Kongo seems to be consistently strong

myclan

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Feb 26, 2008
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1. Can't build holy site, thus building a lot of others like CH, Academy, grabbing a lot of GP from you

2. Don't have a unique improvement, this is important because I have seen some Civilization like Scythia building a lot of UI which seriously limiting her development in the future.

3.Born among jungle, making a range unit rush very difficult, and your army are marching slowly. They can build swordman without iron, which make his city hard to take early compared to which lack of iron.

4.Because of 3 I don't feel like rushing it early game, and because of 1 and 2 they can develop quite well. When I enter Industrial age and every other AI fall behind they are the only which can catch up with me or even ahead of me.
 
One thing understated about hill/forest/jungle starts is that you are very hard to attack since ranged units are ineffective against you. And yea, the combo of the no-resource UU also adds into the trouble.

You really do have to find some time in the mid-game to get him, or otherwise try to sabotoge attempts of him to get early great people, but this is exceptionally hard.
 
I have my beef with them as you can see in my last 2 posts in the Mapuche civ of the week thread. They really messed up my plans for a cultural victory with no theater squares. I could have done it if it weren't for those meddling kids... I mean Kongo.

I didn't look real close, but it looks like he took out the Zulu and at least a few city-states. He had 23 cities to my 18 (really just 17 as one of my cities only had room for one Chemamull).

He's weak enough to conquer usually, but he was far away and I went the peaceful ally route. The biggest problem is he can really conquer city states and other AI's like in my game.
 
I like when Kongo is in the game, they can be challenge if they don't get conquered early on. Though if you win by circa turn 280 you won't lose.
I have my beef with them as you can see in my last 2 posts in the Mapuche civ of the week thread. They really messed up my plans for a cultural victory with no theater squares. I could have done it if it weren't for those meddling kids... I mean Kongo.

I didn't look real close, but it looks like he took out the Zulu and at least a few city-states. He had 23 cities to my 18 (really just 17 as one of my cities only had room for one Chemamull).

He's weak enough to conquer usually, but he was far away and I went the peaceful ally route. The biggest problem is he can really conquer city states and other AI's like in my game.

Yes, it will not be hard to conquer him when you finally have bombard or even corps. But he is still one of the most annoying that grabbing Great person an Great Wonder which you want
 
Yes, Kongo seems like the strongest AI civ.

They are also one of the more fun and unique civs to play in my opinion. I wish there were more unique civs like Kongo that have drastic changes (cant build holy site/found religion)
 
In vanilla version before the +100% great person nerf, Kongo was far and away the most annoying civ. As another poster said, they are generally hard to conquer as well due to 2 and 3 movement jungle and jungle hills.
 
A lot of civs get a lot more dangerous when you basically get rid of religion from the game. A quick and dirty mod I threw together removes prophets, holy sites, etc and the game generally got harder without the AI spending resources on holy sites (though obviously this completely breaks some civs and anything needing faith. I did this just to experiment; you probably shouldn't really play like this).
 

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A lot of civs get a lot more dangerous when you basically get rid of religion from the game.
This guy gets it.
I feel like holy site spam should be much more flavour gated. Games should be set so that no more AIs will be seeded to rush one than the max number allowed. Everyone else should never build a HS unless they get spread a religion in the first place. As it stands, I see very few civs not try to go for religion. Of course, for the AI, even getting a religion doesn't do much because rarely do they actually build a good one that they can leverage- usually there's incidental defender of the faith but the AI would never attempt to, for example, run spanish conquistadors and stack on crusader, or go choral music with a cultural civ, or even pick up work ethic. If you've ever tried to spread an AI faith to yourself, they are never really worth spreading.

Also: they should totally change the cathedral from having an art slot to giving +2 culture. Because I see so many empty cathedrals. Literally any other building would be a better pick for them!
 
