[R&F] Civ of the Week: Kongo

[Disgustipated]

Jungle/Forest bias is one of the best start biases in R&F.

meh. I just don't like starting in/near them. They are awesome later once you have magnus and a couple builders to really chop the hell out of those rainforests. Who needs rainforests anyways. Though I should add that rainforest hills are pretty awesome, flat rainforest just flat out sucks.

 

[Archon_Wing]

meh. I just don't like starting in/near them. They are awesome later once you have magnus and a couple builders to really chop the hell out of those rainforests. Who needs rainforests anyways. Though I should add that rainforest hills are pretty awesome, flat rainforest just flat out sucks.

Well, that's the whole point. To chop them for a lot of extra production, and they have a higher than average yield before Magnus

 

[Disgustipated]

Why would it be higher before Magnus?

Okay here's my start. For realsies this time. I'll make this work or die trying. Hills start is always nice...

Spoiler :

 

[playshogi]

OK, so I found Kandy on move 17 and got the 1st envoy. Now, what? Exploration ceases until I can get Amani established? A backwards way to play, for sure.

 

[eleven11]

I find even flat rainforests are great to chop in population with a bit of production on the side. You can forward settle and chop a few rainforests to shore up loyalty and increase city usefulness immediately. They also provide pretty good defensive terrain against early game deity AI so you can do risky starts like builder -> Settler.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Why would it be higher before Magnus?

Better yields for early game. It gives 1 food in addition to whatever was there. And then once it falls behind it can just be chopped.

 

[liv]

As for Kongo and faith making. You do get faith from destroyed holy sites

r I am looking at how much faith I am making per turn which at present is 68.9
So where does it come from.? I obviously have no real Holy Sites
12.4 faith from Iambi (a captured city) which has a campus which seems to also have a Shrine, temple and wat built???? according to the reports
7.7 faith from Palemberg which has the colossus that gives 4 faith but unclear what is making the 3.7 faith (it is a destoyed holy site)
4.8 faith from Mistawasis which is working a dye for one faith, the rest from the holy site that is no longer there

etc....

 

[BenitoChavez]

My Kongo game: Immortal, Epic, Continents. It's going pretty well. I've got 6 cities at the moment with science districts up and running in 3 of them, working on a bunch of theater districts, and I was able to chop out The Oracle with Magnus for more great people . I got had the perfect opportunity to take Nubia's capitol because she declared war on Indonesia who is to the southwest. Once all her army left I declared a surprise war and swooped in for the free cities. She was able to take Indonesia's capitol so there is that.

I'm currently trying to liberate Auckland and complete this emergency before I run out of time. My army wasn't in the best position when it popped up but I took it anyway since I had weakened Nubia so much. Still she has a lot of archers and they are a real pain to deal with. The Ngao Mbeba has really saved my butt because I don't have any iron. Also I've managed to surround a couple archers by using the extra movement in jungles. Their UU may not be super strong but it has utility and that is definitely worth something. I may liberate Majapahit after Auckland cuz I'm nice like that.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[BenitoChavez]

As for Kongo and faith making. You do get faith from destroyed holy sites

r I am looking at how much faith I am making per turn which at present is 68.9
So where does it come from.? I obviously have no real Holy Sites
12.4 faith from Iambi (a captured city) which has a campus which seems to also have a Shrine, temple and wat built???? according to the reports
7.7 faith from Palemberg which has the colossus that gives 4 faith but unclear what is making the 3.7 faith (it is a destoyed holy site)
4.8 faith from Mistawasis which is working a dye for one faith, the rest from the holy site that is no longer there

etc....

That's strange. In my game both cities I captured had holy sites which disappeared on capture. I'm not getting any faith from those former HS. Maybe it has to do with the building built in a HS because I don't think Nubia had time to build a shrine/temple yet. Are you using any mods?

Edit: Looking at Archon_Wing's post on the first page it seems like the buildings in a HS aren't destroyed. Must be a bug with Kongo.

 

[Disgustipated]

So this game is going much better. It helps I had a relatively non-rainforest start as you can see in my screenshot in post #23. It's a pretty awesome start to be frank.

Of course the cheesy warrior rush helped. I hate to do this, but I wanted to get the edge on the early game and not fall so far behind. 6 warriors made short work of America. America is not great again. And then 7 warriors made short work of Korea. Sorry Kim Jong-Un. And then Giglabro was too close to comfort and he had to go with my newly upgraded UU's (getting the gold to upgrade to these takes a while). I let Spain be even knowing they would backstab me later (and they did) in order to try to form alliances. Amazingly alliances were easier to form this game than last game. Even with Gandhi. I can't explain the AI sometimes.

