French Eleanor struggle

[Gilgameshuggah]

I guess France is late bloomer but how sticky is it going to be early on?

I started a game on emperor, continents, abundant, legendary start, other default to give a try at this flipping dominoes kind of conquest. I didn't really restart, my first start was insane good with Paris having 5 stone, 2 iron, 3 silk, 4 wheat, horses, game and milk. I was also on a widening peninsula, easy to cut off and some space for peaceful expansion. I managed to settle six cities, three of which are quite good with fresh water and resources, other three ok while capping a settler from Japan south of me (they were in war with Ottomans further south and I couldn't resist and was able to pull it off and flee into Ottoman forces). I settled two more cities and easily decimated the Japanese army when they DoW'd in revenge few dozen turns later. I didn't push conquest as that would ruin my Eleanor game. Now I'm allied with both Japan and Ottomans (have no other contact) and am suze of three out of five known CS's.

The thing is the game seems like a slow drag. I'm already at 540 AD developing castles and the enlightenment. My classic age was normal and the next one went dark. I barely managed to get heroic that started this turn (had to reload a quicksave to have a builder on suitable spot to build Chatéau that became available on last possible turn). I used all my diplomatic points to get cheap buildings on theater squares and have them everywhere. I have Bordeaux (9), La Rochelle (5) and Lyon (8) each with two great works all within 9 squares of Kyoto (7) and they have zero effect on the loyalty there even now that I have heroic. Rouen (6) is also within range but has no great works yet. I also have Amani with -2 loyalty promotion within range. Should I be seeing anything or does it happen at later states?

I have a feeling that even with resources improved, my cities are slow at completing anything.

I also have managed to build zero wonders which I guess is bad when playing French. Other civs have been building early ones left and right WHILE at war

 

[Disgustipated]

It certainly gets better when you get art museums. Make sure you have enough economy to buy great works as well (which is why I tend to do better with Eleanor as England since their economy is better). I find ampitheaters alone aren't enough.

As for production, improvements alone won't be enough usually. Especially not on emperor. Many people chop things in, but I prefer industrial zones.

 

[Gilgameshuggah]

I don't really see the need to buy great works. I have all my amphis in the 9-square range filled and had two painters waiting before my first museum was finished. I guess I can always move the works I have if the ball starts rolling. At the moment I can't see myself really bringing more than 4-5 cities in the range of target city.

Archeology and theming are useless in this war, right?

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I don't really see the need to buy great works. I have all my amphis in the 9-square range filled and had two painters waiting before my first museum was finished. I guess I can always move the works I have if the ball starts rolling. At the moment I can't see myself really bringing more than 4-5 cities in the range of target city.

Archeology and theming are useless in this war, right?

Archeology counts as a Work of Art, basically anything that you put in a slot will exert the pressure

But theming does nothing afaik, but it does help YOU get a cultural victory faster.

 

[NukeAJS]

Don't overlook a nicely placed city with an entertainment district for flipping cities. The bread and circuses project can put out quite a bit of loyalty pressure -- even in a medium city. Furthermore, simply growing your cities puts out more loyalty pressure. So setting border cities to prioritize food and running food trade routes can be the difference between a city that flips in 40 turns or 10 turns.

Lastly, even though Eleanor seems like a 100% peaceful civ/leader, conquering a single key (read: large) city can cause the surrounding cities to fall like dominoes. There was this one time where I was trying to flip a civ in a dark age but after 10-15 turns, it was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to happen by the time the era ended. This was because there was a 17 population city right on our border. I joined in on a holy war against them, took the city (which had an art museum and an entertainment district), moved as many works of art as possible, set it to the bread and circuses project, and moved Amani to a bordering CS. The entire civ flipped (about 7 more cities) in about 5 turns. On top of that, I barely got any grievances.

 

[Datian]

One question about Eleanor : does Mexico suz bonus have an effect on the 9 tiles range rule ?

 

[Archon_Wing]

France on its own is kind of a bad civ. Catherine is better because she gets direct bonus earlier, and Eleanor is usually better off as England for the exact same reason. Wonder bonus is decent but nothing to focus your game on and the chateau is terrible though suitable for late game spam when you have nothing better to do and the bonus appeal can help with resorts/parks.

