[GS] GS impressions/random observations thread.

[Lord Xavius]

Playing my first game as Mali with the other GS leaders as AI. Started out next to a volcano, and it gets named after a volcanic lake in Cambodia. Have there really been no volcanoes at all in their part of the world, ever?

Anyway, something that amused me:

Spoiler :

The Inca (who I had yet to meet thanks to them being holed up in the middle of another continent) voted to trade embargo themselves. That's dedication to your leader ability.

(And on a side note, Kristina being a lousy ally.)

 

[Sostratus]

I think it's on purpose to make you diverge from your tech path a bit and not beeline so much.

While true beelining isn't that great, it seems like an easy pitfall for players with a knowledge gap of the game: if you don't plan it out and instead look just 1-2 techs ahead for research, it's easy to not take siege tactics and go for cool stuff like economics and chemistry, only to find you're many techs deep in the hole to get oil unlocked. It's less than ideal design. Making replaceable parts require rifling, for example, would solve a lot of this and probably make @Boris Gudenuf much happier (a noble goal in itself.)

 

[ZeroSuitSenpai]

Love, love, LOVE Gathering Storm so far. Not so much for the big gameplay changes, but for the smaller ones. I've found natural disasters to be nice flavor, but otherwise ignorable (at least on default intensity). Future Era and weather are somewhat duds. But I enjoy grievances and having Diplomatic Favor as a currency a ton.

P.S. Please tell the AI to stop asking me for like 2 diplo favor in a trade deal.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Is there any chance that the probability of disasters is higher for earlier turns and lower for later turns? A few people have commented on seeing lots of disasters early, then fewer later.

It may just be randomness, but there are some reasons to speculate that the chances of natural disasters may have been tuned to decline over time:
1. early turns have always been understood to cover more "real time years" than later turns
2. the production bonuses from disasters get added earlier
3. players get to see the disasters but they're not as devastating in less developed cities
4. later game, human induced disasters kick in, so "natural" ones can be reduced in frequency

File this under pure speculation, but it's just a thought that occurred to me from reading people's comments on their first GS games.

My theory is that there is some kind of timer, so that disasters are less likely to reoccur shortly after they occur. So once most of your region has experienced a disaster, it takes a while for chances of a reoccurrence to build back up. And this time is probably shorter at a 4 setting than at the default 2.

 

[Red_warning]

Note to self, barbarians know how to use tunnels.

 

[Uberfrog]

Playing my first game as Mali with the other GS leaders as AI. Started out next to a volcano, and it gets named after a volcanic lake in Cambodia. Have there really been no volcanoes at all in their part of the world, ever?

Really, no. Mali, and most of West Africa is on the West African Craton, a very old and tectonically stable region of the Earth's lithosphere that formed 2 billion years ago. As a result the region is highly inactive from a volcanic point of view. The only example I can find is the rather unglamorous-sounding Tin Zaouatene volcanic field,, about which information is very scant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Zaouatene_volcanic_field

To find any notable volcanoes nearby, you have to venture into Central Africa (Chad or Cameroon), or out into the Atlantic for the volcanic islands (the Canaries, Cape Verde, São Tomé, etc.)

 

[Jewman]

I'm sure this has been talked to death but there is something clearly wrong with barbarians: some games I'll clearly get no barbarians and others it will be the insta-spawn new camp when you take old camp, no change in start settings.

 

[Uberfrog]

My theory is that there is some kind of timer, so that disasters are less likely to reoccur shortly after they occur. So once most of your region has experienced a disaster, it takes a while for chances of a reoccurrence to build back up. And this time is probably shorter at a 4 setting than at the default 2.

I honestly don't know if what we're seeing reports of is just confirmation bias. I think we need to wait a few more days before we can start commenting on the RNG.

Anecdotally, recurrence definitely does happen. I foolishly built my Government Plaza on a floodplain, and had only just finished repairing my Ancestral Hall after the first inundation when the same river flooded again perhaps 10–15 turns later . And this is on Disaster Setting 2. Needless to say, I have built a Dam now.

 

[Giskler]

The amount of times I've had production salvaged from trying to build wonders as Mali

 

[Vizurok]

I was afraid this would be the case. Adding 50 turns to the victory is just an unnecessary elongation, particularly if you've got a comfortable lead.

The laser beam nonsense is a neat idea for those cases where you have two evenly-matched players duking it out for space supremacy. Unfortunately these cases are zero with the AI, and still quite rare in multiplayer (unless you've got an unofficial truce going on in a peaceful builder game). It's a complete waste of development effort, and seems only to have made the endgame more tedious.

