France vs. The World

MagerBlutooth

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 13, 2022
Messages
4
Newcomer to Vox Populi mod. Played Civ V many years ago but never developed past Emperor difficulty. After playing a few runs to get a feel for the difficulty and mechanics, I tried out a Tiny map as France on Prince to see how I could do. Also, I had to disable Espionage and City Events due to an infrequent bug with them that was preventing me from ending my turn.

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I adopted a fairly aggressive playstyle for this run, in contrast to how I normally play. It took me 3 wars for me to take over my neighbor Brazil, around the time where my Musketeers came into play (~200 turns). I ended up making Brazil a vassal after taking the capital, since I wanted to see what the benefits were.

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What struck me about this game is how my Civ seemed to remain both incredibly competitive while simultaneously dead in the water. I had the most tourism and land, but the rival continent of Byzantium and Carthage were dominating in production, science, and diplomacy. There were really only two world religions, with Byzantium taking over the other continent and mine taking mine. I had more money and faith than I knew what to do with, but the technology gap prevented me from gaining the upper hand in war. Byzantium's religion became the World Religion and they had total unshakable control over all the city states, so the most I could do was conquer all the city states on my continent to reduce their numbers slightly and continue to proc my bonus. Both Carthage and Byzantium started mass-producing Ironclads, which took about 3 Frigates and a Corvette to take down each. Since Byzantium and Carthage had all the city states, it turned into a World War against France, since Brazil didn't play much of a part. I ended up in a position with about 50 turns left to go. After researching Ironclads, I couldn't see a clear win condition that could turn the tables. I still had the most tourism, but Carthage and Byzantium had way too much culture. I was too behind in science for that to be viable, and I had about 3 votes in the World Council next to Byzantium's 14 and Carthage's 5. Due to falling behind in tech, it didn't seem like I'd be able to create a strong enough navy to get a foothold on the other continent either. Without my own Ironclads, I could barely hold off the invading forces, though being able to hold off both nations at once is still much better than what I could normally handle.

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I was interested in analysis of this run to see where I went wrong and what I could have done better. I was aiming for a primary goal of Domination and falling back on Culture if it didn't pan out since every city I took over got me those GWAM points. I figured trying to be the best at everything would make my Civ the best at nothing, but falling behind on science definitely hurt my ability to stay competitive during wartime. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to still be in the Industrial Era in 1990, so I'm sure something went wrong with my tech development. I noticed that Great People produce a much weaker yield compared to the base game, so I likely didn't use those optimally either. I'm also not sure how much I lost or gained by leaving Brazil as a vassal instead of taking their last city. My happiness was fluctuating like crazy every turn, so I couldn't really keep track of what I should be doing with it, and I really didn't know what to do with all that faith and gold, hence why I had almost 10K in reserve in both screenshots.

Some more details for reference:
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I was interested in analysis of this run to see where I went wrong and what I could have done better. I was aiming for a primary goal of Domination and falling back on Culture if it didn't pan out since every city I took over got me those GWAM points. I figured trying to be the best at everything would make my Civ the best at nothing, but falling behind on science definitely hurt my ability to stay competitive during wartime. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to still be in the Industrial Era in 1990, so I'm sure something went wrong with my tech development. I noticed that Great People produce a much weaker yield compared to the base game, so I likely didn't use those optimally either. I'm also not sure how much I lost or gained by leaving Brazil as a vassal instead of taking their last city. My happiness was fluctuating like crazy every turn, so I couldn't really keep track of what I should be doing with it, and I really didn't know what to do with all that faith and gold, hence why I had almost 10K in reserve in both screenshots.
A tip for great people:
Every time you plant one (like build an academy with a great scientist) it makes future great people in that category stronger. So you generally want to put down a few to build up a stronger lategame.

What religious beliefs did you pick? If playing as authority, I usually want my religion to give science. Happiness is difficult this patch but you might want to just lock growth in cities that already work all their strong tiles.
 
A tip for great people:
Every time you plant one (like build an academy with a great scientist) it makes future great people in that category stronger. So you generally want to put down a few to build up a stronger lategame.

What religious beliefs did you pick? If playing as authority, I usually want my religion to give science. Happiness is difficult this patch but you might want to just lock growth in cities that already work all their strong tiles.
I didn't have too much direction on the religion factor. The huge number of options makes it difficult to feel satisfied with a choice, and the bonus you receive often blends in with everything else in the pipeline. When I got my Pantheon I tried to pick a bonus that matched my starting resources since I was surrounded by cocoa, coffee, and bananas. The amount of production I was getting per city was much higher than my usual. It was just that Byzantium and Carthage were producing way more. The World's Fair went by in a single turn after I put all of my cities on it and focused production. All of us got the silver trophy (except Brazil), but I was a few hundred hammers shy of taking gold from Byzantium. Carthage beat me by about 30. But it could have been deceptively close, since they may or may not have been pouring all of their resources into the event.

