So not going to spoil them but apparently leader abilities for the next pack are already in the files for this update. Some really neat stuff for Japan, Persia, and the ottomans there.
Yeah, those are way more interesting ideas than the negotiators pack.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
Yeah they really should have led with those. I think people are sleeping on Saladin and Nzinga a bit but they just don’t really reach out and grab you as being interesting in the same way.
So I messed around with Nzinga, man… I don’t know if I would call her broken per se (maybe high A or S tier) but she’s definitely great. Obviously great culture, but with the yield bonuses, food and production from relics/sculptures/artifacts, extra great merchants, and neighborhoods you can boost her pop like crazy which makes her a good science civ as well, in the same way as how you can go science well with khmer even though they don’t get direct bonuses. Just a really solid and fun civ.
Tried Julius Caesar, I feel like he needs a bit of a bump somehow. Maybe give him his wild card from an enemy capital back. I got maybe 1000 gold from his ability which is good, but then I got mapfucked with no iron…
If I did have Iron I could have probably killed a neighbor pretty easy, but thats a big coin flip. In the end though he feels like Alexander with an early bonus to gold from barbs but no horses to fall back into on and nowhere near the rewards for conquest that alex gets… Meh.
If you only get 1000 gold for the whole game that's like half a turn of Mansa Musa. Though I imagine it could come earlier where it might be more decisive. But still.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
You’d get more as you conquered but honestly after you have the capability to conquer AI cities it doesn’t matter all that much.
The real power is having the gold to grease your production of legionnaires and upgrading warriors…. Assuming you get iron and don’t hit bronze working and have to stop everything to settle some random iron deposit on an island or ice cap.
He’s still a decent to good civ because Rome’s kit is pretty good and if everything works I can see him having a really good early rush, but if it doesn’t and you have to wait on iron or have a strong military opponent next to you or whatever you’re basically worse trajan. Taking Caesar over trajan is a risk and I feel like there needs to be a bit better reward for it. Giving him a wildcard for conquering his first capital as in the earlier builds would be just right IMHO.
0
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Trajan gives you well over 1k in gold worth of monuments, and monuments are by far the most important building in the early game. I don't think it's particularly close between the two.
Yeah, like, literally the break-even point for Caesar is basically you can only buy Monuments - you cannot build them. Until they're paying for themselves, I just can't see Caesar's benefit being better. It's situational at best, which kinda sucks because Rome is a great option for having multiple Leaders.
I do wish we'd gotten more multi-Civ Leaders, though. I don't think we even got one.
So turns out Veni, Vidi, Vici gives you the bonus gold whenever you earn gold from barbs. This means when you are playing the barbarian clans mode you earn the bonus every time you raid the camps so you can print gold by farming outposts.
Yeah this is assumed to be an oversight because thats totally not how gilgamesh who has a similarly phrased ability works.
Learning that I’ve not played for too long, playing on Emperor managed to just get scooped for religion as Ethiopia. Sad. I need to practice my openings so I can both grab religion and get a golden monumentality as a faith civ.
Having a bit more respect for Arabia now.
0
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
I really like this guy. Especially with his ability nerfed a bit. I feel like modders are bad for horribly overbuilding civs and leaders but I feel like right now he’s pretty decent, strong but probably not straight up broke strong. Also his model and animation are one of my favorite I have seen from Sukri or any mod leader.
I really like this guy. Especially with his ability nerfed a bit. I feel like modders are bad for horribly overbuilding civs and leaders but I feel like right now he’s pretty decent, strong but probably not straight up broke strong. Also his model and animation are one of my favorite I have seen from Sukri or any mod leader.
He also posted on reddit a new version of Lincoln that looked like a good fix for him
Yeah I don’t know if I’ll use it or not but its pretty neat.
His oceans is something I use a fair amount though. I’ve looked through his other civs, Vercintorix is pretty nice, Osun of akan is very nice but a bit overpowered (I feel like no pop loss on making settlers is just too powerful and steps on magnus toes), Iceland is fun but has an annoying bug with vanilla phonecia that keeps it turned off for me unless I want to play them specifically.
I think others are older ones and the animation and modeling are a bit lesser quality, I really would love a Siam update.
Still if all I include in my regular playlist is vercingtorix and Burma that still is pretty awesome.
