Explain Austeria to me

So I'm playing king on pangea plus. As such, I do not get optics for quite awhile, and altho my area was nice, I was pretty quickly cut off from 3/4 of the continent. By the time I get optics and start exploring via water, every C-S that i come across is owned by Austria. I ended up taking their capitol to try to protect the 4 remaining free C-S, but even then, one of then flip. Just how easy is it for Austria to buy cities and what is the defense against it? And how do you liberate them afterwards? Austria is very close to joining Polynesia on the civ scrap heap of civs that I remove from the game.

alpha wolf 64 said:

Just how easy is it for Austria to buy cities and what is the defense against it?

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I can't recall the exact amounts of gold needed, but once they have been allies with the City-State for at least five turns, they can buy them for a lump sum price. The defense? Don't let Austria ally those City-States.

alpha wolf 64 said:

And how do you liberate them afterwards?

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You can't. Once acquired by Austria, those CS's lose their original nationality and become native Austrians - as if the city was founded by Austria. Yeah, this is why people usually don't like Austria...

There are 3 defenses I use against Austria, in order of preference

1. Eliminate them from the game ASAP by military force
2. Cripple their economy so they can't afford to buy the City States
3. As soon as they ally a city state, do everything possible to remove them as the ally before 5 turns

Make sure they're not an ally for five turns straight.

What's wrong with Polynesia?

Another defense strategy is: Sell Austria as many of your luxury resources as you can, in order to dwindle Austria’s supplies of gold. You can then use these sales to build up your relations with the very City States that you are afraid of losing to Austria.

You can also keep a spy in a city state to instigate a coup or to continuously rig elections, when Austria attempts to get a bit too friendly. Just remember you only have five turns once Austria and the City State are allies.

You can also threaten and demand gold from Austria. Just remember to back up your threats with military action! No need to conquer Austria, just pillage and loot. Then make peace. Then sell your goods at a premium price as her economy struggles to recoup. Repeat this process again as needed.

This is why Austria is just way overpowered. They already owned all of these C-S before I even met them, or Venice. It is assured from these responses that I will attack Venice as soon as I encounter them. Early in the game, luxuries are needed to keep unhappiness in check. And money does not start to grow until you get plenty of trade routes going to larger cities.

Same thing with Polynesia. I understand why they can cross oceans earlier than every one else, but in game play, they always become the biggest world explorer, which is not what happened. They should have gotten their ability later but earlier than every one else, or been limited to x number of tiles from another Polynesian city.

Anyone thought about this, Austria + gunboat diplomacy = killer. Austria would probably buy each & every CS given the huge diplo bonus from gunboat diplo & generally high amount of gold in late game ! :crazyeyes:

alpha wolf 64 said:

Same thing with Polynesia. I understand why they can cross oceans earlier than every one else, but in game play, they always become the biggest world explorer, which is not what happened. They should have gotten their ability later but earlier than every one else, or been limited to x number of tiles from another Polynesian city.

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That would make them severely underpowered.

The good news is that this confirms the Austrian AI is using their UA again. (They had stopped using it after the G&K fall patch)

Babri said:

That would make them severely underpowered.

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They should be glad they got in the first place. Listened to that Polycast everyone was talking about. inuits were actually on the table for a while. The mind reels...

I agree the Polynesians are a pain, that often take the fun out of exploration.

Austria's UA is also pretty broken. I mean, you get all those buildings and all the CS's units, so it's literally an entire city right out of the box. Pretty sweet deal.

I actually think the way to fix it is to provide a mechanic to perform a diplomatic takeover, and then just let Austria be better at it than everyone else. Then if you really have a problem with it, you can at least try to nab them for yourself.

steveg700 said:

They should be glad they got in the first place. Listened to that Polycast everyone was talking about. inuits were actually on the table for a while. The mind reels...

I agree the Polynesians are a pain, that often take the fun out of exploration.

Austria's UA is also pretty broken. I mean, you get all those buildings and all the CS's units, so it's literally an entire city right out of the box. Pretty sweet deal.

I actually think the way to fix it is to provide a mechanic to perform a diplomatic takeover, and then just let Austria be better at it than everyone else. Then if you really have a problem with it, you can at least try to nab them for yourself.

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Forgive me if I am misinterpreting you, but are you saying that proponents of the Polynesian civilization should be happy with "whatever" because they were lucky to be included in the first place; as the Inuits were the original choice ?

If that is what you meant, then that is an extremely prejudicial viewpoint. The Polynesian UA is unique, well suited to their accomplishments, and well themed in terms of era.

When deciding what Civs to include, it is pretty much meaningless to start saying who is more worthy because it depends of what the criteria for distinction is ?

Anyway if I have completely misinterpreted your viewpoint, I apologise. If not then I suggest that perhaps you not be so flippant in attributing "worth" (or lack thereof) to an entire peoples in the future.

Why does everyone always say "Austria's UA is broken" in that it is powerful? Have you ever actually tried to take over every CS? Its prohibitively expensive and you get crushing unhappiness - and you take Diplomatic Victory out of the equation.

If you play them more sensibly, i.e. take over a few big cs's to get their universities etc then it is powerful yes - but no more powerful than other UAs. You're normally going to end up with a lot of cities all around the map - difficult to link up and difficult to defend because they are isolated (although you usually get quite a big defensive force in place from buying the CS's army aswell).

This also makes domination a bit more difficult because your military forces are all over the map and aren't concentrated for you to make an assault on any particular civ.

So you're left with Science victory or culture.