What's with HIDDEN Antiquity Sites?

CaptainPatch

CaptainPatch

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I can't find anything on this subject anywhere in the Civilopedia. (Probably because I don't know what subject listing it would be under.)

The Culture Report at the bottom of the panel says that there (were) 24 Archaeological Dig Sites, and 24 _Hidden_ ones. How do you discover a Hidden one? Walk an Archaeologist across the hex? Do they appear after all 24 of the unhidden ones have been excavated? Do they not appear until a given era commences, or a given tech has been researched? Why can't the subject be Searched (I tried) in the Civilopedia?

Anyone _know_ the answers to any of these questions? I certainly don't.
 
It's my understanding you have to complete one of the social policy trees. I want to say that its the Exploration Tree to get it, but I could be wrong on that.
 
The hidden archaeological sites are uncovered by the exploration finisher. This only applies to the civilizations that finish exploration, so you're not unlocking them for everyone, only yourself.

Those underscores next to words...wait a minute, you're the same guy on the tropico forums
 
JHoov714 said:
It's my understanding you have to complete one of the social policy trees. I want to say that its the Exploration Tree to get it, but I could be wrong on that.
Click to expand...
Stands to reason. It's a pity that most of the policies on that tree are worthless to me. I have the choice of now spending >15,000 Culture Points on Exploration policies (each), or on MUCH more useful Ideology tenets.
 
CaptainPatch said:
Stands to reason. It's a pity that most of the policies on that tree are worthless to me. I have the choice of now spending >15,000 Culture Points on Exploration policies (each), or on MUCH more useful Ideology tenets.
Click to expand...
I feel the same way about Piety. I would love to score a Reformation belief, but am unwilling to slog through an entire tree just for that. By the time I would get to Ideology, the cost of social policies would have risen too much.

Whether Exploration is worth completing, I dunno. I suppose a trifecta of Tradition, Exploration, Rationalism might work well, but I haven't tested it.
 
I feel like the cost of social policies doesn't rise in the "right" way. I can finish a tree by the end of the classical era, but I have trouble finishing the 2nd one before I unlock ideologies (unless I'm playing as france or something). From then on though, I get 3 or 4 policies an era.

The game really suffers that its downright impossible/not worth it to fill in more than two of the trees; and liberty or tradition is always one of them.
 
Hidden sites are so worthless, better change that to something like buy archeologists with gold or build them 2x faster. At least it will be viable for Venice.
 
I'm not certain this is the case, but doesn't this just boil down to making 24 Antiquities _available_? Even if you collected them all, all it would get you is about 24 x 2-4 = 48-96 Tourism points? Which is, as I said, provided you collected ALL of them. Seems like a trivial payoff for an investment of what WILL be >150,000 Culture points to pay for the entire Exploration tree.
 
Yeah, exploration is all about naval empires, naval empires, naval empires, and then the finisher is... culture victory help for wide empires? Seems like a weird place to put the finisher, and considering most of the time I don't even need all the regular antiquity sites anyway... It would be nice if this social policy were put somewhere else, or hidden antiquity sites did a bit more than regular ones.
 
The main use for hidden antiquity sites is the "it belongs in a museum" achievement.
If they wanted to make it useful, there would need to be half as many normal sites and an increase in hidden sites.
 
Out of curiosity (and knowing that I'm _never_ going to complete a fleshed out Exploration tree), just _how_ do Hidden Antiquity Sites become revealed?
 
same way when you get the tech for horses, iron,coal ... They appear when you complete the tree.
I saw one move once, an AI planted a city on one and it moved.
 
Do the AI civilizations also "see" those sites -- and therefore know exactly where to go in the future, _before_ they fleshed out their Exploration tree? I'm guessing "No", as suggested by the moving site instance described.

[Call me paranoid, but I've always had this suspicion that programs have full awareness of what's where, always, while I am required to do some ritual hoop-jumping to become privy to that same information.]
 