+1
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
old draft:
fired up a true location start on Huge Earth with Eleanor of Aquitaine (England) on King
Immediately snagged a couple of stray city-state settlers who’d been denied their spots (Cardiff and Vatican City). Amsterdam started right across the channel and we played loyalty tag for a few turns until I grew too big and flipped them. While I was doing that, Rome declared war on and conquered Athens.
And then I barely had time to catch a breath before Rome decided I’d make a lovely province. Luckily I was ready for that and wiped them out. So by turn 100 I had most of Europe to myself, with Georgia and Scythia pushing on my borders
Now I’m on turn 260, pumping out 900+ culture per turn and chiseling away at my neighbors. The downside of the insane loyalty I produce is I’ve started accidentally cannibalizing my own city-states.
New post: True start Europe as Gaul is goddamn hilarious. Had France and Germany both found cities 3 tiles from me and each other, and all I had to do was grow my population to 2 faster than either of them. By turn 40 both capitals were mine just from loyalty loss and all I had to do was wait out the shift from free city to my control
I still took a diplo hit for holding two original capitols even though I never attacked either of them
Later I went down and cleared out Spain, which made Scotland and Hungary declare war so I took a city from each to punish their hubris. And Georgia is down in the corner but I’m not terribly worried about them. I have plenty of walls.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I tried a gaul game, I feel like the no districts in the city ring thing is really obnoxious.
I’m on king, 8 cities, strongest military and ahead 10 techs or so, so its probably only a matter of time before victory, debating on whether to call it or finish for the acheivement.
I really need to start playing on emperor but its a pretty big jump and I keep getting behind and stuck with 4 or 5 cities and nowhere to go.
0
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I didn’t like it at first, but you can still do aqueducts and canals. The real penalty is the lack of bonuses for districts being adjacent to each other.
on the plus side, mines and quarries giving a culture bomb is great for expansion, and gestatae are OP early game fighters, especially when you have multiples
I can’t handle emperor. Even with great starts I’ll get 50-60 turns in and then get attacked by neighboring civs just for existing, and all their units are typically one or two ages ahead of mine.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I didn’t like it at first, but you can still do aqueducts and canals. The real penalty is the lack of bonuses for districts being adjacent to each other.
on the plus side, mines and quarries giving a culture bomb is great for expansion, and gestatae are OP early game fighters, especially when you have multiples
I can’t handle emperor. Even with great starts I’ll get 50-60 turns in and then get attacked by neighboring civs just for existing, and all their units are typically one or two ages ahead of mine.
Yeah you really have to do some kind of shenanigans, either through chopping or faith/golden age/monumentality or conquering an early city state or enemy city, to catch up early to the extra city or you’ll get snowballed to death by the AI just having one more city to build settlers and military units with. The same starts that I have in king and end up with 8 cities by medieval and think “man this was a great freaking start” seem to be just bare minimum for emperor and above.
One thing I noticed I have a problem with is if you ever ignore settlers and leave a spot in the map open the AI is really good at grabbing those spots even later in the game and catching up. Like I’ll do an early game settling or conquest push and get up to a size I feel comfortable with on king and be way ahead then look up an age later and the AIs that had 4 cities and were behind me now have 12 and are catching up in science and culture.
+1
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
That’s why one of my early strategies is locking off territory as much as possible and I almost never open my borders
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
That’s why one of my early strategies is locking off territory as much as possible and I almost never open my borders
This is the way. Try to pick blocker spots for your cities, form a wall with them with closed borders, and then you can slowly settle in behind them as you can.
Yeah next time I might try to do that more, only problem is I feel like that is inviting an AI war.
My gauls have settled down, I started building a bunch of oppidiums to build units for a domination push, but then I saw how quickly I could build wonders, campuses, commercial hubs and theatre squares with them, especially once factories and power came online, so now I have a big army standing around in my cities and am pushing up on a science victory. Even late start cities can really get going quickly by building an oppidium and having a builder drop some mines and farms.
Yeah next time I might try to do that more, only problem is I feel like that is inviting an AI war.
My gauls have settled down, I started building a bunch of oppidiums to build units for a domination push, but then I saw how quickly I could build wonders, campuses, commercial hubs and theatre squares with them, especially once factories and power came online, so now I have a big army standing around in my cities and am pushing up on a science victory. Even late start cities can really get going quickly by building an oppidium and having a builder drop some mines and farms.
