I've had this happen multiple times to me as well (on previous patches), it seems to only happen late in the age, perhaps only during the crisis. Was that your experience too?
Tell us the story of your current game
- Thread starter MutilationWave
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I've had this happen multiple times to me as well (on previous patches), it seems to only happen late in the age, perhaps only during the crisis. Was that your experience too?
MutilationWave
IDDQD
Yep, same thing.
I just finished my first game on 1.2.5, and had a blast!
Apologies in advance, I struggle to keep my write-ups brief (
) so I'll make a post for each age.
GAME SETUP
I wanted to try out the new toys, so started with Lakshmibai and Silla.
Map: Continents and Islands
Map size: Huge
Players: 12
Speed: Standard
Difficulty: Deity
Age length: Long
Age transition impact: Regroup
Mementos: Imago Mundi (+2 Sight instead of +1 for Scout's Search & Lookout actions) and Kwalkwali (+1 Gold per Age for each Resource assigned to Cities). I typically only choose Imago Mundi as I feel the Mementos make the game too easy, but seeing as this is a new patch with multiple changes, I figured a bit of extra Gold to cope would be helpful.
As soon as the Civic tree was unlocked, it became apparent that Lakshmibai and Silla do not synergise well, as the former promotes going to war (by giving extra influence for defeating enemy units) - while Silla wants you to stay peaceful and ally your opponents to get the most out of their bonuses.
I loved the map, I was on a continent snaking itself from NW to SE ( no more blocky continents!
) with what turned out to be 6 opponents.
I went for Code of Laws early to get those Silla-boosted trade routes up, only to discover that by the time I got my first Merchant, Friedrich's closest settlement had been razed by barbarians, so no early trade routes for me... A total waste of 18 turns to research that civic so soon!
My initial plan was to incorporate multiple city states, so I befriended them early, but exploring the continent revealed way too many sweet spots to settle. Plus I was lucky enough to have Mount Fuji within my borders, meaning I would never be able to ally Isabella, meaning I simply had to forward settle her! As such, before I could incorporate a single City State, I was already at 6/6 settlement limit... No Settlement limit bonus in Silla's civic tree!
I tried my best to keep my neighbours happy, but only managed to ally 2 of them due to Leader Agendas being against me... Still, thanks to the Silla civics, I got great yields from the 5 trade routes I had with those two.
I managed to stay fairly peaceful with my neighbours until Machiavelli being Machiavelli decided to declare war on me around the time the Barbarian invasion crisis hit. He was allied to Charlemagne and Ashoka, so suddenly I was fighting on 3 fronts at once! My military at the time wasn't great, but I was making plenty of gold and was able to keep my borders safe by buying plenty of Hwarangs. It also helped that neither of those three opponents had borders touching mine.
I saw that one of my City States near Machiavelli's brilliant coastal city Men-Nefer had built up a wild military, most notably they had eight Quadriremes (I had 0). I incorporated them, and managed to keep his troops at bay until that navy was mine - and set sail for Men-Nefer. Meanwhile, I also incorporated another City State that was fairly close to Machiavelli's borders - this got me another ten tier 2 land units.
As my navy approached Men-Nefer, he started begging for peace, but wouldn't offer me that city - nor any other useful settlement, so the bombardment started.
Some 8 turns later, my two packed Army Commanders arrived, ready to start capturing districts, and just as I had ground down nearly all his walls and defenses, the city changed hands to my ally Friedrich in a peace deal
Machiavelli came knocking with another peace offer, sacrificing his 41-pop city Djedet as part of the deal 
And what do you know, Charlemagne gave me his 30-pop City Dur-Katlimmu as well!
I ended the age with 9/6 settlement limit, but due to some great trade routes as well as a lot of happiness resources - not to mention multiple Resort towns - I kept the unhappiness at bay, in fact only 1 settlement was really unhappy.
I managed to finish the Scientific and Economic legacy paths, and was only one point away from completing the Military path. I was hoping to get a settlement from a peace deal with Ashoka as well to complete that path, but hats off - he can be a tough negotiator! I couldn't manage more than 4 wonders, just one away from getting an extra Cultural attribute point.
I ended up with better yields than most of my enemies, except for Friedrich who was ahead of me in both Science and Culture. Of course my total Happiness yield was lagging way behind due to the number of Settlements in my empire.
1.2.5 observations
What's next?
I spotted Distant Lands both in the West and South (gotta love the new map generator!), so my first order of business - as always - is to research Cartography, pump out some scouts and settlers, and set sail for new lands.
My long-term goal in this game is to play as Quajar in Modern, so I'm only planning on getting a few Distand Land settlements for the Economic legacy path.
I ended the age with 3 hostile and trigger-happy neighbours (as well as an Unfriendly Isabella), so there's bound to be multiple wars in Exploration. As I have to keep the number of settlements down to prepare for Quajar (I'm already 3 above the limit!), and the fact that I've got a decent Military (15 land units + 4 commanders), plus a leader that promotes destroying units (by providing plenty of influence), it's obvious that my strategy is to wreak havoc without capturing settlements. As such, picking Bulgaria for Exploration feels like a no-brainer.
I'll stick with the same Mementos for Exploration.
Let's see how it goes!
Apologies in advance, I struggle to keep my write-ups brief (
) so I'll make a post for each age.GAME SETUP
I wanted to try out the new toys, so started with Lakshmibai and Silla.
Map: Continents and Islands
Map size: Huge
Players: 12
Speed: Standard
Difficulty: Deity
Age length: Long
Age transition impact: Regroup
Mementos: Imago Mundi (+2 Sight instead of +1 for Scout's Search & Lookout actions) and Kwalkwali (+1 Gold per Age for each Resource assigned to Cities). I typically only choose Imago Mundi as I feel the Mementos make the game too easy, but seeing as this is a new patch with multiple changes, I figured a bit of extra Gold to cope would be helpful.
As soon as the Civic tree was unlocked, it became apparent that Lakshmibai and Silla do not synergise well, as the former promotes going to war (by giving extra influence for defeating enemy units) - while Silla wants you to stay peaceful and ally your opponents to get the most out of their bonuses.
I loved the map, I was on a continent snaking itself from NW to SE ( no more blocky continents!
) with what turned out to be 6 opponents.I went for Code of Laws early to get those Silla-boosted trade routes up, only to discover that by the time I got my first Merchant, Friedrich's closest settlement had been razed by barbarians, so no early trade routes for me... A total waste of 18 turns to research that civic so soon!
My initial plan was to incorporate multiple city states, so I befriended them early, but exploring the continent revealed way too many sweet spots to settle. Plus I was lucky enough to have Mount Fuji within my borders, meaning I would never be able to ally Isabella, meaning I simply had to forward settle her! As such, before I could incorporate a single City State, I was already at 6/6 settlement limit... No Settlement limit bonus in Silla's civic tree!
I tried my best to keep my neighbours happy, but only managed to ally 2 of them due to Leader Agendas being against me... Still, thanks to the Silla civics, I got great yields from the 5 trade routes I had with those two.
I managed to stay fairly peaceful with my neighbours until Machiavelli being Machiavelli decided to declare war on me around the time the Barbarian invasion crisis hit. He was allied to Charlemagne and Ashoka, so suddenly I was fighting on 3 fronts at once! My military at the time wasn't great, but I was making plenty of gold and was able to keep my borders safe by buying plenty of Hwarangs. It also helped that neither of those three opponents had borders touching mine.