This guy gets it.
I feel like holy site spam should be much more flavour gated. Games should be set so that no more AIs will be seeded to rush one than the max number allowed. Everyone else should never build a HS unless they get spread a religion in the first place. As it stands, I see very few civs not try to go for religion. Of course, for the AI, even getting a religion doesn't do much because rarely do they actually build a good one that they can leverage- usually there's incidental defender of the faith but the AI would never attempt to, for example, run spanish conquistadors and stack on crusader, or go choral music with a cultural civ, or even pick up work ethic. If you've ever tried to spread an AI faith to yourself, they are never really worth spreading.

Also: they should totally change the cathedral from having an art slot to giving +2 culture. Because I see so many empty cathedrals. Literally any other building would be a better pick for them!
Actually I think religion building is one of the least useful belief in the game. They may provide science/porduction/housing that you want, but you must first construct a holy site+shrine+temple for it. So why don't you just try to build a library/workshop for it? They may be bought by faith, but in R&F we have more important things to buy like worker and settler. So I seldom try to choose a religious building belief. While AI like them very much.
 
Actually I think religion building is one of the least useful belief in the game.

Of course. They are usually a terrible return on investment except sometimes mosques (+1 spread great for religion victory) and for Arabia. BUT every complete religion must have one, and if you have holy sites, it is something to build.
My point is the AI will always build them if they have holy sites. They just shoot themselves in the foot and the whole concept of AI kongo is they literally are not allowed to point that gun at their feet, which makes them stronger.

I was only thinking that we could make them hurt themselves less.
 
Of course. They are usually a terrible return on investment except sometimes mosques (+1 spread great for religion victory) and for Arabia. BUT every complete religion must have one, and if you have holy sites, it is something to build.
My point is the AI will always build them if they have holy sites. They just shoot themselves in the foot and the whole concept of AI kongo is they literally are not allowed to point that gun at their feet, which makes them stronger.

I was only thinking that we could make them hurt themselves less.
For other district, the building provide not only gold/culutre/science but also GPP, but for religious building they can only provide faith. They should be enhanced to provide more than now.
 
The thing about talking about Kongo as an AI is that when you realize Kongo is more likely to "win" a game because it doesn't take time building Holy Sites, the value of Holy Sites as a district outside of a specific niche victory condition starts to make me have to question whether or not the design of Civ 6 religion is designed well.

If an AI is actively stronger because it can't build Holy Sites, what does that say for Religion? That the AI just doesn't play the religion game well? Or that we should consider the possibility that religion, as designed, underperforms?
 
possibility that religion, as designed, underperforms?

It's not a possibility, but a certainty. I think they were afraid of religion being too powerful given not every civilization will be able to get one.
 
I think religion is fine in terms of relative strength...it can be quite powerful in the right situation. The problem is just that the non-religious civ AI prioritize it way too highly. Only the civs with religious abilities should be going holy site first in every city, not civs like Rome or Australia! It's definitely a huge crutch for those AI, and the thing is, it makes the religious civs like Scythia or Georgia weaker too. They have to spend so much faith taking over those civs who never should have been messing with religion in the first place, so their chances at eventual religious victory are actually lower as a result. This allows the human player to completely ignore religion, because we're not really in danger of losing that victory condition.

If they just changed the non-religious civs to build other districts first, the religious powerhouse civs would start get their religion going better, and force the human player to contend with religious victory. And the non religious civs would also be much better developed and more competitive for the other victory conditions. It seems like it would be a major win-win proposition, in terms of improving AI competetiveness.
 
I do think it's nice to have civs play to their style when possible. So Greece should build tons of Acropolis districts, civs like the Khmer or Norway should be building holy sites to get their bonus buildings, etc...

Part of the problem too I think is that the AI is often programmed where if they go to build holy sites, they're also going to waste a lot of time on missionaries and apostles. Would be nice if they could separate that - I mean, I have games where I try to generate a lot of faith. But just because I'm getting faith it doesn't mean I need to use it to spread religion.

The game is better since not everyone rushes to holy sites after the patch last year. I do often have games where I wait for the first era and there's still a couple prophets that are available to pick up. I don't think the AI build enough markets - personally I find it rare to have a city build 3 districts and not one of them is a market or harbour, but that seems pretty common for the AI. If they just programmed the AI to throw a bunch of commerce hubs, that would also help them all a lot. Could be another reason why Kongo does well - they will actually build them.
 
