Kongo is One of the Most Powerful in the Later Stages

Well nobody said it is the strongest, just potentially stronger than others in the long run. As for empirical evidence, the combined yields, 12 Food, 12 production and 24 Gold multiplied by over 10 cities and 100 turns. Doesn't sound hard to prove it is quite powerful. (I actually have done that before.)

In fact, try capturing an English City with a museum and look at those yields double.

 

I concede Kongo has some strength playing longer games.

 

“Strength in longer game" is nonsense. For example, one Civ reaches modern era at T100 with e.g. 400 science per turn while another progresses slowly at T130 with, for example , 550 science per turn. The T130 one is better at "modern era" than his T100 peer, but if you compare in the same time scale, at T130 the faster one have already flew his rocket at 1,500 science per turn.

So "strength in longer game" actually indicates that the Civ is weak so that it have to use longer time to reach the same level of progress. Only on that level it is somehow better. This is not "strength" actually, since given the same amount of time your opponent have already reached further stages of development. So "strength in longer game" means weakness since you have to make the game longer.

That's why Kongo fails to match its France or Spain peers. To be honest Kongo is better than Egypt, about the strength of Spain, France or Poland but slightly worse than them. 1 tier worse than England or Brazil, Japan, 2 tiers worse than Norway or Gandhi.

 

AI Kongo is not best because of anything strong about Kongo but rather it cannot waste its time with Holy Sites, coupled with the AI's poor ability to pusue great people means Kongo does better.

And short term benefits have generally outpaced long term benefits in most iterations of Civ. This is why we chop most of the trees away and do not waste time on spending 120 turns to build dinky lumber mills of which almost never pay for their cost. This is also why you don't waste 250 gold to get a +1 extra bonus on the commerce hub. And why cities overlap so they can make efficient use of the tiles. It's about snowballing. If you place your cities so that the initial ring is garbage vs someone that places their cities to work tiles effectively at the start, then they will have more everything than you while they expand to the best spots while you will get crowded out at best or killed at worst. It's a bit of irony, but it's actually looking for the best short term results that ultimately work better in the big picture. And this is true even with artificial constraints like turning every victory condition off.

There's just too much of an emphasis on wishing. You could move your capital into the desert and gamble on building Petra but so what are you going to do if you can't build it? It'd be pretty bad advice to give to someone else, no?

 

Unfortunately for you, the timeless call of Civilization is to build a Civilization to stand the test of time and the Civilization that grows stronger with time not only fulfills that call better but is far more in line with what is desired in real life. Which makes your definition of nonsense nonsensical.

True strength does not wane with time, it grows.

I would call the pursuit of speed over beauty, growth and potential the ultimate weakness.

 

Kongo is a great civ. Definitely the best for a cultural victory.

 

Weren’t you the advocate of how warmonger-oriented this game is and how early conquest trumps everything else? Half of the Creegate thread was about this.

“What is desired in real life” is good for role-playing but irrelevant for speedrunning and Deity perfectionists.

 

I think it really depends. I can't say I play this game super competitively... the game design itself isn't even really super competitive. The design is more like "In single player the player will likely win in the end, using an interesting path that makes them feel powerful."

I wrote a mod where I changed up most of the civs. Slightly nerfed a few (Aztecs, Korea) buffed a bunch (especially Norway, England, Georgia, pre R&F France and Spain). Didn't change Kongo at all. Why not? IMO they're good enough where they are and different enough from the standard civs to stand out. Not the best, not the worst, but in a good position overall.

Speaking only for myself, I don't even think about victory type until around turn 120 or so. I just don't care that much. I understand why some people value winning as fast as possible but I'd rather just win "eventually." I find beelining a victory condition personally less satisfying than just trying to build the best empire I can, whatever that means. Kongo is good at that. Also if I lolligag too long they might actually pull ahead and beat me with their late game advantages. So there's that to consider.

 

If you roleplay or playing not efficiently, there's no mean of comparing about "strength".

If you are talking about "strength" or "who is stronger", then you must refer to the strongest playstyle, you can use different playstyles for different civs, but it have to be the strongest for that civ if you want to do fair comparison, otherwise that will be nothing.

For example, Kongo is definitely the strongest if you limit yourself to one unit "Negao Mbanba" and one district "Mbanza", since other civs can never build anything. But that's nonsense.

 

I don't agree. Even in a total-RPG environment abilities can still be considered under or overpowered. I doubt if there are too many total-RPG players anyway; most probably do some blend of RPG and strategy.

When I mod I don't consider the optimal path of play at all unless it is deviant somehow and distracting from the fun. I see some players winning science victories around turn 140. I consider that when deciding how a change might impact the game. But don't design or change most abilities around the assumption that everything needs to fit into that super efficient playstyle. Just because the optimal path isn't the main focus doesn't mean that just any old value can be put into other abilities because nothing matters anymore.

It's fair to call Kongo a powerful late game civ. Super competitive players may disagree. But the values for the civ look fine to me. It's not all just about clearing the final hurdle as fast as possible.

