Sometimes I don't wipe them out. Sometimes I just pummel them until their weakest city is their capital, and then I surround that city with my own cities and close my borders to them. Enjoy your new life of protection from war, I will make sure every leaves you alone whilst you maintain your ways in peace for the rest of time.
So you play as America?
Could take it a step farther and found a city in the snow or desert, gift it to them, then conquer their other cities leaving them with that really bad city.
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KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
Sometimes I don't wipe them out. Sometimes I just pummel them until their weakest city is their capital, and then I surround that city with my own cities and close my borders to them. Enjoy your new life of protection from war, I will make sure every leaves you alone whilst you maintain your ways in peace for the rest of time.
So you play as America?
Could take it a step farther and found a city in the snow or desert, gift it to them, then conquer their other cities leaving them with that really bad city.
That's great. I'll have to look in to that for future games
I seem to be doing a game a weekend. This weekend I did Rome and tried the new 6 player map they have for multiplayer. Actually the AI does okay on it. The biggest problem was one of the Civs was Russia. And Russia can take the entire middle with 3 cities basically.
I actually went tall because your starting are has a place where you can do three cities and set up 3 3/4 bonus campuses. Nothing like getting factories by turn 120. Still took me to turn 370 to win by science though just because I was so small and couldn't really expand out. Russia was my only rival. I took the middle from them.
I did use my first nuke. I wanted to see it. So at the end Ghandi and Saladin declared war on me. I had a nuke sub in the area. A thermonuclear device ready. Saladin got nuked. Ghandi immediately noped out with a peace.
I played an islands game as the Norse over the weekend. It's super fucking disappointing to roll this civ, and then find out that nobody built their capitals on the coast. Navies in this game just seem so awful (until you get the long range ships I guess). Even in their most optimum settings, this civ is just terrible. Probably doesn't help that i am playing them right after playing the most awesome civ (the Aztecs).
I think it is time for me to go up a level (with a strong civ, and then work my way down to weaker civs). Never played Scythia, Sumeria, or Germany, so maybe one of them.
KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
edited December 2016
Germany is my "go to" civ. It's not an early game monster like Scythia or Sumeria, but god damn it's great once you get Hansa.
Only victory type left for me to get is Religion now. Thinking I may just go on a Duel map, pick Kongo as my enemy and then Peter as me and religion him to death. Seems like the most annoying victory type to get vs AI, as they just LOVE spamming the hell out of missionaries
Germany is my "go to" civ. It's not an early game monster like Scythia or Sumeria, but god damn it's great once you get Hansa.
Only victory type left for me to get is Religion now. Thinking I may just go on a Duel map, pick Kongo as my enemy and then Peter as me and religion him to death. Seems like the most annoying victory type to get vs AI, as they just LOVE spamming the hell out of missionaries
This is almost exactly what I did to get religious victory (I think i was picked Arabia). It's too bad that religious victory is awful, because i really liked how religion worked in prior games.
It's also a shame that Spain is no longer the natural wonder gambling civ and instead entirely geared towards a shitty mechanic/wincon.
Norway, Spain and England. Has anyone had reliable success with any of these civs? I am pretty stoked to get just about anyone else at this point, in fact I will even play India this go around! but those 3 I just don't know what to do with at all.
Norway in particular really seems intriguing to me for some reason, but I just cant seem to find their game plan in any way shape or form.
also screw England, building 1 archaeologist already takes long enough, I cant imagine building 2 everywhere.
England's power is all in the cheap harbor districts for extra trade routes faster.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
With England, build your cities so as they have access to harbours. Make sure you have your harbour, commercial and industrial in a nice little triangle for optimum benefits. With a commercial and a harbour you get 2 trade routes, use that to boost your food/hammers with trading between cities you own.
The bonus harbour doesn't count towards your district limit, so if you go a quick commercial and harbour, you can have 2 trade routes reasonably quickly I believe. After that ignore her boats and just play it like any other civ. Navy is so ordinary in this game it's laughable. Literally the only thing I use them for is the aircraft carriers with 1 or 2 protective units. And to top it off, you build aircraft carrier armada and you still only put 2 planes in there... wtf game...
In other news the most recent update must have changed something because the AI seems even more dickish than usual. Peace most of the game, I have 3 people randomly declare on me for no apparent reason. Fine, you want some of this? I fight back and they sue for peace, fuck no, you wanted this, you get this. Take Brazils capital, and now I'm happy to have peace. But now I'm a warmonger for the rest of the game, being denounced at every opportunity. And them asking for trades (gifts) and then being pissy when I don't want to give away 100gpt and 5 different lux resources? I'm sorry, this isn't a charity.
