[R&F] Civ of the Week: Perky Persia!

[acluewithout]

• Leader: Billy Ray Cyrus

• Leader Ability: Fall of Bablyon. Small Club right next door to Hellenistic Fusion and Trajan's Column. Dubstep Thursday - Saturday. Bingo on Sunday afternoons. Also: declaring a Surprise War counts as Formal War for the purposes of War Weariness and Warmonger Penalties. All units receive +2 movement for 10 turns after you declare Surprise War. +5 Loyalty per turn in Occupied Cities if you have a Garrisoned Unit in that City.

• Civ Ability: Satrapies. +1 Trade Route capacity a Political Philosphy. Internal Trade Routes provide +2 Gold and +1 Culture. Roads built in Persian Territory are +1 Level.
  
  
• Unique Unit: Immortal. Unique Melee Unit which replaces the Swordsman. Lower Combat Strength (30 v 36), but can melee attack and ranged attack (Range 2, Ranged Attack 25). Production Cost 100, Maintenance 2, Movement 2, upgrades to Musketman.

• Unique Infrastructure: Pairidaeza. Unique Improvement (requires one Builder Charge) that unlocks at Early Empire. Cannot be built on Tundra or Snow or adjacent to another Pairidaeza. Grants +1 Culture, +2 Gold, +2 Appeal, and an additional +1 Culture for each adjacent Holy Site or Theatre Square, +1 Gold for each adjacent Commercial Hub or City Centre, and +1 Culture at Diplomatic Service.

• Leader Agenda: Opportunist. Likes Surprise Wars. Dislikes Civilizations that don't declare Surprise Wars. Mixed feels about Surprise Parties, Chicken Surprise, Surprise Surprise.

• Suggested Reading: Archon_Wing; Lily_Lancer; Gardening with Cyrus; .

Notes:

• The Immortal is meant to be able to both melee attack and ranged attack, but it's been buggy across the various patches. In any event, AFAIK, promotion bonuses apply to both the Immortal's melee and ranged attacks and it can capture cities (when it's working properly). I'm not sure if its ranged attack gets a +10 against Anti-Cav units (can someone check please).
  
  
• The Paradiezaradeza-thingy, like other improvements that give culture, also produces Tourism after you research Flight. The Appeal bonus also then helps with placing Seaside Resorts and National Parks, which also provide Tourism.
  
  
• Am I the only person that thinks Cyrus looks like a 1980s Aerobics Instructor?

• Persia get +2 Movement for 10 Turns when you declare Surprise War. This bonus applies to both Military and Non-Military Units, so it also improvements Movement for Builders for example.

[edit: corrected extra movement when Cyrus declares Surprise War and Tourism at Flight (not Natural History).]

 

[Starwars]

They also get +2 movement for 10 turns after declaring Surprise Wars...

... which, creates this weird gameplay thing that I don't really like in these games. Sure, I don't have to declare wars but that +2 movement allows you to scout out a map quite quickly with a few good units. Just declare on someone who isn't in a position to really do something to you and you can just zip around everywhere.
It's... really useful but feels weird I think.

Pairideazes are a really good improvement and makes Persia a pretty good choice for pursuing culture victories. Internal trade also really help getting the culture tree going.

A strong civ overall.

 

[SahintheFalcon]

The +2 movement needs to be fixed to only apply to military units, not civilian units.

 

[acluewithout]

@Starwars Thanks. I’ve amended the OP to cover that.

@SahintheFalcon I’m pretty sure it also applies to non-military units (at least Builders), but perhaps someone could check?

 

[Leathaface]

I watch 2 streamers play Diety on Civ VI much, they are The Game Mechanic and The Saxy Gamer. They both have a ranking system of all Civs up to R&F.

The Saxy Gamer gives Persia and "S" rating overall, which is the very best ranking. The Game Mechanic gives Persia 18 points on his "Deity Ranking list", which is more points than any other civ. (Germany has 17, Korea and Russia 16) So Persia is a powerful civ. Though I personally have yet to play them since moving up to Immortal difficulty.

 

[Disgustipated]

Personally I wouldn't rank them that high. I always felt like Macedon was the strongest in that dlc. Admittedly I haven't played them since playing them twice shortly after that dlc came out.

I feel their bonus abilities are quite strong, but not focussed on any one victory type such as Macedon or Pericles. For comparison I will do an early expansion(war) as I did in my Pericles game then go for culture win for comparison.

and correct me if I am wrong, but I believe it is flight when unique improvements start generating tourism. Edit: I looked it up, flight, not natural history is correct. I'll check On some of the other issues mentioned in the op when I play.

