[GS] GS impressions/random observations thread.

[KAVA]

Is this known fact? Ship can use a tunnel...

 

[Greasy Dave]

Am I right in assuming the more laser devices I launch the faster my space ship gets - we're not just limited to one laser? I kept on building them but could not find anything to confirm that the speed of my ship was increasing. The details of light years travelled given in the science victory screen seemed to jump erratically and not according to any logic regards the numbers of laser satellites I had floating at the lagrange point?

 

[Sagax]

Is this known fact? Ship can use a tunnel...

“Yeah. Any problem with that?” - said Hannibal Embarca, as he pushed his navy through the Alps.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Is this known fact? Ship can use a tunnel...

Lol, I think the devs said several times that they couldn't.

That's even better than a canal.

 

[TomeTraveler]

I had great success flipping cities in my Eleanor game. I conquered 4/7 AIs in my immortal game before I accidentally won a culture victory.

In game as Eleanor/France I found it surprisingly tough to flip a couple of Canadian cities but it eventually happened. Won a CV before I could flip any more, though.

In my current game (Mansa Musa) I started alone on a small continent with others fairly close by, and ran into the no-barbarians phenomenon for the first time, after having been hit with both seeming normal behavior and the amped up barbarians in previous games. There are four major landmasses in the game and so far I have noticed barbarians activity on only one of them, and on that one it seems heavier than usual, so perhaps both the over-abundant and the non-existent behavior is due to a bug that limits an entire world's output of barbarian camps to a single continent?

 

[oakdragon]

Happy Kristina looks like she has a huge crush on you.

 

[Starwars]

I love the little look Mathias gives you when he agrees to a deal. Too fun.

 

[AriochIV]

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!



I never noticed the rain falling beneath. But then, one never moved right on top of me before.

 

[BenitoChavez]

In game as Eleanor/France I found it surprisingly tough to flip a couple of Canadian cities but it eventually happened. Won a CV before I could flip any more, though.

Interesting that both you and MorningCalm had opposite experiences than I did. I have only played 1 game with her so maybe I just got lucky? Great Works, faith, and spies seems like a relatively reliable combo to pull of though. I'll definitely be playing more games as Eleanor because I think I could actually improve my strategy.

 

[BenitoChavez]

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

View attachment 518553

I never noticed the rain falling beneath. But then, one never moved right on top of me before.

If you're in the eye of the hurricane you should take no damage

 

[Victoria]

As if the Mongols were not bad enough

 

[IvoryPavane]

With Eleanor, I found religion and golden ages to be the deciding factors in flipping.

I found it nearly impossible to flip a city if they have a different religion, but the moment I converted them, they started to fall quickly. Then I hit a golden age, and 5 cities fell in 5 turns.

I also experienced a bug where a city flipped to me from about 30 hexes away haha

 

[TomeTraveler]

Interesting that both you and MorningCalm had opposite experiences than I did. I have only played 1 game with her so maybe I just got lucky? Great Works, faith, and spies seems like a relatively reliable combo to pull of though. I'll definitely be playing more games as Eleanor because I think I could actually improve my strategy.

The Canadian cities had three or four other cities packed close behind adding to loyalty, including Ottawa. I never ran any bread and circuses there either, and that would have sped things up somewhat I'm sure. I also think that I neglected to move my first great works to the border cities once I built the requisite buildings and instead just let them fill up as I gained Great People, which was pretty quickly but still probably not as optimal if I'd moved the early works as soon as I could.

 

[Pietato]

So I decided to stop sailing around the world long enough to found my first city as Kupe. Deity, huge, island plates. Founded it at turn 30 next to a natural wonder, and between some city states. Fortunately my circumnavigation meant I had a golden age before I even settled, had 1 emissary in 11 city states (5 cultural), and had uncovered a vulnerable Mali. Culture was easy to catch and overtake the AI, but science was a struggle. Eventually won a culture victory. Anyway, here are my thoughts:

The Maori
- I do not think the map reserves space for the Maori, which means you have to cram in somewhere, and will most likely have to war with someone.
- The Toa is overpowered, which is good due to needing to war to actually get cities.
- The Marae is insane, and even works on flood plains. You need to rush flight if you are going for a culture victory, though. Rush conservatin and spam forests.
- You will not get a good faith pantheon as the Maori.
- Generating science can be a pain in the ass.
- Coastal turtle cities are O for O-some.

City States
- Auckland was made even stronger, and the AI knows this.
- Cardiff is fantastic for powering a coastal empire.
- The AI zergs certain city states, meaning you can cheaply suzerain others.

AI
- The AI is using a lot more ships, though they still suck with them.
- They still like killing CSes.
- Their wars make more sense now.
- Eleanor hates me.

