Do The Iroquois really suck?

Another way to use Venice that I like is just OCC tourism.
Since you don't bother with making settlers, your capital becomes very big very fast and your early science is competitive with the AI so you get to attempt a few key wonders like temple of artemis, collossus and hanging gardens.

Your mass gold generation also allows you to never build a single building except wonders. What I do is simply borrow money from the AI then buy cargo ships. Send those for money, borrow more money from the AI and buy more cargo ships.
This basically gets you all your cargo ships and buildings instantly for free and your capital can just wonder-spam.

You will have RAs with every AI easily and can usually buy all the CS decently early.

It is somewhat weak in the late game though but it's fun to do.
 
To wrap the conversation back to the OP topic, all of these things are ways to make Venice work. However, that doesn't change the fact that they're one of few civilizations in the game that you have to work at to counter the detriments inherent to their gameplay.

The same is said for the Iroquois. The longhouse will almost always result in a net loss, whether directly through lacking production or indirectly through crippling land development by keeping forests. While it's true there are plenty of ways to counteract this ultimate drawback, and indeed these can often make gameplay more fun, that doesn't change the fact that the Iroquois are fundamentally weaker not only than most other civilizations in the game but even than a hypothetical generic civilization with absolutely no bonuses.
 
Another Venice/Austria DomV trick on Deity is to gift a CS some obsolete units and have it upgrade them for you even if you don't have the tech yourself, then buy the CS. This can help with the unit supply limit in the early game as well. Venice isn't too bad for DomV if you're fast about it and have a strong capital, but in a slow game you really feel the pain of being unable to pick tiles to work and choose production.

You could also just go OCC, save up gold, rush artillery and upgrade a ton of cannons. One city science is pretty competitive until Industrial-Modern if the city location is strong enough.

The Iroquois are weak and they'd still be weak on most maps even if the Longhouse kept the 10% production bonus. Getting 3-4 extra hammers per city (being generous) at Metal Casting isn't that great when you compare that to what you get from some other civs' uniques. The Aztecs would've been working 2-3 extra hills per city and still grow faster, the Huns or Russia would've had their extra production much earlier, you would've actually had a strong religion as Ethiopia/Maya/Celts etc etc.
 
The Iroquois could be pretty good in an Industrial Era start. The cities get the loghouse when founded, and the chops lose their importance. Even the UA is a little bit enhanced in that case.
 
The Iroquois could be pretty good in an Industrial Era start. The cities get the loghouse when founded, and the chops lose their importance. Even the UA is a little bit enhanced in that case.

This has to be the first and only argument that validates the Iroquois as a possibly not terrible Civ. They seriously need to be buffed somehow.
 
Yes, a tip of the hat :hatsoff:to @claudiupb for thinking of a scenario where the Iroquois UB/UA beats “The Neutrals”! Ruling out early UU might even put them in the top half of available civs!
 
I tried an Industrial Era start on diety, and it's not really fun. It is hard to keep up with the AI, and it's basically a race on the clock, as the AI will quickly launch. The first time I tried domination opening liberty (you get 5 policies from the start), but by the time I had artillery AI already had planes, and by the time I had bombers and an useful army the AI was launching lots of parts. I realize that liberty is probably the worst policy to take since the game is very short, so a second attempt might be better.
I also tried a SV on the same game T0 save, opened rationalism and settled just the 3 settlers I had from the start. It was quite difficult convincing other AI's not to attack me, and in the end I didn't have money to buy all spaceship parts. I lost by two turns to the AI that built Hubble (also lost by 2 turns).

I will probably try a new run with domination in mind from the start.
 
Liberty domination would be my go-to in that scenario, depending on the start.

What map type? What did your lands look like/what types of resources did you have access to?
 
I had most of the necessary resources: oil, aluminum, coal even uranium. Happiness was ok, had a diversity of luxuries. The problem is that things happen very fast, you don't really have time to develop all the cities. Having fast workers and an extra city is nice but all the other stuff in liberty is very weak at that point.
 
The first time I tried domination opening liberty …
I also tried a SV on the same game T0 save, opened rationalism and settled just the 3 settlers I had from the start.
My own experience with advance era starts is limited to the GoTM and I don’t think I have tried Deity, but I did experiment a bit. Sadly, I am fairly convinced that optimal play is working the Social Policy trees the same as usual. So four city Tradition.
 
My own experience with advance era starts is limited to the GoTM and I don’t think I have tried Deity, but I did experiment a bit. Sadly, I am fairly convinced that optimal play is working the Social Policy trees the same as usual. So four city Tradition.

I haven't had much time to play lately, but from what I did play it appears that Tradition is best, even in this late stage. I had 3 different games all on Pangaea maps with decent starting terrain, one was Liberty start (failed) the other Honor start (failed again) and Tradition start which is in progress but it's looking pretty good, having Stealth bombers and x-com and probably going to win in 10-15 turns, hopefully before any AI would win by space victory. In all games I chose autocracy as ideology as I think it is best suited.
One of the strong points in tradition is that you get free opera houses in your cities, which allows you to build hermitage (It takes 2-3 turns). This significantly increases the number of SP you can take, as I was even able to take 3 SP into commerce to get that extra reduction in cost of purchase.

I have yet to try starting with rationalism and going for domination, but I don't think it will do better than tradition.
 
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