[GS] Phoenicia Discussion Thread

[PhoenicianGold]

Yes, but it was proto-writing.


After contact, yes.


A theory that remains controversial--general academic consensus is that quipu was a mnemonic record keeping system, not a form of proto-writing. Many forms of writing have their roots in record keeping systems (including cuneiform), so perhaps given time it would have developed into writing, but...


In an alternate timeline where the Aztec can go into space, I'm okay with everyone having writing.

I mean the actual technological innovation isn't the form itself. It's the ability to communicate ideas across time by fixing them in a physical form.

So I think there is room to distinguish a spectrum of literacy, depending on how sophisticated the system was and its ability to communicate complicated ideas. Ranging from nothing but oral tradition, to single symbols, to combinations of pictographs or knots, to full alphasyllabaries.

And in that respect, I see more potential that quipu branched out a bit, albeit not much farther, than a mere counting system. But the Maori don't appear to have even gotten as far as basic recordkeeping if I recall.

It's fine. I think it partly exists to further differentiate Maori and Phoenicia as the two maritime civs in this expack. But I still want the Mapuche and Zulu to be similarly nerfed.

 

[IvoryPavane]

Not to mention that it’s a half-hammer harbour, so it’s efficient to build it with a CH

 

[Tiger Genocide]

The settler bonus comes at the cost of building a Harbor which you do not want and comes late in tech tree. You are probably better off just building settlers right off the bat.

Of course you still need to build early ones without much bonus, but once you get to city 5 or 6, the next 4 more cities will be faster settled than the AIs on any difficulty. Alot of time is wasted fighting civs that beat you to a killer spot. Their crap city with it's 2-3 population and a garbage holy site district provides almost nothing for you if you take it. We have no way to destroy a previously built district.

Building your own city IN the RIGHT spot is MUCH better than conquering a bunch of trash cities the AI loves to settle because they had a head start on you with extra settlers and units.

 

[Ziad]

Of course you still need to build early ones without much bonus, but once you get to city 5 or 6, the next 4 more cities will be faster settled than the AIs on any difficulty. Alot of time is wasted fighting civs that beat you to a killer spot. Their crap city with it's 2-3 population and a garbage holy site district provides almost nothing for you if you take it. We have no way to destroy a previously built district.

Building your own city IN the RIGHT spot is MUCH better than conquering a bunch of trash cities the AI loves to settle because they had a head start on you with extra settlers and units.

Actually I suspect part of their "optimal" strategy will involve conquering nearby coastal cities quickly with your Biremes. This will let you get the Holy Sites you need for the early religion while focusing on science and growth in your capital.

So yeah you kinda want Indonesia and such as your neighbors for quick deletes and appropriation.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I'm not the warmongerin' type, but seems like your hope would be to find a nearby coastal capital that you can take with your biremes early and turn into your new capital.

Ha, ninja'd

 

[Ziad]

Really they are suited for any victory type, which frankly makes their civ all the more entertaining. They aren't one-note and their direction will shift depending on the map.

I can't say other GS civs have nearly the same replay value.

 

[Onin]

Actually I suspect part of their "optimal" strategy will involve conquering a nearby coastal cities quickly with your Biremes.

Yeah the combo of the strong unit and healing is a big deal. It can allow for really fast expansion along the coast. Combine that with settling and you are talking fast expansion in places that are potentially pretty far from your capital. Especially against city states along the coast.

 

[Siptah]

@Portinou I don‘t think the inability of the AI to play the Naval Game makes naval units weak per se. Quite the opposite, conquering with frigates is the easiest way to get new cities imho.

 

[IvoryPavane]

Yeah the combo of the strong unit and healing is a big deal. It can allow for really fast expansion along the coast. Combine that with settling and you are talking fast expansion in places that are potentially pretty far from your capital. Especially against city states along the coast.

Particularly when she can sidle up to a civ, settle next to it with no loyalty issue, fast build a Cothon and start chunking out boats to throw at the city. When they are damaged, pop them back in and heal them.

Seems pretty strong! If situational

 

[Ziad]

Yeah the combo of the strong unit and healing is a big deal. It can allow for really fast expansion along the coast. Combine that with settling and you are talking fast expansion in places that are potentially pretty far from your capital. Especially against city states along the coast.

Exactly. They are probably the most powerful naval empire in the game for this alone.

 

[Ziad]

Particularly when she can sidle up to a civ, settle next to it with no loyalty issue, fast build a Cothon and start chunking out boats to throw at the city. When they are damaged, pop them back in and heal them.

Seems pretty strong! If situational

Honestly I wouldn't call "naval empires" situational as much as non-meta, something I expect to change in GS. Hopefully we'll see more on this Thursday.

 

[ChocolateShake]

Cothons would be stronger if the AI would attack you every now and then with naval units... but it doesn't. At least it makes those barbarian caravels that can get on my nerves easier to deal with.

I have hopes this will get better in GS. I've modded my game to make units much cheaper, and along with a mod that increases the length of each era, I've been subjected to some huge AI swarms both on land and at sea. I've actually been forced to build a navy to hold onto my coastal cities to protect them from the constant tug of war between my land forces and the massive AI navy.

I'm hoping Firaxis has beefed up the AI's handling of navies, it certainly doesn't look like much is needed to get them to use them properly. In fact naval combat should be easier to code than land combat, here's hoping we see a good improvement in GS on that front.

Phoenicia's coastal cities will require some dedication to take if they can get them situated nicely to be protected by their navy.

I really like the look of the cothon and trireme. Overall I find Phoenicia appealing.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Ed Beach‏ @EdBeach23
Ed Beach Retweeted manda esse treco de volta senão o bicho pega

Remember that Domination Victory works on ORIGINAL capitals. Dido's ability moves Phoenicia's CURRENT capital. An important distinction. And our UI team was great and came up with three different capital icons for the city banners so we can all keep this straight.

