[R&F] Civ of the Week: Kongo

[liv]

I do not find them fun. They are so luck based which is why I think "subpar" is better description for them than "overpowered". Yes you can be lucky and have Kandy or Yerevan or both beside you or you can luck out finding a relic on turn 4 and you can get a lucky start and chop a lot and yes someone can spread a religion to you that you can use and yes you may be able to make apostles and suicide them for goodies. But it is all about being lucky.

Now I get that if you play for a culture victory rushing early writers like BoyanSun does they will be overpowered because of their fast writers ability. But that is a specialized victory.

I am going to try early writers, Reyna and printing at least once this week and see if I enjoy it. Who knows.. maybe they will become my most liked civ after that

 

[Mr. Shadows]

I rolled a real gem of a start with Kongo yesterday. I had two coffee/hill/jungle and one banana/hill tile without moving. I've never really tried to leverage Kongo before so I set the difficulty at King to give me some wiggle room. I'm looking for a peaceful CV, and I'm more trying to experiment with Kongo's bonuses than anything. The +2 GW card worked like a charm, granted this is only King so there's less competition but +50% makes a noticeable difference. I'm going to have to watch and see if I can get the GM that boosts tourism through trade routes. I've chopped in several amphitheaters but I keep forgetting to move them around to take advantage of the bonus. So far I've been placing works strictly to enhance border-expansion without thinking about it. I probably should have filled Mbanza Kongo to make its production even stronger than it already is. It's only about turn 120 so better late than never. The biggest factor for me in this game has been their start bias, which tends to give them a lot of chops, as well as luxes that give either faith or culture. Obviously I lucked out but I get the impression that they "get lucky" a lot that way. The apostles are kind of a mixed bag. I got lucky with a healer for my first, and a martyr for my second. If you needed to you could use them to spoil an RV or possibly even to win a religious emergency. The healer made winning my last emergency against Nubia a lot easier. I get a decent amount of mileage out of swordsmen and these are a nice improvement. The extra mobility is nice, and the bonus vs. ranged really saved my bacon against Pitatis. I managed to snag the Pyramids, Coliseum and Oracle early on, and now I'm so far past the ai that I can probably choose my wonders. At this point it's really about getting archaeologists out to hoover up the artifacts. I'm enjoying Kongo a lot more than I thought I would. CVs are probably my favorite victory but when I want to go that route it's hard to get me away from Acropoli and Lavras. I also have to say these Civ of the Week threads are making me a much better player. Giving each Civ a few thoughtful games while reading everyone else's ideas is working wonders. Cheers everyone.

 

[UWHabs]

I love the 2x Coffee/hill/jungle starts. While it's slower to get your 3 builder charges in, you're just rolling in the money early game.

 

[eleven11]

Yeah overpowered might have been strong wording.. I do think they are easily A tier though. They have a solid ability for early Oligarchy warmongering with Mbemba not needing iron. They greatly benefit from getting an early great person district in place. I also love scouting and roughly half the time I find that I can nab a relic from ruins. Maybe I just have had a good run with them.... but they seem to have some numerical bias to finding relics from ancient ruins.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

I love the 2x Coffee/hill/jungle starts. While it's slower to get your 3 builder charges in, you're just rolling in the money early game.

The extra culture gets you to Craftsmanship so quickly that it almost doesn't matter, especially when you figure in the hammers, food and gold. I was planning on a peaceful game anyway so I worked foreign trade first and popped the eureka for Craftsmanship in my second city. I went Scout/Settler (it's King) so that made the most out of my eurekas. It's fun playing with caffeinated culture

 

[playshogi]

Heathen conversion is a useful promotion. I was able to clear a barb camp for era points and my 8th land unit for a boost to mercenaries. It what is possibly a bug, the next turn I got a caravel, too. I'm still researching cartography, so it's not one I could've built.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Now this was a neat start (Emperor/Shuffle/Standard). Also popped a relic.

I settled on the chocolate to take advantage of the extra GPT and actually bought tiles to improve. Opened scouts and had much too much gold to deal with, especially after the commercial hub. Fell into a Dark Age since I didn't locate Rome soon enough and before I knew it had been forward settled. He also attacked as well, but the Dutch took a CS and set off an emergency. Eventually i just faith buy a Great General and use tortoise Mvembas to overrun him.

