Korea tiles and money - not what I expected

[Zeuxis]

One of the things that I love about civ 6 is how each leader and each victory type presents its own problems to overcome. I hadn't yet won a science victory and so I read around a bit and decided that for a first attempt, I would try Seondeok with all her advantages built around the Seowon.

I expected to be building lots of Seowons and pulling ahead early in science. Well, I am ahead but it hasn't panned out at all like I was expecting. Here is the problem:

The Seowons yield of Science is reduced for every district you build adjacent to the Seowon and so you need to build it away from the city center. This also helps increase the bonuses from mines and farms. However, a new city only has the first ring of tiles and often the tile that automatically added is not the one you want as you can only build on hills and you might have chosen a different location for the Seowon.

So instead of science, my game up to turn 70 has been all about money to purchase the tiles I need to build Seowons and policy cards to increase money or reduce the cost of buying tiles. This wasn't what I was expecting....

Thoughts?

 

[Archaelicos]

What difficulty level? Even with Korea, I wouldn't spam out a ton of early Seowons. How many districts are you building in each city? I'd think you'd have a Theater Square, Campus, and Commercial/Harbor in each, but beyond that, you just need a few industrial centers for units and a few wonders. I'd just buy the tiles you want (maybe run Land Surveyors for a few turns if you need to) and place them early to reduce cost but finish building them later and focus on defense and infrastructure (granary, farms, get pop up) early.

 

[Zeuxis]

Not Deity yet!

Maybe I wasn't expecting that I couldn't get a cheep Seowan for each city very early to push forward on science very fast. It seems odd that I can found a city on turn 50 but not have the opportunity to build the Seowan where it needs to go before turn 100 or later unless I buy squares in pretty much all cities and that amount of gold really adds up.

I am looking at producing good cities (which seldom actually happens!) having a ring of districts around the city center on one side (for adjacency bonuses) and then one square out from the center on the other side is the Seowan surrounded by mines and farms. In most cases, of course, this doesn't work, mainly due to a lack of hills and having to buy the squares.

 

[Midgardsormr]

Are you grabbing as much gold as possible from the AI? Sell any luxury that would take your cities above Content. You should shoot for at least 5 gpt per lux at the beginning of the game. Even at the point where you need to start importing luxuries, you should still shoot for getting a profit from each trade. Open borders should be worth 1-2 gpt + a little extra. You might have to pay a small amount on the first mutual open borders treaty, but I wouldn't give away more than 10 gold for that. After that first 30 turns they should start paying you for it.

If you don't think you'll need to call an early emergency, trade away diplomatic favor for gold if you can get a reasonable price.

It's not uncommon for me to have an income of 100+ gpt in the Medieval era just from trade deals (huge Continents, Deity/Immortal) if I'm not warmongering. Peace deals can be even more lucrative if I am on the warpath, but those aren't something to depend on.

 

[Archon_Wing]

As long as it is +3 it doesn't matter.

Sure it looks bad, but +3 is the minimum required for Rationalism. Of course, it shouldn't fall below that though. Spending too much gold just to get a small adjacency is a huge leak that should only be reserved for meme games. It's much better to have +3 science than to have none at all if you didn't place.

But you can have it both ways. Using the -20% tile purchase card, use it to buy hill forests of which you can chop with Magnus. You'll be able to place a good Seowon and build it quickly. However, as you can see, it's not just for the sake of a +4 Seowon.

 

[Pietato]

Yeah, sell all your early diplomatic favour. It goes for insane amounts.

 

[Victoria]

As already said, the choice is yours, spend some money for +4 or place in any useless tile next to your city for a +3 adjacency half price district.
In essence +4 is a trap in many ways that should be ignored unless you have a great area of grassland hills you can put a Seowon in the middle of for those wonderful mine bonuses.
The danger with Korea is finishing Seowons while still in the expansion phase of the game and spending all your cash on those tiles. I will buy tiles, but these are early tiles in the second ring that will really help my expansion phase.

Remember that a library is very cheap to buy so using your cash on these during the consolidation phase is much more useful and allows more university chop. Korea is frighteningly good at pure science and you can really ramp it up but be aware that they are not the best civ out there for a science victory fast. Culture plays a key point also as does warring.

seowons have been indirectly nerfed by thermal fissures, and better mountain design. It’s not that hard to get +4 or more with other civs and Seowons are limited to +4. Their real strength comes in +1food and +1 science for adjacent areas.

 

[Bibor]

What Victoria said, +1 is not worth the 80 gold you need to spend on a tile, except for future perfect placement in planned big cities. You'd need to roughly 160 turns to pay that investment off.

 

[Pietato]

What Victoria said, +1 is not worth the 80 gold you need to spend on a tile, except for future perfect placement in planned big cities. You'd need to roughly 160 turns to pay that investment off.

This is wrong. 80 gold for an extra science and empowered farms/mines is totally worth it.

 

[Bibor]

If you read my sentence to the end, you'd see I said the same thing. "Planned big cities".

 

[Victoria]

This is wrong. 80 gold for an extra science and empowered farms/mines is totally worth it.

It can be worth it and to be fair it is +2 as you are insane as Korea not to double adjacency.
What I am saying is when I play other civs +3 campi are quite common and +5/6 are not very rare. Holland, Hungary and Aus being exceptional. That’s all really.
I play devils advocate, I like to challenge standard thinking, I can be wrong and Korea is still a great science powerhouse, half price districts and governor bonuses give that extra bit.

 

[Pietato]

+5/6 are rare, even in GS. No idea what maps you are playing. Extra mountains?

The difference is that Korea can get a +4 campus in every single city, while others will only place a campus in cities which have the necessarily setup (unless you like being highly inefficient).

 

[Bibor]

Arguably a good +3 placement that covers more mines (and does not interfere with an industrial zone) will beat a +4 placement.

 

[sa1vy]

Little known exploit regarding Land Surveyors (-20% tile purchase cost card):
When you unlock a new government, you get to change all your policies for free *twice* in the same turn! This is most notable when unlocking political philosophy. The turn you unlock PP, don't change governments yet; stay chieftain first, and slot in Land Surveyors. Hopefully you'll have a couple hundred gold saved up for this. Once you buy all your tiles you want at the discount, *then* switch governments.
It's also possible to do this for unlocking any government, so you could do it for upgrading units, buying builders, etc. The advantage to this is that you don't have to waste even a single turn having a mostly useless card slotted in your policies.Normally the idea is to save some cheap civics so you can quickly change those bad cards out again after you used them. But with this, it doesn't even take a turn.

 

[jimmywfl]

One of the things that I love about civ 6 is how each leader and each victory type presents its own problems to overcome. I hadn't yet won a science victory and so I read around a bit and decided that for a first attempt, I would try Seondeok with all her advantages built around the Seowon.

I expected to be building lots of Seowons and pulling ahead early in science. Well, I am ahead but it hasn't panned out at all like I was expecting. Here is the problem:

The Seowons yield of Science is reduced for every district you build adjacent to the Seowon and so you need to build it away from the city center. This also helps increase the bonuses from mines and farms. However, a new city only has the first ring of tiles and often the tile that automatically added is not the one you want as you can only build on hills and you might have chosen a different location for the Seowon.

So instead of science, my game up to turn 70 has been all about money to purchase the tiles I need to build Seowons and policy cards to increase money or reduce the cost of buying tiles. This wasn't what I was expecting....

Thoughts?

I do not have Korea as an option in the basic game. Does Korea only come with the Gathering Storm version?

 

[Stylianos]

Korea was introduced with the Rise and Fall Expansion !