tu_79
Deity
The only civs which I have had any success at Progress were Carthague and Polynesia. They both allow for a fast early settling, without being too concerned about aggressive neighbors.
Explain to me how to play Progress
- Thread starter Dawnpromise
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Starrynite120
Prince
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What difficulty are you playing on? That is most definitely too few cities. That's arguably too few for a Tradition play. You need to expand much faster than you did this game. Honestly you probably just want to start over that game, 2 cities progress is maybe a no win situation. In the beginning, almost everything should be focused on peaceful expansion. For example, my latest game I had 10 cities by the time I hit medieval era, on difficulty 5.
Starrynite120
Prince
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America (now with the production bonus) is really good with progress.
Would not recommend going progress with any civ that doesn't have a bonus to culture and an early defensive bonus (or unique unit).
Songhai works well, as does Shoshone, Inca to some degree, Huns if you don't feel like going Authority. Come to think about it, most of the classic Authority civs does really well with progress because of their bonuses, you just have to have a mindset to focus on a strong foundation rather than an early attack.
Starrynite120
Prince
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I'm finding America to be doing really well (I am playing difficulty 5 though, I know you Funak probably play higher). I grabbed Stonehenge by buying a few tiles by turn 20 and just took a pantheon that gives culture. I actually really enjoy the strategy with grabbing an early Stonehenge with America and then taking Ancestor of the Gods, immediately giving me 2 more culture from the council, then building council first in every city, causing you to be strong in both culture and science early one. And then Americas ability lets you get the councils up almost instantly, allowing you then to skip the monument and build other important buildings. I was producing 5 culture on turn 20 with progress, and went on to be first in policies (I did grab Oracle) and science (Also grabbed Great Library, man that early production bonus is nice). Problem solved. Then later on the Smithsonian really helps for a late game push. I'm finding America to be really fun and really good.
The new USA does progress really well, early game is comparably to Carthage but you have a really scary late game UB as well. I've been playing them on Immortal and you can still wonder grab (you can often spend 200-300 gold on tiles and build a wonder in just 1 turn)
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That's some old ancestor or some young gods
Yeah I guess if you can consistently grab early-game wonders to buffer up your culture while still staying alive then by all means, America would work.
Dawnpromise
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I'm playing on difficulty 4 (Standard speed and I may still be using the Historical Tech speed tweak Enginseer posted a long time back unless update reset that). The slow settling was mostly due to AI crowding my borders and barbs hitting everywhere else.
OP is exactly what is wrong with society today.
1. Ask for advice;
2. Get a lot of useful information;
3. Go against that information;
4. Complaint that you still don't know how to do stuff.
Actually I've been using the advice to the best of my ability (I found jma2tb's trade route advice particularly helpful at countering the lack of capital buffs). In regards to your advice however:
1: I have a certain enmity towards Carthage due to them being consistent Warmonger in previous games to the point where I've made that purple elephant a sworn enemy. (Stupid reason I know, but I think we all have our petty civ moments.)
2-3: I actually did follow your policy advice with policies and build order. Only reason I've got the wonders I do is due to lucky Great Engineer events (should I have posted what mods I'm running? If so I apologize that might've needed to be considered).
4: Should I build settlers before or after I find a place to actual send them? I tend towards the latter but if Progress is actually THAT settle-happy then I'll consider the former.
5: I took Ancestor Worship and took Goddess of Protectiona s my Byzantine Belief to help counter my low culture. May not have helped my early game but it has helped me keep up with my neighbors culture and reduced boredom.
6: On this.
I won't claim my early game play is great even with preferred policies. Byzantium in particular doesn't kick up until about the same time Progress apparently does so I feel like I'm doubling up on my problems in the hope of doubling the payoff. That said Piety pairs well with Progress doesn't it? Was planning to go Progress/Piety/Industry/Order for long term.
Again I'm appreciating all the advice. And won't deny America did look like an appealing prospect when picking civ. Maybe next time, but for now I think I'll just keep this game going at least for a while.
Take a look at this discussion: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/progress-on-immortal.609576/ There is a lot of useful info there.
Basically with progress you have to expand very fast, your target is to have 8-9 cities before turn100. And forget about all wonders, you may try to build 1 at maximum. And yes, take ancestor worship, or maybe god of commerce, you relly need something to deal with low culture. And try to play carefully, 4th and 5th difficulty is very easy, just pay attention to small details. To be honest, i have no idea how is it possible not to build 5 or 6 cities...
