[GS] Looking for help playing Gathering Storm

[Leucarum]

My issue with the tall or wide debate is that in general if you try to curb wide play by penalizing expansion it ends up making games feel the same since you're forcing an optimal strategy, and it usually doesn't feel like an natural way to play. Civ 5 is a really good example of this.

At least if you don't penalize wide play, players can still play tall if they want to - it just won't be as efficient. Of course, for competitive players or multiplayer this raises a whole new set of issues, and still forces an optimal strategy on those players...

Landing in the sweet spot of having enough mechanics to slow/discourage expansion, while still being free enough to grow at a reasonable pace is really, really tough. I think it's tough to judge firaxis for not getting it right (or just sidestepping the whole thing), since nobody else has got it right either...

I feel the games which come closest to getting that balance right are the Crusader Kings series, just due to internal empire management being several orders of magnitude more involved than any other 4x I can think of (though I still have yet to play Old World which I gather takes some influence from CK).

 

[Leucarum]

As soon as you have say 50 gold, check the tiles you can buy, not the ones that have good adjacency, but ones that improve your working populations tile. A 2/2 tile could be considered twice as strong as a 2/1 tile as long as your pop work it. Trading that luxury ASAP so you get the best gold out of it means you up your food/prod. Equally, buying a tile cheaply helps, tile cost goes up with civics/tech discovered, so if you are going to discover craftsmanship 1 turn before you can buy a tile, swap civics for a turn.

I like the way you phrase this point. During the pandemic we brought a bunch of new players into the game and it seemed really common that new players would over-prioritize buying tiles. Frequently they'd be overrun with barbarians while having bought enough tiles to get a warrior... We'd always tell them to try and prioritize settling cities with a good mix of food and production in their inner ring and let natural growth do the rest, but often buying a new tile can speed production/growth up a lot. This is quite a good heuristic for new players on when/what to buy without encouraging going overboard....

 

[Victoria]

And to be clear all I was saying is play as many cities as you want, what’s the big deal? It’s not a competition is it? Play what challenges you, for two months I limited myself to 3 cities, it was fun.

 

[Aristos]

The game does practically nothing to punish expansion (and I think this is its biggest flaw).

Agreed. But "punish" is a forbidden word in new-gen gaming.

 

[Aristos]

In addition to raising meaningful challenges to empire management, some system like Old World or Humankind has (predefined legal spots on the map to settle) would be a massive benefit to Civ 7 IMO.

I wish I could Like that part twice. Or tenfold.

 

[pkaem]

Sure you can win with much less cities. But why do that. I just have a mongolia game, where I was stuck on two cities by T75 because my horses ran into a massive barbarian Invasion while I tried to pick up Byzantiums cities. When done with the Red carpet, he had his walls up and doubled my military score. I just stalled him and took very promotion I could get, threw down 5 more cities with ancesteral hall and teched tworda courser, knight and trebuchet. Came in again in renaissance, pilled every tile in his whole realm with raid card and grabbed a monumentality GA. He walled up 300/300 in his cap and I quickly pillaged twords bombards. Those were able to take it out with GG support and the teracotta army did help. Now the snowball is finally on. I bet you could even win with two cities, as long as you have the cav to pillaged the hell out of your neighbours. But everybody should play like it pleases him.

 

[Haig]

I feel predefined settling points would take away freedom of choosing, I like that one can found cities almost everywhere. Rather bring back some sort of corrpution mechanic.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Jungle tiles.... avoid them unless are not playing Brazil...
I can't remember a big jump at GS... soooo many patches in between...
you also got a vampire, which is nice... but hermetic and ley lines could be better for production in GS??
I don't know.... anyway swamps and jungles are pretty bad unless lady of the reef...

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Jungles are not bad, in fact they are among the best terrain types atm because their innate yields are high (often 2/2 base, with even higher or added yields with a resource), you have good balanced chops available, you have the potential to use Sacred Path holy sites with work ethic, and you have a decent chance to settle a plains hill (jungle is always plains) for added production. Imo the only bad thing about jungles is their low appeal if you aim to play cultural, and the higher likelihood of dangerous neighbours when you play on higher difficulties.

 

[Cedbird77]

Early game builds are a topic of a lot of discussion - you can probably find a bunch of threads on the topic. That said the posts saying you seem to have started going for settlers too late are on the mark I think.

In your start/difficulty level I'd have probably tried to go scout > builder > settler > warrior/slinger > settler. There might be a little vulnerability to barbarians... so if you get spotted earlier you might need to slide the warrior up priority or buy them with gold. Try not to send your initial warrior too far from home so they can return if needed - especially when building a scout anyway.

Make sure you use the builder to try and get some tiles with at least 2 food and 2 production. That will let your city still grow a bit early on but also still produce units at a reasonable rate - and make sure you are working those tiles, the AI often likes to work tiles that have other yields at the expense of the ones you developed. Similarly when settling new cities try to make sure there are tiles with a similar combination of food and production on the same tile (possibly after an improvemrny) so they can develop fast.

Another possible thing - try to avoid buying tiles unless you have to. If you buy a warrior rather than hard-build it your city can still be working on settlers. If your city is churning out settlers it probably won't grow as big (this is fine - you'll do better if all your cities are growing rather than just one) so you can often make sure the tiles you need to work are in the first ring around the city centre and rely on natural border growth for the rest. This leaves you money to buy things like monuments and military units which will shave a lot of production time off your builds.

And the other thing which may be slowing you down are policy cards. There are policy cards to help you build military units, settlers, builders etc... faster. Make sure if you can to have policies slotted which will help you build things faster. Especially when you are building the same things in multiple cities.

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