[GS] June Update Tier List

[Victoria]

Does that mean I should maybe not pay that much attention to Oracle?

It is not a bad wonder but not in the ;league of pyramids or coliseum and that production can be used well elsewhere.
It is very useful when here is opposing high GP earners like Kongo, Russia, Brazil, Scotland in the game and you want some GPP. It also helps with faith purchasing GP if you do that. If you do not, its a lot of early prod useful elsewhere.

Despite going CV in most of my game I acutally don't understand it very well. So I guess it is projects.

Not really, only if you want to speed things up and I do not believe you do if I remember correctly. A CV is just fine without them but getting fast ones they really help. Just like you ruch a great prophet using them.

I wish I knew. Lately I've just been focusing more on faith to rush parks and Rock Bands but I feel there are better ideas.

Ski resorts can make p a fair amount... flight with those culture improvements, more cities, seaside resorts, Computers gives you only 25% now but it is 25% just like environmentalism is 25%... but online communities is pretty big now so if anything pushing culture more I guess.
Relics are great and you can get very fast victories but without Kandy they can be quite late and with rationalism coming along it makes them weaker (yes yes cristo but lets not go all the way down here)
Great wroiters are not the best I I do think they need some love but they are OK and if you have 10 cities then 10 archaeologists is a lot of money and if you can suss out how many religious artists you can get then all the better. Hermitage helps as well.
TBH Rock bands are a fast ending as long as you are close enough

SV is pretty much a fixed target but CV changes with the enemies culture growth so the earlier you can get tourism the better it is.

 

[kb27787]

I wish I knew. Lately I've just been focusing more on faith to rush parks and Rock Bands but I feel there are better ideas. When I go for relics/ Mt.Michel, it never ends wel and sometimes the AI won't even kill my religious units.... making me regret I didn't go for RV.



Despite going CV in most of my game I acutally don't understand it very well. So I guess it is projects.




Does that mean I should maybe not pay that much attention to Oracle?

I still do Oracle with Kongo... it's not the GW per se, it's the GM point s(build a CH in that city and put Ping in) the extra gold and envoys are nice earlier.

On deity, MSM-based relic strategies will almost always never be enough to win straight up with any other civ... except for Kongo. If you hardly can find AI to kill your apostles you are probably not playing on deity... AI has SWARMS of apostles normally which you can suicide into (that is why Khmer is not that strong because you cannot force AI to actively engage).

Why Kongo? Well, normally there is a 50% malus for relic/holy city tourism to civs following a different religion than the one you found. However, Kongo never gets this malus (I've tested--even when you get the founder beliefs with a majority religion, you still are not considered the same as the founder and do not suffer the -50% penalty). A relic is 8 tourism base. Reliquaries makes this 24 and Basil can add 8 more for 32. With 50% malus this becomes 16. Kongo with just Basil also gets 16 tourism/relic. In other words, other civs who self-found reliquaries make exactly the same tourism per relic as Kongo (against other civs who have founded other religions) if both have Basil's cathedral. Moreover Kongo usually has more because all his relics are in one city (the capital usually) meaning that Basil doubles the maximum number of relics possible.

Add that to the fact that Kongo requires no faith investment to get those relics and the fact that the relics make you gold (which you can use to purchase amphitheatres) and faith (which you can purchase archaeologists with golden age dedication), AND you begin with 5 relic slots from the palace alone without need to build temples and holy sites... well it's just something very strong.

I fired up an actual deity pangaea game, and humanism is ~t115 for me (after detouring to get monarchy and theocracy first). I have 4 writers but only 1 artist (with a 2nd one close to coming). However, never mind the books, it's the ~7 relics I currently have in my cap making 16 tourism each. This comes out to over 100 tourism alone. And I have plenty more apostles walking on their merry way to die in AI lands for more relics.

Now I still cannot really see 3 great artists at this turn number (even if you run projects to death) but let's say even if you do get them, 3 themed art museums still do not come anywhere close to this amount at this turn number. Kongo gets a maximum of 14 relic slots before democracy (5 palace, 2 Apadana, 2 bank, 3 basil, 2 MSM) which is 14x16 = 224 tourism from this source alone which is never halved--this equates to 10+ themed art museums with cultural heritage. If you hit the jackpot with reliquaries, this comes out to 448 tourism. When this happens it is pretty much a guaranteed renaissance era deity win.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Not really, only if you want to speed things up and I do not believe you do if I remember correctly.

It is true, but I realize nobody wants to play like me so if I am to give advice or even have a discussion, it's best to not center the game around my own preferences as much as possible. Plus once in a while I sometimes try the ruthless game to earn "street cred". But to be serious there are also games where I've clearly won and the AI are only hanging around just by virtue of existing. Biggest offenders are usually like China or Persia that generate like 0 tourism but lots of culture.

This is all purely academical though.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

It is really hard to rank the civs since the rank should be that the top civ is the one that have the best chance to win on a random start with completely random settings, preferably even if you give the ai a significant headstart by not planting your first city by x number of turn. Rankings lose much of its purpose if you can win no matter civ and the only difference is how quickly or convenient you win which to me make ranking pretty pointless.