In general, peaceful flipping is a meme and a waste of time. It is far more efficient to war normally and kick down the opponent's population center and watch as the rest of their cities quickly fall apart due to loyalty and you can absorb all of them without having to get extra grievances. Build theater squares and Entertainment complexes for bread and circuses in your border cities to speed this up.

 

[Gilgameshuggah]

France on its own is kind of a bad civ. Catherine is better because she gets direct bonus earlier, and Eleanor is usually better off as England for the exact same reason. Wonder bonus is decent but nothing to focus your game on and the chateau is terrible though suitable for late game spam when you have nothing better to do and the bonus appeal can help with resorts/parks.

Yeah, I call this startegy bull$hit. One of the worst, most frustrating games I've played. During my heroic age I managed to bring no less than 19 great works in four cities in the range of Kyoto and I got it's loyality to waver once or twice. By the end of this age it has "rebellion in 42 turns" and I have no chance at all to keep golden age going so it's probably all wasted after this.

 

[Gilgameshuggah]

Eventually Kyoto flipped during my normal age and after that it started slowly moving forwards. Nothing like flipping dominoes, more like pushing hard and micromanaging all the time...

Japan and Ottomans were not that fond of theater squares and their cities had max pop allowed districts in them so first I had to hard build Hermitage in Kyoto, food boost them with trade routes to build squares and then gold buy amphis and museums. Then move great works, move Amani, luckily they had entertainment so I could do bread and circuses. I also built two spies but they are just too slow in everything to make any difference even with three slave boosting cards. 7 turns to get in city, 8 to establish listening post, 8 more to eliminate governor.

At least this way I get cities that are large and have culture output but army would be just so much faster. But this strategy only works because AI hasn't been programmed to understand what's happening. Just DoW on me already, I have hardly any army, pillage my iprovements and districts and trade routes and none of this would happen.

ps. One stupid thing I noticed: Flip a city that is a bit too distant to hold and it will revolt back into a free city. Free city will have the highest tech level troops around that no one else yet have in the world. They spawned a bunch of infantry which I had tech for but no oil even revealed yet. At least the French UU is very good against them as long as you are still on your starting continent.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

Eventually Kyoto flipped during my normal age and after that it started slowly moving forwards. Nothing like flipping dominoes, more like pushing hard and micromanaging all the time...

Japan and Ottomans were not that fond of theater squares and their cities had max pop allowed districts in them so first I had to hard build Hermitage in Kyoto, food boost them with trade routes to build squares and then gold buy amphis and museums. Then move great works, move Amani, luckily they had entertainment so I could do bread and circuses. I also built two spies but they are just too slow in everything to make any difference even with three slave boosting cards. 7 turns to get in city, 8 to establish listening post, 8 more to eliminate governor.

At least this way I get cities that are large and have culture output but army would be just so much faster. But this strategy only works because AI hasn't been programmed to understand what's happening. Just DoW on me already, I have hardly any army, pillage my iprovements and districts and trade routes and none of this would happen.

ps. One stupid thing I noticed: Flip a city that is a bit too distant to hold and it will revolt back into a free city. Free city will have the highest tech level troops around that no one else yet have in the world. They spawned a bunch of infantry which I had tech for but no oil even revealed yet. At least the French UU is very good against them as long as you are still on your starting continent.

Yeah, Eleanor is like that. It's a lot of micromanaging. A lot of moving great works around, running spy missions constantly, and only starts taking advantage in the late game. You can try and speed up the spies with policy cards. If you do found a religion, enemy border cities following your religion get -3 loyalty. It's certainly not a fast way to play. My Eleanor games have the highest score in my Hall of Fame because they take so damn long.

 

[Gilgameshuggah]

There definitely should be grievances for keeping a flipped city. This is ridiculously broken even if slow way of playing. It's as if AI didn't understand what was happening even after losing 6 out of it's 8 cities and just smiles and declares frienship. No human player would ever fall for that.

 

[Disgustipated]

Why should there be grievances? If you think of it from a real world perspective, those people just like your empire more than their old one. You have a culturally superior empire after all. They willingly crossed over.