Gokudo01
Emperor
Let's try to explain progress :
Let's start with the description from CBP wikia :
Progress is best for civilizations which desire robust infrastructure and scientific advancement.
It's pretty accurate while not being totally true. you will understand soon.
Introduction : How works science
In order to understand well, the strength of progress you need to understand well how science cost works.
Each technologies has got a cost. The cost depend on 3 factors.
The first and most important one is the era, and its position in the era. it gives the base cost.
The second one is the number of cities that you own while researching. After your capital, each new city increases the cost of technology by 13%. it's additional, so it's 113% for 2 cities, 126% for 3, etc...
The last factor is the number of civs that you have met and that have already got that technology.
On standard, I believe it's -5% to the current cost per civs which has already discovered this technologies.
So those factors allow us to understand what we need to do in order to increase our tech speed.
I - How progress generates culture
In each starting tree, there are two ways to generate culture. A way which doesn't scale with the number of cities and the other which scales with the numbers of cities.
For tradition, Sovereignty/Opener doesn't scale while splendour does
Progress generates culture which doesn't scale with cities from science and culture which scales with cities from buildings. so in order to exploit the best of progress, you need to focus on infrastructure and science. So this tree does help you to get infrastructure and increase your science output, but you have to work on them in order to generate culture output.
it can be a virtue circle or a nightmare circle.
So to keep up the culture game, you have to build infrastructure and get the most science point possible.
As you can see, progress don't dislike war like tradition, they HATE it, because everything works in a circle. If you are slowed down in your infrastructure, your tech rate is slower and your culture output sinks.
for example, during ancient and classical, you need to get 1 building every 5 turn in order to hold on discipline. one building each 5 turn can be done but any possible or futur war can destroy your culture output.
But don't give up, organisation scales which makes it crazy good in the midgame.
II - How progress generates extra happiness
Progress has got the most simple and less conditional to generate happiness. you need to have more population under direct control. puppet doesn't add to the count.
Because it's not really conditional, it's weaker than tradition or authority.
So progress doesn't really like puppeting which is the first factor why progress doesn't really like war. no only there will slow your tech rate but you will need lots of infrastructures in order to reduce unhappiness to an acceptable level and to not sunk in unhappiness although tradition and authority can sustain a lot more unhappiness from nearly destroyed cities.
So progress is always sittings on the edge :they can easily fall into unhappiness because they get extra happiness from a factor that brings unhappiness ( more population ) and they can only solve it by keep their infrastructure up in running to have the lowest threshold possible.
Once again, it's an argument against war : the hammer you are giving to units is hammer lost for buildings.
Moreover thresholds increase with techs, you have to keep your infrastructure on line with your tech speed. If your science output is too high, you will face unbearable unhappiness because you are not able to keep up with your infrastructure. it will slow down your science rate and twice your culture rate because new technologies grants you more culture.
III - Progress and War
As you can see, by design, progress hates war, you should always aim to avoid it ..... for now.
Each hammer into units are lost for buildings. But it's unavoidable, you need an army because even ghandy will attack you if you are an easy prey. So what can you do ? first avoid to buy semi decent tiles with progress, don't buy lake tiles or cattle. Take only strategic resources that can be contested.
Get barrack and armoury asap : Not only they grant extra science and reduce crime but they will allow you to purchase units. You got +20% hammers for buildings, not for units. Dump your gold in horsemen and archer.
don't cut forest unless you really want a wonder and build fort, everything that can gives you a tactical edge is good.
Don't forget to bring good pantheon in da place.
God of commerce is so good for this. yes, it's great to have culture with progress but it's even greater to not waste hammers into units or to not be slowed by poverty and gold deficit.
IV - Progress and Religion
As I have said in the previous part, God of commerce is one of the best pantheon for progress for 3 reasons.
First you are the fastest to construct road, second you get a free woker and lastly, you get extra gold for each cities which sustain 2 tiles of the road.
Any pantheon which requires to create a city connection or improve a tile is stronger with progress.
But we are looking for pantheons which allows us to do better our job : focus on science and infrastructure.
V - Progress and Specialist
To avoid to generate extra unhappiness and because the early yield are usually bad, you should try to manage manually your specialist until midgame-lategame.
You should only working science and culture specialist.
Don't work merchant and engineer unless you didn't get your first one and in ONE city.
The yield that they bring, sucks and they increase unhappiness. you want more production and a mine with forge in better than working the specialist from the forge. Even sheep are better than specialist for progress.
