[NFP] Babylon Tips And Tricks (Works For Diety)

[CivLifeRyoutube]

I thought that Babylon was going to be insane and absolutely S tier. And I was right!

Babylon is the newest civ in the New Frontier pass, and it just seems to be getting stronger and stronger when it comes to how strong the civs are. First Gran Colombia now Babylon, they are genuinely the best civ in the game (aside from maybe Gran Colombia).

I got machinery by turn 37!! CROSSBOWMEN BY TURN 37!!

Here's a video if you enjoy playthroughs:

Anyway here's all of Babylon's abilities:


LA: Upon building each type of specialty district, except the Government Plaza, for the first time, instantly receive the building with the lowest Production Production cost that can be built in that district. Upon building any other district for the first time, receive a free Envoy Envoy.

This is insane. You get up to 5 free buildings from specialty districts, and can receive a lot of free envoys (I think up to 10?) Anyway this is a nice ability to get your empire up off the ground. Getting a free library and a market early on helps with yields. And a workshop is key in any playthrough especially science ones. So a solid ability and would be the best on a lot of other civs, but not Babylon because......


CA: Eurekas instantly unlock their respective technologies. -50% Science per turn.

Wow, just wow...... I thought this would be insane and it was. I HAD CROSSBOWMEN BY TURN 37!!! MOST CIVS DONT EVEN HACE HORSEMEN BY THAT TIME! The best thing about this ability is the fact that you can bypass so many techs later on in the game. You need almost every tech to win a science game but with Babylon you can just focus on getting Eureka's (spies are crucial) and can bypass science for the most part. And while -50% science might seem bad, you will still have enough to compete with other civs if you get enough campuses. And you also get industrial zones and commercial hubs much earlier (build three mines and get a trade route which are simple). So all in all an insane ability that will help you get out extremely fast and easy science/ domination wins.


UU: Sabum Kibittum (a weaker warrior with a bonus against cavalry making them about even)

Decent defensive unit, not strong against melee ata ll but are stronger then spears and about as strong as horses, you will need ranged support though because the majority of enemies will field a lot of warriors. They really shine against chariots because they will still hit like horsemen and decimate them. All in all a decent ability nothing major


UB: Palgum (+2 production, +1 housing, and +1 food to all tiles beside a river)

2 production ok, housing not too bad, a lot of food ok... WAIT A TON OF FOOD? That's right this UB replaces the water mill and is unlocked after irrigation. Rivers are almost everywhere, so almost every tile will be providing you with an extra food on top of everything else. Plains hills will provide 2-2, farms will give you 3-1 or 4-0 food. And mines will give you 3-2 or 2-3. You will be able to skyrocket your population and easily get multiple 20 pop cities if you keep up with housing and amenities which you should.


Strategy for this civ is simple. Beeline crossbowmen and horsemen (build a pasture) and send a horsemen+crossbow rush by turn 60-70. You will easily take out 2-3 civs if you focus Eureka's on getting out more advanced units (field cannons and coursers are possible by turn 100 as are bombards!) but don't forget to rush commercial hubs and industrial zones as these are needed if you want to field a renaissance army in the ancient era. This civ requires some skill for sure, you need to get almost every tech through eureka's which can be hard for some (including me) but if perfected they are the strongest civ in the entire game!

Moderator Action: Edited out some language, please be careful in future thanks -- NZ

PS good work getting this out so fast!

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Long time since i've posted here
Just want to add that their UU is an exceptional scout that holds his ground against barbs much better than real scouts. 3 moves and 3 range vision makes then insane at getting first contact with CS and spotting goody huts.

 

[Casualty of war]

I found my Hammurabi Turn 43 Education, along with Mathematics and Stirrups, to be amusing. If I had only had Iron!

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I found my Hammurabi Turn 43 Education, along with Mathematics and Stirrups, to be amusing. If I had only had Iron!