Issues
- Great Admiral charges suck even more now, because your Ironclad will have -20 to combat and be unable to heal due to a lack of coal.
- Roads are completely messed up.
- Climate change happens too suddenly, and from TROOPS. It does not do enough damage, etc either.
- Linking carbon sink to the IZ is moronic. My forest spam did NOTHING.
- Rock bands are very random. Turn it up to 11 and indie rock are overpowered.
- Pillaging is ridiculous, as expected.
- I had 5 uranium on the entire map...

 

[darko82]

I hear that the AI constantly tends to spam you almost every turn with the same "crap". And there is no way to stop this in GS. Should Firaxis fix this. But no... they have not fixed it yet. It must be really annoying to turn them off almost every turn. We need some anti-spam program!

 

[ZeroSuitSenpai]

I hear that the AI constantly tends to spam you almost every turn with the same "crap". And there is no way to stop this in GS. Should Firaxis fix this. But no... they have not fixed it yet. It must be really annoying to turn them off almost every turn. We need some anti-spam program!

But have you considered giving Seondeok 1 diplomatic favor for 5 gold?

 

[Victoria]

I hear that the AI constantly tends to spam you almost every turn with the same "crap". And there is no way to stop this in GS. Should Firaxis fix this. But no... they have not fixed it yet. It must be really annoying to turn them off almost every turn. We need some anti-spam program!

I am starting to understand that trading gives favour with a nation, when I trade lots with a nation they sometimes even vote for me. Still a pain.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I am starting to understand that trading gives favour with a nation, when I trade lots with a nation they sometimes even vote for me. Still a pain.

The pain (for me at least) is in the utter stupidity of the trade offers, even for this AI, which sets a new limbo-low bar for idiocy. Case in point: game I started this afternoon, had Horses within starting city radius, worked them because it gave me a good tile yield. Immediately had offers of Gold for Horses from 3 other Civs even though No One had researched The Wheel, let alone Horseback Riding yet. And when I found Iron, Everybody offered me everything from Gold to Open Borders to Favor to Amenity resources for even a few points of Iron - before anyone was even close to researching Iron Working.

I understand 'planning ahead' but offering half your per turn Gold output for a fraction of the Iron you need for a single Swordsman sometime in the future does not seem Optimal to me, yet it is a constant feature of the AI Trades.

On the other hand, you're exactly right that if you plan to 'start slow' (like, in my case, I was playing Hungary so figured to 'peak' when I had my Black Army and/or a few CS Armies ready to go) you can make out like a Bandit trading dribbles of Favor and Strategic Resources for jus about everything the AI has early in the game - and establish yourself as Friend To All - GS is just about the first time I had Friendly Relations with every other Civ in the game early in the Classical Era without even trying, which makes me seriously wonder if Firaxis was trying to 'de-emphasize' Domination Victories in this Expansion . . .

 

[Pietato]

I am now undertaking my hardest challenge yet: getting a desert start as Mali.

 

[Morningcalm]

I had great success flipping cities in my Eleanor game. I conquered 4/7 AIs in my immortal game before I accidentally won a culture victory. This is my quick and dirty guide.

I basically built a theater district in every city, got the divine spark pantheon, had founded a religion and got cathedrals and the belief that allowed me to purchase Theater/Campus buildings with faith. That gave me lots of GWAM points and plenty of space to put Great Works. With only those buildings each city can hold 7 GWs each. If you have 2 cities in range of an opponents city that's -14 loyalty for them. 3 cities is -21 loyalty. That plus using spies to remove governors and reduce loyalty even further was generally enough to flip most cities, even very high pop ones. For spies I leveled them up by stealing gold and once they were maxed out on promotions I sent them to nearby cities I wanted to flip, sending two spies to a city, one to remove governors while the other spammed reduce loyalty missions.

I found Theaters and Holy Sites to be the most important districts to build in every city with a few Campuses to keep up in science. Entertainment districts and the Bread & Circus promotion can help flip cities but I found it mostly unnecessary as long as I had enough GWs. Similarly building lots of farms for high pop cities can help as does having golden ages but again GWs and spies were the main thing. Building the Oracle is also really helpful for great people points. Other wonders with GW slots I built in border cities and chopped them out with Magnus, but if you don't get those wonders it isn't a huge deal. Using apostles and missionaries to convert enemy cities can also help exert more loyalty pressure.

Once I flipped a city I used the religion governor (forget his name) to faith buy Theaters and Holy Sites and faith buy buildings within them using my religious beliefs (faith generation was really important). Then I moved all my GWs into the newly flipped cities and also sent my spies to a new city I wanted to flip. Rinse and repeat to conquer the world.

Did you use combat to take over the AIs, or Eleanor's ability? I think it's often best to combine combat with her ability, but I tried a game just using peace, and that's where I ran into difficulty, even with Divine Spark, zealous forward-settling, etc. Didn't realize conversion helped with loyalty pressure--is that covered in the Civilopedia anywhere?