It absolutely will piss them off. You should be trying to send a delegation immediately upon meeting a civ (it starts you on a positive to neutral feeling with them, making them slightly less likely to attack), and then make sure to make enough military units so your score is high enough that they again are less likely to mess with you. They still might, but if you do those two things they may be more likely to pick a fight with someone else, giving you time to get up walls, units, etc to reinforce those cities. I also will tend to leave my core city rather naked while doing this as I'm expecting the fight to be on the outer cities.
Alternately, it's the AI you need like four archers to defend yourself. If that.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
+2
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
think of the defensibility of your terrain if you're worried about an invasion. settle on hills for the defense bonus and clear line of sight for your archers, on the other side of rivers from where the invader would be coming from so they get the fording penalty, use mountains and the sea to minimize the number tiles they can physically attack your city from (if it's not a naval map), etc
establish choke points if the topography allows where you put a fortified melee unit (that can't be surrounded) with an archer standing behind it; if you think someone is gearing up for war, parade your entire military in their vision to try and scare them away (they won't know it's ALL the units you have and may think you're stronger than you are)
and also probably work on optimizing your early build order a bit. immortal and deity early rushes can be flat out unwinnable occasionally if they find you too early because they start with an entire army, but in the lower difficulties you should always be able to match their unit production not very far into the game
I think I am going to try Ghandi next, was having a discussion about whether he is underpowered or not (Chandra is definitely not bad as a conquest civ, so thats why I was going Ghandi)
Strategy is going to be NOT to start a religion, and instead soak up ai ones. Varus are pretty wicked and easy to get so hopefully I can grab some early city states. I feel like if I could get feed the world, work ethic, and choral music by the later eras they could be a monster for a culture victory.
Edit: played around with india a bit, that idea was terrible lol.
From what I have learned I feel like a religion is pretty much necessary.
Steppe wells are marginal, slightly better than a farm in some cases if you know how to place them (NEVER break up triangles). Getting a follower bonus from multiple religions is similar, its an ok bonus but not worth building holy sites just for.
What is good that they have? Missionaries and varus. Varus are basically men at arms that come with horseback riding. Very strong. So a strat might be to make 2 early holy sites to push religion (needed to guarantee a pick sometimes even as low as king) then try to get a golden age and go monumentality (varu and step well help here). Then faith buy settlers and builders and conquest w/varus to catch up and position for a religious or domination win (extra charge missionaries and crusade should be very handy for dom)
So the real question is do you want a good CB that comes a bit late for a varu rush but is still useful for a domination push or a small but significant faith bonus after founding a religion. I feel like either bonus is nice but not terribly game changing. Ghandi even gets a stealth military boost in his war weariness.
Paul Giamatti plays Tokugawa (although he did look like that IRL apparently.)
Suleiman got older and spent some time in the sun….
I’m probably most hype for Nader Shah but Tokugawa comes close. Suleiman is ok but missing Ibrahim and Jannissaries hurts IMHO.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
edited December 2022
Leader Pass appears to be available for the IPad version now but at $20 I’ll have to wait until after XMas before trying it out.
That’s ok I still have plenty to do.
Edit: though the update seems to have broken some of the menus and tags? For example when I look at my relationships it says LOC_DIPLOMACY_GRIEVANCES_NONE and similar things whenever the World Congress screen shows up
knitdan on
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
First game as caesar, no iron. Now first game as nader shah, no iron.
I understand for later resources but if you have an early UU needing iron and there isn’t any nearby you literally cannot do anything aside from hope you can suzerain a city state with it until well past when those uus would be useful. Horses too but they seem to be more common.
Also the AI seems hard coded not to trade strategics. Malthias was next to me, declared friend, I had max horses, he had max iron. Won’t trade for any price including all my horses.
And I know the idea is to get the player to think “ok I can’t do early conquest because of the map, let me do something else” but that sucks when you have someone like caesar whose whole kit is based around classic era conquest or nader whose civ ability depends on you taking a few cities early to kick in.
Honestly I've never liked how Civ handled resources. Humankind is a little better because you can see the resources (just not what they are) from the start of the game.
They also have a neat feature where certain cultures can spend gold to improve resources in city states or other players land. Helps late game when your ally has that Uranium but doesn't have the tech.
Which is a major complaint from me in Civ. I know allowing builders to build anything inside an allies territory would allow for to many exploits, but it would be nice if there was a way to aid allies and vassals in extracting materials they haven't researched yet.
