[LP] Leader Pass Pack 2: Great Commanders (Dec. 2022) - Patch Notes Discussion

Finally have time to play some Civ. Playing Tokugawa.

He's AWESOME! And for reasons I had not even realized, but the synergies are top notch. Apart from the self-evident stuff, there's also:

-> You're encouraged to grow your population fast to unlock more/earlier districts;
-> Aqueducts and Dams seem particularly useful for the pop growth (plus easy adjacencies);
-> Harbors/Lighthouses are really important for the Trade Capacity, Housing and Food, also Colossus;
-> Industrial Zones/Electronic Factory will fit perfectly around Aqueducts and Dams.
-> This playstyle also fits naturally with the two most powerful governors in the game, Pingala (pops) and Magnus (pop growth, industry).

Not entirely sure if this much synergy was even intended.

As expected, 100% Loyalty around Capital is not all that useful by itself. It is very map dependent. The one situation in which it's very strong is if you have nearby civilizations, in which case you can forward settle with no problem. That is a pretty strong ability in that specific situation. The ability should read 100% Loyatly +2 Amenities, as amenities are simply more reliable. (I find +4 Amenities a bit excessive tbf).

Yeah, I'm playing through with him, and you really can try to synergize. Basically I'm playing a mini-game to get my capital as big as possible and get as many districts. I think with the Communism internal trade card plus the great merchant that gives a gold bonus, I'm at like 11 food/7 production/19 gold per internal route, plus I forget if I'm at +6 or +7 science/culture too. The only downside is that it makes the civ a very spread out one - to get the most of the route yields, I can't pile up the traders in the same city too much.

The only parts that don't synergize are wanting your cities packed together as close as possible to benefit from district adjacency, but also want them big to build more districts so they don't tend to have lots of tiles to work. The 100% loyalty isn't a huge bonus overall, but the other parts are nice enough that I don't mind. Even that is nice to let you do a little forward settling early if you need it.
 
Oh, that’s a feature 😉! Artifact has been lost/destroyed in transit!

Apologies, I have never played that mode.

I instantly pictured the final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark

I disable him every game now. What's the point of having him? AI sucks with him every single time. Even worse, I was seeing him appear in nearly every game. I take him and Curtin off the AI list.

Ha ha I usually disable both as well

Nice to see they finally fixed that typo. I’ve been playing with Real AI so long I kinda stopped caring
 
Tokugawa's UA represents the Edo Merchant Culture that flurushes through domestic tradings.
In real history actually Tokogawa Shogunate and Meiji Emperor are enemies. And those who brought Hellfire to Tokogawa Shogunate are all Samurai castes particularly the Satsuma overlords who wanted revenge. (Satsuma sided with Tokugawa's enemy in Sekigahara, despite him (Iyeyasu) for being usurper)
In the final days of Tokugawa Shogunate. the last shogun did create an internal security corps composed entirely of Ronins. dubbed 'Shinsengumi' (There's reason to choose ronins, since they're already masterless, the Shogunate presented itself as a new master. finding new overlord for those ronins aren't easy, what are better job opportunities for these disgraced members of warrior caste in a peaceful era?) This because Anti-Shogunate movements are all composed of Samurais (and even some outer ring overlords particularly those previously picked a wrong side in the Battle of Sekigahara) and they were already deadly swordsmen, to combat this, only equally skillful swordsmen should do).
 
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Suleiman gets a 10 for Hat, but I'm not enjoying his leader ability, and the main reason is: whether the Yield bonus or the CS bonus is the better alternative depends entirely on other Civs' Age Score, which is information that only becomes available after you've entered a new era.

In later Eras you'll likely want to always go for the Yields (that is, push for a Golden Age) because +15% is considerable. But especially in the transition from Ancient to Classical, or Classical to Medieval, the extra yield is not too relevant yet. This is also a time where quick expansion and getting a +4CS might be quite a significant boost, BUT these early Golden Ages aren't particularly hard to get.

This all means that I need to decide, blindly, before I got over the Golden Age limit, whether I should get a +1/ +3 Yield boost to Science and Culture, or gamble on the +4CS.
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TLDR: Suleiman's ability forces the player to gamble, i.e., make a decision without actually having the required information to make an appropriate decision.

