[LP] Leader Pass Pack 4: Rulers of the Sahara (Feb. 2023) - Patch Notes Discussion

[tedhebert]

I started a Sundiata game, and naturally my closest neighbor is Dom Pedro the Jealous Boyfriend, and he is concerned about all the Great People I'm luring to Mali.

Oh, Kristina is here too. This is going to be fun.

Consider yourself lucky... I got Monty 6 tiles from my starting city, on immortal... Got Religious settlement in 8 turns, wiped in 12 turns by 5 eagle warriors and a slinger !

 

[Finvola]

I played Sundiata earlier and my nearest neighbor was French Eleanor. I was like "I'm SO not dealing with this." She had to go. She was getting beat up by another AI earlier on so I took the opportunity to wage my war then.

 

[blackbutterfly]

So far I'm liking NeoCleo a lot more than Ramseses.

NewCleo

I'm really liking Ptolemaic Cleopatra.

*snip*


(This is my play test of TSL Old World from the UN Earth Maps. Apocalypse mode on)

Moderator Action: Please don't try to bypass the language filters. ~ LK

 

[Thormodr]

NeoCleo is really fun. Rolled up a great start on a hot arid wetlands map with scads of floodplains and marshes.

Took Lady of Reeds and Marshes pantheon and built Etemenanki. So much science and production. ❤

Regret only having disasters set on level 2 but still getting many floods. Wow!

 

[Finvola]

She's the one I'll be playing next. I'm looking forward to it!

 

[tedhebert]

I must say... Sundiata (I probably mean more MALI as a civ) is simply too vulnerable until around turn 100... As soon as you have the badluck of having close neighbors, they'll just jump you... and even if you manage to survive, you'll be so crippled it'll be very
hard to come back into the game... Maybe Immortal and Diety is simply too hard for this civ, unless it has a starting location that protects them for a while ? Or I just don't play them the right way ? But my experience with Sundiata in 3 games so far is that
your extremely hard pressed to survive until you start to make serious money with your sugubas.... I know you're supposed to buy all your buildings and all, but there are things that you CAN'T buy... walls for example, if your attacked in the early game... and
you can't also buy Gov plaza buildings...

 

[InsidiousMage]

I must say... Sundiata (I probably mean more MALI as a civ) is simply too vulnerable until around turn 100... As soon as you have the badluck of having close neighbors, they'll just jump you... and even if you manage to survive, you'll be so crippled it'll be very
hard to come back into the game... Maybe Immortal and Diety is simply too hard for this civ, unless it has a starting location that protects them for a while ? Or I just don't play them the right way ? But my experience with Sundiata in 3 games so far is that
your extremely hard pressed to survive until you start to make serious money with your sugubas.... I know you're supposed to buy all your buildings and all, but there are things that you CAN'T buy... walls for example, if your attacked in the early game... and
you can't also buy Gov plaza buildings...

Because of the production malus, the Desert Folklore pantheon with the Work Ethic belief is a must for Mali. Unless you are isolated or have easily defensible terrain, you can't really go with anything else. Its not as great as like Russia with Dance of the Aurora and Work Ethic but it gets you better production than another civ would have regularly. In my Sundiata game I was fairly isolated with really protective terrain so I was able to get the settler pantheon instead of going with usual choices for Mali.

Also, make sure you are working productive tiles instead of food tiles! Mali can generate food with its ability so you skip working some early food tiles. In addition, your first cities are going want to be on the edge of the desert so they still have regular tiles to work and then your later cities can be in the desert proper.

 

[tedhebert]

Because of the production malus, the Desert Folklore pantheon with the Work Ethic belief is a must for Mali. Unless you are isolated or have easily defensible terrain, you can't really go with anything else. Its not as great as like Russia with Dance of the Aurora and Work Ethic but it gets you better production than another civ would have regularly. In my Sundiata game I was fairly isolated with really protective terrain so I was able to get the settler pantheon instead of going with usual choices for Mali.

Also, make sure you are working productive tiles instead of food tiles! Mali can generate food with its ability so you skip working some early food tiles. In addition, your first cities are going want to be on the edge of the desert so they still have regular tiles to work and then your later cities can be in the desert proper.

Yeah I think I made a mistake by taking religious settlements... Funny that about the only civ that CAN get it probably SHOULD NOT ;-) I did get work ethic... still it takes a while to get suguba+holy site running in most cities ;-(

I thought I was protected in my last game, Pericles being hidden behind a large mountain range dozens of tiles from my capital... He STILL came after me with a bunch of hoplites... I survived, but barely... and then my other close neighbor was fred, and he took THE 2 city states I had suzed... really really sucky game ;-)
But hey, I'm still alive... we'll see...

 

[Finvola]

Yeah I went work ethic with Sundiata, it just made sense. I did find the early game to be a slog with how long it took to get going but once I got over that it was fine. I didn't have anybody the minimum settling distance from me to start, thankfully. I think I would have been toast otherwise. French Eleanor got too close for my liking once I started getting settlers out.

