[BERT] For someone that hasn't played base Civ BE in say... 10 years, and never played Rising Tides, any recommendations?

[CoconutTank]

Long story short, I think the current discussions over in Civ7 made me more interested in a Civ BE2 than in Civ7

I've reinstalled Civ BE last night, and I believe I also have Rising Tide, though I've never played with that expansion on. Just want to know if anyone has any recommendations on how to play, or if there are any mods or tips/tricks I should know about.

As an example, I didn't like the auto-select next unit feature of Civ 6 and was happy to turn it off, and it was nice to have ribbons showing the resources and capabilities of each competitor. I don't remember if I ever got any QoL mods for Civ 6, but I'd still like to know about them for Civ BE.

 

[Leefizzy]

Trade, both international and internal gives the biggest yield to the biggest loser between the two cities for said yield.
So a production city and a food city will give 5-8ish of the their thing to the other city, now imagine if 1 food city had 8 prod cities trading with it, all for the same 8 prod per trade route.
A worthless fringe city will get good yields from a built up city.

Which led me to the try out Humata to see what happens if I had a crap load of new cities using their extra free slot to trade with other capitals by rushing a visible trade route to them early on, since new non caps are small early on and capitals are the only built up ones.
Every city had 4-6 science per trade route per cap, a huge amount of science fast, the only other way I got close to this was getting cheap agreements with the insightful trait years ago on release.

Projects are also important, prod to food improves your trade routes, only use it in your food city doe, prod cities can build culture or science depending on your needs.
Buildings count for the trade calculation, so building labs or science yield buildings will nerf the science you get from other people's caps so save that for later.
The difference/delta is what matters apparently, no one had the exact formula as hard as I searched, but recyclers in both cities isn't the end of the world, the yields stay the sameish since both cities get the same yields if both have it +1 prod from internals.


Dunno what a good baseline is, but try to push how fast you reach a certain science and culture by turn 100 I guess, the fastest victory is super RNG cause of the contact victory from what I've seen.


There's also the specialist strat with African Union.

 

[legalizefreedom]

I'd suggest you start off on an easier difficulty the first time so you have an opportunity to experiment and make mistakes.

Rising Tide makes the game so much better, it's a different experience. For water cities, support them early with trade routes, build a few production buildings (but limit any other buildings except trade hub) until your move time is 3 turns or less, then run them around in the circle that will give you all your workable area (3 tiles out), finally settling them in the center and watch them explode and pump out navy units.

 

[legalizefreedom]

I would also suggest the Awesome Pods mod. It fixes a bunch of quests and spreads out rewards to the nearest city (not just to your capital), among other things. It's must use.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Agree with @legalizefreedom to start on a middle or lower difficulty level, to get used to the game.
Also agree that the Rising Tide expansion makes the game much, much better.

Things that will surprise you:

• Cities don't found immediately. They take a few turns (6-10 to grow from an outpost into a city. The baby cities are vulnerable while growing; sending them a trade route speeds that up. The trade route ends when the city is born, allowing you to reuse it.
• Diplomacy is very different. Trading techs, resources, or other items that you're used to trading in other franchise games are not present. You get different bonuses by spending a new currency (diplomatic capital). Since you also use diplo capital to improve your leader abilities, you may want to just sit back and let others make agreements with you, while learning the game.
• Victory conditions (most of them) involve building an end-game wonder. Two random leaders will object to your wonder, so they will (sooner or later) declare war on you to stop you.

Instead of the global happiness number from Civ5, BERT has a global health number. It can go down as you add cities; it can go up as you build certain buidings. You may also get health bonuses as you increase your affinity score. In short, it's possible to GROW your way out of a low health score, through research/affinity and production/buildings.

Perhaps start with INTEGR... She has a leader trait for building diplo capital, which can also be used to purchase buildings and units. The aliens are similar to barbarians in other civ games. A key difference is that they (other than the colossal aliens) will remain peaceful towards you if you delay attacking them. As your units get stronger, the aliens are less of a threat and provide a low-level bonus.

Perhaps start with emphasizing the Supremacy affinity. Explore... a lot! Sending out explorers and digging up their sites give lots of bonuses, some small and some bigger. Combat is like Civ5, except that naval units come sooner and are more of a threat to your coastal or aquatic cities.

 

[CoconutTank]

Just want to say, thanks a ton for the recommendations

 

[CoconutTank]

Been messing around on Mercury difficulty for a few sessions. I think I'm already pretty attached to North Sea Alliance lol

Random thoughts:

• Being able to move a city around on the water is super neat, though I admittedly forgot about the max range on workable tiles a few times. I'm assuming I can deploy another city to use the abandoned improvements.
• I haven't figured out how to increase the intrigue level of a city yet, so my spies are usually sitting at HQ or on my own cities.
• I really like hover units, but it sure takes awhile to unlock them. I wish there were helis.
• There's an aerial carrier unit that I want to work around for next session. I want to see how well I can transition naval dominance to land dominance with it.
• Personality traits are kind of neat, and give me more ways to augment my civ sponsor, though admittedly I have a few traits that I've noticeably chosen multiple times. Civ 7 seems to be doing something similar to diplo capital.
• I really do not like the auto next unit "feature" in this game, though it doesn't look like I can disable it.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Spies: Spies increase the intrigue level (thus, the difficulty of the mission you may attempt) by doing missions in a city. Start with "Gain Sources," followed by a "Siphon Energy" mission or two... in the same foreign city. I often fund my mid-game health buildings on stolen energy.

Moving Aquatic Cities: You have a few options, including moving the city back; building the Drone Command artifact wonder, which lets you work more tiles; or this innovative strategy https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/hawaiian-island-chain-strategy.687373/ Keep moving one city, then found another on the original location to reuse the improvements. I haven't tried it myself yet, but if you have the right map, it could work well to allow the newer cities to grow more quickly.

Aquilon / Land Aircraft Carrier: Yes, they're neat. I've built a few, but they seem to come later in the game if I don't beeline them. Also, they only hold two aircraft each, rather than 3 for a naval carrier. I will rebase my aircraft into newly captured cities, just off the front line, so they can bomb enemies without their base city being threatened.

 

[legalizefreedom]

 

[CoconutTank]

Thank you so much legalizefreedom \o/

 

[legalizefreedom]

That one thing ruined the game for me until they added the option. My big thing is that when you perform an action or an attack, it would just whisk you away without even knowing what happened.