I saw that one of my City States near Machiavelli's brilliant coastal city Men-Nefer had built up a wild military, most notably they had eight Quadriremes (I had 0). I incorporated them, and managed to keep his troops at bay until that navy was mine - and set sail for Men-Nefer. Meanwhile, I also incorporated another City State that was fairly close to Machiavelli's borders - this got me another ten tier 2 land units.
As my navy approached Men-Nefer, he started begging for peace, but wouldn't offer me that city - nor any other useful settlement, so the bombardment started.
Some 8 turns later, my two packed Army Commanders arrived, ready to start capturing districts, and just as I had ground down nearly all his walls and defenses, the city changed hands to my ally Friedrich in a peace deal
Machiavelli came knocking with another peace offer, sacrificing his 41-pop city Djedet as part of the deal And what do you know, Charlemagne gave me his 30-pop City Dur-Katlimmu as well!I ended the age with 9/6 settlement limit, but due to some great trade routes as well as a lot of happiness resources - not to mention multiple Resort towns - I kept the unhappiness at bay, in fact only 1 settlement was really unhappy.
I managed to finish the Scientific and Economic legacy paths, and was only one point away from completing the Military path. I was hoping to get a settlement from a peace deal with Ashoka as well to complete that path, but hats off - he can be a tough negotiator! I couldn't manage more than 4 wonders, just one away from getting an extra Cultural attribute point.
I ended up with better yields than most of my enemies, except for Friedrich who was ahead of me in both Science and Culture. Of course my total Happiness yield was lagging way behind due to the number of Settlements in my empire.
1.2.5 observations
- It's clear that the Independents are much more aggressive in this patch - this got me massive amounts of culture and influence due to my leader and civ bonuses.
- The new and increased building costs forced me to keep the number of Cities down. I always try to convert all my Settlements to Cities before the end of the age, but here I ended up with 5 (out of 9) - two of them only converted very late on in order to get some Unique Quarters up. For probably the first time ever during my 900 hours in Civ 7, I won't choose the Economic golden age!
- I found Gold surprisingly easy to come by - I ended the age making 350 Gold per turn (typically I finish my Antiquity games with a GPT of around 200-250). I'm guessing this was due to having more Towns than I usually do - but I expected more of a challenge based on the changes in this patch. The 31 GPT from Kwalkwali also helped, of course.
- I went hard on specializing my towns, and to my surprise, the majority became Resort towns (mainly due to being above the Settlement limit). I haven't really played much with Resort towns before, but wow, they're powerful!
- In general, I found the Antiquity age considerably easier than before the patch! This could be due to the fact that during my last few games before 1.2.5, I was using a mod called Deity++ that increases difficulty in my last few games before the patch... Essentially it introduces 6 difficulty levels above Deity, and I was playing at Warrior in my final 1.2.4 game - this is two steps above Deity and gives the AI a massive +12 combat bonus! I suspect that for my next 1.2.5 game I'll start using this mod again - but let's see how Exploration and Modern goes first.
What's next?
I spotted Distant Lands both in the West and South (gotta love the new map generator!), so my first order of business - as always - is to research Cartography, pump out some scouts and settlers, and set sail for new lands.
My long-term goal in this game is to play as Quajar in Modern, so I'm only planning on getting a few Distand Land settlements for the Economic legacy path.
I ended the age with 3 hostile and trigger-happy neighbours (as well as an Unfriendly Isabella), so there's bound to be multiple wars in Exploration. As I have to keep the number of settlements down to prepare for Quajar (I'm already 3 above the limit!), and the fact that I've got a decent Military (15 land units + 4 commanders), plus a leader that promotes destroying units (by providing plenty of influence), it's obvious that my strategy is to wreak havoc without capturing settlements. As such, picking Bulgaria for Exploration feels like a no-brainer.
I'll stick with the same Mementos for Exploration.
Let's see how it goes!
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EXPLORATION
For the first time ever, I didn't pick any Golden Age!
Thanks to my handling of the previous age's Barbarian Crisis, I got the Legendary Fortification bonus, meaning an additional 3 Combat Strenth.
Also, I upgraded two Towns to Cities for just 200 Gold each (if you do this before choosing legacies, it's much cheaper!), and also moved my Capital to the City I got from Machiavelli, meaning I started the age with 4 Cities.
Early exploration revealed a snaky island to the South with two individual treasure resources - however there were also two hostile IPs on the island, whose Cogs killed off both my Settlers
My westbound Settlers had more luck, and by turn 50 I had 5 Towns controlling 7 Treasure Resources and the colourful Vinicunca wonder.
Machiavelli decided to pop down a Settlement only 4 tiles away from my new capital Preslav and this obviously couldn't go unpunished. I moved my armies South, Gebtu fell shortly after, and again I was at war with 3 enemies. I was making over 800 Gold per turn, so pumping out units was a breeze.
I pillaged, I plundered, and received tons of Production, Town growth and Influence. So much Influence, in fact, that I managed to constantly have 5-10 war support against my enemies, tanking their Yields and making them crawl to the negotiation table and offering me their Cities.
After pillaging the crap out of a Settlement, and see it sitting there undefended, the temptation was too big, so I kept conquering.
At the same time, while my initial plan was to not grow much as I wanted to take advantage of Quajar's bonuses in Modern, their peace offerings were too hard to turn down.
I traded some tiny conquered Towns for huge Cities like Waset (41) and Nineveh (40).
Isabella decided to ally with Ashoka, so now I was fighting 4 enemies. I made peace with 1, got a huge City, and ~10 turns later they declared again. The rest of the age progressed in this manner, and was a lot of fun!
By turn 80, I was 3 above the Settlement limit, by turn 100 it was 29/20 and by the end of the age it was 36/20! So much for Quajar's potential bonuses
I managed to control the Unhappiness, in fact no Settlements were unhappy at the end of the Age. Much of that was down to my massive amount of Happiness resources, but I was also "lucky" enough to get the Religious Crisis, and as I pay no attention to Religion after finishing that Legacy path, the Crisis Policy Religious Tolerance was a blessing:
With all the Influence I was making, I managed to suzerain practically all the Independents on the map. Of course my enemies destroyed a bunch of them (and I later conquered them), but I ended the age with 17 City States, along with all the wonderful bonuses they provide.
I only managed to eliminate one Civilization during this age (Ashoka); Isabella had 1 Settlement left, Machiavelli 2 and Charlemagne 2.
During the Age I only converted 1 more Town to a City, I was so far ahead in all Yields that there wasn't really any point. Plus, those Towns grow immensely fast due to Bulgaria's False Retreat Tradition!
I finished all Legacy Paths without any trouble whatsoever:
Some observations from Exploration:
The game is practically won already, the main fun to be had now is to conquer everything, which is my plan for the Modern age. I've got 57 land units, 13 Commanders, 10 shis and 2 Navy commanders. This should be fun!
As such, I'll chose Qing due to their Civics' combat bonuses, and will leave Qajar for another game...
It'll be a shame to ruin my Helpful relationship with continent neighbours Himiko and Friedrich B, but oh well, them's the breaks!
For the first time ever, I didn't pick any Golden Age!
Thanks to my handling of the previous age's Barbarian Crisis, I got the Legendary Fortification bonus, meaning an additional 3 Combat Strenth.