 

Facts speak louder than words. I don't say "Definitely", but Kongo is probably the fastest culture victory civilization in the current version(PvE), not in late stage, but very early stage.

Forest and rainforest start bias is very powerful because of Magnus, this represents the early wonders can be easily taken by the players. Then +50% GPP of writers, plus four extra slots. As long as your technology arrives Printing, it's all over with Level 4 Reyna. That is called "pure book victory", the fastest record in Chinese forum is T86(peaceful culture victory) https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5587664945, and it is likely that even the warmonger based culture victory won't be that fast.

In addition, Kongo is likely to be one of the strongest civs in OCC science victory.

 

The story on Baidu Tieba is amazing. And the strategy should work well for Kongo in general situation. It doesn't require much on the map.

 

I'm pretty sure that is not on deity or on any significant difficulty level (great library, etc.). ~260 tpt is hardly enough to take down deity 8 player maps (esp. without routes most likely as the map is still unexplored) without conquest. If we are talking about settler level then the conversation is pointless.
With the right conditions the turn times can go lower I suppose, by combining the "pure books" with relics + reliquaries + St. Basils... and on lower difficulty AI will not reach enlightenment. But really, on lower difficulties if you conquer I'm sure you can go lower than 86.

Lily's right Kongo is weak on deity. Ridiculously so early game... UU does nothing, as they lose to mere swordsmen (let alone horses and knights) due to the difficulty bonus and take huge damage attacking cities despite taking reduced damage for bombardments. X-bows will still chew them up. Oh, but they probably have the fastest peaceful cultural victory possible as long as they get lucky with reliquaries (which is a factor outside your control). I've tested and too bad that Basil's stacks additively, not multiplicatively with reliquaries... so it will be 300% + 100% = 400% tourism for relics... which is significantly less than the 600% I was hoping for initially. Nevertheless palace (5) + Michael (2) + Basil (3) and if later game + natural history (4) and luckily Apadana (2) and free bank from GM (2), Kongo has the highest possible number of relic slots (18) in a single city, makes for a possible OOC cultural victory even on deity (although I am more concerned whether you will have enough space to build 17 Mbanzas + theatre square, for the apostles as a lot of times the game will not let you plant forest due to strategic resource, and luxes/districts/wonders may end up taking too much space)... getting the GM in question will also be difficult OCC (if you already built a bank, will that GM still build you the 2-slot bank?)

All in all they are a tier-C+ to B- civ if you go by turn times. There are worse civs to be had (looking at you, Georgia) by far. For top-level play, they will be quite bad due to being unable to get holy sites and so miss the double science from dark age.

That said, they are so much fun to play. Free apostles means you can abuse heathen conversion quite often... usually you can get 2-3 with that promotion (and that in the right games, it makes building a military by yourself unnecessary, as well as getting eurekas and historic moments). Building huge cities and flipping AI cities due to golden ages from those wonders you built using your superior city size (and larger domains with more stuff to chop and harvest) is really enjoyable that when I go back to play any other civ it feels like I'm annoyed it takes so much longer to build stuff and my cities seem so small. City flipping with a vanilla civ happens so rarely when compared to Kongo... I just ENJOY chain city-flipping... and once the city flips you can just route in food and build mbanzas, and presto! Size 10+ in a handful of turns and ready to flip its neighbors. You can settle aggressive cities for that purpose, and fresh water is not an issue as Mbanzas takes care of all housing problems and gives +2 food +4 gold to city center without being worked. On non-deity difficulties where AI is slow to get multiple governors I suppose you can completely conquer an entire civ peacefully.

On deity, I feel somewhat not so bad if AI forward settles me as I know that one my capitol grow to 20+ the city will flip eventually. This makes early expansion not so crucial and I can focus either on getting a friendship (by builder first improving lux for gift) or defense (archers). I've had a game where I did not build a single settler until ancestral hall was finished. (With magnus and a couple of workers though, you catch up really quickly thanks to 100% production bonus + 100% chop) and still won that game easily without any conquest.

 

Very sure it's deity, Deity-All-Standard, map seed: -152721771 Pangea, game seed: -152721772. On this map there are many records. Want a save file?
This map is really amazing, many people have played on it. The result is 90 to 130, depends on AI's progress, and the sophistication of the operation.
Another fastest civ for peaceful CV may be France, which has so much wonder tourism - all of these have used overflow "exploit" to rush wonders(probably a lot of people don't like it).

 

France, I can understand. I'd be quite surprised though if it's deity. Usually Greecex2 or Russia is quite enough to stop your great writer rush (by recruiting all the early great writers) not on that map though. Unless somehow that map all contains AI who ignore culture in their builds... (with Japan, not likely) but something is off. Kongo is at 81 tourists and the most cultured AI is only at 27 tourists? I'd rather have the winning save to check the AI's cpt.