A 180 degree turn is usually because you made friends or an alliance with an enemy
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
England also is a rolling beast of a civ once you start taking cities on other continents. Free redcoats each city you take. And those do get upgraded as you tech up all the way to free mechanized infantry. They are my one military victory because they roll forward in the later eras with their military. Redcoats will beat their equivalents every time if overseas.
I am playing Scythia and had a map with Zanzibar so I was going to go for religion, but all the AIs snatched the prophets quickly.
Naturally, my only course was to send an endless stream of horses to trample the neighboring russians... and now that I have all their holy sites I am earning like 100 faith per turn and have been using it to bolster my ranks as I press forward against Sumeria.
I had tunnel vision my first four games trying to get each victory type, but now I'm having a lot more fun letting the map and events influence the victory choice.
Having some fun with Sumeria on a fractal map. Trying to play tall style with 4 cities. It's going well so far, but Prince is pretty easy so not sure if it's truly viable.
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
I enjoyed tall in Civ V (of course, tall was OP), but i just don't see an argument for tall over wide in civ 6. In fact, i just spam cities in 6 without much regard for what makes a good site or a bad one, because i'm not aware of any real penalties for doing so.
I'd like to see tall supported by having buildings that use city population in the determination of their output. Or having a significant bonus for constructing x districts (would make Germany even more ridiculous though). Having huge cities use to be amazing, and now i dont even give a shit once they hit, like, pop 7.
I was also able to go kinda tall for science and culture, especially for science where I focused most of my growth into my capital. But really, wide would have been better there to get through the trees a bit faster.
Is kongo supposed to go tall? I haven't tried them yet, but I thought that was their thing. Even then, I guess the same logic applies - ever more cities = more culture/science/faith = win.
KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
Kongo is designed best for tall, but I believe that's only because he gets access to Neighbourhoods so much earlier than everyone else. With the rate at which he gains cultural great people though, you're better off going wide to have a boatload of amphitheatres to store the great works in. Any time I'm Kongo I have far too many of them to know what to do with. But that could be because I'm going wide anyway, thus generating more points via the amphitheatres
Kongo is designed best for tall, but I believe that's only because he gets access to Neighbourhoods so much earlier than everyone else. With the rate at which he gains cultural great people though, you're better off going wide to have a boatload of amphitheatres to store the great works in. Any time I'm Kongo I have far too many of them to know what to do with. But that could be because I'm going wide anyway, thus generating more points via the amphitheatres
Yeah - the fact that you can't even motivate going Tall with the Civ designed for it points to some design issues.
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
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KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
If they want competition for ICS, they just need to look at how Endless Legend did it.
The very fact that a pop 6 city is easy to obtain, and said city can have 3 districts (4 if you have a unique district, 5 if Germany :heartbeat:) doesn't discourage planting extra cities, going Commercial, Campus, +1 of whatever flavour you want for another trade unit (that you can use for more food and production in your city of choice!) more science, cause why not, and culture, holy, harbour for another trade unit, industry if you're in range of another city you want to industry boost.
Shit, you can just go commercial and campus and lock it at 3 pop if you really wanted. Or commercial and industry and then just tell the city to do commercial projects.
Well is quickly settling 4 cities and then trying to build them up as much as possible still considered tall? In Civ 5 I often played with just 3 cities but I don't feel that's a good idea in 6. Heck it might not have been in 5 lol.
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
It was a good idea in 5 - 5 punished having more than 4 cities pretty harshly, and even the 4th city basically needed to be in an above-average spot in order to be a net gain. 3 cities with early granaries and food trade routes to pump your population, then rushing cheap national college+other national wonders because of your low city count was an entirely viable plan.
It's a terrible strategy in 6; 6 strongly rewards having as many cities as you can physically fit on the available land. I play mostly on small maps and generally have 12-20 cities by the midgame.
I feel like Wide vs. Tall only makes sense when global happiness is a thing. If you could only afford to keep X people happy, would you rather have them in 3-4 cities or spread out over a dozen? We are coming off of Civ 5, where that was the case, and I think a lot of people enjoyed playing tall because it tended to be more peaceful (not needing to used conquest for territory, not pissing of AIs for owning too much land, etc.) Without global happiness the argument seems more like "fast vs. slow" to win a race.
