[NFP] Ethiopia First Look

[PhoenicianGold]

Well, there the flaw in the theory.
Seondeok wanting others to have high output of science is not necessarily historical, I think, otoh. But having her agenda being "I want to make crazy amount of science" tie with her mechanics.
And for Cleopatra... Well, this agenda always bothered me because it should be the standard behavior of any AI/human. I mean, you'll "like" any civ with a bigger army because you won't want to attack them, and you'll "dislike" civs with small armies to try to take advantage of it. Why Cleo has such a specific agenda always bothered me.

I think it's because Cleo and Gilgabro are designed to be introductory "easy mode" civs. They both have extremely basic agendas that make them fairly easy to play against.

And I am fine with Russia as it is, which seems to encourage more passivity on the faith side of the machine but more proactivity on the culture/science side of the machine. Ethiopia is the inverse.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I think it's because Cleo and Gilgabro are designed to be introductory "easy mode" civs. They both have extremely basic agendas that make them fairly easy to play against.

Is this a reference to they are the two playable ones in the tutorial?

Any way I find Trajan to be the basic introductory Civ. You really don't have to worry about much ability wise because you'll get a free monument and free roads when you found another city.

As for Cleopatra her agenda is obviously historical. She is looking for you to be her next Julius Caesar or Marc Antony. If you don't have a big army like they did, she won't be interested in you at all.

 

[Virdrago]

Rock-Hewn Churches: Eleven, probably originally late 12th to early 13th Century, churches built at high elevation near Lalibela. They have no association with volcanoes.

The rock-hewn churches in Lalibela were carved from volcanic rock. Ethiopia is in the most volcanic part of Africa, the Great Rift Valley, which is splitting Africa in two.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Is this a reference to they are the two playable ones in the tutorial?

Yes I think that also factored into the design decision. I imagine it all came about in the refinement process, where they wanted some of the older more iconic civs to be pretty basic, and then maybe even leaned harder into that after they decided to make a tutorial mode.

Any way I find Trajan to be the basic introductory Civ. You really don't have to worry about much ability wise because you'll get a free monument and free roads when you found another city.

I think Rome was also intended as an introductory civ. Whereas I see Cleo as being geared toward being an easy AI opponent and Gilgabro well-designed as both a player and AI opponent, Rome seems geared toward being an easy player civ. I imagine this matches up with market research; when I think of which civ the average player is most likely to go for first purely as a matter of resonance, Rome tops the list. I would imagine Sumeria might not be further down given how a lot of historians are drawn to the allure of "oldest civ."

As for Cleopatra her agenda is obviously historical. She is looking for you to be her next Julius Caesar or Marc Antony. If you don't have a big army like they did, she won't be interested in you at all.

This fits in even more if you view Rome or Sumeria as being encouraged as introductory civs. For one, both are mechanically encouraged to hold large armies so Cleo will go even easier on newbie players who don't quite understand infrastructure and just want to dominate things. And for two, gaming is still quite male-centric and the sort of player who goes for the easy hypermasculine (Sumeria) or omnipotent (Rome) fantasies are probably going to want to spend most of their diplomatic face-time with a sex kitten.

And this works kind of in reverse as well, as Cleo is a pretty basic builder civ for more pacifist runthroughs. So if say the female demographic ends up picking her for a starter civ, they have Gilgabro right there wanting to be her boyfriend and Trajan being the only civ around who doesn't mind her plopping down cities pell-mell.

It really has been quite fun seeing a much clearer complexity curve as the game goes on. It definitely appears to me that VI was thought out much more than V, and I'm glad development survived enough that we can now see some pretty tricky designs like Ethiopia popping up.

 

[Sostratus]

Rock-Hewn Churches: Eleven, probably originally late 12th to early 13th Century, churches built at high elevation near Lalibela. They have no association with volcanoes.

The rock-hewn churches in Lalibela were carved from volcanic rock. Ethiopia is in the most volcanic part of Africa, the Great Rift Valley, which is splitting Africa in two.

