finding great writing in hidden antiquity sites

[monkeymcbain]

only discovered this recently, found 2 ancient GWs in hidden sites. Can use them for a 'culture renaissance' too which can give a free SP

Also only just discovered right clicking on the arrow for your votes in the world congress uses all your votes in one go.

What 'hidden' features have you found only after hours of gameplay?

 

[mclericp]

wait, great writers or writings

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

it's like popping a great writer, you get to choose between and getting a great work of writing or a culture bulb

 

[joncnunn]

Culture bomb: Appears to be the exact same forumla as the Great Scientist one;
so 8 turns after having started to host the Olympics, it will be really good.

Can be more than a policy; and can also be less. In any case though your next policy will be more expensive.

 

[Mr. Grieves]

Culture bomb: Appears to be the exact same forumla as the Great Scientist one;
so 8 turns after having started to host the Olympics, it will be really good.

Can be more than a policy; and can also be less. In any case though your next policy will be more expensive.

Yeah, I figured the Olympics thing out only yesterday. It's insane if you've finished Aesthetics and have a lot of Faith stored up.

 

[otaman1]

So are Great Works of Writing only in Hidden Antiquities? I thought it was all Archaeologist Sites.

 

[SULOMON]

So are Great Works of Writing only in Hidden Antiquities? I thought it was all Archaeologist Sites.

Only the Hidden Sites.

 

[otaman1]

So what kind of writings are there? I've only heard about the Rosetta Stone.

 

[budweiser]

From my experience, they are found about 1 in 3 time on hidden antiquities. If you finish this tree and find them, you can potentially get enough culture points for a whole other tree. In other words, exploration potentially pays for itself. I think this is a little known fact.

 

[monkeymcbain]

So what kind of writings are there? I've only heard about the Rosetta Stone.

i've seen dead sea scrolls and hammurabi's code of laws. I've only ever uncovered two so i think they're a low probability event.

Does anyone know if you can theme Shakespeare's theatre with them and have theatre of ancient writing?

 

[kaspergm]

From my experience, they are found about 1 in 3 time on hidden antiquities. If you finish this tree and find them, you can potentially get enough culture points for a whole other tree. In other words, exploration potentially pays for itself. I think this is a little known fact.

Yes, and at least as high as on Emperor difficulty, it's easy to be the only player to finish this tree, because AI seems to have little love for Exploration - I regularly fill out Exploration after taking some ideology tenets, and in a good game I'll find 4 or 5 of these writings which will give me about 10.000 culture each. Very imbalanced, I think the only reason why this isn't frequently exploited is because lower part of Exploration sucks so badly that in any form of competitive play, it's not worth the bother to trod through these hopeless policies just to get culture for other policies.

 

[GerrardCapashen]

If you steal a hidden antiquity site from an AI's territory, will they notice and give you a negative diplo modifier? Or can they not see them at all and just ignore your archaeologist?

 

[otaman1]

Well, if they didn't complete the Exploration tree then all they'll see is an archaeologist digging in their territory. But I assume the AI isn't that dumb. It's like vice versa. You didn't complete the Exploration tree but the AI did and he sends an archaeologist into your territory and it starts digging in your lands. What do you think it's doing? It's obviously not just standing there.

 

[GoStu]

i've seen dead sea scrolls and hammurabi's code of laws. I've only ever uncovered two so i think they're a low probability event.

Does anyone know if you can theme Shakespeare's theatre with them and have theatre of ancient writing?

I've seen a few others. If I recall correctly it's roughly 1/3 chance of getting a Writing/Culture Bulb option, the other two times out of three it'll turn up an ordinary artifact.

I can think of no reason why you couldn't theme the Globe Theater with the ancient writings, I've certainly used them for the Great Library and Oxford University.

 

[kaspergm]

If you steal a hidden antiquity site from an AI's territory, will they notice and give you a negative diplo modifier? Or can they not see them at all and just ignore your archaeologist?

You will get the diplo hit like any other antiquity site. Which always bothered me, because - logical or not - from a gameplay perspective, it doesn't make much sense to offer you a bonus from completing the tree which, in many cases, you'll be either completely cut off from getting access to (AI doesn't want to give you open borders) or will come with a diplomatic penalty.

The hidden writings were added to the game for that reason - people complained that the plain extra artifact sites were not attractive enough as they were originally because in most cases, you'd only be able to access a few of them because of border issues. I still feel they've done an overall sloppy work on Exploration, however, balancing out a crappy policy tree (at least for the lower part) with an overpowered-but-unpredictable finisher bonus. I would rather have seen the bonus artifacts being generally more powerful (but not super powerful) compared to standard artifacts, and then have the lower part of the tree being made more attractive. But at least some of that can be fixed through modding.

 

[George Abitbol]

i've seen dead sea scrolls and hammurabi's code of laws. I've only ever uncovered two so i think they're a low probability event.

I had once Dead Sea Scrolls, Rosetta Stone and a Viking saga I don't remember the name. I like this idea of hidden masterpieces, it makes the Exploration finisher strong (a good tree combined with a naval civ), if you have enough room in your museums.