Australia

[Dracosolon]

I'm wondering if it’s possible to complete the ANZAC goal without too much fighting. Barracks+Totalitarianism+Fanaticism nets you 8 XP, a Great General or the Pentagon could get you to 10. However, I suspect the Pentagon would likely be snatched away by a rival.

For the tech goal that might be a proxy for general development I guess. You have to improve your cities and stay competitive. Specific techs would probably be too hard since your tech rivals are monsters.

 

[Zalfos]

A strong choice. Here to try it when I'll have some time.

Side-note, but would an 1851 date not disturb the current second British UHV ? You need to control six cities in Oceania by 1880.
Admittedly you can have six cities in Australia by 1851, but the railroad in Africa might not be done by then. I suppose settling New Zealand might be the new standard play.

 

[Dracosolon]

I thought so too. The Australian spawn requires at least one city there, but if I understand correctly it isn't conditional on its owner's stability status like New World civs, right?

So you have these options:
- Settle New Zealand and other islands in Oceania,
- Complete the goal before 1850,
- Settle elsewhere in Australia,
- Conquer the cities back once their Rise phase has ended,
- Wait for the spawn check before settling there (as long as nobody else does either).

 

[Zalfos]

To have played them recently, Britain does not have a lot of resources to allocate to that theatre, especially as Africa tends to take all the soldiery away. I usually manage the goal in Asia/Oceania by getting Trading Company conquerors in India, then rolling from there, sending Settlers over whenever some production can be freed up in the newly conquered cities.
If the spawn is simply conditional on one city there, the best seems to either settle elsewhere, or after 1851. Alternatively, change the goal to : "Settle 6 cities in Oceania by 1880" instead of "Control".

 

[banzay13]

GA to became solid?

 

[Dracosolon]

Civics-wise, it's kind of funny that the first UHV synergizes well with Monarchy and Manorialism, for Settlers/Workers/Laborers created faster and working faster. Individualism of course isn't very useful, especially since you don't have a lot of .

Second UHV would be helped by Fanaticism+Totalitarianism, but after testing I wonder if you can get to Totalitarianism fast enough. For combat that's a lot of XP to gain, I'll have to look up which targets are the most convenient. There's some free Great General XP you can get from spawning Natives, maybe Privateers too. Australian corsairs, mmh...

 

[banzay13]

Civics-wise, it's kind of funny that the first UHV synergizes well with Monarchy and Manorialism, for Settlers/Workers/Laborers created faster and working faster. Individualism of course isn't very useful, especially since you don't have a lot of .

Second UHV would be helped by Fanaticism+Totalitarianism, but after testing I wonder if you can get to Totalitarianism fast enough. For combat that's a lot of XP to gain, I'll have to look up which targets are the most convenient. There's some free Great General XP you can get from spawning Natives, maybe Privateers too. Australian corsairs, mmh...

Probably at your start you already can't build Privateers. So better war with weak civ near you. To get those Generals

 

[Hickman888]

So who's going to be the first to secure and post an Australian victory, and claim bragging rights for themselves?

 

[Zalfos]

Tried my hand at it, got some rotten luck, with the perfide Albion leaving me a nice, crisp 0 cities in Australia. Figured I would try it, but I did not pass the second UHV, I'll probably need another build order for 1900-1940.

Some lessons from it :
- If New Zealand is open, settle it. Auckland has two mines. Same would probably apply for New Guinea.
- You have time for one tech before the first deadline, and while Collectivism would be the natural choice you actually need Electricity to enable Aluminium. Unless you plan on getting the mines by force elsewhere.
- Your choices in the Advanced Start matter a lot, and most of that 200 Gold can go to Mines for your future cities-to-be. You can also use the Advanced Start to get one in the Aluminium you otherwise cannot exploit, on the northern Jungle. This can make the difference.
- As always, Manorialism is pretty good.
- It's worth building Culture in your cities, simply to open access to tiles. I've rarely had to do it in DoC, but here it's quite important.
Even starting from nothing, the first UHV is possible, though you have to be very focused on it and not waste much. I can imagine it's a fair bit more comfortable with already established cities and a road network to work from.

