[NFP] Babylon, what VC?

[Socrates99]

At first glance he's geared for tearing through the tech tree so I thought science but after playing him a bit I'm a little up in the air. He's kind of hamstrung later in the game where eurekas are only achieved through spies or scientists. Without luck you're going to be hard researching a lot of that and his penalty gives others a chance to catch up.

Dom is almost a no brainer since its so easy to get units eras more advanced than even the best opponents. I lucked out and got Sinbad as my first hero which gave me the piles of gold necessary to have a few crossbows and a couple skirmishers really early. I'm talking ancient era on deity early. I could have easily done dom but I just finished a long dom/religion game with Basil preceded by dom games with Gaul and Gran Columbia. Dom's boring.

But is this the only VC he's really suited for? I could see rushing key wonders with him and going cultural. It'd be a cinch to almost ignore science and build for culture, production and gold. Then leverage that production and gold into grabbing eurekas and rushing Computers asap for an early tourism win. What are others doing with him?

 

[walkerjks]

You can set yourself up for a fast cultural win by picking Rapa Nui and La Venta to be in the game and then beelining for flight (Ruhr Valley is a very doable wonder for the Eureka, IIRC). You don't even need to do much on the civics side - get to Feudalism so you spam Maoi (everywhere you can) and Colossal Heads (tundra, desert).

You can also do the more traditional culture route of actually, you know, building theater squares, but you don't have to with Rapa Nui and enough space.

Edit - guess I should add that once you start spamming Maoi you will progress through the civics tree.

 

[Socrates99]

I've ran the beginning of a few games with him. Just deciding what I want to do. Babylon feels kinda op crazy broken but I'm totally enjoying him anyway. Production/gold/faith is their science which is really fun and unique. I'm hoping they don't change anything in the future.

I think the culture route seems fun. That's what I'll go for. Should be easy to get the first writer with the free amphitheater and I can wonder spam even on a higher difficulty.

 

[Leucarum]

He does seem best suited for Domination... Depending on the map he can situationally switch to other victory types without too much pain... But his abilities mainly lend himself towards having better troops than others throughout the game which inevitably pushes you towards going dom.

 

[Socrates99]

He does seem best suited for Domination... Depending on the map he can situationally switch to other victory types without too much pain... But his abilities mainly lend himself towards having better troops than others throughout the game which inevitably pushes you towards going dom.

Yeah, kind of a bummer. It seems like that's what a lot of the new civs are geared towards. I don't mind a Dom game here and there but they can be so long and drawn out in VI with the lack of automation. Big armies and a lot of cities means moving at a snail's pace turnwise.

 

[enKage]

At first flance Babylon is obvious for tourism victory.
3 mines - 2 workshops - ruhr valley and you get easy flight turn 100 or earlier with better tile management than mine. All you need is rapa nui or LaVenta. In case none of them, you still have path open for turn 140-150 Biosphere and ecoenergy spam

 

[Socrates99]

At first flance Babylon is obvious for tourism victory.
3 mines - 2 workshops - ruhr valley and you get easy flight turn 100 or earlier with better tile management than mine. All you need is rapa nui or LaVenta. In case none of them, you still have path open for turn 140-150 Biosphere and ecoenergy spam

My thoughts too. No real need to build more than a couple campuses means more room for theater districts and the ability to get flight and computers earlier than anyone is pretty awesome. The early IZs are nice too since you can use their production and GEs to build wonders.

 

[walkerjks]

My thoughts too. No real need to build more than a couple campuses means more room for theater districts and the ability to get flight and computers earlier than anyone is pretty awesome. The early IZs are nice too since you can use their production and GEs to build wonders.

I'm only slightly joking, but theater districts take too much time for the rapid flight strategy. So other than enough theaters to push me to feudalism, you can otherwise ignore them. Other wonders are lovely, but their tourism is very small compared to Colossal Heads and Moai. You want to switch over to 5 charge builders only and start spamming stuff well before you even get flight (I aim for 25 turns or so, so, say, turn 75), the amount of tourism you will have as soon as Ruhr is finished will quickly end the game. If you have Rapa Nui, you are going to chop all the forest and jungle anyway, so you chop most of Ruhr. You should be able to generate several hundred tourism/turn as soon as you hit flight.

The biggest challenge, assuming you pick Rapa Nui and La Venta into the game is finding them.

