Babylon Contrast Journal, All Welcome

[CrazyG]

In hindsight I built the Leaning Tower on turn 155 and took a scientist which I planted. I could have bulbed him to get muskets earlier or could have taken a great general.

Why did Assyria dislike you in the first place? Was it a border friction thing? I think having a good relationship with him is crucial if you wanted to have a peaceful game.

He took my religion, we've denounced the same leaders, and we were friends with the same leaders too. Other than the war we still have nothing but positive diplo modifiers.

I think it's just because he has a warmonger flavor and had peace treaties with his other neighbors. Or it's because everyone else has like 3 defensive pacts while I cannot get 1.

Well it seems like you just ended up at war with everyone as progress so that is always going to suck a lot. I'm actually not sure there's much you can do with bribed wars as if you just have one enemy they will bribe everyone else to war you so it's pretty hard to make friends. I much prefer playing with them off as then it's actually possible to have some friends whilst also having some enemies.

I guess I'll never know for sure, but it could be the Huns who bribed others. Or maybe he bribed Korea and Korea bribed Siam? I did denounce the Huns, but that improved my opinion with 4 other leaders because they had already denounced him too. Siam declaring war on me was a backstab, he broke friendship to do it.

I'm still not convinced about progress being the problem. I got the military techs much earlier than the authority games; I unlocked muskets at turn 159, compare to Milae's turn 182. Authority would give me some supply, heal the melee units, and a combat bonus, none of which are that important I think.

 

[Milae]

In hindsight I built the Leaning Tower on turn 155 and took a scientist which I planted. I could have bulbed him to get muskets earlier or could have taken a great general.

He took my religion, we've denounced the same leaders, and we were friends with the same leaders too. Other than the war we still have nothing but positive diplo modifiers.

I think it's just because he has a warmonger flavor and had peace treaties with his other neighbors. Or it's because everyone else has like 3 defensive pacts while I cannot get 1.


I guess I'll never know for sure, but it could be the Huns who bribed others. Or maybe he bribed Korea and Korea bribed Siam? I did denounce the Huns, but that improved my opinion with 4 other leaders because they had already denounced him too. Siam declaring war on me was a backstab, he broke friendship to do it.

I'm still not convinced about progress being the problem. I got the military techs much earlier than the authority games; I unlocked muskets at turn 159, compare to Milae's turn 182. Authority would give me some supply, heal the melee units, and a combat bonus, none of which are that important I think.

Yea but when you have the tech you gotta use it on someone! I think either with bowmen before castles, or with muskets before arsenals are the two main timing windows to get stuff conquered as Babylon so could have played around that a bit more. I think if you could conquer one other civ you could then keep up on tech and maybe just war the leader to slow them down. I did also find diplomacy very weird in this game but hopefully they would have turned on Korea later on, at least in congress.

I guess war weariness is another part of Authority which would have helped here.

 

[CrazyG]

Yea but when you have the tech you gotta use it on someone! I think either with bowmen before castles, or with muskets before arsenals are the two main timing windows to get stuff conquered as Babylon so could have played around that a bit more.

Holy cow did the AI have arsenals on turn 159 in your game? If so I misunderstood, it seemed to me that the AI were teching faster in my game, especially Korea, but I guess not. That means your conquest is really impressive. I don't see how I could have use them much faster it just took forever to grind out Assyria's army.

Even if authority dropped my war wariness to 0, I think it would still be giving less happiness than progress.

 

[Milae]

Holy cow did the AI have arsenals on turn 159 in your game? If so I misunderstood, it seemed to me that the AI were teching faster in my game, especially Korea, but I guess not. That means your conquest is really impressive. I don't see how I could have use them much faster it just took forever to grind out Assyria's army.

Even if authority dropped my war wariness to 0, I think it would still be giving less happiness than progress.

Nah I'm just saying that being ahead on tech isn't necessarily getting you closer to winning. So I could understand arguing that getting to muskets faster is a positive for progress. But then I feel like as progress you need to start transitioning into one of the win conditions.