I look forward to playing them post r&f and see how that loyalty thing plays out. What is their vanilla bonus?

 

[Disgustipated]

Here's a King start if anyone wants to play. The screenshot is interesting. I'm not a big fan of moving and prefer settling in place, but not sure I like this start. I'll check on the Immortals range attack against anti-cav this game, and whether they can take cities. Last time I heard, they cannot after rise and fall.

Spoiler :

Cyrus's Fall of Babylon bonus for Vanilla version of Civ6 is no penalty to yields for occupied cities instead of +5 to loyalty in occupied cities with a garrison. I figured I'd look that up since I couldn't remember his Vanilla bonus. The rest of Fall of Babylon is the same as far as I can tell.

 

[Disgustipated]

I am getting the +10 combat bonus vs. anti cavalry units with my Immortals with ranged attack.

Regarding Immortals, I have to say the change to the Commando promotion in a recent patch really benefits their promotion tree which is of a melee unit, not a ranged unit. Makes for some extremely fast Immortals. Unfortunately, Immortals currently cannot capture cities which makes keeping a warrior around or making a spearman pretty useful. I made a spearman since I had a city-state quest to do so, I still have one warrior as well since the upgrade is quite expensive.

As for the Immortal itself, the melee strength I find is not that useful since I use them so much like an archer anyways. And I can't really find a way to actually perform a melee attack anyways. I'm guessing only on defense? It's kind of a strange unit that way, and not particularly one of my favorite UU's.

I noticed something about the Immortals in that the AI treats them as a melee unit and won't target them with enemy archers inside cities. Not surprising given their promotion tree. This is quite frustrating as they target my melee units instead like my spearman. I struggled to take the last Mapuche city (didn't help I was in a golden age) because the enemy archer kept tearing up my melee units that could take the city and got so wounded I had to pull back the melee units. Didn't help my movement bonus wore off by then. The inability of Immortals to take a city is a serious drawback, it's why I seriously disagree with anyone ranking them that high as mentioned above. The only way I was able to take his capital is by distracting him with regular archers, though I bought a heavy chariot just in case, but he wasn't needed.

And the other major problem with Immortals that I see are city walls. They still can't deal with them well just as archers can't. Though with enough of them they aren't too bad. To me, the window of opportunity for Immortals is small. I could have pressed my attack on one more civ maybe, but I held back at 2 civs eliminated. I'm concentrating on culture now.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Unfortunately, Immortals currently cannot capture cities which makes keeping a warrior around or making a spearman pretty useful.

I thought the same thing, but did some research and found that you have to use the KEY BINDINGS and choose the key for "ATTACK" in order to engage in a melee attack. Default seems to be ranged. I used it on some barbs and assume it works on cities (as was the gist of another post on the matter).

Spoiler KEY BINDINGS :

They said they fixed this with the patch, then I tried and was still unsuccessful. This had me sworn off Persia until now, and I'm glad the Civ of the Week brought up the subject again, as I'm having fun with my game .

Started a couple of games with Persia for the Civ of the Week. In the 1st I was swamped with barbs and cramped on a peninsula of sorts so I restarted. I mean the 1st game was winnable, but rather blasé (so I quit).

Spoiler Barbs1 :

Spoiler BARBS2 :

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/barbarian-spawn-rate-remains-insane.628150/

The second game is hitting on all cylinders.

Spoiler :

Stayed in a perma-war from very early on, alternating between trading lux resources for gold then immediately declaring a surprise war on either Nubia, America, or the Dutch. Well, actually I didn’t alternate much with the Dutch.

Recruited Magnus then Amani, then sent Amani Hattusa (became suzerain +2 era score), then left and went to Carthage (has yet to arrive). Not all that relevant though, as I’m 1 era score away from a medieval golden age with 32 turns left (+5 for sending the Dutch to the dustbin of history).

This high movement alternating surprise warring has netted me 8 cities by turn 59, Immortal, Standard speed. The trading, then declaring in combination with the Pairidaeza’s has kept me in the gold as well. This is one of my better starts and the reason I love playing Persia. I should soon be swimming in science and gold as I can ignore Theatre Squares, building only Campi and Commercial Hubs (now if I could only stumble onto Kumasi). I’ll soon begin buying builders for a centrally located colosseum for more culture.

