China 1.18 and other things

[Vera]

Hello guys,
I hope you can explain to me a few things regarding the mod. I came back playing it after several years and many things have changed since.
To familiarise with the changes and to explore the enlarged map I played a long game with China. Of course, since it was more like a trial to discover how things work now, it was with the easiest difficulty and I even used the WB several times. Eventually the game crushed completely in around 1976 right after ecology, so anything more modern is yet to be check later. So, here are my questions. Some are general, some are about the Chinese strategy.
1) China needs 16 cities for the required temples by 1000 AD. The core can support 4 at most and one of them isn't really great. Maybe one more if you want really poor ones due to overlapping tiles. It seemed extremely difficult to maintain stability, besides, the segments of the historical area that don't flip to Mongolia or other neighbours aren't really sufficient for 16 cities. So, that makes me wonder whether the solution is to build those later Mongolian cities regardless of the flip since it happens later on. Any thoughts? Also, should you keep the non-core cities crippled to make sure their population remain low for stability reasons?

2) Is the difficulty level influence the weight of your core? It was the easiest mode, so if one plays on let's say paragon, would even less non-core population be tolerated?

3) Why can't you build lumber mills on forested hills? What's the point?

4) It seems that clearing rainforest and jungles doesn't change the tile's designation, it remains grassland. I remember reading the discussions about the new map years ago, and the idea was that those tiles would be degraded to discourage the utilisation of Amazonia, etc. Am I right to assume that this didn't happen? (If so, I'm quite happy with it, I wasn't a big fan of that suggestion.)

5) Am I right to assume that steppe can only be farmed when it's next to a river? It seemed no technology allowed otherwise, unless it's something I haven't researched before the crush.

6) Is there a map available with the flip zones? During the gameplay when you hover over tiles, are the ones named Rise of the [civ name] the same as the flip zone of the given civ?

I will probably come back and add questions later since I was dumb enough not to record them when they were in my mind, and currently I don't remember them. But in the meantime, apart from these questions, if you can suggest a guide for the Chinese UHV, don't hold it back.

 

[triplebassist]

Off the top of my head:

1. 4 cities in the core sounds right. When I won the China UHV, I also had one city on Liaodong (1S of Shenyang) and one in Manchuria, which flipped to the Mongols. The rest were in central and southern China and Taiwan. Historical cities are 1 negative population point per 2 citizens (with a jail), so I mostly didn't intentionally keep their populations low. I did whip a lot of temples though.

2. No, that's difficulty independent.

5. Yes. You can only build farms on tiles that produce at least 1 Food, and Steppe tiles only produce 1 Food when adjacent to a river.

6. Someone may have posted one somewhere on the forum, but last I checked the flip zone maps in the mod folder hadn't been updated for the big map.

 

[Bickerstaff]

Someone shared maps of flip zones fairly recently. With China, the only real gotcha is the Mongol one.

China's core can fit five decent cities. Here is the layout I consider optimal.

The rest of your historical territory can hold another six or seven. I prefer a layout with six. That means owning another five cities for the UHV. There are many options. For managing stability, the main thing is to remember to keep most of them small, as if you build jails everywhere each point of population in one of them costs three times as much as it would in your historical area. Places worth considering:

- Korea. Their capital city is close by, very good and allows control of a solid set of resources. The main thing is that it has lots of food and will need management to keep to a reasonable size. I've let it grow to 12, but you could keep it far smaller if needed. Since China's UP has synergy with despotism, it's easy to quickly whip unwanted population out of existence.
- Japan. Holds two or three worthwhile cities. Good resources, but currently very expensive because cities there count as colonies.
- India. As China, Bengal is a good place to found your fourth city or so. Get a source of culture online as quickly as possible, then improve the citrus and horses. Military units will then be able to enter those tiles. You can then extend your influence. Here's an example of a good city arrangement for a country with no historical territory in the subcontinent (but note that this will require some combination of fast settlement and razing, since India and the Tamils like to spam cities close together).

- If you can get a great engineer, my wildcard recommendation is Okinawa. Since as China you will run syncretism, you can briefly switch back to paganism and use the engineer to complete the Moai statues (which require no land tiles in the city's territory) in a single turn. This is a very good wonder for an empire with coastal cities.

