Civ 7 GOTM03 Announcement

[Uberfrog]

There is also the issue that DLC wonders will be available to owning players regardless of the civ they choose. Not a huge issue, but another inconsistency.

 

[wenamon]

Hello! I am eager to try this one again. I wanted to ask about mods. are they all not ok? I specifically wonder about UI ones. I have installed

TCS Improved Plot Tooltip,
Et Cetera,
Moxl Map Search,
MantisMaestro's Compact Production Chooser,
Sukritact's Simple UI Adjustments,
ff-fix-tech-civic-tree-icons,
DanielD1909's Lens Modpack and
wltk's detailed map tacks.

I get these are a lot, but they don't actually seem to affect any core gameplay. Also, I am not winning any prizes here. Just happy to play along.

Thanks for organizing this

 

[Uberfrog]

Hello! I am eager to try this one again. I wanted to ask about mods. are they all not ok? I specifically wonder about UI ones. I have installed

TCS Improved Plot Tooltip,
Et Cetera,
Moxl Map Search,
MantisMaestro's Compact Production Chooser,
Sukritact's Simple UI Adjustments,
ff-fix-tech-civic-tree-icons,
DanielD1909's Lens Modpack and
wltk's detailed map tacks.

I get these are a lot, but they don't actually seem to affect any core gameplay. Also, I am not winning any prizes here. Just happy to play along.

Thanks for organizing this

I’d support the use of UI mods, especially given how janky the base game UI is.

 

[pkf]

In 5 and 6 we waited well over a year before adding dlc, im not sure how the community feels about adding them in right away

There was a period in 5 when GOTM activity dropped significantly, partly because BNW wasn't yet added to GOTM. I don't think the 7 DLC is as game-changing as BNW was.

I would argue that it is (sadly) impossible to ensure comparability in the current state of 7 regardless of what you do. I also believe it will take the game quite a while to reach a better state. Even though civ has a tradition of unfinished releases, this one is the worst so far imho.
The updates also changed balance by a lot, unfortunately affecting GOTM2 (economic VC) and GOTM3 (maya). If this frequency of balancing keeps up...
Thus I think GOTM should just play around with settings/rules as much as possible, real comparability is probably a year away and even then, Acken will probably still win

As for UI mods: It was also a GOTM tradition not to allow mods. However, 7 seems to be actively trying to hide as much information from the player as possible so it becomes less fun to play without UI mods.

 

[leif erikson]

Staff has discussed the UI situation and we think it would be okay to allow UI mods for Game of the Month on an experimental basis.
Please try to use mods that do not affect game play.
Thanks.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

As for UI mods: It was also a GOTM tradition not to allow mods. However, 7 seems to be actively trying to hide as much information from the player as possible so it becomes less fun to play without UI mods.

I don't think the developers are trying to hide information, more probably they badly overlooked how much strategy game players like to have a lot of information at hand.

As for comparability, i agree (and told a few times already) that Civ7 makes it really hard to ensure that all players play the "same" game. We start with the same situation but there's too much variability from there on to allow direct comparison so maybe we shouldn't get too obsessed with it.

Staff has discussed the UI situation and we think it would be okay to allow UI mods for Game of the Month on an experimental basis.

Thanks for considering UI mods, playing without those have always been my biggest gripe with GotM, even back to Civ5 which had a much better UI

 

[shoshonte]

With this game, I'm going to try a few practice games with these settings before attempting this for real (not with the same map seed but with a random one) since in the past games I was kind of learning on the fly and as a result not doing well.

Going to take more notes on my practice games and then put them here once I finish.

 

[wenamon]

Can I ask questions about the start here? This will be my first try at immortal difficulty for 7.

Part of me wants to move closer to the redwood due to Isabela's ability to double the yields. However, the other part of me wants to move one square E to set up redwood to share with a future city to the West. Thoughts?

Edit: the other benefit of moving one east is to have more vegetated tiles next to the palace for the extra 0.5 science per veggie tile next to the palace.

 

[shoshonte]

I rolled a random start with these settings to give it a try and finished Antiquity on turn 131 with one future tech, 7/7 cities, and 8 legacy points but I think I can do better. Going to keep practicing before trying this save for real.

I am curious as I practice Antiquity what I should be doing more than just completing the objectives to set myself up well for Exploration. That is something I want to think about more as I practice.

 

[shoshonte]

I will say that this was only my third time playing through Antiquity and only my first on Immortal and it was definitely a step up competitiveness wise with the AI but not dramatically so, I think even for new players Immortal is not too bad.

 

[wenamon]

I will say that this was only my third time playing through Antiquity and only my first on Immortal and it was definitely a step up competitiveness wise with the AI but not dramatically so, I think even for new players Immortal is not too bad.

What's your thoughts on the start? Move or settle in place? I'm paralyzed!!!

 

[shoshonte]

Can I ask questions about the start here? This will be my first try at immortal difficulty for 7.

Part of me wants to move closer to the redwood due to Isabela's ability to double the yields. However, the other part of me wants to move one square E to set up redwood to share with a future city to the West. Thoughts?

Edit: the other benefit of moving one east is to have more vegetated tiles next to the palace for the extra 0.5 science per veggie tile next to the palace.

Here is currently how I think about this decision.

Settling in Place:

Pros of settling in place:

• Turn 1 Settle (better than wasting a turn to settle by moving onto rough terrain for example)
• Guaranteed Fresh Water (+5 happiness Benefit)
• Good balanced access to nearby Forests (Production) and Rough Terrain (Production) and Marble (Culture)
• Reasonably close to the Redwood Forest (S/SW) for expansion.

