Jet's v94 games

[Jet]

Austria-Hungary
Immortal, science victory turn 588 (1918 AD).

It was a smooth game - it didn't show anything in the mod that needed to be fixed or changed.

RP scores were:
Portugal 955
Russia 836
India 617
Brazil 544
China 535
England 532
France 494
Austria 462
USA 306
Japan 302
Inca 260
Turkey 253
Germany 150
The Aztecs were doing well in RP points before they collapsed.

Initially I had a big plan to diplo-marry northern Vietnam, so that I would have a strong foothold in Asia and could block India and Japan from RP victories. I changed my mind about that when I decided that they're probably easy to troll - India by declaring on them, Japan by parking a unit near them. In this game, neither was necessary anyway.

That left diplo marriage as a way to get Rome and/or Poland quickly, or possibly some other "colony" city for resources, or possibly cities from some collapsed civ. In this game I was only really interested in Rome, because:
* I was planning to play for science and was a bit paranoid about the number of cities because of the 16% tech penalty per city. In that context, I was dissatisfied with the prospect of marrying Polish cities because they're never on a river and never claim any luxury resources. In hindsight it might have been OK to grab Krakow, though.
* I was also being extra-cautious about stability because of an Austria game where I married Rome and then lost it from stability - I'm not sure why, possibly a foreign city on one of my flip tiles. Later I found the current version of the Atlas and also peeked at the stability code, and then I understood things better.

I moved my start settler east so that it could be next to mountains for an Observatory, resulting in the capital being Venice. Later I realized that if Venice gets enough tiles, it's S-tier capital location - rivers, mountain, many good tiles, and coastal for good trade routes without too many water tiles.

So I just had 4 cities, plus I noticed some +2 stability tiles in East Africa, so I settled a city there too. In hindsight I'm not sure it was necessary. I rushed Commerce to get an early double-effect great merchant to use to marry Rome - Venice starts with a Market - then continued to full Commerce. With the happy boost from full Commerce, I'm not sure that I needed the East African resources.

Mostly a peaceful game although in the late game I did raze a couple of German cities to acquire more tiles for my core cities - opportunistically, as part of a dogpile war. It was probably for that reason that France and Russia declared on me in the last 20 turns of the game, adding some much-appreciated excitement! France took Rome in a rush with Battleships, but there was no real threat - I was an era ahead of them in military with a huge army, and with a large income it was easy to cash-rush all the spaceship parts. I also got to enjoy nukes for the first time in Civ 5.

Declaring on Germany also allowed me to finally raze the originally-Turkish city SE-SE-E of Venice that had been there since I had spawned. The city was silly and irritating, but was never a real problem except aesthetically, so I just left it alone.

About my experience playing through the end of the tech tree:
* IIRC (??) I started with Plastics and built Research Labs.
* then I teched Satellites and rushed the Hubble with engineers.
* then I used those two scientists to help finish the tech tree.
I upgraded units to Rocket Artillery, Infantry, and Bazookas, and I may have rebuilt a few of those units, but otherwise I didn't build anything from the Future Era. I had a couple Mobile SAMs, but they were gifts from Scandinavian militaristic city-states. (Very helpful for saving hammers earlier in the game, too.)

 

[PiR]

Very nice.
Razing didn't cost you a lot of stability?

 

[Jet]

Thanks. I think I razed three cities. I didn't notice any effect on stability, but I don't think I even checked. In this game stability was high on the whole. For example in the screenshot it was Economic growth 100, Civilian Loyalty 43, Military Loyalty 210, Territorial Loyalty 63. After the beginning of the game, when I established my first four cities, I stopped paying attention to it.

I know razing cities affected stability in RFC 4 and I wouldn't be surprised if it did the same in RFC 5, but I don't remember hearing about it specifically. I'm not sure which category it would affect. I would be more attentive to stability from razing cities in a game where my stability was questionable. Even then an equal consideration would be the diplomatic hits that (I think) Civ 5 gives you for doing it.

 

[Jet]

Israel (turns 34 - 315, 972 AD)

• Generally the civ seems to play well, not too strong or weak.
  
