A general strategy for Carthage [BNW]

Well, I've run out of civs that have received explicit changes in Brave New World, so now I'm moving onto more civs that get implicit changes. This month' strategy guide is for Carthage:
http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2016/01/15/Civ-V-strategy-Carthage.aspx

Carthage didn't receive any explicit changes from BNW, but the new trade route mechanics and redesign of the harbor have changed the way that Carthage plays. Instead of getting a building that passively buffs coastal cities with sea resource production and gold, the free harbors now provide a boost to cargo ship range. This gives Carthage some subtle economic, diplomatic, and religious opportunities that other civs have to wait till the medieval era to take advantage of. In addition, the Exploration policy tree (added for BNW) plays very well with Carthage.

Of course, the elephant, quinquereme, and mountain-crossing are still there and are unchanged, but I also cover strategies for using those units and powers. And, of course, there's strategies for playing against the uber-treacherous Dido as well.

As always, I appreciate any feedback, so please comment, share, or rate the post as you see fit. I also welcome any discussion about the strategy guide or Carthage strategies in general in this forum topic.

Additional strategies for the BNW civilizations can be found at:
Assyria the tech thief
Brazil the jungle king
spicy Indonesia
Moroccan gatekeepers
Poland the progressive warhorse
Portual borrows luxuries
Land-snatching Shoshone
Blindly managing Venice
Beware Shaka's loincloth of DOOM!

Additional BNW strategies for updated legacy civs:
French tourist trap
Spreading faith with Arabian Ships of the Desert
India is misunderstood
German engineering
Living by the Japanese sword
All your tiles are belong to U.S.
Ottoman Renaissance war machine
Behold the glory of Rome
Guiding the Iroquois along the Great Warpath



I will also post a similar thread on the official 2k forum in case anyone wants to check the discussion there.

Just a tiny bit of insight on Exploration. It's generally not worth it over stuff like Commerce and/or Patronage, unless you're going really wide and your cities get quite small. I'd say Dido is a top dog on an Archipelago map type in which case it all works but generally it's sound to go wide along the coasts and spam out ships for defense and exploration

On the Carthage Naval UU, the extra strength also significantly improves surviability of the naval scouting units on maps with a large number of landmasses that are connected with sea tiles (such as Archipelago, Large Islands, and Tiny Islands)

On Exploration, as a filler (spare policy points while waiting to be allowed into Rationalism) it's not that bad compared to using Patronage -Consulate or right side of Commerce as a filler.
The entire tree isn't worth it though (but neither would entire trees of Commerce / Patronage) but that has to do with Rationalism being so much better than anything else for every single civ.

On victories, I would agree that Carthage isn't the best to go for a peaceful Culture victory. However, the same advantages that Carthage has for going after a Domination victory would apply for going after a warmongering Culture victory.

Cooperation for a Diplomatic victory ??? Just buy out the city states

Exploration is viable as a filler, especially if you decide to build Louvre for culture victory. It also has extra synergy for naval civs where most of all cities are built on coast, since you can also take the happiness SP from it if ideology pressure is a problem.

The point you mention about immediately getting free +25% production from the Railroad technology on all coastal cities is interesting.
Possibly it is worth pursuing that technology just for that purpose.

I think for Exploration you would want the +3 production and the extra happiness. Those are pretty solid choices and follows on from Liberty quite nicely. The gold bonus looks good but it means you need to take the Great Admiral which seems lacklustre.

I often grab the extra production and sometimes happiness in exploration. I don't always get Rationalism like a lot of people seem to, it can be good if you're still behind in tech by then but usually I'm getting good science from patronage so exploration or commerce give me a boost in things I need more. Then after a couple of those I've hopefully built my factories and have better ways to spend my culture points (if the game lasts that long).

Note too that I actually don't like to get too far ahead of the AI's in science as they are so bad at war that they need any boost they can get which is why I seldom stop them from stealing tech from me.

Not getting rationalism is fine on low difficulty, and you can actually play any way you want and still win. You can also play by additional rules such as not building certain things. Deity AI usually will be ahead until late renaissance/industrial era anyway.

Sclb said:

Not getting rationalism is fine on low difficulty, and you can actually play any way you want and still win. You can also play by additional rules such as not building certain things. Deity AI usually will be ahead until late renaissance/industrial era anyway.

Click to expand...

I play immortal and deity and have for years. Again it's not always worth it sometimes it is but often by the time it's available I'm already catching up in science and will soon become the lead if not already.

My strategy is to get science from patronage: it works very well when you can ally with a bunch of city states which is pretty easy usually. (just kill off Alexander if you have him in the game)..and even on deity once you do that you can quickly catch up and pass the AI players. The patronage science benefit kicks in a lot sooner than rationalism, and quite often by then I'm getting such good science per turn that 10% is insignificant. By then the only thing that is really good is the trading post science if you have a lot of them. More great scientists? Sure but it's not enough more to be very meaningful. Science from specialists? Sure if you have pretty low sci/turn but if you've done patronage right you should have quite high sci/turn.

Also I'm usually playing dominance so I'm picking up a fair bit of science from my pupated cities by then (or sometimes I go Liberty and wide early especially with Carthage for a similar effect).

Often by the time I'd be getting beyond opening rationalism I'll have my ideology and will get much more benefit using my social points in it (if I'm really unlucky with coal I might be able to get a few policies into rationalism but usually if worst comes to worst I can pay a city-state to produce coal).