My first game didn't go nearly as good as that.
I played Deity/All Standard/ Heroes Mode.
I didn't understand Heroes very well and I guess I should of focused on them more.
I had a bunch of them unlocked but was too passive in actually building them.
I rolled England too early and didn't have it planned out very well.
Razed 3 of her cities as I didn't want to bother with them flipping.
She got swallowed up by the Celts/Gual a bit later.
I played nice with him and my other neighbors.
Later I took a city off of Poundmaker and took out a Science CS.
Stole a settler from Norway and chopped/hard built 4 or 5 others.
I basically turtled too long.
Having trouble getting to advanced flight but should get it around turn 200.
I think I can win pre-turn 300 but its pretty clear I didn't play this Civ very well on my first attempt.

 

[Casualty of war]

It's a learning experience. There's a rhythm to the Hammurabi tech progression that I haven't quite found yet. Unless you get lucky with a Hut or a Great Scientist, teching through Ballistics is sloooooow. It's very easy to finish Pottery, Mining, Animal Husbandry and then be gambling that you aren't dumping beakers into the next Eureka.

All I know is this civ has the easiest Ancient and Classical Eras ever. You've got 8 Era Score gift-wrapped for you.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

It's a learning experience. There's a rhythm to the Hammurabi tech progression that I haven't quite found yet. Unless you get lucky with a Hut or a Great Scientist, teching through Ballistics is sloooooow. It's very easy to finish Pottery, Mining, Animal Husbandry and then be gambling that you aren't dumping beakers into the next Eureka.

All I know is this civ has the easiest Ancient and Classical Eras ever. You've got 8 Era Score gift-wrapped for you.

I'm probably doing the wrong order or builds as usual.
My game is basically the same but 50 turns longer.
First attempt, so not bad for just doing whatever without math or a plan.
It seems war and pillage is still King.
I'm guessing game two will go faster and smoother as I understand the Hero Mode a bit better now.

 

[CivLifeRyoutube]

I'm probably doing the wrong order or builds as usual.
My game is basically the same but 50 turns longer.
First attempt, so not bad for just doing whatever without math or a plan.
It seems war and pillage is still King.
I'm guessing game two will go faster and smoother as I understand the Hero Mode a bit better now.

you definitely need to be able to get a large amount of eurekas. I found the best strategy to beeline units and go for domination. you need 3 archers for crossbows which can be done by turn 35ish. Crossbow rush by turn 50 is almost unstoppable even on deity!

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

Pillages seem quite good as Babylon to fill out techs with difficult boosts.

They also seem pretty decent at improvement based culture victories. I just rolled a game as Babylon with 0 iron, 0 niter and no neighbors other than city states, but Caguana as a vassal, so I just Batey'd everywhere and rushed flight via Big Ben (Ruhr would have been faster but I was slow to Industrialization due to a lack of hills) to try out a peaceful game with them. It's not as fast as actual top tier CV civs but it's a pretty reliable fallback option.

They are pretty domination focused though. They really struggle with finishing off the Science Victory, I don't think I ever want to pursue that with them. They are strongly incentivized to diversify their districts, their gains from Campuses aside from the Scientists points really suck. They do a passable attempt at tourism. They are likely quite good at diplomatic victories thanks to the extremely early coal power plants and having fairly solid culture to get to Carbon Recapture quickly, they might be one of the best diplo civs. But they do early domination like no other civ really.

 

[lotrmith]

Conversely I imagine a game played against Babylon would be nigh impossible. Not that the AI is smart but I imagine they would nab all the improvement based eurekas (ie masonry) since they start with 2 free builders and build at least 3 archers (they also automatically start with the first 3 hard-research techs).

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Conversely I imagine a game played against Babylon would be nigh impossible. Not that the AI is smart but I imagine they would nab all the improvement based eurekas (ie masonry) since they start with 2 free builders and build at least 3 archers (they also automatically start with the first 3 hard-research techs).

I doubt it would be a problem.
I've seen Korea get out to massive Tech Leads.
Unfortunately they never try to win and just let me win every time.
I'm pretty sure the biggest threat to losing is to get rolled in the early game.

