ZURICH has discovered that the world is round!

Posting this from work, so no screenshot. But this is something i came over late last night runnin BNW - I'm somewhere medieval, and suddenly the message that i had met Zurich popped up, with their city cropping out somewhere in the middle of the ocean fog in the middle of the map.

Turns out one of their caravels was careening merrily through the map. Which is odd behaviour, but not entirely uncommon other civs - just not city states, what's the point of them exploring anything?

A few turns later, the message in the title pops up. There goes my bonus! Appearantly the little Caravel That Could made it around the world and claimed the bonus for itself.

I blame it on bad movement - some weird command made the caravel go around the world, probably because the route planning in the move command was borked.

Anyone else encountered this?

Don't know about Zurich, but there's no bonus for circumnavigating the globe in Civ 5. You could enable it in xml files, but by default it's off.

There is no bonus discovering the world is round. I think it would be nice if there was.

I see! I always thought there was, simply because the message popped up.
But the glory and honour then, is that not a bonus? AND HAS THIS BONUS NOT BEEN TAKEN FROM ME BY THESE SILLY SWISS?

de_baser said:

I see! I always thought there was, simply because the message popped up.
But the glory and honour then, is that not a bonus? AND HAS THIS BONUS NOT BEEN TAKEN FROM ME BY THESE SILLY SWISS?

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Well, you should have expected this. The Swiss have always been known for their vast naval superiority over other nations

This thread wins, we can close down the internet

Less ridiculous than you might think. There's no in-game bonus, but there is an achievement for proving that the world is round.

loserforsale said:

Less ridiculous than you might think.

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Hey, thanks for the info, I didn't know that Switzerland had a merchant fleet

oddtail said:

Well, you should have expected this. The Swiss have always been known for their vast naval superiority over other nations

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Good one.

de_baser said:

Posting this from work, so no screenshot. But this is something i came over late last night runnin BNW - I'm somewhere medieval, and suddenly the message that i had met Zurich popped up, with their city cropping out somewhere in the middle of the ocean fog in the middle of the map.

Turns out one of their caravels was careening merrily through the map. Which is odd behaviour, but not entirely uncommon other civs - just not city states, what's the point of them exploring anything?

A few turns later, the message in the title pops up. There goes my bonus! Appearantly the little Caravel That Could made it around the world and claimed the bonus for itself.

I blame it on bad movement - some weird command made the caravel go around the world, probably because the route planning in the move command was borked.

Anyone else encountered this?

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Sounds like AI pathfinding gone wrong. Occoionally you find CS units mile from home, but circumnavigating the globe is a new one on me!

You sometimes see the effect with your own units. You set a "go to" point, and for some reason the game plans out a 50 turn route because a unit was blocking the path.

Whenever I see CS caravels, they seem to be doing exactly what you would expect from a unit that was given the auto-explore command.

I've noticed that CS actually do use their Caraverls a lot. it's not so uncommon.

That bonus was in Civ 4. It was +1 movement for all naval units, if I remember correctly.

The XML will left over from Civ IV and then turned off.

And martime city states like to build Caravels; a lot; and send them all over the globe. Playing Austria it can be quite interesting to marry one of them.

I've had Helsinki do that one time in Vanilla. Which was annoying because I was also going for the achievement that I didn't have yet...

I've had CSs get that bonus more than once. It tends to happen probably because they get tech parity with the leader, and Caravels are a Renaissance unit- a time when there are lots and lots of shiny wonders and buildings to get. Overseas exploration is hardly ever a big priority for the AI because there's so much else they have to do, and I think the only time I've ever seen them colonize the New World on a Terra map to any great extent was the Ottomans' doing (though they'd wiped out Spain in that game), which I guess works since Sipahis are Conquistador Lites. Anyway, so while civs are busy with all the shinies, city-states get all those techs and have little to do with it, so they end up defaulting to caravels which are promptly set to auto-explore. Thusly, they end up often circumnavigating the globe before anyone else. They don't have wars to fight or wonders to chase or lands to settle, so they just kinda do that by default. Of course England or Polynesia will usually get those if they're present, Polynesia especially holy crap.

NukeAJS said:

Whenever I see CS caravels, they seem to be doing exactly what you would expect from a unit that was given the auto-explore command.

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Possibly but the implication that it's dumb or doing something wrong might be incorrect. My view is CS explore to expand their contacts.

Gold gifts aside, I assume a CS also benefits from their quests being completed