A truly strong civ should be one that can win no matter what situation is thrown at it such as:

• Starting position, the worse the civ can have the better
• Map type, should be strong no matter if Pangea or archipelago
• Lack of resources or wonders should not hurt the civ by much
• Being dominant no matter if crowded or isolated in terms of other civs
• Be as little dependent on era as possible

The more dependent on setup a civ is going to be the weaker it probably is, civs that are very specialized are probably going to be the weakest while the generalist are probably going to be the strongest. The difference between the strongest and everyone else is probably going to be much larger than the difference between everyone else since the strongest probably are going to be so dominant or easy to get into a dominant position early and snowballing away from the rest that they already have won super early in all but name. Specalized civs may however be the strongest in their niche so may be the most suited in a setup game that trying to push things to its limits but in a random setup may be quite weak.

I do find Campuses in general lowkey overrated here if you arent playing tall. It usually ends up being a win more kind of thing.

Pottery into writing is probably one of the stronger opening tech path and how quickly you get out the first campuses and how good their adjacency bonus are is going to make a huge difference on early game tech speed. It also open up stuff such as early commercial hubs for trade route and even into industrial zones and +1 to mines which can also have significant impact on the game.

Generally a city without any district is not going to provide much and since science, culture and other resource is very much tied into how many districts you have which in turn is based on how many cities you have, civs that have the ability to expand alot early on is probably going to be considerably stronger than other civs, even more so if these civs expand with their military since that also remove the cities from the enemy.

 

[Pietato]

@Jewelrunna You do know culture and cultural victory exists, right?

 

[Kwami]

@Jewelrunna You do know culture and cultural victory exists, right?

Well, there's a Tourism victory condition. That's not the same as Culture.

 

[Victoria]

Well, there's a Tourism victory condition. That's not the same as Culture.

Pedantically speaking it is called a Culture victory.
To be fair, the only reason you win a CV is if you create a lot more tourism than the enemies accumulated culture and the main way you get good tourism is by generating lots of culture

Tourism is an end product, the driving force is culture.

 

[Kwami]

Pedantically speaking it is called a Culture victory.
To be fair, the only reason you win a CV is if you create a lot more tourism than the enemies accumulated culture and the main way you get good tourism is by generating lots of culture

Tourism is an end product, the driving force is culture.

My point was just that you can't win by generating a lot of Culture. You also need to generate Tourism, which isn't the same thing. That's all.

 

[Pietato]

My point was just that you can't win by generating a lot of Culture. You also need to generate Tourism, which isn't the same thing. That's all.

No duh. It is called a Cultural Victory though, and he has ignored the civs who accel at culture.

 

[kb27787]

No duh. It is called a Cultural Victory though, and he has ignored the civs who accel at culture.

There are civs who don't directly excel at culture, but are great at cultural victories... (Kongo and Canada namely--and America I suppose, though their bonus comes at the time where you should've won long ago).
And there are civs who excel at culture (mostly the tile-based culture ones) but really are not super strong at cultural victories (Maori post-patch, Mapuche, Persia, China).

Still, in a cultural victory, you will more or less focus on culture over science (except for those civs who absolutely need flight). The sooner cultural heritage comes (and cold war, if the game drags on) the easier the victory.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Hmm, I'm not getting the context here. Is it because cultural civs are ranked lower or what? Because it is fair to argue cultural victory is maybe not as important as other victories. Not that I agree, but some may think domination and science victories are more valued.

And of cultural civs I only see Sweden, France, and Canada being ranked low. Canada's low ranking is probably understandable, Sweden IS overrated, Mapuche is capable of cultural generation but not really good as a whole and Catherine is probably wrong though France itself really sucks but I'm always open to a discussion rather than flat out telling them they are wrong. You want to have a discussion and then tell them why they are wrong.

 

[Victoria]

The funny thing is, polls have shown a CV is the most popular victory choice in this forum.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Yea, but intuitively speaking, a club can hurt someone more than a painting.

Apparently this may not be true in civ. Then again, Kongo can eat their sculptures, so what do I know?

 

[Victoria]

but intuitively speaking, a club can hurt someone more than a painting.

Not seen Francis Bacons works then... great comment had to double like in this way, scoffing a sculpture pfft.

 

[kb27787]

Yea, but intuitively speaking, a club can hurt someone more than a painting.

Apparently this may not be true in civ. Then again, Kongo can eat their sculptures, so what do I know?

They can also eat mummies, stone tablets, clocks and pistols.
They can even eat holy objects such as the ark of the covenant.

According to Wikipedia:

Among the many common materials used in the minkisi were fruit ("luyala" in Kikongo), charcoal ("kalazima"), and mushrooms ("tondo").[8] Minerals were collected from various places associated with the dead, such as earth collected from graves and riverbeds. White clay was also very important in the composition of minkisi due to the symbolic relationship of the color white and the physical aspects of dead skin as well as their moral rightness and spiritual positivity

So if Michaelangelo were born in Kongo, he's make his sculptures out of edible stuff such as fruits and mushrooms...
.