[R&F] Civ of the Week: Australia

[acluewithout]

• Leader: John Bloomin Curtin

• Leader Ability: Citadel of Civilization. Gain +100% Production Bonus for 10 turns if you've received a Declaration of War, or for 20 turns if you have liberated a City State.

• Civ Ability: Land Down Under. +3 Housing in Coastal Cities. Building a Pasture triggers a Culture Bomb. Campuses, Commercial Hubs, Holy Sites and Theatre Squares receive +1 adjacency if built on a tile with Charming Appeal, or +3 if the tile as Breathtaking Appeal.

• Unique Unit: Digger. Unique Melee Unit that replaces Infantry. Melee Strength 72, Movement 2, Cost 430, Maintenance 6. Gains +1 CS on Coastal Tiles, and +5 CS outside of Australian territory.

• Unique Infrastructure: Outback Station. Unique Improvement that unlocks at Guilds (one builder charge). Must be built on Grassland, Plains, Desert of Desert Hill Tiles. Really, really wants to be built on Petra Tiles, ideally with Uluru involved, and then posted on Reddit (OMGIHEARDYOUSEGUYZLIKEYIEEEEELDS!!!!). +1 Food, +1 Production, +0.5 Housing, then +1 Food and (after Steam Power) +1 Production for each adjacent Pasture, (after Steam Power) +1 Production and (after Rapid Deployment) +1 Food or each 2 adjacent OBS.

• Leader Agenda: Perpetually on Guard. Likes Civs that liberate Cities. Doesn't like Civs that occupy enemy Cities. Also something about Defensive Pacts.

• Suggested Reading List: God. So much.

Notes:

• Double bill this week. You also get Brazil. And then next week (or whenever, really), we'll do Captain Hook (Russia), which I will be very tempted to call Tundra Australia. For what it's worth, I think Australia and Brazil have a kind of interesting symmetry, in that they're Civs that get unique adjacencies (appeal and jungle), but which may need to give up those adjacencies (by building mines etc which lower appeal, or chopping jungle) to get production and other yields / build things.
  
  
• Previous CotW: Ancient: The Full Monty, Cree, Gilgabro, Greece, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock (Harold) the Third, Nubia, EgyptClassical: Kongo, Point Break, Price of Persia, Rome, Sythia, Medieval: China, Georgia, India, Japan, Khmer, Mongolia, Poland, Zulu; Renaissance: Indonesia, Netherlands, Spain, Mapuche, Korea; Industrial & Modern: Team America, Germany, Scotland, France

 

[bite]

I think it should be no surprise that I love playing as Australia, see my Avatar <---, also I wrote like over 1500 words on their inclusion.

There is such a good synergy of Coastal bonuses, Pasture Bonuses, Food, Production, Housing from tiles that don't usually get focused, with the Outback Station, and those Uluru, Petra spots, goodness, also that Hihg Mountain pass with good appeal.

hoever, I don't actually play with them as much anymore, as I found myself re-rolling to much at the start, and the time it was taking up was not healthy.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Australia has bonuses that go for the entire game and it's somewhat amazing that they are so strong without direct warmongering bonuses.... well maybe that production bonus.

Leader Ability: Citadel of Civilization. Gain +100% Production Bonus for 10 turns if you've received a Declaration of War, or for 20 turns if you have liberated a City State.

Perhaps the most potentially demoralizing ability, attempts to stop Australia might just put them even more forward. Early decs of war are welcome as long as you're ready, and it's likely the production will let you build defenses really fast. This makes them incredibly annoying. With Rise and Fall and CS's dropping like flies, it's not unlikely you can maintain this permanently for the later half of the game. And this is fun.

Civ Ability: Land Down Under. +3 Housing in Coastal Cities. Building a Pasture triggers a Culture Bomb. Campuses, Commercial Hubs, Holy Sites and Theatre Squares receive +1 adjacency if built on a tile with Charming Appeal, or +3 if the tile as Breathtaking Appeal.

Basically, coastal cities don't suck as Australia. It's not a reason to aggressively settle on the coast, but those appealing tiles sure give incentive. Australia can get high adjancency campus pretty easily, and it helps that mountains are good for science and improve appeal anyways. And wonders for Theater Square adjacency too.

Culture bombing on pasture is useful since they're good tiles to improve anyways and affords you more tiles early on, saving gold.

Unique Unit: Digger. Unique Melee Unit that replaces Infantry. Melee Strength 72, Movement 2, Cost 430, Maintenance 6. Gains +1 CS on Coastal Tiles, and +5 CS outside of Australian territory.

Late, but infantry is still useful so not completely a non-factor.

