Large Map and New Civilizations are now playable

[BigSchwartzzz]

It's fine imo.

I'd like to respectfully disagree. I think it's ahistorical to prevent sweeping across the North African desert for example. The coast is a good suggestion imo.

 

[RustyBrick]

Some random things now that I've played ~4 games on Marathon/Regent as Rome, Assyria, Greece, The Hittites

• I think the naval landings are cool to see happen, Rome did it a bunch when I was the Hittites.
• Razing independent cities causes them to respawn immediately after for ~20 turns. I also think razing cities should have less stability penalty with the larger map, maybe half or a third of what it is now with additional penalties like unit damage, unhappiness, or relations. There could be a factor in decreasing the penalty by having a larger or more populous empire. IMO razing cities shouldn't be as discouraged as it was on the old map.
• Greece seems to be very underpowered. The AI struggles and usually dies early before Rome spawns without conquering anything. I also struggled with Greece when I tried to play them, they were the only civ I couldn't win as out of Greece, Assyria, Rome, and the Hittites. It felt like my commerce/research as Greece was weak compared to the old map or at the very least I had less than what Greece needed to compete with the new map. Idk maybe I'm bad but I restarted once or twice from my original save and couldn't win. Their core area could be increased by a few tiles too.
• Maintenance seems like it is a bit too high.
• Sea people are cool to sea in the game. However, it is a bit much having ~12 axemen spawn next to Athens fairly quickly after Greece spawns (seems to be around 60 turns on marathon). I'm sure they're what's been killing Greece early. This is not why I couldn't win, although it probably didn't help.
• I usually play Monarch, but I think the earlier civs like Persia and Assyria could be more aggressive even on Regent. Not necessarily declaring war, but invading during wars.
• On the topic of impassible terrain, roads should also allow movement even without cultural control on deserts/tundra. As the Assyrians, I invaded Egypt plus Jerusalem which they controlled, this caused my army to be stuck in Egypt even though they had built a road to Jerusalem. I don't have an opinion on the coasts, but I think it made sense when I had to ship my army from Carthage to Egypt instead of them being able to walk there.
• The stability display now only shows core area when turned on.

 

[Leoreth]

I'd like to respectfully disagree.

You are at liberty to do that.

 

[CivEnthusiast]

So what can I say of my fresh impressions after playing this for a bit as Babylonia, Persia and a bit of Ruthenia in 600 AD Scenario

1. I absolutely loved the addition of the Bronze Age Collapse with the mass migrations and barbarian invasions, to me as Babylonia it was quite fun to find my way through surviving this. Although Assyria was much less lucky, having very easily collapsed both under mine and the Barbarian pressure. I suppose they experience a similar being underpowered issue as the Greeks, assuming that the Assyrians should techinically have enough strength to contest Babylonia in the Mesopotamian region historically
2. Some switch to new civilizations prompts still do not work just as it was in 1.17. In previous versions I found Arabia to have no switch upon spawn prompt available, and now no prompts are showing for Assyria and Rome as I hoped to later switch to them both after playing Babylonia and Persia
3. Just before the Persia spawn, two more independents appeared representing the Medes and the Urartu kingdom. While Medes flipped to Persia, Urartu did not, and so I attempted to conquer it, only for the city to get automatically razed upon the conquest. I had a similar issue in the 1.17 version, not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but still I wonder if it could be slightly changed or tweaked, because it turns out that instead of conquering Urartu first I have to destroy it entirely as Persia, then build a settler and rebuild a city which is a large number of turns that could be spent onto preparing for conquests and placing other cities
4. I'm not sure about this one, however Civilopedia says that the Norse are meant to spawn at 545 AD, yet the 600 AD scenario when I started as Ruthenia I saw no Norse civilization whatsoever, instead just a bunch of independents

Overall, already loving how this test looks like with so many new civilizations available, still super hyped for the final version of the update

 

[ShinobiHus92]

Nothing changed for these leaders, they are still there.

That's good to hear. I know it's probably not a priority at this point, but is there a chance more leaderheads will be added later on? Especially modern ones for Germany, Arabia, Morocco, and so on. Unfortunately, there aren't many choices available, so I understand that we have to work with the current ones, even if we have Gustavus Adolphus in the modern age.

Those are conditional leaders that require specific civics, so they don't show up in your leader choices.

That sounds like a cool mechanic! I'm all in.

 

[Orbii]

Trying Japan on the 3000 BC start, Regent/Normal, and saw this nice little pop-up:

Deng Xiaoping is about 760 years early for China's free market transition.

 

[Landyn Linhares]

Sweden should be able to have trading company not just the norse

 

[AOS9001]

Tried my hand at Vietnam today. I wasn't successful, but I came close-ish, which after a few hours of testing isn't bad by my casual standards. You can see my game right before I fail goal 3 in the attached images.

