Ask Me Anything

[ExpiredReign]

Hmm... so does that mean it's actually better to keep just one small city of theirs under your thumb? Perhaps as a vassal?

 

[Funak]

Hmm... so does that mean it's actually better to keep just one small city of theirs under your thumb? Perhaps as a vassal?

Only if they keep up (and ahead) in science, which is unlikely.

 

[HealthySnacks]

As someone who is coming to this patch from Vanilla BNW, are there any rules of thumb for expansion for Tradition/Progress? In Vanilla, it seemed it was always 4 city tradition and 6-8 city Liberty. I know the CBP is much more flexible than the base game, but it would be helpful to get a sense of how I should be expanding with those two trees.

Obviously the answer will likely be 'it depends' but any information on how to evaluate these decisions would be very helpful.

 

[Funak]

As someone who is coming to this patch from Vanilla BNW, are there any rules of thumb for expansion for Tradition/Progress? In Vanilla, it seemed it was always 4 city tradition and 6-8 city Liberty. I know the CBP is much more flexible than the base game, but it would be helpful to get a sense of how I should be expanding with those two trees.

Obviously the answer will likely be 'it depends' but any information on how to evaluate these decisions would be very helpful.

Sorry, that question is way too broad to give you a decent answer upon. Expansion depends greatly on strategy, civ, mapsize, maptype and so on.

Imho, in general, I don't stop expanding until there are no good spots for cities left.
In general I don't really expand any less with tradition than I do with Progress, but I've heard others do so it might just be me.

 

[HealthySnacks]

Sorry, that question is way too broad to give you a decent answer upon. Expansion depends greatly on strategy, civ, mapsize, maptype and so on.

Imho, in general, I don't stop expanding until there are no good spots for cities left.
In general I don't really expand any less with tradition than I do with Progress, but I've heard others do so it might just be me.

Totally fair, I guess I was looking for heuristics surrounding expansion. I was thinking about my question after I posted and a follow up question I had, that directly relates to your post is how should I go about evaluating what is a 'good' expansion spot? In Vanilla it seemed you were very much limited to the number of luxuries you had access to. In CPB I don't think it's that simple.

 

[Funak]

Totally fair, I guess I was looking for heuristics surrounding expansion. I was thinking about my question after I posted and a follow up question I had, that directly relates to your post is how should I go about evaluating what is a 'good' expansion spot? In Vanilla it seemed you were very much limited to the number of luxuries you had access to. In CPB I don't think it's that simple.

Generally for me, anything with enough workable tiles and resources. It's kinda hard to answer, but if you think the city can actually be productable it's probably worth settling it. I tend to avoid locations with too much desert, too much tundra or too many mountains, also locations with too much overlapping tiles.

 

[BliTTzZ]

Hello!
When war weariness starts to kick in and it is calculated in general?

 

[Funak]

Hello!
When war weariness starts to kick in and it is calculated in general?

When you have an unlocked ideology, and I don't know exactly.

 

[Jdoug312]

Just want to confirm:

You keep your global monopoly on a resource as long as you control the tiles, even if you trade away all copies of the resource, correct?

 

[Funak]

Just want to confirm:

You keep your global monopoly on a resource as long as you control the tiles, even if you trade away all copies of the resource, correct?

Absolutely, Monopolies are not based on resources controlled at all, it's based on tiles controlled. That's why gaining silver from a city-state isn't going to help you reach your silver-monopoly.

If someone steals one of your tiles with a great general however, you could lose your global monopoly, same thing if someone captures your city.

 

[Myrrdin_Emrys]

Hello, lately i try few games, and for the first time i random my civs. And i really struggle hard with these two civ : Japan and Iroquois.
I'm usually playing in deity. If maybe i had bad luck on start with my fews games with japan ( i had to try some more) and really find iroquois under powered (it doesnt mean they are, just i dont understand their strengths).
Any advices for these two civs (in particular iroquois ?)?

Another question, is it totally dumb to take authority even if we dont plan to go on domination victory ?

 

[Funak]

Hello, lately i try few games, and for the first time i random my civs. And i really struggle hard with these two civ : Japan and Iroquois.
I'm usually playing in deity. If maybe i had bad luck on start with my fews games with japan ( i had to try some more) and really find iroquois under powered (it doesnt mean they are, just i dont understand their strengths).
Any advices for these two civs (in particular iroquois ?)?

Another question, is it totally dumb to take authority even if we dont plan to go on domination victory ?