The +2 movement for surprise wars makes my archers a lite version of a Nubian archer but counts for the movement of builders and settlers as well. Speaking of Nubian archer lite, I have 4 main archer units that did most of the heavy lifting, and because they could move to a 2 movement tile, then fire, they have been able to acquire more experience than one might expect. Two of them are x3 promotions and 2 are x2.

As for the immortal rush, I hear it works. I don’t do it, and will wait on knights.

Persia commands a Triple A rating in my book, right there with Macedon, Russia, Shaka, and (on a good day) Pericles.

 

[Disgustipated]

I forgot about how much gold these guys can generate. I know we were talking about it on the Egypt civ of the week discussing how Egypt and the Cree are probably the best gold makers, but I'd say Cyrus is fairly high as a gold maker as well.

I just upgraded my Immortals to musketmen in my game or I'd try that attack key binding. Good to know. Actually I probably have an old save I can try it out on. I'll have to do it tomorrow as I'm done for the day. It's good to have these threads so we can learn things like this.

 

[acluewithout]

Personally I wouldn't rank them that high. I always felt like Macedon was the strongest in that dlc. Admittedly I haven't played them since playing them twice shortly after that dlc came out.

I feel their bonus abilities are quite strong, but not focussed on any one victory type such as Macedon or Pericles. For comparison I will do an early expansion(war) as I did in my Pericles game then go for culture win for comparison.

and correct me if I am wrong, but I believe it is flight when unique improvements start generating tourism. Edit: I looked it up, flight, not natural history is correct. I'll check On some of the other issues mentioned in the op when I play.

I look forward to playing them post r&f and see how that loyalty thing plays out. What is their vanilla bonus?

Thanks. I’ve corrected the OP. No idea how I got that wrong.

 

[craney1987]

I've just loaded up my first Persia game post r&f. My starting location was terrible for production but I'm not a fan of rerolling so I ran with it.
I ignored an early scout and instead started with a couple of warriors because of later upgrades to immortals. This led me to only having a small view of the map. I had Toronto to my south. France very close to the east and Australia across a wide desert to the north. I assumed that I might be pressured by France at some point and kept a small army near my second city which I had parked as close to their territory as I could as a land grab. However, at around turn 40 (could've been a little later I forgot to record) three Australian warriors appeared outside my borders. I poked my garrisons head out to see if there was anything else behind and found that there was a second wave of three warriors and an archer on their way also. Time to switch gears to military production. I'd been focusing on getting to iron working and hadn't seen much barb activity so I hadn't yet researched archery. I only had a couple of singers and a few warriors to hold out with. What I did have though, was two rivers running either side of a row of hexes that meant everything coming at me had to stop twice before attacking. Such an amazing quirk of map generation. This gave me time to pump out some extra slingers and a heap of warriors. Defeat what seemed like endless waves of Australian warriors and march toward their as yet undiscovered capital only to find it and Australia's second city protected behind a row of mountains funnelling anything I threw at them right into the jaws of their own archers.

Peace it is.

All this stalemating drove me to a dark classical age, which I'm currently in. With the ui and immortals and a few other odd things I've easily reached points for a heroic age, and have declared war on Australia again to capture an errant settler they helpfully sent my way. Still no way around those mountains though and they sit safely in their den laughing at me!


This is the most fun I've had playing in a long time. I wish I'd taken screen shots. I really enjoyed the wave attack of Australia. The odd dynamic of two capitals neighbouring behind two incredibly strong natural barriers is really fun. Australia's army is minimal but with only two tile access to either city between mountains and sea, my units are fodder for archers and walls. And those two rivers means the same for Australia.

The AI doesn't seem to see this though and pull their troops back. They just continue to suicide themselves at my capital. Which I know is probably bad AI. But I enjoy watching it!

Emperor. Standard speed. Random map.

TLDR: I had fun playing Persia, but so far it's mostly to do with a fun map generation.

 

[liv]

Been playing a bit of Perky-
All I could think about was how much I would rather have swordmen than the immortal.
Negatives of immortal
-They are weak - at the point in the game when they are available they seem obsolete as a range unit.
-They are poor as a melee unit
-They do not improve city strength
-When you want to use their range ability you have to double take and remember to engage it as their default is melee and this also make
-their automatic path incredible confusing and often totally misleading (well worse than normally with units)

Immortal makes this civ a weaker one compared with the top civs. I don't think the extra movement (great as that is) and the Pairidaeza make up for it

 

[row2infinity]

• Leader: Billy Ray Cyrus

• Leader Ability: Fall of Bablyon. Small Club right next door to Hellenistic Fusion and Trajan's Column. Dubstep Thursday - Saturday. Bingo on Sunday afternoons. Also: declaring a Surprise War counts as Formal War for the purposes of War Weariness and Warmonger Penalties. All units receive +2 movement for 10 turns after you declare Surprise War. +5 Loyalty per turn in Occupied Cities if you have a Garrisoned Unit in that City.