Thonks on Vietnam:
-On regent difficulty, no AI ever invaded me, which made the UP useless. I had to go fight the AI in their home territory (independents or other civs). I wonder if this UHV would actually be easier on higher difficulties because of this lack of AI aggression on regent?
-You don't get XP for barbarians, which were my primary enemy (besides independents), so useless to contributing to two great generals
-That independent city south of Hanoi with the walls and four crossbows with hill defense 1 is a HUGE obstacle for this civ's UHV goals. You can be bogged down for dozens of turns trying to build an army to chip damage those crossbows down. This wouldn't be a big problem if you weren't stuck on one city challenge mode, to get the rest of Vietnam you have to pass through that. After being screwed by that city for several tries, even with trying Russia-tier whipping of longbows and trebuchets, I decided on a new strategy...
-the China strategy: invade and capture Guangzhou to use it as a longbow/Confucian scholar factory. This was working really well... until China respawned and it flipped back to them.
-Once I got past crossbow hell, I was free to attack the much weaker Khmers... until they collapsed immediately after I invaded, and all those free kill archers turned into level 2 independent/barb crossbowmen. And again, barbs don't count towards great general XP, so you're SOL for that goal if any of their cities collapse into barbs.
-The Confucian cathedral goal relies on capturing all of Vietnam's four "canonical" cities implicitly, which I really like. A bit more creative than "Control or conquer X by Y date." I barely managed to scrap by thanks to being held up on crossbow hell for so long. I saved all bamboo forests around Hanoi for chopping and wiped that cathedral to completion with two turns to spare. You're screwed if one of your Confucian scholars fails to spread the religion, I had to re-roll a few times. There's just not enough time/hammers for a missionary to fail here.
-The culture goal was my goof-up. I should have went all in on the culture slider as soon as I got machinery for trebs (and maybe crop rotation for slightly better chopping). I think it's possible if you don't forget about sliders like I do.

I think Vietnam is in a good place. The unique unit is great for the region, the unique power works when you attack from inside your borders (excellent for border shenanigans, but I rarely got a chance to use it this way). The unique building is also nice, two artists contributes to your UHV's need for great artists and there's a nice commerce bonus for all the seafood your cities will have.
I think the main problem is Leoreth might have over-corrected on making independent cities non-trivial obstacles. Cities are now tougher nuts to crack after their civ collapses because of the auto-spawn of four level 2 crossbows in them. These could do with a nerf, especially in a production poor region like Southeast Asia.

Also, the new map has done SE Asia HUGE favors. It doesn't feel like playing in a shoebox anymore. Next time I play Vietnam I'll try my "pitbull in a school playground" strategy: sending the UU longbows to hunt AI units for XP in other civs' homelands.

Edit: It is kinda funny your UP is the power of resistance, but you have to invade others for the UHV since the AI doesn’t want to invade. Here’s an idea: what if you make the great general goal the last one, and have the ending date be 1900? The idea is you have to modernize after getting all that culture, and then fight off the French.

 

[troubleshooting]

Put me down as an enthusiastic fan of the Viking barbarian landings, I much prefer this to the old way where the Vikings attack one random Civ who have to deal with a couple stacks of huscarls. This feels much more historical imo and less gamey

 

[TsimTsigal]

I tried the new Assyria civ from git development (1.18).
The gold requirement on UHV 1 seems very hard (750 gold from conquering cities).

Did you sack cities? I sacked two nearby neutral cities (forgot their names sadly), Babylon, Jerusalem and all Egytian cities for total of ~300 gold (Normal speed). I assume sack income is tripled for Marathon.

And a side note:
I really think Russia deserves a modern-era unique unit. Since they're supposed to be the late game communist counter-balance to the USA, which gets three UUs (god bless~), here's some ideas:

BM-13 Katuysha? Not very modern, but is 1) iconic, 2) has historical importance. Something something like a Howitzer/Artillery with +50% attack against Gunpowder units? Or, if you are hellbent on Cold War Era, Ka-50/Ka-52: a heli with higher basic strength and probably small interception chance. Neither helis nor modern siege units have unique variants afaik.