Was it your plan to convert into a conquest game? If so maybe authority second and the military religious beliefs. I'm guessing you killed a lot of units so would've had a lot of culture from auth and faith from orders.
If not I think more culture from the religion could've been better. Theocratic rule for +5 culture from holy sites, perhaps even with prophecy enhancer. Artistry or Tradition second policy tree, then you could choose ceremonial burial or the golden age founder.

 

[CrazyG]

Nah I'm just saying that being ahead on tech isn't necessarily getting you closer to winning. So I could understand arguing that getting to muskets faster is a positive for progress. But then I feel like as progress you need to start transitioning into one of the win conditions.

Was it your plan to convert into a conquest game? If so maybe authority second and the military religious beliefs. I'm guessing you killed a lot of units so would've had a lot of culture from auth and faith from orders.
If not I think more culture from the religion could've been better. Theocratic rule for +5 culture from holy sites, perhaps even with prophecy enhancer. Artistry or Tradition second policy tree, then you could choose ceremonial burial or the golden age founder.

Yeah I was planning on conquest, there's no peacefully beating that Korea (he has 2 rationalism by turn 180). I think I should have taken military beliefs, probably orders and defender of the faith. In regular VP you can compete peacefully with the AI pretty easily and I just didn't know what to expect.

I thought Stii would take statecraft since he took it in our last Babylon game (see here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/overcoming-snowballing-ai.661371/), and I took artistry that time, so I thought fealty would be the odd choice. The faith discount was great but I think it's overall the weakest true, especially if happiness stays so difficult.

My culture is great without Theo Rule (completed fealty by turn 180). I have 2 holy sites but if I didn't have Holy Law I'd probably have zero, it's produced a lot of faith and probably given me 2-3 techs. Progress has great culture in the mid-game and I'll have great writers later too.

 

[stii]

Yeah I was trying out statecraft in that game but I just found it too hard to hold onto CS. It was just a constant battle of flipping them back and forth. It was also easier when we had infinite money from trades. I don't really like fealty I just consider it the best of the bad options. Which is why I think progress into authority would be fine.

 

[stii]

So I was playing another game and after doing authority with a late attack I though I'd redo it and try this progress into authority a try. Progress is a lot better than I remember it, I guess it has been ages since I played it.

I ended up quite a bit ahead on tech and culture. Main issue was a lack of production, cities took forever to build everything. It really is a tech focused policy now rather than wide at all. It felt pretty weird to be worse at settling than authority. I'm not sure how good it would have been if I got attacked early but without a war this did seem better than just going authority. Everything lined up pretty well with me getting the relevant authority polices for my attack when I needed them. I was a culture civ (brazil) but it felt like it would work out for any civ as long as you focus on culture and you want to do that anyway most of the time.

 

[bonniepbilly]

Why focus on culture? Isn't one of the strengths of progress that science translates into culture, hence you can focus on science more than with other trees?

 

[stii]

Why focus on culture? Isn't one of the strengths of progress that science translates into culture, hence you can focus on science more than with other trees?

So in this case because we are taking authority second we want to have the +10% attack strength when we start the war and the bonus from taking a city when you start taking cities. This requires a lot of culture compared to science.

there is also the more general thing that it is impossible to have too much culture but extra science can have diminishing returns. Better military is always useful but more buildings is only good if you can make them. It took quite a while for the progress start to catch up to authority in terms of building everything, as you have both more science and less production

 

[bonniepbilly]

Ok thanks.
Yeah I had recently the painful experience of having to defend with low progress production against an early-ish attack that I posted on Milae's thread on games analysis...

 

[Grassland Farm]

I'll probably join in the next similar event, especially if we get a new clean version with the new Spy system made perfect.
I love this mod but I'm far too lazy to partake in screenshotting/video editing, especially with how bad my upload speed is :^)