Also, I upgraded two Towns to Cities for just 200 Gold each (if you do this before choosing legacies, it's much cheaper!), and also moved my Capital to the City I got from Machiavelli, meaning I started the age with 4 Cities.
Early exploration revealed a snaky island to the South with two individual treasure resources - however there were also two hostile IPs on the island, whose Cogs killed off both my Settlers
My westbound Settlers had more luck, and by turn 50 I had 5 Towns controlling 7 Treasure Resources and the colourful Vinicunca wonder.
Machiavelli decided to pop down a Settlement only 4 tiles away from my new capital Preslav and this obviously couldn't go unpunished. I moved my armies South, Gebtu fell shortly after, and again I was at war with 3 enemies. I was making over 800 Gold per turn, so pumping out units was a breeze.
I pillaged, I plundered, and received tons of Production, Town growth and Influence. So much Influence, in fact, that I managed to constantly have 5-10 war support against my enemies, tanking their Yields and making them crawl to the negotiation table and offering me their Cities.
After pillaging the crap out of a Settlement, and see it sitting there undefended, the temptation was too big, so I kept conquering.
At the same time, while my initial plan was to not grow much as I wanted to take advantage of Quajar's bonuses in Modern, their peace offerings were too hard to turn down.
I traded some tiny conquered Towns for huge Cities like Waset (41) and Nineveh (40).
Isabella decided to ally with Ashoka, so now I was fighting 4 enemies. I made peace with 1, got a huge City, and ~10 turns later they declared again. The rest of the age progressed in this manner, and was a lot of fun!
By turn 80, I was 3 above the Settlement limit, by turn 100 it was 29/20 and by the end of the age it was 36/20! So much for Quajar's potential bonuses
I managed to control the Unhappiness, in fact no Settlements were unhappy at the end of the Age. Much of that was down to my massive amount of Happiness resources, but I was also "lucky" enough to get the Religious Crisis, and as I pay no attention to Religion after finishing that Legacy path, the Crisis Policy Religious Tolerance was a blessing:
With all the Influence I was making, I managed to suzerain practically all the Independents on the map. Of course my enemies destroyed a bunch of them (and I later conquered them), but I ended the age with 17 City States, along with all the wonderful bonuses they provide.
I only managed to eliminate one Civilization during this age (Ashoka); Isabella had 1 Settlement left, Machiavelli 2 and Charlemagne 2.
During the Age I only converted 1 more Town to a City, I was so far ahead in all Yields that there wasn't really any point. Plus, those Towns grow immensely fast due to Bulgaria's False Retreat Tradition!
I finished all Legacy Paths without any trouble whatsoever:
Some observations from Exploration:
- Bulgaria is awesome! Their pillaging bonuses are wild, to be honest they feel quite overpowered. Pillaging my way through the Continent was surprisingly fun
- With enough War Support (10+), your enemies will throw their Cities at you.
- The new City State bonuses are really powerful, I recall getting over +700 food from an Expansionist City State card!
- I was making more Gold than ever before, nearly 5k per turn at the end of the age! Of course, having 31 Towns (many of them with population in the 40-60 range) helps a lot in this regard.
The game is practically won already, the main fun to be had now is to conquer everything, which is my plan for the Modern age. I've got 57 land units, 13 Commanders, 10 shis and 2 Navy commanders. This should be fun!
As such, I'll chose Qing due to their Civics' combat bonuses, and will leave Qajar for another game...
It'll be a shame to ruin my Helpful relationship with continent neighbours Himiko and Friedrich B, but oh well, them's the breaks!
MODERN AGE
I upgraded 3 towns to Cities (again, before choosing Legacies - I'm not sure if it's a bug or not, but it's considerably cheaper when doing it this way!) and moved my Capital, so I started the age with 5 Cities, just like I ended Antiquity and Exploration with.
This time I chose the Science Golden Age (Golden Age Universities), which gave me an early boost in Science. Not that it was needed, as I had a Science output of 1300, while most of the AI had around 300-500, with Ada sitting on nearly 900 - I assume due to some nifty Wonders she built.
I was raking in 3000 GPT, so I went for Natural History to pump out some Explorers.
Like always, I spent my entire bank balance on Merchants on turn 1, and what do you know, I realised that in Modern you don't have to physically move your Merchants to their destination, you can just click to start a trade route immediately! I feel like an idiot for having played this game for 900+ hours and not know about this You learn something new every day!
As mentioned, my plan was to conquer, and conquer I did - a considerable part of my Army was moved to Pataliputra during the age transition, with Charlemagne's capital Thãng Long located just 5 tiles away. On turn 2 I went to war, and within 10 turns I had wiped Charlemagne, Isabella and Machiavelli the Snake from our continent.
It was time to decide between wiping Himiko or Friedrich, and due to her much lower Science output, I went for her first. I had to wait some 8 turns to get Armor, and from then on it was easy as pie - my military sliced through her empire from 5 fronts, and by turn 40 she was gone.
What do you know, before I could reposition my troops on Friedrich's borders, he got involved in a war with Hatshepsut, all the way on the other continent. She only had 2 Settlements, and my Treasure towns weren't far away, so I pumped out 2 navy commanders loaded with Battleships, and set sail. As my Battleships were obliterating the defenses of her city Delhi, it suddenly changed hands to Xerxes in a peace deal. That's the third time in this game that this happened!
Conquering her Capital Cilakofa was a breeze, and I finally had a foothold on the other continent, in a tiny Town squeezed in between Xerxes KoK and Confucius.
By this time I had 72 land units and 8 Battleships, which fairly quickly dispatched of Friedrich's entire empire.
Around turn 80, I noticed that both Ada and Pachacuti (my last ally) had completed all 3 Space Race projects, and as is always the tactic when I play modern, I want to make it last as long as possible - and do my best at stopping the opponents winning. I identified their Launch Pads, Pachacuti's two were in range from my city Kou - but Ada's lone pad was out of range. I assembled a fleet of a Carrier and Battleships, declared war on her, and a few turns later their Launch Pads were nuked to oblivion
Poor Pachacuti, he never got to launch that spacecraft!
On turn 86, I had conquered everything on my continent, with a Settlement count of 74 - which was 45 above the limit.
I had loads and loads of Happiness resources, not to mention 230k of Gold in the bank (making 10k GPT), so I managed to keep unhappiness at bay without much issue.
My 77 land units, 19 battleships, carriers with nukes and bombers all set sail for Confucius, to start conquering the other continent.
Unfortunately I don't have any saves after this (the autosaves are gone due to my loading up other autosaves to write this story, so I can't look up the exact numbers. Anyway, I kept conquering (while periodically nuking launch pads) until I spotted Ada's Great Banker in my territory. Pachacuti's banker had been stuck outside Antananarivo for at least 20 turns (I think it's a bug that occured when I conquered that City while it was an opponent's Capital - so he couldn't activate his GB there), but Ada's unit was suddenly a threat.
On turn 101, with perhaps only 15 more settlements on the planet, shared between Xerxes, Ada and Pachacuti, I had to call it quits - so activated my GB in the final capital to get the win.
I ended the game with only 5 Cities and around 88 Towns.
This game was a lot of fun, but also very time consuming - conquering over 80 Settlements really takes its time.
I noticed that there were a lot less Artifacts than ususal (on a Huge map), which led to none of the AIs getting more than 6 artifacts. This is quite odd - why didn't they dig up the Natural Wonders?'
