Share your fun new leader games!

[Thalassicus]

Post new strategies or fun games you've experienced with the recent leader changes.

I'm loving my current game as Dido of Carthage. She now starts with a Trireme, can send civilian units across water from turn 0, and new port cities get a free Lighthouse trade connection.

I started on one side of a large bay across from Polynesia. I promptly settled aggressively onto their continent, taking some fantastic city sites. I'm using my starting Trireme to escort settlers and workers across the bay. Carthaginian ports automatically get free trade routes, so I got the pantheon reward of +3 per trade route, immediately boosting my science rate by +50%! Barbarian ships occasionally blockade my cities and cut off trade. This severely impacts my science and gold income, so I'm going to get a Liberuna soon to help clear out pirates from my trade lanes.

An interesting thing about Dido is she can immediately embark civilians, but not military units, so it's challenging to explore inland on new continents in the early game. I basically needed beachhead cities to build scouts for exploring deeper into the continent. This provides some fun risk and uncertainty I didn't anticipate when planning the leader. I love discovering emergent gameplay like this.

I plan to turn the southern city Hippo Regius into my military specialization city. It has 6 food resources, 1 iron, 7 hills, AND ocean access, ideal for both land and sea military production. It's also right next to the peaceful Polynesians. Perfect place to crank out an army!

 

[Hawawaa]

Took me good 10mins to think who to play.

(Note: One Color Civs, Colored Religions and Infoaddict)

So this game its Korea. Got a good starting location. Going for my first patheon now. So far loving the changes.

Only thing bugging me is no barbs yet... Where they at!!?

Spoiler :

 

[Hawawaa]

Oh the next turn I found those barbs irony.

I'm done wonder whoring and with my next great prophet I will slap my religion on my neighbors which then holy warriors will help me grab the lands to the south. Lots of CS allies this game and wonders.

Spoiler :

 

[Tomice]

@Thal: fascinating you started in such a perfect place for testing. Sadly, the Polynesians probably won't get much of a chance to show which naval civ is better

Am I right that you have trade routes before researching the trade tech?

 

[Thalassicus]

It appears lighthouses always give their connection benefit, even when we do not have the trade tech. I think that makes sense as "trade" represents mainly road land trade, while lighthouses are sea trade.

 

[Hawawaa]

Siam is dead. Well it looks like Monty has come down with the crazies (loads shotgun). Gonna have to put him down (remembers the old days with alliances, open borders, the gold both for me and giving him aid)... good times. (BANG)

Spoiler :

 

[AnthonyG]

Only thing bugging me is no barbs yet... Where they at!!?

Count yourself lucky ... I got slapped with a marauding barbarian horseman within 30 turns!

 

[Hawawaa]

Continent is mine. Gonna grab some naval tech and meet the other neighbors. Dday is coming! Man Korea craps out science like none other.

Spoiler :

 

[Hawawaa]

THERES TWO KOREAS!?!?! KILL THE IMPOSTOR!

Spoiler :

D Day without the navy went really good. India lost its capital and my forces are divided going to grab his last 2 cities. Korea is next to fall. Not me the Korea wannabes...

Spoiler :

 

[Hawawaa]

Koreans are one again.

Spoiler :

Now Japan dies next! I only need to send a small force. They are so tiny. Starting to build a navy to support my invasion of Arabia. Turn 298 Arabia will burn.

Spoiler :

 

[Hawawaa]

Well Japan will live to see another day, need to heal up and join the main forces for Arabia. I'll leave a vanguard force just incase Japan gets off his crazy pills.

Spoiler :

This is the final battlefield. Looks like I will soon have another CS ally. Good meatshield good. 10 more turns and the fireworks begin but I'll post it tomorrow.

Spoiler :

 

[Tomice]

Is it a bug or a feature that a Civ can appear twice? You can set up a game this wayunder advanced options, so I guess it's a feature?

 

[Hawawaa]

I don't know all my enemies... oh I think I didn't touch my advanced features from last game. God I really love making a fool of myself.

Any who those 2 CSs really helped squish Arabia. One more attack and game. Seriously though is Korea getting a nerf? The science is everywhere.

Spoiler :

 

[mystikx21]

I'd say push the science on farms to +1, +2 with university (or the tech), and the science on specialists from Jade to just on scientists. Otherwise, looks like fun.

 

[grrnonameleft]

I think one of those may suffice. I vote for the farm nerf.

 

[grrnonameleft]

So I finished a game with Sweden last night. Standard map size/speed, Continents plus, Deity. I decided to go for cultured, peaceful tall with an early religion.

Because I always took Honor & Liberty since I started playing the mod, I decided against taking those.
Ancient and classical Era:
My capital built a scout, then monument. With my first 260 gold I bought a worker to put allotment to use. And use it did see.

I chose to beeline for Stonehenge, which got me the second pantheon with +25% production for ancient/classical wonders. Together with the social policy I was poised to become the worlds greatest wondermonger.

Since my capital had plenty of river hills, and a couple of desert hills; naturally I went for Banaue and Petra next. After Engineering, I filled out the top part of the tree.

