MrRadar
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2014
- Messages
- 2,304
It all started with a thread with a SV with no campus. I tried it with Peter and got a fairly uncomplicated win. I even tried to discuss if a thematic victory should be possible without building respective districts. Then I thought that maybe in my Peter game the settings were too easy - 7 seas gave me a lot of space, easy religion with Peter and Dance of Aurora with tons of tundra converted in ridiculous amounts of faith, monumentality settlers, etc. I thought I'll try something more complicated.
No districts whatsoever - specialty or no specialty, with one notable exception - spaceport district, if things come to a SV. It is not really a district, but just a giant slab of concrete, after all.
Then I had to pick a civ and a leader. I did not want to go with something too OP for the purpose, like Gilgabro, Alex or John because that would be easy mode. I somehow remembered the cover art and saw the true path immediately. I went with His Majesty Meme King of the Franchise, the Divine Gandhi Himself. At that point, somewhere inside me, I knew that maybe I wouldn't need even the spaceports, after all. Rockets yes, but just a bit smaller launchpads.
This enlightenment dictated a few further decisions for the game. Gandhi is so divine that to advise him would be completely unnecessary. Therefore, all governors dismissed before engagement. Go meditate and levitate in peace, your services are not needed.
Because of the meme thing, things could get violent - what to do with captured cities? Answer - raze them immediately, before "Next turn". Gandhi doesn't need minds contaminated with the ideas of districts. Capitals can't be razed, so before their capture all their districts must be pillaged to the ground and then never repaired. Or else, captured on the victory turn, before "Next turn" should be pressed.
And the last, but not least - as it is India - cows are holy creatures, so no cattle tile can ever be worked, improved or, perish the though, chopped. They shall stay untouched and roam in peace undisturbed for the length of the game.
I also thought to hand pick the nastiest opponents, but opinions on that differ, so I decided to leave that to Fate. Let RNG roll. It appeared, I got Dido, Kupe, Qin, Genghis, Gilgamesh, Phillip and Tamar for a company.
TL;DR Settings: Gandhi, India, Deity, Continents, Standard Size&Speed. No building/built or having functioning districts (and their buildings) whatsoever when pressing "Next turn", except Spaceports; only city centre buildings allowed; no Governors; only self settled cities, no city keeping upon capture beyond capitals, other captured cities must be razed before pressing "Next turn", Cattle tiles can't be chopped, improved or worked before pressing "Next turn". And it goes without saying, Ironman mode - no reloading, retrying or rerolling - first map, every action counts, even if misclicked.
That, in principle, leaves you with a single trade route, you can't leech science via trade routes. Not very many great people, only those that you buy and use outside districts or bring them to the districts of the captured cities, before razing them. I bought Galileo for 4 mountains and Ammal for 3 jungle worth.
No district related wonders. I got only two - Pyramids, and later Taj Mahal, built with faith bought Eiffel for flavour. Turned out a bit useful later.
No amenity districts, happiness maintained by having and trading luxuries only. At one point I had -70 war weariness and had to stop warring, to avoid further unrest.
Quite a lot of policy cards are useless, and no legacy cards, because no GP. Science, culture and money only from the ground and people, and spies... and pillaging, omg, of course, pillaging.
I picked Fertility Rites for more population. Immediate landmass neighbours were Kupe and Dido. While biremes caused some casualties, they both folded easily, although Kupe's capital was somewhere else, and I left Dido keep her capital for the time. Next continent west was China. This was the main hurdle and he stalled me with his city walls for quite a while. He even passed "Attacked by an aggressive civ" emergency and kept spewing infantry armies as a result, but in the end field cannons behind a river and in the field proved to be better of them.
He also had a lot of his Great Wall improvements. When each of them yields ~300-400 gold, I could run -100 gpt deficit and still see my treasury hitting 10000 g, 20000 g...
After that it was easier. Mongolia shared a continent with Gilgabro and choked the poor guy. Genghis was a science leader, built spaceports first, at one point he had 54 techs, and I had 42 or so. But then he just stopped. This is quite a common thing that I see post GS - AI just stops in its tracks. His tech count hadn't changed until the end, even Georgia getting her cities razed overtook him with 55 in the end.
At one point I even got into a liberation emergency bundled with Genghis - that revealed the entire map for me - big help.
I got to stay in normal eras all along until Atomic, which was Dark for everyone involved, and then got heroic next, including Automaton warfare, lol. The rusty bastard couldn't even one-shot Uruk when it was needed, I had to lose another turn to move in a sub to nuke.
I got DomV on T335 with a few final nuclear fireworks, in true Gandhi meme style, below are attached some saves - start, end, and a few in between. No doubt, there are people on this forum, who could do it some 100 turns or so earlier, in GOTMs I lag by 100-200 turns.
So what does that mean? A nation, which shunned everything - culture, science, economic and military knowledge, even leisure, massacred all their neighbours - a giant violent barbarian conglomeration in every way, it still got to dominate the game on its supposedly hardest settings.
Unstacking cities and districts was one of the major selling points, turns out you don't need them "districts" at all to win on hardest difficulty and not even using a particularly strong civ, if you have some patience and determination. The same with Governors and with almost all the great people - they're next to useless, almost inconsequential, as things are now.
This game needs a major balance pass and maybe even concept rethinking. All pillaging yields should be reduced dividing them by 10 or even 20 easily or their acquisition revised, population yields, flat yields and the role of districts should also be revised.
