Civilization Analysis

[Trickster7135]

Persia is an ICS civ? I had no idea. Always thought they'd want to go tall to maximize their golden ages. I guess their happiness bank helps things, but even so.

Persia is pretty flexibility and do any type. What gives it an edge for ICS is the unique bank that provides extra happiness and gold. Persia does struggle a bit in the early game compared to other civs who are attuned for ICS, but it can do it just fine once you hit middle ages.

 

[Crafty Bison]

Persia is pretty flexibility and do any type. What gives it an edge for ICS is the unique bank that provides extra happiness and gold. Persia does struggle a bit in the early game compared to other civs who are attuned for ICS, but it can do it just fine once you hit middle ages.

I find persia very good at puppet empire + TP spam. Makes golden ages awesome. UU and golden ages make it easier to get puppet empire. puppets prioritise satraps court, reducing puppet unappiness. Can still get some GA's in the controlled cities. True though, they can work around most empire types.

 

[Crafty Bison]

"Well I meant play peacefully as in, not be labelled a warmonger (cause then no one will be your friend). I suppose I can change These bonuses depend on keeping friends, and require Sweden to play peaceful to maximize its abilities. to These bonuses depend on keeping friends, and require Sweden to avoid harsh diplomatic penalties such as warmonger to maximize its abilities. I still don't think the UU is a perfect fit for that strategy though. Mind you, March is the best promotion a melee unit can get, but I mean to say that it suits continuous warfare where you don't want to stop and heal to keep up the pressure. The kind of warfare you engage in when not trying to win via conquest is usually more of the hit and run type, where survival isn't as important as being able to frontload a lot of damage and the get out quick. Maybe I'm just nitpicking here? March is still a fantastic promotion either way, much better than the Shock type of promotions most unique units get."

The changed sentence at the top seems to cover both our views so looks good.

You don't want to be frontloading a lot of damage, killing all their units. If you all kill their units, they can't instaheal, can't hit you and you can't get exp. What you want is a unit that can take a lot of punishment both attacking and being hit in 1 turn (enter the carolean. melee get much more experience per attack than ranged, and the carolean can do more attacks than other melee. Give him cover and put close to medics). Otherwise you'd end up taking their cities or something rediculous like that . I'd say continuous warfare is exactly what Sweden wants to do, but might want to avoid offers of even peace treaties (I think they give a diplo hit if rejected?). You can't run around declaring war on everyone for 10 turns cos of the diplo hit, you need to induce wars and it's difficult to do a lot of them quickly as desired without being killed for having no units.
I'll admit, the Swedish concept of war feels alien to most other civs, even the aztecs, whose mission is exactly the opposite. They do want to frontload the damage and take out as many strong units as possible, and they also aren't worried about a few puppets.

 

[Calouste]

I don't mind trade-offs, but it just seems like if you take advantage of them you're stunting your own growth too much to make it worth it. Maybe if the improvement also gave +1 food or something. Or, maybe even better for flavor, give them +1 culture and +1 religion for every adjacent one. That would be pretty good.

You have to build Maois in clusters. If you have three next to each other, they will all give 3 culture each, and that is a decent amount. Also keep in mind that because a Maoi will increase the yield of adjacent Maois, you don't have to work the tile it is on to still get benefits from it. You can put them on tiles you won't work like desert and tundra or tiles that you don't have the population to work or are outside the 3 tile radius of your cities and they can still be useful. Keep in mind that for a significant part of the game, you only get 1 food or 1 hammer from an improvement on a non-resource tile, and 3 culture is definitely better than that.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

You have to build Maois in clusters. If you have three next to each other, they will all give 3 culture each, and that is a decent amount. Also keep in mind that because a Maoi will increase the yield of adjacent Maois, you don't have to work the tile it is on to still get benefits from it. You can put them on tiles you won't work like desert and tundra or tiles that you don't have the population to work or are outside the 3 tile radius of your cities and they can still be useful. Keep in mind that for a significant part of the game, you only get 1 food or 1 hammer from an improvement on a non-resource tile, and 3 culture is definitely better than that.

