[NFP] Ancient Era Policy Elimination Thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
Agoge (20) (23-3). I’ve never felt the need to churn out units ASAP in the early game. Quite possibly as I *only* play at the Prince difficulty level?
Colonization (23)
Discipline (11) (10+1). Just to help keep scouts alive whilst they’re exploring. Which is probably, to me, the most engrossing part of the game.
Urban Planning (20)
 
God King (1) dropped from the list
 
Agoge (20)
Colonization (23)
Discipline (8) (11-3)
God King (1)
Urban Planning (21) (20+1)

Urban Planning (+1) - Cities need to a lot of stuff early game and this card helps a lot - especially when they’re at pop one or two.

Discipline (-3) - Least useful card left. Agoge, colonization, and urban planning are all much better. God king sucks but is often a necessary evil. I only use discipline to get my warrior promoted and if barbs are spawning units. Both problems could also be solved by building a couple more slingers/archers. The other cards give a far greater ROI than a few units you don’t have to build. Land surveyors is also much much better than discipline, but rip :(
 
Agoge (20)
Colonization (23)
Discipline (8)
God King (eliminated) (1-3)
Urban Planning (22) (21+1)

God King
I’ll do it in. This is a good place for it. It’s the best card for the turns you needs it to get that pantheon early. It can double your culture or more very quickly, or give you another settler, or quadrouple your faith, etc, and the early turns are exceptionally valuable. But, the pantheon isn’t the most important thing to your game. Settlers, more production, and tools for surviving invasions will be the things you run longer, and give you the oomph to make it to future eras. God king can define your game, but it’s not a workhorse for the rest of the game. The best argument against it: it’s a good day if you don’t need it. For that reason, it deserves this rank.

Urban Planning

It’s easy to underestimate +1 production. In many early cities, this is at least a 20% boost to the city’s production and often up to a 100% boost. The only thing that’s as valuable to getting new cities off the ground is a free builder in each new city.
 
Last edited:
Agoge (20)
Colonization (23)
Discipline (5) 8-3
Urban Planning (23) 22+1

Discipline is the only policy remaining not offering a production bonus. I think that's noteworthy. In civ, production is king. Some times you need to spam units. That's when you load in agoge. Sometimes you need to pump out settlers. Colonization is the obvious pick. But, the rest of the time, a flat production bonus to all your cities is just too good to ignore. Urban planning is just so darn useful. It gets my vote..
 
Agoge (21) (20 + 1) Getting Archers out quickly is important for squaring up on defense and deter would-be aggressors, which then builds into a nice army for early invasions with Swords.

Discipline (2) (5 - 3) It really should be Conscription in this position, not Discipline. Discipline is nice for clearing out barbs in the early game, but its usefulness drops out about as early as God King's does.

Agoge (21)
Colonization (23)
Discipline (2)
Urban Planning (23)
 
Agoge (18) (21-3) I am a firm believer of the no-army gameplay, so I have many games in which I don't use this card at all. Obviously, it's essential for DV, but for any other victory condition, not that much. On the other hand, there are not that many good red cards in the early game for peaceful play, so I understand its appeal.
Colonization (24) (23+1) Rapid early expensions wins the game (helps you win the game, tbh) and this card helps tremendously with the ever escalating Settler costs. Some might argue that the Monumentality approach renders it less useful, but personally, I seem to never have the patience to wait until I have the faith for a Settler and always take the Builders - chop, chop, and you have your Settler.
Discipline (2)
Urban Planning (23)
 
Agoge (18)
Colonization (24)
Discipline (3) (2+1)
Urban Planning (20) (23-3)


Urban Planning: as explained, I’m a God King person for the first 30 turns or so. After that, I will only plug Urban Planning in as a placeholder between the cards I actually need at any given point: Corvée for building wonders like Oracle, Ilkum when I’m prebuilding my Builders before Feudalism hits, Serfdom when the latter happens, etc. If you’ve left Urban Planning in, you’re not playing right IMO.

Discipline: this won’t save it, but I’ll try nonetheless. I fired up my first game in a few weeks yesterday, and what happens? Swarmed by barbarian horsemen on turn 15. I haven’t unlocked Agoge yet, so what is the only thing that saves my fledgling Swedish capital? Discipline. I think people forget how powerful (and necessary) it is until they need it.
 
Agoge (18)
Colonization (24)
Discipline (0) (3-3)
Urban Planning (21) (20+1)


Urban Planning is my go-to "production card" whenever Agoge and Colonization are not directly useful.
I downvoted Discipline because whilst +5 CS is good, having higher production helps you to build an extra unit, which is even better.
 
Agoge (18)
Colonization (21) (24-3) - useful, but in most games I end up buying most of my settlers with faith in the early game, and in late game there are other cards to use.
Urban Planning (22) (21+1) - always useful, even when I'm building settlers this will help me. In fact in almost all cases, this card will be strictly better than colonization in terms of overall production yields, the exception being when I only have one city, and in that case I normally have not unlocked Colonization yet, so I'm stuck with Urban planning anyway.
 
Agoge (15) (18-3) More limited use compared to the other two. If you play peaceful you might slot this for <10 turns when building a defense army. If you early war into peaceful you might slot this for a bit longer when building army, then switch for Colonization to plug the map gap with settlers.
Colonization (21)
Urban Planning (23) (22+1) The only card that help me build main districts early.
 
