[GS] Does Trajan work now? (Post June 2019)

[sethryclaus]

First, thanks to everyone who posts here. I've been playing Civ since I was 11 (Civ 1) and I've mostly just played it without researching strats etc (I did get a 2nd paper run to afford Civ 2 though
Already I've learnt some cool things that I'll definitely try out at some point.

What I wanted to ask about is whether Trajan comes away as a big winner with an IZ style after the June 2019 patch?

Swole Gains

He *actually* gets 5 adj. IZs with paired cities early - not theoretically

The free settler/border expansion pantheon synergizes with free monuments, essentially giving the latter a gold bonus as well (also a 3 city opener - hard to quantify that advantage).

Closely placed cities mean domestic trade routes will usually pass through 2 cities which gives a 2 gold bonus. You also have a 3rd city in which to build a commercial district and/or a 2nd campus to get to IZs faster. Additionally, cities are going to have Baths.

What has actually happened when I have tried it

I got rolled by barbs (lul), went back to emperor, which was too easy (esp. since I got a Colosseum into Petra using trade routes on my 3rd).

Now I'm starting up Immortal again and just wanted to see what people thought were priorities for this.

Dilemmas/Questions

Should I opt for early peace until my IZs are rolling?
- Oligarchy and Legions seem to be a really obvious timing for Rome
+ front-loading the IZs suits 3 Archer hold greed
+ Classical Republic + Baths suits a bunch of eurekas/inspirations in practice
+ Barbarians are rolling me a lot when I pull away from patrolling to go to war
+ the free monuments and 3 city start let me rush an Ancestral Hall for cities beyond the 3rd

Emphasize Commercial and Harbor districts over Encampments?
- I don't understand the meta lol
- Grand Admirals and Great Merchants are... ah... underwhelming?
+ domestic trade routes are extra good for Rome
+ I love rushing topside tech
+ As mentioned, it seems really easy to avoid war
+/- less territory but since I'm building cities so close that might not be a big problem
+ dovetails with a Big Ben timing

Ancestral Hall into 3 points on Magnus for the domestic trade route food bonus?
- greeeeeeeeed
+/- need to be able to get city 4/5/6 - which is actually perfect if am able to get 2 commercial districts. City 6 will probably come up just as my initial trade route is finishing
+/- good for 6 cities, bad if there's more space than that but OP IZs might mean 6 cities is always good?
- only really works if I only build economic districts
+/- is just population growth - it delays subsequent Campus and Theatre districts but free monuments kinda makes up for that?

Giant minus for the super greedy approach - a single barb camp could wreck me if it pops and they seem to be spawning 2 or 3 at a time very close to borders on immortal.

Thoughts?
I usually play small map/standard speed but I'm considering lowering the speed if I go the super greedy route.

Edit: is there a thread around that analyzes when/how to build workers? I think this is one of the things I'm getting wrong.

 

[Victoria]

Emphasize Commercial and Harbor districts over Encampments?

uhhh, normally emphasise campus first unless going for a eureka district.
One key thing is getting as many eureka and inspirations as possible, that is called greed in this game.

Grand Admirals and Great Merchants are... ah... underwhelming?

Generally they get era points and if playing naval admirals are quite strong but the naval game is sorta dull, I still play it a lot but meh
Merchants I would not mock. For a start there is a merchant inspiration but also some of their uses are ... useful. Your CH aleardy has the benefit of a trade route so I would not nock these too much.

Ancestral Hall into 3 points on Magnus for the domestic trade route food bonus?

.... I think you may be overestimating city size. This is not a path many will take. The popular ones are a Pingala x3-4 because of the early bonuses and a fat city helps then... one fat city. It is generally understood that a city of 10 is great and a city of 11+ is generally pointless. Rationalism and grand opera give great bonuses for 10 pop cities. It is at this stage start working with specialists. The key reason big is bad is amenities.

is there a thread around that analyzes when/how to build workers? I think this is one of the things I'm getting wrong

Well the chop example link below is a little old but still referred to by many as a good write up in the area you are asking.
The key noob mistake people make is building too many districts early. There is sort of a 3 phase approach to the game hinted at in the chop example post, I can link you to a phase post if you wish or just work it out.

There is a IZ guide that discusses the best layouts by @Sostratus which is very good, Roman baths are great for it. Victoria in the long run is probably better but Romans are up there. Pair not just with baths but with dams.

Not sure I would wait too long for war as Rome, legions are great.
You tried Kupe yet? Really fun and Toa’s indeed have mana.

 

[Sostratus]

What I wanted to ask about is whether Trajan comes away as a big winner with an IZ style after the June 2019 patch?

There are essentially 3 winners of the IZ change:

1. Civs with an IZ advantage
2. Civs with an AQ/Dam/Canal advantage
3. Civs who naturally end up in locations suitable for the above

Germany & Japan & Dutch fall in category 1.
Rome, Khmer and Inca fall in category 2. Rome's big advantage here is that Khmer and Inca have to surrender a valuable tile buff to place an IZ next to an aqueduct. Rome just has cheaper and better AQs - you were gonna spam baths anyways so taking advantage of the "infrastructure IZ" strategy is almost costless to them. Yes, this is a really big deal which I will touch on in one second. Also, the monument culture really helps push the civics tree - the faster you can unlock craftsmen the better, because that multiplies the efficacy of this strategy. Rome unfortunately has no start bias for rivers AFAIK but its not like it's rare to start on one.

