[R&F] Just got R&F - AI Korea... come on!

[ShakaKhan]

OK, so I'm late to the party because as I mentioned in other threads, I saw nightmare scenarios of LPs regarding loyalty and didn't want to get it. Got it and started an easy game, dropped the difficulty to emperor (I usually play deity for challenge, emperor for fun, or immortal for a happy medium.) Picked a strong civ, Persia, should be a successful campaign while learning the new mechanic.

Have to confess something here, I usually hand-pick my opponents. I always pick two civs that are going to give me a hard time (Scythia, Aztec, etc.) but the rest I pick based on their agendas. I find it hard to play with modest aggression and still be able to have decent diplomatic relations, so I pick civs like Egypt (I always have at least a modest military, which is enough to appease her), Nubia (always try to max out the districts, except deity), Poland, and so on. I don't pick the same leaders every time, but some find their way into my games more often than others. Brazil is never in my games for this reason. Then I see Korea's agenda is that she'll befriend civs with high science output and I thought this would be a civ to pick quite a bit. On emperor, I'll usually be doubling the #2 best civ in science by medieval, and that usually happens before industrial on immortal - deity sometimes I don't catch up before I win.

So I put her in there thinking we'd end up best buds (unless she's too close) but what she was doing was insane. I checked the progress at the medieval era and she was doubling ME in bpt! On emperor! Looking at the great people already recruited screen, she had about 2/3 of them! And had SIX great scientists before turn 100! On emperor. Obscene.

Another thing that I noticed is that prophets are going earlier than in vanilla. Again, this is only emperor, and I expanded my civ by taking a useless religious city-state with good lands and that snagged me a free holy site. I wasn't planning on going for a religion, but since I got it for free, thought I'd supplement it with a HS in one of my other cities and snag one. But when I checked the GP screen, all the prophets were gone by turn 40. This seems about right for deity, maybe a little quick for immortal, but the window on emperor is usually wider than that. Are others finding this the case as well? May have just been the other civs that were in the game (the ones that got a religion were Scythia, Japan, Nubia, and Poland... now that I look at it, the civs definitely had something to do with it, but still that's really early for the difficulty level.

 

[Pietato]

Yeah, Korea will do that...

 

[Sagax]

Welcome to the uncontested Korean science output. There's a reason why she is one of the few non-warmonger civs that many people like to ban in multiplayer.

 

[Sostratus]

She's got exactly the tools to overcome the normal AI weakness:
They don't campus spam enough
-Not an issue when you're programmed to spam their UD
Their placement sucks, giving low adjacencies all game
-Not an issue when the seowon just gives you 4 science
Yes, the Ai will often put districts near seowons later, but they almost always are extracting MASSIVE benefits just by being told to play the "correct" way on high difficulty.

They were even better before the Hwarang change to be per promotion; the AI likes to spread out many governors, and that was a free +10% for korea in 7 cities.

Welcome to the uncontested Korean science output. There's a reason why she is one of the few non-warmonger civs that many people like to ban in multiplayer.

Don't really need to be a warmonger civ when your army is an era and a half ahead of everyone else... shudders

 

[Archon_Wing]

She's the new runaway AI along with Mvemba. It's pretty annoying.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Lots of science but I haven't seen that translated into faster science victories by Korea.

Personally, I'm glad that there are some civs with simple but powerful designs that are easy for new players and the AI to handle well.

I also continue to be confounded by why the game set up doesn't allow you to ban certain civs from appearing randomly. I get why some people would like to play without Korea as an opponent.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Update - the game is closing in on a finish (yeah, still playing the same game; my schedule doesn't let me play that much.) and I gotta say, this is the most fun game of civ6 I ever played! Like I said, I play at different difficulty levels, I beat deity 4 out of 5 times, but feel very constricted in my actions and don't get to enjoy some of the fun aspects like wonders and max-districts. I find emperor to be the most fun, but the problem is that as early as the beginning of the medieval era (when I get there, not the new era thing) I start to pull away and there's no challenge for the rest of the game. This was the best of both worlds, I had the fun of emperor but there was still someone not just nipping at my heels but proving to be a real threat in terms of advancement.

The map had a lot to do with it, there's this large land mass where all the other civs are with a narrow land bridge to the southeast rising up into a sizable peninsula, about 1/3 the size of the larger landmass, and that was all mine. I had 4 city-states on my landmass - Jerusalem (which I took because the land was good and I didn't have a nearby neighbor for the critical early expansion), Babylon (going for science so the suzy bonus isn't playing a big part but having the extra yields from envoy bonuses was big), and the two most important for the situation - Nan Midol and Auckland. For space race games, which I decided to go for with the isolated start, I usually don't build any theaters, at least not until later in the game. My culture progression is mostly from numerous mid-size+ cities all with monuments, civ-specific bonuses where available, and supplemented by meritocracy if needed. The shape of my landmass made all but one of my cities on or near the coast, so I got considerable culture from Nan Midol and between Auckland, moving the governor around for fisheries, and hilly land for lots of mines, my growth and production were off the charts.

