Oxford University

[CrazyG]

Currently Oxford gives 3 science, 3 culture, a free great scientist and bonus culture. The bonus culture is 75, scaling with era, every time you discover a technology, more than the entire progress tree earns.

If you compare someone who enters the medieval era through steel to someone who rushes education, the education rusher can get up to 7 techs (bronze working, iron working, construction, masonry, currency, metal casting, and steel) of culture the steel player does not, that’s 1,050 culture at a time when your per turn culture is likely less than 100 (even including bonus yields).

This is a game warping amount of culture, I'm constantly skipping bronze working and on purpose to get the culture for it, horsemen or even scouts can cover your early game melee needs. I really prefer to skip construction and masonry too, which is causing me to hate starting on rivers. I love the Great Wall but it costs 450 culture to get the research construction, masonry, and engineering before Oxford.

Anyways, I think that Oxford should be changed; the culture bonus for discovering techs should be removed or dramatically reduced. The wonder is more than worth building without these bonuses, currently its stronger than many world wonders.

 

[azum4roll]

Greatly lower the culture bonus but retroactively apply the amount to every tech you've discovered? (like Progress starter)

 

[Gazebo]

Currently Oxford gives 3 science, 3 culture, a free great scientist and bonus culture. The bonus culture is 75, scaling with era, every time you discover a technology, more than the entire progress tree earns.

If you compare someone who enters the medieval era through steel to someone who rushes education, the education rusher can get up to 7 techs (bronze working, iron working, construction, masonry, currency, metal casting, and steel) of culture the steel player does not, that’s 1,050 culture at a time when your per turn culture is likely less than 100 (even including bonus yields).

This is a game warping amount of culture, I'm constantly skipping bronze working and on purpose to get the culture for it, horsemen or even scouts can cover your early game melee needs. I really prefer to skip construction and masonry too, which is causing me to hate starting on rivers. I love the Great Wall but it costs 450 culture to get the research construction, masonry, and engineering before Oxford.

Anyways, I think that Oxford should be changed; the culture bonus for discovering techs should be removed or dramatically reduced. The wonder is more than worth building without these bonuses, currently its stronger than many world wonders.

Seems fair. I like the bonus, but it is probably a bit too strong. Dropping it to 25 would likely suffice.

G

 

[kawyua]

I've tried many times to do the oxford cheese, it is always very hard to coordinate both the amount of production and national population to achieve it. I do have to go pretty wide, even conquer cities in order to get to the national population. Still, its really strong when it does work (I have to save and reload a lot to coordinate properly though) and its a cheesy strategy at that, that pays off so much.

 

[Bromar1]

I just tried this strategy with progress Dutch on standard/continents/emperor and I wasn't super impressed. By the time I got Oxford, I had already researched up to medieval techs. I think the pop restriction really bottlenecks it already, because even having conquered another capital and 2 puppets I had to wait for 2 more pops to build.

Seems like you can only "exploit" this by somehow beelining education, ignoring key military techs while rapidly growing or expanding. BUT if you have too much research already, you won't be able to time Oxford with those techs.

I can't really think of a way to simultaneously get enough population while forgoing military and economic techs in general. I guess it could work if you went tall tradition with a super defensive or isolated start.

Maybe the pop requirement should start out very high and then scale down with number of cities. Should address the edge cases

 

[CrazyG]

I haven't tried this as authority since the food changes, but I'm able to get the population needed fairly easily with progress or tradition. I also save gold specifically for the university and for oxford, they should get built pretty quickly. If you want to be really cheesy, you can actually put like 4 turns of science into a tech, then switch to another tech before it discovers, to maximize the culture.

I just tried this strategy with progress Dutch on standard/continents/emperor and I wasn't super impressed. By the time I got Oxford, I had already researched up to medieval techs. I think the pop restriction really bottlenecks it already, because even having conquered another capital and 2 puppets I had to wait for 2 more pops to build.

Seems like you can only "exploit" this by somehow beelining education, ignoring key military techs while rapidly growing or expanding. BUT if you have too much research already, you won't be able to time Oxford with those techs.

I think the key military tech of the classical era is mathematics, which is on the way to education. There are only two techs which I miss when I do this, masonry and engineering, but if you really want you can take them first then go for oxford, which also gives some time for your population to catch up.

I'm pretty sold on just skipping bronze and iron working in particular, unless you have 0 horses war is very winnable without these techs.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

The strategy is pretty good with Progress Russia and culture focus (alongside with a science or culture monopoly).

I will take a screenshot from my last Deity Russia Game (Coral monopoly in Pangea... and a nearly isolated start, and easy happiness in the last patch, the game was very easy because of the lucky start)

 

[Bromar1]

I don't think Oxford deserved the nerf. The real issue is that this strategy is viable:

I'm pretty sold on just skipping bronze and iron working in particular, unless you have 0 horses war is very winnable without these techs

The fact that you can safely skip historically critical techs like bronze and iron working while beelining to medieval in 90+% of games without getting crushed or falling behind is a pretty glaring flaw. This isn't the fault of Oxford because you could arguably do the same thing with theology wonders.

 

[Stalker0]

I do think that skirmishers could stand another nerf. Even with the -1, they still seem to be very strong.