There's something wrong with the AI too, it tends just to quit the game. I saw vanilla deity AI victories before T300, now, post GS, in all my games I only saw AI go as far as to launch Exoplanet Expedition once, some T310. All other games, T320-340 they get to Mars only and that's it. Deity. I suppose, WC and its emergency projects have very much to do with this, it's a real brick wall for AI now.
No districts whatsoever - specialty or no specialty, with one notable exception - spaceport district, if things come to a SV. It is not really a district, but just a giant slab of concrete, after all.
Then I had to pick a civ and a leader. I did not want to go with something too OP for the purpose, like Gilgabro, Alex or John because that would be easy mode. I somehow remembered the cover art and saw the true path immediately. I went with His Majesty Meme King of the Franchise, the Divine Gandhi Himself. At that point, somewhere inside me, I knew that maybe I wouldn't need even the spaceports, after all. Rockets yes, but just a bit smaller launchpads.
This enlightenment dictated a few further decisions for the game. Gandhi is so divine that to advise him would be completely unnecessary. Therefore, all governors dismissed before engagement. Go meditate and levitate in peace, your services are not needed.
Because of the meme thing, things could get violent - what to do with captured cities? Answer - raze them immediately, before "Next turn". Gandhi doesn't need minds contaminated with the ideas of districts. Capitals can't be razed, so before their capture all their districts must be pillaged to the ground and then never repaired. Or else, captured on the victory turn, before "Next turn" should be pressed.
And the last, but not least - as it is India - cows are holy creatures, so no cattle tile can ever be worked, improved or, perish the though, chopped. They shall stay untouched and roam in peace undisturbed for the length of the game.
I also thought to hand pick the nastiest opponents, but opinions on that differ, so I decided to leave that to Fate. Let RNG roll. It appeared, I got Dido, Kupe, Qin, Genghis, Gilgamesh, Phillip and Tamar for a company.
TL;DR Settings: Gandhi, India, Deity, Continents, Standard Size&Speed. No building/built or having functioning districts (and their buildings) whatsoever when pressing "Next turn", except Spaceports; only city centre buildings allowed; no Governors; only self settled cities, no city keeping upon capture beyond capitals, other captured cities must be razed before pressing "Next turn", Cattle tiles can't be chopped, improved or worked before pressing "Next turn". And it goes without saying, Ironman mode - no reloading, retrying or rerolling - first map, every action counts, even if misclicked.
That, in principle, leaves you with a single trade route, you can't leech science via trade routes. Not very many great people, only those that you buy and use outside districts or bring them to the districts of the captured cities, before razing them. I bought Galileo for 4 mountains and Ammal for 3 jungle worth.
No district related wonders. I got only two - Pyramids, and later Taj Mahal, built with faith bought Eiffel for flavour. Turned out a bit useful later.
No amenity districts, happiness maintained by having and trading luxuries only. At one point I had -70 war weariness and had to stop warring, to avoid further unrest.
Quite a lot of policy cards are useless, and no legacy cards, because no GP. Science, culture and money only from the ground and people, and spies... and pillaging, omg, of course, pillaging.
I picked Fertility Rites for more population. Immediate landmass neighbours were Kupe and Dido. While biremes caused some casualties, they both folded easily, although Kupe's capital was somewhere else, and I left Dido keep her capital for the time. Next continent west was China. This was the main hurdle and he stalled me with his city walls for quite a while. He even passed "Attacked by an aggressive civ" emergency and kept spewing infantry armies as a result, but in the end field cannons behind a river and in the field proved to be better of them.
He also had a lot of his Great Wall improvements. When each of them yields ~300-400 gold, I could run -100 gpt deficit and still see my treasury hitting 10000 g, 20000 g...
After that it was easier. Mongolia shared a continent with Gilgabro and choked the poor guy. Genghis was a science leader, built spaceports first, at one point he had 54 techs, and I had 42 or so. But then he just stopped. This is quite a common thing that I see post GS - AI just stops in its tracks. His tech count hadn't changed until the end, even Georgia getting her cities razed overtook him with 55 in the end.
At one point I even got into a liberation emergency bundled with Genghis - that revealed the entire map for me - big help.
I got to stay in normal eras all along until Atomic, which was Dark for everyone involved, and then got heroic next, including Automaton warfare, lol. The rusty bastard couldn't even one-shot Uruk when it was needed, I had to lose another turn to move in a sub to nuke.
I got DomV on T335 with a few final nuclear fireworks, in true Gandhi meme style, below are attached some saves - start, end, and a few in between. No doubt, there are people on this forum, who could do it some 100 turns or so earlier, in GOTMs I lag by 100-200 turns.
So what does that mean? A nation, which shunned everything - culture, science, economic and military knowledge, even leisure, massacred all their neighbours - a giant violent barbarian conglomeration in every way, it still got to dominate the game on its supposedly hardest settings.
Unstacking cities and districts was one of the major selling points, turns out you don't need them "districts" at all to win on hardest difficulty and not even using a particularly strong civ, if you have some patience and determination. The same with Governors and with almost all the great people - they're next to useless, almost inconsequential, as things are now.
This game needs a major balance pass and maybe even concept rethinking. All pillaging yields should be reduced dividing them by 10 or even 20 easily or their acquisition revised, population yields, flat yields and the role of districts should also be revised.
There's something wrong with the AI too, it tends just to quit the game. I saw vanilla deity AI victories before T300, now, post GS, in all my games I only saw AI go as far as to launch Exoplanet Expedition once, some T310. All other games, T320-340 they get to Mars only and that's it. Deity. I suppose, WC and its emergency projects have very much to do with this, it's a real brick wall for AI now.
