Civ thread

[BBM]

It's difficult to give an answer to that because if you can make a lot of gold you're good at Diplo. So the "gold" civs like Arabia/Morocco/Venice/etc are good at Diplo despite possibly not being focused on Diplo. But beyond that, making a lot of gold is not really that difficult. Send out a lot of trade routes, have Market/Bank/Stock Exchanges in all your cities, trade luxes at 7 gpt, and you'll easily be making over a hundred GPT no matter which civ you're playing as.

[MacLovin]

What's the best earlygame luxury to have? Salt?

I fudging love Shoshone when I set resources to legendary. It's just sooo fun getting all the things.

I tried France once on Prince. It's a really good lategame culture generator. I got tradition/aethetics/liberty/rationalism done with a few put into commerce and exploration for good measure.

Order seems to be the best Idealogy for anything though

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

i really like order overall better.

but for space victory's i just gotta go with freedom for that spaceships with gold tree

[BBM]

I actually like Order for Science more. You can bulb spaceship parts with Great Engineers and fsr I'm always low on money by the end of the game from buying buildings and stuff. Another good thing that Order has is a lot of Happiness tenets. If you're going for a Science victory you're going to get the first ideology, meaning the best AI (who's probably going Cultural) will choose a different ideology than you. If you go Freedom and the cultural runaways go Autocracy or Order it's going to be much more difficult to keep your happiness up than it would be going Order.

[XeKr]

What's the best earlygame luxury to have? Salt?

It’s not close.

I actually like Order for Science more. You can bulb spaceship parts with Great Engineers and fsr I'm always low on money by the end of the game from buying buildings and stuff. Another good thing that Order has is a lot of Happiness tenets. If you're going for a Science victory you're going to get the first ideology, meaning the best AI (who's probably going Cultural) will choose a different ideology than you. If you go Freedom and the cultural runaways go Autocracy or Order it's going to be much more difficult to keep your happiness up than it would be going Order.

Well Freedom has one of the best happiness policies in Universal Suffrage. You’re at least working 3-4 Scientists, plus usually 3-4 Engineers later, especially if you get Secularism. Plus always the Writers and Artists and possibly even Merchant/Musician slots later. Civil Society makes it easy to work all these and still grow decently.

Order’s ones are just instant (but you can sometimes time a natural policy for Freedom). AI also likes Order a bit more which helps ideological pressure, but you might not get the free policies.

Statue of Liberty is also so, so much better than Kremlin.

Autocracy also has way more longterm happiness from its policies and Prora. It's best with Mobilization+Mercantilism (Commerce) synergy though. That and Total War for 3 promotions at base.

[BBM]

Yeah actually I went Freedom with the Inca yesterday and it was much better than I remembered it being. Particularly the Foreign Legion, it rocketed my army from last place (by a big margin) to second place when I got it.

Also IIRC AI prioritizes free policies over anything else, because I've never had the guy who gets to ideologies second or third pick the same one as me.

My Inca game was I think the easiest game I've ever had on Immortal, but a lot of factors went my way. Firstly, my capital was right beside a big mountain range, so there were lots of great Terrace Farm spots for both it and my second city. My third city wasn't close to any mountains but it had a natural wonder (can't remember which one though). Also it was Pangaea, which helps for Science since earlier Research agreements. I got early declarations of friendship from Ethiopia and Venice. Ottomans went warmonger and wiped Rome out of the game, and took 2/3 of Poland's cities. Since he was focused on military production, screwed Rome and Poland over, and Venice was Venice, my only real wonder competition was Ethiopia. It allowed me to get a lot of early-midgame wonders like Oracle, Hagia Sophia, Petra, and Machu Pichu. I was worried he'd attack me but I guess I was a little too far away because he actually ended up wanting to be friends with me. I think it eventually cost me Ethiopia's friendship, but it was inevitable since we were wonder competing, city state competing, and had different ideologies. Near the end I backstabbed the Ottomans (didn't even get me negative rep lol) and returned one of Poland's cities to him since it sucked anyways, which got me insta-friendship from him.

Gonna try out a few more Immortals and then give Deity another shot.

[XeKr]

That’s one of the factors, but not the only one. The AI also cares about its Grand Strategy, chosen victory condition, what Ideologies others have chosen and the relationship with them, Happiness/Public Opinion, some RNG component, etc.

