March Post Patch opening

[Treso]

Pre-Patch NC start was really nice. The question is what new openning are as good as the old NC start.

I tried playing Monty (King ,continents and everything standard).

Started in River.

Tech:
Pottery -> Writing.

Went to the liberty tree and grabbed a GE to rush GL to slingshot CS.
After that went to engineering to build aqueducts.
Slingshot to Education and Public Schools.

Turn-200. I have 237 beakers. Only 3 cities (I have problems about expanding, didnt get the time right)

Built:
Capital: Stonehenge, GL, NC, Ironworking, Porcelain Tower.
Bulbed 3 GS my way to scientif theory.

Im popping an army now to get my neighboors down.
Im the tech leader atm.

Least two turns Babilon got two CS allied with me. My plan is getting them back!!!

Im attaching the save
Enjoy

 

[Treso]

I wont open a new topic to discuss the same thing.

We can do a copilation what is the viable starts in this new patch.

We have:

NC start -> REX
Monument and Liberty getting a GE from Merithocracy and rushing an early Wonder.

NC start -> steel rush???

Any thoughts?
Any advice for these starts?

 

[Kevin J]

I've noticed that Honor is stronger in this patch, despite being unchanged. The increased settler/worker spam of the AI makes for more productive early conquest.

Even easier is doing it as Russia - 1 5 1 riverside plains horses are amazing.

I'm part-way through an Emperor/Huge/Continents/Marathon game with Russia, went down the right side of honor to get the happiness from Garrisons, then down tradition to Oligarchy.

I've conquered my continent *early*, and though I fought happiness and income for a long time (ran a deficit for close to 100 turns - the dozen happiness and reduced unit cost have helped some), it's finally turned around and I now have both the score and tech lead.

Even though builder starts have been buffed, the warmongering path is definitely viable - the difference now is that it no longer feels necessary.

 

[mwwilliams]

What Civ are you playing? I can't open because I don't have that DLC it says.

 

[RedRover57]

I like how you now have several viable starting options. For example, I am also playing a game with Monty (standard pangaea, King) where I opted for Tradition to Landed Elite and NC before founding my second city. After founding 3 more cities and ramping up my culture per turn (buildings, wonders plus fighting) I took a few Honor policies, filled up the rest of Tradition and am now starting on Freedom. I haven't needed Liberty so far and don't plan to take it. I'll either go Piety if I decide to go for a culture win or conquer the world with puppets, or Rationalism if I go for a science victory. But for me, the most important is to work on achieving a good balance of growth, production and economy early on without making your population unhappy, which is why I like to focus on 3-4 founded cities only, plus the right combination of buildings and wonders.

Edit: One other thing I noticed with this new patch is that if you opt for a "traditional" start, i.e., 4 or so founded cities and relatively peaceful, you need to have a lot of duplicate luxuries and buyers for those luxuries or you will run into cash and happiness issues at around turn 100 if you are focused on primarily the top of the tech tree. So I have been holding off on rushing Civil Service/universities and instead make sure I have coliseums and markets/banks before I push the science too hard on the top of the tree, unless I really get lucky and have a ton of different luxuries early on.