 

That's the point, Greece or Russia can't in (In fact America and France also enjoy the theater), and then you must first get the Goddess of Harvest, it's very luck dependent. This strategy is not stable, and the link I attached said the same. But in terms of the fast challenge, this is by far the fastest in our forum. If you can read Chinese, you will find it is not all of luck. You must pay attention to the the highest culture AI, don't let him get the 3rd GP, or Great Merchant, and don't make ally, ... all to avoid trigger inspiration to increase AI's domestic tourists.
But even if all the culture-oriented AI are present, you can still win culture victory in 100~140 turns.

Here I attach one save file. Not the fastest, but also impressive.

ps: even with Russia or Greece, the AI's theater civic is always too late, then most of early great writings are belongs to players - if you are familiar with the theater style science victory. In this version, it is likely that focusing on culture is the fastest way to win a peaceful science victory.

 

Yea. The thing is this game can be played with many different settings. Winning fast on Deity should not be considered the only valid metric of game balancing, as higher difficulties are contrivances for the sake of challenge, and some things (such as certain wonders and religion are devalued). It doesn't mean those things are useless-- the game is just changed so that those things can't be a factor. It's not necessarily that those things are broken, but it's inherent that the highest difficulty settings break balance and the game wasn't balanced around a hapless AI with super high bonuses on a level the majority of players don't play. This is like if you judged Chess if it were played exclusively played against a chimp and the goal was to beat it as fast as possible.

I'd even argue that the only reason why winning on deity fast is even a thing is that the game doesn't provide enough of a challenge to people so they got bored enough to invent their own criteria. This isn't any indicator of truth when one breaks the game on an already contrived version of it. The fact that the game doesn't even give a score modifier for speed or difficulty makes it pretty clear enough.

That being said, I of course do think certain things cannot be changed due to wishful thinking. Egypt not being upgrade to knights is a severe disadvantage in anything besides a very isolated start and probably still so, for example.

 

2-3 cities and go. Kongo's early swordsmen rush is one of the stronger ones with the productivity boost from Magnus. Of course, swordsmen counter it but the AI is now programmed to spam archers in the early game in R&F. Also, since you start in a rainforest, and they start near rainforests, some of the AI near you may not have access to iron.

Have you seen the Mongols or the Zulus play R&F in the early game? The number of archers they build if they don't get iron or horse? And you are likely to start near the Zulus, which is actually a GOOD thing for an early rush so long as they don't rush you first.

Kongo's early military game is obviously not top 5, but it is in the top 10. Rome, Scythia, Alexander, Giggles, Persia, Nubia, Monty, and Chandy all arguably have better classical or ancient era rushes. But after those would be Kongo. Their UU is flexible and can be massed in quantity early on thx to chops. And if the AI forward settles you into a rainforest, that's like the perfect terrain for a Ngao rush.

If you are lucky enough to start next to the Egyptians or Nubians (which is likely) it's an auto-win as your UU is a direct counter to both of theirs, and the AI is dumb enough to mass them.

They're one of the best at culture victories. But they're very good at early wars, too

It feels like some people have this extremely fixed and dogmatic way of playing the game and when they run into an oddball like Kongo they don't know how to handle it.

 

Hey thanks for the save (86 or 89 not much difference anyway)! Looking at it, it is quite a spectacle... Oracle? I see... with harvest pantheon (does it get amplified with Magnus? If so, it is completely broken), he bought great engineers and whatnot with faith... I suppose that is to deny AI the enlightenment eureka... You had me completely blindsided there, I was expecting divine spark (divine spark is what I normally run for book rushes)!

Surprised at the lack of campi (while still seeing science that high) but actually Babylon is so strong when book-rushing!
If you get that CS then you don't need campi I suppose... one book is worth one good campus without the buildings... and each GW has two... then you have Stockholm...

Seems like a perfect storm (perfect luck + perfectly optimized play): perfect map with pantheon and perfect CS (and CS have to survive too... not sure how reproducible that would be since AI just loves killing them... he only had archers so he didn't even get X-bows to conquer/defend) combined with AI who are quite complete culture gimps (highest AI only had 50 cpt... lowest at 30 cpt--I checked one of my own saves and at that turn time the highest AI was ~90 cpt easily). Going from the GPP, half-cost theatre Japan had ONE grand theatre square... will he always do that if I play this save? Btw Russia doesn't need theatre civic... his half cost holy sites give the same GPP as a theatre so most likely you will lose the first GW to him in my exp. (and he has no qualms just using gold/faith).

 

Yes it does. Harvest + Monumental + Magnus + overflow exploit, these make the current version totally broken.

The fast-win challenge is what it should be. Perfect map, perfect luck, optimized play and strategy.

These archers are extra products of the overflow exploits: With Magnus + Agoge, every chop you change into slinger/warrior, you'll get much more production, plus an extra unit. In this way, all the early wonders are not a problem, all leaders can be Qin.. Link: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...arch-order-from-vanilla.629031/#post-15051554

Not sure, but as long as you play with this strategy, it's hard to get more than 120 turns CV on this map. Remember: go straight to the theater civic by rush the Pyramid by Agoge+Magnus overflow exploit (2 trees, 1 for 34/35 slinger, 1 for 39/40 warrior).