More abilities like the card that let's spaceports make aluminum would be nice. Something so that a lack of resources doesn't bog down your game, but at the same time you have to give up something for it so you want to naturally expand and extract them off the map if possible.
Also the AI seems hard coded not to trade strategics. Malthias was next to me, declared friend, I had max horses, he had max iron. Won’t trade for any price including all my horses.
The A.I. is very unwilling to trade strategics with an immediate neighbor, for obvious reasons. You should have better luck trading with someone farther away.
Also the AI seems hard coded not to trade strategics. Malthias was next to me, declared friend, I had max horses, he had max iron. Won’t trade for any price including all my horses.
The A.I. is very unwilling to trade strategics with an immediate neighbor, for obvious reasons. You should have better luck trading with someone farther away.
Well its classic age on a standard continents map, theres really no one that isn’t my immediate neighbor. Getting iron trade after caravels doesn’t help much.
Really interested in how they are going to make 5 china leaders all play differently. I feel like Yongle is right there with Nader Shah and Tokugawa in hitting that “kinda generic middle aged guy” vibe but oh well. Like they could all be members of the same world leader rotary club.
All cities gain three unique projects. Lijia (Gold) converts 100% of production into gold. Ligia (Faith) converts 50% of production into faith. Ligia (Food) converts 50% of production into food.
Cities with a population of 10 or higher receive bonus gold, science, and culture based on a percentage of their population.
District projects only convert 15% of production into their respective yields, so these unique projects offer a much greater value, as long as you don't mind forgoing the great people points. And of course, there was no food generating project at all before this one. If nothing else, the faith project will make it trivially easy to get the first pantheon of the game.
The food project and population based bonuses push Yongle in a tall direction, but not having any built in housing bonuses mean Yongle players will need to prioritize housing above all else to keep up with their food intake.
Manuel of Entrapment
All spies opperate at one level higher.
Successfully completed offensive spy missions give a burst of science and culture.
Gain a free spy upon researching defensive tactics.
The obvious point of comparison is Black Queen Catherine. Cathy's spies allow you to specialize them right out the gate, but Wu's maintain a general advantage throughout the entire game. Wu also gets her first spy two eras earlier than everyone else, as opposed to Cathy's one. If you want to harass opponents with espionage they can't do anything about, Wu has taken that crown. However, Cathy still maintains her unique diplomatic visibility bonus, which received a stealth buff with Rise and Fall when the devs attached a small combat strength bonus to all diplomatic visibility. Overall, that pushes Wu into being the new leader of choice if you want to go all in on espionage, while Cathy's agents are better used to support more conventional aggression.
Thirty-six Stratagems
All military units have the Convert Barbarian action. This sacrifices the unit, but causes all adjacent barbarian units to fall under your control. Units do not need to be at full health to use this action.
The perfect ability to have when playing with zombie mode turned on. No one will be able to stop China when their borders are guarded by legions of the undead!
Even in normal gameplay, you'll now have the option by get some utility out of scouts who get surrounded and would normally just die. Getting a foothold on those barbarian islands you normally encounter in the mid game will be a lot easier. And no one will ever recruit partisans against you. They'd only be feeding you free units!
Yongle is interested the other two I basically don't care about.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
I like this better than the other 2 packs by far. Pack 1 Nzinga was really cool but mainly only because of kongo, the rest sort of fell flat. Pack 2 Tokugawa and magnificence suleiman were pretty good but Nader shah is really only decent because his abilities are bugged (which I don’t know if they will ever fix or just make the bugs “official”, hopefully they will do a bug fix/gameplay balance pass at some point). This is the first pack where all the leaders seemed like they were well thought out and interesting.
First bug I’ve seen for the new pack, probably of limited use but if you build the hagia sophia it grants Qins melee units an extra charge of convert barbarians for some reason.
Also he works as designed but yongle is apparenty a monster at econ.
First bug I’ve seen for the new pack, probably of limited use but if you build the hagia sophia it grants Qins melee units an extra charge of convert barbarians for some reason.
If Mosques do the same thing, they’ll be pretty important worship buildings for him.
First bug I’ve seen for the new pack, probably of limited use but if you build the hagia sophia it grants Qins melee units an extra charge of convert barbarians for some reason.
If Mosques do the same thing, they’ll be pretty important worship buildings for him.
