Are the Iroquois really that bad?

Also, forested tiles on non fresh water hills actually provide more food for Irq for the same hammers that the standard alternative.

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This I did not know.

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forest hill 1/1 -> (chopped and mined) 0/3 -> (with Chemistry) 0/4
forest hill 1/1 -> (long house built & lumbermill) 1/3 -> (with Sci Theory) 1/4

While the same number of trade routes increases food the same raw amount, it helps low food starts a lot more since it represents a higher percentage. (The gap in population from a percentage basis is a lot less from a low food start on turn X compared to normal food start is a lot less than in used to be.)

joncnunn said:

forest hill 1/1 -> (chopped and mined) 0/3 -> (with Chemistry) 0/4
forest hill 1/1 -> (long house built & lumbermill) 1/3 -> (with Sci Theory) 1/4

While the same number of trade routes increases food the same raw amount, it helps low food starts a lot more since it represents a higher percentage. (The gap in population from a percentage basis is a lot less from a low food start on turn X compared to normal food start is a lot less than in used to be.)

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Oh that's what you meant. For some reason I thought you meant they had higher base food .

That makes sense, but you are still reducing potential growth.

I'm coming from a more MP view, whereas you're coming from a more SP view, right?

In SP all civs have basically the same ability to win with small gaps, due to the AI vs human difference. Whereas in MP, give the same competent player The Iroquois vs someone like Russia (T2 to me, in MP) they will have a better chance to win with Russia, due to their bonuses giving more benefits. Same as Russia vs England/Inca (T1s to me for MP) - deliberately leaving Bablyon, Korea and Poland out of the equations.

corranhorn01 said:

Oh that's what you meant. For some reason I thought you meant they had higher base food .

That makes sense, but you are still reducing potential growth.

I'm coming from a more MP view, whereas you're coming from a more SP view, right?

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Yup, this is from SP view. And since winning against the AI no matter who you are playing is a forgone conclusion it's expected turns to victory.
There's a lot of civs with faster expected turn to victory even with the help in BNW, but the delay for science victory from a low food start is a lot less that it used to be.
Irq in fact is one of the better cultural civs in BNW in SP (standard map size) due to the extra food allowing the city to work more high hammer / low food tiles faster. Of course the Incas are still better.

joncnunn said:

Yup, this is from SP view. And since winning against the AI no matter who you are playing is a forgone conclusion it's expected turns to victory.
There's a lot of civs with faster expected turn to victory even with the help in BNW, but the delay for science victory from a low food start is a lot less that it used to be.
Irq in fact is one of the better cultural civs in BNW in SP (standard map size) due to the extra food allowing the city to work more high hammer / low food tiles faster. Of course the Incas are still better.

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I think food is going to be more important than production for early/mid game. Unless if you're going for really important wonders. The higher your population is the generally more you have in terms of production and science you have, meaning you can build the stuff that you want to faster. Halting it for some period of time for production is generally just going to slow you down in the long-run. But I think it mostly depends on if you're going the type of tradition/liberty starts, which I think in this case Iroquois are better in expansion because of what their workshop is to offer, but at the same time you need to have population to work those tiles so it's a very confusing building. Although the production for the Longhouse is cheaper to build, getting those 1/3 tiles is going to slow you down unless you send caravans to those cities. So settling in coastal areas in better for the Iroquois if you want the early food and to make sure that you're content with the production you're working in the forest.

Of course I'm assuming this is my MultiPlayer view. There are different strategies in MultiPlayer because you're not playing against the AI, and the bonuses to the Iroqous are just so bad. (At least in my eyes). In single-player they tend not to suck because the AI is blind as a bat.

It also makes sense to start getting a high population early vs. a low population but high production, because in the end, the population DOES matter for your nation. And in the late game, you want to make sure that your population goes into your specalists such as your science ones, your production ones, your culture ones, at that point growth becomes unimpactful and starts to halt as you should be focusing on victory conditions.