 

[IsabelBraganca]

Babylon malus doesn't apply to science gained through religion. The screenshot below is from my last game. I won a Culture Victory by turn 218. I had Kilwa, was suzerain of two scientific city states, one of them gave me extra science for great art works and artifacts.

Spoiler :

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

Babylon's science modifier is at the city level, which means it is additive with other modifiers at the city level. This makes high amenities, Kilwa, Pingala and anything else that boosts science extra valuable for Babylon.

For any other civ, if you have +50% to science from additive modifiers in a city, that multiplies the city's science output by 1.5. For Babylon, it cancels the -50% modifier so you actually double your science in the city.

For similar reasons, the -10% penalty for unhappiness is actually -20% for Babylon (without any other modifiers), but I find that during the part of the game where my cities are not at least content, my beakers per turn is completely irrelevant as Babylon, since I only unlock techs through Eurekas at that stage. But the positive amenity modifiers that you can setup later in the game as Babylon (especially since Colosseum is so trivial for them to construct) do help to manage their malus and convert it from -50% to something closer to -33% and this is impactful for late game tech or hard to boost tech.

Regarding early war, I actually think the Bombard timing is even better than the Horseman + Xbow timing against the AI. Horsemen + Crossbows turn 60 can be countered, the AI seem to prioritize walls better. Bombards by turn 90 can't be countered at all.

 

[slavaskii]

Does anyone have any idea how to make the endgame of a Babylonian science victory less of a slog? I just won a deity game at turn 292, almost 40 turns more than I usually do. Babylon has a crazy early game, and I was hitting all the necessary eurekas while growing a productive capital (even bought spaceport with Reyna). However, everything completely flopped after that, as I couldn't get the boost for satellites to save my life and all my spies were getting killed/captured. I'd bet that even if I did get satellites, I'd still be screwed, because it took me forever to get those two booster missions at the end of the tech tree.

Do you just have to get lucky with spies, and if yes, is there anything I can do to make them more successful? I was having missions with 84% success rates that would consistently go down in flames. The science malus is absolutely humongous; I don't think it's a reliable idea to trust that you can just tech your way through the final turns. The Information Age Great Scientists are also not that helpful, as I didn't need any information era techs at the end (only the future ones). Thanks!

Babylon malus doesn't apply to science gained through religion. The screenshot below is from my last game. I won a Culture Victory by turn 218. I had Kilwa, was suzerain of two scientific city states, one of them gave me extra science for great art works and artifacts.

Spoiler :

Do you mind explaining what you mean by science through religion, ie, what beliefs you chose? Those are all really phenomenal yields!

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

Does anyone have any idea how to make the endgame of a Babylonian science victory less of a slog? I just won a deity game at turn 292, almost 40 turns more than I usually do. Babylon has a crazy early game, and I was hitting all the necessary eurekas while growing a productive capital (even bought spaceport with Reyna). However, everything completely flopped after that, as I couldn't get the boost for satellites to save my life and all my spies were getting killed/captured. I'd bet that even if I did get satellites, I'd still be screwed, because it took me forever to get those two booster missions at the end of the tech tree.

Do you just have to get lucky with spies, and if yes, is there anything I can do to make them more successful? I was having missions with 84% success rates that would consistently go down in flames. The science malus is absolutely humongous; I don't think it's a reliable idea to trust that you can just tech your way through the final turns. The Information Age Great Scientists are also not that helpful, as I didn't need any information era techs at the end (only the future ones). Thanks!

I think the best solution is to just not do a Science Victory as Babylon. I think they are probably better at every other victory condition. Domination is trivial with them, but they also have some advantages towards a Culture Victory or Diplomatic Victory. Peaceful Science Victory as Babylon sounds like torture.

But if you do want to pursue a Science Victory, your best options are to:

1. Conquer large portions of the world so that you would normally have 2000+ science per turn which turns into 1000+ per turn. This is by far the biggest way to fix the malus. To deal with -50% science, take twice the land you normally would. But this is tedious imo, because managing that many cities is annoying, and if I were doing this, I'd just end the game quickly via domination.
2. Pillage campuses whenever you fight, their yields from pillaging aren't affected by their modifier.
3. Build Kilwa Kisiwani and suzerian two science CS: that +15% is additive with the -50% so it does double work.
4. Have happy/ecstatic cities: another additive modifier.
5. Have a level 2 research alliance for random techs.