At the end of the day, who cares if they do a little less damage....when they are basically invincible in the hands of a smart player.

 

[Bromar1]

I do think that skirmishers could stand another nerf. Even with the -1, they still seem to be very strong.

At the end of the day, who cares if they do a little less damage....when they are basically invincible in the hands of a smart player.

Yeah, the fact that horsemen and skirmishers can beat swordsmen and comp bowmen in offense AND defense is crazy.

I think that skirmishers could be shifted to reconnaissance and support role, like mounted scouts essentially. Mounted ranged as a primary damage dealer should be reserved for Mongolia, Huns, etc.

 

[CrazyG]

G removed era scaling from all buildings, which included Oxford, and dropped tis yields to 25. I actually think that's overkill. If it loses era scaling, 50 or possibly even 75 is fair (the settling situation in the beta makes Oxford's population requirement tough, but I expect those settler rules will be changed).

I do think that skirmishers could stand another nerf. Even with the -1, they still seem to be very strong.

At the end of the day, who cares if they do a little less damage....when they are basically invincible in the hands of a smart player.

Spoiler Unpopular Opinion :

Move after attacking should be removed from skirmishers.

There is an excellent strategy guide that claims "Once you have skirmishers, the AI is no longer a threat". The AI just handles move after attacking somewhat poorly. In game, I have 3 skirmishers that jump onto a hill, shoot Egypt's capital, then go back down. He can see the skirmishers, he has skirmishers on the other side of the hill too, but they never attack me.

You could add move after attacking to the Mongol UA and UUs

A smaller change would to lower their CS, because they are really good at taking hits, and a 50 HP skirmisher is a lot more useful than a 50 HP horseman is. They are also cheaper than horseman, despite being later and clearly stronger.

 

[Stalker0]

G removed era scaling from all buildings, which included Oxford, and dropped tis yields to 25. I actually think that's overkill. If it loses era scaling, 50 or possibly even 75 is fair (the settling situation in the beta makes Oxford's population requirement tough, but I expect those settler rules will be changed).

Spoiler Unpopular Opinion :

Move after attacking should be removed from skirmishers.

There is an excellent strategy guide that claims "Once you have skirmishers, the AI is no longer a threat". The AI just handles move after attacking somewhat poorly. In game, I have 3 skirmishers that jump onto a hill, shoot Egypt's capital, then go back down. He can see the skirmishers, he has skirmishers on the other side of the hill too, but they never attack me.

You could add move after attacking to the Mongol UA and UUs

A smaller change would to lower their CS, because they are really good at taking hits, and a 50 HP skirmisher is a lot more useful than a 50 HP horseman is. They are also cheaper than horseman, despite being later and clearly stronger.

If the attack after moved was removed, honestly at that point I would just remove the unit, as the niche is gone. I would definitely put a hit on their CS, and a cost increase is reasonable as well.

 

[Bromar1]

If the attack after moved was removed, honestly at that point I would just remove the unit, as the niche is gone. I would definitely put a hit on their CS, and a cost increase is reasonable as well.

What about giving it just 3 move points? Would eliminate the ability to move into forest, attack, and retreat in the same turn.

 

[vyyt]

What about giving it just 3 move points? Would eliminate the ability to move into forest, attack, and retreat in the same turn.

Or make them lose more move points in rough terrain like chariots. And of course also lowering their ranged attack and CS (I am reducing these on my end even more than @Stalker is proposing and they are still very strong).

 

[CrazyG]

Or make them lose more move points in rough terrain like chariots. And of course also lowering their ranged attack and CS (I am reducing these on my end even more than @Stalker is proposing and they are still very strong).

I like your suggestion a lot. This should be moved to a different thread though

 

[chicorbeef]

I think the tech tree positions of Skirmishers/Heavy Skirmishers could be switched with Composite Bows/Crossbows. It makes more realistic sense as well.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

I think the tech tree positions of Skirmishers/Heavy Skirmishers could be switched with Composite Bows/Crossbows. It makes more realistic sense as well.

Composite Bows are strong enough against Spearmen and Horsemen, i don't want the archer spam from Vanilla Civ V to be back

 

[vyyt]

Composite Bows are strong enough against Spearmen and Horsemen, i don't want the archer spam from Vanilla Civ V to be back

I'd switch them with the Oxford University Let's make a new thread about skirmishers, this is not the right thread.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

I'd switch them with the Oxford University Let's make a new thread about skirmishers, this is not the right thread.

It's related. The argument is that Oxford is really strong because you can skip the military techs of Bronze Working and Iron Working to rush the wonder. So, it's not that the wonder is OP per se, it's the technology tree that makes the wonder good.

One solution is nerfing the yields from the Wonder, like Gazebo did. But the Oracle rush is effective thanks to the same thing: Skipping bronze and iron working is easy.

 

[DarkZero]

Composite Bows are strong enough against Spearmen and Horsemen, i don't want the archer spam from Vanilla Civ V to be back

I would rather face an army of bowman than an army of skirmishers, there is a reason why bowman requires no strategic but skirmisher does, not to mention a good horseman flank massacres bowman, I agree that the stronger and more specialized units should be on the lower end of the tech tree so civs ignoring military techs don't have access to strong military units.