Unique Infrastructure: Outback Station. Unique Improvement that unlocks at Guilds (one builder charge). Must be built on Grassland, Plains, Desert of Desert Hill Tiles. Really, really wants to be built on Petra Tiles, ideally with Uluru involved, and then posted on Reddit (OMGIHEARDYOUSEGUYZLIKEYIEEEEELDS!!!!). +1 Food, +1 Production, +0.5 Housing, then +1 Food and (after Steam Power) +1 Production for each adjacent Pasture, (after Steam Power) +1 Production and (after Rapid Deployment) +1 Food or each 2 adjacent OBS.

Not a bad improvement but it comes a bit late and is weak initially. Doesn't really reach its full potential until Steam Power which kinda sucks but at least this lets you fully utilize your land.

Leader Agenda: Perpetually on Guard. Likes Civs that liberate Cities. Doesn't like Civs that occupy enemy Cities. Also something about Defensive Pacts.

But for some reason he seems to always be the aggressor....

Overall, they're almost god tier. In non rush situations, possibly even the strongest but not exactly being terrible in those.... at all.

 

[Disgustipated]

But for some reason he seems to always be the aggressor....

John Curtin is just a jerk and a big meanie. He really annoys me most games.

I'll probably go into them more later. But does anyone get any use out of the digger? Most of the late game uu's are lackluster anyways. I wish I could get more use out of them.

If I start next to him, I take him out ASAP. His production bonus isn't too bad early in the game.

 

[Disgustipated]

I actually played him twice. I wanted to compare his science victory prowess to his cultural victory prowess, but my science victory game didn't turn out so well. Island plates maps in general tend to have low production, and I could never really get off the ground in that game. It was my worst science victory time. That's why I usually like to stay with the same map time when comparing times. Still, I can't believe I did that badly. You think Australia would have excelled on an island plates map.

My cultural victory on the other hand was my 2nd fastest time, even higher than Kongo. Wow. Only my Pericles game was faster (much faster, he is my #1 pick for culture victory leader). Just saying, despite taking up good tiles for districts, cultural victory is very viable with Australia. But it should be noted that Kongo, Russia, and Pedro were not in the game. Only Catherine and Teddy got any kind of culture going, and not much. So it's hard to get an objective score when 3 civs really skew the results when they are or are not in the game.

• Leader Ability: Citadel of Civilization. Gain +100% Production Bonus for 10 turns if you've received a Declaration of War, or for 20 turns if you have liberated a City State.
• Not much to say about this one, I have very little control over it. I was largely peaceful both games, and don't think I had a lot of wars declared on me. I'm kind of "meh" about this ability.

• Civ Ability: Land Down Under. +3 Housing in Coastal Cities. Building a Pasture triggers a Culture Bomb. Campuses, Commercial Hubs, Holy Sites and Theatre Squares receive +1 adjacency if built on a tile with Charming Appeal, or +3 if the tile as Breathtaking Appeal.
• Extremely powerful ability, and this is the bread and butter for Australia. This will win you games.

• Unique Unit: Digger. Unique Melee Unit that replaces Infantry. Melee Strength 72, Movement 2, Cost 430, Maintenance 6. Gains +1 CS on Coastal Tiles, and +5 CS outside of Australian territory.
• Not sure why you would want to be warring this late in the game. This isn't really a domination type civ. Useless except maybe for defense.

• Unique Infrastructure: Outback Station. Unique Improvement that unlocks at Guilds (one builder charge). Must be built on Grassland, Plains, Desert of Desert Hill Tiles. Really, really wants to be built on Petra Tiles, ideally with Uluru involved, and then posted on Reddit (OMGIHEARDYOUSEGUYZLIKEYIEEEEELDS!!!!). +1 Food, +1 Production, +0.5 Housing, then +1 Food and (after Steam Power) +1 Production for each adjacent Pasture, (after Steam Power) +1 Production and (after Rapid Deployment) +1 Food or each 2 adjacent OBS.
• I prefer the Cree's UI, but this one is pretty cool in that you can chain them. I still found myself wanting to put farming triangles in some areas, but I used this pretty much everywhere else. Not sure if this is optimum, it's what I prefer. I prefer larger cities.

• Leader Agenda: Perpetually on Guard. Likes Civs that liberate Cities. Doesn't like Civs that occupy enemy Cities. Also something about Defensive Pacts.
• Sometimes I can get on his good side, if you are going domination victory he of course will hate you.