Some feedback :
- Australia could be a valid target for the immigration loop, to represent the convicts, the gold rushes and the Bigge laws. It would help your cities grow while they are busy making more civilian units.
- I never had any religion spread. A starting Missionary could be an idea.
- For all starts in general, if you get an extra Settler for "lack of cities", it could be accompanied by either an extra Worker or some extra Advanced Start Gold. It might smooth out some starts, I can remember one Turk opening where all cities in the Tarim Basin had been razed and I just could not make it work.

 

[Dracosolon]

Starting cities matter a lot. I had a pre-existing Melbourne in addition to the two Settlers, which allowed me to get Collectivism+Electricity on the last turn. There are so few turns that even one less city is very rough.

Working is mostly a concern for cities that have a desert Mine resource on their second ring (or something valuable like a sea resource). The slider is ill-advised if you're going for two techs. You can potentially switch out of Secularism and use Missionaries in these critical spots too if Protestantism has spread.

 

[Zalfos]

Finally succeeded. It was a ride.

That ANZAC goal was hell and back, don't be afraid to use every trick in the book. Most notably :
- Find something to fight and fight it early. Rush Stratocracy. Declare war with the garrisons of the Congress flips. Sail to Africa if need be — you need those Great Generals, I had to get 3.
- Rushing Pentagon can help, but it might not be enough. Settle your Great Generals and start early. You can make do with one per city with Fanaticism + Totalitarianism.
- Trading for Ballistics is a scam. It's cheaper to produce Musketeers than Grenadiers.

As of note, getting to Social Service unlocks the Digger and on paper it's a great unit, but he came too late in my situation. There's a bit of a general issue with the Infantry unit representing both the WWI and WWII infantry types, but unless the unit is moved earlier or the tech is made faster, the Digger might replace the Rifleman instead — or come one or two techs earlier. I'd be to speed up tech a bit : WWII tends to happen around 1950-1960, but all the UHVs associated are at 1940.
Side note : getting to the Digger will invalidate your other Gunpowder units as they become depreciated and this did not seem to count for the UHV. Might be unintended. In any case, skip the Digger.

The rest is straightforward : choose your Mines and get to them, choose your Marine Reserves and get to them. The tech race can be tight, my winning streak was Psychology, Power Projection, Geopolitics, Ecology and Tourism. Would have gotten Social Services if it did not break the UHV.

I link the saves to go with it, if anyone is interested in a pretty rough start. I ran it a dozen times, and my best advice would be : immediately go for Colombo in Sri Lanka, I found no better way to make up for the slow opening.
(Of note I had errors during the start, so no Brazil, no Columbia and no Argentina.)

 

[1HammerCitizen]

- Rushing Pentagon can help, but it might not be enough. Settle your Great Generals and start early. You can make do with one per city with Fanaticism + Totalitarianism.

Congrats on being the first!

I've been thinking about this goal and I've had an idea: what if, instead of settling the Great Generals, you attach one to a stack of 20 units with 8XP, so each of them gets 1XP to get to 9?

That way, you'd only need 2 generals instead of 3, get a head start in producing the units (instead of waiting for the GG to arrive to the city to settle), and can use every city in your empire for training (provided they got barracks + religion).

Do you guys think that could work? I haven't use that mechanic in ages, and I'm not sure if there's a limit to how many units can receive XP this way in a stack.

 

[a pen-dragon]

This should work. AFAIK, experience points from attaching a GG are evenly distributed between all units on a tile. I do not know in what order, but that is not relevant here. (Keep only units you want to get XP on the tile.)

 

[Zalfos]

I've been thinking about this goal and I've had an idea: what if, instead of settling the Great Generals, you attach one to a stack of 20 units with 8XP, so each of them gets 1XP to get to 9?

Yes, this is probably the right way of going about it, depending on your time to Psychology.
Though, once you are fighting with Stratocracy the Great Generals roll pretty fast, and even by using them like that I would have made my ANZAC in a select 2-3 spots anyway : many of the cities needed for the initial Mine covering are not that good on the long-run, so they can use the time to catch up on infrastructure before resuming the tech race.

Using this might open some rewarding approaches though, where you would only need one Great General, and gamble the last 10 ANZAC on a mix of Aboriginal spawns, fighting in Indonesia and a potential Pentagon. This would let you run Constitution until 1939, then switch for the promotions (while reverting Totalitarianism) then five turns later, revert Fanaticism and Stratocracy.

