Carthage, are they an effective civ?

I once tried out their UA, crossing mountains and it worked. I had massacred/surprised crossbows that wanted to attack me in multiplayer. It was a great game, Since the african war elephant has 3 movement, I put the elephant next to the mountain. The next turn, I crossed the mountain, landed on a desert and then attack a crossbow, I couldn't forget.

Arachnofiend said:

Carthage would be awesome if the UA was updated to give free lighthouses instead. Their strength was solving the problem of having to produce buildings in order to have the hammers to produce buildings that coastal starts entail. The harbor is really only particularly useful in your first few cities.

Click to expand...

I disagree, harbors are free city connections (previously called trade routes, pre BNW), so a 2nd city can generate gold long before you can even get the harbor tech, especially on large or sea based map scripts this helps far more then a lighthouse which only really shine with lots of sea tiles (2 food) and fish tiles (+1 extra food on top of the regular bonus), and is really fast to build.

Combined with the new internal trade route system in BNW this gives nice sea trade, the free harbors, lessens the need of some trading with city states for gold, unless you really plan to go naval war early on, I think byzantium's UU ship is better cause it's ranged, quinqueremes are still very nice melee ships until caravels/galeass however.

I'm now playing on a "oceania" map script that was added in a recent map pack (small islands but no ice caps), most islands turned out to be desert or with a small river or lake ,settings likely turned out to be arid/hot as there's almost no jungles, and only some islands with forests at the equators, the poles are almost pure desert with few hills.

Using food/production ships you can get a 2nd or 3rd cities off the ground really quick, and of course also boost your capital in return from the extra cities.

My capital is in 100% desert island with a lake next to it, with Petra and Desert pantheon it turned out to be really nice, now it grew to size 40+ by the time I researched oil I found 4 oil spots near city. (of course this could be the same for other civs but still think having harbor 100% guaranteed is a nice extra boost early on for some extra luxuries)

Exploration tree has nice synergy when going peaceful in terms of gold/happiness.

I cannot really say how the mountain crossing or elephants feel as on a mostly ocean island map I had no use for it, but I can see it work on a smaller map for some early UU/UA wars, but there are better civs for that like rome/huns/greece.

I suppose on a highlands map, with long mountain ridges, the mountain crossing can give an edge finding really secure/hard to get spots before discovering helicopters etc.

Quinqueremes on a archipelago map with the Honor social policy can generate a bunch of culture as you farm barbarian ships. I believe I have generated over 200+ culture this way

I wonder if it is worth it (over the long run) grabbing the Honor even if it is the only policy you grab in the Honor tree. How much culture do you need to generate to make it worth it?

Taking only the Honour opener is never worth it in terms of Culture. Even if you farm alot of barbs the cost of Social Policies increases too quickly for you to catch up and you end up delaying your next "useful" Social Policy by quite a lot.

Only open Honor if you intend to fill it at some point. Or just go full Honor from the start, it's not that bad... at least it's fun! Wouldn't recommend it for Carthage, but the Aztecs and Germans have good synergy with Honor-first approach.