First Look: Sumeria

Gilgamesh and Harald should have fun conquering and pillaging together. :lol: Let Harald do the pillaging and reap the rewards...

I was surprised to see a civ reveal today. Sumeria's definitely on the bottom of my list of civs to play but they still look fairly interesting.
 
Halfsies!!! That means if you are playing Sumer and some of your pesky allies are around, you only get half experience and half loots??? Why would I do that ...

From Pete Murray:
Some people are fast out of the gate in Civ. The Aztec, for example, and the Scythians, are two Civs that bring a lot of hurt early. But Sumeria is something else entirely. When humanity wakes at the Dawn of Time in Civ, Gilgamesh has been up for half an hour already, has made you breakfast, built a Ziggurat, hitched up the War Cart, and is ready to go.
Gilgamesh is your new best friend. He loves, and I mean loves his allies. He feels your pain. He rejoices when you rejoice. He goes to war with you. He is fired up. He has the car loaded. Montezuma declares war on you. Before Tomyris is finished denouncing him, Gilgamesh is punching Monty in the face with his enormous, beefy fists. He calls his left fist "The Vengence of Ur" and his right fist "The Vengence of Enlil." You've pointed out that maybe he could pick another nickname than "Vengence" for one of those fists, but he always laughs and slaps you so hard on the back you can hear your teeth rattle.
Then he holds Monty upside down and shakes him, and points to the pocket change that falls out: "Go halfsies?" he asks, grinning.
Everyone knows that Gilgamesh is about the business. Everyone knows you don't touch his friends, because he will come for you. And when you play as Gilgamesh, you can take care of your friends when they get hurt. You don't get the Warmonger penalty when you declare war on anyone at war with your allies. You are Gilgamesh. You look after your own, man. Because you know, deep down inside, in the marrow of your bones, that it wasn't technology or religion or agriculture that caused civilization to come into being.
It was friendship. Gilgamesh extends the Vengence of Enlil to you, and you bump it with your own.

source
 
What I'm wondering is if in Civ VI it's much harder to bribe the AI to war without you joining them than it was in V. If that's the case, Gigla's abilities will be in high demand.

He also is one of those civs it seems like a really bad idea to anger. For his UA to work, you want to be the one of his good side and make sure the other civs are on unsteady ground. What we don't know yet is how to keep him happy. If you do end up on a continent with 3 people (him, you, and a third) either you or the other civ is going to get attacked so for sure that will be some delicate diplomacy!

Gilgamesh is definitely a leader where paying that 30 gold to send him a delegation when you first meet him will always be a good idea.

Sending a trade route to his closest city should also be a priority.
 
"He can declare war on anyone at war with one of his allies without any warmonger penalties."
This should keep relations good with most Civs in a game, effectively negating penalties that others have towards you, like Scythia's.

When you are at war with an ally, I guess we will have to maneuver our units to 6 hexes away to keep full xp for our battles.
 
i noticed on the FL video that Washington loses the farm improvement when Sumeria captured the capital. Can someone explain why that happened?

Two farms disappeared actually, and the horse pasture as well. It looked like the districts may have gotten pillaged, too.
 
I hate to say it, but I hate how they designed both Gilgamesh and Sumer. Gilgamesh's beard is entirely wrong, and his clothing is completely anachronistic--both in design and color choices. As for the civ, the ziggurat's bonuses are nice but the design is strange. I'm not entirely certain what the historical basis for getting goody hut bonuses out of barbarian camps is supposed to be. I couldn't hear Gilgamesh well enough to say for certain, but what I did hear sounded suspiciously like Akkadian. And the video is just wrong about Gilgamesh's historicity: we do know for certain that Gilgamesh was a historical person: his seals and other artifacts have been found in Ur. Overall, I'm very disappointed in what I hoped would be my favorite civ. :( I do like the personality they gave Gilgamesh, though: it's very in keeping with his friendship with Enkidu. "Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk." :D
 
"He can declare war on anyone at war with one of his allies without any warmonger penalties."
This should keep relations good with most Civs in a game, effectively negating penalties that others have towards you, like Scythia's.

Scythia will still dislike declaring surprise wars, because it's agenda, not warmonger penalty. For the same reason, you could get bad relations with Teddy if start on the same continent.
 
Very interesting if improvements get razed on city capture. It would mean there is basically a penalty for not pillaging tiles before taking the city center. Or at least a very strong incentive to pillage before taking the center.
 
I agree that surely they won't require horses. :) We know Scythia doesn't, for the same reason.
That and the wheel tech comes so early that expecting folking to have improved horses by then would relegate such a unit to the trash pile. Don't think even vanilla chariots will require horses for that reason.
 
Scythia will still dislike declaring surprise wars, because it's agenda, not warmonger penalty. For the same reason, you could get bad relations with Teddy if start on the same continent.

With this in mind, I can easily imagine scenarios that having Gilgamesh as an ally and Scythia as an enemy could lead to a domino effect world war. Excited to see it in action.
 
I was a bit disappointed about the UAs.
Rewards from can be powerful, but it's a bit random and eventually peters out, and shared loot and experience sounds like something that will very rarely come into play.
However, the UA and UI easily make up for it, especially because they don't require any research. The War Cart could make them the ultimate rush civ (if the city attack penalty isn't too high) and will be very useful for clearing out barbarian camps. The Ziggurat is probably the best unique improvement and possibly the best piece of unique infrastructure since it can be spammed.

Edit: Just saw that he can also levy CS units at a discount. That's potentially pretty useful too.
 
I'm not entirely certain what the historical basis for getting goody hut bonuses out of barbarian camps is supposed to be.

I assume it's meant to represent the idea that the Sumerians invite their enemies to join their civilization after defeating them, rather than just wiping them out or enslaving them.
 
When they say there's no warmonger penalty for declaring war on people who declare war on "his allies" how is "allies" defined, esp in early eras? Declaration of Friendship...?
 
I assume it's meant to represent the idea that the Sumerians invite their enemies to join their civilization after defeating them, rather than just wiping them out or enslaving them.

Right, the Kassites. Still not a big fan of the civ's design, visually or mechanically. :(
 
Although the LUA does not make me thrilled to play as Sumeria necessarily (Ziggurats do that!), I must say it does make him one of the most interesting Civs to have in your game right up there with Cleopatra and Tomyris
 
... and shared loot and experience sounds like something that will very rarely come into play.

What makes you say this out of interest?

On normal map/difficulty there is almost always a war going on somewhere, if you manage your allies well as Sumeria you should be able to have the shared loot/xp going on quite a lot, especially in the early game when there are less penalties.

Frankly I quite like the idea of joining with my allies to get free unit XP and loot just for turning up ;)
 
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