3-1 Modmodded Playthrough: pdan's Phoenicia, More Wonders for VP, Unique City States & others

[kenneth1221]

Hi everyone!

I had some spare time, so I decided to do a playthrough with modmods. First, some qualifiers/disclaimers: I'm not an expert. I would describe my level of play as 'suboptimal' and my primary goal in playing CiV as having fun through power fantasy. I have some comments on the mods themselves, but I will try to emphasize which of these comments arise from my particular set-up.

Note that while I'm speaking in the present tense, this game is over and done. I will probably be releasing my records over the next few days simply because it's quite a bit to sort through. Please leave comments about what about my style is hard to follow/off-putting, and I'll try to address them.

What's the set up of my game?
The star of the show is pineappledan's Phoenicia civilization. The remaining gameplay enhancing mods are the latest github version of 3/4 UC for VP, the current github version of More Wonders for VP by adan_eslavo, Community events (though Phoenicia doesn't seem to have unique events (yet), AsterixRage's most recent version of Enhanced Naval Warfare, HungryForFood's Even More Resources for Vox Populi, Enginseer's Vox Populi Bare Necessities, and Enginseer's Unique City States for Vox Populi. I'm also using many of adan_eslavo's UI mods.

Spoiler Links :

Phoenicia: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ithobaal-is-phoenician-civilization.655685/
3/4 UC https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/3rd-and-4th-unique-components-for-vp-official-thread.631657/
More Wonders for VP: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/more-wonders-for-vp.653498/
Even More Resources: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/even-more-resources-for-vox-populi.654431/
Bare Necessities: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bare-necessities.645157/
Unique City States: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/unique-city-states.607883/

I have also undone the change in Unique City States that sets the allyship threshold to 70 instead of 60. If I didn't do this, Phoenicia would essentially lose its UA.

I will be playing on the 3-1 patch with the roughly 3-10 fixed dll, Prince difficulty, Epic Speed, on a Planet Simulator map with 2 extra civs. This is usually how I set things up.

Those who've kept up to date with these mods might be noticing one very big problem with my setup: namely, by including UCS in a Phoenicia game, I've introduced a massive source of powercreep. Yes, yes I have. I will try to note which of these Unique City States may have provided a disproportionate impact on my victory and gameplay. I don't think there's anything inherently broken about either of these mods, but their combination is interesting. And even then, the only reason my playthrough was broken is because I tweaked UCS, though if I hadn't tweaked it it would be broken in an entirely different way.

Why am I doing this?

Spoiler self-indulgent explanation :

This way, whenever I inject myself in balance discussions in the future, you can look at this and gauge whether my perspective is one you consider valuable to take into account.

I'll try to stay barebones. I have a lot of pics, but sometimes I went 20 turns while forgetting to take some. If you're curious, just ask.

Without further ado:

Spoiler The beginning :

So these are the humble beginnings for the one-day mighty city of Sur. This is a rather decent start for Planet Simulator -- Planet Simulator has a very real chance of giving you really terrible starts and I've honestly been looking for alternatives. I moved one tile east to settle on the river, next to the cotton, and to minimize the ways I can be attacked from sea. I begin scouting with my warrior and pathfinder. I start with a shrine because faith is difficult to acquire for ultra-tall or OCC, which this civ basically is,

Spoiler neighbors :

I find (what I think) are my three nearest neighbors: France, Russia, and the Zulu. I have a big choice aheadd of me to make, Tradition or Authority. Russia and the Zulu are divided from me by a jungle and a lot of mountains, respectively, but France is really very close-- and there's not a lot of space between me and him. And personally, Napoleon can kind of be a smarmy person and I don't want to deal with that.

Spoiler A fifth contender :

The discovery of Sweden, on the other hand, finalizes it. (I meet him before I find his lands). I open Authority on turn 42, because if I'm going to be stuck on a continent with 4 warmongery civs, I'll need every edge I can get.
I believe I go down the left path to get Imperium before going down the right. Imperium is actually quite nice with Phoenicia because in theory you can spam out as many cities as possible and it won't hurt your costs all that much if at all, and you don't get bogged down in the micromanagement.
Would you have gone Tradition? Progress is literally worthless for this civ.

Spoiler Pantheon :

I take God of Commerce as my pantheon, but because I'm a suboptimal player I don't immediately get the benefit because I haven't researched Wheel yet. This is a long-term play because of how Phoenicia's UU works: the Merchant Prince gives you +1 trade route per use. Honestly, I'm not sure how much it actually benefited me. I wasn't all that diligent with getting my routes up. What would you have chosen?

