[GS] Canada Discussion Thread

[agonistes]

In my quest for oil, just settled on a tundra Kilimanjaro with 3 oil and whales.

 

[Brew God]

Hello Civ GS Fans:
Quickly can someone explain the strategy behind playing Canada. On the livestream Ed and the gang mentioned as Canada you want to settle cities in all different landscapes. That is...mountain city, coastal city, island city, tundra city etc. What is this all about. I get the Tundra part for the Hockey Rink.

Thanks

Brew God

 

[Vizurok]

Hello Civ GS Fans:
Quickly can someone explain the strategy behind playing Canada. On the livestream Ed and the gang mentioned as Canada you want to settle cities in all different landscapes. That is...mountain city, coastal city, island city, tundra city etc. What is this all about. I get the Tundra part for the Hockey Rink.

Thanks

Brew God

The concept that you recall belongs to Sweden. Their unique improvement, the Open Air Museum gets +2 culture for each different bioreme (grasslands, plains, desert, tundra, snow) on which a Swedish city was founded, resulting in a +10 culture yield for each museum.

As for Canada, they only have boosts for tundra and snow. They can purchase tiles much cheaper and have faster strategic resourcr accumulation on these two terrains. They can also build farms on tundra, but that's not really useful imo.

 

[agonistes]

The concept that you recall belongs to Sweden. Their unique improvement, the Open Air Museum gets +2 culture for each different bioreme (grasslands, plains, desert, tundra, snow) on which a Swedish city was founded, resulting in a +10 culture yield for each museum.

As for Canada, they only have boosts for tundra and snow. They can purchase tiles much cheaper and have faster strategic resourcr accumulation on these two terrains. They can also build farms on tundra, but that's not really useful imo.

Its not merely faster accumulation. An oil means 6 tanks instead of 3.

 

[Draco84]

In my Canada game I actually found the farms quite useful in tundra, which surprised me.

Once you have fuedelism you can get a decent amount of food and housing from essentially useless tiles.

There is tons of oil in the tundra too, so I ended up with reasonable production for my crappy little cities.

Finally I had tons of faith from the aurora faith, +8 faith from some holy sites and the food from shrines/temples was able to grow my cities enough.

I wouldn't put Canada in God tier by any means, bit their bonus could be worse.

I think I would make Canadian districts and improvements immune to blizzards, I had a blizzard wipe out 16 farms in two turns, that sucked.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

Finally I had tons of faith from the aurora faith, +8 faith from holy sites and the food from shrines/temples was able to grow my cities enough.

That worked really well for me as well (dance + feed the world). Canada is in the position to take advantage of dance of the Aurora and the crazy faith you can get out of it, especially with several holy sites and running the 100% adjacency card. I leveraged all that into a traditional religious victory with them (they played like a poor man's Russia), but there's some excellent options with theocracy and faith buying units or going for a cultural win with rock bands.

 

[God of Kings]

That worked really well for me as well (dance + feed the world). Canada is in the position to take advantage of dance of the Aurora and the crazy faith you can get out of it, especially with several holy sites and running the 100% adjacency card. I leveraged all that into a traditional religious victory with them (they played like a poor man's Russia), but there's some excellent options with theocracy and faith buying units or going for a cultural win with rock bands.

Since Mounties can be used as naturalists that happen to cost production or gold, faith can easily be saved up for rock bands.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

In my Canada game I actually found the farms quite useful in tundra, which surprised me.

Once you have fuedelism you can get a decent amount of food and housing from essentially useless tiles.

There is tons of oil in the tundra too, so I ended up with reasonable production for my crappy little cities.

Finally I had tons of faith from the aurora faith, +8 faith from some holy sites and the food from shrines/temples was able to grow my cities enough.

I wouldn't put Canada in God tier by any means, bit their bonus could be worse.

I think I would make Canadian districts and improvements immune to blizzards, I had a blizzard wipe out 16 farms in two turns, that sucked.

I have a similar horror story. I had a maximum strength blizzard roll across 4 cities in one turn, then go backwards along the same path. I lost tons of tiles and had to repair about 9 districts.
I didn't bother with a religion or Holy Sites. I managed to start next to Mato Tipila and get the Earth Goddess pantheon. That provided plenty of Faith.

 

[tedhebert]

I find Mounties totally underwhelming... one of the most useless UU in the game IMHO...

I don't know how some people do it in their games, when they say they had tons of National parks... Even if I go major warmongering and have 20+ cities,
I rarely have more than 2 sites that allow me to place a Park, even when I analyze closely the tiles city ownership and stuff... Maybe I over install stuff on tiles, but
having room for 5+ national park on my territory seems like science fiction more than a probability...