The volcanic soil thing is because when a volcano erupts in civ6 and places down soil, it becomes its own terrain so to speak - and civ6 cannot distinguish between volcanic soil that was a hill vs soil that was flat. This is why you can make mines on formerly flat volcanic soil. It's just a workaround to their implementation of volcanoes.

 

[pokiehl]

The volcanic soil thing is because when a volcano erupts in civ6 and places down soil, it becomes its own terrain so to speak - and civ6 cannot distinguish between volcanic soil that was a hill vs soil that was flat. This is why you can make mines on formerly flat volcanic soil. It's just a workaround to their implementation of volcanoes.

That's not quite true.

Volcanic Soil is classified as a Feature in the game - Features go on top of Terrains. The reason you can build Mines on flat Volcanic Soil is because when an improvement is set to be valid for a Feature, it overrides Terrain placement rules. I assume they allowed Mines to be built on Volcanic Soil for the same reason they let Farms - to ensure that players could do something with those tiles once volcanoes erupted. And they either couldn't alter the engine to consider both Feature AND Terrain type, or they decided it wasn't worth the effort. Therefore we have flat Volcanic Soil mines.

There's no technical reason they had to allow the Rock-Hewn Church to be built on Volcanic Soil. After all, Wind Mills are restricted to Hills only as well but they did not allow it to be placed on Volcanic Soil. So it's just for geographic flavor or for gameplay purposes (to maybe make it feel less restrictive or reduce the frustration of having a valid Church tile be removed after eruption).

 

[Sostratus]

Volcanic Soil is classified as a Feature in the game - Features go on top of Terrains.

when an improvement is set to be valid for a Feature, it overrides Terrain placement rules

Hence the "so to speak" part of what i said- I was ELI5'ing . I don't know why you can't set up valid feature + valid terrain combination conditions- some of the limits in the game's modifiers and tables really grind my gears and if they won't do DLLs at least make a bunch of flexibility for us. Or document the stuff that's there because i have no idea what half the effects actually do.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

That's not quite true.

Volcanic Soil is classified as a Feature in the game - Features go on top of Terrains. The reason you can build Mines on flat Volcanic Soil is because when an improvement is set to be valid for a Feature, it overrides Terrain placement rules. I assume they allowed Mines to be built on Volcanic Soil for the same reason they let Farms - to ensure that players could do something with those tiles once volcanoes erupted. And they either couldn't alter the engine to consider both Feature AND Terrain type, or they decided it wasn't worth the effort. Therefore we have flat Volcanic Soil mines.

There's no technical reason they had to allow the Rock-Hewn Church to be built on Volcanic Soil. After all, Wind Mills are restricted to Hills only as well but they did not allow it to be placed on Volcanic Soil. So it's just for geographic flavor or for gameplay purposes (to maybe make it feel less restrictive or reduce the frustration of having a valid Church tile be removed after eruption).

I just took it to mean that a big volcanic flow would leave lots of rock to carve.

 

[Kupe Navigator]

I just took it to mean that a big volcanic flow would leave lots of rock to carve.

same and create "artificial hills"

 

[walkerjks]

You're definitely going to want to queue up a "Legendary Start, Abudant Resources" game setting right away. Imagine a bunch of forest hill deer camps in your capitol with a Temple of Artemis. THE YIELDS.

Even without that start tweak, I do wonder how fast of a culture start you can pull off here. Assuming a pretty normal start (with hills), it seems like Ethiopia can get a fast faith and culture start. Might have to build an early worker (which I normally don't do) for improved resources or rock-hewn churches, but Ethiopia could be somewhat fast to a pantheon, quite fast to political philosophy, and then buy arch. museums and archeologists in lower-production cities and still have faith left over for some rock bands. Even without building a single holy site and trying to maximize faith (through pantheon choice and scripture card), Ethiopia seems like a very good civ for a cultural victory.