VI - Progress and Policy combo
I wont say there are incompatible policy with progress but some of them are not that great.
Example :
Equality and martial law are not super combo.
Progress can't work too much specialist, can't build that much wonders early on and is not able to generate excessive happiness like tradition. Progress and aesthetics don't work really well in duo.
On the other hand, statecraft ( specially since the change to CDS buildings ) and piety are good with progress.
Industry is the best combo with progress. you will be able to generate lots of gold from producing buildings which will allows you to get more units or more buildings. you will have better production, efficient gold and extra happiness.
For the choice inside progress, the mistake I did before was to pick equality before fraternity but I understood that it slowed down my tech rate and at this point you don't have organisation.
on the other hand, science increase your culture rate via the opener and the scaler.
Picking equality over fraternity is like picking justice before sovereignty : sometimes you do it because luxury resources allow you to do it but you should not do it every game.
Conclusion :
Progress is great if you know what you should aim at, if you are able to stay under the radar. and if you know how to hold your ground.
It's the worse policy for attrition wars and even opportunistic wars.
Ps: Sorry my english is horsehockey, lots of grammar and syntax mistakes
Let's start with the description from CBP wikia :
Progress is best for civilizations which desire robust infrastructure and scientific advancement.
It's pretty accurate while not being totally true. you will understand soon.
Introduction : How works science
In order to understand well, the strength of progress you need to understand well how science cost works.
Each technologies has got a cost. The cost depend on 3 factors.
The first and most important one is the era, and its position in the era. it gives the base cost.
The second one is the number of cities that you own while researching. After your capital, each new city increases the cost of technology by 13%. it's additional, so it's 113% for 2 cities, 126% for 3, etc...
The last factor is the number of civs that you have met and that have already got that technology.
On standard, I believe it's -5% to the current cost per civs which has already discovered this technologies.
So those factors allow us to understand what we need to do in order to increase our tech speed.
I - How progress generates culture
In each starting tree, there are two ways to generate culture. A way which doesn't scale with the number of cities and the other which scales with the numbers of cities.
For tradition, Sovereignty/Opener doesn't scale while splendour does
Progress generates culture which doesn't scale with cities from science and culture which scales with cities from buildings. so in order to exploit the best of progress, you need to focus on infrastructure and science. So this tree does help you to get infrastructure and increase your science output, but you have to work on them in order to generate culture output.
it can be a virtue circle or a nightmare circle.
So to keep up the culture game, you have to build infrastructure and get the most science point possible.
As you can see, progress don't dislike war like tradition, they HATE it, because everything works in a circle. If you are slowed down in your infrastructure, your tech rate is slower and your culture output sinks.
for example, during ancient and classical, you need to get 1 building every 5 turn in order to hold on discipline. one building each 5 turn can be done but any possible or futur war can destroy your culture output.
But don't give up, organisation scales which makes it crazy good in the midgame.
II - How progress generates extra happiness
Progress has got the most simple and less conditional to generate happiness. you need to have more population under direct control. puppet doesn't add to the count.
Because it's not really conditional, it's weaker than tradition or authority.
So progress doesn't really like puppeting which is the first factor why progress doesn't really like war. no only there will slow your tech rate but you will need lots of infrastructures in order to reduce unhappiness to an acceptable level and to not sunk in unhappiness although tradition and authority can sustain a lot more unhappiness from nearly destroyed cities.
So progress is always sittings on the edge :they can easily fall into unhappiness because they get extra happiness from a factor that brings unhappiness ( more population ) and they can only solve it by keep their infrastructure up in running to have the lowest threshold possible.
Once again, it's an argument against war : the hammer you are giving to units is hammer lost for buildings.
Moreover thresholds increase with techs, you have to keep your infrastructure on line with your tech speed. If your science output is too high, you will face unbearable unhappiness because you are not able to keep up with your infrastructure. it will slow down your science rate and twice your culture rate because new technologies grants you more culture.
III - Progress and War
As you can see, by design, progress hates war, you should always aim to avoid it ..... for now.
Each hammer into units are lost for buildings. But it's unavoidable, you need an army because even ghandy will attack you if you are an easy prey. So what can you do ? first avoid to buy semi decent tiles with progress, don't buy lake tiles or cattle. Take only strategic resources that can be contested.
Get barrack and armoury asap : Not only they grant extra science and reduce crime but they will allow you to purchase units. You got +20% hammers for buildings, not for units. Dump your gold in horsemen and archer.
don't cut forest unless you really want a wonder and build fort, everything that can gives you a tactical edge is good.
