Quick Questions / Quick Answers

Larger maps favour Statecraft since you get more quests from City States.
 
Larger maps favour Statecraft since you get more quests from City States.
You'd get more delegates with more CS and more Spies as well.
What does the response to a DOW : "You'll pay for this in time." do?
It just pisses them off more, so that even after you make peace, they'll be extra mad at you. I never use it though so I'm not sure how significant it is in practice.
 
I use that response to make them hate me more so they'll declare war on me more (and be hated by everyone else more).
 
I've been having a hard time understanding how to play aggressively in the early game. I pick authority, build some units, and then go bankrupt when I don't have enough gold to keep a decent army. Do I have to research trade very early and build markets to avoid that?
 
That helps, as does getting tribute from city-states, pillaging tiles, capturing barbarian camps and, most importantly, conquering cities.

Essentially, if you are getting a large early army, you need to use it.
 
I'm cheating in VP with Denmark, it is fine to burn a city, leave the city tiles, and then proceed to constantly repair and burn those tiles over and over again.

Is it possible to code the UB to don't receive culture from pillaged tiles in neutral territory?
 
I've been having a hard time understanding how to play aggressively in the early game. I pick authority, build some units, and then go bankrupt when I don't have enough gold to keep a decent army. Do I have to research trade very early and build markets to avoid that?
Nope. The goal is to make gold without markets. I hereby presents some options:
- Luxuries. Some mineable gold and silver are wonderful, but other luxuries provide some gold when improved too. Getting a monopoly might give some extra gold, but you have one, maybe two cities, and building an army, so your monopoly has to wait. Anyways, if you know more than one civ, you can trade your excedent luxuries with the civ you plan to attack later.
- Tributes. See a city state nearby? Go demand some gold from it. If it refuses to pay, kick it ass, steal its workers, and try again.
- Roads. Don't. Build. Roads. At least not at this stage, they are too expensive. If you need to move faster, see if you can chopp some forests for an easier passage.
- Don't build buildings with maintenance if you can avoid it. You don't need barracks (not yet). You don't need walls (you are the aggressor).
- Get culture. Each time your borders grow, you get some gold, so culture in the city will give some instant gold. Killing barbarians give some culture, by the way...
- Don't capture barb camps, unless another civ is going to. You want to farm some experience and culture from barb killing, so try not to spoil barb spawn points. Take them only in bare necessity (another civ is going to kill them anyway, or you reaally need the gold).
- Explore fast. Sometimes you get some gold from discovered city states, sometimes an ancient ruin may give you that. The very least, you'll discover some players that you can trade with. You may sell any strategic resource you are not going to use. Giving horses to a neighbor is risky, as he can produce horses, but in case he decides to attack you (or you decide to attack him), he'll lose the ability to heal the horses.
- Pillage. Well, for this you have to wait until your neighbours made some terrain improvements. Capturing cities yield some gold too.
- Use a smart pantheon. It doesn't mind if you don't want to found your own religion. Build just one shrine and ripe some pantheonist benefits. Goddess of Fortune may not be available, but there are other pantheons that give gold, although culture is much more useful.

If you can't get enough gold with all the above, well, go for markets. You'll have to build them eventually, once you find it difficult to demand tribute.
 
Get culture. Each time your borders grow, you get some gold, so culture in the city will give some instant gold. Killing barbarians give some culture, by the way...
The culture you gain from killing barbarians goes straight to empire, not the capital, so while culture is important, these two sentences are unrelated.
 
The culture you gain from killing barbarians goes straight to empire, not the capital, so while culture is important, these two sentences are unrelated.
Is it? I thought it went to the city that produced the unit, but I might be mistaken with the recent Danish change. Nevertheless, more culture opens up more policies that could help with gold (cheaper units, cheaper roads).
 
What does the response to a DOW : "You'll pay for this in time." do?
Since I had installed last (feb 2019) VP version, the button "You'll pay for this in time." in response to a DOW is not operating everytime; when I do click on the button sometime nothing happens and I'm forced to the other choice. Is there any reason for that or is it a bug?
 
Since I had installed last (feb 2019) VP version, the button "You'll pay for this in time." in response to a DOW is not operating everytime; when I do click on the button sometime nothing happens and I'm forced to the other choice. Is there any reason for that or is it a bug?
Sounds like a bug. Report it.
 
I've been having a hard time understanding how to play aggressively in the early game. I pick authority, build some units, and then go bankrupt when I don't have enough gold to keep a decent army. Do I have to research trade very early and build markets to avoid that?
Try to use tribute to stay afloat early on, then get Markets after your army is at a good enough size for now and you've expanded and conquered a bit. You won't have a lot of spare Gold but as long as you don't hit 0 for longer than a couple of turns you'll be okay.
 
An easy template for early warmongering, assuming you don't have any UU/UB you need to rush: monument> shrine> warrior or archer (buy worker)> settler> military, with 2nd city doing monument (shrine if you want to try to found religion) > military. Not saying that is 100% the best order but it has worked well for me plenty.

Don't make the mistake of building much infrastructure, you can leave that for later. Roads can come after you get the policy for it or when it pays for itself from city connection and isolation happiness. Tributes and what you get from conquests and resources should keep you floating until you can build markets after your military is sufficient.
 
TL/DR: Questions at bottom. Permanent war dark age during Renaissance/Industrial culminated in my taking 1 of snowball's core cities. Suddenly they're my vassal and my economy is unF@#*ed.

2/3s (I think) of the way through a king/epic/pangea domination game as Rome. Turn 550ish and its been AWESOME. Just the improved combat tactics alone have made the game 100x more interesting. Summarily:

Conquered my first neighbor Polynesia instantly. Morocco was just east of them and those wars took most of the classical era. Then England was to the west and I managed to relegate her to one island city before she got her UU. Things got very interesting after that. Having gobbled 3 civs I was a massive, very unpopular purple blob in the middle of the continent. Which has unsurprisingly resulted in an endless stream of DoWs. Japan + Egypt on the west coast and Carthage + Denmark on the east. Also, Portugal has been quietly existing in the north east corner of the world but even at t550 we have little interaction. So the late Medieval + entire Renaissance became a massive slog where I'd hold a choke point (or even temporarily cede a border city) on one side while trying to gain ground on the other. Aside from grabbing Venice and finding/holding good long term choke points, not much progress was made.

Truthfully, those were dark times for the Roman people. Unhappiness peaked at -160 and didn't break -20 for 200+ turns. Gpt fluctuated massivelly and was up to -600ish at times. I wasn't at zero gold ever but my piggy bank was basically too volatile to touch. And all of that during near constant golden ages thanks to our glorious UB no less!

What makes this story worth telling though, is the incredible turn of events that vanilla could never match. Egypt was snow balling hard and was one civ (me) away from a culture victory before Industrial. I had started pumping out cruisers in quantities that would be laughably overkill in vanilla. As they were moving along the south sea to turn the tide with Carthage, they came upon a flotilla of unescorted Egyptian land units, likely massing for a surprise attack against me. My fleets opened fire and then turned abruptly back east towards the massive bay that Venice shared with Egypt.

And so began a battle that spanned generations. The Egyptian ground forces quickly overtook the small defensive force I had stationed in Venice and took it + 2 more near by cities. My troops held at a crucial canal city and my navy began pushing forward from there. After retaking Venice and carpeting the bay in cruisers, we set our sights on the holy city of Elephantine. War weariness alone had crested 100 and the 41pop city had ~1500 hit points. 30+ turns of shuffling cruisers later, and she was mine. I immediatelly sought peace and was FLOORED by the offer...

Egypt capitulated!!! They had 5 more 35pop+ cities and I had basically zero ground control. But suddenly, they were my vassal. And with the additition of a key autocratic order ~17 turns later, they will ALWAYS be my vassal. On top of that, the once great bastion of Freedom immediatelly revolted and adopted my ideology. My happiness jumped from -100ish to -8 in a single turn. It actually peaked at +7 before the Western front reopened. GPT peaked at almost 1k+ before long overdue upgrades dropped it again. Oh and my science basically doubled.

With Egypt now in my pocket, a massive veteran navy, and a population that isn't perpetually rebelling, I'm poised to take some serious ground in the latter half of the industrial era.

Questions:

1500 city defense points is obscene compared to vanilla. Late game is dawning, what's the secret? I suspect focusing anti city promotions and I'm hoping battleships?

Short/incremental wars are recommended in CBP. Does that basically mean one major city per war?

I've probably already annexed too many cities. Is puppeting all non-capitals of the remaining 4 cities optimal?

Will poverty unhappiness start to improve as I bring down the global average with war?

Are late game military + defense buildings worth it for war weariness reduction?

I've got two holy cities now. Depending on their beliefs, would it be worth trying to spread that around internally?
 
Yes, because it was dumb. If anyone liked it, reevaluate your life choices, because the Ski Infantry was and is dumb.

G
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R.I.P. , my heroes...
 
Is puppeting all non-capitals of the remaining 4 cities optimal?
You have already won the game, I think, don't go for the optimal. The optimal is the strategy that makes you win faster, so if you don't need to pump units in those cities, just leave them as puppets.

Will poverty unhappiness start to improve as I bring down the global average with war?
No. That's a problem with current happiness scaling. We're working on it. Meanwhile, control your population growth.

Are late game military + defense buildings worth it for war weariness reduction?
Not sure, but I think military policies are better for this purpose. What military buildings offer is mostley more supply, so you can stand longer periods of war weariness.

I've got two holy cities now. Depending on their beliefs, would it be worth trying to spread that around internally?
Absolutely. You'll be considered usurper of the faith for the religion that is more widespread in your empire, giving you the founder and enhancer bonuses. Just purchase first the religious buildings of the faith you want to remove.
 
1500 city defense points is obscene compared to vanilla. Late game is dawning, what's the secret? I suspect focusing anti city promotions and I'm hoping battleships?

You mean 1500 hit points, right? If you have a unit on every tile around the city (except mountains), then the city no longer regenerate HP (and has -20% CS, if I remember correctly), so it really help. Other than that nukes are always helpful.
 
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