[NFP] Do you use soothsayers?

[GunsGermsandSteel]

Do you use soothsayers? If so have you found them to be effective?

I'm plodding through a Viking Apocalypse Domination game and heralding doom upon opposing civs with my soothsayers. Unfortunately it sounds a lot cooler than it is. I don't like that the soothsayer has to be on top of the tile they trigger the disaster. I did have some luck starting a fire and it nearly killed two free city units. In another instance I caused a 1000 year flood which took the city's health down a good 30-40%. Only problem was it also pillaged a bunch of farms, which I would have preferred to pillage with my melee units just before taking the city to heal them. Furthermore, I wouldn't have had trouble taking the city conventionally, I just did it for fun.

I've also found the 'appease the gods event' to require too many sacrifices to actually be worth the rewards. I had to sacrifice three warriors in order to get 1 free soothsayer with +1 charge for all soothsayers. Not bad I guess, but like I said it just seems like too high a cost.

TBH I'm getting a bit bored with the playthrough and am probably going to jump over to something else. Frankly, I just don't think soothsayers are effective enough to warrant heavily incorporating them into a strategy.

Anyone finding soothsayers to be interesting/powerful? Any strategies or tips?

 

[Red Adept]

I find them hit or miss. When it comes to burning down forests and jungles, they're very effective and gain yields. I have a 50% success rate in getting volcanoes and rivers to activate and increase yields.

In offensive uses, I've pummeled opponents forces and weakened city defenses with volcanic ash before mopping up with my army.

My main use for them (aside from chucking things into volcanoes) is to try to increase my yields.

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

I find them hit or miss. When it comes to burning down forests and jungles, they're very effective and gain yields. I have a 50% success rate in getting volcanoes and rivers to activate and increase yields.

In offensive uses, I've pummeled opponents forces and weakened city defenses with volcanic ash before mopping up with my army.

My main use for them (aside from chucking things into volcanoes) is to try to increase my yields.

Yes, but you're already playing in Apocalypse Mode so you're probably getting flooded/erupted about as much as you'd want anyways. I haven't used them for the purpose of gaining yields. Might should try that.

 

[MrRadar]

Anyone finding soothsayers to be interesting/powerful? Any strategies or tips?

Yes.
First of all, burn forests and jungle in your own territory or at your own borders, and even better - in the areas you plan to settle. After the trees regrow, bonus food and production yields are added to the tile. Later you may chop the trees, but the bonus stays on the tile. Rinse and repeat several times, and you may end up with 6f6p tiles or even more.
Also try to win Appease the Gods, if you can. Soothsayer upgrades are interesting, among others they get more charges which helps to do more of what's described above. A free Soothsayer also helps. Use a few anticav units for the sacrifice, they're ideal for that

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I find their biggest use is as, literally a support unit. If you succeed in getting the Gold/Silver ranking in the sacrafice thing, you can get a chance at two VERY powerful abilities

- +4 Combat Strength to all adajcent units
- Automatically siege cities when adjacent to a City Center

They're quite useful for conquest.

 

[Pietato]

Their biggest use, easily, is burning down your own forests and jungles, and creating ridiculous tiles.

As for Appease the gods, the number of units needed can get pretty nuts, as the AI loves it. I found it best to levy a CS and sacrifice their units.

 

[Amrunril]

Using soothsayers to boost yields through fires and storms can be worthwhile, depending on how many you've already bought and whether you've won any of the competitions. I think keeping one or two in reserve can also be a good defensive strategy, if there's a floodplain or volcanic area enemy units need to pass through to get to one of your cities.

If you really want a soothsayer-centric strategy, though, build the Great Bath. While soothsayers don't trigger food and production yields by flooding your own territory, they do activate the Great Bath's faith ability. More faith from your floodplain tiles translates into more soothsayers, and by midgame, you can be looking at 20+ faith per turn per floodplain tile, which, if you ever decide to stop buying soothsayers, you can turn into Grandmaster's Chapel units, great people, religious spread etc. For extra degeneracy, do this as Ethiopia with the voidsingers (now that I think of it, vampires could also be fun), and you'll also be getting a third of that faith as science and culture.

 

[Red Adept]

Yes, but you're already playing in Apocalypse Mode so you're probably getting flooded/erupted about as much as you'd want anyways. I haven't used them for the purpose of gaining yields. Might should try that.

Not really. I've had a volcano I'm near just blow ash and kill units and population for a couple hundred turns, and I was really counting on those yields. So disappointed. RNGesus didn't like me that game.

Using soothsayers to boost yields through fires and storms can be worthwhile, depending on how many you've already bought and whether you've won any of the competitions. I think keeping one or two in reserve can also be a good defensive strategy, if there's a floodplain or volcanic area enemy units need to pass through to get to one of your cities.

If you really want a soothsayer-centric strategy, though, build the Great Bath. While soothsayers don't trigger food and production yields by flooding your own territory, they do activate the Great Bath's faith ability. More faith from your floodplain tiles translates into more soothsayers, and by midgame, you can be looking at 20+ faith per turn per floodplain tile, which, if you ever decide to stop buying soothsayers, you can turn into Grandmaster's Chapel units, great people, religious spread etc. For extra degeneracy, do this as Ethiopia with the voidsingers (now that I think of it, vampires could also be fun), and you'll also be getting a third of that faith as science and culture.