Don't forget to bring good pantheon in da place.
God of commerce is so good for this. yes, it's great to have culture with progress but it's even greater to not waste hammers into units or to not be slowed by poverty and gold deficit.
IV - Progress and Religion
As I have said in the previous part, God of commerce is one of the best pantheon for progress for 3 reasons.
First you are the fastest to construct road, second you get a free woker and lastly, you get extra gold for each cities which sustain 2 tiles of the road.
Any pantheon which requires to create a city connection or improve a tile is stronger with progress.
But we are looking for pantheons which allows us to do better our job : focus on science and infrastructure.
V - Progress and Specialist
To avoid to generate extra unhappiness and because the early yield are usually bad, you should try to manage manually your specialist until midgame-lategame.
You should only working science and culture specialist.
Don't work merchant and engineer unless you didn't get your first one and in ONE city.
The yield that they bring, sucks and they increase unhappiness. you want more production and a mine with forge in better than working the specialist from the forge. Even sheep are better than specialist for progress.
VI - Progress and Policy combo
I wont say there are incompatible policy with progress but some of them are not that great.
Example :
Equality and martial law are not super combo.
Progress can't work too much specialist, can't build that much wonders early on and is not able to generate excessive happiness like tradition. Progress and aesthetics don't work really well in duo.
On the other hand, statecraft ( specially since the change to CDS buildings ) and piety are good with progress.
Industry is the best combo with progress. you will be able to generate lots of gold from producing buildings which will allows you to get more units or more buildings. you will have better production, efficient gold and extra happiness.
For the choice inside progress, the mistake I did before was to pick equality before fraternity but I understood that it slowed down my tech rate and at this point you don't have organisation.
on the other hand, science increase your culture rate via the opener and the scaler.
Picking equality over fraternity is like picking justice before sovereignty : sometimes you do it because luxury resources allow you to do it but you should not do it every game.
Conclusion :
Progress is great if you know what you should aim at, if you are able to stay under the radar. and if you know how to hold your ground.
It's the worse policy for attrition wars and even opportunistic wars.
Ps: Sorry my english is horsehockey, lots of grammar and syntax mistakes
Urgh, that sounds like something I would write :/
Dawnpromise
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2016
- Messages
- 422
You should be happy then. They're quite thorough and even if the explanation does cover some redundant aspects for me, it should help anyone in the future who wants to learn about playing progress. You have to admit Progress lies on the steeper side of the difficulty curve of Vox Populi.
I'll have to admit Progress isn't as weak as i initially believed it to be. But I honestly don't feel it's as strong as people claim it to be either. I may not enjoy Progress (or be any good with it) but I feel I can respect it now and taking it seriously I came to respect some other aspects in the game I had always felt were underwhelming actually synergize with Progess to be quite potent (I can honestly say I never saw the appeal of the Cooperation Religion belief until now).
Not my usual cup of tea but something new to appreciate about the mod I've come to enjoy.
tfw you are the roman empire AI and you fully complete progress and authority feels good.
Let's be honest, Progress + Authority is better than the Progress + Medieval Tree if you want to snowball hard. They synergize with each other so much that they don't have any apparent weakness beside for the fact that they neglect religion, city-state alliance, and tourism for world conquest. And that is how you truly play progress with authority. An authoritarian republic is the best type of government.
Let's be honest, Progress + Authority is better than the Progress + Medieval Tree if you want to snowball hard. They synergize with each other so much that they don't have any apparent weakness beside for the fact that they neglect religion, city-state alliance, and tourism for world conquest. And that is how you truly play progress with authority. An authoritarian republic is the best type of government.
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The tsundere from down undere?
I agree that progress is not good for attrition wars. If going up against an authority Civ, their healing on unit kill, lower unit maintenance, and +10% combat bonus will eventually wear you down. Authority wants to be constantly killing things for their instant yields, so it is in their best interest to keep building units. However, it is important to keep up your military as progress too.
I STRONGLY disagree on opportunistic wars. In fact, one of the best things about progress is being able to use your tech lead and robust infrastructure to quickly shift into war mode. There are many situations that come to mind. You could use your excess gold to bribe a distant civ that likes you to go to war with your neighbor or quickly buy units. Yes, progress generally hates EARLY wars but if you plan correctly you can hit a late classical/early medieval power spike. With a tech lead and good infrastructure, progress can have a formidable, technologically advanced army. For example, if you can build knights before your neighbors have even researched chivalry, then you have a huge military advantage.