I'm also quite surprised that I was making so much gold in all ages, I expected this to be much tougher after the changes in patch 1.2.5... And also unexpectedly I found the game too easy. For my next game, I'll use the Deity++ mod again to make it harder, and play without Mementos.
I'll also try to play a more peaceful game, as I'm sure my wild "expansion" was the reason behind the gold rush I was experiencing!
I upgraded 3 towns to Cities (again, before choosing Legacies - I'm not sure if it's a bug or not, but it's considerably cheaper when doing it this way!) and moved my Capital, so I started the age with 5 Cities, just like I ended Antiquity and Exploration with.
This time I chose the Science Golden Age (Golden Age Universities), which gave me an early boost in Science. Not that it was needed, as I had a Science output of 1300, while most of the AI had around 300-500, with Ada sitting on nearly 900 - I assume due to some nifty Wonders she built.
I was raking in 3000 GPT, so I went for Natural History to pump out some Explorers.
Like always, I spent my entire bank balance on Merchants on turn 1, and what do you know, I realised that in Modern you don't have to physically move your Merchants to their destination, you can just click to start a trade route immediately! I feel like an idiot for having played this game for 900+ hours and not know about this
You learn something new every day!As mentioned, my plan was to conquer, and conquer I did - a considerable part of my Army was moved to Pataliputra during the age transition, with Charlemagne's capital Thãng Long located just 5 tiles away. On turn 2 I went to war, and within 10 turns I had wiped Charlemagne, Isabella and Machiavelli the Snake from our continent.
It was time to decide between wiping Himiko or Friedrich, and due to her much lower Science output, I went for her first. I had to wait some 8 turns to get Armor, and from then on it was easy as pie - my military sliced through her empire from 5 fronts, and by turn 40 she was gone.
What do you know, before I could reposition my troops on Friedrich's borders, he got involved in a war with Hatshepsut, all the way on the other continent. She only had 2 Settlements, and my Treasure towns weren't far away, so I pumped out 2 navy commanders loaded with Battleships, and set sail. As my Battleships were obliterating the defenses of her city Delhi, it suddenly changed hands to Xerxes in a peace deal. That's the third time in this game that this happened!
Conquering her Capital Cilakofa was a breeze, and I finally had a foothold on the other continent, in a tiny Town squeezed in between Xerxes KoK and Confucius.
By this time I had 72 land units and 8 Battleships, which fairly quickly dispatched of Friedrich's entire empire.
Around turn 80, I noticed that both Ada and Pachacuti (my last ally) had completed all 3 Space Race projects, and as is always the tactic when I play modern, I want to make it last as long as possible - and do my best at stopping the opponents winning. I identified their Launch Pads, Pachacuti's two were in range from my city Kou - but Ada's lone pad was out of range. I assembled a fleet of a Carrier and Battleships, declared war on her, and a few turns later their Launch Pads were nuked to oblivion
Poor Pachacuti, he never got to launch that spacecraft!
On turn 86, I had conquered everything on my continent, with a Settlement count of 74 - which was 45 above the limit.
I had loads and loads of Happiness resources, not to mention 230k of Gold in the bank (making 10k GPT), so I managed to keep unhappiness at bay without much issue.
My 77 land units, 19 battleships, carriers with nukes and bombers all set sail for Confucius, to start conquering the other continent.
Unfortunately I don't have any saves after this (the autosaves are gone due to my loading up other autosaves to write this story
, so I can't look up the exact numbers. Anyway, I kept conquering (while periodically nuking launch pads) until I spotted Ada's Great Banker in my territory. Pachacuti's banker had been stuck outside Antananarivo for at least 20 turns (I think it's a bug that occured when I conquered that City while it was an opponent's Capital - so he couldn't activate his GB there), but Ada's unit was suddenly a threat.On turn 101, with perhaps only 15 more settlements on the planet, shared between Xerxes, Ada and Pachacuti, I had to call it quits - so activated my GB in the final capital to get the win.
I ended the game with only 5 Cities and around 88 Towns.
This game was a lot of fun, but also very time consuming - conquering over 80 Settlements really takes its time.
I noticed that there were a lot less Artifacts than ususal (on a Huge map), which led to none of the AIs getting more than 6 artifacts. This is quite odd - why didn't they dig up the Natural Wonders?'
I'm also quite surprised that I was making so much gold in all ages, I expected this to be much tougher after the changes in patch 1.2.5... And also unexpectedly I found the game too easy. For my next game, I'll use the Deity++ mod again to make it harder, and play without Mementos.
I'll also try to play a more peaceful game, as I'm sure my wild "expansion" was the reason behind the gold rush I was experiencing!
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How did you spot Ada's Great Banker? Is there a mod which shows it?
Pure luck! I spotted it outside my Capital, kept my eye on it, and two turns later it was gone.
MutilationWave
IDDQD
Hatshepsut - Egypt - Deity - Continents and Islands - Standard map size, standard everything except moderate disasters instead of light.
I decided to finally try to get the Antiquity culture legacy, so I picked Hatty and Egypt. Spawned on a two tile navigable river. This would not do. I restarted and got a very silly start that I posted in the screenshot thread, here it is again.
This is a pretty terrible start but I decided to play it anyway for a fun challenge, and it was. I challenged anyone to play it with me and @Berrern took me up on it. So if you're reading this B, spoilers ahead!
I took Imago Mundi and Juris Civilis as mementos. The first is always awesome in Antiquity and the second proved to be key in getting the most out of these rivers with Egyptian traditions. There were three natural wonders surrounding my start, and pretty close by. Vihren very close south, Hoerikwaggo to the northeast right by Xerxes KoK as Persia, and Vicuna farther to the northwest. I expanded north first to deny Xerxes some expansion room, then south by Vihren. I made a serious mistake when I was claiming all the navigable river tiles for Waset though. Went on to claim one that took a nearby forest tile, and I didn't realize I'd blocked in my third settlement to only have two tiles to build on because of nearby resources and the natural wonder. We really need a way to trade unworked tiles between cities. I had already made that a city before I realized. I did well this age, but It could have been a real blowout if I hadn't made that mistake.
I was able to make quite a few amazing adjacency tiles with my wonders, but snaking districts around the rivers proved difficult. This is exactly the kind of decision making I want, it was a great game. I settled another couple times and saw that Xerxes expanded rapidly, even going to 6/5 settlement cap to take Vicuna from the north. I couldn't let that stand, but I had wonders to build first.
I used the two militaristic IPs for chopping to get wonders faster. The second time was wasted and I missed a mid-age Gate of all Nations by two turns. My first wonder was Pyramids, followed by Great Stele. The Stele is fantastic because when your capital is focused on wonders you really don't have time to build military, so I used the extra gold to buy my army. After levelling up my commander on IPs (I dispersed four of them in total) it was finally time to punish Xerxes for taking MY natural wonder, from the wrong direction even. I sent my commander over and found it lightly defended. Our relationship was already at -90. In fact check out how rocky we had it by the end of the age:
So I declared war, took the offending settlement and razed it, ensuring that I would have no influence for the rest of the age. This penalty is absurdly high. The turn it finished burning I settled my own Vicuna town from the south, in a much better position on fresh water near a volcano. I had disasters on medium this game and volcanoes can make some really prime settlement locations. After healing my units up I moved again on Xerxes, taking another small, lightly defended settlement. I offered peace and he gave me the settlement beside it. Unfortunately they were too far away to join my trade network and I was now over the settlement limit by two. The crisis came, which was loyalty crisis. In another thread I argued that it always happens to me that way if I'm over the settlement limit, and this was no different. I had to spend a lot of money repairing the stuff my citizens were burning all over. Xerxes's next settlement over flipped to me during the crisis granting me the last two points for the military legacy! I counted tiles and it was one away from connecting all my conquests to my empire, but I can't complain. I didn't expect to get it as my Medjays and archers away from my commander were getting wiped out by Immortals during the war.