Spoiler Time to start winning the game :

20 turns later, Paris falls to the equivalent of a spearman rush. In the meantime, I'm building a settler of my own. I have to replay these turns, actually, because I annexed Paris long before I would've discovered courthouses, and that unhappiness was enough to prevent me from settling, even though newly settled cities wouldn't be a drag on my unhappiness. Ultimately, I decide not to annex until Philosophy.
These Habiru do some gosh darn good work. They're 2 CS stronger than spearmen, come at Animal Husbandry, and fully heal from pillaging. They keep the heal on pillage on upgrade, which comes in handy quite a few times. They're very good for early warmongering, but they're definitely a benefactor of the fixes to tile improving logic.
Also, you can see I got the Wheel up and running sometime between turn 61 and turn 80, as now I have +4 faith/turn.
I peace out 2 turns later, without any city states to show for it but a shiny new capital.

So in the 1st 80 turns, I decide that France is definitely worth conquering. Sweden is close enough to also be worth conquering, while Russia and the Zulu are a bit too far to snipe their capitals. My tech priorities end up being Trade -> Philosophy, as I need courthouses to make these capitals productive. And I take Authority, as I want the edge in battle, Imperium is quite good, and there are two conquerable civilizations in nearby range.

 

[kenneth1221]

Spoiler New Cities :

I get SIDON up on turn 90, GEBAL up on turn 91, but this is a better shot, shows my military buildup against what remains of France, and shows that the Nazca lines have been built. (Incidentally, the Nazca lines have been built ~1000 years earlier than they were in real life.) Gebal gives me a straight +5 horses, while Sidon gives guilds +2 culture, +1 tourism. Nothing gamebreaking yet.

You can also see I'm finally researching trade, which I probably should've done sooner given that trade is the core backbone of my Civ. Whoops.

Spoiler UB :

On turn 104, I've built/am building a trade unit, and I'm finally starting to build my unique building. My UB, the Beit Melqart, gives +3 food, faith and culture, +2 food/city state friend, and +2 food and faith per city state ally. I really should've gotten to this earlier, but even coming online as late as it is, it's still really strong.

Spoiler War! :

Orleans falls trivially on turn 109, eliminating France. It becomes Geneva, whose bonus is +1 faith per 5 citizens. This bonus gets me +2 faith empire wide, I get 2 from my shrine, I get 2 from my trade route with Ragusa, and +2 from being allies with Geneva in the first place. By turn 116, my Beit Melqart is up, getting me another 9 faith from having 3 allies. Bulawayo falls by 124, as it's in too tactical a position to allow Shaka to get a foothold. It now gives +50 gold, +15 GAP on GP birth. (Surprisingly, I don't think Shaka declares war a single time in this game. He's declared on, or taunted into it.) Sigtuna crumbles like paper by 131. Now it gives +1 culture to quarries, and +2 GAP to artists. Stockholm is mine by turn 142. I get Stonehedge, and Karnak.

At this point, I have 2 capitals 131 turns into the game, and I've effectively won. I do keep playing, but there's less and less to talk about as time goes on -- though usually, on Prince, it takes me until ~1000 AD to be definitely winning.

On turn 150, I get my Prophet, the 2nd in the game. I take Council of Elders and Mastery for my options. Council of Elders is consistently good because of the science and production, while Mastery is good for a specialist-heavy approach. Which I am.
By turn 152, I unlock Philosophy and I annex the cities proper. I also explore the other continent, where I meet Washington, who's founded Baptist Christianity, Hiawatha, and Pocatello... Oh boy, that can't possibly end well.
I have 10 pop in SUR on turn 160, when Russia founds Eastern Orthodoxy. This proves to be a thorn in my side for the next thousand years. And at this point, I have pretty much abandoned the idea of Grand Strategy and am just playing the game on autopilot/chasing the closest shiny thing.

 

[kenneth1221]

TLDR:

Once I wiped Sweden out of the game, I pretty much was in a position to win.
The rest of the game was dealing with Russia trying to spread its religion through the continent and eventually balkanizing their entire nation. I went Statecraft in order to get monopolies from all the City States, and Imperialism to strengthen my monopolies and give me force projection across the world.
By turn 370ish, I got tired of waiting to win so I declared war on the whole world.
I captured the final capital turn 452. I was 10 turns away from finishing the Citizen Earth Protocol, though I could've done so earlier but I didn't want to. I also had the UN built and was all but waiting for a world leader session. I had 150 delegates at this point. The only thing keeping me going was the desire to write these reviews.