I forgot to give Reyna her last promotion, or I could have tried for an earlier victory, but this game is well in hand. My beers are catching up with me. Time to sleep.

Spoiler :

 

[liv]

That's strange. In my game both cities I captured had holy sites which disappeared on capture. I'm not getting any faith from those former HS. Maybe it has to do with the building built in a HS because I don't think Nubia had time to build a shrine/temple yet. Are you using any mods?

No mod
Here is the screen shot

Spoiler :

the interesting thing about the "campus" in Iambi with all those holy buildings in it is that it is placed on top of where the holy site was. So now I get the faith from those ghost buildings. I have not finihsed the campus

Spoiler :

And why are they defending with catapults???

Kind of quirky. Now I really feel like experimenting with ghost holy sites

 

[BarbarianHunter]

No mod
Here is the screen shot

Spoiler :

View attachment 499133

the interesting thing about the "campus" in Iambi with all those holy buildings in it is that it is placed on top of where the holy site was. So now I get the faith from those ghost buildings. I have not finihsed the campus

And why are they defending with catapults???

There is definitely something out of the ordinary with Kongo and former Holy Sites. I am able to place religious works of art in ghost Cathedrals as well. I believe the former buildings also grant faith to some lesser degree than they would for a normal civ that could found a religion.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[eleven11]

This civ is truly OP. Rolled a great start right off the bat. Good enough that I'll actually finish the game.

Spoiler Start :

Spoiler Seed :

Deity Pangea Standard All

Spoiler Don't look if you are going to give the map a shot :

I found a Relic on Turn 4 with my Warrior. I was planning a peaceful game but by the time I got Iron working researched, Khmer was sitting there without walls and 80% of his force on Lisbon's borders. Tsk Tsk. As a bonus, he took Jesuit Priests and I have Goddess. Could be a fastest culture finish for me.

 

[liv]

I am not sure I am understading how they are truly overpowered. You obviously have found the most powerful wonder in the game. Any civ that builds next to it will be overpowered

 

[Disgustipated]

Those pictures don't work for me. What wonder are you referring to?

 

[UWHabs]

Those pictures don't work for me. What wonder are you referring to?

Assuming it's talking about Roraima. Having a free 16 faith and 16 science nearby is definitely strong - I started with that in range of my 2nd city in my current game and it was definitely crazy. Having a 2 food/2 prod/3 science/3 faith tile workable in a new city without an improvement is just insanity.

 

[eleven11]

I am not sure I am understading how they are truly overpowered. You obviously have found the most powerful wonder in the game. Any civ that builds next to it will be overpowered

Yeah it's Roraima but it was my 3rd city settled around T40. I didn't start with it.

Mainly, I believe they are OP due to his start bias in rainforests/forests which enables fast pop growth and lots of production overflow chopping. I chopped in 5 settlers prior to turn 60.. and a full army.. and a handful of builders. And I haven't even made a dent in resources.

The swordsman without needing to worry about iron is amazing too - and if you have iron, you can sell it to the AI for extra cash while you wait on knights. I had 2 iron this game sold for about 400 gold. I was able to get a Great Writer by T70 (could have been much sooner had I not focused on wide expansion) and slot it in my capital palace.

 

[Disgustipated]

Finished my game with the Kongo. One of my fastest victories ever, so there's that. I still have mixed feeling about them due to some not great starts with them on Sunday, but I really wasn't in a Civ playing frame of mind anyways. There's still something about this civ I don't like. I generally don't care for civs focused one one victory type, even though I had a blast on my Pericles game back in the Greek Civ of the week, they are my favorite of the cultural victory civs.

My ranking was lower than expected at #10: Hatshepsut. I'm not sure why it was so low due to my relatively fast victory time.

The fast warrior rush is cheesy, but effective. I just started building warriors from turn 1 and didn't stop until I had enough to do what I needed to do. But this really isn't effective above King difficulty which I was playing at because archers come too fast and tear you apart. Gilgamesh probably could have built archers, but he was intent on his stupid donkey cart. By then I had my unique swordsmen unit which made short work of those donkeys.

I'll include my save, though I got the cultural victory one turn earlier than expected. The score shows me 1 point shy, but several things completed this turn, including Cristo (which I didn't even need). I just had so many great people this game.