I think the fact that you can just preplan your districts and drop a bath without needing any pop means you can play a totally normal legion strategy, and just have the baths preplaced so when you hit the medieval (ideally around the sunset of your legion assault) you can slam down the IZs and get rolling.

He *actually* gets 5 adj. IZs with paired cities early

Look at the IZ guide in my signature, it is made for people who think like you do. One thing you will notice is that by far the easiest to use 'green district' for IZ boosting is the aqueduct. In fact, you almost want 1 in every city. So the cost savings on building them as Rome adds up immensely - you can get cities and IZs going dramatically faster. The extra housing and amenity are just a bonus.

The other thing that is great is Rome's legion rush is outstanding for securing rivers and floodplains where you can construct Aqueduct Triangles (see the IZ guide.) It is hard to overstate what a trio of cities built around 3x AQ with a Dam can do with their IZs.
Shameless self promotion: if you like this kind of IZ strat see my Hansa guide, the updated tab has images that demonstrate the insane stuff you can do in a real game with these mechanics.

 

[sethryclaus]

Look at the IZ guide in my signature, it is made for people who think like you do.

Haha, already done that. The 3-city triangle really hadn't occurred to me (my standard modlist has 4 tile city restriction so I forgive myself ).

Playing on Immortal/small/standard/pangaea:

So I spawned in the middle of a mountainous region. Insanely terrible spawn, no plains hills, no 4 yield tiles (even though heaps of rainforest), coast miles away, no desert for petra rush, missed heaps of eurekas etc - just generally bad times. Lots of rivers though - river valley with mountains ranges on both sides (narrower than a single city radious tho).

I couldn't do your perfect triangle as a mountain was in the way. I should've re-rolled but I thought it was funny and +5 campuses are nice - I also once watched a documentary about mountain peoples and there was a lost civilization in the mountains of India left over from Alexander's invasion who were still practicing Macedonian culture a thousand years later so it was a roleplay game.

Partly because of the mountain chaos, I actually built ancient walls to defend a barb camp instead of melee units (Bath eureka too). Also, I had no iron - the spawn was amaz facepalm. And I built 2 +5 campuses and a government plaza. The Ancestral Hall rush is extremely viable.

I managed to get the bath triangle ready just after discovering IZs while also having founded my 4th/5th cities using Ancestral Hall. 4th/5th and 6th/7th were paired rather than triangles.

With the government plaza substituted into the triangle, I still had a 8/7/5 adj breakdown going. I also used all my diplomatic favour to get 100% construction bonus for IZ buildings just before the zones themselves completed. This lasted long enough for my last 4 cities to get workshops too.

No IZ city states either. It was about the worst possible spawn and map for the strat that I can think of.

Overtook the AI in the renaissance. Super greedy Rome strat 2019. Took me about 6 hours to win science - basically just "end turn". My computer is also a monster and I play FPS, RTS & MOBA so I'm quick.

I've never won Immortal without conquering an opponent before. The AIs all had at least 2 cities more than me until I discovered a glitched second continent (vertical sliver on the edge of the map with no sea route past it - never seen that before). I think the map seed was pretty bugged tbh. So many mountains.

Thanks for the triangle though - broken AF. The +5/7 from paired cities is nuts enough but the new free settler pantheon in combo with your triangle is very very broken.
I think the reduced cost of Baths is supremely powerful. The instant amenities means you get ecstatic early with some trading and you don't really need the gold for purchasing tiles because of the free settler/border expansion pantheon.

The only blessing from RNGesus was getting boosted steal technology into instant establishment then boosted sabotage production on my first spy. That single spy oppressed the entire game.

 

[sethryclaus]

This is a picture of the first 5 cities from the earliest save I have (should've thought about that lol).
My screen is ultrawide so I cropped to 16:9.
I also had so much spare production that I improved every tile so that I wouldn't get artifacts

Edit: also worth noting is that I couldn't seem to get golden ages - hence why I have so much faith. I was only just behind the AI in tech/culture most of the game.

 

[Sostratus]

Glad you liked the guide.
I think the best part about triangles is there are so many "generic flat river" areas where you can easily plop them down, especially when you can get a dam in the center. It works with every single civ, its compact, easy to settle, you name it. And then you have tons of spaces to place whatever regular stuff. As an example from a recent Hungary game -

Spoiler :

Big flat floodplain with a little jungle turned into a spaceport powerhouse. I built a bunch of space ports so i could hoard more aluminum (space contractors) for the lagrange stations. Pre-june this would be a total trash start for producing on any difficulty.

 

[sethryclaus]

You tried Kupe yet? Really fun and Toa’s indeed have mana.

One of my friends who's new to Civ only plays Maori and I've played Victoria alongside for an NZ themed Te Tiriti o Waitangi team up. I have been meaning to play them myself on archipelago or Earth with historical starts (haven't played an earth map since Civ 2 lol).

Thanks for advice too - that does clear up the early decisions a fair bit. I remember chopping from when R&F first came out and overflow etc - I didn't really like that version of the game tbh.
You're dead right about great merchants, I stand corrected.
This is actually the first time I've overbuilt districts early on Immortal or Deity and succeeded. I think there needs to be a diplomacy malus if the ratio between your army and territory is too low (I only had 4 units most of this game and the AI was happy being friends the whole time).

Big flat floodplain with a little jungle turned into a spaceport powerhouse.

Nice lol, I was running out of workable tiles when I built spaceports.

 

[Victoria]

I remember chopping from when R&F first came out and overflow etc

Chop overflow has been nerfed, that bit of the thread has changed.