I just finished NeoCleo too and picked a wetlands map. I didn't really spam preserves but I had a lot of national parks. I won with culture with the parks and rock band spam. It was nice and relaxing, saw a total of zero combat for once. Two new leaders down, one to go!

 

[Tech Osen]

Took a few restarts, actually had a couple without any desert in sight. And then I got this. Desert Folklore, Work Ethic, Owls of Minerva. Got a cultural victory at 276 on Emperor. (Pictures without the Scripture policy, messed up a government change. )

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

NeoCleo feels like Bull Moose Teddy, in that a good map start will lead to a huge snowball effect.

Also, I noticed that Earth Goddess might be a good pantheon for her, since she gets a lot of Breathtaking floodplain tiles.

 

[fy00sh]

NeoCleo feels like Bull Moose Teddy, in that a good map start will lead to a huge snowball effect.

Also, I noticed that Earth Goddess might be a good pantheon for her, since she gets a lot of Breathtaking floodplain tiles.

yeah, i actually managed to get a pantheon choice early enough as her to take religious settlements and i still took earth goddess since i got the great bath built in a city with a huge floodplain blob that already flooded thrice and figured the long term ROI of earth goddess's faith more than covered for buying an additional settler with monumentality, even if i got the cities out later. dunno if it actually was the right play but it felt nice for it to even be in question, gave me some strategizing to do ^_^

 

[SecretWeapon]

Hmm I think Ptolomeic Cleopatra was intended to have a different trait or agenda

TRAIT_LEADER_CLEOPATRA_ALT leads to her Floodplains stuff, while the city state one isn't fully coded and is marked as internal only elsewhere. Could also be a testing thing that wasn't cut too

 

[pokiehl]

Hmm I think Ptolomeic Cleopatra was intended to have a different trait or agenda
View attachment 654552

TRAIT_LEADER_CLEOPATRA_ALT leads to her Floodplains stuff, while the city state one isn't fully coded and is marked as internal only elsewhere. Could also be a testing thing that wasn't cut too

Nope. The "low_city_state_preference_war" thing is just a generic behavior modifier that gets added to many different leaders.

There are similar ones that make leaders have low preference for religion, or high preference for Science, for example.

 

[kryat]

My experience has been Mali is still Mali, but now with great works, and continues to be strong but difficult to play. Buying great writings off the AI seems easier than trying to go for them yourself. There’s a lot of district juggling going on since you want CH, TD, and HS in every city, on top of whatever else you would normally include. I’m not sure what the ideal build order is yet. I agree with some earlier sentiments that you don’t feel like you’re going to make it as a viable civ until about turn 100 when the gold taps finally turn on. But once you’re there it gets hard to run out of money. It’s fun bringing up the great person screen and seeing ~8,000 cost and thinking, “so 5 turns?”.

Also played with Ramses and he’s been fun. Egypt has always been good at wonders, but his culture rebate is a good reminder to keep doing that. It’s also very satisfying to get snowballing with early wonders that set you up for a strong mid and late game. Biggest weakness is finding time to build settlers between wonders. Maybe get Etemenanki for the production and Magnus’s population preserving promotions then start pumping out settlers?

 

[UWHabs]

Playing through NeoCleo, yeah, Earth Goddess is definitely big for her. You can get some truly ridiculous appeal values on floodplains. I got a nice stretch where I have basically back to back floodplain rivers, and I have a pretty large stretch of land with appeal values ranging from about +9 up until +16 is the largest I have seen. There's gonna be some nice National Parks in 15-20 turns. If only the city I'm building them around had a spot for the Golden Gate Bridge, or if I could put Seaside Resorts on floodplain tiles...

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

For Ramses, the early game is where you see the greatest benefit from building wonders, but simultaneously has the greatest risk that you are failing to build adequate settlers.

Sundiata is very much just Mali with Great Works. It doesn't feel substantially different than Mansa Musa. That's not a bad thing. I rather enjoy playing as Mali.

NeoCleo is very powerful with a good start. 3 floodplain resources within two tiles of your capital, especially plantation resources, is a great way to snowball. However, just one or no floodplain resources in your capital, or a low number of floodplain city spots nearby will hamper her severely. She is the closest any leader in this pack comes to being OP.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

NeoCleo

Haha, should I hurry up and trademark my post?

 

[InsidiousMage]

Anybody else think Ramsey's voicing and acting is designed to scare small children? That's the big take away I got from interacting with him.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Anybody else think Ramsey's voicing and acting is designed to scare small children? That's the big take away I got from interacting with him.

Erm...IDK about that.
He does have a creepy smile.

But what I really do like about this Leader Pass pack is that finally you can do an "Africa build" playing TSL maps!

Most of the civs in Civ VI are Eurasian.
Whenever I playtest my TSL maps I go Eurasia.

As Ramses I went African (for a Cotton monopoly).