It turns out that I am on an island with Ethiopia and a few city states, so I criminally neglect my military (i.e, initial warrior, scout, and a poacher and brute from opportunity) to crank out more wonders. I didn't get (or even try) the usual suspects, Temple of Artemis, Flavian, Parthenon, Great Wall, Great Library and Pyramids, but bagged pretty much everything else. ( I got sniped on Angkor Wat and Hidden Palace).

I found no suitable city places with a new luxury resource on my island, so it took me a while to expand. I felt I needed a coastal city, so I placed one away from ethiopia with a couple of bonus resources, and basically let it fend for itself, as all the gold was invested in capital buildings to keep the production queue for the wonders. Later I added another city completely on a 1tile island, and in the industrial era another 1tile island.

I think I was the first to found a religion, I took Papal Primacy and Feed the world, and later added +4 Faith for wonders, and +1000% conversion strength for CS.

Some time in the classical era, after my score is nearly double Ethiopias, Haile decided that I am too juicy of a target to ignore and "sneak attacked" me. As in, gathered an army near my borders for 5 turns, which gave me plenty of time to build walls, and ally with the two closest CS. That attack did not go well, though he pillaged plenty of Stockholms beautiful countryside. This was the first and only military action my empire saw throughout the game. Some time later, I finally build a few triremes to explore the world ( I neglected the naval branch entirely) and found all the other empires at similar score to Haile. So basically, the game was in the bag.

I still finished it, in part to see how the Folkskola turns out. That thing is a monster. After reaching education, I went directly to Folkskola and saved up on culture so I could get Rationalism and a free research building in my 4 oldest cities as soon as I got the tech. Wow. It took 15 turns to go from finishing the first uni to getting folkskola, and my science nearly doubled. The rest of the renaissance era took very little time to research.

I finished the game with a cultural victory around turn 300. Stockholm was only missing 3 more population to work it's entire area and all specialist slots, and everything that was not a resource had a great person improvement. I don't think it gets much taller than that

Spoiler :

Here's some various thoughts:
On AI:
The AI didn't take the happiness change well. It probably didn't help that Arena and Circus increased in cost by that much.

Left to their own devices, they developed at a much slower pace than I did. There was no runaway conqueror or builder on another continent.

Interestingly, there was not a single research agreement between AI (but plenty of alliances), probably because nobody had enough money at the same time. However, I also was not offered a research agreement at all in the game (but that may be because of diplomacy?).

I didn't have many luxuries to sell, but if I had, I may have bankrupted all of them. They also weren't competitive when it came to social policies.

On religion:
Somehow Inquisitors disappeared along with the Missionaries, so I had to expend my own Prophets to keep my religion. After the second foreign prophet came along, I placed units in a ring around my capital. Effective, but seems an exploit of game mechanics.

I missed having missionaries. It takes two conversions for a formerly atheist city of size 11, which means even a small CS beachhead of your religion is expensive. Also, because of the nature of prophet costs, every civ is on somewhat similar footing with respect to unit spread.

If I recall correctly, there was a discussion that the faith prices have not been adjusted compared to the faith income, and therefore all the costs are 1/2 or even 1/3 of what they should be. Why not try this adjustment first, and see if it solves the missionary spam? Say, initial costs go up by 2, per era costs by 3 for missionary and inquisitors.

Great People probably need a factor of 3 or even 4 on their faith cost increase, or if it's possible a common cost for all non-prophets. The industrial era is a sudden GP explosion.

 

[mystikx21]

56 pop! Awesome.

I'd agree circus/arena cost too much (at least in hammers, possibly in gold too).

Inquisitors should be restored. I find that annoying also.

Faith income was reduced somewhat in 1.13 (per pop was dialed back, and various natural wonders were changed), but I could see a case for trying to increase price. The case against it was that increasing missionary/inquisitor prices tends to mean they need to be stronger (at least missionaries do), which then gets us back to using prophets. I think the other option available is to try to cap the number used at once, to prevent the AI spamming, and reduce the missionary unit flavor at some point (renaissance?), where they become less useful anyway (as cities have mostly already spread). But a high passive spread with GP/inquisitors would be fine with me too.

 

[grrnonameleft]

I don't think they need to be stronger. After all, compared to the base G&K, Faith income has skyrocketed, so those same strength missionaries (and religious buildings, and holy warriors) have become much, much cheaper effectively.

Maybe we don't need to adjust ancient era costs. After all, it takes a while to get faith production running. But the cost increase per era should be hiked up by at least 100%, maybe 200%.
Also, the snowballing faith production because of Holy Sites could take a beating. Maybe increase the faith increase per subsequent prophet?

 

[Thalassicus]

Shrines and temples give only 1, so we can't reduce that. I did reduce their income in other ways by removing their faith bonuses from the Piety tree (shrines used to go up to 2).

I did not intend to remove inquisitors... what's more confusing is I can't even find a reference to inquisitors in the GEM files. I can't seem to remember where I made the change merging missionaries with prophets. It's not in either of the two logical locations, Cities/GEC_Civilians.xml or Faith/GEF_Data.xml.

I haven't ever lost something before...

 

[gdwitt]

If you want to re-enable inquisitors in the latest beta add the following line to GEA__End.sql:

Code:
UPDATE Units SET FaithCost = 200 WHERE Class = 'UNITCLASS_INQUISITOR';