[R&F] Civ of the Week: Gilgabro

[Archon_Wing]

Dang rolled a quality start this time! It almost makes up for the near endless garbage starts for the past month. Not only is the start decent, but I managed to spawn 6 CSs with the same landmass as me, though it came with the disadvantage of me only having one neighbor and I actually failed to take his capital for some reason. And we all know that's because I made the mistake of building something that wasn't a war cart. I opened with only war carts at the start and bought a builder, mostly looking to clear camps for boosts. That led to a Classic Golden Age. I also should have put down more ziggurats but I was always running low on builder charges due to harvest and also only insisted on river spots which probably wasn't right either.



I actually didn't war beyond the 2 cities and settler I took from Poundmaker, though I was so far ahead anyways, and used my War Carts to take out barb camps to get boosts from them. Since I had opted for culture, I went for shipbuilding to find other civs. Expanding too slow so more barb camps appeared turned out to be a good thing. Naturally I wanted to grab Kilwa and once that finishes I have 4x the culture of the nearest AI. That's pretty much the end of the game right here.



Though I didn't win for a while since I was messing around though somehow I lost the first wonder GE by 1 turn and also somehow lost Oxford which sucked, but whatever.

Final Envoy Count-- and yes, I'm suzerain of everything and stopped caring about envoys a while back.

Spoiler :

Capital at the end

Spoiler :

Saves provided below, the t37 save is when i snagged Goddess of the Harvest so I provided, and the turn 1 save is after I settled but I doubt anyone would move the settler.

Settings:
Seeds:
-427938871
-427938872
Shuffle
Normal Size/Speed/Immortal Difficulty.

Though I can't guarantee the CS's will spawn as such.

 

[Leathaface]

Do Ziggurats aid you much? They seem to be weak seeing as they don't give you no food or production.

 

[Archon_Wing]

They're pretty good early game since science is hard to come by, especially on river spots where they'll give culture as well. They can also be useful for a cultural victory later on.

However, 2 science is probably going to beat anything else you put on those tiles for a long while

 

[eleven11]

Yes they do quite a bit. On grassland river tile they are food neutral and net +2 science, +1 culture times every city you have. That's quite a boost in the early game. I generally run at least 1 in every city

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Do Ziggurats aid you much? They seem to be weak seeing as they don't give you no food or production.

Agree with other posters. I keep it to 1 per city and always place next to a river. +2 science/+1 culture helps allot (for both early game, then mid game with more cities from conquests). Like your favorite harmless vice: 1 is good, 10 not so much so.
Disclaimer: 1 is good, 10 not so much so .Unless you are referring to devoting countless hours to playing Civilization. Then the more the better!

 

[liv]

I think Ziggurats are very good. Maybe the best unique improvement in the game You can get great science going without any building early in the game,
Even AI Summaria does well partly due to all the ziggurats they place

 

[UWHabs]

I think Ziggurats are very good. Maybe the best unique improvement in the game You can get great science going without any building early in the game,
Even AI Summaria does well partly due to all the ziggurats they place

Yeah, most games I find my capital grows pretty fast, so it's already working pretty crappy tiles. If I can grab a builder and put down a couple ziggurats instead of building a campus, that's a huge boost. And since production is crucial early, it means that you can put more hammers into donkeys. And then once you have created enough space for yourself, then you can start building campuses and whatnot.

You do have to be a bit careful that you actually give your cities enough food to grow, since they don't give food or housing. I wouldn't spam them on every tile like I would with the outback station, but I think you definitely want a bunch of them early to power your science and culture game.

 

[Disgustipated]

Time to play Gilgamesh. I admit this is one of my more disliked civs in the game. But I admit I haven't played them optimally in the past to best utilize their unique improvement. Honestly I just don't think they are that fun. I will play them, but most likely never play them again. But I am going to try to play them better than I have in the past.

Unfortunately my brother died 2 weeks ago, and playing this civ or being on these boards was the last thing on my mind. Worse yet my brother was suffering from a stroke while I was playing this game. That is 2 bad health things that happened this year while playing this game. It makes me wonder if this game is somehow cursed. Although I believe he initially got the stroke before I had started playing the game on Sunday (he lives with me making my guilt worse that I should have found him earlier, but I believe he started having the stroke when I was asleep). Sorry for the off topic rant. But this type of thing really affects a person, and even how I view this game. I have tried to take it in moderation with only one game a week, but yet I wonder about this bad luck and me missing warning signs.

As for Enkidu trait, the purpose of my game will be to see how useful this is post Rise and Fall. My biggest problem with the game is the difficulty in forming friendships and alliances if you do early conquest. And the war cart just screams early conquest. I'm thinking this is the biggest problem with this civ. They have a uu that goes against their trait. So we'll see how much I get out of it. I could always go all peaceful, but then I'm wasting my uu.