Mounties being possibly the weakest unit for the time range available (scout units excluded), it makes this UU utter crap

 

[Chocolate Pi]

I find Mounties totally underwhelming... one of the most useless UU in the game IMHO...

I don't know how some people do it in their games, when they say they had tons of National parks... Even if I go major warmongering and have 20+ cities,
I rarely have more than 2 sites that allow me to place a Park, even when I analyze closely the tiles city ownership and stuff... Maybe I over install stuff on tiles, but
having room for 5+ national park on my territory seems like science fiction more than a probability...

Mounties being possibly the weakest unit for the time range available (scout units excluded), it makes this UU utter crap

National Parks require a really comprehensive awareness of both the map and Appeal-enhancing options. They are also not worth the reward you get for doing this, especially for non-Canadian Civs since Rock Bands are insanely OP and cost half the price of a Naturalist.

But, in case you really want that boost for Radio:

• National parks need a vertical diamond of 4 unimproved hexes in the same city that are all Appeal of 2 or higher. Mountains always count, water never counts--unless it's a special Natural Wonder.
• You can swap tiles between cities and remove improvements to setup your diamond.
• The most universal way to raise Appeal is planting woods. This gives +1 Appeal to adjacent hexes--not itself.
• Canada's Hockey Rink improves Appeal by 2; put it on a corner outside where you want a park to go, easy. Cyrus's UI is similar.

By adding woods as needed, it's not hard to form National Parks once you know exactly how this esoteric corner of the game is played. But a mediocre park gives around 10 tourism, which (even with +5 amenities) is a rather hard sell for 1600 standard-speed faith.


National Parks are admittedly somewhat viable as a late-game option for Canada, though it feels like an unwanted consolation prize. The key is not just getting lots of high-Appeal space to put.them in your crappy Tundra backyard with your late-game UI, but that you can uniquely stack the World Congress military production resolution (half-price Mounties) with Wish You Were Here golden age. 5 national parks averaging 20 Appeal each (Eiffel Tower?) makes for 200 Tourism (pre-multipliers) and +25 total Amenity for your civ, which is not at all bad for 1000 production or ~5000 gold. (Facist Canada can crank them out even cheaper! But, that's dumb.) Plus you get these 5 mediocre light calvary to protect them as a little bonus, I guess.

But the standard cost for other civs building the same parks minus adjacent Hockey Rinks is 10,000 faith for 80 raw Tourism, 160 in a Golden Age. Yikes! (That's just shy of the faith needed for enough Rock Bands to win the game from zero by themselves.)


Edit: My unsolicited opinions on what should be tweaked:

• Significantly lower the cost of Naturalists. (And Mounties, sure.)
• Let National Parks include Ancient/Classical-built Holy Sites and Wonders.
• Nerf chop. National Parks are the endgame payoff for not chopping; it's just that currently parks suck and chop is the best thing in the game. (Besides pillage lol)

 

[Guynemer]

Alternately, don't limit each Mountie unit to building one national park.

 

[Chocolate Pi]

Alternately, don't limit each Mountie unit to building one national park.

I considered this for Naturalist (since we want National Parks to be at least decent on ALL Civs, or most), but this paradigm only rewards the edge case of multiple parks while doing nothing for the guy who wants to splash in one. I don't think we want National Parks to be an all-or-nothing strategy, for Canada or otherwise.

They do need bold adjustments to compete with Rock Bands and Ski Resorts, though.

We could also go more broad and look at Amenities, which right now feel less valuable than they seem to be positioned for, *especially* for a stable, peaceful culture Civ going into the late game. At the very least, it's be nice to make Happiness lower the chance of Recruit Partisans--it should not be easy to conjure terrorists in my Canadian Hockey Utopia just because I built a Neighborhood.

 

[God of Kings]

Mounties should also provide loyalty when garrisoned on top of their existing abilities and bonuses.

This way, when you are done creating national parks with Mounties and need to defend, having them provide loyalty to cities with national parks by Canada's borders would make them more viable.

 

[Chocolate Pi]

Mounties should also provide loyalty when garrisoned on top of their existing abilities and bonuses.

This way, when you are done creating national parks with Mounties and need to defend, having them provide loyalty to cities with national parks by Canada's borders would make them more viable.

+Loyalty is a fairly niche benefit; it is unlikely to be relevant to the big, sprawling cities where+when National Parks are built, and is of particularly low value to a Civ with a Tundra bias.

 

[God of Kings]

+Loyalty is a fairly niche benefit; it is unlikely to be relevant to the big, sprawling cities where+when National Parks are built, and is of particularly low value to a Civ with a Tundra bias.

Gameplay-wise, having Mounties provide loyalty when garrisoned on top of their existing bonuses would not make them OP.

History-wise, Mounties were originally used to provide loyalty when garrisoned.