• Civ Ability: Satrapies. +1 Trade Route capacity a Political Philosphy. Internal Trade Routes provide +2 Gold and +1 Culture. Roads built in Persian Territory are +1 Level.
  
  
• Unique Unit: Immortal. Unique Melee Unit which replaces the Swordsman. Lower Combat Strength (30 v 36), but can melee attack and ranged attack (Range 2, Ranged Attack 25). Production Cost 100, Maintenance 2, Movement 2, upgrades to Musketman.

• Unique Infrastructure: Pairidaeza. Unique Improvement (requires one Builder Charge) that unlocks at Early Empire. Cannot be built on Tundra or Snow or adjacent to another Pairidaeza. Grants +1 Culture, +2 Gold, +2 Appeal, and an additional +1 Culture for each adjacent Holy Site or Theatre Square, +1 Gold for each adjacent Commercial Hub or City Centre, and +1 Culture at Diplomatic Service.

• Leader Agenda: Opportunist. Likes Surprise Wars. Dislikes Civilizations that don't declare Surprise Wars. Mixed feels about Surprise Parties, Chicken Surprise, Surprise Surprise.

• Suggested Reading: Archon_Wing; Lily_Lancer; Gardening with Cyrus; .

Notes:

• The Immortal is meant to be able to both melee attack and ranged attack, but it's been buggy across the various patches. In any event, AFAIK, promotion bonuses apply to both the Immortal's melee and ranged attacks and it can capture cities (when it's working properly). I'm not sure if its ranged attack gets a +10 against Anti-Cav units (can someone check please).
  
  
• The Paradiezaradeza-thingy, like other improvements that give culture, also produces Tourism after you research Flight. The Appeal bonus also then helps with placing Seaside Resorts and National Parks, which also provide Tourism.
  
  
• Am I the only person that thinks Cyrus looks like a 1980s Aerobics Instructor?

• Persia get +2 Movement for 10 Turns when you declare Surprise War. This bonus applies to both Military and Non-Military Units, so it also improvements Movement for Builders for example.

[edit: corrected extra movement when Cyrus declares Surprise War and Tourism at Flight (not Natural History).]

best description ever tbh

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I'm done w/ my Persia game...

I decided to clear the north of barbarians. Shortly after my horse units cleared the 2nd of 3 camps, the Americans declared a surprise war on T88.

I checked the age status and found Teddy was in a golden age, so annexing his lands was going to be kind of tricky. Luckily I was in a golden age as well and could summon settlers with faith. I would 1st have to swing south, settle an area east of Kandy (1), conquer Kandy (2), settle another city west of Kandy and slightly east of Washington (3), then take New York (4), NewOrleans (5), Washington (6), etc…

Spoiler :

For whatever the reason, I stopped cycling through surprise wars and just stayed @ war with the Americans. There wasn’t really any point, other than killing the errant knight or two that would head my way before being gunned down by double shot crossbows. This wasn’t particularly efficient, the plan was long and involved, and the war effort progressed more slowly than not, but it struck me as more fun. Perhaps it actually was efficient, as near the end I declared on Nubia just for the +2 movement bonus and one of my knights was gunned down by a horde of Nubian archers. If this happened at the wrong time during one of the anemic American AI pushbacks, it could have gotten ugly.

The war (and by and large game) ended on T128. While the Koreans technically have more science than I do (170 vs. 154), but I have more cities and vastly more culture (159 vs. 48). The Chinese have 55 science, and the Nubians 16.

I’m not going to finish. Maybe I should stick to deity, shrug.

Spoiler :

Conclusion: Persia has a powerful early game surprise war exploit that, if you cycle surprise wars from one civ to the next, cycling declarations of war/peace for +2 movement, you make Persia a top tier choice. As for not being able to trade with the AI’s? Who cares. Pairidaeza’s, commercial hubs, and trade routes are sufficient for the task.

PS, Just say no to Immortals!

