Think Salt is most OP of all?

[joncnunn]

There are three sailing luxuries, not two. Crabs, whales and pearls.

I excluded Pearls because that would be a Tears of the God start. (With the fall patch)

 

[anthropophage]

I'd generally take GotS over TotG on pearls. Assuming I've got 4 or more sailing resources...

 

[anthropophage]

pearls suck and you'd be taking tears of the gods if you spawn with them as main lux anyway.

They're the worst sea resource to get, sure, but they're still quite powerful tiles when you've buffed them with everything. They only suck in comparison to other sea resources, they'll still be better than almost anything you can find on land. As for taking tears of the gods, if I get a start with all pearls I'll take it, but if I get a start with, say, two pearls and three fish, I'd take GotS in a heartbeat. You can turn those extra hammers into faith later, turning faith into hammers is a bit more difficult.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Why not... both?

 

[Syailendra]

i think salt needs a little nerf, remove the gold once a civ hit chemistry. But even with that nerf, i'd pick salt start over sea res start.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

That wouldn't do anything, the problem with salt is it gives food and production early game, not mid game.

 

[Buccaneer]

Anytime the RNG places your starting settler directly on the coast (as opposed to one tile away from it)
On a water map it would happen 100% of the time, but on standard map size it happens a lot (other than on Pangaea)

You mean like this (settler started on the coast before I moved it)?

 

[kb27787]

They're the worst sea resource to get, sure, but they're still quite powerful tiles when you've buffed them with everything. They only suck in comparison to other sea resources, they'll still be better than almost anything you can find on land. As for taking tears of the gods, if I get a start with all pearls I'll take it, but if I get a start with, say, two pearls and three fish, I'd take GotS in a heartbeat. You can turn those extra hammers into faith later, turning faith into hammers is a bit more difficult.

Faith to hammers is not hard at all once you hit industrial 1000 faith = 1000+ hammers (GE for any wonder you want)
Early game if your faith is good, holy warriors is another way.

Compare with the hammer cost to generate the same amount of faith and faith to hammers wins out unless GotS enables you to get Hagia or a religious wonder (given the fact that you don't beeline theology, detouring to optics, it seems unlikely on deity)

 

[darkpigraph]

You'll know when you have a GotS start (cityspots with 5-7 sea resources each) and it can blow up into something ridiculously powerful. It's a frantic push to all those workboats out but seeing your fish tiles give 5f2h at turn 50ish is huge. The only problem i tend to have in GotS games is keeping faith up since my pantheon isn't generating any, and happiness since my growth will skyrocket and since i've committed to GotS i'm unlikely to settle inland for other luxuries.

The main issue that makes salt too strong is that it's already a strong tile, but improving it adds two yields, 1f and 1h, whereas most luxuries get one yield when improved and it's usually 1g. I think it'd be a bit more balanced if improving salt added either 1f OR 1h(still gains a hammer at ST), still strong but not OP. Also, as it is, improvable with mining and still a growth booster, you have lux's tradeable very early. Maybe with the yields as is but salt "demoted" to bonus resource it'd be more balanced.

 

[anthropophage]

The opportunity cost of faith buying GEs is that you can't buy any more useful GPs. And really, what's the point of a post industrial GE? You can already get any wonder you want at that stage of the game. Early hammers can be turned into anything and everything, not just faith. GotS is a far stronger opening than TotG, the early hammers snowball into everything else you do.

 

[Talcove]

Salt doesn't need a pantheon/religious belief to make it good. It's good on it's own.
Salt doesn't require you to deviate from an optimal tech path.
Salt doesn't require you to give up a lot of land tiles.

Salt > All.

 

[4N4C0ND4]

Speaking of ridiculous yields, Goddess of Festivals and then Monasteries is the coolest

Too bad you aren't the French and can plant Bordeaux here

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

Salt doesn't need a pantheon/religious belief to make it good. It's good on it's own.
Salt doesn't require you to deviate from an optimal tech path.
Salt doesn't require you to give up a lot of land tiles.

Salt > All.

^
Yup. That says it all.
Salt is like a honey badger. it just doesn't care. You dont need anything to make it great.

and speaking of wine / incense and the god of festivals and monasteries , it has been my experience that having 4+ incense in your capitol is generally bad, even with all these buffs. Why? lack of food. I tend to see incense on flat desert tiles with no water. Working these tiles requires tons of food from somewhere else. This makes it harder to run specialists. So, then you pump your food trade routes to your cap to make up the difference. Maybe you get some wonder to increase food. You are *still* at a food/hammer deficit compared to salt, or even some other mining resource that gives hammers.