Religion's actually fine as the bonuses can be strong over time. Founding a religion on the hand is tough though.

You just need someone dumb enough to build Holy Sites, and then you just kill them and take those Holy Sites.

Although that's not really encouraging, honestly. In a weird bit of irony, the AI's tendency to build Holy Sites is the only way religion is viable for the player.... it even kinda makes sense for Arabia or Mongolia.
 
Religion's actually fine as the bonuses can be strong over time.

Can is a very operative word. The entire religious building set is useless unless you build a holy site. Many follower beliefs are also irrelevant outside holy sites - Choral Music, feed the world, religious community; reliquaries and warrior monks also being edge cases. Zen meditation can be a nice to have (free liberalism card!,) Jesuit education is good if you happen to have a faith economy (doable but if you're doing a traditional campus/TS spam strat not a lot of room for holy sites. So... Earth Goddess.) Work ethic is also a pretty good one for your core cities since it scales infinitely. Divine Inspo is also a bit hit or miss on higher difficulties where building world wonders is less common for the player.

Other than burial grounds and Crusader/DotFaith, the enhancer beliefs are also all geared towards religion victory. If you don't pick the beliefs yourself, you're liable to get a grab bag of mixed use. Or flaming garbage.

Holy sites also grant no great people points, and that entire class of potential benefits is missing from the game. In Civ5 if you got the religion ball rolling, you could just faith buy your way to success independent of producing stuff. (Faith buys missionaries, converted cities faith buy worship buildings, increasing your faith income, ad infinitum.) But the Piety tree also had some pretty aggressive bonuses, namely temples could give you tons of extra money and reformation beliefs were very strong. Now you have to sink production in a district slot to get the mileage. I digress.

Basically I think the current balancing of religion leads to Religion being too orthogonal to the rest of the game; they don't really intersect as much as they should. I am specifically referring to religion and not the faith resource, which has many convenient uses. laughs in Monumentality
 
Can is a very operative word. The entire religious building set is useless unless you build a holy site. Many follower beliefs are also irrelevant outside holy sites - Choral Music, feed the world, religious community; reliquaries and warrior monks also being edge cases. Zen meditation can be a nice to have (free liberalism card!,) Jesuit education is good if you happen to have a faith economy (doable but if you're doing a traditional campus/TS spam strat not a lot of room for holy sites. So... Earth Goddess.) Work ethic is also a pretty good one for your core cities since it scales infinitely. Divine Inspo is also a bit hit or miss on higher difficulties where building world wonders is less common for the player.

Other than burial grounds and Crusader/DotFaith, the enhancer beliefs are also all geared towards religion victory. If you don't pick the beliefs yourself, you're liable to get a grab bag of mixed use. Or flaming garbage.

Holy sites also grant no great people points, and that entire class of potential benefits is missing from the game. In Civ5 if you got the religion ball rolling, you could just faith buy your way to success independent of producing stuff. (Faith buys missionaries, converted cities faith buy worship buildings, increasing your faith income, ad infinitum.) But the Piety tree also had some pretty aggressive bonuses, namely temples could give you tons of extra money and reformation beliefs were very strong. Now you have to sink production in a district slot to get the mileage. I digress.

Basically I think the current balancing of religion leads to Religion being too orthogonal to the rest of the game; they don't really intersect as much as they should. I am specifically referring to religion and not the faith resource, which has many convenient uses. laughs in Monumentality
Totally agree.
Faith is better in R&F now. If I’m playing Japan or Norway, though I may not have the chance to found a religion. I will still try to build some holy site. Buying worker/settler/trader/archaeologist is just amazing!
But if I'm playing a normal nation without any religous bonus like China or Rome, I will never bother to build a HS to try to found a religion.
 
Religion's actually fine as the bonuses can be strong over time. Founding a religion on the hand is tough though.

You just need someone dumb enough to build Holy Sites
, and then you just kill them and take those Holy Sites.

Unfortunately a lot of AI Civ's go for Holy Sites. I'd prefer if they went for Campuses more early on.
 
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