 

[Zaddy]

Some random things now that I've played ~4 games on Marathon/Regent as Rome, Assyria, Greece, The Hittites

• I think the naval landings are cool to see happen, Rome did it a bunch when I was the Hittites.
• Razing independent cities causes them to respawn immediately after for ~20 turns. I also think razing cities should have less stability penalty with the larger map, maybe half or a third of what it is now with additional penalties like unit damage, unhappiness, or relations. There could be a factor in decreasing the penalty by having a larger or more populous empire. IMO razing cities shouldn't be as discouraged as it was on the old map.
• Greece seems to be very underpowered. The AI struggles and usually dies early before Rome spawns without conquering anything. I also struggled with Greece when I tried to play them, they were the only civ I couldn't win as out of Greece, Assyria, Rome, and the Hittites. It felt like my commerce/research as Greece was weak compared to the old map or at the very least I had less than what Greece needed to compete with the new map. Idk maybe I'm bad but I restarted once or twice from my original save and couldn't win. Their core area could be increased by a few tiles too.
• Maintenance seems like it is a bit too high.
• Sea people are cool to sea in the game. However, it is a bit much having ~12 axemen spawn next to Athens fairly quickly after Greece spawns (seems to be around 60 turns on marathon). I'm sure they're what's been killing Greece early. This is not why I couldn't win, although it probably didn't help.
• I usually play Monarch, but I think the earlier civs like Persia and Assyria could be more aggressive even on Regent. Not necessarily declaring war, but invading during wars.
• On the topic of impassible terrain, roads should also allow movement even without cultural control on deserts/tundra. As the Assyrians, I invaded Egypt plus Jerusalem which they controlled, this caused my army to be stuck in Egypt even though they had built a road to Jerusalem. I don't have an opinion on the coasts, but I think it made sense when I had to ship my army from Carthage to Egypt instead of them being able to walk there.
• The stability display now only shows core area when turned on.

Seconding the Sea People - having 6 strength units with +50% versus melee units spawning next to your capital while it's still size two and building basic infrastructure is... a lot.

 

[AOS9001]

BM-13 Katuysha? Not very modern, but is 1) iconic, 2) has historical importance. Something something like a Howitzer/Artillery with +50% attack against Gunpowder units? Or, if you are hellbent on Cold War Era, Ka-50/Ka-52: a heli with higher basic strength and probably small interception chance. Neither helis nor modern siege units have unique variants afaik.

Katuysha, Grad, Urugan, Smerch, even TOS "heavy flamethrower system" (currently being used extensively in Ukraine, I'm not sure any other country in the world has a thermobaric MLRS) would be great ideas for a howitzer or mobile artillery UU. Ka-52 is also great. Honestly, there's so many potential industrial/modern UUs Russia could have. I'd like to see some other modern competitors like Japan, France, Britain, and Germany get another UU too, but that's wishful thinking for another day.

 

[Leoreth]

That's good to hear. I know it's probably not a priority at this point, but is there a chance more leaderheads will be added later on? Especially modern ones for Germany, Arabia, Morocco, and so on. Unfortunately, there aren't many choices available, so I understand that we have to work with the current ones, even if we have Gustavus Adolphus in the modern age.

For some of the new civilizations there are some candidates for later leaders, I just did not bother to add them all because I consider them an aesthetic concern. So that will come later. But it all depends on availability. If there is no leader to fill a certain gap in the timeline, there just isn't one.

 

[BigSchwartzzz]

I just played my first game as Italy in Epic Monarch, won the UHV in 1818. I found it very fun and very similar gameplay to 1.17 in terms of method to win. It was challenging at times but I never felt like I had to game anything. Italy really snowballed throughout the game, especially since early game the cities grew extremely slowly.

The first thing is without trebuchets, it was difficult to break into Rome. But taking that city ASAP is key. So I relied on France to lower defenses, and then I threw one trebuchet at it and took it. After that Neapolis and Messana fell like dominoes. In mediolanum, the first thing I did was build a settler to settle Algeria in Wyksm, which the Moors didn't touch. Then after that I settled Qart-Hadasht. I left Tacheira alone until the last ten turns because I figured that city would be a drain.

After building up culture, rushing wonders, and bulbing some scientists, I sent an Armada to Egypt to conquer it. Once I did that I began to overextend, so capped the growth. Eventually with factories and levees these three cities provided a ton of military.

Then I founded protestantism and used a prophet to build the Church, that gave me a lot of money. Then culture up to 100. Was able to get the culture goal nearly last minute, but it wasn't ever a sweat.

Then once the core expanded to include Rome, I got a larger population core for more conquests and to unleash Egypt's population. Then France went on a conquering spree taking most of Germany. The were juggernaut for a bit with Amsterdam, Kiev, and Warsaw and a vassalized Poland. Though once Prussia spawned they collapsed to core. When this happened I snagged Marseille and Strasbourg as independents. Then soon Prussia declared war on me so I conquered Marburg and Ingostadt as well and vassalized them. They eventually lost Krakow and Warsaw in a single Congress to The ottomans and Russia respectively.

By now, recession was killing me with a -20. I still don't know how that works. But I saved up GP and did a double gold age.

From here on I built up my military, positioning it in galleons off Athens and in the Sinai. Within ten to fifteen turns I took Athenai, Amphipolis, Yerushalayim, and Dimasqu, and finally independent Tacheira. And that was game.

