Spoiler :
Ran a quicker first game, but this one was pretty intense so recorded it a bit more. Standard communitas_79 Immortal. CV on Turn 357. Ultimately my goal this game was a power religion CV. I used Stupas + Sacred Sites + Way of Tourism (ehem some more religious name). The goal was to control the world through religion, and from religion tourism, and from tourism....ehem....the world.
Ultimately I conquered my neighbor Babylon, and expanded like mad with conquistadors, and honestly just took over the top spot, in the first time in a long time so early in an Immortal play. I was number 1 in science and had everyone under my influnce thrall by Turn 320. My goal was to just pound through the tenents and win the game. But the AI wouldn't let me have it easy, the ENTIRE world turned on me, again....and agian....and again....and....again. Every CS was taken from me, every ally betrayed me, my vassal Babylon went independent....just to go to war with me! You can see they are literally hitting me on both shores, but I have the power of culture in my pocket, and the mind control laser, or super eye thingy, or the culture whammy gun....whatever it is, is upon them.
And now...my overall balance thoughts on 2.7 so far.
Tactical/Strategic AI
Big improvements here. I have seen the AI pull off some great stuff, its much better on amphibious tactics, its presses attacks a lot better, it even attacks with caravels now (and man was that a surprise). The AI managed to take a pretty fortified city from me in the first game, I was quite impressed.
Strategic AI, I am noticing that the AI is now willing to declare in early medieval as opposed to Renissance, though I still think it declares too late for how weak my early position is. Now the AI is not shy about going hostile, and denouncing me, and XYZ in classical, but it just can't seem to pull teh trigger until medieval.
Granary/Lodge/Herbalist
I've given the details in other posts, so my quick and dirty here. The new lodge is solid, does a good job at what its supposed to do, but the granary and the herbalist had to pay too much in cost. There needs to be some rebalancing here.
Happiness
So I pushed the happiness system in this last game, going 16 full cities.
The result.... happiness was VERY TOUGH to manage, I was below 50% the vast majority of the game, and dipped below 35% 3 times. I built over 50 public works over the course of the game to keep happiness in check, bought every lux I could (at least while the AI would deal with me), and even took the happiness policy of BOTH imperalism and rationalism and Order's +2 happy from public schools....and couldn't quite make 50 most of the time. So from a very wide standpoint, happiness felt a bit too rough, having to build 3 PWs for every city I owned and still not break to 50% felt weak to me.
Zoos
So a weird thing about zoos. With their 500 instant science, in a regular city they basically generate about 50 turns worth of public school science. So other than a few for archeologists, you should ALWAYS build the zoo first, you'll get a much bigger boost to science quicker, and then can follow it up with public schools.
Deal AI
The AIs deal making was a bit better in this version, and more deals were reasonable. I was still seeing some crazy high deals, not quite the 60+ GPT I was seeing before but still 30-40 GPT ones that were still way out of line. I would see a few impossibles but that was only when the AI only had 1 copy, which I can respect.
Skirmisher Reworks
I made a fair amount of use on the heavy skirmisher for both the previous game and this latest one. Ultimately I like what I saw for the most part. It was an interesting niche, trying to find ways to fit them in for maximum effectiveness was a fun mini-game. I do think the heavy skirmisher RCS may be 1 too high, I am still doing a solid 20ish damage to most units, which might be a bit more than it needs to be.
Spain
So I tried out the new conquistador. Ultimately what I thought was more of a knight replacement turned out to be more of a longsword one. I found that Knights were still useful, their raw offensive power and their ability to pull away from an attack was still quite useful, not to mention their extra speed. That said, Survival 2 conqs are quite tanky and great to hold specific spots. Trail 2 conqs meanwhile are going for sneaking into the backline and just pillaging key resources.
Ultimately, I found a combined arms approach best with the unit. They go very well with heavy skirmishers due to overun, gaining a full +70% CS bonus! This was the main way to make use of their offense, which was a good bit weaker than the knight's at base, though they performed better against pikes. Their ability to cross rivers without slowing down is a huge benefit I made use of.
Once the war was over, I sent them all overseas, they made short work of the barbs out there and set up shop. The new mission was nice, letting me get my religion up without having to bring missionaries was a nice time saver.
All in all I found it a fun unit, and not an OP one on my first outing with it. I might find it stronger on open land with more changes to flank....the terrain I was in was mountainous with lots of choke points, so I'll have to give them another go. But the style of play was interesting, very different from your normal UU combats. Probably the biggest "weakness" of the unit is that they DO NOT stand up against musketman at all. Like my survival 2 conqs were getting shredded, taking 40-47 damage from muskets. If you are still warring with them at that point its a mistake, you need to send them off for satellites or hoard them until commandos, and switch to tercio for your tanking.
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