America - The Civilization of Contradictions

I used to think the tile-buying discount was mediocre, and made up for with extra sight and strong UUs.

But in a hotseat MP game I'm playing as Poland (hardly a weak civ, as you all know), I went Liberty and find myself buying tiles all the time, to the point that tiles cost 400 gold each. Makes me actually wish I was America. Even more irritating because my friend and teammate, playing Korea, went both Liberty and Tradition and hardly has to buy tiles.

Even in games where I go Tradition, I find myself buying tiles often, both to keep AI civs from getting them and to speed up culturally gaining other tiles. Even with Tradition, the speed of cultural tile acquisition is sometimes too slow for me. I wonder if I buy tiles too much.
 
Rooftrellen said:
If you are suggesting they should be geared toward technology, I say...maybe. America is known for it's technology, but even at its height, we Sputnik was the first manmade satellite, Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and America was the first to land on the moon likely only because the USSR wasn't trying.
Click to expand...

The USSR failed to land on the Moon because their moon rocket (the N-1) had a bad habit of exploding - when it blew up on July 3, 1969, alarm bells went off in NORAD because the computers thought a nuclear bomb had gone off in the Soviet Union.
Moderator Action: Whenever directly stating something is inappropriate language, indirectly stating it is also. Word removed.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
I am having FUN as the Americans, in my latest experiment (see #24 in this thread), going Tall AND Wide; SPolicy's: Tradition-3, Liberty-4(saving free settler for critical resources), Honor-2, Piety and Asthetics-openers, Exploration-2; (to let the 3 surviving civ's have a credible defense) .
I now have 32 cities, and 2 turns from BB's; near 40 frigates, 45 oil ready to use in upgrading; and Dutch Willy's island empire at the south edge of the map, hiding behind his damn GWall in Amsterdam(n) .
What I'm planning for is to take down Willy in 10-12 turns, when I kick off this next war; before anybody else gets Flight .
The thought is, when Willy goes extinct, as my #2 cultural rival, a culture VC can be had .
 
An update on America:

I took some advice that read about America (I'm not sure if it was from this thread or not) and played them from the Renaissance Age, and upped it to Marathon to make up for lost time. I did tilted axis, large continents, medium seas on Emperor. I kicked the crap out of the competition, and never really had much opposition.

America is awesome when you start from at least the Renaissance, as you get the MM soon, and the B17's aren't ridiculously far away at that point. Also, the titled axis much was almost like cheating, because I was able to farm all of the Barbs that I wanted up north with my MM and their upgrades for the free gold, culture, and golden age points (with the full honor tree). I still never got that excited about the tile buying, but the extra sight helped for attacks, especially if you put your siege weapons on hills. Also, I'd probably have to say that the B17's were just icing on the cake after I probably had more or less clinched victory, and even bombers would have been fine at that point.

Maybe to make America more worthwhile they should have made B17's replace Great War Bombers instead and upgrade to Bomber.
 
I think the MM UU sucks mainly because it is useful for just a few turns before it is obsolete.
 
The only reason the UU could possibly suck is because pure melee have limited application. Outside of that, its one of if not the best infantry units, and its never obsolete because its awesome abilities stay when you upgrade to rifleman.
 
rover6695 said:
I think the MM UU sucks mainly because it is useful for just a few turns before it is obsolete.
Click to expand...

If I recall correctly, the MM gets to keep both it's special promotions when it upgrades.
 
joncnunn said:
If I recall correctly, the MM gets to keep both it's special promotions when it upgrades.
Click to expand...
Oh really?
This is my 1st long game as the Americans. I got riflemen within ten turns or so after the MM, so I just figured it wasn't worth it.
I guess then one should be prepared when discovering gunpowder to quickly produce a ton of MM.
 
rover6695 said:
Oh really?
This is my 1st long game as the Americans. I got riflemen within ten turns or so after the MM, so I just figured it wasn't worth it.
I guess then one should be prepared when discovering gunpowder to quickly produce a ton of MM.
Click to expand...

If you have Iron, build all your planned ones as Warriors & Swords and upgrade instead of waiting for Muskets to save hammers. This actually works really well if you have a coastal city as well since you upgrade them from Longswords to MM right before you upgrade Galasses to Frigates.
 
joncnunn said:
If you have Iron, build all your planned ones as Warriors & Swords and upgrade instead of waiting for Muskets to save hammers. This actually works really well if you have a coastal city as well since you upgrade them from Longswords to MM right before you upgrade Galasses to Frigates.
Click to expand...

Ahhh....I see...so...normally I build most ranged units...with a couple of warriors/pike/swords before riflemen.

I see the trick is to have maybe a half dozen or more, upgrade, and boom, you get the UU benefits for the whole future lifespan.

It works with pikemen too right?
 
rover68 said:
Ahhh....I see...so...normally I build most ranged units...with a couple of warriors/pike/swords before riflemen.

