BNW Leader List: What They Are Biased To Be Best At...

Thuellai · Jul 13, 2013

seancolorado said:
Diplomatic is Indonesia's best bet. You can rake in more gold from the unique luxury resources, and it forces you to trade them and keep friendly nature with other civs. Remember, the resources have a +2 base, in addition to the gold you get from trading your extra copies. Also, being friendly fosters trade routes which fosters bringing in foreign religions from those routes - which can give your candi +10

Domination is also viable. Remember, if you conquer a city on a foreign land before actually settling on a different continent then you get the unique luxury resource. If you get favorable Kris Swordsman upgrades, that is something to consider if you don't mind dealing with the repercussions.

Definitely. Going for a kill across the sea can be a huge boon, letting you snap up both a new city and some new lux resources to help fight the gold and happiness costs of maintaining a war.

Plus, Kris promotions are maintained throughout the upgrade cycle, meaning that a Kris swordsman with a good promotion can easily become a Longswordsman with a good promotion, and so on.

Crazy question... if I build a Kris Swordsman and gift it to Japan, will he upgrade it to a Samurai when Steel rolls around? Could you have Kris-wielding samurai?

JohnYoga · Jul 13, 2013

seancolorado said:
Diplomatic is Indonesia's best bet. You can rake in more gold from the unique luxury resources, and it forces you to trade them and keep friendly nature with other civs. Remember, the resources have a +2 base, in addition to the gold you get from trading your extra copies. Also, being friendly fosters trade routes which fosters bringing in foreign religions from those routes - which can give your candi +10

Domination is also viable. Remember, if you conquer a city on a foreign land before actually settling on a different continent then you get the unique luxury resource. If you get favorable Kris Swordsman upgrades, that is something to consider if you don't mind dealing with the repercussions.

Thanks Sean. Our MP team always starts at the Medieval era; I would think that the Swordsman will come right in the nick of time.

Marc

kingofsealand · Jul 14, 2013

As others said poland is for whatever you like really. It was the first game I won and I ended up going cultural. I had so many free policies that I nearly found myself wondering what to pick, i had exhausted all my standard picks!. The Ducal stables are very nice and the hussars "heavy charge" ability has endless tactical uses. Push units farther apart to cut them off from one another. Alternately, if they are packed tightly together attack one that is unable to retreat and you receive i believe an additional 30% attack bonus. The one victory they dont seem well suited for is science. I say this because their culture policy bonus encourages you to expand more than normal. You dont have to worry about the rising policy costs as much because they are being supplemented by your free age advance policies. By that same token, the larger the empire grows the longer the research takes and the more likely it is someone else will beat you to the punch. And while they dont get an inherent tourism bonus, they can simply build more cities without worrying over the cultural consequences. Each city is a new location for tourism generating buildings/artifacts making your climb above the other civs cultures that much easier. Indonesia should have the enter shallow water promotion at the beginning of the game. It makes sense historically speaking and it would level the playing field with Polynesia. Honestly on a map of all islands, are the couple extra luxuries going to be worth your time when kamehameha already has all the actual resources himself because he was sailing on turn 1? The only map youd ever want to use indonesia for is going to be water/island heavy and polynesia is statistically more likely to appear on those maps. Therefore they will be at a disadvantage without the ability to at least claim other islands in their immediate vicinity.

Thuellai · Jul 14, 2013

kingofsealand said:
As others said poland is for whatever you like really. It was the first game I won and I ended up going cultural. I had so many free policies that I nearly found myself wondering what to pick, i had exhausted all my standard picks!. The Ducal stables are very nice and the hussars "heavy charge" ability has endless tactical uses. Push units farther apart to cut them off from one another. Alternately, if they are packed tightly together attack one that is unable to retreat and you receive i believe an additional 30% attack bonus. The one victory they dont seem well suited for is science. I say this because their culture policy bonus encourages you to expand more than normal. You dont have to worry about the rising policy costs as much because they are being supplemented by your free age advance policies. By that same token, the larger the empire grows the longer the research takes and the more likely it is someone else will beat you to the punch. And while they dont get an inherent tourism bonus, they can simply build more cities without worrying over the cultural consequences. Each city is a new location for tourism generating buildings/artifacts making your climb above the other civs cultures that much easier. Indonesia should have the enter shallow water promotion at the beginning of the game. It makes sense historically speaking and it would level the playing field with Polynesia. Honestly on a map of all islands, are the couple extra luxuries going to be worth your time when kamehameha already has all the actual resources himself because he was sailing on turn 1? The only map youd ever want to use indonesia for is going to be water/island heavy and polynesia is statistically more likely to appear on those maps. Therefore they will be at a disadvantage without the ability to at least claim other islands in their immediate vicinity.