I had absurd culture so I was able to grab the two settlement limit increases and leave myself just one over the limit. With careful resource juggling and liberal application of science UI (which grants extra happiness beside rivers) I finally stabilized to the point only two Persian cities were below zero happiness. I was able to get down three unique quarters and three academies with good to great adjacencies. My science was low at first but with wonders anything is possible. I finished the science legacy path at the end of the age, setting me up for golden age academies next age. I got lucky so many times this game. I resigned myself to not getting the economic legacy, but my trade route to Himiko had cotton added, so I bought a trader and sent it over to Xerxes to get the final two resources I needed to slot to complete the legacy. This was also exactly the number of slots I had, since I was only able to grab two camels and none of the resource limit wonders.
Some navigable river yield porn here:
I didn't think I was going to make it on wonders, but right before the end of the age I managed to build Angkor Wat. So I got my first 3/3/3/3 legacies antiquity age, by the skin of my teeth. Picked up one future civic. Here's the yields and rankings from the end of the age.
Super fun and tense age! Oh and I built six out of ten Tjaty and missed out on the four best ones! Lots of luck in both directions this game. If it weren't for some mistakes on my end, plus not getting the wonder Tjaty, this would have been a total steamroll.
I decided to finally try to get the Antiquity culture legacy, so I picked Hatty and Egypt. Spawned on a two tile navigable river. This would not do. I restarted and got a very silly start that I posted in the screenshot thread, here it is again.
This is a pretty terrible start but I decided to play it anyway for a fun challenge, and it was. I challenged anyone to play it with me and @Berrern took me up on it. So if you're reading this B, spoilers ahead!
I took Imago Mundi and Juris Civilis as mementos. The first is always awesome in Antiquity and the second proved to be key in getting the most out of these rivers with Egyptian traditions. There were three natural wonders surrounding my start, and pretty close by. Vihren very close south, Hoerikwaggo to the northeast right by Xerxes KoK as Persia, and Vicuna farther to the northwest. I expanded north first to deny Xerxes some expansion room, then south by Vihren. I made a serious mistake when I was claiming all the navigable river tiles for Waset though. Went on to claim one that took a nearby forest tile, and I didn't realize I'd blocked in my third settlement to only have two tiles to build on because of nearby resources and the natural wonder. We really need a way to trade unworked tiles between cities. I had already made that a city before I realized. I did well this age, but It could have been a real blowout if I hadn't made that mistake.
I was able to make quite a few amazing adjacency tiles with my wonders, but snaking districts around the rivers proved difficult. This is exactly the kind of decision making I want, it was a great game. I settled another couple times and saw that Xerxes expanded rapidly, even going to 6/5 settlement cap to take Vicuna from the north. I couldn't let that stand, but I had wonders to build first.
I used the two militaristic IPs for chopping to get wonders faster. The second time was wasted and I missed a mid-age Gate of all Nations by two turns. My first wonder was Pyramids, followed by Great Stele. The Stele is fantastic because when your capital is focused on wonders you really don't have time to build military, so I used the extra gold to buy my army. After levelling up my commander on IPs (I dispersed four of them in total) it was finally time to punish Xerxes for taking MY natural wonder, from the wrong direction even. I sent my commander over and found it lightly defended. Our relationship was already at -90. In fact check out how rocky we had it by the end of the age:
So I declared war, took the offending settlement and razed it, ensuring that I would have no influence for the rest of the age. This penalty is absurdly high. The turn it finished burning I settled my own Vicuna town from the south, in a much better position on fresh water near a volcano. I had disasters on medium this game and volcanoes can make some really prime settlement locations. After healing my units up I moved again on Xerxes, taking another small, lightly defended settlement. I offered peace and he gave me the settlement beside it. Unfortunately they were too far away to join my trade network and I was now over the settlement limit by two. The crisis came, which was loyalty crisis. In another thread I argued that it always happens to me that way if I'm over the settlement limit, and this was no different. I had to spend a lot of money repairing the stuff my citizens were burning all over. Xerxes's next settlement over flipped to me during the crisis granting me the last two points for the military legacy! I counted tiles and it was one away from connecting all my conquests to my empire, but I can't complain. I didn't expect to get it as my Medjays and archers away from my commander were getting wiped out by Immortals during the war.
I had absurd culture so I was able to grab the two settlement limit increases and leave myself just one over the limit. With careful resource juggling and liberal application of science UI (which grants extra happiness beside rivers) I finally stabilized to the point only two Persian cities were below zero happiness. I was able to get down three unique quarters and three academies with good to great adjacencies. My science was low at first but with wonders anything is possible. I finished the science legacy path at the end of the age, setting me up for golden age academies next age. I got lucky so many times this game. I resigned myself to not getting the economic legacy, but my trade route to Himiko had cotton added, so I bought a trader and sent it over to Xerxes to get the final two resources I needed to slot to complete the legacy. This was also exactly the number of slots I had, since I was only able to grab two camels and none of the resource limit wonders.
Some navigable river yield porn here:
I didn't think I was going to make it on wonders, but right before the end of the age I managed to build Angkor Wat. So I got my first 3/3/3/3 legacies antiquity age, by the skin of my teeth. Picked up one future civic. Here's the yields and rankings from the end of the age.
Super fun and tense age! Oh and I built six out of ten Tjaty and missed out on the four best ones! Lots of luck in both directions this game. If it weren't for some mistakes on my end, plus not getting the wonder Tjaty, this would have been a total steamroll.
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I'll stop reading here then!
It's a lovely scenario you've created, I'm on Turn 99 with 64% age progression, and am having a lot of fun!!
@MutilationWave Great write-up, and very well done on completing all 4 paths! You beat the hell out of my attempt - but I did complete the main challenge, at least 
I'll do a write-up a bit later, but I was hoping you could post some more screenshots! I'd be very interested in seeing your capital and how the borders to Himiko and Xerxes look in your game. And a screenshot of your Vihren-city, it sounds like you settled it differently to me.
Oh and how many cities did you end up with?
Edit: And what's your plan for the next age?
I'll do a write-up a bit later, but I was hoping you could post some more screenshots! I'd be very interested in seeing your capital and how the borders to Himiko and Xerxes look in your game. And a screenshot of your Vihren-city, it sounds like you settled it differently to me.
Oh and how many cities did you end up with?
Edit: And what's your plan for the next age?
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This turned out be a great game, and the odd starting position was actually really good; a 5-adjacency Food/Gold tile, 2- and 3-adjacency tiles for Science/Production and a lone mountain to help Culture.
And what a great surprise to find 3 Natural Wonders all within reach - however Xerxes had the drop on me on Hoerikwaggo.