Anxious to play them using my peaceful cultural strategy. I suspect they will be very good.

Buying museums and archaeologists with faith also compete with naturalists and rock bands, but you'll be generating more faith than other Civs.

But getting an archeologist 20+ turns earlier (40+ turns early in a lower production city) because you bought the museum and archeologist with faith means 40+ extra turns of culture and tourism production from turns 120-160. That almost certainly is better than a naturalist and is probably better than turn 170+ rock bands.

Kupe and Mansa also have these latent faith generation without actually building any holy sites cultural strategies. It looks like Ethiopia could be better (but it's possible a gold-based Mansa strategy will still be better than a faith-based Ethiopia strategy).

 

[Kwami]

But getting an archeologist 20+ turns earlier (40+ turns early in a lower production city) because you bought the museum and archeologist with faith means 40+ extra turns of culture and tourism production from turns 120-160. That almost certainly is better than a naturalist and is probably better than turn 170+ rock bands.

Kupe and Mansa also have these latent faith generation without actually building any holy sites cultural strategies. It looks like Ethiopia could be better (but it's possible a gold-based Mansa strategy will still be better than a faith-based Ethiopia strategy).

Building museums and archaeologists in low-production cities is crazy. You can buy them with gold.

 

[walkerjks]

Building museums and archaeologists in low-production cities is crazy. You can buy them with gold.

I need to study the turn 100 stats thread more to see how to get into a better position by turn 100. Outside of Mali, where cash is no object, I don't get how one is flush in cash and simultaneously ready to build/buy archeologists by, say, turn 140. My standard culture games (not Mali, mostly), I am cash poor at that point. Which doesn't matter if I can spam Moai or Colossal Heads, but turn 140 doesn't have a lot of artifacts already in museums. Ethiopia seems to provide a mechanism to get there.

 

[Pfeffersack]

German youtuber Writing Bull has announced to release a info video (mainly about Ethiopia, but secret societies and the DD will be covered as well) in about 7h from now:

Spoiler :

Since he probably had already the chance to play with the new content (or at least access to more material) this might answer some questions. I will watch it and share new stuff I might discover ​

 

[Larsen]

I think people underestimate the sacrifice of forgoing mines on most of your hills. Using the rough-hewn church will basically cut your production in half across your empire, and if you don't save forests/rainforests until you can make lumber mills on them - which really happens too late to suffice, and you'd have to forgo chops - production might be so low that your cities aren't really functional at all. You really need a certain benchmark of production in order to play the game.

What few mines you might get from the church's adjacency restriction will not be enough. Keep in mind that you also pretty much have to settle on a hill, so that's another mine gone already. This will cripple nearly any city barring those with wildly improbable terrain, like 15 hills or a natural wonder that improves production surrounded by woods. Your typical city will have, what, maybe four hills? If you give up three of those for churches, that city will be stuck at like 12 production forever.

I think this improvement will end up being like the Incan terrace farm: you might make one or two in choice locations but you can't put them everywhere or you're irrelevant by turn 100, and in the end it means that the improvement just doesn't have that much of an impact. I don't see how you can realistically expect to make more than one or two of these in an average city without turning that city into complete trash. Like the Mayans, this civ gives me the sense that it's good if you're willing to restart six times to get suitable land but crippled by its design if you don't do that.

At least Ethiopia doesn't have built-in penalties, but I predict that its bonuses will not be nearly as good as people seem to expect. Have you tried playing civ with a self-imposed "I don't make mines" rule? It's nearly unplayable. Someone who normally plays Deity would struggle to win on King. Production is the most important yield by such a distance that sacrificing significant amounts of it is just not an option at all.

 

[kb27787]

I think people underestimate the sacrifice of forgoing mines on most of your hills. Using the rough-hewn church will basically cut your production in half across your empire, and if you don't save forests/rainforests until you can make lumber mills on them - which really happens too late to suffice, and you'd have to forgo chops - production might be so low that your cities aren't really functional at all. You really need a certain benchmark of production in order to play the game.

