A general strategy for Iroquois [BNW]

[megabearsfan]

There's one last civ that received explicit changes in the Brave New World expansion which I haven't written a strategy for: the Iroquois. Well, now that omission has been rectified, as a new strategy for that civ has been published.
Please check it out at:
http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2015/11/17/Civ-V-Iroquois-strategy.aspx

Iroquois is one of (if not the single) most map-dependent civ in the game. Its unique ability is borderline useless if you don't start near a large forested or jungle area. And its unique building is actually worse than the building that it replaces if you don't have multiple nearby forests to work. Ouch. This strategy focuses on utilizing Iroquois' uniques when the map is favorable, and also touches on how to grind through non-optimal maps. I also cover methods for dealing with the Hiawatha A.I., which seems to get a lot of credit in the community for being one of the strongest A.I.s in the game.

As always, I appreciate any feedback, so please comment, share, or rate the post as you see fit. I also welcome any discussion about the strategy guide or Iroquois strategies in general in this forum topic.

Additional strategies for the BNW civilizations can be found at:
Assyria the tech thief
Brazil the jungle king
spicy Indonesia
Moroccan gatekeepers
Poland the progressive warhorse
Portual borrows luxuries
Land-snatching Shoshone
Blindly managing Venice
Beware Shaka's loincloth of DOOM!

Additional BNW strategies for updated legacy civs:
French tourist trap
Spreading faith with Arabian Ships of the Desert
India is misunderstood
German engineering
Living by the Japanese sword
All your tiles are belong to U.S.
Ottoman Renaissance war machine
Behold the glory of Rome



I will also post a similar thread on the official 2k forum in case anyone wants to check the discussion there.

 

[ShakaKhan]

We appreciate you sharing your insight. There's a few additional notes that I would have included, and a few comments:

-like the Aztecs, they get a movement bonus in a type of rough terrain. Unlike the Aztecs, this applies to all units, not just the UU. However, this bonus only applies to friendly territory. I find this bonus has some of its strongest effects with civilian units.

-as the overview seems aimed at less experienced players, I'd make sure to emphasize the road-forest-road glitch. While filling in sections of road between forests can be used to connect cities, units will not use 1/3 of an MP when moving from a forest to a non-forested road tile and vice-versa.

-On deity, I prefer to use the Mohawk as a defensive unit. He's got a 33% bonus in forests (or jungles) which YOUR territory is often littered with but other civs have the average dispersal of. That + forest bonus + drill promotions + fortification bonuses means that pikes and longswords suffer more damage than they cause, and just a few ranged units can clean up the mess. After doing so, the Mohawk will get a few cover promotions allowing for upgrades to unstoppable rifles or infantry to clean up.

-I found it odd that the strategy focused on Tradition. While I find Trad to be superior in most cases, Liberty is a viable option that many players are strongly attached to. And other than possibly Rome and Carthage, the Iroquois are about the most suited towards using liberty. On a similar note, the Iroquois (along with Carthage on a water map, but unlike Carthage aren't limited to it) make very good use out of the Liberty sprawl combined with the MoG pantheon as their city connections are already in place (or at least partially so.)

-Like most people, I really don't care for the Iroquois. When playing them, I find it better to just treat them like a plain, vanilla civ (clarification: vanilla meaning without any unique attributes, not pre-expansion pack) instead of going out of my way to try to factor in their advantages. The Mohawk are useful against the AI since it will attack them in their bonus terrain instead of going around to attack a city; kind of like bugs to a bug-zapper, but for more aggressive play, pikes are preferable (yes, except for the upgrade path, don't mean to re-visit that debate.) I generally ignore the city connection via forest IN YOUR TERRITORY because with a wide empire (which they're designed for) you'd end up spending much more on tile purchases to connect the cities since the inept governor doesn't prioritize it. And sure longhouses stink less when you leave more forest in your terrain, but I think it's a mistake to allow this compensation to convince you to have a 1F/3P (later 1F/4P) instead of a 4F tile. So in summary, buying forest tiles for connections is at best break-even, keeping forests and sacrificing growth to compensate for an abysmal UB hurts growth which can be more harmful than the UB itself, and resource free Mohawks are either a modest defensive advantage or a situational bonus at best. So I'd just use the default strategies (trad 4-cty, early NC, turtle with RA's, etc. etc,) instead of trying to maximize their severely limited unique potential.

 

[Primacide]

Thanks for your hard work! I have enjoyed every installment of your series and always find myself trying out a new civ. Now I've got an arbor Iroquois game going, of all things. Thanks again.

 

[meatpardle]

Yeah good to see these are still being done, excellent work!