In previous versions of civs the AI "knew" where all the resources were before they were revealed - in the sense that they would value a location more highly if oil was going to appear there later. I do not know if this is the case in Civ5...
 
Lord Olleus said:
In previous versions of civs the AI "knew" where all the resources were before they were revealed - in the sense that they would value a location more highly if oil was going to appear there later. I do not know if this is the case in Civ5...
Click to expand...
Yeah, that was particularly bad in Civ IV. You could predict with some accuracy where Oil, Aluminum, and Uranium would pop up by surveying the location of seemingly crap cities built by the AI. ("Oh, Monty's built a useless city up in the arctic -- he's gonna have Aluminum in a few centuries." :rolleyes:) I've often wondered if that is still the case in Civ V.

Regardless, in the case of Hidden Antiquity Sites, I would guess that the AI cannot see those sites in advance. It's one thing to see resources that all civs will eventually be able to see, but it's another to see things that can only be unlocked by a difficult accomplishment. Things that are outright labeled "Hidden", no less. ...I mean, okay, I guess it's really not all that different when you come down to it, but the blatant egregiousness of it makes it seem more absurd, at least.
 
redwings1340 said:
Yeah, exploration is all about naval empires, naval empires, naval empires, and then the finisher is... culture victory help for wide empires? Seems like a weird place to put the finisher, and considering most of the time I don't even need all the regular antiquity sites anyway... It would be nice if this social policy were put somewhere else, or hidden antiquity sites did a bit more than regular ones.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Other than the fact it's called "Exploration," putting hidden antiquity sites as the finisher for Exploration makes no sense. I also can't imagine any scenario where I would want to go all the way through the Exploration tree when there are so many better policies available.
 
CaptainPatch said:
I'm not certain this is the case, but doesn't this just boil down to making 24 Antiquities _available_? Even if you collected them all, all it would get you is about 24 x 2-4 = 48-96 Tourism points? Which is, as I said, provided you collected ALL of them. Seems like a trivial payoff for an investment of what WILL be >150,000 Culture points to pay for the entire Exploration tree.
Click to expand...

CaptainPatch said:
Do the AI civilizations also "see" those sites -- and therefore know exactly where to go in the future, _before_ they fleshed out their Exploration tree? I'm guessing "No", as suggested by the moving site instance described.

[Call me paranoid, but I've always had this suspicion that programs have full awareness of what's where, always, while I am required to do some ritual hoop-jumping to become privy to that same information.]
Click to expand...

The 96 i tourism points is highly unlikely anyway, as you are going to run out of places to place them all (unless you have a huge Civ) and you will want ti turn some into sites anyway.

If the AI sees these sites they do a poor job of protecting them. I have yet to see a unit placed permanently on one to protect it, so I doubt that they can see either normal or hidden sites without the social policies.
 
Lord Olleus said:
In previous versions of civs the AI "knew" where all the resources were before they were revealed - in the sense that they would value a location more highly if oil was going to appear there later. I do not know if this is the case in Civ5...
Click to expand...

I don’t know if this is still the case in BNW, but back in G&K I was playing a game as Austria. I noticed a nearby CS had a Work Boat sitting in a seemingly random water tile for years. I “Diplomatically Married” the CS and, upon later discovering Biology, I saw that the tile turned out to be an offshore oil resource. Coincidence?

So, at least in G&K days, the AI was aware of unrevealed resources. Whether or not that's still the case in BNW I don't know. But I'd like to think that they aren't aware of Antiquity sites before they're revealed. That would be too much of an advantage for them.
 
katfish said:
Hidden sites are so worthless, better change that to something like buy archeologists with gold or build them 2x faster. At least it will be viable for Venice.
Click to expand...

that's a good idea... or perhaps, based on their "hidden" nature -- no diplomatic penalty from digging them up inside another Civ's borders unless they've also maxed out the exploration tree.
 
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