Korea

[peterw1987]

I wonder if this strength is due to not being threatened in a long time, thanks to being small.

i go straight spam settler after monument,stonehenge, and worker until i have 5 cities. not very small i think.

 

[CrazyG]

I wonder if this strength is due to not being threatened in a long time, thanks to being small.

This is a small part at most. I've snowballed while next to Rome and he attacks me all game.

You get a ton of culture from expending great people, which can be much larger than your per turn culture; and a high density of powerful things, like trade routes, guilds, GP tiles. Basically a 12 city empire has to pay more its social policies, but doesn't get more from GP, and it doesn't get more GP till really late in the game, by the time that 6th or 7th city gives a GP this build will already be in rationalism

If you want to see how it works try a one city challenge as Korea or another tradition loving civ, it'll be a short game. Even if you miss religion you should easily lead in social policies all game.

i go straight spam settler after monument,stonehenge, and worker until i have 5 cities. not very small i think.

Surely you build military?

 

[peterw1987]

Surely you build military?

For early stage, I buy 2 warrior using gold when spamming settler.

Later, I only build 1 archer and 1 warrior for each city early, and saving some spare gold to rush upgrade/buy unit for defense. I also try to build road ASAP, so my reinforcement is faster. Once i reach hwacha, it is a piece of cake. Just put 2 hwacha in each city, and always try to spare some gold for rush buy units.
And i always try to found city next to river for defensive bonus. I am willing to give up some resource for river strategic defense.

Maybe because my great location + spirit of desert 2 gold 2 food 2 faith, I am in good shape. I can share the save file if you want.

 

[CrazyG]

For early stage, I buy 2 warrior using gold when spamming settler.

Later, I only build 1 archer and 1 warrior for each city early, and saving some spare gold to rush upgrade/buy unit for defense. I also try to build road ASAP, so my reinforcement is faster. Once i reach hwacha, it is a piece of cake. Just put 2 hwacha in each city, and always try to spare some gold for rush buy units.
And i always try to found city next to river for defensive bonus. I am willing to give up some resource for river strategic defense.

Maybe because my great location + spirit of desert 2 gold 2 food 2 faith, I am in good shape. I can share the save file if you want.

Is this a general build order or just one game? I was confused by a build order with no military units, 2 warriors can handle barbarians but if you start near someone mean you are going to have a bad time.

 

[peterw1987]

Tradition garrison defense is quite strong. Maybe i cannot wipe their unit out, but they cannot take down my city. My front city stuck earlier because my worker cannot improve resource nearby, and all my good tile is blocked. But once my capital is good enough, I can produce archer and counter them back.
This is my general opening build. I try to save gold and only buy unit when attacked, so I can save on unit maintenance cost.
Just try to make good relation with neighbors by trading luxuries and strategic resource. Occasionally accept their tribute demand.

 

[infidel88]

Maybe because my great location + spirit of desert 2 gold 2 food 2 faith, I am in good shape. I can share the save file if you want.

This is hardly a measure of civ being OP or not. Starting in good position and getting SoTD pantheon downgrades game by 1 or even 2 levels. With 6 pop city you're able to get additional 12, 12 and 12. Early game it's gamebreaking and indeed lets you pump up settlers like crazy and work mines, while still growing pretty damn fast.

 

[peterw1987]

I post some screenshot so you can evaluate my location.

 

[Favorius]

I get my first emperor win with Korea. Thanks Sejong. 10 tech ahead of second civ. Killing Fusiliers with Death Robots was unfair.

 

[CrazyG]

Hey guys, I think Korea is a really bad civ currently.

It seems directly outclasses by Arabia. The science from historic events that Arabia gets is just a way better source than Korea's is, and he earns culture. The great person points are pretty even, I'd even say it favors Arabia because you aren't dependent on golden ages. I guess the H'wacha is marginally better than camels?

You can compare him to Portugal. Even if Portugal does not build either Petra or Colossus, she earns more science per turn from her trade routes than Korea will. To match her in medieval you need to work 30 specialists. She also gets an even amount of gold.

With specialists eating 3 food to start, even with +1 science specialists aren't very good early game. The strength of early science would be that you can delay building libraries or universities, except you need them in order to have specialists to work. And your unique building is a university. I find if you go tradition, your secondary cities are still working on arenas when you unlock the Seowon, the science just isn't very useful. It also makes you unhappy. His toolkit screams rationalism, but you cannot build anything in a reasonable amount of time if you take that policy tree.

Late game your science is crazy, I'll give him that. But I don't really see the point because you cannot build anything. I recall having artillery before anyone else, but it took 9 turns for my cities to build one and I still had not finished military academies or even began on stock exchanges.

 

[Owlbebach]

This is a decent rationale. Though might it be that Arabia and Portugal are too strong and not Korea weak? Not saying so, but raising a question. 20% progress towards a great person is ridiculously strong, especially when it comes to Archaeology.

I agree that Specialists nerf that happened half a year ago hit Korea really hard. Early game specialists are really bad. Maybe Sejong needs something like a food reduction for Specialists?

 

[pineappledan]

I think the Seowon is a weak link. If Korea was going to get buffed I would look there. Arabia's got a pretty strong religion game too, which you didn't meantion in your analysis. Korea's UB comes 2 eras later and has worse base yields.

Overall, the Seowon doesn't offer a lot over the base university

 

[Stalker0]

Having played Tradition Korea recently, I will agree that you are using your hammers absolutely non-stop and can never keep up. To that point...I wonder if Korea is really a tradition civ afterall...it may actually be progress.

Going wide gives you access to more specialists, which will increase your overall science bonus. And progress both pushes your science while giving you the gold to assist with using your science to actually build something. Also, the way stacking works, the 30% great points during GA is actually stronger for progress than tradition, because tradition has innate bonuses.