It's still going to be a bit of a slog, Babylon just aren't built for late game science. You're supposed to use your crazy early game slingshots to snowball past your neighbors and kill them militarily or culturally.

 

[IsabelBraganca]

Do you mind explaining what you mean by science through religion, ie, what beliefs you chose? Those are all really phenomenal yields!

I took Cross-Cultural Dialogue founder believe: one science for each four followers. Babylon has big cities and I converted two other civs. I could have converted more cities but I had other uses for my faith. My science was good enough because I was aiming for a cultural victory.

In page 6 of discussion below, there are a series of detailed posts discussing pillaging gains of science.

CFC: Fastest STANDARD SETTINGS Deity Science Victory

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

One other useful tip: you definitely want to go Pingala as your first Governor for the early culture and since he's actually +30% science since he acts additively against the malus I believe. Feudalism is a massive civic for Babylon for Cavalry timing. Additionally, the first 2 promotions should be Culture per citizen and Great Person Points. You get so much easy GPP as Babylon with a free Library and/or Shrine in the capital that Grants is way more useful than 0.5 Science per Citizen. This is especially useful if one of the big Eureka scientists is up early, unlike other civs, Hypatia is not actually that interesting to Babylon.

Divine Spark + Pingala + Campus + Holy Site in the Capital is +8 Great Scientist Points and +8 faith per turn after your Prophet. It makes Babylon a pretty decent Monumentality Civ, and they have a trivially easy Classical Golden.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

One other useful tip: you definitely want to go Pingala as your first Governor for the early culture and since he's actually +30% science since he acts additively against the malus I believe. Feudalism is a massive civic for Babylon for Cavalry timing. Additionally, the first 2 promotions should be Culture per citizen and Great Person Points. You get so much easy GPP as Babylon with a free Library and/or Shrine in the capital that Grants is way more useful than 0.5 Science per Citizen. This is especially useful if one of the big Eureka scientists is up early, unlike other civs, Hypatia is not actually that interesting to Babylon.

Divine Spark + Pingala + Campus + Holy Site in the Capital is +8 Great Scientist Points and +8 faith per turn after your Prophet. It makes Babylon a pretty decent Monumentality Civ, and they have a trivially easy Classical Golden.

Thanks for this.
I tried this combo out and you get a GS very fast.
Zhang Heng is a very powerful Great Person with Babylon lol!
I suppose others like Emilie Du Chatelet work too.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

Oracle is also a nice addition to that combo, though it's much harder to get now. Yeah, it's a bit sad to see Hypatia up front. She's usually the scientist you want, but Babylon gets so little use out of her compared to the other scientists.

In my Babylon games, peaceful or warlike, I find that I have way too many things to build in the early game. I'm definitely out-teching my production capacity early. I actually really like Monumentality with them, since I like being able to delay one Settler to get a Palgum or Holy Site in place if I'm going peaceful, or to just go full horses/crossbows early.

I think if you have good culture with Babylon (a culture providing natural wonder is really big in particular), their cavalry timing push is their strongest weapon. I had Cavalry running turn 80 in my last game because I spawned next to Tsinghy, but I also had a strong work ethic start that got me a quick Pyramids, Oracle, Colosseum in the capital. It's the first time I've managed to get Pyramids after the recent updates, having gypsum to early unlock masonry was a big deal.

One issue I'm having with the early crossbow/horse rush is the lack of neighbors. I play mostly on shuffle so I don't always know if I will have any neighbors or not by the time my first slinger is completed or even by the time I have the Archery Eureka. Unless I've seen some targets, I've started to prefer the safer approach of building infrastructure early via 3 mines and an early holy site and/or campus + settler spam and then killing someone via cavalry after I've had time to scout. Cavalry rushes require no commitment and still come out very early.