The relic thing wasn't really a thing. I didn't get one until I got an apostle with the martyr promotion. No goodie hut pops for relics. Is there any way to get more buildings to put relics in? I built the wonder for the free martyr promotion, but while building it I realized I have no where to put relics. And you'll see in the save the AI never took out my apostle just sitting there on his holy site. Relics are just too annoying to reliably get this game, which is a mark against Kongo. And nearly every city in that save has an idle Apostle. Dumb mechanic in my opinion as also noted in a post above. I did convert a couple of my cities, but all that does is give me more Apostles. Without more places to put relics, and an AI willing to take out my apostles, these things are useless, and I didn't bother with them all game.

I was concentrating on Reyna final promotion in my capital, which meant I preferred to keep writing, art, and music in my capital for the Reyna boost. I goofed, and forgot to build Hermitage in my capital. One of these days I'll realize my dream of a super Reyna capital with National history museum, art museum, hermitage, and other wonders that can house artists/writers/musicians. I need to remember to plan ahead. Final Grade B. Certainly an above average civ, but they aren't the most fun to play in my opinion.

I compared victory times and I got 347 with Pericles and 373 with Kongo both on epic speed standard size map.

Spoiler :

 

[BarbarianHunter]

My Kongo Game

Started in an atypical location for Kongo with some menacing looking Deity level neighbors to the North and East (Mongolia and Shaka). I decided that it wouldn’t be such a good idea to settle in their direction until there was at least some illusion of parity, so I backsettled and declared on 2 city states.

Spoiler :

Orchestrated a Classical dark age on purpose, then a Heroic Age to take advantage of the Commercial Hub science bonus as well as Monumentality. The Heroic Age commercial hub science bonus kept the edge off this deity level scenario for a while, then I had to build more campuses.

One of my main issues with Kongo as a civ was the looooong archeological museum/archeologist/explore+acquire-x3-artifacts production and exploration time curve. I find the key to not becoming agitated with this civ, as well as extracting value for the very serious artifact bonuses is to 1) build commercial hubs, 2) drop 6 envoys into one (or more) commercial city states, and 3) simply buy the museums and archeologists immediately. This gets the archeologist out exploring and recovering artifacts allot sooner and you closer to actually having a themed 12 food/12production/24 gold/18 culture/27 tourism museum! This would be opposed to be planning for one that will finish sometime after Y2K.

Early on I was declared on by the Mongols and served it back to him with my crossbow units but couldn’t continue due to his fearsome diplomatic visibility augmented cav units. This left me with a quandary: What to do with the army? I know I didn't want to waste all the production, gold and effort it took to build, so I'd best figure out something to do with it. I pivoted to the east and hit Shaka. This began the perma-war that lasted until the last 10 or so turns of the game .

Spoiler :

<Insert much war and carnage here> ...Shaka...Indonesia...Mongolia...Poland...

By the time I got to my arch rival, Robert the Bruce, I found he had concentrated on Culture, Rocketry, and Spaceports but didn’t have any modern units or decent garrison defenses worth mentioning. I was guessing his units also lacked the experience my units had accrued over the multi-millenia running wars as well. So rather than prolong the game, I decided to invade him.

Shortly after declaring, I found the Colosseum that had been built out from under me in the Classical Era, along with more than a few other wonders. In fact, the fellow was a PROLIFIC wonder builder! His wonder fetish and the Theatre Squares in his region helped immensely in the quest to realize a cultural victory!

Spoiler :

Reducing the tourists required from 445 on T258 to 219 on T268 (after eliminating him) helped as well ;-).

Spoiler 258 :

Spoiler 268 :

Ended up with #2 ranking, Hammurabi due to all the conquests.

Take:

• Artifacts are powerful.
  
• 50% bonus to Theatre Square and Commercial Hub GP is quite useful.
  
• Much more fun to play that to play against.
  
• UU, not much to say. Knights and horses are better for the long term.
  
• Discovered that Ghost Cathedrals in former Holy Sites can house religious works of art.
  
• Oddly, the normally belligerent perma redface/frown AI’s seem willing to trade artifacts for an another artifact and a couple hundred gold (this helps quite a bit with theming).
  
• Science is important but not as much with other civs

 

[kb27787]

Really, you need Mt st michael and basils cathedral with them otherwise they are subpar (you also need a religion spread to you before the TSs go up as mbanzas come a bit too late for my liking)

Properly played though they are fun (but not efficient) who cares if you win after t 200 when your capital can pound out a late game wonder in 8 turns without chopping? Also, best civ to do city flips (peaceful conquest) due to the UDs causing your cities sizes to be double that of your neighbors mid game. If they did not cap the pressure at -20, or make free cities not have innate +10, Kongo would be a lot more fun.