I think someone on reddit said they tried mosques and it didn’t work, probably someone just forgot to set a flag on the hagia sophia to apply to religious units only.
Yongle is in fact super dumb. Here's all of the science/culture/gold. The gold is like Mansa Musa without the drawbacks. Plus a ton of science. Might be balanced if it were for each population from 10 on you got the 1/1/2 but as is it's dumb.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
Looking at him compared to Khmer which is a similar mechanic(and most people think was on the strong side)…. Khmer gets 1 faith per population, .5 culture per pop, 10 tourism per 10 pop (so breakpoints at 10 and 20 pop rather than a 15 pop getting 15 tourism they just get 10 until they hit 20).
Yongle is just flat out better. Twice as much culture at the cost of tourism and double the gold bonus vs khmer’s faith, and science on top of that?
Khmer does get other abilities that give food and faith… But so does yongle? And the eureka bonuses and great wall gold/culture?
I think at the very least the gold should be dropped to something more reasonable like .5/pop given his other bonuses, and even then he’d probably be in the top 3 civs.
Posts
Tried Julius Caesar, I feel like he needs a bit of a bump somehow. Maybe give him his wild card from an enemy capital back. I got maybe 1000 gold from his ability which is good, but then I got mapfucked with no iron…
If I did have Iron I could have probably killed a neighbor pretty easy, but thats a big coin flip. In the end though he feels like Alexander with an early bonus to gold from barbs but no horses to fall back into on and nowhere near the rewards for conquest that alex gets… Meh.
The real power is having the gold to grease your production of legionnaires and upgrading warriors…. Assuming you get iron and don’t hit bronze working and have to stop everything to settle some random iron deposit on an island or ice cap.
He’s still a decent to good civ because Rome’s kit is pretty good and if everything works I can see him having a really good early rush, but if it doesn’t and you have to wait on iron or have a strong military opponent next to you or whatever you’re basically worse trajan. Taking Caesar over trajan is a risk and I feel like there needs to be a bit better reward for it. Giving him a wildcard for conquering his first capital as in the earlier builds would be just right IMHO.
I do wish we'd gotten more multi-Civ Leaders, though. I don't think we even got one.
Learning that I’ve not played for too long, playing on Emperor managed to just get scooped for religion as Ethiopia. Sad. I need to practice my openings so I can both grab religion and get a golden monumentality as a faith civ.
Having a bit more respect for Arabia now.
I'd heard Gilga actually had this exact same bug and it got fixed. Which makes this oversight particularly funny.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1217487582
I really like this guy. Especially with his ability nerfed a bit. I feel like modders are bad for horribly overbuilding civs and leaders but I feel like right now he’s pretty decent, strong but probably not straight up broke strong. Also his model and animation are one of my favorite I have seen from Sukri or any mod leader.
He also posted on reddit a new version of Lincoln that looked like a good fix for him
His oceans is something I use a fair amount though. I’ve looked through his other civs, Vercintorix is pretty nice, Osun of akan is very nice but a bit overpowered (I feel like no pop loss on making settlers is just too powerful and steps on magnus toes), Iceland is fun but has an annoying bug with vanilla phonecia that keeps it turned off for me unless I want to play them specifically.
I think others are older ones and the animation and modeling are a bit lesser quality, I really would love a Siam update.
Still if all I include in my regular playlist is vercingtorix and Burma that still is pretty awesome.
fired up a true location start on Huge Earth with Eleanor of Aquitaine (England) on King
Immediately snagged a couple of stray city-state settlers who’d been denied their spots (Cardiff and Vatican City). Amsterdam started right across the channel and we played loyalty tag for a few turns until I grew too big and flipped them. While I was doing that, Rome declared war on and conquered Athens.
And then I barely had time to catch a breath before Rome decided I’d make a lovely province. Luckily I was ready for that and wiped them out. So by turn 100 I had most of Europe to myself, with Georgia and Scythia pushing on my borders
Now I’m on turn 260, pumping out 900+ culture per turn and chiseling away at my neighbors. The downside of the insane loyalty I produce is I’ve started accidentally cannibalizing my own city-states.