 

[Disgustipated]

Finished my game as well. It's difficult to compare due to different map and conditions and more cities through offensive warfare (my Cree games tend to be all peaceful for RP reasons), but it seems like Persia might actually be a better money maker than the Cree. Certainly in the top 5 of money/gold makers. I would maybe put them between Egypt and the Cree. Near the end it is still more lucrative to send trade routes to foreign cities than your own, so the gold bonus to sending to your own cities is moot by that point. But is very nice in the first half of the game. If you are going total warfare the entire game, then sending routes to your own cities the whole game is the way to go.

I wanted to keep it more even with my Greece game for comparison, but France attacked me, and I was in a dark age and struggling with loyalty against their cities, and it was too tempting to take them all (they were quite weak). Everyone hated me after that, though by the end they are starting to mellow. So I ended up with more cities and more theater squares than my Pericles game (though still finished later, see below).

I ended up with rank #7: Ashoka. Macedon actually conquered a decent number of cities apparently, at least from the end game graphs (though I'm not sure if them taking a free city a few times runs up the score, I know they did take a free city at least twice). Actually, taking a final look at the map, they don't have many cities, retaking cities lost through loyalty ran up their cities conquered graph.

I'll include the save, but I was racking up culture so fast, I ended up with a culture victory one turn sooner than expected. Very early victory. They are certainly top tier. My only reservations about this civ are their uu (though still better than Pericles uu, Pericles who I also rate very highly due to ability to cultural victory very fast), and their split focus between conquering and culture meaning they aren't dominant in either, though still competent at both. My Pericles victory was at turn 347 (even with less conquered cities) versus my Cyrus victory at turn 403. I'm going to give them an A- score. Certainly tier 1, but I feel there are better civs out there.

Final screenshot, check out the awesome mountain adjacency of that holy site in Susa. I would have put a campus there, but it was too late in the game to be of much use. A holy site was better (for faith for nudists, I mean naturalists). The funny thing is I specifically chose an old world, yet still had lots of mountains.

I even planned my Reyna super tourist city better this time (remembering to put both Art Museum and Hermitage in it), but still not better than my Pericles game.

Spoiler :

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Started another game with Perisa to check the veracity of my previous statements on the matter, and found I may have understated Persia’s potential for early game expansion/conquest. This time I used Marathon speed, Huge Map, Deity.

The early game rolling surprise war perma +2 movement exploit is simply OP. IMO this civ is 2nd right behind Macedon in terms to ability to expand early game.

Your results may vary, but for me, to have used gold acquired from trading the lux I settled the capital on top of for gold, then declaring a surprise war, then using the +2 movement to find another civ, trading the same lux, then declaring another surprise war, makes this civ top tier. Even the roleplayers can get into the spirit of the maneuver, as it fits the civ’s MO perfectly.

By 3430BC I had used the gold to buy 3 slingers.

Spoiler 3430BC :

2460BC, eliminate my closest neighbor(France) and liberate Kabul from Germany (surprise war).

Spoiler 2460BC :

1140BC, 20 cities, as Japan and the Cree join France in the dustbin of history.

Spoiler 1140BC :

Edit --- Disclaimer: I think I have neglected to account for the Aztecs or Nubia, as they are too easy.

Edit Update: I finished this game and was surprised by the results. I realized my pipe dream of finishing a HUGE map with via domination victory before year zero. The closest I had come before was with vanilla Saladin around 500AD, and R&F Alexander around 1000AD. I just finished this board circa 100BC.

Spoiler :

PS, this rankng system is a crock!

Spoiler :

 

[liv]

Marathon would skew it a bit as buying and killing give you such a huge benefit but I agree the movement is very good especially with horses.
I also liked the extra loyalty as it helped hold on to cities a little bit longer
The garden is also a good UI for a warmongerer as going fast through the culture policies is very helpful and up there with science early on. I would want early empire fast to chop a settler or two anyways.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

The surprise war bonus is extremely strong, and I'd expect them to be among the fastest and strongest of the war mongers. I decided to play them peacefully, and the paradaisa is an interesting improvement. It makes it easy for Cyrus to get gold as well as culture, but what makes it especially interesting is the +2 appeal. That makes it easy to place strong seaside resorts. In my current game I have several that are producing +7 gpt. Cyrus can win a CV with them if you don't alienate the world with surprise wars.

 

[liv]

That is a good point about appeal. Does that puts Persia in sort of a middle spot for a peaceful culture win: weaker than the civs that can generate great writers fast (like Kongo, Greece) but stronger than civs like China and France?