  
• Macabees are cool, but Iron seems too difficult for Israel to acquire. More significantly, Iron Working/Swordsmen are not a good tech/unit in Civ 5. I would build Legions as Rome, but that's because it's a great unit and Rome starts with the tech. Even if Macabees didn't require Iron, I still don't think I'd research the tech as Israel. Israel can't do a lot of conquest anyway because of its stability map. A low-use unique unit is not terrible - I think some other civs have them too - it's just something to understand.
  
  
• Nebuchadnezzar is ~insane~. He keeps declaring war, then offering random peace deals unprompted, and then declaring war again as soon as the peace deal expires - over, and over, and over again. It's very strange, to the point that it feels like a coding glitch. Later in the game I stopped making friendship deals with civs he disliked, and made a friendship deal with him, and then it seemed that he finally stopped declaring war.
  
  
• The double trade routes are a good power. With puppet cities, it's frustrating that you can't maintain very many of them, since there are so many red tiles on Israel's stability map. But I think maybe that's OK. It forces you to make interesting decisions.
  
  In my game I had Yerushalayim (dark green), Sur (dark green), Syracuse (red), and Gibraltar (red; I got it for free when I bought Sur). With those 4 cities, Territorial Loyalty is -12 on turn 315. For a culture victory I was planning on buying one more city in Asia, like Sri Lanka or Indonesia (both yellow), for trade route access to East Asia. That would probably be stable enough.
  
  Syracuse was strange because temporarily, it had only its own city tile, so there was no tile on which to place my merchant to buy the city. But then it got a tile back. When playing Rome, I think I have seen similar strange behavior with that city, gaining and losing tiles.
  
  
• I couldn't send trade ships to Gibraltar or from it. All my cities had granaries and harbors. The distance from Yerushalayim to Syracuse was 13 tiles (and I could send ships there) and the distance from Syracuse to Gibraltar was 11 tiles. I suspect it has something to do with the rough seas tiles that initially are at the mouth of the Mediterranean - maybe when they were removed, they were not fully cleaned up.
  
  
• The Arabian spawn was strange.
  
  Looking at the Atlas, since both Yerushalem and Sur are in Arabia's flip zone, I didn't know what would happen. That made it hard to plan a strategy.
  
  What happened seems to be the same as what Mezzy described in his v92 Israel report. Neither city flipped, but for about five turns after Arabia spawned, any units in Arabia's flip area disappeared - my units, and Babylonia's units. I don't think Arabia got the units; they just disappeared.
  
  Arabia only got Mecca and one or two units. No group of units, settlers, flipped cities, or flipped units. As far as its interaction with Israel, it did not declare war, and it got only 1 tile around Mecca, so I was able to buy back the incense tile and hill tile. It declared on Egypt, but shared a religion with me and was soon friendly (apparently).
  
  
• There's not much mechanical incentive for a human player to settle on the start tile instead of moving 1W or 1 NW. It would be nice if the choice of where to settle was more balanced. I'm not sure how to achieve that, but you could grant an RP-point incentive, like with the Aztecs. Then you'd have a choice between a better start, or some free RP points.
  
  
• On turn 315 my RP points were 363, without the Mines of Solomon. (FYI. I understand that Israel's RP goals are a placeholder.)
  
  
• Suggestion: to make it more thematic for the civ, it might be interesting to give the free great merchant at Code of Laws rather than Optics. Or Writing, although that would be a bit early. You can get one from the Liberty policy anyway.
  
  
• Vikings, Spain, France, England, Germany, Russia: none of them spawned. I have no idea why. It's similar to what Pawlak described in his v94 Israel report, but more extreme.

 

[Jet]

Arabia start

I ran an Arabia start to compare it with what happened in that Israel game.

It seemed normal:

There weren't many cities in the area - I'm sure that's by design - but Yerushalayim was there, and it flipped. I also got a normal complement of starting units - settlers, military, a worker.

It looks like hostile units in a large area - larger than the flip zone shown on the Atlas, including the northern Sahara and East Africa - will flip for around the first 5 turns. I got some flipped barb units that way, including some that must have spawned in the Sahara after I spawned.