I'll share my start and starting save. It seems to me having good food start is essential to using the ziggurats since you aren't getting any food bonus from this improvement. I have rice, so that's a start. Most likely I'll just replace them as the game goes along with districts and farms. In the past when I was starting this game, I didn't put much stock into unique improvements, and I didn't get much use out of them. I will try to correct this.

Spoiler :

 

[liv]

Your start looks a bit flat but good for a lot of nice ziggurats that will serve you well. I do not find farms helpful but I guess that depends on how you play
I agree about Enkidu. It goes against the warcart abilities.
It is nice when you play against AI Gilgamesh as he will likely agree to friendship right away

 

[Disgustipated]

True, AI Gilgamesh truly is Gilgabro.

Finished my game. Not nearly as powerful or great as I had hoped. At this point I can't really rank them above a C+ grade. Meh. Map played some part in it, but map is always a factor, and good civs can overcome this to some extent. I can only consider them slightly above average. Still at least the unique improvement has more useful bonuses rather than faith that many of the unique improvements have.

Catherine the Great was my ranking, #6.

Only one nearby neighbor I could clobber with war carts, and that was Georgia. China was on my continent, but I didn't discover them until much later. I wanted to go the peaceful route at this point and try to form alliances. Though China was so backwards due to barbs hammering them, I went with alliances with other civs who found me since there was no deep water between our continents.

Strange map as I had trouble getting over 1000 gold per turn (standard epic speed map) and over 100 faith per turn, which meant I could only get 2 National Parks delaying my cultural victory a fair bit. Lack of religious city-states was one reason. Tourism seemed hard to come by as well, as well as great people that could have helped with tourism. Perhaps this was because I had strong rivals with Scotland in science and America in culture, Zulu were doing fairly well as well.

I'll share my not so epic Petra city. I tried Pyramids in this city, but started too late and lost, but snagged Petra with some of the lost production. With some more housing and trade routes, I probably could have grew this city more, but I wasn't that motivated. Behold my beautiful Ziggurats in my Petra city.

Spoiler :

They just aren't that fun of a civ for me, and not too likely I'll play them again.

As for Adventures in Enkidu, it's just not that useful of a trait. But on larger maps, I could have made more use out of it. I had 5 allies, and only 2 civs hostile to me (though China was friends for a while before they started hating me). Pangea maps would probably be more useful for this trait as well. All my allies were far away, and only one war triggered due to Scythia declaring war on my ally, I wasn't particularly interested in doing any fighting. If they were close by it would have been a little more interesting.

 

[Leathaface]

People say it is easy to befriend Gilgamesh, why is this?

 

[Archon_Wing]

You can always befriend him on the turn you meet him.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I'm really sorry to hear that Disgustipated.

 

[sixty4half]

People say it is easy to befriend Gilgamesh, why is this?

It's mainly due to his leader agenda "(Ally of Enkidu). Easy to Befriend, and likes Civilizations who are his Declared Friends. Dislikes anyone attacking or denouncing his friends"

What that means is that he won't dislike you until you start warring or denouncing, and even then, only if you denounce or war with his other friends. He'll always accept your Embassy on the turn you meet him because of this. And the Embassy will further increase how much he likes you. Compare that to someone like Cleopatra. Her agenda is directly tied to the size of your "army." So if you meet her early enough, she might not like you right off the bat because you only have 1 warrior and slinger. So she won't accept your Embassy the turn you meet her. Almost every other leader's agenda depends on something in your empire. Whether it be improvements, religion, culture, science, buildings, empire size ect. But his depends on absolutely nothing other than you being nice to him.

 

[liv]

I always forego the embassy and asks him for friendship on the turn I meet him which he will give you. I do not want to fight warcarts early so it is a win win. Traderoutes and trade will keep him happy and even as a warmonger I can get an alliance with him and keep it for quite awhile. Gilgabro is a great neighbour (except that he captures every city state and can really steamroll with his UI so my "strategy" can backfire.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

That's a good point about diplomacy. If you aren't going to take him out it makes sense to cultivate a relationship. He almost always wants to be friends if you put just a little effort into it, and that can result in some sweet deals. He also seems like he's happy to pitch in and fight in any wars to happen to be waging. I don't usually play Gilga because the war-carts feel like I'm the sixteen-year-old 6th grader kicking butts and taking names... O'Doyle Rules! Those ziggurats do a lot of nice things though. They can easily double your science early on, if that's what you want to do. The culture (when you can get it) makes it even sweeter not only for the policies but for border expansion. That can save you a lot in tile purchases, especially with Reyna. The goodie hut bonus that you get for clearing barbs isn't game breaking but I find that it always gives me a grab-bag of nice things that you wouldn't normally have. It's not game-breaking but it's stronger than I was expecting it to be.