Yes I know the human player is manipulating things behind the scenes to make this happen, that's just a gameplay mechanic. But the real world meta is they find your empire more pleasing and switch sides. The human player will always have ways to manipulate game mechanics over the AI. But I have seen Eleanor AI flip cities as well, so it's not unheard of for the AI to benefit. The human player will always be superior to the AI at things like this.

 

[Gilgameshuggah]

Why should there be grievances? If you think of it from a real world perspective, those people just like your empire more than their old one. You have a culturally superior empire after all. They willingly crossed over.

Yes I know the human player is manipulating things behind the scenes to make this happen, that's just a gameplay mechanic. But the real world meta is they find your empire more pleasing and switch sides. The human player will always have ways to manipulate game mechanics over the AI. But I have seen Eleanor AI flip cities as well, so it's not unheard of for the AI to benefit. The human player will always be superior to the AI at things like this.

No country that I know of has a mechanism for legal "flipping" nor would let that pass. Think of Catalonia or Crimea for example. National infrastructure and property crosses borders and so on.

 

[Loderingo]

Glad you are making some progress now Gilga. It definitely helps with Eleanor to play on pangea and be fairly central in the map as you can then "attack" different neighbours based on who is in a dark age.

Don't know if you are aware but if you go to the loyalty map mode, there is a drop down below each city's name, which shows the breakdown of loyalty in each city. If you want to get a city to flip in reasonable time (say 10 turns) then you need to get loyalty down to -10 or greater

I generally find it needs a combo of factors to get the ball rolling but it is then easy to wipe out a civ completely: great works + Amani + bread and circuses + spies + indie rock bands

With spies, it is important to get as many as you can and slot the relevant diplomacy cards. If you can get 2-3 spies you work on multiple enemy cities at once. When your spies level up you can skip the listening post mission.

If a city looks like flipping back then slot Victor in a nearby city as one of his promotions gives loyalty

Generally I agree with Kmart that Eleanor is not the quickest but she is fun and can really come into her own in from the modern era onwards. It is definitely possible to win peaceful domination with Eleanor provided you don't have Dido and Tamar on the map (Tamar is hard to flip as she has so many golden ages)

 

[Gilgameshuggah]

Pangaea would be optimal and also keep CS's to minimum. They can become a serious roadblock on your way to peaceful conquest.

I was able to get everything on my continent but few coastal CS's and then won by tourism already. Anyway, I had a cheap feeling all the way after it started rolling. AI is clearly not capable of reacting even though it can play dirty when you are reaching other victories while doing nothing "wrong".

What determines the cost of Reyna gold buying districts? 2200 or so for theater is a lot but if it saves me 8 turns...

 

[Karmah]

Don't overlook a nicely placed city with an entertainment district for flipping cities. The bread and circuses project can put out quite a bit of loyalty pressure -- even in a medium city. Furthermore, simply growing your cities puts out more loyalty pressure. So setting border cities to prioritize food and running food trade routes can be the difference between a city that flips in 40 turns or 10 turns.

Lastly, even though Eleanor seems like a 100% peaceful civ/leader, conquering a single key (read: large) city can cause the surrounding cities to fall like dominoes. There was this one time where I was trying to flip a civ in a dark age but after 10-15 turns, it was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to happen by the time the era ended. This was because there was a 17 population city right on our border. I joined in on a holy war against them, took the city (which had an art museum and an entertainment district), moved as many works of art as possible, set it to the bread and circuses project, and moved Amani to a bordering CS. The entire civ flipped (about 7 more cities) in about 5 turns. On top of that, I barely got any grievances.

I second the 'take a key city' war policy. For me Eleanor is about a mix between low conquest (so few grievances, warmonger rep) and peaceful conversion. Not just peaceful conversion. It's for those people who can create advantage to get a low grievance war going, pillage /take one or two cities, finalize with conversion therefore achieving a full civ conquest with your reputation intact.

 

[Victoria]

Yeah, I call this startegy bull$hit

No, just not early. Spies and bread and circus, but let’s be very clear on one thing. A capital is much harder to flip because it double pressures itself.
Pillaging to me is the early answer, they get stuck is a catch 22, high pop to stave off your pop/circus pressure but then you go miserable because all of your amenities are gone.
Your first game Eleanor is not as much fun as your third.