I also got a Spearman from the African Cities minor nation. I sent a unit to discover Kilimanjaro, and one turn the spearman attacked me, and the next turn it flipped to me. Funny. But Aksum was neutral, and its spearman did not flip.

 

[Jet]

Regarding what happened with the Arabia spawn in my Israel game, I played a v94 Babylonia game where something similar happened with the Persia spawn. I believe there were a couple cities in Turkey/Caucasus that normally would have flipped to Persia, but they didn't. Persia also did not seem to receive any extra military or civilian units: my army of three Bowmen and two Warriors killed Persia's one Immortal, walked into Parsa, and that was the end of the Persian Empire. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[PiR]

Nebuchadnezzar is ~insane~. He keeps declaring war, then offering random peace deals unprompted, and then declaring war again as soon as the peace deal expires - over, and over, and over again. It's very strange, to the point that it feels like a coding glitch.

same happened to me as Israel

the declaring is probably coded by Rhye ? and the making peace is base game civ taking back control (as for Huns for example)

 

[PiR]

It looks like hostile units in a large area - larger than the flip zone shown on the Atlas, including the northern Sahara and East Africa - will flip for around the first 5 turns. I got some flipped barb units that way, including some that must have spawned in the Sahara after I spawned.

I didn't know it could do that.
I'd have to think of a way to represent it in the Atlas if this is confirmed.

 

[Pawlak]

Israel (turns 34 - 315, 972 AD)

• Generally the civ seems to play well, not too strong or weak.
  
  
• Macabees are cool, but Iron seems too difficult for Israel to acquire. More significantly, Iron Working/Swordsmen are not a good tech/unit in Civ 5. I would build Legions as Rome, but that's because it's a great unit and Rome starts with the tech. Even if Macabees didn't require Iron, I still don't think I'd research the tech as Israel. Israel can't do a lot of conquest anyway because of its stability map. A low-use unique unit is not terrible - I think some other civs have them too - it's just something to understand.
  
  
• The double trade routes are a good power. With puppet cities, it's frustrating that you can't maintain very many of them, since there are so many red tiles on Israel's stability map. But I think maybe that's OK. It forces you to make interesting decisions.
  
  In my game I had Yerushalayim (dark green), Sur (dark green), Syracuse (red), and Gibraltar (red; I got it for free when I bought Sur). With those 4 cities, Territorial Loyalty is -12 on turn 315. For a culture victory I was planning on buying one more city in Asia, like Sri Lanka or Indonesia (both yellow), for trade route access to East Asia. That would probably be stable enough.
  
  Syracuse was strange because temporarily, it had only its own city tile, so there was no tile on which to place my merchant to buy the city. But then it got a tile back. When playing Rome, I think I have seen similar strange behavior with that city, gaining and losing tiles.
  
  
• There's not much mechanical incentive for a human player to settle on the start tile instead of moving 1W or 1 NW. It would be nice if the choice of where to settle was more balanced. I'm not sure how to achieve that, but you could grant an RP-point incentive, like with the Aztecs. Then you'd have a choice between a better start, or some free RP points.

I used Macabees until industrial age a lot, but not really for fighting other civs just farming faith on barbarians, I believe they are very useful unit without being particularly good at fighting.

With puppets not in red and with number of trade routes shipping food to capitol I managed to have quite a lot of cities, Sri Lanka was useful and I guess I got African city for iron. You can get either many or well placed, which seems to me like interesting choice.

As far as starting settlement I would even argue there is great incentive against it, having costal capitol is extremally useful, while placing Jerusalem historically gives you nothing. RP -points is easy solution, resource placement would probably be hard way to make meaningful case for not settling costal seeing how you can just buy or wait for tiles...

Earlier free merchant is great idea IMO.

 

[Jet]

I think I was too quick to criticize Swordsmen. I can't imagine myself prioritizing Macabees, but Swordsmen do upgrade to Muskets, unlike Spearmen. And farming faith on barbarians is a great idea.