I agree with your point on the new SV being nothing but a tedious end-turn click fest, but it should be noted that the 50 turn extra time can be cut back quite easily. I am now working on my somewhat shaky memory, but I'm certain that there are two types of laser beam projects. While one of them does need excessive aluminum that might be hard to obtain, the other one has no significant restrictions. Any city with a spaceport can spam the laser project (multiple projects can be run at the same time) and with the obvious boosting cards, a city with decent production can do the project in 5ish turns. And this can be even cut shorter if you have the Royal Society.

In my Hungarian SV, I managed to teach the exoplanet in 10ish turns with two, later three spaceports without using any chops.

 

[Uberfrog]

The amount of times I've had production salvaged from trying to build wonders as Mali

You are clearly a glutton for punishment

 

[Jewman]

Got my first win of GS with Hungary. Continents, large, 8 players, 16 city states. Got my capital on a river bend with 5 tiles accross a river and mountains behind that for nice campus adjacency. Built nothing but 3 slingers and workers/settlers then beelined iron working and cycled amani through all the CS on my continent and levied city states non-stop until I conquered the 3 other civs on my continent. Was settling non-stop and barb hunting with the troops I still had levied for a while racking up absurd era score.

Beelined for ocean travel and levied 3 city-states and just went blindly into the ocean. I discovered the polynesians on the other continent were very far behind and had 13 strength city defense and we're assaulting a city-state. Allied the city state right away, levied and declared protectorate war and captured the Polynesians right away upgrading all my levied troops to musketmen and knights for free and met all the other players. I was still going blindly, luckily the Arabians captured Stockholm which sparked an emergency. I joined the emergency with Kristina and Harald (scandinavians sticking together lol) which gave me an emergency alliance with them giving me sight of the entire continent.

I discovered that the aztecs had conquered 3 city states in the north so I went and liberated them. In the south I discovered two city states that I flipped and levied and then declared war on everyone while simultaneously levying more troops in my continent and sailing them (at NINE or TEN embarkment movement speed) accross the ocean. I had 4 different military campaigns going on with highly promoted, highly advanced troops stomping over even the powerful civs on the continent like the aztecs.

Turn 144 win, took 3 capitals in my last turn lol. Since I wasn't building any troops and city-states dont ever build horseman, I did not get to enjoy Hungary's UUs too much unfortunately. Also, pillage economy is very real. The speed of your levied troops really makes domination victory a lot more enjoyable lol.

 

[Sagax]

The amount of times I've had production salvaged from trying to build wonders as Mali

Note to self: forget about wonders as Mali.

This also means that I should probably just go Domination with them... some wonders really help CV and DipV

 

[Sostratus]

I honestly don't know if what we're seeing reports of is just confirmation bias. I think we need to wait a few more days before we can start commenting on the RNG.

They said in one of the first streams that the math behind spawning a disaster is such that is tries to avoid the same spot twice if it can. However, this isn't always possible due to other factors like the map, so it's just a preference not a hard rule. I had thought the spawn chance was tied to the number ont he climate screen and nothing else- I don't think it goes up or down over the course of the game?

Also: tornadoes really suck to deal with. Only disaster level 3 and they are worse than anything.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

They said in one of the first streams that the math behind spawning a disaster is such that is tries to avoid the same spot twice if it can. However, this isn't always possible due to other factors like the map, so it's just a preference not a hard rule. I had thought the spawn chance was tied to the number ont he climate screen and nothing else- I don't think it goes up or down over the course of the game?

Also: tornadoes really suck to deal with. Only disaster level 3 and they are worse than anything.

The problem with tornadoes is they move so far each turn. And while you know which direction they are heading, it's not a straight line. They could hit anything.

 

[Phoenix1595]

My theory is that there is some kind of timer, so that disasters are less likely to reoccur shortly after they occur. So once most of your region has experienced a disaster, it takes a while for chances of a reoccurrence to build back up. And this time is probably shorter at a 4 setting than at the default 2.

Maybe, but I have had the same volcano erupt within a relatively short timeframe, as well as floods. Perhaps they randomized disaster timers through the mapscripts? My games have been all over the place, so I can’t replicate the same issues I have from one game to the next.

 

[Softly]

Mvemba's ability still doesn't work. Just had all 7 of my cities converted to Islam while playing as Kongo. Did not get the religious beliefs.

Yea was always wondering about this. Almost 2k hours in the game and I figured I just didn't understand the ability. Is it a known bug?

 

[Giskler]

So, I might be an idiot and this is very old news, but I just learned that I can dismiss stacked notifications by double right clicking them. Win.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Sandstorms are actually kind of cool.

The one that went through a nearby desert earlier in the game fertilized 27 tiles. Now most of that desert is effectively Plains. Except you can't farm it, I guess.

 

[Giskler]

You are clearly a glutton for punishment

Note to self: forget about wonders as Mali.

I have managed to build 5 of them, including Petra