Although I do wish there was more emphasis on having valuable cities. As it stands, whenever i take a city in a war, i never ever raze. In Civ IV in my early wars i had to raze most cities just because I couldn't afford to keep them. Now, not only can i afford the cities, I get a huge warmonger penalty for razing the city. So there isn't even much of a choice here. Having upkeep tied to building usually means by the time a city can afford the hammers to build any given building, they can also afford to pay for it.
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Yeah, there's definitely some balance things (surprise!) regarding tall vs. wide that need to be addressed. Population in and of itself is just not that valuable, especially in relation to cities themselves. It should be more expensive to found a city in the first place, and you should have to expend more resources in maintaining larger ones. I think there's a lot of room with regards to district costs (and penalties) in particular that they can play around with. Amenities, too. The 4-city limit seems kind of arbitrary to me, and I find it interesting that every single amenity works the same way.
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KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
The problem with going tall is that with the way the map resources spawn in default maps, you may not get any of the resources you need in your 3 city placements. There's been plenty of times, when I've had 10 cities down, that I've had to go place an 11th just to get X resource cause RNGesus fucking hates me.
Tall is also boring if it's the dominant strategy due to the fact that if everyone goes tall there's little actual conflict because nobody is competing for space or resources. Huge swathes of the map are uninhabited just because it's not worth founding the extra cities just to occupy the space, etc. Your only reason to clash with other players is direct attempts to prevent them from completing a victory condition and the game stagnates.
Wide being dominant gives better gameplay because it forces a lot of border skirmishes and short-term wars over things like luxury resources so player conflict is ongoing and organic throughout the game, but the micromanagement starts to become a serious issue. I'd be a lot happier with the state of civ 6's strategy space even without any balance tweaks if they just cleaned things up so that trade route management and production queues didn't interrupt the game so much.
KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
Had a game yesterday. Randomed Spain, ugh. First city state I found was Kandy. Hmm.. lets try something.
Proceeded to scout very cautiously, any time I saw something that might be the edge of a natural wonder I diverted course. Got suzerain with Kandy, discovered my first wonder, got relic. Rush built holy site and told scouts to stop moving. Got temples online in my cities and started them moving around again. Got insanely lucky with a tribal village that been found as I wasn't doing much scouting, so I didn't expect any to be left. Ho ho ho... relic from village.
In the end I had 7 cities, 2 relics in cap and 4 from wonders. Founded the pantheon that got bonuses from relics, was generating insane amounts of religious points per turn. Still couldn't keep up with Russia and his missionary and apostle spam. Switched it up to tourism victory in the end. Not being able to heal your religious units is super annoying (haven't checked if that religion option that increases healing in holy sites and tiles around it works for apostles).
Not being able to heal your religious units is super annoying (haven't checked if that religion option that increases healing in holy sites and tiles around it works for apostles).
You'll be pleased to learn that Apostles heal if they spend full turns in, or adjacent to, Holy Sites. It's remarkably hard to learn this from the game itself!
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KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
Not being able to heal your religious units is super annoying (haven't checked if that religion option that increases healing in holy sites and tiles around it works for apostles).
You'll be pleased to learn that Apostles heal if they spend full turns in, or adjacent to, Holy Sites. It's remarkably hard to learn this from the game itself!
Is that only because you chose that religious perk though? Or does it happen no matter what?
Not being able to heal your religious units is super annoying (haven't checked if that religion option that increases healing in holy sites and tiles around it works for apostles).
You'll be pleased to learn that Apostles heal if they spend full turns in, or adjacent to, Holy Sites. It's remarkably hard to learn this from the game itself!
Is that only because you chose that religious perk though? Or does it happen no matter what?
No matter what. All religious units heal around or in the holy site. It's impossible to defend yourself otherwise.
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KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
Well, how about that... TIL
I guess it never occurred to me because my guys are on away missions or I just war someone and butcher their missionaries to clean religion off my cities if it comes to it.
I guess it never occurred to me because my guys are on away missions or I just war someone and butcher their missionaries to clean religion off my cities if it comes to it.
TBH I only found out when I got frustrated with the fact they couldn't rest and heal and had to google to find out they only heal around holy sites. It's just flat out not explained in the game (SHAME on them for it too).
Tall is also boring if it's the dominant strategy due to the fact that if everyone goes tall there's little actual conflict because nobody is competing for space or resources. Huge swathes of the map are uninhabited just because it's not worth founding the extra cities just to occupy the space, etc. Your only reason to clash with other players is direct attempts to prevent them from completing a victory condition and the game stagnates.