Here are some observations while I played:
1) North Italy's food situation is awful. Without Republic, that I had to get rid of when the civic aged out, Milan got capped at 8, Ravenna 11, Pisae 9, and Rome 15. The core pop is more than enough, but the cities just felt too small.
2) Countries collapsed more often than 1.17 especially the colonial powers. That was kinda cool actually. There were independent and barbarian cities all over the new world and Africa after Portugal, France, and Netherlands collapsed, but at least when the Netherlands respawned they got their colonies back. It would be interesting if the AI was coded to be more inclined to conquer these shedded cities in the be world.
3. Prussia started unexpectedly week.
4. The lack of Vienna as a canon city was odd, as Austria was just Prague after Prussia spawned except for two odd Russian cities that they ended up losing anyway. Seeing them as a colonial power was really cool with a colony in Venezuela and Eastern South Africa.
5. I was surprised the Moors weren't more aggressive, especially in Africa.
6. Russia seemed balanced up until I finished playing, which surprised me.
7. Persia randomly declared war on me sending a massive army in 1500s or so and wiped their forces in process gaining nothing. I'm not sure why and I think they would have been better served not trying to conquer a very distant land.

I think that's it. Gonna try Sweden now I think.

 

[CivEnthusiast]

Katuysha, Grad, Urugan, Smerch, even TOS "heavy flamethrower system" (currently being used extensively in Ukraine, I'm not sure any other country in the world has a thermobaric MLRS) would be great ideas for a howitzer or mobile artillery UU. Ka-52 is also great. Honestly, there's so many potential industrial/modern UUs Russia could have. I'd like to see some other modern competitors like Japan, France, Britain, and Germany get another UU too, but that's wishful thinking for another day.

Oh an idea, as the modern warfare is mentioned, maybe it would have been great to add to the latest gameplay the latest drone warfare developments as the drones seem to be getting quite the juggernauts nowadays

 

[CivEnthusiast]

For some of the new civilizations there are some candidates for later leaders, I just did not bother to add them all because I consider them an aesthetic concern. So that will come later. But it all depends on availability. If there is no leader to fill a certain gap in the timeline, there just isn't one.

By the way I wonder if the Turks will also have the modern leader option like an Uzbekistan president perhaps, to represent independent modern day Central Asia. Currently in 1.17 Turkestan never respawns in the Modern Era after Tamerlane. Same idea for Ukraine's addition now as Ruthenia, I believe Zelenskyy would've been the greatest fit as the modern day leader as no other Ukrainian president could represent the modern nation any better in my opinion. Also I wonder if Afghanistan may exist in modern era now too as the respawned Kushans, just like how the Mughals are Pakistan in modern era, or just like Mexico being the respawned Aztecs technically

 

[Zaddy]

General feedback for the ancient era:

Barbs seem excessive; playing as Persia, Babylon and Assyria often have died to barbs by the time I spawn. Grecce has to deal with large quantities of axemen spawning one tile away from your capital that can easily kill any unit you can build.

Greek conquerors also seem really hard to deal with, in my game they spawned like 5 stacks of 7 or so units. The only unit you can really build that fights against them well is Horsemen, but if the stack spawns on a hill that goes out the window too. Not to mention paying maintenance for an army to handle that cripples your economy, and in the early game you're forced to use Redistribution that kills your tech rate as soon as you start expanding.

 

[AOS9001]

By the way I wonder if the Turks will also have the modern leader option like an Uzbekistan president perhaps, to represent independent modern day Central Asia. Currently in 1.17 Turkestan never respawns in the Modern Era after Tamerlane. Same idea for Ukraine's addition now as Ruthenia, I believe Zelenskyy would've been the greatest fit as the modern day leader as no other Ukrainian president could represent the modern nation any better in my opinion. Also I wonder if Afghanistan may exist in modern era now too as the respawned Kushans, just like how the Mughals are Pakistan in modern era, or just like Mexico being the respawned Aztecs technically

+1 to Afghanistan as a modern Kushans spawn. It doesn't even have to be the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, it can come back as the Duranni Empire in the 1700s.

 

[DanLT3]

Did you sack cities? I sacked two nearby neutral cities (forgot their names sadly), Babylon, Jerusalem and all Egytian cities for total of ~300 gold (Normal speed). I assume sack income is tripled for Marathon.

Even when sacking all those cities and even some more I could only get 482 out of 750 gold required. But since I could not raze any of those cities made me go bankrupt.

 

[banzay13]

Every city in the core adds to the expansion stability limit, and then that limit scales with the game era. The change here is that the capital additionally adds to the limit, but that addition does not scale with the game era. In effect it means that there is a bit more room before you get negative expansion strategy, but that effect becomes negligible with large cores and after the classical era.

Does this bonus still wok if i move capital outside core area?