Towns Are Broken, I Have A Fix (Higher Growth Rate, More Expensive Cities)

[tman2000]

Each specialist added to the Punic Docks seems to give +2 science, +2 culture, +2 food and +1 food production.

So a total of 6 added within the first 15 turns probably means +12 science, +12 culture, +12 food and +6 production? Not sure if that's an accurate total.

I guess it's cumulative specialists that really overpower them. I find that most mega yields result from specific social policies that complement with leader/civ/wonder bonuses and then having a lot of settlements with the right buildings and adjacencies. The UI remains a bit too opaque to really review this clearly.

Still, it's cool you tried out this experiment and while it doesn't seem incredibly overpowered, it's at least a way to get a bit of an early lead especially if you played as Carthage.

 

[Melkus]

Yes, maximizing the number of punic ports - but only at the end of Antiquity - is the way to go for Carthage (the Cothon's production can be huge, but a bad investment in towns - so you don't want to go for them too early). Can be suspenseful if you're in a tough game or draw a difficult crisis and money gets tight.
They have fixed the beneficial bugs, so it's harder to dominate with them - being a midsize power until the transition is probably a decent goal.

 

[Taefin]

Yes, maximizing the number of punic ports - but only at the end of Antiquity - is the way to go for Carthage (the Cothon's production can be huge, but a bad investment in towns - so you don't want to go for them too early). Can be suspenseful if you're in a tough game or draw a difficult crisis and money gets tight.
They have fixed the beneficial bugs, so it's harder to dominate with them - being a midsize power until the transition is probably a decent goal.

Help me understand this. As I see it, every Carthage unique building you buy in a town increases your gold/turn, making it easier to buy the next. And these are the most important things to buy. And you want to end antiquity with as close to 3000 gold as possible to jumpstart converting to cities in exploration. I also found I needed to buy other buildings like altars to get cothons into the right place without blocking good resource adjacency spots.

How would you get the gold you need for this if you are not buying these consistently throughout antiquity, any time you can? Even if each individual building doesn’t pay itself off in antiquity, the earlier you get each, the longer it yields gold and the less net gold it costs. I ended my Carthage game early into exploration because I felt too far ahead with +4/5 cothons in each of 7 settlements.

 

[Taefin]

That's a sort of funny exploit idea - but why would you even want this? I sounds like turning everything into cities for its own sake - there's almost nothing you can build early in Exploration (and some of those towns will have weak production anyway)

I agree with you there. I’ve never had success with converting low production cities on turn 1. By then, I don’t want to spare my camels and all production resources to build up production buildings in these cities one at a time, since I have more than enough use for my camels in my high production cities.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The competitive civ community and the high level players. Normal settings, Normal speed, Deity.

Don't the competitive folks play online speed?

A big part of my issue with the streamers is they mostly play Deity, a niche that is well represented here but not representative of most players.

 

[Melkus]

And these are the most important things to buy.

IIRC, I ended up with situations where I'd get 5 gold out of a 480 gold investment - a tough proposition at turn 50. And the thing costs 2 maintenance. Seems better to buy some cheap warehouses first?
Of course, with multiple silver ([Edit: Gold... thx @UWHabs...)] resources / better adjacencies you may pull it off. Then there's the tradition to get them cheaper - but do you want to rush to that?
But yes, finding the gold for the late push and have some left over for at least 2-3 early conversions is an issue.

Another interesting question would be: if you can only afford the Cothon, but not the Dockyard - would it still be worth it for Explo? Carthage is definitely interesting to think through.

 

[UWHabs]

IIRC, I ended up with situations where I'd get 5 gold out of a 480 gold investment - a tough proposition at turn 50. And the thing costs 2 maintenance. Seems better to buy some cheap warehouses first?
Of course, with multiple silver resources / better adjacencies you may pull it off. Then there's the tradition to get them cheaper - but do you want to rush to that?
But yes, finding the gold for the late push and have some left over for at least 2-3 early conversions is an issue.

Another interesting question would be: if you can only afford the Cothon, but not the Dockyard - would it still be worth it for Explo? Carthage is definitely interesting to think through.

I think only a Cothon would still be worth it, but starting the next age with a ton of resource slots is a nice extra bonus that can't be discounted. If you immediately jump to the next age and can spread out 4-5 cities with like 4-5 resources each, it can really help you not waste resources if you need a trade route to get Camels.

With the tradition, and if you have access to a Gold or two for cheaper buildings, you can get Cothons pretty cheap. I feel like they came out to like 384 for me at the end of the era in my last game, and they'd basically never get less than 6 production.

In my game earlier in the era I was getting other infrastructure down, but once I got to the middle of the era, then I switched to basically grabbing the Cothon/port in each town whenever I accumulated enough cash, since I didn't necessarily have anything else desperate to spend it on. There's not really any point to rushing them earlier, if you have anything else more urgent to use the money for. But once you just have enough cash sitting around that you're not in trouble, you may as well get them down.

 

[Melkus]

But once you just have enough cash sitting around that you're not in trouble, you may as well get them down.

For sure, I did it the same way - just second-guessed in hindsight if buying them so early is the smart thing to do. Probably depends - if there's some military goal to achieve, a Numidian horse or two never hurts. But it's not like spare money is collecting interest.

 

[aelf]

In this game, I had a lot of gold income. I only bought the UBs when I was in a comfortable spot, i.e. when 1000+ gold in treasury, buy the unique quarter in one settlement.

I was able to start Exploration Age with 3500 gold, and I had to spend 1000 at the end of Antiquity to not simply lose it.