[R&F] Offensive Loyalty Pressure Ideas

[NauticalStrike]

Okay, seeing how the exact details of the loyalty mechanics are being/mostly figured out, I thought it'd be interesting to think of some strategies for flipping cities. It is more of a defensive mechanic, so I doubt think it is very doable without ANY warfare (generally), but here are my ideas:

• Pillage the heck out of a civ. They'll lose loyalty due to starving and unhappiness, and you can effectively force them into a dark age if it goes on long enough. Light cav ftw. Make sure to leave builders to repair once you flip things though.
• Stay in a golden age. Golden age vs. dark age is extremely strong. You'll take small cities by accident.
• Forward settle en masse. Pop is the be all end all of pressure it seems, so let your settlers work together. Combine with Ancestral Hall to get some quick settlers/free builders, and do some marsh chops/food focus to grow pop.
• Use Magnus for chops/marsh clear. Use Pingala for +30% district prod
• Amani is very helpful. +8 governor in local city, +2 to neighboring enemy cities, +2 to neighboring friendly cities, and +4 amenities in local city sounds very good in terms of stabilizing loyalty.
• Reyna can buy districts, so perhaps it could be helpful to put her on the front, then buy an entertainment district and run Bread and Circus.
• Coliseum is great at keeping loyalty pressure (and frees amenities to go to other cities). Both it and Statue of Liberty could in theory be built aggressively to keep captured cities.

I unfortunately don't have time to play Civ until next weekend, but I want to do a Mapuche game where I pillage the crap out of people and try and flip them with malon raiders. I'm sure it won't work nearly as well as I want it, but it is fun to brainstorm. I played a Mongolia game on Emperor and flipped a couple cities, so we will see how some of these ideas work out. Any other strategies that people can come up with? The mechanics are mostly focused around keeping cities.

 

[Leyrann]

When in golden age versus dark age, conquer cities behind the enemy's frontlines, wait until the front cities flip due to no loyalty reinforcement then make peace and give back the cities to remove warmonger penalties, let cities flip to you. Depending on exact events you might even get a snowball after, where cities flip on by one until all are gone.

 

[clapyourhands]

Like you said, population is the primary source of pressure, so if you really want to flip a city it might be a good idea to originate a bunch of trade routes your closest neighboring civ--not for the production, but for the food.

 

[NauticalStrike]

When in golden age versus dark age, conquer cities behind the enemy's frontlines, wait until the front cities flip due to no loyalty reinforcement then make peace and give back the cities to remove warmonger penalties, let cities flip to you. Depending on exact events you might even get a snowball after, where cities flip on by one until all are gone.

Interesting! Never thought of that. The AI probably won't be too happy you are stealing her city back. I wonder if the AI has any sense of loyalty pressure when given cities in trade deals? Could be a very easy way to cheese the AI. Want to test this.

Like you said, population is the primary source of pressure, so if you really want to flip a city it might be a good idea to originate a bunch of trade routes your closest neighboring civ--not for the production, but for the food.

Magnus would help with that, with +2 food for internal trade routes.

I also wonder how useful spy missions are. The AI booped my governor out of a city, but it wasn't under any loyalty pressure anyways. That and the spy mission to cause unrest could really help flip border cities; perhaps a niche strategy to try as France. Probably not too practical.

 

[clapyourhands]

Interesting! Never thought of that. The AI probably won't be too happy you are stealing her city back. I wonder if the AI has any sense of loyalty pressure when given cities in trade deals? Could be a very easy way to cheese the AI. Want to test this.



Magnus would help with that, with +2 food for internal trade routes.

I also wonder how useful spy missions are. The AI booped my governor out of a city, but it wasn't under any loyalty pressure anyways. That and the spy mission to cause unrest could really help flip border cities; perhaps a niche strategy to try as France. Probably not too practical.

I dunno about practicality, but I focused a lot on espionage last game in order to take advantage of loyalty without war. The thing with neutralized governors is that if the AI has more than 1 governor, it's smart enough to relocate a governor to a city in danger of flipping. Of course you could solve that like I did, by neutralizing all their governors in quick succession across multiple cities, but that really does seem like a lot of hassle, and it didn't affect city loyalty much. The unrest-causing mission, though, does help speed up flipping if the city might flip to you soon; when the '10 turns remaining' timer comes up for the era and you want to flip a Dark Age civ before it returns to a Normal Age, pulling off a clutch loyalty-disruptive mission can ensure a city is free just before the era change.

 

[NauticalStrike]

I dunno about practicality, but I focused a lot on espionage last game in order to take advantage of loyalty without war. The thing with neutralized governors is that if the AI has more than 1 governor, it's smart enough to relocate a governor to a city in danger of flipping. Of course you could solve that like I did, by neutralizing all their governors in quick succession across multiple cities, but that really does seem like a lot of hassle, and it didn't affect city loyalty much. The unrest-causing mission, though, does help speed up flipping if the city might flip to you soon; when the '10 turns remaining' timer comes up for the era and you want to flip a Dark Age civ before it returns to a Normal Age, pulling off a clutch loyalty-disruptive mission can ensure a city is free just before the era change.

If a governor gets neutralized, can it still go back to that city? Or another governor? If so, it seems like an oversight, as that is a large purpose for that spy mission. My Castellan got neutralized in my capital most likely because he was interfering with spies, but I don't remember if where I sent him after that. If the only payoff is the time it takes to reestablish a governor, than that is a worthless spy mission.

The loyalty-disrupt I totally get though. I had a game where I took the Aztec capital, struggled to keep it even with Amani. It dropped down to 3.8/100 loyalty until I hit a golden age and recovered. Disrupt would've messed with me hard.

 

[Leyrann]

For spy missions, you should remove governors, it removes them from the civ's pool for a bunch of turns, and it reduces the pressure in the city by 8, which is quite significant. The foment unrest mission is only to speed up already existing loyalty problems, as it's a 6 or 8 turn mission (depending on promotions) that reduces like 15-35 loyalty (again depending on level).

The AI does understand how to move governors for loyalty though, so you might have to just assassinate their governors on sight. Or pressure more cities than they have available governors, but that's not always possible.

 

[Tech Osen]

Did a game with Mapuche but the Swift Eagle ability didn't do much for me because of lack of units to kill around enemy cities. You'd need to kill 5 or 6 units to flip a city, preferably on the same turn and that just doesn't happen often vs the AI.

 

[NauticalStrike]

Did a game with Mapuche but the Swift Eagle ability didn't do much for me because of lack of units to kill around enemy cities. You'd need to kill 5 or 6 units to flip a city, preferably on the same turn and that just doesn't happen often vs the AI.

Yeah, the only time the AI has a ton of units is when they are on offense. I wonder if it works on city states? Sometimes city states just make stupid amounts of units. Although not much point loyalty flipping them. I presume the point is to help flip cities on your border, that you provide loyalty pressure towards anyway. I wonder if it works on support units. Or even worse, if it works on religious units. Combat bonuses have been known to apply to religious combat as well, would be funny if you could flip a city with apostles.