Standard Immortal Communitas_79 as America. Defeated by Austria's DV on Turn 422.
NOTE: This is the original version, not the hotfix that came in (aka my tourism numbers are before the slight nerf).
This was a fun and competitive game overall. I started with a beautiful Stars and Sky opener, and went for the Stonehenge + Pyramid double rush. But a snag! While I got Stonehenge with ease, I actually lost the Pyramids with 3 turns to spare. So that put me a little bit behind, and I shifted to recover.
I managed a 6 city start, compressed to the south against Korea and Aztecs. Of course I expected an Aztec assault, so prepared defenses with the desire to snag a few Aztec cities to get my numbers were I wanted them to be. This game I had hammers out of my butt, with the power of the klondike and the hammer belief (which in hindsight was probably not the right choice) I built things so quickly I actually ran farming in my capital for a while just for something to do! Happiness was an absolute breeze this game, I had 100% a good portion of the time until late game when ideological pressure kicked in.
I wanted to try another CV as America, so Progress + Artistry. Because of my insane production, I went Rationalism to finally get some more buildings on the pile to work on, and then shifted to Order to flex its tourism power and see where they would take me.
This was a funny collection of "art nerds" in this game. Lots of Artistry + Rationalism
All game was a fight between the Aztecs and I. Good old Monty can always be counted on to declare on you with just a little prodding, so my defensive pact with Korea bared a lot of fruit, and it was 2 on 1 for most of it. Korea and I became solid allies all game, and slowly and steadily pushed Monty back and managed to take 3 cities overall, which rounded me out nicely. For all of my whining in another thread about not being able to make progress against Immortal AIs in war, I find very judicious uses of citadels to be my key this game. I was ruthless with siegecraft, putting roads on every bit of border, every fort I could make I built, and as many citadels as I had GGs to use.
Things were looking in the drivers seat, and as Turn ~340 rolled around, with just a little bit of Siam influence to go, I thought I was going to have myself a nice quick CV victory. But....then Austria's numbers started to drop a little....and then dropped out of influential! And suddenly we have a problem Will Robinson. I was able to push Siam but didn't have a musician to push Austria over. I rushed to Refrigeration, wanted to see if my new and improved Stadium would help me with that nice +5k tourism to all civs (spoiler: it didn't).
So I pushed towards Telecom and tried to get whatever musicians I could to finish the job. However, my momentum started to slide away from me. Austria's dominance of the WC was felt, as I was sanctioned, and a travel ban placed. Ultimately I got close again as Telecom came online and I got the CN tower.
But.... after missing the first hegemony vote, Austria had 45 votes going into the second. I took out one of her CS allies, which dropped her vote by ....1? (I guess she got a vote through something else), but the hegemony vote required also dropped from 44 to 43....so she still had it. No one else in the world wanted to tango with her to stop the vote, and so a DV it was.
I blame myself ultimately. Still learning the ins and outs of the new CV system so I feel confident I could have been more optimal there, and I didn't recognize Austria's threat early enough, should have warred with her sooner or tried some diplomatic pressure through her neighbors. So no shenegians, pure user error
WC Notes
- I saw the AI shoot down both World's Fair, and International Games....which I think is definately because of the new logic (those were gimmes before). IG makes complete sense to ward off a tourism play, but World's Fair....on the one hand I was production leader at that point so giving me the top spot is never ideal. On the other, ultimately the +33% more culture should actually hurt tourism play I would imagine, so it was probably still worth doing that.
- Seeing World Religion pop up a bit more again, but not yet all the time so I think its ok.
- I never see ban luxuries anymore, I still see a LOT of sanctions.
General Notes
- Though I didn't get my CV I still think the nerf in the hotfix was warranted. It seems really easy to mass tourism even before the big tourism hammers of Telecom and later.
- America: This is my 3rd run through with the civ and the change is neat, but honestly not that dramatic all things considered. There's a little bit of settling strategy, and I do think it helps any Pioneer settles which is nice, but ultimately America hasn't really changed that much, whether that is good or not of course depends on your thoughts on old america.
- I did not understand the Police Station change in the notes, when I read it in game I finally understood that it was a full -1 unhappy for all 4 categories (I thought it was a % reductor in my head). So that's a bit better, I did consider building one police station in a satelitte to try the happiness reductor, but it was almost double the cost of a public works building (and I had already built a public works there previously)....so I still question if the public works was not better bang for the buck. I do think the Police station should reduce urbanization as well, that's often the only "real unhappiness" I'm still dealing with at that point in the game.
- In terms of puppets, honestly I kind of liked them in this game. My medieval conquests I annexed. My industrial ones I puppeted, and it was nice to see the puppet just go "Walls, Castles, Arsenal and.....make gold". Realistically at this point the infrastructure is probably a waste of time anyway.
- Towns, a little bit better but still nothing amazing. I certainly never "push" for them like I do other GP, though with the gold problems I mentioned maybe I need to push on them a little more. I would argue that late game towns are probably better than late game manufactories.
- Gold as I mentioned above, just gets really scarce around Industrial. Now normally I don't build a lot of stock exchanges so there is always that excuse, but this game I actually did build them, and still had trouble.
- Not really feeling the spy changes so far, just not seeing much difference in my games so far.
- Still really liking the new CV paradigm, still so much more intuitive. Though I messed up, I feel like I know exactly when I messed up, and how I could have optimized my tourism better, the mechanics were very clear to me.
- People have argued that the AI spam citadels too much instead of keeping a few GGs...but honestly I find in my own play the more citadels the better. An extra citadel, even if its not in the most ideal place, still puts a lot of pressure on the AI that a meer +15% CS doesn't. More and more I convert all of my GGs into citadels, unless I have a LOT of them or imperalism, as a +25% CS is a little stronger and more useful.