Capital had 800 tourism

Spoiler :

Final state of the capital

Spoiler :

Managed to fit in 12 wonders here, though bad placement meant I had to build Oxford next door. Also someone built Colosseum; never saw that coming. That sorta ruined things.

Turn 35 save is where I get Goddess of the Harvest, so left it there as well

 

[Boyan_Sun]

I am going to try early writers, Reyna and printing at least once this week and see if I enjoy it.

This is a bit difficult to casual players, needs a lot of skills. Actually requires two combo, one for Reyna and one for Pingala.

1. Pingala level 3 + Oracle in non-capital, which produces 6 times of GW points(for Kongo is 9), much cheaper than 5 more theaters.
2. Reyna level 4 + Great Library + Apadana in capital, to maximum double tourism writings.
3. Need too many productions to build wonders and theaters, so we usually use Magnus + Agoge overflow (I know a lot of people here are against that)
4. Keep in peace to avoid military costs. Really need good defense skill to deal with barbarians, and try to please AIs...

The key idea of this strategy is not just to get more tourism, but to keep AI from getting more domestic tourism. If you can get all classic and medieval writers, then AI will not (renaissance writers need too many GP), so they will lack of culture to generate domestic tourism, and they cannot trigger some inspirations like 3 great people. So it's harder to have Russia or Kongo in the AI.

6otM35 T97 CV and 6otM39 T107 CV were all using this strategy, but neither civilization is the best fit for it. Kongo is surely one of the best for this "special" strategy. (Besides, I don't really think this is special, as long as not against overflow, I can do it in every deity CV game, just slower in some conditions)

 

[liv]

This is a bit difficult to casual players, needs a lot of skills.

I think it will be my first culture win if I make it to the end so I was under no illusion that I could get a very good finish time. But nice to try something different with Kongo. And thanks for writing that out.

Kongo is surely one of the best for this "special" strategy. (Besides, I don't really think this is special,

Yes, I was thinking about this and concur that the civ should be "scored" by how really good deity players do (rather than those strategies be deemed "special" by someone who cannot follow them

 

[Mr. Shadows]

This is a bit difficult to casual players, needs a lot of skills. Actually requires two combo, one for Reyna and one for Pingala.

1. Pingala level 3 + Oracle in non-capital, which produces 6 times of GW points(for Kongo is 9), much cheaper than 5 more theaters.
2. Reyna level 4 + Great Library + Apadana in capital, to maximum double tourism writings.
3. Need too many productions to build wonders and theaters, so we usually use Magnus + Agoge overflow (I know a lot of people here are against that)
4. Keep in peace to avoid military costs. Really need good defense skill to deal with barbarians, and try to please AIs...

The key idea of this strategy is not just to get more tourism, but to keep AI from getting more domestic tourism. If you can get all classic and medieval writers, then AI will not (renaissance writers need too many GP), so they will lack of culture to generate domestic tourism, and they cannot trigger some inspirations like 3 great people. So it's harder to have Russia or Kongo in the AI.

6otM35 T97 CV and 6otM39 T107 CV were all using this strategy, but neither civilization is the best fit for it. Kongo is surely one of the best for this "special" strategy. (Besides, I don't really think this is special, as long as not against overflow, I can do it in every deity CV game, just slower in some conditions)

Thank you for a worthy riddle! I'm not a very serious player but I think I can crack this nut.

 

[Hactar]

Playing Kongo on a Duel map is a challenge. Try not to lose a religious victory.

 

[Lord Lakely]

The only thing that is kind of awkward about them is the Apostles. The only promotion you want is the one that give relics but the way promotions work for Apostles you don't get that very often. You can't win a religous victory so spreading the religion only helps your opponents. So you end up with a bunch of near useless Apostles running around without much to do. I guess you can convert some barbarians with one and the rest can basically be substitutes for scouts.

The best way to use them, I've found, is to build Mont-St-Michel and then kamikaze your apostles by sending them to a strong religious opponent. You'll be swimming in relics in no time.

 

[sixty4half]

Playing Kongo on a Duel map is a challenge. Try not to lose a religious victory.

