I apologize in advance if this isn't the place to add this post.
Danish Domination with Civ, WHoward's Pick'N'Mix Mods, and the Community Patch
After playing with Venice and other more peaceful Civs for a couple of games, I decided to test the CP with something completely different: the Danes.
I have now played three consecutive games with them on Immortal:
(1) with an unmodded, but fully expanded Civ;
(2) with most of
WHoward's mods [and while they are all fun, some proved to be too imbalancing to use consistently];
(3) the Community (Balance) Patch with the added Civ 4 diplomatic features + City State Diplomacy + some of WHoward's mods.
The game was played on a standard sized map (Improved Small Continents), Epic timescale, random opponents. All victories were allowed, Raging Barbarians were added (I need to find a mod that turns barbarians into a threat!).
Gameplay was delightfully different; and no bugs occured that were more than irritating. Both modded games were less difficult, but more enjoyable. That won't surprise anyone, since the AI falls behind more and more with every added layer of freedom to pursue complexity.
Policies:
Raging Barbarians is pretty much the only reason to open
Honor at all while playing the established policy trees, even with a domination oriented Civ like the Danes. The culture gain is the appeal, not the - for a human player - irrelevant battle aids. [Though I still chose Tradition to open the policy game in (2) because of a Goody Hut +30 culture trove on the 4th turn.]
The CP, however, makes all of Honor very interesting for domination, add Raging Barbarians -- and it's a no-brainer.
The reason is simple: victories in battle first substitute then supplement construction and population growth. The CP Honor tree doesn't aid you in winning battles - but in building a civilization by controlled aggression.
Add the changed Pantheon "God of War" (which now gives Faith regardless of location), and every victory adds culture, science and faith, every conquest adds gold.
Honor makes the starting position pretty much irrelevant, as long as the barbarians keep coming and/or another Civ is close by. Very early warfare is not just feasible but a priority.
It was the first time that I completed Honor - yes, it was that great from start to finish.
Which is exactly, imo, how it should be like if you intend to play a high octane Domination Game: not the steady and well-planned development of your cities feeds the conquest -- winning feeds it.
The two restricting areas are still Hammers and Happiness. Gold, however, can substitute the first one reasonably well, since the AI is so inept in warfare that it's hard to lose units. And while Happiness could be a major problem in a conquest game, it simply isn't -- as long as you keep razing every city regardless of its desirability.
If you want to dominate the world, empty it.
That realisation left me quite uneasy ...
But since I wanted to wage war against empires, and not the people, WHoward's
Refugees mod will be added to my next domination game. While those refugees feed a domination game even more (possibly too much), their existence is .. may I say "comforting"? .. and in many ways also more "realistic".
I had expected to dug deeper into
Liberty -- but the "raze them all"-strategy to counter Unhappiness made this tree almost irrelevant. Only the free worker was of any serious use to my culture-rich but hammer-poor first and second development phase. All additional workers were .. liberated from barbarians or other civs.
Piety isn't usually interesting but the CP changed my mind; its Opener was far more desirable for the Danes than Patronage or Tradition.
However, the described effects are either not yet implemented correctly -- or I simpy didn't understand them correctly and had therefore false expectations. In any case, I need to try Piety policies again in another game that is less .. dynamic to test them in-depth.
Anything else was pretty much useless for my approach with the Danes, apart from the Exploration Opener. Though I do hope that
Exploration gets a make-over as well -- it's pretty much useless even on an Archipelago map since it comes far too late to be of any use. I think, a Classic start might make all the difference.
Wonders:
No need. Even Zeus costs too many Hammers to justify its production in favour of more units. More units = more culture, science, faith, gold. Units are all the Wonder you need with the new Honor tree.
Religion:
The Pantheon "God of War" now fits well with those Civs that would plausibly choose such a belief. The generated faith will give a domination culture a respectable chance to found a religion.
The religions don't synergize with an aggressive strategy as well as the Pantheons -- but their tenets are still useful to fill some gaps and to damp down unhappiness that is added by taking capitals.
It'd be nice if something was added that had a more direct .. calming influence on the taken cities. A specific religious policy, for example, could give Inquisitors an effect similar to a courthouse. Or they could gain the ability to reduce the turns a city is in uproar (even if that migth cost population). I wouldn't mind if all inquisitors became more expensive as a result of such a tenet.
So, is Honor OP now?
No. The other policy trees generally reward the responsible approach: build, develop, bide your time, don't risk too much. They are safe.
Honor, otoh, rewards the gambler. You only rake the benefits of Honor if you take a risk. Actually, you need to take risks or all the costly culture poured into the policy is wasted. But the more risks you take, the more you gain.
A focus on cumulative effects seems to be a key to the new social policies. And synergistic effects among Policies, Ideologies, Pantheons, Religions, tile development, buildings and Wonders seem to get more layered, which allows more diverse strategic approaches to the game.
I like that. And I can only say "Kudos!" to everyone involved.