My start:

Spoiler :

Like I said, not having those 3 civs allowed an easy cruise for cultural victory. I had many unimproved tiles because it was so early. I was still building Eiffel Tower and National History Museum, didn't need either one. Lots of great works of writing this game. It was mostly a combination of writing, art, and artifacts. Your best bet as Australia is not rely on seaside resorts and national parks, but let your theater squares do all the work for you.

my final save screenshot

Spoiler :

Yeah my 2nd game went much much worse. My victory time is abysmal. I don't know exactly what happened. I just found it hard to get enough production and focus on science. Island plate maps are never easy for me, not unless you are going for domination (since the AI sucks at naval warfare). Maybe playing a large map also slowed things down.

Spoiler :

And my finish. Yeah that turn time. I say finish loosely, because while I did actually finish, I reloaded, and just started conquering the world. I wanted to see if I could get nuked. But so far I was unable to provoke anyone to nuke me. That game is unfinished, but close.

I did love my +9 holy site this game though.

Spoiler :

Yeah this science victory time was much much worse then Scotland. And Korea, and Netherlands, and China, and Arabia, and Germany. yeah the map type had to be it. Because on paper they should be able to beat Germany and probably Arabia and China as well.

They are an alright civ, but not as fun a civ as Netherlands or Germany. Grade: A-

 

[Sostratus]

I think the outback station/pasture part of Australia is my favorite. It answers the age old question "what if farms could give production?" (the answer is they would be godlike.)
Whereas Japan will want you to play with cities placed such that you can cram lot of districts next to each other, Australia leans towards having wider spaces so you can get those adjacencies hoppin' like kangaroos.
I love the tweak they made after release so the pasture would count towards OBS production. (Before it was often better to replace a pasture with another OBS.) They have some really powerful early game bonuses with the appeal and coastal housing and culture bomb, and then at guilds they can awaken like a sleeping koala and switch to being a food/production monster. +1 food/+1 production is extremely strong without any bonuses.

I like how the Leader ability works mechanically as a defense against aggression and reward for liberation, but it might be too strong.
I don't think I've ever cracked 500 production in a city (no TR stacking) as anyone besides Australia. That 100% boost really needs to be shortened for balance...

 

[SephiBBZ]

My main.

I am usually walking on the map with settlers until someone takes it so that I can get 3 wonders in 5 turns

 

[kb27787]

People forget that the housing bonus is separate from the regular freshwater bonus...

Which means a city with both fresh and coastal water (common enough where the river meets the sea) starts off with a whopping 8 housing base! Throw in a granary, ToA and some improvements and you are looking at the worlds first 15 pop city long before even Kongo can manage it.

Unlike Brazil's bonus which replaces jungle's inherent bonus to campi (campus with 6 rainforest is only +6, not +9) a 6-mountain campus is indeed +9 as AU... In normal games at least you can manage at least +5 campi early (one mountain breathtaking with plaza) which skyrockets your early science greatly.

Production bonus can helpful in surviving early war as well, esp on deity. The safest civ to play by far.

 

[redfox85]

Australia can be a bit OP. I'm a prince/king player .. and use a mod to force cities 5 tiles apart. I had this crazy idea to do a diety game. Planted 6 cities that had +7 adjacency in campus' and kept up with the AI... just barely. That production bonus (it went DOW - DOW - Lib a City state.. so 40 turns of it), plus an Atomic dark age (policy card that gives +50% nuke production but not envoys) allowed me to spit out thermo nukes in 3-4 turns. I just barely won a domination victory by sniping the capitals with nukes and destroyers ... and turning Mapuche into something from the fallout universe and taking there capital with a Tank. Thats how a prince / king player had there only Deity win.

 

[Disgustipated]

People forget that the housing bonus is separate from the regular freshwater bonus...

Which means a city with both fresh and coastal water (common enough where the river meets the sea) starts off with a whopping 8 housing base!

Really? Did not know this. Yeah I'll take Australia over Brazil any day.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well, actually I played a few games before this, sooo.... gonna post! Emperor, Fractal, Blahblahblah...


Not exactly the most encouraging start; not much space to build.



I settled on the copper to be on the "coast" to meme the canal. It turned out to be a lake so had to drill another canal out somewhere.

Spoiler :

There really is nowhere to go. China's so close by and mobility is awful. Only Sydney has good production.

But at least we're doing decent with the science thanks to those mountains on appealing tiles. No good spot for Collosseum.



We finally make a push on China....it's already turn 177. He dies, but I let his last city revolt so I can liberate it for that liberation bonus!

Spoiler :

And then just hang around a bit and win a culture victory. There was a great campus site in the mountains but it has iron on it. :S It is also completely closed off so no national park



Seem to be rolling all these mediocre starts with Australia, but they're so strong that I'm just sorta winning without doing much. Australia can play their way out of any awful start it feels. Maybe I didn't even need to take out China. lol

I also managed to build that crappy lake wonder. Though Sydney had to do it for not the best spot. Those outback stations really helped as well as being able to put commercial hubs outside of rivers.