[NFP] City-state based improvements, and their effects on gameplays

[Lily_Lancer]

I find it very hard to believe that even now there're only few people realized this, that your game is actually depend on what CS you have more than which Civ you're playing.

The most significant game-changer is Rapa-Rui.

This CS basically makes every population you have to be worthwhile, by allowing you to build one of the most powerful UIs in the game-- Moai. A Moai has a base +1 culture, and can get +1 culture from every adj Moai, +2 from volcano soil, +1 from lake or coast, making it very easy to get +4-6 culture, and it has very little restriction to build.

With Rapa-Rui basically all your population become very valuable, before once you worked on all resources and hills there's nothing to do with extra population, they work on farms to provide food only to grow more pop to work on farms, until you run out of housing and amenity, without providing any other yield than food.

However, things change. With Moai those citizens can work on Moai, each citizen may yield 4-6 extra culture, making them very valuable.

Also, Moai influences the strength of Civs very much, if a unique improvement is worse than Moai, it does not have means to exist, since you can just build Moai! Outback stations, Stepwells and Chateaus become nonsense, maybe the only unique that survives the challenge of Moai is the Great Wall, but its explicit advantages is reduced a lot. Before Great Walls is much better than farms, however it is only slightly better than Moai.

On the other hand, Civs that give direct food/housing bonus shine as they embrace the synergy with Moai. Without Moai, food are useless, however every population counts if he can work on Moai.

Same may also work for Alcanzar, Alcanzar is not as powerful as Moai, but they share the same "make useless population useful" logic.

 

[Kwami]

The Colossal Head improvement from La Venta is similar. It gives Faith instead of Culture, but that Faith also converts into Tourism after Flight. You can easily get +4-8 Tourism for every Head and you can just spam them everywhere. They give more Tourism than Seaside Resorts and National Parks and Wonders, and they're way easier to build.

 

[leandrombraz]

I don't think it's a matter of realizing it, people know how impactful some City-State bonuses are. Civs are something that you can choose, while city-states are a matter of luck. You can't choose which CSs will be in your game, you can only increase how many are in your game, to have a better chance of getting the ones you want. The discussion has a tendency to be focused on things we have control over, and we have a lot more control over Civ bonuses than CS bonuses.

 

[Victoria]

With Rapa-Rui basically all your population become very valuable,

a bit of an overstatement. Yes the CS is over powerful but there are many trees just outside your borders stopping all your population. Also the builder cost and the fact the moai becomes more powerful with adjacent ones. Also culture is not everything you need.
I find it best to find a grassland area and deforest/moai ASAP even pumping some trade routes in to bolster population. You do not need volcanic soil, just 6 adjacent moai. The meagre +1 from volcanic soil is a trap, as you lose the moai there from explosions.
Having a moai city is more than adequate. I have written about it in plenty of threads lately and many GOTM have had it in, not sure it is as unknown as you say.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

a bit of an overstatement. Yes the CS is over powerful but there are many trees just outside your borders stopping all your population. Also the builder cost and the fact the moai becomes more powerful with adjacent ones. Also culture is not everything you need.
I find it best to find a grassland area and deforest/moai ASAP even pumping some trade routes in to bolster population. You do not need volcanic soil, just 6 adjacent moai. The meagre +1 from volcanic soil is a trap, as you lose the moai there from explosions.
Having a moai city is more than adequate. I have written about it in plenty of threads lately and many GOTM have had it in, not sure it is as unknown as you say.

Moai provides culture, they let you city border grow rapidly, so you quickly cover those trees and benefit from their productions, as well as building more moai to make your border grow more quickly.

BTW best way to pump up population is harvesting food. (And this also makes space for more and better Moai)

 

[Victoria]

Yes I know all of this, whenever Rapa Nui is in a game I do build moai
But there are always borders with trees and land that does not give choppable food. Land that is unhealthy for food.
Is a moai the best use of volcanic soil?
We in essence are not disagreeing that the moai is OP. I was pointing out many people know this already and a grassland city for it seems better than an every city. Especially with the builder charges involved.
There is also a law of diminishing returns that I believe need to be applied here.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

I definitely agree that City Sates can have a huge impact on your game. Do you think the Moai improvement is too powerful then? How does it compare to the bonuses of other city states? I often find myself with a large amounts of culture from City States like Nan Madol/Antananarivo/Kumasi. I haven't had many games with Rapa Nui spawn, but I do remember in one tourism game I had a few months ago, I spammed the Moai's to take the advantage of tourism for tiles with culture on them.