Other things to consider for expansion stability:

- It gets better with era. From memory, the ratio is 1 (ancient) -> 1.5 (classical and medieval) -> 2 (renaissance). So you can consider rushing one renaissance tech if it's getting difficult.
- Build Dujiangyan in your core for extra food. I like Qingyang for this.
- If you go into India, you can switch to Hinduism for a while and build their best wonders. Running syncretism as well, this will get you super priests until the late renaissance who provide 1 food and 3 hammers. Later, you can also build the porcelain tower for 1 food on your statesmen. These bonuses are great for the northern core cities, since steppe terrain is so weak for food.
- Prioritise farms on tiles outside your core but within reach of core cities. For core tiles, though, consider cottages – once they upgrade to villages, each of them will be like having another population point in one of your cities. This is equivalent for stability purposes to having a farm and using the food to run another boosted statesman or priest. However, your cities will be limited by happiness and health due to a recent balance change, so villages are currently better.
- You will want to send some units west to maintain contact with the civs there. Try to have two of each happiness and health resource, to get the benefits for your top six cities, which will mostly be in your core.

 

[Dracosolon]

1) China proper has room for around ten good cities with some overlap. For the six others, you can push into Manchuria, Korea, Indochina, Tibet, or nearby islands. Or just go warlike and conquer all you can, but that's not strictly necessary. The first strategy also isn't too demanding on your stability, Chinese cities can grow huge, especially with a big fat Dujiangyan+Great Canal city in your core.

3) IIRC Leoreth decided hill lumbermills were too good compared to mines.

6) You can find flip maps here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/1-18-flip-maps.693363/

 

[Zalfos]

The 16 cities can all be made in China proper and following a semi-historical setup — I tend to do so when playing as them. No need to go push against Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, the Tarim Basin, China has the space.

The trick is to keep them compact. Remember that you are China, you don't need as much food to grow to large cities with your UP.
- 4 cities in your core (my go-to are Chang'an, Anyang, Tongwan and Beijing).
- 4 cities along the southern coast : Jiao'ao, Nanjing, Fuzhou and Guangzhou.
- 3 cities in the southwestern mountain ranges (Chengdu is a given, then two more south of it, you can go as far south as Yunnan-fu).
- 2 cities in the center, around that small lake, usually Wuhan and Changsha.

- You need 3 more.
One go between Beijing and Korea, it will be flipped to the Mongols but you should be able to retake it easily.
One go on the steppe border, northwest of Chang'an, to serve as a buffer for barbarian spawns and an eventual Turk attack. It will be flipped, but it's no issue, it's a small city.
The last one can be put on Taiwan. There, 16, no war required. Putting Nanjing also allows you to get Shanghai a bit later, the Marshes blocking the spot will lift in 800.
Everything is in historical territory as well, helping with your Stability once you get Jails. If you ever dip below, whip more — you're China, the UP is made for it.

With this setup will only lose 2 cities to the mongol flip. The trick is always the same : never let them get close and attack.
The mongols will murder you on the attack, they ignore city defenses and do collateral damage. But both your unique units also do collateral damage : if you stack enough Fire Lancers in time, you can destroy the Keshik stacks before they get to Tongwan/Beijing. If both fall but you dealt enough damage, you still have a change to hold them at the Yellow River and counterattack — but don't delay, you'll be running at half-Stability at that point.

 

[Zalfos]

A bird's eye view of my last setup, if need be :

They can be quite close and not all of them are titans of production, but it does not matter. Not all your cities need to be good — it's better to have them a bit weaker as long as it does not dip your Stability.
And weaker cities can still take tiles from more productive ones so as to make themselves useful through whipping or specialists ; it's a very important mechanic to grasp in Europe, where space is much more limited.

 

[Vera]

Thank you guys, with the right core city placement the stability wasn't an issue at all, even when I seriously overextended. (Though I had to keep some cities intentionally small.)
I got some Vietnamese, Burmese and Korean land to get the first UHV, so I did not have to lose cities to the Mongols when they arrived.

 

[Dracosolon]

I replayed the UHV and the Mongol flip zone seems to have gotten bigger? They got all of Manchuria.

 

[Vera]

I replayed the UHV and the Mongol flip zone seems to have gotten bigger? They got all of Manchuria.

Positive.

 

[Kott]

I had no issue fitting 16 cities into the historical area. You need to keep a good stability level, that means that non-core cities should stay small, so I put one for each food resource (while keeping 2-3 for core cities, which I had 5), that worked quite well, five big cities are enough to generate all the great persons you need.

 

[Vera]

Sorry it's slightly unrelated, but what about Vladivostok? It just appears at some point. How does this work?

 

[Zalfos]

AI Russia has a special script that creates the settlement for them — or if it already exists, grants them a stack of units to take it. I believe it's triggered by them researching Railroad ?
Usually it's not worth bothering. It's a single settlement and a war against Russia might drag on for a long time. I only go for it when playing Japan, as you need to control all of Manchuria.