New post: True start Europe as Gaul is goddamn hilarious. Had France and Germany both found cities 3 tiles from me and each other, and all I had to do was grow my population to 2 faster than either of them. By turn 40 both capitals were mine just from loyalty loss and all I had to do was wait out the shift from free city to my control
I still took a diplo hit for holding two original capitols even though I never attacked either of them
Later I went down and cleared out Spain, which made Scotland and Hungary declare war so I took a city from each to punish their hubris. And Georgia is down in the corner but I’m not terribly worried about them. I have plenty of walls.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I’m on king, 8 cities, strongest military and ahead 10 techs or so, so its probably only a matter of time before victory, debating on whether to call it or finish for the acheivement.
I really need to start playing on emperor but its a pretty big jump and I keep getting behind and stuck with 4 or 5 cities and nowhere to go.
on the plus side, mines and quarries giving a culture bomb is great for expansion, and gestatae are OP early game fighters, especially when you have multiples
I can’t handle emperor. Even with great starts I’ll get 50-60 turns in and then get attacked by neighboring civs just for existing, and all their units are typically one or two ages ahead of mine.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Yeah you really have to do some kind of shenanigans, either through chopping or faith/golden age/monumentality or conquering an early city state or enemy city, to catch up early to the extra city or you’ll get snowballed to death by the AI just having one more city to build settlers and military units with. The same starts that I have in king and end up with 8 cities by medieval and think “man this was a great freaking start” seem to be just bare minimum for emperor and above.
One thing I noticed I have a problem with is if you ever ignore settlers and leave a spot in the map open the AI is really good at grabbing those spots even later in the game and catching up. Like I’ll do an early game settling or conquest push and get up to a size I feel comfortable with on king and be way ahead then look up an age later and the AIs that had 4 cities and were behind me now have 12 and are catching up in science and culture.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
This is the way. Try to pick blocker spots for your cities, form a wall with them with closed borders, and then you can slowly settle in behind them as you can.
My gauls have settled down, I started building a bunch of oppidiums to build units for a domination push, but then I saw how quickly I could build wonders, campuses, commercial hubs and theatre squares with them, especially once factories and power came online, so now I have a big army standing around in my cities and am pushing up on a science victory. Even late start cities can really get going quickly by building an oppidium and having a builder drop some mines and farms.
It absolutely will piss them off. You should be trying to send a delegation immediately upon meeting a civ (it starts you on a positive to neutral feeling with them, making them slightly less likely to attack), and then make sure to make enough military units so your score is high enough that they again are less likely to mess with you. They still might, but if you do those two things they may be more likely to pick a fight with someone else, giving you time to get up walls, units, etc to reinforce those cities. I also will tend to leave my core city rather naked while doing this as I'm expecting the fight to be on the outer cities.
establish choke points if the topography allows where you put a fortified melee unit (that can't be surrounded) with an archer standing behind it; if you think someone is gearing up for war, parade your entire military in their vision to try and scare them away (they won't know it's ALL the units you have and may think you're stronger than you are)
and also probably work on optimizing your early build order a bit. immortal and deity early rushes can be flat out unwinnable occasionally if they find you too early because they start with an entire army, but in the lower difficulties you should always be able to match their unit production not very far into the game
Strategy is going to be NOT to start a religion, and instead soak up ai ones. Varus are pretty wicked and easy to get so hopefully I can grab some early city states. I feel like if I could get feed the world, work ethic, and choral music by the later eras they could be a monster for a culture victory.
Edit: played around with india a bit, that idea was terrible lol.
From what I have learned I feel like a religion is pretty much necessary.
Steppe wells are marginal, slightly better than a farm in some cases if you know how to place them (NEVER break up triangles). Getting a follower bonus from multiple religions is similar, its an ok bonus but not worth building holy sites just for.
What is good that they have? Missionaries and varus. Varus are basically men at arms that come with horseback riding. Very strong. So a strat might be to make 2 early holy sites to push religion (needed to guarantee a pick sometimes even as low as king) then try to get a golden age and go monumentality (varu and step well help here). Then faith buy settlers and builders and conquest w/varus to catch up and position for a religious or domination win (extra charge missionaries and crusade should be very handy for dom)
So the real question is do you want a good CB that comes a bit late for a varu rush but is still useful for a domination push or a small but significant faith bonus after founding a religion. I feel like either bonus is nice but not terribly game changing. Ghandi even gets a stealth military boost in his war weariness.
Paul Giamatti plays Tokugawa (although he did look like that IRL apparently.)
Suleiman got older and spent some time in the sun….
I’m probably most hype for Nader Shah but Tokugawa comes close. Suleiman is ok but missing Ibrahim and Jannissaries hurts IMHO.