I usually play random as well, and civs like Iroquois and Japan (among others) are always a pain, because they are really map-dependent. If you don't have enough forest to settle your first 3 cities in your game as Iroquois is really not going to be very interesting. If you don't have a coastal start with some fish, your Japan start isn't going to be very strong.
Only thing you can really do about this is restarting the game until you get a start that works for the civ (or suffer, I guess ).

Anyways, more specifics, the strength of the Iroquois lies in their ability to control the forest, you're moving faster than everyone else in forest and you get more yields out of the forest-tiles. The best way to exploit this is going all out rushing your first shrine, instantly tech towards Calendar, pick of the Goddess of Renewal pantheon and building your first unique building. After that you want to push out settlers as fast as possible to quickly settle all the heavy forested areas. Unless you have camp-based resources nearby you can usually neglect early workers, you want to work the forest-tiles anyways (and you can't improve those right now) to benefit from Goddess of Renewal. Gold I pick up from barbcamps and I usually spend towards rushing Longhouses in newly settled cities, either before or after the shrine depending on if I'm afraid I won't land a religion. If you have a neighbor that settled too close to the forest (or even started in the forest) you can usually use your early production advantage to build up a few Mohawks and use them to reclaim the forest. After this the Iroquois plays pretty much like any other civ (except you don't cut down your forests to build farms), it is in general best to think of them as an early-game civ that is best used to guarantee yourself a religion and culture advantage. This being said, they aren't exactly toptier or anything like that.


For Japan, they play pretty much like most warmongers, they have their samurai timing that is best combined with Trebuchets or Dromons for city-siegeing. They have a pretty big combat-advantage over pretty much all other civs from their ability to keep fighting while damaged.
Other than that they are really slow to start unless they have nearby sea-resources, which lands them a lot of extra culture when worked.



As for the Authority question, I don't think any of the three starting-trees needs to be thought of as leading towards a specific victory-condition, Authority supports early warfare, but early warfare is just as viable for Domination victory as it is for Culture or Science. But if what you meant to ask is if going for Authority without attacking someone is viable, I'm not really sure. Authority does play a fairly decent peaceful game, but unless you fight at some point you're going to feel like you're shooting yourself in the foot for not going Progress instead. How much fighting is needed to justify Authority however is something that you'll have to explore yourself.

 

[pandasnail]

I guess you might not see this in time for it to matter, but just in case:

Between how much easier Marathon is and that my computer is starting to get more and more upset, I'm gonna try Standard speed and Standard size maps. Playing on one of the regular maps, do you recommend keeping the 8 majors/16 CS setup?

Since you don't play Marathon ever I believe, you may not have any idea, but do you have thoughts on how many difficulties I should move down?

 

[Myrrdin_Emrys]

Anyways, more specifics, the strength of the Iroquois lies in their ability to control the forest,[.....].

Ok then i did nothing wrong just bad luck (i had one good start but got some extremely aggressiv neighboors and i could not take all of them down)

But if what you meant to ask is if going for Authority without attacking someone is viable, I'm not really sure.

No i was really talking about conquering civs, cuz when i pick authority i always rty to restrain one neighboor or going war against a city state (to get some worker then try to ask for tribute when he has no more units).

About the last point, in deity i can nearly never ask for tribute for city state without going to war against the target, kill all his troop and then making peace and asking tribute. Did i miss something or is that normal ?

and thx for ur answers

Between how much easier Marathon is and that my computer is starting to get more and more upset, I'm gonna try Standard speed and Standard size maps. Playing on one of the regular maps, do you recommend keeping the 8 majors/16 CS setup?

Since you don't play Marathon ever I believe, you may not have any idea, but do you have thoughts on how many difficulties I should move down?

Even if im not the best specialist around i can give you my 2 cents :
i was an epic speed player, and since few games i now only play in normal speed.
Game is a loooooooooooooot harder i think here is the reason (i think) : the only thing that doesnt scale with gamespeed is unit's movement. And even if the AI is smarter and smarter, they cannot compete. In epic speed, i finally had more time to do some smart moves, and i could do more of them. So for me, game is harder in normal speed cuz u have to rely on a stronger army before getting invaded for example cuz you will have less time to react.
For mapsize and number of civ i love default option (standard size = 8civ/16 city states) cuz in renaissance then in industrial/early modern era, if u rush them you still some spot to settle with pionner/colonist to grab the newly discovered ressources (as coal or oil). In epic speed i had never the opportunity to send pionner (well sometimes 1 but not more) or colonist.

