Civ Discussion - Aksum

[Boris Gudenuf]

Fealty is the new Monumentality. You can definitely play just fine without chasing it, but once you experience it, that min-maxing part of your brain will never let it go.

That being said, in the larger context of settlement caps, I don’t know if Aksum not having cap increases is that big of a detriment. I’m much more miffed by their unique military unit - you are discouraged from spamming them because of how poorly navy carries over to Exploration, plus I’ve found the application of navy in Antiquity very limited. Not that many settlements are exposed to naval assault even with navigable rivers, and the same goes to the applicability of trade routes.

Maybe I’ll try them one day on the Archipelago map, when we get a bigger civ roster.

Fractal maps used to give a lot of scope for naval attacks - playing as Carthage, I managed to take 3 cities with Quadriremes in one game. But since the last patch Fractal seems to just be 'irregular continent' and doesn't provide quite as much coastal access as before.

This is based on just a few examples and I could be dead wrong, but that's been my experience recently.

 

[Kurtbob]

I wanted to add to my previous post regarding pushing Axum's UI as far as it will go. The Hawilt is the most spammable UI in the game and should be exploited to its fullest.

Play as Xerxes Achaemenid: +1 Culture and Gold per Age on Unique Buildings and Unique Tile improvements.
Use Memento "Chalcedony Seal": +1 Culture and Gold for unique buildings and improvements.

Build the following wonders to boost them further:
Petra: +1 Gold and +1 Production for every Desert tile in this Settlement (build Hawilt on desert tiles)
Pyramids: +1 Gold and +1 Production on minor and Navigable River tiles in this Settlement (build Hawilt on minor river tiles)
Serpent Mound: +3 Science and +2 Production to all unique Improvement in this Settlement.
Shwedagon Zedi Daw: +2 Science on all rural tiles in this Settlement that have at least 1 Happiness (UIs are on rural tiles)

 

[Sostratus]

Play as Xerxes Achaemenid: +1 Culture and Gold per Age on Unique Buildings and Unique Tile improvements.
Use Memento "Chalcedony Seal": +3 Culture and Gold for unique buildings and improvements if you have 3 or more unique buildings or improvements

I think you may be misremembering what Chalcedony seal does. It's just a copy of Xerxes' ability.

It's actually an insanely strong memento, independent of leader. I don't think people grasp just how strong this bonus is, and the fact that you can stack it with Xerxes-A is even more bonkers. +2,+2 by itself is a solid yield for a UI in ancient or exploration, and that's just the bonus on top of whatever the UI already does.

 

[Kurtbob]

I think you may be misremembering what Chalcedony seal does. It's just a copy of Xerxes' ability.

Ah thx. I grabbed the text from a wiki that must have been outdated. I updated my post.

 

[Sagax]

I think you may be misremembering what Chalcedony seal does. It's just a copy of Xerxes' ability.
View attachment 734352

It's actually an insanely strong memento, independent of leader. I don't think people grasp just how strong this bonus is, and the fact that you can stack it with Xerxes-A is even more bonkers. +2,+2 by itself is a solid yield for a UI in ancient or exploration, and that's just the bonus on top of whatever the UI already does.

It indeed used to be +3 Culture and Gold, then got nerfed in one of the patches. Yes, it was that bonkers.

 

[javier51]

Interesting thread. I tried it out with an Aksum-Xerxes (Achaemenid)-Archipelago game. This configuration justifies a game focused on gold income as I wanted. Gold adds a lot of versatility to the strategy, and I think it's a good option when the game setup or circumstances make boosting gold more effective than production, culture, or science. I used the 1-cap Memento for settlements to alleviate the drawbacks of not having the settlement limit extended by other means (with the current 1.2.1 patch). With the help of about five promoted Dhows, I was able to conquer two more settlements, plus two more through peace treaties. This secured the 3 military legacy points, which, as mentioned by others, are important for extending the settlement limit by 2 in the Age of Exploration.

I think something that should be discussed and I haven't seen in the posts in this thread is civilization attributes. Thanks to Lord Yanaeka's thread in the Strategy subforum, you can learn that attribute points aren't random (at least largely). So this can be planned and adds dimension to the game. In this case, Aksum is both economic and cultural, meaning you'll get one cultural attribute point for researching six Civics and one economic attribute point when you have two trade routes. A third attribute point (to choose between cultural and economic) is earned by completing the Aksum-specific culture tree. So, in my gold-focused strategy, I used the economic attribute Memento and then Askum gave me two more rather easy. Also, since I went to Navigation relatively early to promote Dhows, I was able to get the Colossus (which gives an additional economic point). Xerxes activates an attribute point when researching Code of Laws, which, it seems, will be one of his two attributes (also economic and cultural in this case). It's a bit obscure how to get the one you want, but I was asked between two monuments and two altars and, effectively, excluding the first one for cultural reasons and after the second request, which I don't remember, but was easy, I ended up with one more economic attribute.

For the Age of Exploration, I'm going with Chola and three additional economic attribute points (Memento plus two economic points from legacy points). With this, I've almost finished the attribute tree at the start of the Age of Exploration, and I think that as soon as I get an alliance and a little more, I'll have about 1000 gold per turn.

 

[Kurtbob]

Thanks to Lord Yanaeka's thread in the Strategy subforum, you can learn that attribute points aren't random (at least largely).

Thanks for this! Very informative.

 

[Memoryjar]

One of my favorite antiquity civ. I’m a tall player, so cap limit doesn’t bother me.
Hawilt is kinda silly and can carry your culture production to the end of modern age (with or without Xerxes or his memento) . Kingdom of Natural Wealth is really good, specially in the first 50 turns. Dhow and Tankwa are gadgets. Traditions too, except Momentum Adulitanum and May this please the people. Thrones of My Father are more likely to have an interest in expedition and/or modern age.
But Aksum is mainly about spamming Hawilt. So it’s for Sim Civcity players. For fight or tech is better to pick something else.
After antiquity, Songhai is quite interresting if you have land some cities near a navigable river. It can produces some legacy point between your click next turn to win gameplay as exploration and modern age are.