So maybe the problem is they are wrongly typecast. Though they seem to scream Tradition....maybe that is actually the wrong way to play them?

 

[pineappledan]

Hmm... hard to say if it’s legitimately because progress is a better match, or just tradition being generally weaker. The synergies with tradition are so obvious (more and faster specialists, a source of GAPs, food for GP tiles, more +25%GPPs) it’s hard to argue they don’t have good tradition play.

I maintain that the Low tier UB is holding the civ back more than any lack of synergies.

 

[CrazyG]

If you take progress you basically play without a unique ability for like 3 eras, I don't think its the right decision.

I'm trying Korea now and actually the UA is actually pretty good. Is a very strong source of golden ages and the reward for golden ages is significant. He has the classic tradition problems, but the new tradition opener is so good, it has a huge impact.

The main challenge for Korea is early game weakness, which just makes this kind of civ hard to play. You want to get a few wonders but you don't really have the resources. I missed Hanging Gardens and University of Sankore in this game. You also really want a religion in my opinion, which stretches the early game challenges.

Seowon used to have another specialist, which was cool. Its a really boring unique building, though the +15% science during golden ages is potent. I miss the bonus on great person tiles too.

 

[Legen]

My impression is that this civ stop being as successful when permanent golden ages became infeasible in the midgame. Korea was traditionally a slow civ, needing time to take off compared to many others, and would catch up with other science civs, like Babylon and Maya, once the golden age train began around medieval-rennaissance. With that gone, reports of super early SV with this civ slowed down. Less time in golden ages didn't just mean less great people (Seowon didn't have the extra science on GAs yet), it also meant less production and gold to keep the infrastructure updated.

I don't think Korea is necessarily a Progress civ for its difficulties with Tradition now, it was a top tier Tradition civ back then. Seowon never presented an issue either, it even got the +15% science during golden ages while Korea was still a strong civ. But maybe it needs to adapt, now that Tradition->Artistry for great people + golden age alone isn't as powerful as before.

 

[Owlbebach]

I'm trying Korea now and actually the UA is actually pretty good. Is a very strong source of golden ages and the reward for golden ages is significant. He has the classic tradition problems, but the new tradition opener is so good, it has a huge impact.

The main challenge for Korea is early game weakness, which just makes this kind of civ hard to play. You want to get a few wonders but you don't really have the resources. I missed Hanging Gardens and University of Sankore in this game. You also really want a religion in my opinion, which stretches the early game challenges.

With new Tradition Opener Korea seems to have a good synergy with Wisdom. Early pop really speeds up your Settlers and then you get science without building anything and on top of that you get a little extra faith from Specialists and some GA point that you will use just when you get to Seowons...

 

[CrazyG]

In my most recent game I was able to sustain golden age from turn 80 something until turn 185. That was without using artists, monopolies or chichen itza, though I did use Notre Dame. Then I only had to wait 3 turns until an artist was born and its going strong again. 50 GAP scaling with era adds up big time. Lack of golden age isn't really a problem.

 

[CrazyG]

Can we ditch the coastal start bias? Its so bad for a tradition civ. Seoul isn't even a coastal city.

 

[pineappledan]

You're right, It's like 1km inland, forming a single massive metropolitan area which reaches the coast, but the part that touches the coast is technically another city called Incheon .

Is that just a holdover from them having the turtle ship UU, maybe?

 

[crdvis16]

Hey guys, I think Korea is a really bad civ currently.

It seems directly outclasses by Arabia. The science from historic events that Arabia gets is just a way better source than Korea's is, and he earns culture. The great person points are pretty even, I'd even say it favors Arabia because you aren't dependent on golden ages. I guess the H'wacha is marginally better than camels?

You can compare him to Portugal. Even if Portugal does not build either Petra or Colossus, she earns more science per turn from her trade routes than Korea will. To match her in medieval you need to work 30 specialists. She also gets an even amount of gold.

With specialists eating 3 food to start, even with +1 science specialists aren't very good early game. The strength of early science would be that you can delay building libraries or universities, except you need them in order to have specialists to work. And your unique building is a university. I find if you go tradition, your secondary cities are still working on arenas when you unlock the Seowon, the science just isn't very useful. It also makes you unhappy. His toolkit screams rationalism, but you cannot build anything in a reasonable amount of time if you take that policy tree.

Late game your science is crazy, I'll give him that. But I don't really see the point because you cannot build anything. I recall having artillery before anyone else, but it took 9 turns for my cities to build one and I still had not finished military academies or even began on stock exchanges.

A counterpoint to the comparisons to Arabia/Portugal is that their bonuses are more risky.

I assume Arabia probably needs to build a number of wonders and grab a number of dig sites in order to pull off enough historic events to truly shine. Competition for wonders can be fierce and grabbing dig sites can be difficult if you're in wars or don't have open borders for whatever reason. If you pull off both of those then maybe Arabia should be stronger?

With Portugal you need to keep those trade routes up and running. You could fall back on internal routes if really necessary but that's not always ideal. If you're at war and your routes are getting plundered then that science gravy train will stop. If you're able to keep your routes up and running the whole game then maybe, again, Portugal deserves that strength?

With Korea there isn't really any risk involved. There isn't much anyone can do to stop your bonuses from working for you. With less risk comes less reward I guess? Maybe Korea is sort of beginner friendly in that regard- a lower ceiling but a lesser skill/knowledge requirement?

I haven't played as Korea in while though, mostly because I see them as being somewhat boring, though maybe how best to handle your tech edge is where the skill is needed? I could also see their UU being fun if you grab the AoE damage promotions. A few of those would absolutely murder any invaders.