 

[Funak]

I guess you might not see this in time for it to matter, but just in case:

Between how much easier Marathon is and that my computer is starting to get more and more upset, I'm gonna try Standard speed and Standard size maps. Playing on one of the regular maps, do you recommend keeping the 8 majors/16 CS setup?

Since you don't play Marathon ever I believe, you may not have any idea, but do you have thoughts on how many difficulties I should move down?

I can't remember the last time I played a marathon map, so I can't tell you that, sorry.
About the number of civs, it usually depends on the size of the map, as you can probably tell, some maps are a lot bigger than other maps, for example the maps from the scrambled continents/nations packs and the communitas map. If you're playing more standard maps, like Continents/Pangaea/Oval/Archipelago and so on you're probably fine with keeping the base number of civs, but if you go for those bigger maps I would recommend increasing the number of civs if only to limit isolation and out-of-control expansion.

Personally I mostly play Oval maps with the Small size setting and the base number of civs. Of course this does vary a lot.

Ok then i did nothing wrong just bad luck (i had one good start but got some extremely aggressiv neighboors and i could not take all of them down)

Good to hear.

No i was really talking about conquering civs, cuz when i pick authority i always rty to restrain one neighboor or going war against a city state (to get some worker then try to ask for tribute when he has no more units).

About the last point, in deity i can nearly never ask for tribute for city state without going to war against the target, kill all his troop and then making peace and asking tribute. Did i miss something or is that normal ?

I can't remember the last time I actually bothered demanding tribute from a city-state. I do see the option sometimes however, with city-states on the border between me and my neighbor in the middle of war so it is probably not impossible.

 

[pandasnail]

I can't remember the last time I played a marathon map, so I can't tell you that, sorry.
About the number of civs, it usually depends on the size of the map, as you can probably tell, some maps are a lot bigger than other maps, for example the maps from the scrambled continents/nations packs and the communitas map. If you're playing more standard maps, like Continents/Pangaea/Oval/Archipelago and so on you're probably fine with keeping the base number of civs, but if you go for those bigger maps I would recommend increasing the number of civs if only to limit isolation and out-of-control expansion.

Personally I mostly play Oval maps with the Small size setting and the base number of civs. Of course this does vary a lot.

Thanks! Gonna just start with Pangaea 8/16 then.

Even if im not the best specialist around i can give you my 2 cents :
i was an epic speed player, and since few games i now only play in normal speed.
Game is a loooooooooooooot harder i think here is the reason (i think) : the only thing that doesnt scale with gamespeed is unit's movement. And even if the AI is smarter and smarter, they cannot compete. In epic speed, i finally had more time to do some smart moves, and i could do more of them. So for me, game is harder in normal speed cuz u have to rely on a stronger army before getting invaded for example cuz you will have less time to react.
For mapsize and number of civ i love default option (standard size = 8civ/16 city states) cuz in renaissance then in industrial/early modern era, if u rush them you still some spot to settle with pionner/colonist to grab the newly discovered ressources (as coal or oil). In epic speed i had never the opportunity to send pionner (well sometimes 1 but not more) or colonist.

Thanks! That is one of the big reasons Marathon is easier yeah, I'm just not sure exactly how much easier, I'll just test it out at only -1 difficulty. Worse things than losing.

 

[Jdoug312]

Absolutely, Monopolies are not based on resources controlled at all, it's based on tiles controlled. That's why gaining silver from a city-state isn't going to help you reach your silver-monopoly.

If someone steals one of your tiles with a great general however, you could lose your global monopoly, same thing if someone captures your city.

Thanks! I thought that's how it worked, but I started to get concerned when I saw some AI have like 4-6 copies of their luxuries available.

 

[vyyt]

Thanks! I thought that's how it worked, but I started to get concerned when I saw some AI have like 4-6 copies of their luxuries available.

One thing to be aware of - unless I am mistaken, the extra resources added by the East India Company NW are being included in the monopoly formula. Correct?

 

[Funak]

One thing to be aware of - unless I am mistaken, the extra resources added by the East India Company NW are being included in the monopoly formula. Correct?

Yeah, same thing with resources that you get from events and such, like that pearl-event that destroys the harbor, it contributes towards a pearl monopoly.

 

[Stickerbrush]

With Japan having their bushido reworked from the vanilla bushido, does that mean that their passive %dmg when injured stacks now with the autocracy tenet?