Interesting. I think I will give Polynesia a try with that in mind. Let's see what an OCC Polynesia with Maois 3 and 4 tiles away from the city.

edit: BAH! Terribly difficult to find a suitatble map for this. But what I noticed:
(1) The "line" effect for additional culture is NOWHERE mentioned in the ingame CIVpedia. WHY?!
(2) You can build Maois on ressouce tiles - that is awesome!

 

[Trickster7135]

Interesting. I think I will give Polynesia a try with that in mind. Let's see what an OCC Polynesia with Maois 3 and 4 tiles away from the city.

edit: BAH! Terribly difficult to find a suitatble map for this. But what I noticed:
(1) The "line" effect for additional culture is NOWHERE mentioned in the ingame CIVpedia. WHY?!
(2) You can build Maois on ressouce tiles - that is awesome!

Oh, go into more detail please. I think I'll play a game and see what the Maoi can do if they have a bit more complexity than I thought.

 

[Trickster7135]

You don't want to be frontloading a lot of damage, killing all their units. If you all kill their units, they can't instaheal, can't hit you and you can't get exp. What you want is a unit that can take a lot of punishment both attacking and being hit in 1 turn (enter the carolean. melee get much more experience per attack than ranged, and the carolean can do more attacks than other melee. Give him cover and put close to medics). Otherwise you'd end up taking their cities or something rediculous like that . I'd say continuous warfare is exactly what Sweden wants to do, but might want to avoid offers of even peace treaties (I think they give a diplo hit if rejected?). You can't run around declaring war on everyone for 10 turns cos of the diplo hit, you need to induce wars and it's difficult to do a lot of them quickly as desired without being killed for having no units.
I'll admit, the Swedish concept of war feels alien to most other civs, even the aztecs, whose mission is exactly the opposite. They do want to frontload the damage and take out as many strong units as possible, and they also aren't worried about a few puppets.

I think I see where you're getting at. Have one war with one enemy everyone hates and keep it going all game by just fighting his units for exp and pillaging. It's a good strategy, but a bit more meta than I like to play. I try to not abuse the stupidity of the AI when I play.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Oh, go into more detail please. I think I'll play a game and see what the Maoi can do if they have a bit more complexity than I thought.

Well, Maois are still very limited because of the coast requirement, so you probably want to play on a water map. Didn't work out in my game because I had no decent spot to build them. I guess the best use for Maois is if you have a peninsula that allows you to build them in clusters. With a decent coastline you should be able to have 4-5 adjected Maois, giving you a +5-6 culture tile.

Still, compared to other UI the Maoi is pretty weak. If they would grand +1 commerce and another +1 with flight they would be worthwhile, but as it is, you need a very specific terrain setup. Even worse than for the Polder...

 

[Crafty Bison]

I think I see where you're getting at. Have one war with one enemy everyone hates and keep it going all game by just fighting his units for exp and pillaging. It's a good strategy, but a bit more meta than I like to play. I try to not abuse the stupidity of the AI when I play.

Ya I suppose it's milking the AI a bit, but I think it ranks pretty low on that front compared to other abuses out there. Those that wish to avoid all of these are of course free to do so. Also I imagine it's not a tactic for mp (I don't play mp tho), partly cos humans can kill your units but also cos diplo shouldn't matter for squat so you can take cities as you wish .

On the moai front, yeah they can be built anywhere on land (except mountains, cities and nat wonders), even lux's. I think they work best on standard size tiny islands (standard water height), which also accentuates the UA. You can war and then use your puppets to spam them over everything (even most lux's) and get great little culture pockets (only 75% of an annexed city, but u can't annex for culture vc's and sistene chapel cancels it out. Also they slow puppet growth to conserve hapiness). Heck, if you bring a worker with your army you can sometimes take a nearby second city and get a moai up quick enough to use it as an offensive bonus. Very situational though.

Hope your site goes well, and that you're getting some good info from the forum.