 

[megabearsfan]

Long time since i've posted here
Just want to add that their UU is an exceptional scout that holds his ground against barbs much better than real scouts. 3 moves and 3 range vision makes then insane at getting first contact with CS and spotting goody huts.

With the Battle Cry promotion, the Sabum Kibuttum does, indeed, hold its own against barbs and is a very good early barb-hunting unit, especially in pairs. It's kind of too bad that Babylon doesn't start with one in play. Does anybody build a Sabum Kibittum instead of Scouts? If so, how does this work out for you? I always like to run the Survey policy at the start of the game and try to get one or two of my first 2 Scouts to the Ambush promo. I also kind of wish that the Sabum Kibittum was just a Scout replacement, and that it pulled from the recon promo tree.

Babylon's science modifier is at the city level, which means it is additive with other modifiers at the city level. This makes high amenities, Kilwa, Pingala and anything else that boosts science extra valuable for Babylon.

For any other civ, if you have +50% to science from additive modifiers in a city, that multiplies the city's science output by 1.5. For Babylon, it cancels the -50% modifier so you actually double your science in the city.

For similar reasons, the -10% penalty for unhappiness is actually -20% for Babylon (without any other modifiers), but I find that during the part of the game where my cities are not at least content, my beakers per turn is completely irrelevant as Babylon, since I only unlock techs through Eurekas at that stage. But the positive amenity modifiers that you can setup later in the game as Babylon (especially since Colosseum is so trivial for them to construct) do help to manage their malus and convert it from -50% to something closer to -33% and this is impactful for late game tech or hard to boost tech.

Regarding early war, I actually think the Bombard timing is even better than the Horseman + Xbow timing against the AI. Horsemen + Crossbows turn 60 can be countered, the AI seem to prioritize walls better. Bombards by turn 90 can't be countered at all.

In the last game I was playing earlier this week, I was using my Bombard against Gaul by 100 B.C.. It was expensive to upgrade a Catapult to a Bombard, but I got the money by pillaging a bunch of clustered mercury mines during a war with Gran Columbia. Got over a 1,000 gold from those mines.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

With the Battle Cry promotion, the Sabum Kibuttum does, indeed, hold its own against barbs and is a very good early barb-hunting unit, especially in pairs. It's kind of too bad that Babylon doesn't start with one in play. Does anybody build a Sabum Kibittum instead of Scouts? If so, how does this work out for you? I always like to run the Survey policy at the start of the game and try to get one or two of my first 2 Scouts to the Ambush promo. I also kind of wish that the Sabum Kibittum was just a Scout replacement, and that it pulled from the recon promo tree.



In the last game I was playing earlier this week, I was using my Bombard against Gaul by 100 B.C.. It was expensive to upgrade a Catapult to a Bombard, but I got the money by pillaging a bunch of clustered mercury mines during a war with Gran Columbia. Got over a 1,000 gold from those mines.

I build the Sabum as my first unit but I only build 1 and mostly for era score. I don't think they are significantly better than scouts and are marginally more expensive. If I'm going double scout opening, I would open Scout into Sabum but Babylon have big demands on their build queue early, between builders and districts so I often don't have the time to double scout. I think building one in Ancient is pretty important actually, that Classical Golden is strong for Babylon. You get to invest in their ridiculous infrastructure over Settlers (that first campus and holy site ROI is so large and the Palgum in the capital is often insane growth) and then monumentality saves you. With Secret Societies + Voidsingers, it's even better and the Governor promotions also get you a Provisioned Magnus by the time you use Monumentality, even with 3 promotions dumped into Pingala first.

Babylon get disproportionate value from pillaging yeah. Early gold snowballs way too hard for them, since it gets them an advantage no other civ can match. This, along with the big boost from Feudalism, is why I also am a big fan of Choral Music as Babylon if you don't have an insane Work Ethic situation (multiple +3 holy sites).

I'm not 100% sure early religion is optimal as Babylon though. You do get crazy value from that holy site, between the near guaranteed religion and the faith for monumentality, so I'm liking it so far. If you have a very close neighbor, the horse+crossbow rush is probably better and that involves sacrificing the religion I think.