 

[Craig_Sutter]

I have played Canada a couple of times and had no problems getting to 10 parks each go... just plan district and wonder placement and remove improvements as needed. Got eiffel both games... but also planting forest works.

 

[Disgustipated]

Also don't forget about removing mines and quarries, things that lower appeal of adjacent tiles. As well as marsh and rainforest. If you get really desperate Liang's city parks can help boost appeal. But Eiffel tower is almost a must. And don't scatter districts everywhere. I kind of like the national park mini game.

 

[Chocolate Pi]

As an experiment, I tried winning a game with only Parks as Canada--sort of like how I tried winning with on Prince with only Rock Bands and 2 cities.

This time I played on King, which artificially increased the win condition a bit due to the AI's culture bonus. But to facilitate National Parks, this time I allowed myself a full 7 cities. (I also absorbed 2 more, though they were pretty bad.) Just as before, the rules were that I could not go to war or build Wonders beside Eiffel Tower.

I actually had to abort my first start, after a turn ~30 Blizzard reset my capital to 1 pop + no improvements while I was finishing my first settler. Absurd.

My second start was quite good for a Tundra start (Dead Sea and Chocolate Hills!!!), but it still put me in the emasculating position of barely keeping up with my King AI opponents. Part of this was the complete lack of Barbarians on our entire continent (bug???), very strange for GS--it meant very low era score and at least 3 missing boosts. The CS situation was also lackluster--there were no strong CSs except Auckland, and I was inland. The AI left me entirely alone. I could not get Earth Goddess (as expected), and instead went Dance of the Aurora. My faith output was stellar.

The Park elgibility highlight algorithm is funky. Sometimes I would have space for 2 adjacent parks, but it would only highlight the middle. Swapping tiles or creating a temporary improvement in order to make only the desired area "legal" worked fine for forcing it to accept the area I wanted.

I built 17 parks, at a lifetime cost of roughly 18000 gold. (17 Naturalists would have cost 54400 faith, before any discounts.) I did get Effiel Tower and Charles Correal. There was no location for Golden Gate Bridge on my continent. I ultimately removed almost every improvement and replaced them with woods--literally every plains, grassland, or tundra tile was woods in the end, except for my Hockey Rinks that always tried to touch 4 park hexes. My average park was about 30 base Appeal, or 90 Tourism after multipliers. My best was 50 base Appeal, or 150 Tourism after multipliers. I could have eeked out a bit more if I moved Liang around to spread City Parks, but ain't nobody got time for that. Roosevelt's parks would also all be +4 better, but of course he'd have to pay the crazy faith cost like everyone else.

For fun, I saved the game and tried invading an opponent with my legion of Mountie Armies. Although we were still in range for their park bonus, they all got completely melted by Atomic era units, accomplishing absolutely nothing. Once someone created partisans, and I had to have them run away. Useless unit, militarily.

For this strategy, Natural Wonders and mountains are actually bad. An Appeal of 5 or 4 is very low for a truly all-in-optimized National Park game! Workable Natural Wonders at least produce unusually great yields while serving as park tiles, but mountains are a complete dud. And you could have made them a Ski Resort regardless!

It was incredibly boring. It looked like I was going to win around turn 400. I don't know exactly, because I built some wonders and a single Rock Band out of sheer boredom. As chance would have it, the single Rock Band got Album Cover Art, Goes to 11, and Pop Music, and produced well over 250k tourism and 125k gold; enough to outproduce all 17 super-Parks and win the game solo while buying up every remaining Great Person. Sigh.

There are a few painful anti-synergies that hurt any National Parks strategy, besides that it is super complex and weak. National Parks really want Great Engineers, as they desire Wonders, Appeal, and Housing. But Industrial districts and their mines are directly at odds with Appeal. Golden Gate, the big Park booster, also depends on very specific placement involving water, when top-tier National Parks avoid water. Finally, while Parks are a super-long-term strategy, Parks anti-synergize with all 3 T4 government types.

The upside? Well, the extra 102 Amenities put my cities around +30 Happiness, which of course does more or less nothing. Creating that many parks also produced 52 era score, comfortably ensuring that I stayed Golden through Information. (Though remember, I'm having to use all my Dedications on Wish You Were Here)

Side observation: I produced 0 CO2, and the King AI still maxed the Climate bar in about 5 seconds as soon as they hit coal.

 

[Disgustipated]

Useless unit, militarily

I always disband them after making a park. Why pay the maintenance. Plus it's confusing to have to click on them to see if they are eligible to build a park or not.

Reminds me of my Mapuche game trying to win only using Chemamills, I wasn't able to do it on King because one opponent was Kongo. I came very close, but then he pulled away.

 

[Leucarum]

So... One thing i hadn't realised is that Canada gets double favour from emergencies they are the target of... Playing Wilfrid as a warmonger has one reward at least...