Recent content by Silver Marmot

The random tech choices make each game feel unique, especially when factoring in the free techs you can sometimes pick up early on via ruins, events, and founding the science family seat. In some games I’ll end up with a level three tech like forestry on turn 10-15 even though it’s not at all...

Thanks Dale! The new leaders idea was just something I thought would be nice in the next weeks/months to introduce more options and variety without requiring a major undertaking (though new civs would of course be welcome too!). I think the judge, orator, and schemer archetypes aren't...

I didn’t realize randomizing leaders was in the options! By families I had meant the starting relatives eg Romulus/Remus, not the four families for cities, though I see how that would be confusing. Basically I would at some point in the future like an additional “official” starting leader (and...

I’d like to see a different starting leader option (+ family situation) for each civilization. It would open up a lot of new early game strategies and add more variety to games since you wouldn’t be facing off against the same leaders for the first 50 turns. I think there’s a mod that...

It probably never makes sense to build a militia when training a warrior/slinger takes the same number of turns. But a high-growth city may be able to build a militia in 3-4 turns, while a slinger/warrior takes 6-8 turns. Militia are great for securing the happiness bonus, holding city sites...

I like to go for four cities quickly (a) for the ambition, and (b) so that I can have two training-focused cities crank out military units. The latter is particularly important if I'm expanding in different directions and need to defend in several places. From there it depends. At a certain...

Agree re unhappiness -- I think you just have to learn to live with it at higher difficulties rather than obsess over eliminating it through festivals, etc. I'd rather have the extra five orders from slavery in many cases.

Of course building lumbermills should be superior in the long-term, but as things stand I don't think chopping is a viable alternative. Archers require 100 wood which means 10 orders at a minimum to chop. That's a non-starter. Even ignoring units it's still difficult to meet wood requirements...

My initial impression is that Forestry is too strong relative to chopping. Chopping means spending a minimum of 2 orders per 20 wood in your own territory, 4 per 40 wood if you clear (1 order to move into forest, 1 to chop, 2 to clear). You can always chop outside your territory but that means...

Don't think there's anything you can do with Remus except make him a general. Takes a while to unlock governors.

Growth units are the ones at the top of the list--I think just workers, settlers, scouts, militia, conscripts and disciples. Their production speed is based on the city's growth. I generally don't train specialists until I've exhausted my immediate need for settlers, workers, militia, etc.

Landowners are great for militia/conscripts in addition to workers/settlers, and then rural specialists if growth units aren't needed. You can target rural specialists on food/mines/quarries to specialize the city in growth/training/civics later on. I like militia early game given how cheap...

At the start, I use a training family (champions/hunters/riders) to produce units. Their cities start with 10 training instead of 8, which means 6 turns to produce a warrior/slinger (60 training) instead of 8 turns. Champions family seat gets an extra +25% training, which means it starts at...

I hate the way walls make my cities look. I wish ordinary walls would be fixed in place like the Great Wall, and not adjust to surround my cities whenever I build something else that causes them to expand. Adding that to the game would probably be more trouble than it's worth, but still, I think...

I have mixed feelings on this. When I first started playing the game I would reload to win battles at 30% odds, which is obviously cheating. However, when the odds are heavily in your favor I think it's OK to reload in order to be successful. For instance, let's say I'm trying to capture a city...