Couple of questions

[yanner39]

Hello

1. Capturing foreign Missionaries. Is there a purpose to doing this? If my religion is Islam, and I capture a Catholic missionary, I can't really using him, correct? So I just delete the unit?

2. In Civ4, I work really hard on city specialization. Lately I've been going wide with my cities. What's the ratio of cities I should be trade-posting and gold generating as opposed to farming to make my tech rate go up? How do the good players do it.

3. I want to play a game as Austria. I guess I can find out myself, but if Austria diplo marries a mercantile CS, does the CS loses the jewelry or porcelain, and therefore no benefit to Austria?

 

[Browd]

On Missionaries, might as well delete, although can be used as a mediocre scout; you don't need open borders, but they will die from attrition without OB. And they cost maintenance. Consider sending them into another civ's territory that you can't explore right now, and have them scout until they die from attrition.

On city specialization, the benefits of specialization are somewhat less relevant than in CIV, where you would have specialist cities, production cities, etc. Each city's potential contribution should be made on its own terms, based on its terrain. There is some benefit in having a city where you concentrate your academies (NC city, even better with an observatory), but you should have multiple cities working universities and science specialists to churn out GSs--just plant the GSs in your NC city.

Population is key to science, and science is key to nearly every victory strategy. You want your pop to be as high as you can manage, and your pop in your NC city to maxed out. You also need excess pop (and food) to work specialists.

On Austria, yes, the special CS luxuries (porcelain and jewelry) are lost when Austria marries a mercantile. Not a good plan.

 

[yanner39]

On Austria, yes, the special CS luxuries (porcelain and jewelry) are lost when Austria marries a mercantile. Not a good plan.

Thanks for this. I don't get Austria's UA then. I assume its the same for Maratime CS. You lose the extra food. Is the UA only good because it removes CS from the map and that has a negative effect on the other Civs?

 

[Ra's Head]

As said, missionaries are useful as scouts to places you don't have open borders with. They move pretty fast through unclaimed territory as well, which can be useful.

Generally, you don't super specialize cities in Civ 5. Most if not all of your cities should be farmed, except for puppet cities which should be trading posted so they don't soak up all your happiness. You can set up gold cities, but I only do this in very production poor areas.

Austria's UA is useful because you instantly get a large population city that usually has luxury resources and even a standing army. You lose the CS bonus, so you need to weigh that against what you can gain, but it is a fast way to grow. Often CS's are in good positions and may have natural wonders too.

 

[Browd]

Also, when you marry the CS, its buildings and units remain intact. Much better than a sacked city that has had its population cut in half, its buildings sacked, and in revolt for multiple turns. Also, no need for a courthouse.