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I didn't have too much direction on the religion factor.
This mod rewards a balance of different stuff. I find a good rule of thumb is to use the follower beliefs to address your weaknesses. These options will usually help lead to balanced cities:

With tradition, take mastery (+1 yield to specialists) or diligence (extra production)
With progress, take inspiration (extra culture)
With authority, take scholarship (extra science)

If you put everything towards production you'll just run out of stuff to build. I think if you had more science you could have built ironclads/cruisers earlier and had a good chance at winning.
 
Would it have benefitted me to try and devote more effort into diplomacy? That was also a significant weakness of mine, and I was arguably further behind in it than science. It led to me getting sanctioned and then my luxury resources slowly getting banned, which didn't really cripple my finances but gave me a lot of poverty-based unhappiness. I couldn't really get a foothold on any of the city states on the other continent due to the proximity, and this mod doesn't let you exchange gold for favor. I figured it became a losing battle after the World Religion was established. I'm not too well-acquainted with the Envoy unit yet, but are Envoy rushes a strategy in the same vein as Missionary rushes? Byzantium seemed to gain a few hundred points of favor with city-states really quickly, much more than I could have gotten from quests or unit gifting.

Are vassal states more advantageous for diplomatic purposes than wiping a Civ off the map? I noticed Brazil tended to vote in my interests after I conquered him. The only issue was he had 2 votes, so it didn't make much difference. Would there have been an advantage to liberating him at some point, or does that just put me at risk of having another opponent during the world war?
 
Would it have benefitted me to try and devote more effort into diplomacy? That was also a significant weakness of mine, and I was arguably further behind in it than science. It led to me getting sanctioned and then my luxury resources slowly getting banned, which didn't really cripple my finances but gave me a lot of poverty-based unhappiness. I couldn't really get a foothold on any of the city states on the other continent due to the proximity, and this mod doesn't let you exchange gold for favor. I figured it became a losing battle after the World Religion was established. I'm not too well-acquainted with the Envoy unit yet, but are Envoy rushes a strategy in the same vein as Missionary rushes? Byzantium seemed to gain a few hundred points of favor with city-states really quickly, much more than I could have gotten from quests or unit gifting.

Are vassal states more advantageous for diplomatic purposes than wiping a Civ off the map? I noticed Brazil tended to vote in my interests after I conquered him. The only issue was he had 2 votes, so it didn't make much difference. Would there have been an advantage to liberating him at some point, or does that just put me at risk of having another opponent during the world war?
I would keep the vassal all game.

I usually buy a lot of envoys, especially if I have spare gold. I also usually avoid conquering city states unless its truly impossible to ally them.
 
Would it have benefitted me to try and devote more effort into diplomacy? That was also a significant weakness of mine, and I was arguably further behind in it than science. It led to me getting sanctioned and then my luxury resources slowly getting banned, which didn't really cripple my finances but gave me a lot of poverty-based unhappiness. I couldn't really get a foothold on any of the city states on the other continent due to the proximity, and this mod doesn't let you exchange gold for favor. I figured it became a losing battle after the World Religion was established. I'm not too well-acquainted with the Envoy unit yet, but are Envoy rushes a strategy in the same vein as Missionary rushes? Byzantium seemed to gain a few hundred points of favor with city-states really quickly, much more than I could have gotten from quests or unit gifting.

Are vassal states more advantageous for diplomatic purposes than wiping a Civ off the map? I noticed Brazil tended to vote in my interests after I conquered him. The only issue was he had 2 votes, so it didn't make much difference. Would there have been an advantage to liberating him at some point, or does that just put me at risk of having another opponent during the world war?
Envoy is how you change gold into influence it is just slower, if you have plenty of gold it is still pretty effective.

Vassals provide a bunch of benefits, free yields without increasing the cost of science/culture from number of cities. Generally you want to take as few cities as possible and make people your vassal, as there is a limit to how many cities are useful but vassals always provide some benefit.

To win you kind of need to pick a way of winning and focus on that, but obviously that is hard to do without playing the mod more. With naval units you just need to make a huge swarm of them
 
One factor that I was struggling with was the dilemma presented by France's UA. While not conquering city-states and making vassals seem like good general strategies, I had to weigh them against the benefit of the GWAM generation that I'd get from total conquering. Conquering the city states seemed like the only thing I could do, since Byzantium had control over all of them by a few hundred points. When I made Brazil a vassal, I had just conquered their capital, so they only had one city left. I suppose the yields I was getting from their last city were more advantageous than the Great Writer or Artist I would have gotten from taking it. I was advised to constantly take cities as France and raze any cities that aren't useful enough.
 
I always play in epic speed and if I went authority I try to finish my neighbour late classical or preferably early medieval era for vassalization. You played at quick speed so I am not sure how that translates into your game but three wars to finish your neighbour seemed a bit delayed.
 
This mod rewards a balance of different stuff. I find a good rule of thumb is to use the follower beliefs to address your weaknesses.
This is really good advice worth repeating.

It doesn't matter how good your science is if you have no hammers to build units and infrastructure. It doesn't matter how powerful your hammers are if your army is an era behind in tech and you have no culture to meet the prereqs for wonders, etc. A well balanced civ tends to do a lot better than one who is laser focused on a specific thing.
 
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