Indonesia did alright for me on small continents.

And while science may not be Poland's favorite, I think you could get around it by building tall and using your excess policies to rapidly ascend Rationalism as soon as you get it, which will balloon your science quite a bit. Combine that with an Ideology like Order or Freedom and I bet you could Poland into space.

Honestly, the more I play around, the more it seems like there are a lot of middle-of-the-road civs. Obviously Assyria is mostly military with science as a fall-back (since they can gain a lot of tech conquering neighbors). Shoshone are all about that giant expansion of theirs and definitely favor wideness and thus aren't the best choice for culture but are pretty flexible otherwise. Brazil is pure culture. But Indonesia and Poland both seem to have a pretty wide-open field, and Morrocco has at least a couple decent options.

kingofsealand · Jul 14, 2013

Right on thuellai, it is now possible to win almost any victory type with almost any nation but the civs are obviously predisposed to have advantages going for a particular one. At the very least, if you get halfway through a game and decide there is no way you can win via for example science, the game will be less of a wash and might offer you some opportunity to salvage it. The only reason i complain about indonesia is I have the polynesia DLC. Indy to me seems well suited for a map like small continents where my first inclination is to throw them on tiny islands or archipelago and in that situation polynesia simply seems like a better option. I need to play with indy some more, i didnt get far in the one game i started with them because it was on tiny islands and kamehameha showed up. Besides that their UU promotions have the potential to construct a crazy powerful army(or get seriously shafted by the curse promotions).

Thuellai · Jul 14, 2013

kingofsealand said:
Right on thuellai, it is now possible to win almost any victory type with almost any nation but the civs are obviously predisposed to have advantages going for a particular one. At the very least, if you get halfway through a game and decide there is no way you can win via for example science, the game will be less of a wash and might offer you some opportunity to salvage it. The only reason i complain about indonesia is I have the polynesia DLC. Indy to me seems well suited for a map like small continents where my first inclination is to throw them on tiny islands or archipelago and in that situation polynesia simply seems like a better option. I need to play with indy some more, i didnt get far in the one game i started with them because it was on tiny islands and kamehameha showed up. Besides that their UU promotions have the potential to construct a crazy powerful army(or get seriously shafted by the curse promotions).

Polynesia is a tough rival to Indonesia, yeah, because Kamehameha is likely to snatch up some valuable islands

But finding even a decent island can be a boon. The nice thing about the spices is, you KNOW no other civ has them. That makes them valuable to everyone. Planning a war, and have your kris swordsmen teched but no iron? Trade a loose spice to someone you're not warring with for a stack of iron - they'll usually give you three to five, more than enough to build an army even if you're iron starved. Hold onto that deal until gunpowder, then upgrade your Kris swordsmen who got decent promotions and you'll have musketmen with awesome abilities (Invulnerability + March gives you a guy who heals 30% every turn even when attacking, Restlessness is +1 movement and an extra attack...)

JohnYoga · Jul 14, 2013

Excellent discussion folks, thank you.

It would be great to bottle this thread up (including the expansion thread embedded in this main thread) into a spreadsheet. Perhaps I will do the "bottling" when I have a moment, and post it inside this thread.

I would guess a paired-down summarization would have the following elements: The first column would be the Victory type/general theme, including the no-bias theme sought after, the second column would be the leaders that are biased towards the stated victory type, the third would be the social policies that enhance the ability to get to the stated Victory condition, the fourth column would be the wonders that enhance that bias, and the fifth would be the buildings that do the same.

Marc

BNW Leader List: What They Are Biased To Be Best At...

Thuellai

Warlord

JohnYoga

Prince

kingofsealand

Warlord

Thuellai

Warlord

kingofsealand

Warlord

Thuellai

Warlord

JohnYoga

Prince

Similar threads