 

[Victoria]

How does it compare to the bonuses of other city states?

Nan and Kumasi are around the 60 culture range
A 10 pop grassland city will also give similar but 2 grassland cities near each other more than double it. I use grassland as an example because these cities suit Rapa Nui For growth and sustainability of pop on tiles and are more importantly pretty useless cities in other ways (sure CH/IZ building can be good but take a while and culture is far more valuable... until you have a lot of it)
Interestingly, finding enough grassland is the problem I tend to have.

the real power comes, as lily hints, with being able to ramp up culture to say 300/turn. These things leave the likes of chateau in the dust. They are also self fulfilling, the more you get early the sooner they double in value. Before you know it you are at the end of the culture tree with a zillion envoys and 5% science and culture per suzerain. (Not that you need more culture)
Being able to choose which rock band you use and spy promotion, having loads of wild card slots and tourism multipliers, the first pick of culture wonders and trade route boost cards. The list just goes on.

you have to be really dedicated to the cause to do this and it does skew immersion somewhat but hey, if you want to play that way you can.
Next time you play them, get 3 cities close to each other in a triangle and start building moai from the middle out. Use you other cities to keep some sanity in science and gold/faith.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

^ I will certainly be looking out for this in future games

 

[Naeshar]

I actually think citystates have a very powerful effect on the game. There are some with powerful suzerain bonuses, for sure (and some very measly ones, especially commercial).

But the influence bonus is the most powerful of them all. In my last game were four scientific and three religious ones. I went for religion while the AI met mostly scientific ones and built campuses. It is obvious they got an upper hand early due to the basically free science, and they were motivated to build those districts (*looking at Seondeok*). I however had also an early militaristic Akkad which made for an easy expansion. The CS you meet first make a huge impact on your game. If you get two early envoys from cultural ones you can roll the culture tree too fast. If your enemy gets militaristic ones, good luck. If you get an commercial one, you will swim in gold early.
Maybe these bonuses could be scaled to +1/+2/+3, but still make wide play very strong.

I must say I enjoy games without or few CS for the vanilla feeling. Too many CS corrupt the flavour.

Also, later additions are always quite powerful. Compare Rapa Nui to Vilnius? Akkad to Preslav? Even Cahokia shines compared to Lisbon or Nazca against Armagh.

 

[walkerjks]

I just Rapa Nui'd and La Venta'd my way to a turn 162 completely peaceful cultural victory without building a single theater square or wonder on Emperor difficulty. I did it just to see if I could, and yep, it was faster than my cultural wins played in the normal, peaceful way, Admittedly, I did pick my opponents, so Peter couldn't run away with culture as I wasn't competing for any great works (no theaters), but was generating 500+ tourism/turn on turn 162 with about 80% of that coming from Moai improvements, another 17% coming from colossal heads and 2% coming from ancient walls, and 1% from a single seaside resort. Was playing Seondeok as I wanted to get to flight as quickly as possible (have no idea which civ is truly fastest to flight if you basically beeline for it, but Seondeok seemed like a good candidate).

Yeah, Moai are too powerful.

Edit to add - Colossal Heads are also pretty insane in their own right, but in this game, virtually all non-tundra was converted to Moai. The colossal heads only went up in tundra once the moai spam was basically done.

 

[UWHabs]

I haven't really maxxed out the Moai yet, but between many of the various UI from CS, or from the default bonuses like Nan Madol or Kumasi, they can really drastically alter you game. I've had games with absolutely insane culture just because I had Nan Madol and happened to be on an archipelago so had virtually all my cities coastal. You're talking a base +4 or +6 culture per city, which is as powerful as the most spread Choral Music.

But in general, a good CS gives you a bonus virtually as good as any civ's abilities, so yeah, if you get lucky to have 1 or 2 strong ones nearby it can be huge, relative to either not having them or having one of the crappier ones. And if you think that each civ only really has 3 or 4 solid bonuses, adding an extra one or two from a city-state can be huge. Okay, maybe not enough to make Georgia as strong as Russia, but still can make the world of difference.

 

[Futumch]

The city states are a great way to put your own spin on whatever civ you choose to play. I still want to try carpet bombing religious pressure from the coasts using Great Admirals combined with Vatican City's suzerain bonus.