Potato McWhisky did just this in a "Eh-tiopia" OCC. I believe he had 4 flood plains each with 200 Faith.

 

[AriochIV]

I trained a few in my one Apocalypse Mode game, but I found them to be pretty useless. In order to get them close enough to enemy cities for their disasters to be effective, you have to be at war with the target, in which case enemy units will kill them (and if you have escorting units, they'll be damaged by the disasters).

But then, I wasn't willing to sacrifice units to get them more promotions, so I don't know how useful those are.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

As for Appease the gods, the number of units needed can get pretty nuts, as the AI loves it. I found it best to levy a CS and sacrifice their units.

Ha that's a nice idea, hadn't thought of that, very devious.

 

[Deadly Dog]

I find their biggest use is as, literally a support unit. If you succeed in getting the Gold/Silver ranking in the sacrafice thing, you can get a chance at two VERY powerful abilities

- +4 Combat Strength to all adajcent units
- Automatically siege cities when adjacent to a City Center

They're quite useful for conquest.

Now that's funny those are exactly the 2 promotions I have in my Menelik II game at the moment! With faith to throw around winning the Appease the gods was easy and so I took some cities from the aztecs which I have no business doing at all my military was green and rush-bought and was behind in resources/tech.

Aztecs had 2 city states I wanted to liberate and walled encampments were everywhere. Plague bearers let me siege from one tile while cavalry/cuirassiers corps waited in safety until I could get some damage on the walls. I had soothsayers ready to throw floods and dust storms in the way of reinforcements but never needed to use a charge. And without a Great General the +CS promotion served as a substitute.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I did a couple of apocalypse games and I tried using them in the two common ways (raising my own yields and blasting enemy cities) but neither seemed partictularly worth the effort. I don't use apocalypse mode anymore

 

[acluewithout]

The way Soothsayers are implemented is really boring. Everyone gets them. Everyone gets them from turn one without unlocking them or requiring any infrastructure or requirements (eg being in a dark age). They don’t upgrade other than promotions, and they way you get promotions is tedious and not worth the investment.

If we’re going to have Magic Druids casting “Call Lightening” then that’s fine. But could they at least be a bit more interesting beyond just looking cool?

So, no. I haven’t got a lot of use out them.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

I've used them once in a Russian game since 1) Russian units are invulnerable to blizzards and 2) blizzards do give yields with soothsayers.

However, it just wasn't worth it. The tiles getting fertilized were few and far between, and you can't control which tiles get it. Even worse, it was still pillaging my districts, setting me back. Tried it several times until I nixed the idea because it just was more trouble then rewards.

 

[Futumch]

I used them a couple of times and found them underwhelming. They are handy if you want to flood a river or wake a volcano to get a fertility boost.

I like the wrath of nature. Floods, storms, volcanoes - all that jazz. Except tornadoes, they suck. I've found since this most recent patch that even on disaster level 3 with Apocalypse mode off, I'm still getting plenty of grumbling from mother nature. This is good because it means I don't have to use Soothsayers to poke the sleeping bear, so to speak.

I'll be playing with Apocalypse mode off for the forseeable future.

 

[oSiyeza]

I did a couple of apocalypse games and I tried using them in the two common ways (raising my own yields and blasting enemy cities) but neither seemed partictularly worth the effort. I don't use apocalypse mode anymore

I used the Apocalypse mode for a while. I love the new disasters. However the soothsayer / appease the gods mechanics drive the whole mode down for me.

Using the soothsayer to rise my own yields feels wrong to me, it does not only feel gamey and out of place, but I cannot stop thinking I'm exploiting the game. Offensive uses are, on the other hand, kind of pointless and not worth the effort most of the time.

Now I use the mod that brings the commets and solar flares to the main game. I miss the Stage 7, that is a lot of fun, but so far is not enough well implemented with the global warming progression and the annoyances of the soothsayers and constant repairs and aid requests are not worth it to me.

A shame, honestly.

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

I've been thinking that my next Egypt game I would do with soothsayers - get ridiculous food yields without damage from floods.

Personally though I would much rather use them offensively. And while the later promotions do have their uses - particularly the siege one. For the most part it's just not really worth it. Perhaps if there were a few more disasters that you could control - lightning storm/pillar of fire/metor shower (that sort of thing) they could be more effective for combat.

 

[walkerjks]

I don't and maybe that's a mistake. Increased yields are never bad. I play apocalypse mode quite a bit in my quest for peaceful cultural victories. Disasters are painful for me, but probably more painful for the AI. And at least with rivers and volcanoes, I know where the pain is going to come from (just not when). But I've never built a soothsayer or tried to win an appease the gods competition.

 

[Deadly Dog]

I don't and maybe that's a mistake. Increased yields are never bad. I play apocalypse mode quite a bit in my quest for peaceful cultural victories. Disasters are painful for me, but probably more painful for the AI. And at least with rivers and volcanoes, I know where the pain is going to come from (just not when). But I've never built a soothsayer or tried to win an appease the gods competition.

If you play Appease the Gods, I recommend having either a large faith economy and Grand Master's chapel, or tons of gold to levy units from a City State. Also camp the units near the volcano but only sacrifice near the end of the competition. You can always back out if the AI is driving the "cost" up.

Nihang is a nice cheap sacrifice if Lahore is on your map.

Many times I don't bother it's not often I feel I can just throw away units.

 

[Pietato]

You should always set fire to large forests or rainforests.