 

[megabearsfan]

-I found it odd that the strategy focused on Tradition. While I find Trad to be superior in most cases, Liberty is a viable option that many players are strongly attached to. And other than possibly Rome and Carthage, the Iroquois are about the most suited towards using liberty. On a similar note, the Iroquois (along with Carthage on a water map, but unlike Carthage aren't limited to it) make very good use out of the Liberty sprawl combined with the MoG pantheon as their city connections are already in place (or at least partially so.)

That's actually very true. I had originally intended to outline a Liberty strategy when I started drafting the guide. Unfortunately, all the maps I started with the iroquois didn't have enough luxuries to sustain a very wide empire, so I was forced into tradition in every game I played with them. I also had very limited food in the games I played (due to having a large carpet of forest and only a couple deer). So I leaned towards Tradition for the food and growth modifiers.

But you're definitely right. Given a good mix of luxury and food resources, Iroquois is very well suited for a Liberty start. I will definitely add a paragraph about the value of the liberty tree with the Iroquois.

 

[NiSaSh]

The only good thing about Iroquios is when you can steal an early worker and cut down all those woods to snowball the earlygame.

Keeping them is absolutely awful.

 

[Callonia]

I found ur stuff to be entertaining to read.

 

[joncnunn]

The main thing I'd add is for when they start in a lot of forest (as normal). Here they also benefited greatly from the BNW food caravans/cargo ships. (Forest areas are often limited by food)

Tradition works very well for Irq (like it does every other civ in the game), it's just even more important than normal to have food routes going to the capital when its in a high hammer - low food area.

 

[FrostK]

Unfortunately their forest-roads are bugged forest-forest-forest is ok, but forest-road-forest will not work as usual road...

 

[joncnunn]

Unfortunately their forest-roads are bugged forest-forest-forest is ok, but forest-road-forest will not work as usual road...

Yes, but that only effects movement of units and not city connections.

 

[meatpardle]

So you can join together two units/areas of forest/jungle with a unit of road and it still counts as a city connection (ie city-forest-jungle-road-forest-jungle-city)? Or does it have to be unbroken forest/jungle?

 

[Plumfairy]

So you can join together two units/areas of forest/jungle with a unit of road and it still counts as a city connection (ie city-forest-jungle-road-forest-jungle-city)? Or does it have to be unbroken forest/jungle?

forest-road-forest will create a city connection.

However, I find it very difficult to take advantage of the forest road connection ability because forest tiles are low priority when the city manager chooses which tiles to claim. (via culture expansion) My cities are often either separated by one or two tiles of forest that neither city manager wants to claim, or the cities are culturally connected along non-forested river valleys, and the forests (which would provide the free city connection) are outside my cultural borders. Meh.

Despite all that, I actually really dig the Iroquois. I think Longhouses are pretty fantastic. Given their start bias, most of my cities usually have enough forest so that the Longhouses are at least as good as Workshops. More importantly, the fact that Longhouses are 20 hammers cheaper always seems to make a *huge* difference. At least, that's how it feels.

I've never been able to get much use out of the Mohawk Warriors, though. A swordsman UU that's situationally stronger than the standard Swordsman isn't something I find terribly useful.

Oh, and there's one thing that really, really sucks about the Iroquois: enemy AIs always chop down forests near their cities as a matter of course, which means that when you capture an AI city, your Longhouses really *are* flat-out inferior to workshops.

 

[megabearsfan]

Oh, and there's one thing that really, really sucks about the Iroquois: enemy AIs always chop down forests near their cities as a matter of course, which means that when you capture an AI city, your Longhouses really *are* flat-out inferior to workshops.

This is one of the reasons that a domination victory doesn't appeal to me when I play as Iroquois. Conquered cities just feel like more of a burden.

 

[joncnunn]

I've never been able to get much use out of the Mohawk Warriors, though. A swordsman UU that's situationally stronger than the standard Swordsman isn't something I find terribly useful.

Actually, the main advantage or their UU is that it doesn't require Iron.

Playing the Irq, you'll definitely be able to field sufficient Mohawk Warriors as screen units for your Composite Bows while if you were playing a regular civ without Iron you'd have to settle for Spearmen (or worse yet regular Warriors) as screen. Even if you still don't have Iron when Longswords become common, you're still better off with Mohawk Warriors as screen units to your Crossbows than regular warriors. (Pikes would be preferred in this situation though)

Oh, and there's one thing that really, really sucks about the Iroquois: enemy AIs always chop down forests near their cities as a matter of course, which means that when you capture an AI city, your Longhouses really *are* flat-out inferior to workshops.

This is one of the reasons that a domination victory doesn't appeal to me when I play as Iroquois. Conquered cities just feel like more of a burden.