Wine is perhaps a bit different (read: better) because that tends to appear near grassland tiles, maybe even some fresh water.

 

[Chum]

Salt is clearly better, but the nice thing about God of the Sea is that it turns terrible starts into downright decent ones.

Like so --

Spoiler :

Absolutely nothing on land worthwhile that game, but GoTS turned it into very acceptable.

 

[bovinespy]

^
Salt is like a honey badger. it just doesn't care.

That needs to be on a T-shirt...

 

[Justice1337]

The problem with Salt is that it doesn't give you very much Gold. I think every other luxury gives you 3 total Gold when improved. And, it's not every game where I'd want to trade 1 Hammer or 1 Food for 2 Gold. It basically locks you into going 2-3 cities and staying relatively peaceful before Turn 100, or at worst, punishes any play outside of that. You will need to trade away most of your luxuries to the AI just to stay positive, much less turn enough income for CS's. Consider also that you're often on an otherwise High-Prod, low-Food start with Salt, and you see the pigeon-hole into a Tall opening as a bit awkward.

Once I had a triple-Wheat, Triple-Salt start as Celts. I went Sun God there, not Earth Mother. My opening was 1-city NC. As expected, my continent was cleared by about Turn 90, and I still had made Education by about then. Also as expected, I was pillage-repairing to keep in the black as I searched for the other continent. (Picts FTW) Otherwise, I wouldn't tout a Salt, Earth-Mother start as anything God-like, and it's probably not even favored to found a religion on Deity without a good second city site.

The real OP luxury? Gold/Silver. It's already puzzling enough to have an entire building, the Mint, dedicated to +2 Gold on a Luxury, rather than other buildings that depend on strategics. It's just really odd that all other variables are equal, only if you get that one particular luxury, you get an extra building. But then also, you get one of the best Pantheons in the game, Religious Idols, tied to that Luxury. That Culture is arguably better mid-game than even Faith, of which 2F Pantheons are not generally good to begin with. But now that Culture also turns to Tourism late. At least with Wine/Incense, those luxuries are 1f1h3g yield on base, or worse in the case of Desert Incense. If that's not enough, Mining is the earliest Luxury tech, which of course leaves you a lot of space to beeline whatever 3'd level tech you really want, such as Philo. At what's with Mercantilism giving +1 Beaker from Mints also? Now Gold/Silver sites are effectively 1 pop bigger just because? Just absurdly polarizing on the Gold system. Economic starts w/ Gold/Silver are just so much better than those without, it's not comparable. Leads to more rerolls than anything else, imo.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

You don't work luxury tiles in the early game, you work food tiles. And salt is a food tile and a production tile and a gold tile. You can grow while getting things built faster. You get the granary soon, which means you get your workers faster, a library sooner, so you get the NC sooner, so you get the oracle sooner, so you finish tradition and get your aqueduct sooner, etc... Mining lux starts aren't going to give you a pop 40 capital by turn 150, but salt will.

Aqueduct is the correct spelling? What is that e doing there?

 

[Justice1337]

The old "play every game the same way and reroll if it doesn't work" canard. Also, you lost me at "build the Oracle sooner". Play on Deity only should be considered for what is the best, since every other difficulty is an automatic win whatever you do.

But for the rest of us not playing the same Tech-push game every time, some games have you working nearly all luxury tiles from early game. Which you would certainly be doing in any game where you valued 2G greater than an extra Food/Hammer to begin with. It's for those games that Gold/Silver are really bonkers, relative to other 3g luxes like Copper.

 

[Light Cleric]

The old "play every game the same way and reroll if it doesn't work" canard. Also, you lost me at "build the Oracle sooner". Play on Deity only should be considered for what is the best, since every other difficulty is an automatic win whatever you do.

But for the rest of us not playing the same Tech-push game every time, some games have you working nearly all luxury tiles from early game. Which you would certainly be doing in any game where you valued 2G greater than an extra Food/Hammer to begin with. It's for those games that Gold/Silver are really bonkers, relative to other 3g luxes like Copper.

I think you're the only one who really introduced re-rolling here unless I missed something.

Also, given some of the stuff that's been posted lately and the absolutely stupid stuff I've screwed around with in-game, there's still a lot of "bad" stuff you can do on Deity and still win. I don't see the point of pissing on other people over the difficulty.

 

[Justice1337]

It was said that you don't work Luxury tiles early game, you work Food tiles. I was wondering what's the strategy in games where that's not the best idea. Reroll seemed like the only step left for a strat that dogmatically works food tiles. Seems better to me to have a strategy that actually responds to map conditions, but reroll is an option, I suppose.

I guess for that strategy though, Salt seems to be the best luxury.