 

[kenneth1221]

Thoughts on the mods:

I am going to post these thoughts in the respective mod threads as well; I just wanted to contextualize them first.

pineappledan's Ithobaal I's Phoenicia
Very well done. A level of polish about what you'd expect out of VP itself--or at the very least, the unpolished parts are under the hood. You get a very strong start with the 2 early UUs (though I only used the one) and the UNW. The really beautiful part is the scaling component/feedback loop. You get +10% Merchant Prince (unique diplomat) rate for every trade route you have, but every expended Merchant Prince gives you +1 trade route, so as the game ramps up you keep getting Merchant Princes. I think by my actual victory I was getting a Merchant Prince every 20 turns or so.
Habiru are very good. They make a Spearman rush more than viable, but I don't know how much of that is from difficulty level. I faced shockingly little resistance in taking those two capitals. I may have to go up a difficulty sooner rather than later.
Because none of my neighbors were reasonably accessible via sea, I ignored my navy, so I can't comment on the Bireme. For most of the game, I only had 1 coastal city. I'm still not sure the best way to play that.
The UA: This is amazing. You can basically settle like an AI now. Settling 1-tile islands for luxuries is now beyond viable. Settling snow cities for resources or to get your monopoly is also viable because you don't have to care about keeping these cities viable or alive.

I definitely recommend trying this one out.

My concerns: Since you have no control over the cities, you can't make them build defensive structures, so they'll remain rather squishy and so you're best off settling them nearby where your army can reach them. I also think that it might be a better idea to plan on conquering to create most of your allies. I settled a total of about 7 cities not lncluding the capital throughout the game, but chewing up my three neighbors spawned 6 in close proximity very quickly. The progression was something like 3 settled -> 5 conquered -> 2 settled -> 3 conquered -> intermittent settling and massive conquering spree. I don't think I've played enough to have any real concerns with the core gameplay, but I think I'll try a peaceful tradition -> statecraft -> rationalism game next.
There are a few weird things going on, though.

adan_eslavo's More Wonders for VP
I don't think this mod is for me, to be honest. II like the idea of adding more wonders, more diverse wonders, more impressive wonders and more cool wonders, and I even contributed a few civilopedia entries, but I don't personally agree with the direction of some of the design choices. It's not completed yet, so there's still hope, but it's not quite as polished as Phoenicia.

Spoiler Why: :

On turn 211, I'm researching education, and 9 wonders have been built worldwide. That's about half the number of wonders in the Base VP in the Ancient and Classical eras combined, while I'm well into Medieval. On some level this is because I'm playing a very limited-city empire, but why are the AIs similarly constrained?

Spoiler Why Part 2 :

I am not a fan of the style adopted for the description. I don't think it adds that much to the utility of the tooltip for vanilla wonders (for example, for Sistine Chapel, it says that anyone going for a cultural victory should aim to get it, but I would think that's fairly self-evident), but in the case of new wonders added by the mod it actively impedes understanding:

Spoiler Easter Island :

There's just too much room for ambiguity in a flavorful description that you don't see in boring numerical descriptions. Flavor is for the picture, model, quote, and civilopedia. I know what's going on here because I've read the forum thread, but I'm not sure it's obvious to a 1st time player.
Finally:

Spoiler Hard conditions :

This war condition really just means that the human has a major advantage in planning ahead to get these wonders.

To be sure, part of my feeling is almost definitely a side effect of only having 3 cities for a good chunk of the game, but that shouldn't affect the AI. The Statue of Zeus was built on turn 223 (~730 AD). Mausoleum went turn 258. Colossus went turn 266. Parthenon went 323. Several neolithic wonders went later as well. Maybe the AI is just weak. Maybe my map just wasn't good enough. Or maybe the restrictions are too strict.

To summarize, I like the idea of the modmod. I like how it tries to bring in diverse world wonders. I like the goal of making individual cities more unique. But I think gameplay suffers because too many strategy-defining wonders are now terrain-dependent wonders, and a good chunk of grand strategy now goes out the window.

HungryForFood's Even More Resources
Not much to say here, to be honest. The resources were integrated nicely into the game, but I wouldn't particularly miss them if they weren't. That said, if I ever adapt the Play The World Map with real-world resources, this is a mod I'd include.

Enginseer's Unique City States
In retrospect, it was stupid to believe I could analyze this mod when also playing with Phoenicia. Tons of fun, but kind of stupid to expect.

Odd things I noticed.
At some point, my units started getting born with more and more xp. By the end of the game, I got 7 promotions on a newborn unit. 454 xp. I think it's from the Great Zimbabwe in More Wonders, which gives xp for trade routes, but that scaling is amazing.