 

[Trickster7135]

Ya I suppose it's milking the AI a bit, but I think it ranks pretty low on that front compared to other abuses out there. Those that wish to avoid all of these are of course free to do so. Also I imagine it's not a tactic for mp (I don't play mp tho), partly cos humans can kill your units but also cos diplo shouldn't matter for squat so you can take cities as you wish .

On the moai front, yeah they can be built anywhere on land (except mountains, cities and nat wonders), even lux's. I think they work best on standard size tiny islands (standard water height), which also accentuates the UA. You can war and then use your puppets to spam them over everything (even most lux's) and get great little culture pockets (only 75% of an annexed city, but u can't annex for culture vc's and sistene chapel cancels it out. Also they slow puppet growth to conserve hapiness). Heck, if you bring a worker with your army you can sometimes take a nearby second city and get a moai up quick enough to use it as an offensive bonus. Very situational though.

Hope your site goes well, and that you're getting some good info from the forum.

I just played a game with Poly and tried to work the Moai to the max. Went for a tall culture game on small continents. Here's what I found: you can only build them on the coast, they grant +1 culture and +1 culture for each Moai adjacent to them. Except for some very rare land formations, straight coastline will only allow them to get up to +3 culture, with the ones on the ends only giving +2 culture. They're completely worthless if you can't put any next to them. At +2 culture, it feels something like filler tiles. Farms and trade posts are almost always better choices for those tiles, especially for a tall empire that wants to grow. At +3 culture, they begin to feel useful, like a mini-landmark. The main problem I have with them, is that you need a lot of land to get a number of +3's. Three coastal tiles will only give you two +2s, which are weak, and one useful +3. You really need to have two cities placed 5-6 tiles apart with a line of coast running through them to really get a lot out of this improvement.

They do look cool all layed out on the coast in a row, but are pretty weak. Unfortunately, even a city on a coastal tile will break the chain, so finding a spot with 5 coastal tiles and placing your city in the middle to work all of them only results in four +2s. It is very difficult to get these to work at full potential, and even when you do, it just doesn't feel worth the effort.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The trick is that you don't want them on a coastline. You rather want a 2x2 hex peninsula. This will allow you to get +4 culture from each Maoi, which is actually decent during the early game. Even better if you have a cow or sheep at the coast.

I tested the Polynesia scenario - they receive +1 culture from a SP there, actually decent with that.

 

[Trickster7135]

The trick is that you don't want them on a coastline. You rather want a 2x2 hex peninsula. This will allow you to get +4 culture from each Maoi, which is actually decent during the early game. Even better if you have a cow or sheep at the coast.

That's true, but very situation. I think they'd be much better if they started at +2 base and capped at +4.

 

[Trickster7135]

Okay I've updated the guide based on the discussions. Thanks to everyone who contributed! I'll keep updating it here until I'm sure it has the civfanatics forum seal of approval

 

[ArchyDarky]

I always see Germany as both tall and sprawling. Tall in the beginning to benefit from barb camps and then when barbs contain obsolete units, shift towards a sprawling empire to support the amassed army. Otherwise you might have supply problems.

I also love it that the Huns can raze twice as fast. That IS a bonus when it comes to keeping your enemies in check. I like to completely destroy enemies in other continents and leave the ones near me with just a capital for easy pickings. This requires fast razing to mantain your happiness since neighbors like to build new cities often.

 

[Trickster7135]

I always see Germany as both tall and sprawling. Tall in the beginning to benefit from barb camps and then when barbs contain obsolete units, shift towards a sprawling empire to support the amassed army. Otherwise you might have supply problems.

Actually, that's exactly why I listed it only as tall. Tall usually has less gold per turn than sprawling, so an ability that reduces the cost for maintenance for units will be more valuable for a tall empire than a sprawling one. Obviously, it's a pretty flexible ability so Germany can do just fine going either way.

I also love it that the Huns can raze twice as fast. That IS a bonus when it comes to keeping your enemies in check. I like to completely destroy enemies in other continents and leave the ones near me with just a capital for easy pickings. This requires fast razing to maintain your happiness since neighbors like to build new cities often.

It's a bonus, for sure, but it's fairly negligible overall. It adds to the play style of the Huns without altering it at all, but does so in a hard to notice way. It's just a fringe benefit, really.