Edit: I think the solution could be something like: +1 Great General points per Military Slot in current Government when not in a Golden Age and +4CS when not in a Golden Age against Civs which are also not in a Golden Age.
 
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Suleiman gets a 10 for Hat, but I'm not enjoying his leader ability, and the main reason is: whether the Yield bonus or the CS bonus is the better alternative depends entirely on other Civs' Age Score, which is information that only becomes available after you've entered a new era.

In later Eras you'll likely want to always go for the Yields (that is, push for a Golden Age) because +15% is considerable. But especially in the transition from Ancient to Classical, or Classical to Medieval, the extra yield is not too relevant yet. This is also a time where quick expansion and getting a +4CS might be quite a significant boost, BUT these early Golden Ages aren't particularly hard to get.

This all means that I need to decide, blindly, before I got over the Golden Age limit, whether I should get a +1/ +3 Yield boost to Science and Culture, or gamble on the +4CS.
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TLDR: Suleiman's ability forces the player to gamble, i.e., make a decision without actually having the required information to make an appropriate decision.
I think it's more of a "play it as it lies" kind of ability, rather than one to plan out.

If you can't manage to get a Golden Age, then you pick one of your neighbors who is also not in a Golden Age and take a few cities. Hopefully that's enough era scores to get you into a Golden Age next. In Golden Ages, you focus on building. In addition, if you played your Normal Age cards right, then a few more cities will loyalty-flip to you. It's kind of bipolar. Sometimes to warmonger. Sometimes you build.

I like the concept of having an ability that alternates based on Ages. I even hypothesized something like that for a Georgian unique improvement back in the run-up to RNF. But this particular take on the idea doesn't appeal to me very much.
 
Suleiman gets a 10 for Hat, but I'm not enjoying his leader ability, and the main reason is: whether the Yield bonus or the CS bonus is the better alternative depends entirely on other Civs' Age Score, which is information that only becomes available after you've entered a new era.

In later Eras you'll likely want to always go for the Yields (that is, push for a Golden Age) because +15% is considerable. But especially in the transition from Ancient to Classical, or Classical to Medieval, the extra yield is not too relevant yet. This is also a time where quick expansion and getting a +4CS might be quite a significant boost, BUT these early Golden Ages aren't particularly hard to get.

This all means that I need to decide, blindly, before I got over the Golden Age limit, whether I should get a +1/ +3 Yield boost to Science and Culture, or gamble on the +4CS.
The way I see it is that the CS strength bonus allows you conquer a nearby neighbor to get started snowballing and then the golden age bonuses allow you catch up to and surpass other civs in order to maintain your conquests once you get going because, personally, I usually start chaining Golden Ages in the Renaissance or Industrial Eras and, by that point, you shouldn't need the combat bonuses anymore because of you base unit strength and promotions.
 
I don't know if it's because the leaders/civs are so imbalanced or just because I'm rubbish, but Emperor feels nigh impossible to beat these days.

I'm getting old :(
 
A minor thing, but Tokugawa's Fallback doesn't look great. There's a white edge along the right side of the character which should only go along the armor/clothes, to give the impression of reflection, but instead goes all the way up to his head. Looks weird, like bad photoshop.
 
I don't know if it's because the leaders/civs are so imbalanced or just because I'm rubbish, but Emperor feels nigh impossible to beat these days.

I'm getting old :(
A few people also mentioned this on Twitter. The fix that the AI doesn't hyper-focus on science anymore probably has made the AI overall better.
 
A few people also mentioned this on Twitter. The fix that the AI doesn't hyper-focus on science anymore probably has made the AI overall better.
That's been my experience. Whereas before I'd be getting whipped until partway through the game when the AI would collapse, this last game I've been given quite reasonable competition all the way through.
 
I don't know if it's because the leaders/civs are so imbalanced or just because I'm rubbish, but Emperor feels nigh impossible to beat these days.

I'm getting old :(

Are you actually getting beat tho or is it just based on the AI's science/civics progress. I haven't played post-patch yet, but the AI traditionally took a lot longer than you'd think to actually achieve a victory condition. Ie they might be very ahead in science but they will still take a while to get to alpha centari
 
I've had that happen this week too. What of it though if the useless AI did not engage me with even a single unit, even though we were sharing a continent?
Maya sent a bunch of units at me.
 
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