Wide being dominant gives better gameplay because it forces a lot of border skirmishes and short-term wars over things like luxury resources so player conflict is ongoing and organic throughout the game, but the micromanagement starts to become a serious issue. I'd be a lot happier with the state of civ 6's strategy space even without any balance tweaks if they just cleaned things up so that trade route management and production queues didn't interrupt the game so much.
I prefer playing tallish, I generally avoid conflict unless someone really annoys me.
Even in 5 I still ran sometimes 5/6 cities, I just made sure to place them in really good spots, which sometimes created conflict. It was just over specific desirable land, not random border skirmishes.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Does anyone have any tips for running an airforce? I'm trying to figure out if it is even worth it.
It's not worth it.
It's sort of not worth it due to the inability to produce multiple planes at once. But vs the AI, it's not a bad thing. I've never bothered with planes in multi.
The benefit of them is, the bombers can cover a huge area and allow you to deal damage to the cities without having to slam tanks in to them over and over. Siege units like mobile rocket arty just take so damn long to move around, even with a general attached to them 3 hexes is super slow compared to what your tanks are doing, though the general does help a little.
If you can attach a general to one arty and observation balloon to a second, you can help the problem a teeny bit more. Or just shit out a bunch of bombers and wreck cities if you have the time to build them.
edit: my default difficulty is King if i'm just looking for a casual game. YMMV on harder/easier diff wrt planes. Also, I've never built a jet, the AI either doesn't know about anti air units or airports, or doesn't care about them in my experience.
Does anyone have any tips for running an airforce? I'm trying to figure out if it is even worth it.
It's not worth it.
It's sort of not worth it due to the inability to produce multiple planes at once. But vs the AI, it's not a bad thing. I've never bothered with planes in multi.
The benefit of them is, the bombers can cover a huge area and allow you to deal damage to the cities without having to slam tanks in to them over and over. Siege units like mobile rocket arty just take so damn long to move around, even with a general attached to them 3 hexes is super slow compared to what your tanks are doing, though the general does help a little.
If you can attach a general to one arty and observation balloon to a second, you can help the problem a teeny bit more. Or just shit out a bunch of bombers and wreck cities if you have the time to build them.
edit: my default difficulty is King if i'm just looking for a casual game. YMMV on harder/easier diff wrt planes. Also, I've never built a jet, the AI either doesn't know about anti air units or airports, or doesn't care about them in my experience.
You also have to build an otherwise worthless district for them.
Does anyone have any tips for running an airforce? I'm trying to figure out if it is even worth it.
It's not worth it.
It's sort of not worth it due to the inability to produce multiple planes at once. But vs the AI, it's not a bad thing. I've never bothered with planes in multi.
The benefit of them is, the bombers can cover a huge area and allow you to deal damage to the cities without having to slam tanks in to them over and over. Siege units like mobile rocket arty just take so damn long to move around, even with a general attached to them 3 hexes is super slow compared to what your tanks are doing, though the general does help a little.
If you can attach a general to one arty and observation balloon to a second, you can help the problem a teeny bit more. Or just shit out a bunch of bombers and wreck cities if you have the time to build them.
edit: my default difficulty is King if i'm just looking for a casual game. YMMV on harder/easier diff wrt planes. Also, I've never built a jet, the AI either doesn't know about anti air units or airports, or doesn't care about them in my experience.
You also have to build an otherwise worthless district for them.
Rarely do I find extra production worthless. I actually find the aerodrome one of my more common late game districts, housing districts and aqueducts on the other hand....I might almost call those worthless.
Airforce is really strong in sp, and just ok, if not underused in mp. Their real strength in mp is their air pillage which no one is playing around with right now and the ability to deliver and deny nukes.
I have yet to try rushing an airforce as I am not sure that would gain you nearly as much as it did in civ5, but once you start to get the bulk of your late game ground army in place I find its a lot better to switch to plane production then clogging up the ground with land units too much. 2-4 Fighters to start as spotters for your artillery/main force. Then roll into heavy bomber production, its fairly common for me to have my ground army ignoring cities and just focusing on units while my bombers take the city defenses down in the background. They arent the best, but they fill a role that is otherwise left completely empty.
For defense I find that the bombers are pretty good against naval units but more or less abysmal against ground units until you hit a critical mass. On offense they are great for picking off low hp units and taking out cities. Fighters are basically support units at this point unless your opponent starts to mass their own to counter your bombers, but a smart opponent will just go AA guns at that point to counter instead.