In fact, I think that is the key to playing progress on higher difficulties: you have to be much more opportunistic and flexible. If you let your technologically inferior neighbor expand into your territory because you'd rather just build infrastructure, then you're gonna regret it later when they show up at your door with a huge army.
I disagree here too. One of the first Aesthetics policies gives you +3 science on amphitheaters, museums, etc. This works very well when going wide with progress because your cities can make those buildings so quickly. Admittedly, it's not as good as Statecraft in a vacuum. However, there are certain situations where Progress->Aesthetics is extremely potent. If you have a religion with beliefs like Mosques, Synagogues, Mastery, Asceticism, or get a Luxury resource monopoly that gives you food or growth, then Aesthetics could be a great combo.
Txurce
Deity
Again, good point... And good to see you around again!
Based on my starcrossed experience with Indonesia, you couldn't be more right. I built my early game around my Kris swordsmen, using them to expand into my closest neighbor. And when I paired Progress with Aesthetics, the policies fell like cherry blossoms in Wahington in the spring.
jma22tb
Prince
Thanks, Txurce.
In a meta-strategy sense, Progress is both an expansionist and a urbanization policy at the same time. What I currently do is settler spam, grab as much continuous land as possible, keep the satellite city populations low, around 3 or so, send food to the capital, grow it, build infrastructure in the satellites that address happiness, then let them grow when Progress is finished.
Once Progress is done, there's a gold per births mechanic that makes satellite city growth extremely profitable. At that point you could run a loss building a huge army and navy, letting loose your population growth and you'd be running a profit just from the births alone, especially if your cities completed granary and aqueduct before turning off avoid growth.
The capital's growth is critical because that's where the science power comes from. The science per connected city is nice, but it can't touch those yield bonuses from births. My game I'm currently writing a guide for right now has Washington at 32 population at the start of the Industrial era, I've been the tech leader all game and my espionage rating funnels all the spies to Washington for my Spy to slaughter like fish in a barrel.
Agreed on Progress and Aesthetics. Parthenon and Uffizi, just from a great works standpoint are excellent pairs of policy-exclusive Wonders for tourism output, especially for America when you can have Smithsonian scale that output even higher. The building bonuses get the guilds and culture buildings up faster, which nets longer term culture gain and more GP points. Tradition and Aesthetics is stronger strictly from a culture standpoint, but there's more to it than just culture alone. Progress is an objectively more dominant economic policy than anything in the Ancient era and that power is not to be underestimated.
In a meta-strategy sense, Progress is both an expansionist and a urbanization policy at the same time. What I currently do is settler spam, grab as much continuous land as possible, keep the satellite city populations low, around 3 or so, send food to the capital, grow it, build infrastructure in the satellites that address happiness, then let them grow when Progress is finished.
Once Progress is done, there's a gold per births mechanic that makes satellite city growth extremely profitable. At that point you could run a loss building a huge army and navy, letting loose your population growth and you'd be running a profit just from the births alone, especially if your cities completed granary and aqueduct before turning off avoid growth.
The capital's growth is critical because that's where the science power comes from. The science per connected city is nice, but it can't touch those yield bonuses from births. My game I'm currently writing a guide for right now has Washington at 32 population at the start of the Industrial era, I've been the tech leader all game and my espionage rating funnels all the spies to Washington for my Spy to slaughter like fish in a barrel.
Agreed on Progress and Aesthetics. Parthenon and Uffizi, just from a great works standpoint are excellent pairs of policy-exclusive Wonders for tourism output, especially for America when you can have Smithsonian scale that output even higher. The building bonuses get the guilds and culture buildings up faster, which nets longer term culture gain and more GP points. Tradition and Aesthetics is stronger strictly from a culture standpoint, but there's more to it than just culture alone. Progress is an objectively more dominant economic policy than anything in the Ancient era and that power is not to be underestimated.
When playing progress the capital is special and should still be ahead of other cities (this is something I didn't realize at first) so maybe its an issue people are having. I will often get my second city to just 3 or 4 pop and work high production like mines so it produces stuff, including settlers. Sometime I rush towards forge as well, this city often becomes a military or wonder spammer. As odd as it sounds there isn't much need to prioritize growth
If you want to do well with progress I'd try the USA, he is really strong and I'd play him now because I'd say a nerf if probable.
If you want to do well with progress I'd try the USA, he is really strong and I'd play him now because I'd say a nerf if probable.
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