Prior to BNW, that wasn't really a problem since you'd leave all conquests puppets forever. But even with BNW, having your core empire have higher production than normal at the cost of conquests having less hammers is a trade I'd gladly make.

 

[Redaxe]

I guess Messenger of the Gods would be a good pantheon to pick as Iroquois. If you don't need to build roads and there is enough forest around you can get some good early science to keep you going

 

[ShakaKhan]

I guess Messenger of the Gods would be a good pantheon to pick as Iroquois. If you don't need to build roads and there is enough forest around you can get some good early science to keep you going

Yes. Carthage, Iroquois and Rome are quite compatible with MoG

 

[ShakaKhan]

However, I find it very difficult to take advantage of the forest road connection ability because forest tiles are low priority when the city manager chooses which tiles to claim. (via culture expansion) My cities are often either separated by one or two tiles of forest that neither city manager wants to claim, or the cities are culturally connected along non-forested river valleys

Bingo! Not having to build a road saves you 1gpt in road maintenance(plus a few turns to build the road.) Having to buy that tile to connect the city costs 50 gold, and tile costs escalate. So, if you bought one tile, it would take 50 turns (1gpt saved on the road) to make up for the additional expense, and this "catch-up" time escalates with each additional tile you purchase.
This cost is somewhat masked by the fact that the city connection generates a decent amount of gpt, but you'd have that city connection whether you were the Iroquois or not.

I'm glad you find the longhouse satisfactory, but I don't. Keeping all that forest leads to growth poor cities which leads to poor performance. Particularly for tradition, but liberty strategies need growth too. It seems a better compensatory measure would be if the longhouse provided an extra food per forest tile instead of an extra hammer, this may seem OP, but since all Iroquois cities lose the 10% production bonus, I think it's justified.

 

[megabearsfan]

Bingo! Not having to build a road saves you 1gpt in road maintenance(plus a few turns to build the road.) Having to buy that tile to connect the city costs 50 gold, and tile costs escalate. So, if you bought one tile, it would take 50 turns (1gpt saved on the road) to make up for the additional expense, and this "catch-up" time escalates with each additional tile you purchase.
This cost is somewhat masked by the fact that the city connection generates a decent amount of gpt, but you'd have that city connection whether you were the Iroquois or not.

That's another thing that will be map-dependent. If the tiles you're buying contain resources, can be immediately worked, or have some other strategic value, then those benefits can also be worth the cost of purchasing it, which would be true regardless of whether you're the Iroquois or not. So buying the tile is still a net gain for Iroquois in those cases. Of course, if none of those conditions are true, then yeah, you're probably spending more gold on purchasing tiles than you save by cutting out the road maintenance. But then again, the earlier you buy the tile, the quicker you get the city connection, the longer you have the no-maintenance connection, and so the sooner you recoup those losses.

You can always just build the roads over the tiles that you don't own yet, then remove them once the tile does get claimed.

 

[ShakaKhan]

That's another thing that will be map-dependent. If the tiles you're buying contain resources, can be immediately worked, or have some other strategic value, then those benefits can also be worth the cost of purchasing it, which would be true regardless of whether you're the Iroquois or not. So buying the tile is still a net gain for Iroquois in those cases. Of course, if none of those conditions are true, then yeah, you're probably spending more gold on purchasing tiles than you save by cutting out the road maintenance. But then again, the earlier you buy the tile, the quicker you get the city connection, the longer you have the no-maintenance connection, and so the sooner you recoup those losses.

You can always just build the roads over the tiles that you don't own yet, then remove them once the tile does get claimed.

If the tiles contain resources, they would be higher priority for the governor to culture-purchase the tile, so you wouldn't have to spend gold on it anyway. But it's a rare case that there's a straight line of adjacent resources that would connect the cities. The Iroquois would also benefit from having very close cities, optimally 4 tiles apart, so there's only 1 tile to be purchased from either culture or gold. But personally, I HATE having cities this close, but that admittedly is player preference.

 

[joncnunn]

I'm glad you find the longhouse satisfactory, but I don't. Keeping all that forest leads to growth poor cities which leads to poor performance. Particularly for tradition, but liberty strategies need growth too. It seems a better compensatory measure would be if the longhouse provided an extra food per forest tile instead of an extra hammer, this may seem OP, but since all Iroquois cities lose the 10% production bonus, I think it's justified.

Going Tradition is actually where the Irq got the biggest boost in BNW. Food caravans/cargo ships to the capital benefit the Irq (and Celts) a lot. Also when going Tradition with a capital starting in forest, Goddess of the Hunt tends to be an excellent pantheon.