The main landmass had Korea in the middle surrounded by the other civs - Japan, Poland, Nubia, and Arabia. Usually when one civ is squashed by all the others, it gets fed on by everyone else but this was the opposite - Korea would take a bite out of this civ, then make peace and take some cities from that civ, and so on. There have been 3 emergencies declared, all against Korea. Not familiar with this mechanic but it looks like you're penalized if you don't get the assigned city and as I have no way of getting to her I sat out all of them. Japan was the closest civ to me, but didn't expand towards the land bridge and didn't seem to mind that I settled it. He's down to 4 cities, so I'm hoping that Korea will finish him off and I can be everyone's hero by liberating his entire civilization and continue on to set her back a few cities with the warmonger offset by the liberation. But as I'm plunking down the spaceport now, it's kind of moot.

Like I said, Korea had me at 2:1 BPT around turn 100. What was surprising was that with such a dominant yield lead, her total techs were about the same as mine, maybe 2 or 3 more. Around turn 150, a few major events let me catch up - First, universities went up in most of my cities. Second, snagged Newton. Third, most of my cities were at least near 10 pop and some had good campus adjacency so rationalism compounded all of that, plus getting 6 envoys into Babylon. Fourth, I see Geneva sitting in the middle of the war zone, but no one has taken it out and it has no suzerein. I figure two civs were tied, but went ahead and threw 3 into it and now I got the extra 15% bonus. And fifth, there's a new (sorry, new to me) wonder in R&F which seems really overpowered in the right situation, Kilwa Kisiwani. I got it and since Babylon has been mine the whole game and now for some reason they're not conquering or investing envoys in Geneva, that's two so there's 15% in all my cities from Geneva, an additional 15% in all cities from Kilwa, an extra 15% my capital that has Kilwa, and my universities have +4 from newton, +2 from city state (+4? I don't know if they stack any more) and +50% or doubled from rationalism.

So now at the point in the game where I'm plunking the spaceport down, I double Korea's BPT and am 8 techs ahead. Unfortunately I didn't familiarize myself with all the new wonders because there's a snow one that could boost me further, but it doesn't seem like it's necessary.

A few questions regarding R&F:

1.) Do all of the Magnus chops get the bonus of active policy cards? So if you're chopping settlers while running colonization you get an extra 50% or when chopping horseman you get an extra 50% from maneuver?

2.) I see that the two envoy level bonuses from city states now affect the first and second tier buildings respectively, and I heard speicifically that commercial city-state bonuses don't stack (i.e. if you have 3 envoys with two commercial city-states, you just get 4 GPT, not 8.) Is this true of the other city-state types as well?

3.) emergencies - if you partake in them, do you automatically go to war with the civ or do you still have to declare? Are the warmonger penalties lessened or removed, because otherwise I don't see the benefit of engaging in them.

 

[MarigoldRan]

1. Yes.
2.
3. War. No penalties unless you start taking their cities. Also, you get the money regardless of who liberates the city state.

 

[MrRadar]

1.) Do all of the Magnus chops get the bonus of active policy cards? So if you're chopping settlers while running colonization you get an extra 50% or when chopping horseman you get an extra 50% from maneuver?
2.) I see that the two envoy level bonuses from city states now affect the first and second tier buildings respectively, and I heard speicifically that commercial city-state bonuses don't stack (i.e. if you have 3 envoys with two commercial city-states, you just get 4 GPT, not 8.) Is this true of the other city-state types as well?
3.) emergencies - if you partake in them, do you automatically go to war with the civ or do you still have to declare? Are the warmonger penalties lessened or removed, because otherwise I don't see the benefit of engaging in them.

2. Huh? Who told you that?? Everything stacks, that's the beauty of it all:

Spoiler :

 

[Isengardtom]

2) I didn’t even know that was the case for gold but at least for science, culture and religion they should stack

 

[ShakaKhan]

2. Huh? Who told you that?? Everything stacks, that's the beauty of it all:

Huh, don't remember where I heard it but it was another reason I delayed R&F. Now if they'd only let the player select the city-states that were in the game... sigh

 

[bbbt]

Huh, don't remember where I heard it but it was another reason I delayed R&F. Now if they'd only let the player select the city-states that were in the game... sigh

They changed it in R&F from everything stacking on adjacency bonuses (which could be doubled with the cards) to going on the buildings instead for later tiers (which do stack but aren't affected by policy cards, which might be what you are thinking of.