What few mines you might get from the church's adjacency restriction will not be enough. Keep in mind that you also pretty much have to settle on a hill, so that's another mine gone already. This will cripple nearly any city barring those with wildly improbable terrain, like 15 hills or a natural wonder that improves production surrounded by woods. Your typical city will have, what, maybe four hills? If you give up three of those for churches, that city will be stuck at like 12 production forever.

I think this improvement will end up being like the Incan terrace farm: you might make one or two in choice locations but you can't put them everywhere or you're irrelevant by turn 100, and in the end it means that the improvement just doesn't have that much of an impact. I don't see how you can realistically expect to make more than one or two of these in an average city without turning that city into complete trash. Like the Mayans, this civ gives me the sense that it's good if you're willing to restart six times to get suitable land but crippled by its design if you don't do that.

At least Ethiopia doesn't have built-in penalties, but I predict that its bonuses will not be nearly as good as people seem to expect. Have you tried playing civ with a self-imposed "I don't make mines" rule? It's nearly unplayable. Someone who normally plays Deity would struggle to win on King. Production is the most important yield by such a distance that sacrificing significant amounts of it is just not an option at all.

If you manage to make the golden age, monumentality solves pretty much everything. Faith buys builders, which then chop out your theatre districts. After hard building amphitheatres (you need to find some way to pass the time) you can buy museums and archaeologists wit the faith.

There is no comparison with Maya. Maya wastes builder charges (let's say 3 for an average builder) which could have gone into mines into worthless farms. Ethiopia actually uses those charges into (depending on the land, but potentially massive) faith, and later on, tourism. Maya gets: 4.5 housing (net 1.5 once you take into account the penalty) to city center and 3 food 3 gold if the improved tiles are worked. Ethiopia gets what could be up to 18 faith worked (which then also comes with 2.7 science and 2.7 culture).

I predict that barring a rework, Maya will still be underwhelming even on a favorable map (check the Maya GOTM and see how even the deity players were not able to make a sub-200 science win on Prince, all the while the comments say they are such a slow civ) while Ethiopia will absolutely crush it if the map is favorable.

And FTR I spam terrace farms all the time as Inca... early game food is actually good for something and the +1 production from freshwater is the icing on the cake; it's +1 food and +1 production on top of otherwise a normal hill river tile from the moment you get your first builder. They don't need mines as they can just work mountains tiles... (with earth goddess if possible). The extra faith compensates for a lot.

 

[Zaarin]

I think people underestimate the sacrifice of forgoing mines on most of your hills. Using the rough-hewn church will basically cut your production in half across your empire, and if you don't save forests/rainforests until you can make lumber mills on them - which really happens too late to suffice, and you'd have to forgo chops - production might be so low that your cities aren't really functional at all.

TBH I don't build many mines if I'm playing a culture game, and I don't chop much, either. Mines hurt appeal; forests boost it. You need those high-appeal zones for your National Parks and other tourism-boosting improvements.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I like Gold more than Production. Having something now > having something later.

Faith takes a little more setup, but it's even better than Gold once you have unlocked the ability to buy more things. I almost never hard build units after a certain point, and buy at least half of my buildings.

Production is overrated!

 

[tedhebert]

I like Gold more than Production. Having something now > having something later.

Faith takes a little more setup, but it's even better than Gold once you have unlocked the ability to buy more things. I almost never hard build units after a certain point, and buy at least half of my buildings.

Production is overrated!

Lol overrated might just be an over-exageration ? ;-) Still lots of thigs out there you can't gold/faith buy, unless really lucky. But yes, I also make use of it a LOT, and I,ve always felt the famous 4:1 ratio between gold and hammers doesn't stand up with the overall value of being able to buy most of what you want, at the exact moment you want/need them

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

 

[Kupe Navigator]

That was fast. Even before release of the civ.