 

[Calouste]

I just played a game with Poly and tried to work the Moai to the max. Went for a tall culture game on small continents. Here's what I found: you can only build them on the coast, they grant +1 culture and +1 culture for each Moai adjacent to them. Except for some very rare land formations, straight coastline will only allow them to get up to +3 culture, with the ones on the ends only giving +2 culture. They're completely worthless if you can't put any next to them. At +2 culture, it feels something like filler tiles. Farms and trade posts are almost always better choices for those tiles, especially for a tall empire that wants to grow. At +3 culture, they begin to feel useful, like a mini-landmark. The main problem I have with them, is that you need a lot of land to get a number of +3's. Three coastal tiles will only give you two +2s, which are weak, and one useful +3. You really need to have two cities placed 5-6 tiles apart with a line of coast running through them to really get a lot out of this improvement.

They do look cool all layed out on the coast in a row, but are pretty weak. Unfortunately, even a city on a coastal tile will break the chain, so finding a spot with 5 coastal tiles and placing your city in the middle to work all of them only results in four +2s. It is very difficult to get these to work at full potential, and even when you do, it just doesn't feel worth the effort.

I don't think you should pay too much attention to the Moai that only give +2 culture, as they are usually on tiles you don't have the population to work early in the game anyway. But you can turn tiles that are normally barely worth working before Fertilizer into something productive.

 

[Crafty Bison]

I suppose my main grief with polynesia is that the map they work best on for both UA and UI (tiny islands) is one on which the AI is still useless. I don't know what map you played on, but I've never had problems getting heavy culture on polynesias best maps, it's just that it fades off VERY quick when you start adding landmass to your map (or if you lose any aka. the scenario, which was why they had the SP adding a culture). They'd be more exciting if the AI was good at knowing when is was in a water world, but the UI is rubbish on most normal maps so you're confined to mediocrity or facing an already foolish AI with both hands tied behind its back.

 

[Syntax Error]

About the Inca: Never stack a GG on a Machine Gun-slinger. I lost a gifted Khan from that one. And at the early game, lost a rushbought worker from the turn prior.

 

[ArchyDarky]

Actually, that's exactly why I listed it only as tall. Tall usually has less gold per turn than sprawling, so an ability that reduces the cost for maintenance for units will be more valuable for a tall empire than a sprawling one. Obviously, it's a pretty flexible ability so Germany can do just fine going either way.

Oh I didn't mean the gold supply. I meant the supply that you see in the military tab. The one that decreases your production capability when you surpass it.

The Hun bonus is a bit of a fringe benefit. Especially early in the game. But it comes in very handy later when you fight empires like Siam, Inca, Ethiopia, and India with 20+ pop cities and you are taking over 1-2 cities per turn. You can afford to take over cities more recklessly and also sustain your combat effectively with the city razing twice as fast.

 

[Furycrab]

SWEDEN
Nobel Prize - Gain 90 influence with a great person gift to a City-State. +10% great person generation for Sweden and anyone who they've declared friendship with.
Hakkapeliitta - Replaces lancer, great generals gain movement bonus if stacked with this unit, +15% combat bonus if great general is stacked with this unit.
Carolean - Replaces rifleman, free March promotion.
Start Bias - None
Victory Preference - any except for domination.
Empire Strategy - any.

Oh god no. It might not have been the intention, but it's sure as hell not the result.

In most games, the map will always divide up into factions of people hating and loving each other. Playing peaceful "might" get you 1 extra friend, but more often then not, the guy going out of his way smashing people will be making almost as many friends, just with different kinds of Civs. Playing as Sweden, one of the most interesting/powerful ways is to play for conquest, smashing into people while trying to make friends with whoever else is left. You keep 1 general to move with your main army, and donate any extras to Citystates (and you will be getting them fairly quickly too since the GP bonus applies).

Playing for peaceful science will be slower than Babylon or Korea. Diplomatic Victory is also WAY easier if you've gotten a fairly large empire and 5-6 extra allies from dumping Generals and Admirals.