Beefers on
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
By the time the late game rolls around and you can actually build Aerodrome districts, and then build the accompanying buildings, the additional production is far outweighed by their costs. Encampments sometimes make sense because they are built early enough that you will reap a return over the course of the game, especially if you know you need to be pumping out units from that particular city. But in the case of the Aerodrome, that's not really the case (at least, in my opinion).
That being said, Aerodromes are really nice if you have a big map and need to shuttle units across them quickly.
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So you play as America?
Could take it a step farther and found a city in the snow or desert, gift it to them, then conquer their other cities leaving them with that really bad city.
That's great. I'll have to look in to that for future games
I actually went tall because your starting are has a place where you can do three cities and set up 3 3/4 bonus campuses. Nothing like getting factories by turn 120. Still took me to turn 370 to win by science though just because I was so small and couldn't really expand out. Russia was my only rival. I took the middle from them.
I did use my first nuke. I wanted to see it. So at the end Ghandi and Saladin declared war on me. I had a nuke sub in the area. A thermonuclear device ready. Saladin got nuked. Ghandi immediately noped out with a peace.
Poor Cairo, it was a wasteland.
I think it is time for me to go up a level (with a strong civ, and then work my way down to weaker civs). Never played Scythia, Sumeria, or Germany, so maybe one of them.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Only victory type left for me to get is Religion now. Thinking I may just go on a Duel map, pick Kongo as my enemy and then Peter as me and religion him to death. Seems like the most annoying victory type to get vs AI, as they just LOVE spamming the hell out of missionaries
This is almost exactly what I did to get religious victory (I think i was picked Arabia). It's too bad that religious victory is awful, because i really liked how religion worked in prior games.
It's also a shame that Spain is no longer the natural wonder gambling civ and instead entirely geared towards a shitty mechanic/wincon.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Norway in particular really seems intriguing to me for some reason, but I just cant seem to find their game plan in any way shape or form.
also screw England, building 1 archaeologist already takes long enough, I cant imagine building 2 everywhere.
The bonus harbour doesn't count towards your district limit, so if you go a quick commercial and harbour, you can have 2 trade routes reasonably quickly I believe. After that ignore her boats and just play it like any other civ. Navy is so ordinary in this game it's laughable. Literally the only thing I use them for is the aircraft carriers with 1 or 2 protective units. And to top it off, you build aircraft carrier armada and you still only put 2 planes in there... wtf game...
In other news the most recent update must have changed something because the AI seems even more dickish than usual. Peace most of the game, I have 3 people randomly declare on me for no apparent reason. Fine, you want some of this? I fight back and they sue for peace, fuck no, you wanted this, you get this. Take Brazils capital, and now I'm happy to have peace. But now I'm a warmonger for the rest of the game, being denounced at every opportunity. And them asking for trades (gifts) and then being pissy when I don't want to give away 100gpt and 5 different lux resources? I'm sorry, this isn't a charity.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I am playing Scythia and had a map with Zanzibar so I was going to go for religion, but all the AIs snatched the prophets quickly.
Naturally, my only course was to send an endless stream of horses to trample the neighboring russians... and now that I have all their holy sites I am earning like 100 faith per turn and have been using it to bolster my ranks as I press forward against Sumeria.
I had tunnel vision my first four games trying to get each victory type, but now I'm having a lot more fun letting the map and events influence the victory choice.
I'd like to see tall supported by having buildings that use city population in the determination of their output. Or having a significant bonus for constructing x districts (would make Germany even more ridiculous though). Having huge cities use to be amazing, and now i dont even give a shit once they hit, like, pop 7.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Is kongo supposed to go tall? I haven't tried them yet, but I thought that was their thing. Even then, I guess the same logic applies - ever more cities = more culture/science/faith = win.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Yeah - the fact that you can't even motivate going Tall with the Civ designed for it points to some design issues.
--Mark Twain
The very fact that a pop 6 city is easy to obtain, and said city can have 3 districts (4 if you have a unique district, 5 if Germany :heartbeat:) doesn't discourage planting extra cities, going Commercial, Campus, +1 of whatever flavour you want for another trade unit (that you can use for more food and production in your city of choice!) more science, cause why not, and culture, holy, harbour for another trade unit, industry if you're in range of another city you want to industry boost.
Shit, you can just go commercial and campus and lock it at 3 pop if you really wanted. Or commercial and industry and then just tell the city to do commercial projects.
It's a terrible strategy in 6; 6 strongly rewards having as many cities as you can physically fit on the available land. I play mostly on small maps and generally have 12-20 cities by the midgame.