The early game is all about your cities and growing them as fast as you can in my eyes. Because later in the game you're going to need a higher population for A LOT of other things.

Sharples said:

I think food is going to be more important than production for early/mid game.

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This was limitation I felt when play Iroquois. Any other civ, forest on river/lake you want to farm since (after Civil Service) that's 4 plus the chop. But Iroquois with the workshop that is so dependent on worked forests, the lumber mill or trading post seems required. But, yikes, that is just 1 now -- how many of those can you afford?

The cap, at least, has so many forests that I think it might be optimal still to chop wet forests.

beetle said:

This was limitation I felt when play Iroquois. Any other civ, forest on river/lake you want to farm since (after Civil Service) that's 4 plus the chop. But Iroquois with the workshop that is so dependent on worked forests, the lumber mill or trading post seems required. But, yikes, that is just 1 now -- how many of those can you afford?

The cap, at least, has so many forests that I think it might be optimal still to chop wet forests.

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Iroquois are in a pretty tough position considering they don't have a coastal start. You're need to think hard with what you need. Those river/lake tiles you really should consider chopping down for food while others you might want to consider leaving up or chopping down depending on the circumstances. I mean with multiple options to go, it can be very daunting to play them. Do you want food over production? Or vice versa?

The production you do get from lumbered mills with a Longhouse is very good, generally a 1-3 tile. And this scales up at scientific theory I believe (correct me if I am wrong but I think it's a 1-4). I think you're also dependent on how many forest you have, since I think a forest bias only counts as a few for the Iroqous or any forested bias in particular, you may get a ton or just like 2-3. At least when I played them.

Sharples said:

I think food is going to be more important than production for early/mid game.

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Actually, I think that in the very early game production might take precedence. There's a couple reasons for this in my mind. One is that you have a lot of things to build in the beginning of the game, arguably more so than in any other stage of the game. In addition, lost food isn't that difficult to make up later on--compare the value of a point of food at turn 0 to the value of a point of food after you've finished tradition. It's also easier to get food later on, through food transports and Civil Service farms. Production, on the other hand, has around the same value throughout the game, so it might actually be good to focus on production for the first 50 turns or so of the game.

You're right about that, key early wonders and settlers are going to require the production, since early wonders will help you in the long-run or settling those early/contested areas.

beetle said:

This was limitation I felt when play Iroquois. Any other civ, forest on river/lake you want to farm since (after Civil Service) that's 4 plus the chop. But Iroquois with the workshop that is so dependent on worked forests, the lumber mill or trading post seems required. But, yikes, that is just 1 now -- how many of those can you afford?

The cap, at least, has so many forests that I think it might be optimal still to chop wet forests.

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In G&K or Vanilla; not many.
In BNW, if coastal, every single tile could be since 3 food cargo ships provide tons. If not coastal and limited to regular food caravans, then with only 3 cities you might hit a limit after 10 unless you have more than 3 caravans.

But the real power of Irq in BNW is ignoring the normal chop all forest for farm rule.

joncnunn said:

In BNW, if coastal, every single tile could be since 3 food cargo ships provide tons. If not coastal and limited to regular food caravans, then with only 3 cities you might hit a limit after 10 unless you have more than 3 caravans.

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In my Iroquois BNW games, the cap was not coastal, but I sure wish I had thought to be more aggressive the regular food caravans.

Is this basically a Mohawk rush civ?

qemist said:

Is this basically a Mohawk rush civ?

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More of a settler / worker steal from an AI to cripple them early civ (from near their territory as if its simply the AI attempting to far settle next to the human any civ can do this)

Might in Vanilla also be good enough to capture a non capital if its on flat ground (and no walls present) but even that's quite a bit iffy in G&K or BNW.

You really want either ranged or siege units involved to do most of the work against cities and by definition (at least that used up to and including Civ IV) using two unit types is NOT a rush.