With a focus purely on the Cultural legacy path, I had a lot of trouble finding the best order of researching Civics and Techs, and I had to pivot multiple times due to the current situation - for example when a Wonder got built by an opponent, or when realising I had made a mistake and put a building on the only eligible tile for a particular Wonder
I researched Mysticism before anyone else, and had a free choice of Pantheons, and for the first time I went for the God of the Sea (+1 production on Fishing Boats with). I only got the benefit in the Capital though, but with 11 Navigable River tiles it really boosted production!
I settled the Vihren first, and then Vinicunca next after dispersing the IP there.
Shortly after I spotted a hostile Military IP NW, and sent my Commander there. Himiko was befriending them and it was only 12 turns left, but I managed to disperse them just in time, which decreased the remaining turns to build my first wonder Great Stele from 8 to 3.
The IPs were very hostile, and I had to spend more Gold than planned on pumping out ranged units to stave off their attacks. This really delayed my plans of converting a Town to a City (near Vihren) to help building Wonders - in fact I wasn't able to upgrade Akethaten until turn 67!
Meanwhile I expanded west with two Towns, to claim the Navigable rivers there. This smells like a Songhai game in Exploration!
Xerxes, on the other hand, was aggressive in forward settling me to the East with two towns.
After Great Stele I went for Hanging Gardens, but on the next turn I got the warning that Himiko was building it too, and I could see in her empire it was almost done, so I scrapped that idea. She finished it 1 turn later. Instead I went for the Dur-Sharrikun, and dispersing Divodurum shaved 4 turns off the build time, and I had my second wonder, just only beating Himiko to it!
I conveniently forgot that Egypt's final Civic gives +1 Settlement limit, and my Capital was busy building wonders (and the next Settler would cost 440 Gold), so I didn't get to found that Town until 10 turns later than I should have...
Next Wonder was the Pyramids, and then I had to decide whether to choose the upper path (Oracle and Colosseum) or the lower (Terracotta Army and Mausoleum of Theodoric). I know the AI loves the lower path, so I went for the upper.
Interestingly, Himiko build the Mausoleum on turn 66, yet nobody had yet build the Terracotta Army. At this stage I started building the Oracle, and I was very tempted to research Tactics for Terracotta, but I assumed that it would get built any time now by an AI. How wrong I was, it didn't get built until 21 turns later! I could've had a free Army Commander...
I got the Oracle, so 4 down, 3 to go. I was doing very well in Science, so I went hard for the Colossus, but lost out ridiculously early to an unmet player Someone out there's got wild Science yields!
Next up was Gate of all Nations, and then I decided to research Navigation in the hope of getting the Ha'amonga 'A 'Maui, while building the Gate of all Nations.
I then finished researching Entertainment, and realised I had no viable location in Waset for the Colosseum! I'd have to build a Bath first to get across the river, which cost an extra 4 turns - but I still got the Colosseum in the end.
Himiko grabbed Emile Bell from under my nose, and suddenly I was running out of potential wonders with just 1 to go to finish the Cultural path!
At this stage the AI was building Wonders way ahead of where I was in the Civic tree, so I decided to do Code of Laws II and see if I could build the Mundo Perdido. At the same time I finished Navigation, and managed to build the Ha'amonga 'A 'Maui on Turn 91 - Challenge complete
I managed to build 1 more Wonder, Mundo Perdido, so ended up with 8 Wonders - all in my capital Waset.
At this stage, I realised that I had been focusing too much on Wonders, forgetting everything else... For example I was only on 5/6 Settlement limit - and only had two cities!
So I decided to settle another Town north of the Vinicunca, to get some potential adjacency bonuses from that side too.
I'm Helpful with both Xerxes and Himiko (quite the difference from @MutilationWave 's game!
), and on turn 98, they go to war, and they both invite me to ally them! My Army is on the west side of the continent (dispersing the IP on that little island), so I side with Xerxes and am suddenly at war with Himiko. She only had 29 (!) Science output, and sent a few random Tier 1 Warriors towards my lands, and so I figured this would be a breeze - I'd conquer her closest Town and City to at least get me Fealty. How wrong I was, as my measly army approached her, they found Chariot after Chariot. Neither of us made any progress, except for Himiko taking my Scientific City State Ur.
The Crisis hits, it's Loyalty, luckily I'm on 6/7 Settlement limit, but taking Himiko's two Settlements will definitely cause problems!
12 turns later Xerxes makes peace with her and gets the CS she just took, and I get the message 'Another leader has opposed your war'! That sneaky bastard of an ally Xerxes... I'm not forgetting this, mark my words, his time will come (though probably next age).
I'm getting nowhere fighting Himiko, she offers me Creek in a peace deal, and I take it. Time to regroup, get Horsemen, and take Chickasaw by force! Iron Working will take 9 turns, the Age will end in about 15, this will be tight!
With 6 turns left of the age, we go to war, and with one turn left, Chickasaw falls! Fealty is secure, but the way this invasion has been going, I could have easily taken another one from her to complete the Legacy path - but there's not enough time.
This turned out to be a really fun game, and it's the first time I've completed the Cultural legacy path, but I really had to min/max my way there to get it! Unfortunately I forgot the other paths and neglected my empire - I'm used to playing with Long ages, so I ran out of time. I much prefer Normal ages after this, it's way more challenging - in fact for my next game I might try Short ages!
I didn't get around to do any civic/tech stealing, which is a good idea when going for the Cultural legacy path. I just didn't have enough influence - although what I spent on befriending 3 Independents perhaps could've been better used on spy activities.
I perhaps should've gone to war earlier, but I did my best to stay peaceful and focus all my efforts and resources on Wonders. Lesson learnt!
I ended with 8 Settlements, of which only 2 were Cities. I wasn't above the limit as I got +1 from the Expansionist CS in the southeast.
Final yields and legacy results:
My lovely capital with its 8 Wonders:
And a couple of shots of the continent:
For the next Age, I guess there's only 1 choice: Songhai!
I've got 4 Settlements next to Navigable Rivers and the possibility of conquering 3 more - however if I recall correctly, they have to be Cities to produce Homeland Treasure Convoys. As such, I reckon I'll keep my alliance with Xerxes and trade like crazy with him, while using Himiko as a punching bag (I simply have to punish her for all the Wonders she built - nearly ruining my challenge in the process - by taking Cahokia ASAP).
As I'll be focusing on Trade, I'll replace the Juris Civilis Memento with the one that gives +5 Trade route range (can't remember its name). I'll stick with the Imago Mundi, which is brilliant in Exploration.
Also, @Xerxes, I haven't forgotten your betrayal! That alliance won't last the entire age, I can guarantee you that!
Of course I forgot that we played with Contiuity rather than Regroup, so I haven't made any preparations...
I did spot some distant lands to the west, east and southeast - so I'll start by exploring the latter and hopefully find some decent Treasure spots there.
Thanks for the challenge @MutilationWave , I'll be up for your next one too!
And what a great surprise to find 3 Natural Wonders all within reach - however Xerxes had the drop on me on Hoerikwaggo.
With a focus purely on the Cultural legacy path, I had a lot of trouble finding the best order of researching Civics and Techs, and I had to pivot multiple times due to the current situation - for example when a Wonder got built by an opponent, or when realising I had made a mistake and put a building on the only eligible tile for a particular Wonder
I researched Mysticism before anyone else, and had a free choice of Pantheons, and for the first time I went for the God of the Sea (+1 production on Fishing Boats with). I only got the benefit in the Capital though, but with 11 Navigable River tiles it really boosted production!