That’s ok I still have plenty to do.
Edit: though the update seems to have broken some of the menus and tags? For example when I look at my relationships it says LOC_DIPLOMACY_GRIEVANCES_NONE and similar things whenever the World Congress screen shows up
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
First game as caesar, no iron. Now first game as nader shah, no iron.
I understand for later resources but if you have an early UU needing iron and there isn’t any nearby you literally cannot do anything aside from hope you can suzerain a city state with it until well past when those uus would be useful. Horses too but they seem to be more common.
Also the AI seems hard coded not to trade strategics. Malthias was next to me, declared friend, I had max horses, he had max iron. Won’t trade for any price including all my horses.
And I know the idea is to get the player to think “ok I can’t do early conquest because of the map, let me do something else” but that sucks when you have someone like caesar whose whole kit is based around classic era conquest or nader whose civ ability depends on you taking a few cities early to kick in.
They also have a neat feature where certain cultures can spend gold to improve resources in city states or other players land. Helps late game when your ally has that Uranium but doesn't have the tech.
Which is a major complaint from me in Civ. I know allowing builders to build anything inside an allies territory would allow for to many exploits, but it would be nice if there was a way to aid allies and vassals in extracting materials they haven't researched yet.
More abilities like the card that let's spaceports make aluminum would be nice. Something so that a lack of resources doesn't bog down your game, but at the same time you have to give up something for it so you want to naturally expand and extract them off the map if possible.
The A.I. is very unwilling to trade strategics with an immediate neighbor, for obvious reasons. You should have better luck trading with someone farther away.
Well its classic age on a standard continents map, theres really no one that isn’t my immediate neighbor. Getting iron trade after caravels doesn’t help much.
Really interested in how they are going to make 5 china leaders all play differently. I feel like Yongle is right there with Nader Shah and Tokugawa in hitting that “kinda generic middle aged guy” vibe but oh well. Like they could all be members of the same world leader rotary club.
Lijia
District projects only convert 15% of production into their respective yields, so these unique projects offer a much greater value, as long as you don't mind forgoing the great people points. And of course, there was no food generating project at all before this one. If nothing else, the faith project will make it trivially easy to get the first pantheon of the game.
The food project and population based bonuses push Yongle in a tall direction, but not having any built in housing bonuses mean Yongle players will need to prioritize housing above all else to keep up with their food intake.
Manuel of Entrapment
The obvious point of comparison is Black Queen Catherine. Cathy's spies allow you to specialize them right out the gate, but Wu's maintain a general advantage throughout the entire game. Wu also gets her first spy two eras earlier than everyone else, as opposed to Cathy's one. If you want to harass opponents with espionage they can't do anything about, Wu has taken that crown. However, Cathy still maintains her unique diplomatic visibility bonus, which received a stealth buff with Rise and Fall when the devs attached a small combat strength bonus to all diplomatic visibility. Overall, that pushes Wu into being the new leader of choice if you want to go all in on espionage, while Cathy's agents are better used to support more conventional aggression.
Thirty-six Stratagems
The perfect ability to have when playing with zombie mode turned on. No one will be able to stop China when their borders are guarded by legions of the undead!
Even in normal gameplay, you'll now have the option by get some utility out of scouts who get surrounded and would normally just die. Getting a foothold on those barbarian islands you normally encounter in the mid game will be a lot easier. And no one will ever recruit partisans against you. They'd only be feeding you free units!
Also he works as designed but yongle is apparenty a monster at econ.
If Mosques do the same thing, they’ll be pretty important worship buildings for him.
I think someone on reddit said they tried mosques and it didn’t work, probably someone just forgot to set a flag on the hagia sophia to apply to religious units only.
Looking at him compared to Khmer which is a similar mechanic(and most people think was on the strong side)…. Khmer gets 1 faith per population, .5 culture per pop, 10 tourism per 10 pop (so breakpoints at 10 and 20 pop rather than a 15 pop getting 15 tourism they just get 10 until they hit 20).
Yongle is just flat out better. Twice as much culture at the cost of tourism and double the gold bonus vs khmer’s faith, and science on top of that?
Khmer does get other abilities that give food and faith… But so does yongle? And the eureka bonuses and great wall gold/culture?
I think at the very least the gold should be dropped to something more reasonable like .5/pop given his other bonuses, and even then he’d probably be in the top 3 civs.