Cons of settling in place:

• No immediate access to the Redwood Forest (requires a second growth event or placement of a granary)
  

Settle 1 Tile SW

Pros:

• Same as settling in place but are next to the Redwood forest and can access immediately
• Higher vegetation surrounding the palace for Maya special ability (3 vs 2)
  

Cons:

• Cotton and Dates are now in third expand instead of 2nd
• Need to build a fishing quay before you can build your Navy

Personally, I think it is better to settle one square SW, but would be interested in other people know something that I am missing or other reasons for a different settle location.

I don't really understand any justification for a T2 settle in Civ 7 (like one square East) which is also further away from the Redwood Forest given that palace yields are pretty high relative to Civ 6 and unimproved tile yields are so low compared to Civ 6 so I would be thinking about the above things when thinking about where to settle.

In general, these are the factors I use to determine where to settle (and add vegetation adjacency for Maya in this case)

1.) Freshwater Access
2.) Production Potential
3.) Resource Availability and Adjacencies
4.) Food/Growth
5.) Turn 1 Settle
6.) Natural Wonders
7.) Defensive Terrain

 

[wenamon]

Here is currently how I think about this decision.

Settling in Place:

Pros of settling in place:

• Turn 1 Settle (better than wasting a turn to settle by moving onto rough terrain for example)
• Guaranteed Fresh Water (+5 happiness Benefit)
• Good balanced access to nearby Forests (Production) and Rough Terrain (Production) and Marble (Culture)
• Reasonably close to the Redwood Forest (S/SW) for expansion.

Cons of settling in place:

• No immediate access to the Redwood Forest (requires a second growth event or placement of a granary)

Settle 1 Tile SW

Pros:

• Same as settling in place but are next to the Redwood forest and can access immediately
• Higher vegetation surrounding the palace for Maya special ability (3 vs 2)

Cons:

• Cotton and Dates are now in third expand instead of 2nd
• Need to build a fishing quay before you can build your Navy

Personally, I think it is better to settle one square SW, but would be interested in other people know something that I am missing or other reasons for a different settle location.

I don't really understand any justification for a T2 settle in Civ 7 (like one square East) which is also further away from the Redwood Forest given that palace yields are pretty high relative to Civ 6 and unimproved tile yields are so low compared to Civ 6 so I would be thinking about the above things when thinking about where to settle.

In general, these are the factors I use to determine where to settle (and add vegetation adjacency for Maya in this case)

1.) Freshwater Access
2.) Production Potential
3.) Resource Availability and Adjacencies
4.) Food/Growth
5.) Turn 1 Settle
6.) Natural Wonders
7.) Defensive Terrain

Thanks for this detailed response. My thoughts in settling 1 square E are to then share redwood forest with potentially 2 other cities for the +1 culture and science. Unless that doesn't work?

I do tend to get overly ocd about my city placement tho

 

[shoshonte]

Thanks for this detailed response. My thoughts in settling 1 square E are to then share redwood forest with potentially 2 other cities for the +1 culture and science. Unless that doesn't work?

I do tend to get overly ocd about my city placement tho

You probably should experiment yourself and figure out which one has higher tempo, I'm honestly not sure.

It's fairly easy to roll a start like this with Isabella due to her NW spawn bias, I am currently trying a one turn settle off fresh next to the Redwood Forest to see what the tempo is like (not this exact spawn but similar).

The tempo is massive I'll just put it that way, with the 300 gold from the leader benefit and the 4f4p4h x 3, you can very quickly get your next 2 expands online really really fast.

I would imagine the tempo from the quick start is probably better than low tempo for cap (relatively speaking) then higher tempo for b2 (first expand) but I could be wrong.

The reason for my thinking on this is you can probably settle b2 near some nearby gypsum and once you get the gold you can probably get it online fairly quickly, and you get gold pretty fast if you have a decent scouting game with Isabella.

My two cents here, play around with it yourself and see how it feels.

 

[shoshonte]

Honestly playing a Redwood Forest start with Isabella and Maya feels like larping as a Deity AI

 

[wenamon]

alright fair enough. thanks for the advice and discussion. I think my tendency to sim city and aim for perfect adjacencies to line everything up really gets in the way of playing "correctly" or efficiently.

I hope to play it soon! Cheers and good luck!

 

[shoshonte]

alright fair enough. thanks for the advice and discussion. I think my tendency to sim city and aim for perfect adjacencies to line everything up really gets in the way of playing "correctly" or efficiently.

I hope to play it soon! Cheers and good luck!

You too! I'm also a beginner Civ 7 player so we're all learning!

 

[Knowtalent]

Honestly playing a Redwood Forest start with Isabella and Maya feels like larping as a Deity AI

I was quite happy with it

 

[shoshonte]

Finished two more trial runs of Antiquity.

There is an interesting calculus with the goal being total time about how much you can sandbag Antiquity to try to accelerate Exploration/Modern (getting more cities up with unique districts/ setting everything up to be overbuilt with discounts/ etc...).

The second time around I sandbagged an extra 10 turns to set up an extra city with everything but not sure if the final calculus will justify it.

I still find gold to be my limiting factor for getting more cities online, either that or I'm putting my towns in positions where they will make good cities and the rate at which they grow to be affordable to convert into a city takes so long.

 

[shoshonte]

I need to be more careful to not spend gold in reactionary ways and put more military into my build order, because often the AI will attempt to irrel war me with how tight these spawns tend to be, even on balanced.