Of course it could still be confirmation bias (afaik no one has done serious analysis), but my (and others’) general impression is the AI still favors Order a bit more. Probably that happiness factor and Order has some tenets that promote a coalition-type deal. Other ideology also do a bit, but less so on the tourism side. There’s a heavy grand strategy bias for Cultural Victory (iirc Science Victory isn’t evaluated by the AI until the Apollo program and I suspect similar for Diplomatic Victory and the United Nations)

[MacLovin]

is Askia supposed to be mediocre?

[XeKr]

Obviously not that strong compared to the good civs but I like their UB. Essentially +2 Gold and +2 Culture. Can be fun to go Piety with them (mix with Liberty or something, usually). Their UU is a bit cheaper than Knights, but they can't really fight Castle'd cities, even without the penalty, so meh.

[MacLovin]

What's the best money producing civ not named Venice or Arabia?

[BBM]

Portugal is also pretty good at making money

[MacLovin]

Portugal is also pretty good at making money

Nau way!

Also, anyone try any good mods that add balanced/fun civs?

Aside from the gabe newell one.

[XeKr]

Portugal: Fairly efficient conversion of hammers to gold via Naus (can gift them to city-states after, better with the Freedom tenet). UA directly benefits gold. Coastal bias is also generally more gold.

Poland: Can fill Commerce for essentially free.

A lot of mod civs from the larger civfanatics threads are pretty fun and cleverly designed/coded. Balanced? Meh, but neither are the vanilla civs.

[MacLovin]

I tried the Gabe Newell mod.

It's broken as all hell, but it's sooo satifying on Deity.

[Esau of Isaac]

Guys, like one week until Beyond Earth

UGH

[Psych]

i want to like venice but i can never seem to make them work

i end up with like 300 gpt by like the renaissance era but i can't turn that into victory since culture is so hard in bnw

[XeKr]

Guys, like one week until Beyond Earth

UGH

I'm hype.

i want to like venice but i can never seem to make them work

i end up with like 300 gpt by like the renaissance era but i can't turn that into victory since culture is so hard in bnw

Sometimes peaceful culture victory is just (nearly) impossible (on Deity, at least). You need too much food/science/production to be competitive for wonders and you need multiple AIs to not runaway. Forced OCC as Venice doesn't help.

Build an army or bail as Sci/Diplo. >_>

[Psych]

Yeah i was playing multiplayer with a friend against AI and while we only usually use Warlord or Prince, there were still parts it was hard. I was leading our team for most of it, till around maybe halfway through Classical/Medieval, but she took a lead from then on till around the Atomic Era when I had so much culture and science and gold. She was also taking most of the cities for us and we chose her religion for world religion so it wasn't till after a couple world congress things and when I had like 300 culture per turn and 900 science was I able to start feeling useful again.

Cultural victory is just so hard in BNW though. We ended up winning diplomatically after we had eliminated 1/6 AI's and by me allying with a few city states. I had already purchased like half of them, so between that and having delegates from passing stuff like World Religion and Ideology we managed to get enough to win.

[XeKr]

What were the issues you were finding?

The trick to Culture is realizing it's in large part a science game (the 2 things that boost tourism by far the most are the National Visitor Center and the Internet tech). Other than that, build guilds asap and staff them (send food trade routes if needed). Build landmarks where your cities can work them and artifacts elsewhere. Do all the theming bonuses and other stuff like trade routes, open borders, shared religion, world religion. Sacred Sites the reformation policy can also be very strong on those difficulties.

It's challenging because you do ultimately need to balance all the yields in food, production, gold, science and culture, but that's the fun. ^_^

[Psych]

It was really hard for me to get theming bonuses in places besides Museums. I only had about 3 places, the Louvre, Hermitage, and one other place. I had been making a couple other Wonders that have slots for works, but they kept getting taken out from under me by Arabia and Montezuma.

And I didn't know other things like trade affected tourism. I only knew about the ideology thing.