If we are talking about Deity single player... Yes Iroquois are probably the worst Civ. Thei UA is weak and their UB is probably worse than the original. On the other hand Venice is one of the best Civs on Deity. I have had some of my easiest wins with Venice. Multiplayer is of course totally different thing.

I find it funny how easy Venice is in Single-Player but in MultiPlayer they're like no. Just.... no... please....

Isn't it funny how a civ generally regarded as one of the worst when played by a human is one of the most beastly in the hands of the AI?

As far as I can tell, general consensus is that the Iroquois AI's effectiveness is due to their AI flavors. It has nothing to do with their uniques. So this would mean that if any other AI civ, with presumably better uniques, had the same AI flavors that the Iroquois AI does, then they would be even stronger than the Irq AI is, is that correct?

That said, this science penalty per city in BNW should really be hitting them now. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it though. Then again, since I remember having to race the Iroquois for spaceship parts on Prince difficulty in vanilla CiV while the other AI civs were still in the Industrial Era, maybe there is something to that science penalty.

Iroquois is not even remotely as bad as Venice. Their real strength lies in _warmongering_, you just have to play civs to their strengths. Yes they are harder to play than say Attila, but I can't imagine how they are "one of the worst" - it is like playing a peacemonger Space game as Shaka, and then say Zulu is terrible because all 3 unique traits are completely useless.

1> Starting positions can be considered the fourth hidden trait of civs - the Iroquois start in forests most of the time. Chop chop chop. Nothing helps early aggression like a lot of chops; two chops alone would net you an archer. And Iroquois is the best civ in the entire game when it comes to chopping because of their UA. a) They save at least one worker turn per forest chopped and b) they have much more freedom at _which_ forest to chop. Yes, it makes the UB worthless for your first few cities, but exactly why does it matter? Early wars has always been sacrificing everything in exchange for military, and that won't change just because you have a special UB. The AIs will build Lumber Mills for your UB to shine when you conquer their cities.

2> Mohawks _don't require Iron to build_. That can mean a) you are guaranteed access to the unit once you get the tech, not having to worry about getting enough resources; this is important because in an early war on higher difficulties, founding a city just to "grab iron" is all but impossible due to both production and happiness limits. b) you don't have to pay a copy of Iron for each Mohawk you build. That means 1-2 less gpt paid for each one because you can sell the Iron instead. It goes without saying that this is a major economic advantage in early game.
Because of the dominance of Archery units, the role of Melee units are generally frontline defenders for damage absorption now. That actually makes Mohawks quite useful because in most cases you get to choose which tile to defend in. Regular Swordsmen are not worth the detour to IW; spears start to get hurt quite badly after compbows come into play. Mohawks standing in a forest don't think much of them.

So, regarding the Longhouse, would it be acceptable if it only had 5% production, since Austria's Coffee House only gets 5% as opposed to 10%. Although that's balanced with the fact it can be built on hill cities...

Coffee House is very different since it's a Windmill replacement and, in addition to being limited to non-hills, the 10% bonus is limited to buildings.

5% is better than 0%, though.

Austrias Coffee house is actually pretty decent, the hill requirement for Windmills was pretty bad and I didn't tend to build them, now with the Coffee house you can make it on a hill.

The Windmill had a 10% production to all buildings, the Coffee has loses 5% of this BUT it involves EVERYTHING you produce, I.E Wonders, units, buildings. Although I'm not sure for things like Projects.

They also have a 25% bonus to Great people generation which makes this building very good if you like to stack bonuses on one another, Leaning Power + Coffee House + Garden + National Epic means you're getting a 100% bonus to great people generation. So for an example, if you was making 14 specialist points per turn on a scientist, it would go up to 28. Which is actually pretty nice.

Iroquois UA/UB are horrid. UU is very average, the only decent part is no iron needed. start Bias is pretty good, although you basically need a river capital as Iroquois to get a decent capital. AI flavours are very good. So, Iroquois is a AI civ powerhouse, not human.