Although I do wish there was more emphasis on having valuable cities. As it stands, whenever i take a city in a war, i never ever raze. In Civ IV in my early wars i had to raze most cities just because I couldn't afford to keep them. Now, not only can i afford the cities, I get a huge warmonger penalty for razing the city. So there isn't even much of a choice here. Having upkeep tied to building usually means by the time a city can afford the hammers to build any given building, they can also afford to pay for it.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Wide being dominant gives better gameplay because it forces a lot of border skirmishes and short-term wars over things like luxury resources so player conflict is ongoing and organic throughout the game, but the micromanagement starts to become a serious issue. I'd be a lot happier with the state of civ 6's strategy space even without any balance tweaks if they just cleaned things up so that trade route management and production queues didn't interrupt the game so much.
... as Sumeria.
Proceeded to scout very cautiously, any time I saw something that might be the edge of a natural wonder I diverted course. Got suzerain with Kandy, discovered my first wonder, got relic. Rush built holy site and told scouts to stop moving. Got temples online in my cities and started them moving around again. Got insanely lucky with a tribal village that been found as I wasn't doing much scouting, so I didn't expect any to be left. Ho ho ho... relic from village.
In the end I had 7 cities, 2 relics in cap and 4 from wonders. Founded the pantheon that got bonuses from relics, was generating insane amounts of religious points per turn. Still couldn't keep up with Russia and his missionary and apostle spam. Switched it up to tourism victory in the end. Not being able to heal your religious units is super annoying (haven't checked if that religion option that increases healing in holy sites and tiles around it works for apostles).
You'll be pleased to learn that Apostles heal if they spend full turns in, or adjacent to, Holy Sites. It's remarkably hard to learn this from the game itself!
Is that only because you chose that religious perk though? Or does it happen no matter what?
No matter what. All religious units heal around or in the holy site. It's impossible to defend yourself otherwise.
I guess it never occurred to me because my guys are on away missions or I just war someone and butcher their missionaries to clean religion off my cities if it comes to it.
TBH I only found out when I got frustrated with the fact they couldn't rest and heal and had to google to find out they only heal around holy sites. It's just flat out not explained in the game (SHAME on them for it too).
but they're listening to every word I say
I prefer playing tallish, I generally avoid conflict unless someone really annoys me.
Even in 5 I still ran sometimes 5/6 cities, I just made sure to place them in really good spots, which sometimes created conflict. It was just over specific desirable land, not random border skirmishes.
It's not worth it.
It's sort of not worth it due to the inability to produce multiple planes at once. But vs the AI, it's not a bad thing. I've never bothered with planes in multi.
The benefit of them is, the bombers can cover a huge area and allow you to deal damage to the cities without having to slam tanks in to them over and over. Siege units like mobile rocket arty just take so damn long to move around, even with a general attached to them 3 hexes is super slow compared to what your tanks are doing, though the general does help a little.
If you can attach a general to one arty and observation balloon to a second, you can help the problem a teeny bit more. Or just shit out a bunch of bombers and wreck cities if you have the time to build them.
edit: my default difficulty is King if i'm just looking for a casual game. YMMV on harder/easier diff wrt planes. Also, I've never built a jet, the AI either doesn't know about anti air units or airports, or doesn't care about them in my experience.
You also have to build an otherwise worthless district for them.
Rarely do I find extra production worthless. I actually find the aerodrome one of my more common late game districts, housing districts and aqueducts on the other hand....I might almost call those worthless.
Airforce is really strong in sp, and just ok, if not underused in mp. Their real strength in mp is their air pillage which no one is playing around with right now and the ability to deliver and deny nukes.
I have yet to try rushing an airforce as I am not sure that would gain you nearly as much as it did in civ5, but once you start to get the bulk of your late game ground army in place I find its a lot better to switch to plane production then clogging up the ground with land units too much. 2-4 Fighters to start as spotters for your artillery/main force. Then roll into heavy bomber production, its fairly common for me to have my ground army ignoring cities and just focusing on units while my bombers take the city defenses down in the background. They arent the best, but they fill a role that is otherwise left completely empty.
For defense I find that the bombers are pretty good against naval units but more or less abysmal against ground units until you hit a critical mass. On offense they are great for picking off low hp units and taking out cities. Fighters are basically support units at this point unless your opponent starts to mass their own to counter your bombers, but a smart opponent will just go AA guns at that point to counter instead.
That being said, Aerodromes are really nice if you have a big map and need to shuttle units across them quickly.