Cardith Lorda's stagnant cities

[civ-wrecked]

I just tried to play Cardith Lorda for the first time. I got a good start but then when I captured the 5th city from the barb and built the 6th city, both cities remain stagnant and I can't do anything with them. Both of them have no food growth, no hammers, no gold and, thankfully, no maintenance cost either so at least they're not just getting me bankrupted. The only thing they do have is culture growth from the Creative trait.
It only happens to the last two cities, other cities are still growing normally so it's not the Stasis spell (although Illian is in the game).
That really spoils a good start. How can I play if I can't expand ? What am I missing ?

Thanks for any help.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

that's working as intended. the Kuriotates can only have 3 cities ( modified by map size ) , the others are settlements that work as you described. the cities you DO have however, will be able to work 3 rings of tiles instead of 2.

edit: suggestion. settlements can't gain yields as you noticed. however, they CAN gain commerce ( i.e. culture, gold, science. so sacrifice priests of all religions to build temples in them, and assign the few population they have to specialists. if you do that, all those settlements are not so useless after all )

 

[civ-wrecked]

that's working as intended. the Kuriotates can only have 3 cities ( modified by map size ) , the others are settlements that work as you described. the cities you DO have however, will be able to work 3 rings of tiles instead of 2.

edit: suggestion. settlements can't gain yields as you noticed. however, they CAN gain commerce ( i.e. culture, gold, science. so sacrifice priests of all religions to build temples in them, and assign the few population they have to specialists. if you do that, all those settlements are not so useless after all )

Thanks. That helps a lot. I have to use an entirely new strategy then. Thanks for the tip also. I have large map so that probably explains why I can have 4 functional cities. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that each city can have up to 3 rings so I have two of them a little too close to each other.
Interesting civ to play. Having 3 rings will probably pose a huge happiness problem if the cities are allowed to grow so that might not help much.

 

[a_civilian]

Kuriotates have ways to deal with happiness, and I have gotten cities large enough to work all 36 tiles by the mid-late game. They get +3 happiness for free from civilization trait, and they have two unique buildings, tailor and jeweler, that each give up to 4 happiness as well as generating extra resources that you can trade for further luxuries. Additionally, unlike cities the settlements cost no maintenance, so you can use them to cheaply pick up unclaimed resources at any distance.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

indeed getting a high happiness is a quest in itself for the Kurios. ways to deal with it include Order's civic Social Order, FoL's civic Guardians of Nature, and the Law III spell Unyielding Order.

another thing that often pays with them is to get Currency quickly and get Industrious with the Adaptive Trait change, then build the Guild of the Nine ASAP. since you only have 3 cities, you can only build so many units and not more, so it's likely that your opponents will have more. the guild of the nine solves that. highly specialized cities are also vital, you should be running God King and not be afraid to move your palace. God King Capitol + Bazaar of Mammoon + lots of merchants specialists and/or a holy shrine can give you a crapload of gold with which you can buy enough mercenaries to have a military on par with your enemies. one city should be cottaged ASAP to get the awesome enclaves, this will become a science monster city.

all in all, one of my favourite civs and very refreshing to play. also not having to manage a gazillion cities is nice and lets you focus on the more fun parts of the game

 

[readercolin]

just a note, Law 3 isn't unyielding order in the base game. Unyielding order is available to high priests of order, or druids upgraded from confessors (the easiest way to get them, IMO).

-Colin

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

good call, I got confused

 

[Earthling]

How do you get druids from confessors? Don't druids require Neutral and confessors require Order = Good?

 

[Breunor]

How do you get druids from confessors? Don't druids require Neutral and confessors require Order = Good?

Priests won't desert when you change religion. So, if you build confessors, you can switch out, say to Octopus Overlords and become neutral.

This strategy is often a good idea. For instance, if I plan on going to order (say for the Bannor), it often is good to start with Runes of Kilmorph, get some temples and stonewardens, they can cast their spells and stay in the game.

In this case, if you do switch to OO, then having some confessors around is also helpful, bless is nice and there are only so many tsunamis you can cast.


Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[DaveGold]

This strategy is often a good idea. For instance, if I plan on going to order (say for the Bannor), it often is good to start with Runes of Kilmorph, get some temples and stonewardens, they can cast their spells and stay in the game.

This strategy becomes priceless if you want to change your religion to the Council of Esus as the CoE have no priests. It also works well for any elves who want to leave the Fellowship of Leaves but still want some tree planters.