You could just declare war ASAP and then condemn heretics with military units.

 

[kb27787]

Seems reliquaries is still bugged... check my capital... true, I have max relics with reliquaries, as well as several pieces of artwork; but there's no way that can add up to 1500+ tourism in Mbanza Kongo alone... (I am aware of the national parks bug, but there were no parks in that city) Either the game report is wrong, or it seems Rena also gives bonuses to relics... or who knows....

Anyway first game ever that I managed 18 (5 palace + 2 apadana + 2 Michel + 2 Bank + 3 basil + 4 museum) relic slots... usually Apadana/Medici is taken by AI... here I managed to get them both.


Btw, two civs gone, and Persia had 250+ cpt... does not really matter when your tourism is that high haha... completely peaceful game, no early relics... but early culture from jade and amber is so strong... you get God King faster than anyone else. A rather average game that did not get any religion in my cities until almost t100. If it had come sooner the game probably would end 30+ turns faster.

Culture flipped a bunch of conquered CS so that was nice. Who says Kongo cannot generate faith? Actually with reliquaries + gold age dedication you almost did not need harvest pantheon (well, it can only help... I ended up spending the leftover faith on naturalists)... save a handful of turns after victory.. If any other civ tries to get that many relics the faith cost would be too high to make it worthwhile... only Kongo can pull off something like this.

 

[local_hero]

Seems reliquaries is still bugged... check my capital... true, I have max relics with reliquaries, as well as several pieces of artwork; but there's no way that can add up to 1500+ tourism in Mbanza Kongo alone... (I am aware of the national parks bug, but there were no parks in that city) Either the game report is wrong, or it seems Rena also gives bonuses to relics... or who knows....

What is the national park bug? I like national parks, sounds like I should know this.

Cities with extra slots wonders aside, the dream opponent must be Victoria for Kongo. Conquer those cities for archelogical museum with 6 slots.

 

[kb27787]

What is the national park bug? I like national parks, sounds like I should know this.

Cities with extra slots wonders aside, the dream opponent must be Victoria for Kongo. Conquer those cities for archelogical museum with 6 slots.

The tourism lens and the reports will show grossly inflated tourism values (1000-2000) each... The number on the top of your screen is correct though. I do not know why national parks are the only source of tourism that gets so grossly overcalculated in the report... Did not use to be like this preexpansion (see funny screenshots thread)

 

[Mr. Shadows]

My King game ended in a turn 177 CV, which is certainly my fastest. The extra GWs combined with the extra slot in the palace make it easy to build up a lot of tourism before the ai can really get cranking. I'm going to be playing more with these guys in the near future.

 

[liv]

I tried it as well with a similar result. Did you build many campuses @Mr. Shadows

Trying to get all the great writers and find spots for them was fun. Kongo excels in this kind of a game for sure. It was nice to explore a powerful side of them.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

I tried it as well with a similar result. Did you build many campuses @Mr. Shadows

Trying to get all the great writers and find spots for them was fun. Kongo excels in this kind of a game for sure. It was nice to explore a powerful side of them.

I had seven cities (I flipped one towards the end for eight but that didn't matter) with seven Theaters and four campuses. Printing and Cartography were the last techs that mattered. I did a few sloppy things though. I neglected mid-game exploration and so met 2 Civs very late. I only built the GL when I saw it was available late, and then realized it had two writer slots. That was a light-bulb moment for me. I didn't even think about Apadana, but I certainly had enough chops and raw hammers to put both of those in my cap. I probably should have put the Oracle in the city I built the Pyramids instead of the Pyramids. I probably should have tried to squeeze an extra city or two in during my expansion phase. The thing was I didn't want to antagonize my neighbors too much because I wanted as many mutual open borders as possible. I think I worried too much about that though; an extra city or two would have helped.

 

[Ferocitus]

Before R&F (and Shaka), Kongo, Brazil and Aztecs were by far the most difficult
opponents to beat.

I now only ever play on the largest Terra maps and always have 5 civs in Africa,
namely, Kongo, Egypt, Arabia, Zulus and Nubia.
In many dozens of games I have never seen Kongo eliminated. Even barnstorming
civs like Nubia can be eliminated early by one of the other 4.