 

[walkerjks]

Got flight on turn 72 with a pretty hyper-focused fast flight strategy and managed to ramp tourism/turn up to 324 by turn 100 (16 from great works, 15 from wonders, 293 from Moai spam). Difficulty level will affect how long it takes to win, but shouldn't really affect when you can hit the techs or how fast you can churn out settlers (though difficulty will likely affect how much room you have to expand into. Hercules was needed to make it go this fast (Hercules built both industrial zones and was particularly helpful getting the non-capitol city one done as that one would have taken some time), but that was the only major bit of luck (other than favorable map) to making this work.

BTW, other turn 100 stats - 16.5 spt, 275.5 cpt, 38.2 fpt, 63.8 gpt

Science was completely irrelevant. Culture continues to ramp as expansion continues (but post-feudalism, you don't really need it), faith would be nice if you eventually need rock bands, but mostly I just used it to buy builders for emergency hurricane repair, and gold is nice to buy tiles where you really want to get rid of forest (i.e removing 1 forest would give you room for 2 more moai adding, say, 10 tourism/turn). I did build some harbors (don't take up space from moai), and in a longer deity game would have built more just to get the gold going a bit better (and I would have received a lot more in trade for various things - so maybe I wouldn't have felt like I needed the gold).

 

[Socrates99]

I'm only slightly joking, but theater districts take too much time for the rapid flight strategy. So other than enough theaters to push me to feudalism, you can otherwise ignore them. Other wonders are lovely, but their tourism is very small compared to Colossal Heads and Moai. You want to switch over to 5 charge builders only and start spamming stuff well before you even get flight (I aim for 25 turns or so, so, say, turn 75), the amount of tourism you will have as soon as Ruhr is finished will quickly end the game. If you have Rapa Nui, you are going to chop all the forest and jungle anyway, so you chop most of Ruhr. You should be able to generate several hundred tourism/turn as soon as you hit flight.

The biggest challenge, assuming you pick Rapa Nui and La Venta into the game is finding them.

Right. Generally speaking I avoid planning strategies based on CSs. I put Rapa Nui in my game but it spawned on another continent and Shaka razed it early on.

Do you know if faith gained from Nazca lines boosts Collossal Head tourism?

 

[walkerjks]

Do you know if faith gained from Nazca lines boosts Collossal Head tourism?

No, but I wonder if I have an earth goddess save (I don't pick earth goddess often) with La Venta in the game that I could check. I assume earth goddess faith (or faith added by nazca lines or faith added by the specific luxury or faith added by a nearby wonder) doesn't add to La Venta tourism, but I don't know.

I know I have a recent Bull Moose Teddy and Pachacuti game where I went earth goddess... let's see if La Venta were in either game (if I picked city states they definitely will be, though Nazca will not be)

 

[enKage]

Culture continues to ramp as expansion continues (but post-feudalism, you don't really need it)

Going haevily into theatres really helpes as a backup in case Shaka razes Rapa Nui
You need reach sanitation as soon as possible for neighbourhoods and artifact digging for tanks.

This would allow you to spam ecoenergy for Biosphere

 

[schondette]

Just won a casual turn 200 Culture victory as Babylon.

Open pottery to get your unique building and Campus District. You'll eureka it easily be meeting other civs
Build the Campus-> get library
Build Campus in second expand
You'll inevitability get Hypathia. Use her to get library in second city.
go Republic govt. You'll be accruing GPP for eurekas very steadily
I was building refineries in the renaissance era
I only built 6 cities initially, and couple more to pick up strategics later on. My early production was focused on infrastructure and setting up eurekas
Hermetic society to get some sick adjs for your Theater Squares
I dont think its necessary to spam settlers in this context. Good tip is to settle two coastals/near coastals as a lot of the upper tech path deals with naval stuff.
from there just spam wonders and GPs. You can unlock Flight super early which is one of the biggest pluses to CV as Babylon
As others have stated Biosphere is pretty easy to get to. I was half way done building one at turn 201 when i won

 

[PiR]

Babylon feels kinda op crazy broken but I'm totally enjoying him anyway. Production/gold/faith is their science which is really fun and unique. I'm hoping they don't change anything in the future.

Isn't he in need of a nerf though?

 

[Socrates99]

Isn't he in need of a nerf though?

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I'm never in favor of nerfs really. Pvp players can agree on civ restrictions and SP players can play whatever makes them happy. The AI doesn't seem to be able to leverage his abilities in any way. So why nerf something people are enjoying?