 

[Winter8035]

I feel needing to convert to fanaticism, totalitarianism, and stratocracy to fulfill the goal isn’t really historical for Australia. Maybe the goal should be more war oriented than using civics. Realistically, that would mean reducing the level for the units as getting 4 great generals is absurd, but that could maybe be counteracted by more units?

Edit: I realized there are other ways to accomplish this goal but going off of the one victory I still feel historical civics would be preferable on completing the historical victory

 

[Zalfos]

Before any complex discussion on that goal, I would encourage people to try the Australian game and make their own ways to victory. While I used those civics to get me through, I'm sure I missed plenty of things and there's certainly other ways to get the ANZAC together. I'm sure it'll get easier over time as the community figures more ways to play the civ.
Also, the game has a strong pacing that makes it quite enjoyable, with the first two deadlines being both short but leaving enough room to experiment around.

If after the test period there's still a call for a goal that does not rely on XP so much, a "Gift X gunpowder units to an Defensive Pact partner" could be an idea, maybe with the caveat that you have to be in a shared war, and/or to give them in Europe/Middle East/North Africa specifically, so the logistics of shipment have to be considered, with your Steamships requiring protection for the trip.

 

[Dracosolon]

I don't know much about Australia's history but "gift/liberate X cities on other continents (or Europe specifically)" could be a goal to represent its involvement in the world wars. But I agree the existing UHV should be played further for now.

 

[Leoreth]

This goal idea has been floating around forever and I considered it but it's rather boring and trivial.

 

[Lzz]

I've always found the third Canadian UHV boring and trivial, but it still fits nicely with the theme of the nation and it feels nice to complete it.

 

[1HammerCitizen]

Well, I've tried the idea and it does indeed work:

I ended up needing just 1 Great General, by applying the advice and follow up idea by @Zalfos , especially the part of not getting ballistics so as to not obsolete the musketeer. Got it attached to a stack of 20 8XP units and it worked, for the other 10 I got 3 fighting aboriginals, and the other 7 fighting Indonesia.

There's probably some more optimization needed, as the whole point of doing it with just 1 GG was so that I could stay with Constitution, then do 1 civic switch to Totalitarianism + Fanaticism, 1 more to go Stratocracy + Secularism when I was ready to upgrade, and a final one to go back to Constitution + Individualism (or Egalitarianism). The problem was that by the time I did that, I went over the limit of cities and those 2 final civic swaps cost 2 turns of anarchy each, so I ended up not switching out of Stratocracy and Totalitarianism, as I didn't think it was worth the 2 turns of anarchy

I don't remember what was the city threshold that made you increase the anarchy turns, does anyone know?

I did settle a few more cities after the initial UHV and conquered one from Java:
- Hobart, to get the whale in Tasmania in my borders.
- Cairns, to get the jungles in my border for nature reserves.
- 2 Polynesian islands for the pearls
- Wewak in New Guinea, just for the heck of it
- Conquered the 2 easternmost cities in Java, Trowuland and Denpasar and capped Indonesia since I had enough 9XP units, gave back Trowuland but kept Denpasar for access to the whale and pearl

Of these, I could maybe avoid settling Hobart until later, if you keep Denpasar, you only need 1 of the Polynesian islands for marine reserves and Wewak is unnecessary, so that would be 3 fewer cities, putting me at 15. Don't know if I go over the cap with that.

In general, I think it is a fun civ to play with a bit of everything. The only thing is that the unique units are not useful at all, with the digger even being detrimental due to increased cost of production compared to a musketeer, and the fact that it obsoletes any lvl4 musketeer you got for the 2nd UHV. The unique power is amazing and synergizes well with the 1st and 3rd UHV, and the unique building is a bit meh, the ability to build it comes a bit too late (you need to build observatory, factory and coal plant first, while having to do many other things in the meantime), and that free scientist doesn't make that much of a difference for the final push in tech in the short timeframe you are going to have it.

For unique unit it would maybe have been more useful to have maybe some sort of transport with extra movement, a worker with extra movement, improvement speed or even mobility, or a worker you can draft like a military unit with Nationhood.

For unique building it would be more useful perhaps if the CSIRO replaced the observatory instead of the laboratory.

Anyway, fun civ, fun UHV and great addition overall!