I settled the Vihren first, and then Vinicunca next after dispersing the IP there.
Shortly after I spotted a hostile Military IP NW, and sent my Commander there. Himiko was befriending them and it was only 12 turns left, but I managed to disperse them just in time, which decreased the remaining turns to build my first wonder Great Stele from 8 to 3.
The IPs were very hostile, and I had to spend more Gold than planned on pumping out ranged units to stave off their attacks. This really delayed my plans of converting a Town to a City (near Vihren) to help building Wonders - in fact I wasn't able to upgrade Akethaten until turn 67!
Meanwhile I expanded west with two Towns, to claim the Navigable rivers there. This smells like a Songhai game in Exploration!
Xerxes, on the other hand, was aggressive in forward settling me to the East with two towns.
After Great Stele I went for Hanging Gardens, but on the next turn I got the warning that Himiko was building it too, and I could see in her empire it was almost done, so I scrapped that idea. She finished it 1 turn later. Instead I went for the Dur-Sharrikun, and dispersing Divodurum shaved 4 turns off the build time, and I had my second wonder, just only beating Himiko to it!
I conveniently forgot that Egypt's final Civic gives +1 Settlement limit, and my Capital was busy building wonders (and the next Settler would cost 440 Gold), so I didn't get to found that Town until 10 turns later than I should have...
Next Wonder was the Pyramids, and then I had to decide whether to choose the upper path (Oracle and Colosseum) or the lower (Terracotta Army and Mausoleum of Theodoric). I know the AI loves the lower path, so I went for the upper.
Interestingly, Himiko build the Mausoleum on turn 66, yet nobody had yet build the Terracotta Army. At this stage I started building the Oracle, and I was very tempted to research Tactics for Terracotta, but I assumed that it would get built any time now by an AI. How wrong I was, it didn't get built until 21 turns later! I could've had a free Army Commander...
I got the Oracle, so 4 down, 3 to go. I was doing very well in Science, so I went hard for the Colossus, but lost out ridiculously early to an unmet player
Someone out there's got wild Science yields!Next up was Gate of all Nations, and then I decided to research Navigation in the hope of getting the Ha'amonga 'A 'Maui, while building the Gate of all Nations.
I then finished researching Entertainment, and realised I had no viable location in Waset for the Colosseum! I'd have to build a Bath first to get across the river, which cost an extra 4 turns - but I still got the Colosseum in the end.
Himiko grabbed Emile Bell from under my nose, and suddenly I was running out of potential wonders with just 1 to go to finish the Cultural path!
At this stage the AI was building Wonders way ahead of where I was in the Civic tree, so I decided to do Code of Laws II and see if I could build the Mundo Perdido. At the same time I finished Navigation, and managed to build the Ha'amonga 'A 'Maui on Turn 91 - Challenge complete
I managed to build 1 more Wonder, Mundo Perdido, so ended up with 8 Wonders - all in my capital Waset.
At this stage, I realised that I had been focusing too much on Wonders, forgetting everything else... For example I was only on 5/6 Settlement limit - and only had two cities!
So I decided to settle another Town north of the Vinicunca, to get some potential adjacency bonuses from that side too.
I'm Helpful with both Xerxes and Himiko (quite the difference from @MutilationWave 's game!
), and on turn 98, they go to war, and they both invite me to ally them! My Army is on the west side of the continent (dispersing the IP on that little island), so I side with Xerxes and am suddenly at war with Himiko. She only had 29 (!) Science output, and sent a few random Tier 1 Warriors towards my lands, and so I figured this would be a breeze - I'd conquer her closest Town and City to at least get me Fealty. How wrong I was, as my measly army approached her, they found Chariot after Chariot. Neither of us made any progress, except for Himiko taking my Scientific City State Ur.The Crisis hits, it's Loyalty, luckily I'm on 6/7 Settlement limit, but taking Himiko's two Settlements will definitely cause problems!
12 turns later Xerxes makes peace with her and gets the CS she just took, and I get the message 'Another leader has opposed your war'! That sneaky bastard of an ally Xerxes...
I'm not forgetting this, mark my words, his time will come (though probably next age).I'm getting nowhere fighting Himiko, she offers me Creek in a peace deal, and I take it. Time to regroup, get Horsemen, and take Chickasaw by force! Iron Working will take 9 turns, the Age will end in about 15, this will be tight!
With 6 turns left of the age, we go to war, and with one turn left, Chickasaw falls! Fealty is secure, but the way this invasion has been going, I could have easily taken another one from her to complete the Legacy path - but there's not enough time.
This turned out to be a really fun game, and it's the first time I've completed the Cultural legacy path, but I really had to min/max my way there to get it! Unfortunately I forgot the other paths and neglected my empire - I'm used to playing with Long ages, so I ran out of time. I much prefer Normal ages after this, it's way more challenging - in fact for my next game I might try Short ages!
I didn't get around to do any civic/tech stealing, which is a good idea when going for the Cultural legacy path. I just didn't have enough influence - although what I spent on befriending 3 Independents perhaps could've been better used on spy activities.
I perhaps should've gone to war earlier, but I did my best to stay peaceful and focus all my efforts and resources on Wonders. Lesson learnt!
I ended with 8 Settlements, of which only 2 were Cities. I wasn't above the limit as I got +1 from the Expansionist CS in the southeast.
Final yields and legacy results:
My lovely capital with its 8 Wonders:
And a couple of shots of the continent:
For the next Age, I guess there's only 1 choice: Songhai!
I've got 4 Settlements next to Navigable Rivers and the possibility of conquering 3 more - however if I recall correctly, they have to be Cities to produce Homeland Treasure Convoys. As such, I reckon I'll keep my alliance with Xerxes and trade like crazy with him, while using Himiko as a punching bag (I simply have to punish her for all the Wonders she built - nearly ruining my challenge in the process - by taking Cahokia ASAP).
As I'll be focusing on Trade, I'll replace the Juris Civilis Memento with the one that gives +5 Trade route range (can't remember its name). I'll stick with the Imago Mundi, which is brilliant in Exploration.
Also, @Xerxes, I haven't forgotten your betrayal! That alliance won't last the entire age, I can guarantee you that!
Of course I forgot that we played with Contiuity rather than Regroup, so I haven't made any preparations...
I did spot some distant lands to the west, east and southeast - so I'll start by exploring the latter and hopefully find some decent Treasure spots there.
Thanks for the challenge @MutilationWave , I'll be up for your next one too!
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MutilationWave
IDDQD
Nice work! Your write ups are fantastic.
I don't think I did better in any way, I only got lucky with a settlement flip to get the final legacy points. No more screenshots unfortunately, but I finished with four cities and five towns, two over the limit. It should have been three cities but I made that fateful mistake with my Vihren city.
I have been ignoring Mysticism in favor of an earlier commander because I feel like the pantheons are trash. God of the Sea would have been a huge advantage. Nice strategy!
The only differences in our wonders are you got Gate and Dur-Sharikkun, while I finished with Angkor Wat right towards the end.
I hope you can keep your alliance with Xerxes, because the war he started in exploration ate every bit of my reserves and my 600 gold per turn until I could make peace. I picked Dah Viet since I had never played them and they looked good to take advantage of all our tropical tiles. Songhai may be the better choice, although I haven't tried them yet myself. My yields are insane but the Vietnamese unique unit is straight garbage. I wish I had crossbowmen instead!