Agoge (16)
Colonization (21)
Urban Planning (20)

Agoge (15+1): Settler spam can help you win the game. But ensuring your survival is a necessary precondition to winning.
Urban Planning (23-3): This feels very overrated considering how early Ilkum was eliminated. At first, we have the choice between UP and God King, and it's not even clear that UP wins that. After that we've probably started settling new cities. Builders are better than UP at getting a new city up and running, which should strongly push you toward Ilkum. UP gets a lot better after researching Political Philosophy because we can have both it and any of the +% production policy cards working together. But the +% policies are doing more for you in those cases than UP is. Finally, by the time Ancestral Hall/Monumentality are rolling and we no longer need Ilkum/Colonization, it's likely that you get more value across your empire by using district adjacency, amenity, and trade route cards. UP isn't bad but it's a lot like Conscription: it's the best filler if you have nothing better to run.
 
Agoge (16)
Colonization (22) (21+1)
Urban Planning (17) (20-3)

If I'm plugging Urban Planning I've lost focus. Dirt is win.

The capital is locked into producing settlers for most of the first hundred turns. The capital is overwhelmingly the most productive city. 50% of, say, 15 hammers is more than two or three hammers. Urban Planning feels nice. More numbers look better. Multipliers give more hammers. Unless it's a monumentality run, Colonization is slotted for far longer than I would like it to be.

More hammers > fewer hammers
 
Agoge (17) (16+1)
Colonization (22)
Urban Planning (14) (17-3)

Agoge wins for me out of these three. Colonization is great for non-monumentality games, but if you have any faith generation you're unlikely to plug it in at all. The popularity of Urban Planning bemuses me, +1 production becomes insignificant extremely fast and I would never keep this plugged in beyond turn 30 or 40. That leaves Agoge, which wins by default: if you don't need to build any units, you've had a very lucky game.
 
Agoge (14) (17-3)
Colonization (22)
Urban Planning (15) (14+1)

Agoge: I'm not going to stake claims that I'm the best player or that I make the best decisions, but to me this card isn't generally useful. For a Domination player, it's something that should practically never leave your Military slots, but for anyone else it gets a bit more situational. Outside of Domination, the other use for this would just be to collect a defensive army, but I find you're much better protected with walls, garrisoned range units, and friendships than you are a cluttered army of anything else.

Urban Planning: TL;DR- Production good. But for a real explanation, every bit of production matters. And if you're going wide enough, then collectively this single card gives you plenty of free production. It's kind of stupid, actually. This card is unlocked right at the beginning, and unlike other starting cards like God King or Survey which are either instantly tossed aside or were never worth it to begin with, you can justify using Urban Planning multiple eras after it was unlocked. If Urban Planning is this good, then God King should really be given a buff to compensate. A measly +1 Faith and Gold for a single city is insignificant compared to the always-useful empire-wide production that Urban Planning grants.
 
Agoge (14)
Colonization (23)
Urban Planning (12)


I'm not surprised it came down to the 3 early game production cards. All three are solid, but in Civ 6 moar cities is the name of the game hence upvoting colonization and I suspect I will oscillate my votes (if I get another vote) between the other two, but this time I'm downvoting urban planning.
 
Last edited:
Agoge (11)
Colonization (23)
Urban Planning (13)

Urban Planning (13)
- All three are good cards, but this gets my vote because it benefits every city no matter what you're doing with them. During the early expansion phase my cities often will be doing different things - capital pumping settlers, second and third cities building my first districts, new cities building builders/monuments, someone making additional units, etc. I definitely use Colonization when I'm pumping out settlers from my capital (and hopefully simultaneously from a second or third city also), and I'll use Agoge for at least a chunk of turns to build up a defensive army and/or get the eureka for Machinery, but for most turns I have those slotted there will be cities that aren't benefitting from them. UP provides a benefit to cities regardless of what they are currently putting out.

Agoge (11) - Unless I'm building a huge army for early domination, this is the card I'd use the least out of the remaining. It's definitely worthwhile for a period of time, but just not as useful overall for me as the other two.
 
Agoge (8)
Colonization (20) (23-3) - Only useful if you are building settlers, which won't always be the case (you are playing very small, conquering cities instead, or buying settlers with gold/faith)
Urban Planning (15) (14+1) - Always of some benefit, even if +1 isn't a lot
 
Agoge (8)
Colonization (17) (20-3) - Don't like to downvote twice the same, but as options left are few I have to. In terms of time being slotted and opportunity cost, i think both Agoge and Urban Planning are worthwile. Colonization is mainly useful in the case you coincide to be pumping out settlers in more than one city at once, and may be necessary if you are pressed to secure territory. Otherwise, you'll get more production from the other two cards.
Urban Planning (16) (15+1) - This is so useful to grow recently settled cities that keeps slotted long time. More with recent changes making it obsolete only at civil engineering.

Edit/comment: seems the question is between having a highly productive/growing capitol that does not more than churn out settlers (colonization), or starting a working empire asap (urban planning). Or stealing the empire from others (agoge), so to this point, decision may be a matter of playstile. I do prefer my first 4-5 cities being able to produce its workers, granaries and monuments, and do not depend on the capitol, but I underestand other gameplays don't need that.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom