Russia or Canada poll

[kb27787]

The strategy of Canada is to play like a civ without bonus initially (because that's exactly what it is) except you have more leeway to forward settle your rivals, and then settle into the tundra when you've gotten some gold to buy woods and whatnot, and chop out districts/wonders. Later on your cities are mostly about Hockey Rinks, Parks, and Preserves.

They basically get national parks for "free" now (mountie is 2 park charges now). So getting cities early out is not important since empty tundra will not be settled by AI. All they need is early culture so build wonders in your capital and focus on growing it tall with builders + Pingala's culture per pop promotion (forget holy sites, go theatres! Early expansion is terrible due to barbs... and you don't have the early gold to bribe them. Later on though those barbs are all nice little snow city states which give you stuff so let them be. Their war immunity means they don't need to worry about the t15 DoW from deity AI and can skimp out on military production.

Oh and forget about dance of the aurora if not Russia... the deity AI is coded to know you are Canada even if they haven't met you (same happens with Brazil or Mali) and will always take the adjacency pantheon away from you even if they do not have that particular terrain type at all in their empire. Unless you get an early relic or something (and in which case, religious settlements is still better). I've had AI prioritize Aurora over RS just to mess with me. I laugh since I play Kongo and sacred path is almost always taken first, leaving RS for me sometimes (as if I could ever make use of holy sites! lol).

 

[bengalryan9]

Early expansion is terrible due to barbs...

I disagree. If you know that barbs are the only threat you have to pay attention to they're really not that hard to handle. I didn't build a single unit in the game I just finished as Canada and my starting warriors and two purchased scouts were enough to keep barbs at pay on Deity.

Oh and forget about dance of the aurora if not Russia... the deity AI is coded to know you are Canada even if they haven't met you (same happens with Brazil or Mali) and will always take the adjacency pantheon away from you even if they do not have that particular terrain type at all in their empire.

This is not my experience at all. I can pretty much always grab Aurora as Canada even if God King is my only source of faith at the start. That's on Deity as well.

 

[Leucarum]

This is not my experience at all. I can pretty much always grab Aurora as Canada even if God King is my only source of faith at the start. That's on Deity as well

While I agree that good unit control is usually enough to prevent barbs from spotting you, I've had the "polar" opposite experience here. If Dance of the Aurora could be taken, 9 times out of 10 it will be taken for me. If I want to go religion as Canada and I want this pantheon I have to work for it... I have found I usually can't just 'let it be' and scoop it up later with God King....

 

[PSG]

While not in the poll the Khmer are a stronger tundra civ than both Russia and Canada. Work ethic easily gets you 18Food/18Faith/18Production holy sites. Just need to stack your groves well and you will dominate.

 

[Leucarum]

While not in the poll the Khmer are a stronger tundra civ than both Russia and Canada. Work ethic easily gets you 18Food/18Faith/18Production holy sites. Just need to stack your groves well and you will dominate.

Yeah but havng to listen to Khmer's music counters any advantages the civ may have...

 

[agonistes]

I agree with most other people that Canada is the better tundra civ, but not necessarily the better civ overall.

Canada can completely thrive in the tundra with farms while Russia needs non-tundra tiles in their cities to even think of surviving.

Not if you take food-providing religious ideas. I've had pretty big russian cities on ice.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I dont see the problem with lack of food tbh. Last win on deity with Russia (at about t190) I had about 18 cities all on tundra, with most being at pop 7. Thats enough for 3 districts, which is also plenty enough to pursue the win condition (CV in my case). The yields are pretty static off of the districts anyway so it's not like I really need more population. Would be nice of course, but absolutely not required.

 

[jehtro777]

I think Russia is stronger. A half priced district and an early Pantheon are two things I really enjoy.

Though, I want to play through Canada one more time. I'm not sure I optimized them at all.

 

[Tuvok694]

Russia still is way stronger. The Lawra alone would be reason enough for me.

 

[kb27787]

I disagree. If you know that barbs are the only threat you have to pay attention to they're really not that hard to handle. I didn't build a single unit in the game I just finished as Canada and my starting warriors and two purchased scouts were enough to keep barbs at pay on Deity.



This is not my experience at all. I can pretty much always grab Aurora as Canada even if God King is my only source of faith at the start. That's on Deity as well.

Paying barbs off only guarantees that their units don't set foot in what is already your borders... it certainly doesn't prevent them from clustering around your borders and their archers from shooting into your territory... nor does it mean they will allow your future settlers to get to where they want to go.

Moreover the more you pay them, the more units they spawn. Until it becomes an unstoppable ball of units and you have no way to prevent them from becoming city states.

 

[bengalryan9]

Paying barbs off only guarantees that their units don't set foot in what is already your borders... it certainly doesn't prevent them from clustering around your borders and their archers from shooting into your territory... nor does it mean they will allow your future settlers to get to where they want to go.

Moreover the more you pay them, the more units they spawn. Until it becomes an unstoppable ball of units and you have no way to prevent them from becoming city states.

I didn't say a single thing about paying off barbarians, mainly because I've never bothered to do it.

All I'm saying is that when playing Canada you know that barbarians are the only threat you are going to face early on. If you focus solely on them, it's not too hard to keep them from spawning near your cities - I did it with two scouts and a warrior. I used the scouts to coral and take down any barb scouts before they could get back for reinforcements while my sole warrior took care of actually clearing the camps. Circle the scouts around the outside edge of where you plan to expand and cut off the barb scouts as they try to leave. By pushing out a couple of settlers early on (easy to do since you can go extremely light on troops) and choosing the right places to settle with them at the start you can greatly cut down on the amount of fog surrounding your cities and really limit where any camps are likely to spawn - for example, if you have any city states nearby don't settle in those directions yet, because if the camps spawn there they will almost certainly get taken care of by the city states and won't be your problem.

The barbs aren't that difficult to keep at bay if you prioritize doing so. I do it every time I play as Canada. Heck, I probably have *less* trouble with barbs as Canada than I do with any other civ because they're my sole focus in the early game as Canada. No more getting distracted by a nearby army only to let a barb camp spawn behind my defenses... it's not a concern.

 

[Leucarum]

Playing devil's advocate, I do think barbarians are a bigger factor as Canada if playing with barbarian clans. Less because they pose an existential threat and more because they very often spawn encampments in places where you want cities further down the line. I have found myself being much more aggressive towards barbarians in this mode as Canada since you simply can't deal with city states which form from them (barring some great people shenanigans) and that does affect how crazily fast I can expand slightly.