[NFP] Owls of Minerva discussion

[monikernemo]

Owls can work with kumasi in the game and cuts back some of the opp cost with districts, you can opt not to build theatre squares since you would have high culture yields from trade routes to CS.

 

[Datian]

I never called you a moron...but if you were building commercial hubs in every harbour city before Owls, then you really do need to consider more what you are missing out on.

Owls are not weak (except for their final promorion). They just require a lot more effort and investment to maximise, compared to Vampires and Void, and also rely a lot more on the map. If I had to rate the different societies, I would give go:

Void - A (S for high faith civ or Eleanor)
Vamps - A (S for Gran Columbia or with Apoc on)
Owls - B (A+ on water map with accessible city states)
Hermetic - E

I already built CH+harbour triangles in coastal cities, especially when playing a trade focused civ.
With free inquiry, that meant swimming in gold and science, until having cities big enough to spam campuses, which came right before the end of this dedication ; the only problem was the lack of culture, it is now partially solved.

However, I'll admit that Voidsingers are more versatile and easier to play.

 

[cain3456]

Finished a game as Sweden. Large map, Island Plates. Got stuck on a small continent and couldn't expand very well. Unlike some other games, the game went very much along Society lines. I was part of the Owls bloc, opposed by the Voidsinger bloc, with a couple of Hermetics as free agents. No vamps were around. In the end, I won a Noble Peace Prize contest for the diplo win after global warming reached max. Indonesia had launched the exoplanet mission but was only at 1 LY per turn. England Eleanor raced out to a huge culture lead, but I was able to keep her from winning. By the endgame, I pretty much had a license to print money and my counterspy in my capital was invincible.

 

[Pietato]

Yeah, I had Kumasi and used the Free Inquiry golden age. I had 60 trade routes and 5k gold a turn income by the end of the game. But it took a lot of work and investment to get there.

I actually wish all Secret Societies were like this, giving you large benefits for proper investment and playing the map. Instead we have 2 simple ones, one proper one, and one rubbish one.