Bandobras Took
Emperor
I just got two trade convoys eaten; a siege worm popped up in the middle of nowhere. My play experience is definitely coloring my perceptions.
Seeding options - best sponsor
- Thread starter Mount Suribachi
- Start date
I just got two trade convoys eaten; a siege worm popped up in the middle of nowhere. My play experience is definitely coloring my perceptions.
I'm not going to argue specifically re: PS vs. ARC (I also happen to think that Hutama is overrated outside of specific map settings). I will point out, however, that your ability to steal tech/science gets complicated once the AI gets its own Spy Agencies up and starts employing counteragents, at which point your chances of success go down and chances of agents getting killed (mainly a time penalty) increase. So on the one hand, ARC is great because you can better exploit that gap where you have a Spy Agency and the AI doesn't due to your faster agents, but it also gets less reliable later in the game.
Polystralia is good but they're only "awesome" on the right map. So if you play Atlantean maps (most if not all capitals will end up on the coast) with the continent surveyor and manage to pop the reverse polarity quest reward quickly and don't get involved in early war with anybody that has gunboats yeah, they're pretty awesome. And, it's pretty easy to get that setup.
Switch maps and you may find yourself with no early external routes, two extra internal routes is still very good but it's no longer an early bonus then since you need four cities. It's also backwards if you're stuck with only internal route since the ideal setup there is to have the new city routes to the capital for the "super city" effect. And, once you have four additional cities the value of those two extra trade routes is considerably diminished. You also have to consider the science and energy provided to the trade partner. If your external route is coming to me I am also getting a boost in science and energy and although it may not be much it is a lot more than I will get if your spy is stealing from me.
ARC has the advantage of the simple fact that you can always see at least one city belonging to each player until one of them loses their capital. So, regardless of the map type you have somewhere to send your spies. Spies are immune to aliens, gunboats, planet carvers and... well, everything except an enemy spy if there is one in the target city.
In the end though, it doesn't really matter.
Any sponsor is capable of achieving any victory condition and the advantages of any one of them are really small enough that you're only talking about shaving a handful of turns off your victory in most situations. Sure, you can come up with the perfect conditions to make any one of them really shine but as it stands now you're not really an worse off just picking the sponsor that has the color that you like most.
It isn't hard to get more early trade routes than the Polystralian player. It may seem unlikely or irrelevant but it's no more unlikely than having a game that plays perfectly into your sponsor and chosen strategy. In my last game as the Slavs I popped a solar collector on turn 2 so I took a gamble and used it on pioneering (forgive me) and it actually turned into one of the most amazing early expansion games I've ever had with two cities and two outposts up at turn 50 at standard speed. Resource pods were the real reason though- that little random element can have a much bigger impact on the early game than your sponsor choice (or alcohol induced tech choices).
Edit: Oh, and I picked FI as the best. Virtues are very good and everybody can benefit from getting a lot of them so getting a couple extra free techs along the way is a nice, reliable bonus.
Switch maps and you may find yourself with no early external routes, two extra internal routes is still very good but it's no longer an early bonus then since you need four cities. It's also backwards if you're stuck with only internal route since the ideal setup there is to have the new city routes to the capital for the "super city" effect. And, once you have four additional cities the value of those two extra trade routes is considerably diminished. You also have to consider the science and energy provided to the trade partner. If your external route is coming to me I am also getting a boost in science and energy and although it may not be much it is a lot more than I will get if your spy is stealing from me.
ARC has the advantage of the simple fact that you can always see at least one city belonging to each player until one of them loses their capital. So, regardless of the map type you have somewhere to send your spies. Spies are immune to aliens, gunboats, planet carvers and... well, everything except an enemy spy if there is one in the target city.
In the end though, it doesn't really matter.
Any sponsor is capable of achieving any victory condition and the advantages of any one of them are really small enough that you're only talking about shaving a handful of turns off your victory in most situations. Sure, you can come up with the perfect conditions to make any one of them really shine but as it stands now you're not really an worse off just picking the sponsor that has the color that you like most.
It isn't hard to get more early trade routes than the Polystralian player. It may seem unlikely or irrelevant but it's no more unlikely than having a game that plays perfectly into your sponsor and chosen strategy. In my last game as the Slavs I popped a solar collector on turn 2 so I took a gamble and used it on pioneering (forgive me) and it actually turned into one of the most amazing early expansion games I've ever had with two cities and two outposts up at turn 50 at standard speed. Resource pods were the real reason though- that little random element can have a much bigger impact on the early game than your sponsor choice (or alcohol induced tech choices).
Edit: Oh, and I picked FI as the best. Virtues are very good and everybody can benefit from getting a lot of them so getting a couple extra free techs along the way is a nice, reliable bonus.
If you force the issue to be binary, then of course Hutama is at least a little bit dependent on the map. But the degree to which he is, is what matters. Civs have always been rated on a weighted scale of how effective they are under certain conditions * how likely those conditions are to occur.
If you really want to split hairs then ARC is even more dependent on factors outside of it's control, such as how quickly the AIs build their own Spy Agencies, if/where they put counter-agents, and the generic RNG of covert operations.
Prophet Skeram
Chieftain
I haven't played as Africa or ARC yet (even though I won 10 games already, one of them on Apollo). The obvious first: Brasilia's bonus sucks because it's only melee strength when it should have been melee + range strength, imho, because 10% is noticable, but not overpowered. Extra traderoutes/free techs make Polystralia, SF and Franco-Iberia quite good.
Now the less obvious: PAC is actually really strong, especially if you can grab the quite cheap "Control" wonder that gives all of your workers +1 movement (which is easy to grab with the wonderbuilding bonus and provides a free Network). The KP are also really great if the map allows you to be "landgrabby", they're basically balanced Shoshone from CiV.
Now the less obvious: PAC is actually really strong, especially if you can grab the quite cheap "Control" wonder that gives all of your workers +1 movement (which is easy to grab with the wonderbuilding bonus and provides a free Network). The KP are also really great if the map allows you to be "landgrabby", they're basically balanced Shoshone from CiV.