I was so glad to hear you preferred standard ages over long. I always played long ages too until I saw a post about how they make the game too easy. It's true! I'll never go back, the tension of the shorter age is so much more fun and really breathed new life into the game for me.
I'm on turn 56 in exploration. Trying to get ready for the next insane assault from Xerxes while trying to pick a target for overseas war is making me crazy. He went Abbasids, in my opinion the best exploration civ, which I imagine he will in your game as well.
I think you should pick the next one. I'll play whatever you come up with as long as work doesn't interfere. Soon I'll be traveling and working for six weeks straight and I won't have time to play, but I may have nine more days until that starts. I'll see if I can get my gaming laptop fixed and maybe I can play if I get a few days off.
Personal BS aside, this has been really fun and knowing I'm playing with/against someone is just great. I don't have the cojones to step into the GoTM arena just yet, so I like this as a more casual version.
If anyone out there wants to try this game or join our next one, please do!
I don't think I did better in any way, I only got lucky with a settlement flip to get the final legacy points. No more screenshots unfortunately, but I finished with four cities and five towns, two over the limit. It should have been three cities but I made that fateful mistake with my Vihren city.
I have been ignoring Mysticism in favor of an earlier commander because I feel like the pantheons are trash. God of the Sea would have been a huge advantage. Nice strategy!
The only differences in our wonders are you got Gate and Dur-Sharikkun, while I finished with Angkor Wat right towards the end.
I hope you can keep your alliance with Xerxes, because the war he started in exploration ate every bit of my reserves and my 600 gold per turn until I could make peace. I picked Dah Viet since I had never played them and they looked good to take advantage of all our tropical tiles. Songhai may be the better choice, although I haven't tried them yet myself. My yields are insane but the Vietnamese unique unit is straight garbage. I wish I had crossbowmen instead!
I was so glad to hear you preferred standard ages over long. I always played long ages too until I saw a post about how they make the game too easy. It's true! I'll never go back, the tension of the shorter age is so much more fun and really breathed new life into the game for me.
I'm on turn 56 in exploration. Trying to get ready for the next insane assault from Xerxes while trying to pick a target for overseas war is making me crazy. He went Abbasids, in my opinion the best exploration civ, which I imagine he will in your game as well.
I think you should pick the next one. I'll play whatever you come up with as long as work doesn't interfere. Soon I'll be traveling and working for six weeks straight and I won't have time to play, but I may have nine more days until that starts. I'll see if I can get my gaming laptop fixed and maybe I can play if I get a few days off.
Personal BS aside, this has been really fun and knowing I'm playing with/against someone is just great. I don't have the cojones to step into the GoTM arena just yet, so I like this as a more casual version.
If anyone out there wants to try this game or join our next one, please do!
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I'll reply to the rest of your post later, but I just had to comment on this before you play further:
I've played as Dai Viet twice, and I have to say the Voi Chien is one of my absolute favourite units in the entire game, due to its ability to move after attacking. Play it right, and you'll have no problems wiping the floor with our old pal Xerxes.
The trick is to unload from a Commander, fire, and load back into the Comander. Rinse and repeat. Of course it depends on terrain and circumstances, but with 3 commanders you can strike the enemy TWELVE times from ONE TILE per turn, without them being able to hit you back!
Get used to loading and unloading the Voi Chien (and be willing to do a lot of micro-management), and you'll never look back
Blasphemy!
I've played as Dai Viet twice, and I have to say the Voi Chien is one of my absolute favourite units in the entire game, due to its ability to move after attacking. Play it right, and you'll have no problems wiping the floor with our old pal Xerxes.
The trick is to unload from a Commander, fire, and load back into the Comander. Rinse and repeat. Of course it depends on terrain and circumstances, but with 3 commanders you can strike the enemy TWELVE times from ONE TILE per turn, without them being able to hit you back!
Get used to loading and unloading the Voi Chien (and be willing to do a lot of micro-management), and you'll never look back
MutilationWave
IDDQD
Well he declared right after I posted. Against a lesser foe that may work, but my level 2 Voi Chien are doing roughly 1/4 health to his level 2 infantry because of his stacked bonuses. The waves of them and knights necessitate knights of my own.
I always struggle choosing between Mysticism and Discipline, but I usually go for the former.
Of course it depends on your start, but the Pantheons can be very powerful. And if you're "lucky" enough to get the Plague crisis, building 4 Altars gets you the Piety civic for free in the next age!
Dai Viet is a good choice as we're surrounded by Tropical, should get you some nice yields!
I haven't really played Songhai much, but all the Navigable Rivers + the fact that I conquered two of Himiko's Settlements in Plains and Desert, made it a good choice I feel.
I'm only on turn 23 in Exploration, and just got 4 Treasure Convoys from my Homeland - those 4 Cities will yield 8 Economic points every 10 turns, so that legacy path should be a breeze!
Let's see how the alliance with Xerxes goes, after he dispersed an IP I was befriending + leader agenda already being at -20, it's beginning to fray!
I fully agree with you, playing the same game as someone else makes it a lot more fun and interesting!
I'd love to do another one, let's see how soon I can finish this game.
Yeah you'll always need some strong Infantry/Cavalry units for support.
When you get Tier 3 Voi Chiens you'll see what I mean - they've got 10 more combat strength than the Crossbowman!
Also, their Commander is a lot of fun and should give you some good bonuses for the jungle fighting
MutilationWave
IDDQD
I must admit, I underestimated the Voi Chien. I ended up running 3 of them plus a lancer with an additional lancer for support on my two main commanders. I used the tactics you described, and chipped away at the enemy while my lancers tanked some damage. Took this screenshot of the two commanders meeting on the field as their elephants look on, all overlooking the next conquest.
I've got to look into getting a mod to clear all the screen clutter to get better shots. Also, level 3 Voi Chien lose their ability to move after attacking in my game. I posted it in the bug forum.
Edit: I did not see any special unit commander at all, and I built a couple during this age.
I've got to look into getting a mod to clear all the screen clutter to get better shots. Also, level 3 Voi Chien lose their ability to move after attacking in my game. I posted it in the bug forum.
Edit: I did not see any special unit commander at all, and I built a couple during this age.
I see, @Berrern and @MutilationWave having their very own GotM :-D
MutilationWave
IDDQD
You GotM people are scary good. I like playing "with" someone without stressing over turn count.
Great to hear!! Bet you're not missing your Crossbowmen now
Great shot as well
If you can build Fortifications with those Infantry/Cavalry units sitting on your Commanders (and if they have the Bulwark and Deflade promotions), you'll never lose a war again!
Oh no! Could this be a new bug in 1.2.5? I last played Dai Viet in 1.2.4 and it was working as intended then... In fact, I just loaded up that game to check, and it works fine!
What, you didn't get the special Commander for Dai Viet, Trung Nhi? She should appear the moment you build your first land unit in Exploration...
Wow, you missed out on two of Dai Viet's main strengths, how did that happen?!
stealth_nsk
Deity
I wanted to try and see how high settlement limit I could reach in Antiquity. So, I started as Carthage with +1 limit memento and managed to get +1 from both militaristic and expansionist city-states, ending antiquity with settlement limit of 11 (of course I built 12th settlement to have fully peaceful fulfill of the military path)
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