 

[pgm123]

I see two issues with the Writing boost: the first is that it's almost never relevant. The second, and more important, is that it will inspire people to go down the wrong tech path. Writing is not a tech you usually want among your first 3-4 techs, but I've already seen a suggestion that "Wow, you can rush writing and get libraries up quickly!" when what you want to be doing is getting builders, settlers and archers up first. Getting Writing more quickly doesn't change that and doesn't play into anything Phoenicia wants to be doing to make use of its other bonuses since the tech is off the Harbour tech path.

Do you mean my suggested boost is almost never relevant or the Writing boost in general is almost never relevant? Or did you mean specifically Phoenicia's writing boost isn't relevant? I think the last one is fair. A shipbuilding boost would be huge, even if you're probably going to build a ship essentially as a scout.

It would be awesome flavor wise if they changed the Euraka for Writing to "A Civ you have met discovers writing, or you meet a Civ that has discovered writing".

I think it needs to be interact--send a delegation, make a trade, give gold, etc. Otherwise it's completely passive.

Yes, but it was proto-writing.

A theory that remains controversial--general academic consensus is that quipu was a mnemonic record keeping system, not a form of proto-writing. Many forms of writing have their roots in record keeping systems (including cuneiform), so perhaps given time it would have developed into writing, but...

Interesting note about the Phoenician alphabet is that they didn't even use matres lectiones (consonant letters to be read as vowels) like Aramaic and Hebrew did until Neo-Punic (which lost its laryngeals so used het, alep, and ayin as vowel symbols--and sometimes he as well).

On mnemonic record keeping, the Eastern Woodlands Culture of North America (particularly the Iroquois) used wampum for this purpose. Though if you were trained to interpret wampum, you didn't have to be present at the original meeting to know its meaning: e.g. if you passed the wampum representing the treaty of friendship between France and the Mingo back to the French Ambassador, it would mean that you were dissolving the relationship. The French ambassador knew what this meant, which is why he didn't touch it and urged them to reconsider, even though he wasn't present when the treaty was signed and the wampum created.

Levantines have a broad range of skintones. NB that Esau and David in the Bible are both described as redheads. Civ5 Dido was fine (her 1950s evening gown was more problematic); so is Civ6 Dido.

Question that I don't know the answer to: What does "red" mean in this context? In some cultures, it refers to red-brown. I don't know the answer to this (hence why I'm asking)

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

https://twitter.com/EdBeach23/status/1090316933092818950?s=19

So it looks like Phoenicia cannot, in fact, make you play "capital keepaway" as we originally thought.t

 

[Ziad]

Oh btw... the sneak peak we saw was indeed the Lebanese coast. It's the Raoche Rock near Beirut.

Spoiler :

 

[ehecatzin]

I think Dido will be weak on Pangea, which is my favourite map to play. I won't play water based maps until the AI can handle naval warfare better.

Probably not the best on pangea but hardly useless, you still got the 100% loyalty on your own continent to forward settle like crazy, plus extra trade routes from the government district. Should you want to continue you conquest to a new continent on Pangea you switch capital and get massive output from policy cards.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Most interesting about this Thread so far is the fact that succeeding posts call this civ 'the weakest', 'one of the weakest' and 'a powerhouse', 'first I'll play'. Kudos to the Designers, at least half the CivFanatic Community either doesn't know how to play the Civ or doesn't like to play the way this Civ will be strongest.

Nailed the Trade Emphasis, and the Bireme's greatest ability may be Safe Sea Trade routes, which now bring in more Gold and, for Phoenicia are available early and in quantity. Also, with the extra healing and strength, Biremes are not only not 'useless' at any level, they are potential Coastal City Killers. On a coast near Dido, garrison your coastal cities. Or Else.

Reference Writing. The Eureka is 90% useless unless, as stated already, you are alone on an island and don't meet anybody for a while. Far better would have been an on-going Science Bonus from the start for having a way of passing on knowledge before anybody else.

Reference Tyrian Purple. Yes, it is 'iconic' to the Civ. On the other hand, it is a Natural Resource terrain-specific to the east coast of the Mediterranean. So, on the one hand, it could be a new Natural Resource in coastal waters, but then it wouldn't be 'Phoenician'. On the other hand, the real Effect of Tyrian Purple was that it was a minor Gold Mine for Tyre and other Phoenician cities. So, the better way to show it would be that for Phoenicia, Every Amenity Resource on a coastal tile or on a land tile next to the coast produces 2 quantity - so Phoenicia always has Something to Trade. I believe that was a UA in Civ V for Holland, and it works to show Trade Gold Emphasis for a Civ based on its ability to trade Resources.

Reference the hoary old Mountainous Elephants (most of whom died in the Alps, by the way). I've posted it before, but it bears repeating: Hannibal was an Amateur. Lost most of his elephants in the snows and passes, only did it once and never tried it again. IF you want to take military units over mountains, make it the ability of a Great General: Alexander Suvorov in the early Industrial Era: any Renaissance-Industrial Era unit within 2 tiles of him can cross mountains at 1 tile/turn without penalty. Done.

Historically, in 1799 Suvorov Retrained his entire army and then took the army of 16,000 men with artillery over the Alps in winter and emerged from a ring of Revolutionary French armies with his force intact, having out marched, out skirmished, and outmaneuvered all his enemies. And that's how you do a Mountain Movement!

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Based on Ed's tweet, it appears domination does not work on Dido's new capital. It is also interesting that the art team created 3 separate capital icons.

 

[Ziad]

So you always wanna protect your Levantine homeland. I suppose then IRL Phoenicia failed when Tyre fell. Someone should tell Carthage.