 

[Earthling]

Ah right, but I wouldn't imagine doing that in the way this was implied; switching out of Order loses major religious heroes and happy benefits anyway, just so you can use your druids to cast Unyielding Order I thought he'd found/thought he had found some trick to upgrade directly out the gates, like Malakim upgrading highly experience Lightbringers.

 

[UncleJJ]

Religion switching can be a good strategy for the Kuriotates, particularly if you take Spiritual as the Adaptive trait for a period or two. It does mean you can't keep religious heroes, but there are ways around that. If you do it right you can end up with 4 Paladins, 4 Druids and 4 Eidolons and Beasts of Agares and that more than compensates for 1 or 2 religious heroes. Since you're Spiritual when the priests are being built this will give a free mobility and potency promotion.

The Kuriotates with only 3 cities need just 2 priests for temples for most religions although I would spread RoK to my settlements as well (2 gold plus a merchant for 3 gold). Each temple can add happiness, 2 specialist slots, +20% culture and a temple ability to the main cities. So once the religious techs are researched only spend 10 turns or so in each religion to build the temples and a few spare priests. Then later once the religious techs have been researched (or traded for), switch the alignments to good, neutral and evil to make all the Paladins, Druids and Eidolons by upgrading priests. Meanwhile the priests will have gained lots of experience from the potency promotion. The Paladins and Eidolons will have the mobility promotion and the spell casting ability of the priest, plus the accumulated experience, much better than building them from scratch. The Druids upgraded from a priest will be the equivalent of the High Priest of their religion, except they don't need that religion to be run.

 

[Azhral]

Priors + Kurios = Win.
And the only temples you will want in your Settlements are RoK and OO. Perhaps AV (can't remember if AV temple gives free beakers, don't think so). All of the other ones usually give other bonuses that Settlements can't really take advantage of. You will want to spread your main / founded religion to all of them however, they still count as cities for that.

 

[Breunor]

Ah right, but I wouldn't imagine doing that in the way this was implied; switching out of Order loses major religious heroes and happy benefits anyway, just so you can use your druids to cast Unyielding Order I thought he'd found/thought he had found some trick to upgrade directly out the gates, like Malakim upgrading highly experience Lightbringers.

But you may not get your religious heroes; or they might get killed. You also will get the benefit of the new religion. The strategy benefits are situational. Druids can be VERY good, they can be better than some of the heroes.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Tholal]

4 Paladins, 4 Druids and 4 Eidolons and Beasts of Agares

Aren't all of these units alignment-restricted?

 

[a_civilian]

Yes but they won't abandon civilizations.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Yes, but they don't abandon you for changing your alignment so with the proper use of religious conversions you could get them all. (Ok, actually Beasts of Agares depend of AV state religion instead of evil alignment, and I think they do abandon you for leaving that religion, but so long as you take AV last you can have all those at once.)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it does take a loooooong time to research all that stuff though.

 

[UncleJJ]

Beasts of Agares do not abandon the civ when the switching out of AV (patch m) but they don't seem that good for the Kuriotates. The population loss and revolt in big cities would hurt more than for another civ where they can be made in a junk city where that doesn't matter too much. I only added them to the list as an afterthought but in principle they could be used to bolster the forces.

If you decide on an altar victory then the experience boost to disciples from the altar and the potency promotion (from Spiritual) would make an army based on religious troops a very powerful back up for the centaurs. Paladins are on the research path for the Altar victory. Malevolent Designs and Commune with Nature are expensive techs but can be traded for or the techs might be traded for other techs you need. With a lot of highly promoted priests the opportunity to use 12 of them as paladins, eidolons and druids is too good to miss. If any get killed they can be replaced by experienced priests in waiting as as soon as the alignment is right. Druids made from Confessors will have Unyielding Order and would solve the happiness problems in the 3 huge cities and allow the final push for the last stage of the altar victory.

I've never tried an altar victory but it seems that Kuriotates might be one of the best civs to win that way. They should also be great at a cultural victory with 3 huge cities and the enclave. I'll have to give them a go when I get enough time

 

[Buckwild]

For the Kuriotes, is it a good idea to try and get the max amount of cities ASAP? In order to secure good spots and get the economy rolling?

I just had a Kuriote game on Emperor where I had two nice cities going, then all of a sudden the nearby cultureless city gets a Great Bard and totally blows my expansion away. I retired that one.