[XeKr]

Generally you want all the wonders in one city (usually your capital) so that they are all boosted by the National Visitor Center. So at minimum you can usually have Lourve (4 GW + 8 theming), Hermitage (3 GW + 6 theming), Oxford (2 GW + 4 theming), Museum (2 GW + 4 theming), Amphitheater (1 GW), National Epic (1 GW), Heroic Epic (1 GW). The only World Wonder there is Lourve which usually isn’t that contested.

Uffizi and Sistine are okay, but they only fit Great Works of Arts which are hard to get enough Great Artists for the theming. Broadway is good, but Musicians can be better used for bombs. There’s 2 main ways to handle this. Either build the Musician’s Guild early and fill all your Opera Houses and Broadway, or don’t build the Musician’s Guild until Tourism is otherwise maxed out.

Tile-based culture such as Landmarks and from the Historical Landmarks resolution is also converted to tourism (partially why Brazil, Polynesia, and France are so good, less tourism capped). So is the culture from Wonders, but this usually isn’t significant unless Cultural Heritage Sites gets passed. That stuff plus Arts Funding and International Games is why Gold is so important for Culture games, to control the Congress.

Trade Routes, Open Borders (buy for 2 gpt), Shared Religion are each +40% after the Aesthetics policy. Different ideology is -34%, but you can get +25% from a Diplomat there.

[BBM]

tbh you can normally just trade Open Borders for Open Borders. I used to always just buy for 2 gpt because I didn't want to give them out, but realistically if you're going for a non-culture victory you probably have a shitty culture output anyways and are probably going to get people being Influential over you even without that, and if you're going for a culture victory and you don't have the culture production to stave off their tourism you're probably not going to win anyways?

[XeKr]

Fair enough, but sometimes the AI just doesn't want your open borders. They will offer their OB for your OB and 2 gpt, but you can take out your OB from the deal. Also otoh later you need to get their OB somehow before they realize you're going for Culture victory.

I suppose it’s partially habit for me. There’s 7 other people in a standard game and if they are all exotic/familiar on you, it still hurts happiness wise (especially if you picked ideology first and they picked differently). It’ll slow down your games in other victories, particularly domination. You want at least the same against them without increasing their tourism against you (not that hard to match with exotic, even in non-culture games). You don't want to buy OB for no reason, as that's 14 gpt down the drain, but usually want to consider it for select AIs after looking at their culture/tourism.

And you never really want to neglect culture output, even in other victories. At least Writer/Artist Guild should be stocked asap to greatly improve your early culture (6 culture when you have like 14ish from 4 cities is like +40%) and give GW or Treatises/Golden Ages (well, technically shouldn’t detour from Philo/Education and should try to avoid too many extra policies before Renaissance, but I find many people build and staff them later than they should. Also not always possible/worth it for non-Babylon civs.) and Cultural city states are probably the highest priority to ally (Faith also, in some games). Getting Secularism fast is one of the things that improves your mid/lategame the most (it’s like a 20-30% Sci boost. A real percentage boost, not mitigated by additive scaling). For all victories except super-early domination.

In rare cases, it’s not impossible for a runaway Brazil or something to win sub turn 270 standard if you’re not aware and careful about these things.

Edited October 21, 2014 by XeKr

[BBM]

bought beyond earth though I wont have time to play until sunday

EDIT: I lied I just played for like an hour. Initial thoughts were that the tech web felt a little confusing because of all the different options you could take. And it'll take a while to figure out the different resources and stuff. I like the quest system though, and the fact that you get to choose which stations (city states) settle near you.

Alien AI is kind of weird; they mostly leave my Explorers alone but then they killed one randomly (might have been because it stepped beside a nest) and destroyed a Trade Convoy I sent out. I want to go Harmony so I'm mostly leaving them alone for now.

Edited October 25, 2014 by BBM

[Magical CC]

Beyond Earth is kinda bland and boring, probably because the lack of content (aka DLC). The miasma stuff is annoying but not a serious problem. The lack of unit, variety, building and no clear faction are way more serious. Not to mention, the terrain is so lackluster. Except the weird resources and aliens, it doesnt give me the feel that I am on another planet, not Earth. The orbit satellite and quest system are plus points but that's not enough. However, knowing this game industry, all of the problem I mentioned with be addressed by a ton of DLCs. How dare they compare this sad piece of game to Master of Orion especially in it's current state, honestly?

I will probably wait for a year to play it.