I see the trick is to have maybe a half dozen or more, upgrade, and boom, you get the UU benefits for the whole future lifespan.

It works with pikemen too right?
Click to expand...

Pikemen don't become minutemen.

It would work with Lancer UU's though.
 
I don't have a problem with America. The Minuteman is a decent unit that's good for both offense and defense. The UA is good too - that extra line of sight really helps in the early game for spotting ruins and barbs.

I like to buy tiles, especially when they're in the range of other civs' cities. You can take really good tiles off of them, like luxuries. The bonus also comes in handy when you're developing cities later on, since you can buy good food tiles.

The B17 is the only bad thing. It really comes too late in the game to make a serious difference. It's a good UU in some aspects, but really, by the time you build them, victory is less than 50 turns away.
 
What happens with GW bombers that are upgraded to B17s? Do they get the promotions if and only if they don't already have them?

@kc123, your 50 comment makes me think I should try merica w/ Autocracy and try and time the Level 3 tenet with B17s coming on line. I struggle w/ Domination, but that combo might do it for me!
 
GW bombers upgraded to B-17's keep prior promotions . Ya gotta love that range upgrade !!!
 
kc123 said:
I don't have a problem with America. The Minuteman is a decent unit that's good for both offense and defense. The UA is good too - that extra line of sight really helps in the early game for spotting ruins and barbs.

I like to buy tiles, especially when they're in the range of other civs' cities. You can take really good tiles off of them, like luxuries. The bonus also comes in handy when you're developing cities later on, since you can buy good food tiles.

The B17 is the only bad thing. It really comes too late in the game to make a serious difference. It's a good UU in some aspects, but really, by the time you build them, victory is less than 50 turns away.
Click to expand...
Yeah think that the tiles get more and more expensive the more you buy though, thus taking away some of the value of buying them in bulk. I could be wrong though, I can't seem to find where they're prices online.

As people have mentioned, America is great if you start in the Renaissance or later, but that's arguably cheating.

As I was saying when I was starting this thread, USA, has some great things, but they kind of contradict each other. The B17 is pretty much only useful as an offensive unit, but it comes too late to make a difference for domination. The minutemen would be great for scouting, but they come way too late to scout. The UA's both point to playing wide, but with the late UU's and domination goal, wide is kind of pointless.

At least they don't have weak triplanes who have a bonus against other triplanes, Caravels who can't go into deep ocean, or a bonus against defenseless City States.
 
Even after you get stealth technology, for America you want to only build B17 and then upgrade. This takes more time and wastes gold and hammers, but the two free promotions are well worth it.

dasaard200 said:
GW bombers upgraded to B-17's keep prior promotions.
Click to expand...

Off course. But do they get free evasion and city bombard if they don't have that already?

Coastergenius said:
At least they don't have weak triplanes who have a bonus against other triplanes
Click to expand...

Which UU is that?
 
beetle said:
Even after you get stealth technology, for America you want to only build B17 and then upgrade. This takes more time and wastes gold and hammers, but the two free promotions are well worth it.



Off course. But do they get free evasion and city bombard if they don't have that already?



Which UU is that?
Click to expand...
That's the Zero for Japan. Their UU is probably the worst in the game. It replaces the triplane, and actually has a lower strength. The advantages are that you don't need oil for it, and they curiously have a bonus against triplanes and fighters. Very odd considering how bad triplanes are at bombing, and that the AI never does air sweeps.
 
beetle said:
The Zero is a fighter replacement. Arguably, still be the weakest UU, but not that bad!
Click to expand...

That wiki says fighters and zeros both have 45 strength, so I don't think it could be weaker than the triplane (or fighter) as the previous poster claimed. An air unit that doesn't require oil could open up some possibilities with beelining flight (i.e. bypass Biology) or coping with a lack of oil.

EDIT
Well that didn't make any sense. Still had the idea that it was a Tripe replacement in my head. Power of suggestion.
 
+1 Sight is huge. I never understand why people call it "useless."

One of the best things about it is it makes it easy to camp enemy civs and stealing their workers and settlers.

Against America played by a human, the +1 sight is really, REALLY annoying. Especially once they have planes.

The 50% discount on tile purchases isn't huge but has some insidious uses. I've sometimes used it to trap an AI settler. Blocking them from passing through an early cooridor is a decent use too, when you are still building libraries and can't make it to Monuments yet. Occasionally I have also used it to thrust a Great General fortress in someone's face too (just pop-pop-pop-fortress).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Blake00
CivBattleRoyale Season 4 (CBR X4)
Replies
6
Views
1K
Blake00
Blake00
foreverlost
Need help to advance to beating the AI Civs
Replies
4
Views
516
foreverlost
foreverlost
P
Unable to trade with City States
Replies
6
Views
555
martindo
M
R
Few questions about vox populi and more
Replies
1
Views
214
Yerltvachovicic
Yerltvachovicic
M
Loss of infrastructure when city is conquered
Replies
9
Views
543
martindo
M
Top Bottom