Treasure Fleets From Homeland Cities?

[Brew God]

Hello Fellow Civ 7 Fans - I have over 300 hours now for the game and in my current game for the Exploration Age playing as Isabella my homeland cities were spawning Treasure Fleet Ships. Has anyone else noticed this before? I had cities in distant lands too and ended up getting 65 TF Ships for the age. The ships would spawn and I could instantly cash them in for points and gold. I have never seen this before.

Any feed back would be helpful.

Thanks

Brew God

 

[aelf]

Were you playing as Songhai?

Some weird behaviour I've seen regarding distant lands. Distant land AIs can spawn treasure fleets, it seems, but it's not clear if they can simply cash them in right there. I've seen them just wandering around.

Another one is in a previous game of mine, one of the distant land AIs completed the military legacy path quite early in Exploration without even crossing the ocean. I suspect they got it because there were two distant land continents and they had cities on both, but I've never seen this happen before despite the two-continent distant land thing being a consistent setup.

 

[Navelgazer]

Yeah, my guess would be that you're playing as Songhai. One of their Civic Bonuses spawns treasure fleets in homeland cities with navigable rivers.

 

[Brew God]

Hello Aelf - I was playing as one of the new Civ Leaders from the latest update with Founders Edition. Bulgaria or Songhai I would have to load up saved games etc. to find which leader I used. The cities were on the same continent too. I used the lens for that thinking the ships were spawning because my cities 10 hexes or less away were on a different continent. Not the case. Oh well worked out great for me. I wonder if I can replicate this again going forward.

Update...Yes played as Songhai with Civic Bonuses working with Navigable Rivers. Thanks Navelgazer.

Brew God

 

[vorlon_mi]

Were you playing as Songhai?

Some weird behaviour I've seen regarding distant lands. Distant land AIs can spawn treasure fleets, it seems, but it's not clear if they can simply cash them in right there. I've seen them just wandering around.

When I played as Songhai, I did get Treasure Fleets on my navigable rivers. They were usually 1-pointers, so they helped, but didn't make a huge difference. Right now, I can't remember whether I need to move them before cashing them in, or whether I could cash them in right there, in the river.

In my last game, Macchiavelli cashed in a few fleets from his island city, but didn't really come close to fulfilling the legacy path. One of the Distant Lands civs (Ben Franklin as America) cashed in some Factory resources in Modern, but I don't remember seeing any DL civs actually cashing in fleets in Exploration. I wonder -- is their goal the mirror of mine? Would they consider a luxury resource in my Homeland as their treasure resource, since it's in their Distant Lands? I did see some DL leaders trying to found -- or acquire thru a peace deal -- cities on my land mass in Exploration.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'm usually pretty unlucky with my distant land resources. I don't think I ever had a settlement with more than 3 and usually it's just 1. So, having 5 homeland settlements producing 1 treasure fleet each (which I actually had in my Songhai game) was about half of my treasure fleet total.

 

[Brew God]

Hello Civ 7 Fans - I love playing with Archipelago Maps and the TF resources are hit and miss. The best I had in the last game with the crazy ships spawning in my homelands was 4-5 sources from the distant lands. As Stealth NSK wrote my homeland ships were just 1 resource and yes they can be cashed in while on the river instantly.

I did not really understand the concept for the ships spawning in the homeland so I can't answer yes or no for the question from Siptah. I will test it out next go around. I just wanted to go with Songhai as it was my first time to use them.

Brew God

 

[aelf]

When I played as Songhai, I did get Treasure Fleets on my navigable rivers. They were usually 1-pointers, so they helped, but didn't make a huge difference. Right now, I can't remember whether I need to move them before cashing them in, or whether I could cash them in right there, in the river.

In my last game, Macchiavelli cashed in a few fleets from his island city, but didn't really come close to fulfilling the legacy path. One of the Distant Lands civs (Ben Franklin as America) cashed in some Factory resources in Modern, but I don't remember seeing any DL civs actually cashing in fleets in Exploration. I wonder -- is their goal the mirror of mine? Would they consider a luxury resource in my Homeland as their treasure resource, since it's in their Distant Lands? I did see some DL leaders trying to found -- or acquire thru a peace deal -- cities on my land mass in Exploration.

You don't have to move the Songhai treasure fleet to cash it in. In my experience, it helps to complete the legacy path when you have something like a +1 and a +2 source of points in addition. It's not too bad because it's pretty easy to manage those, but anything more might depend on map generation luck.

Homeland resources are not currently treasure resources to distant land civs.

 

[Kwami]

Some weird behaviour I've seen regarding distant lands. Distant land AIs can spawn treasure fleets, it seems, but it's not clear if they can simply cash them in right there. I've seen them just wandering around.

I've seen very few AI players get any treasure fleet points across all of my games so far. They just don't know how to do it. I usually end the age with all of the AI on 0 TF points. Sometimes, they'll get 1-3.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I've seen very few AI players get any treasure fleet points across all of my games so far. They just don't know how to do it. I usually end the age with all of the AI on 0 TF points. Sometimes, they'll get 1-3.

I'll add to this they tend to plant settlements in Distant Lands (and Islands) with very little regard to whether they have any Treasure/Distant Lands Resources at all. That means they may block off your direct path to Resources, but don't directly compete for them that often.

Latest game was a good example: I was slow off the mark getting to Distant Lands, and found 3 AI settlements already founded there from the Homeland: the total of all three settlements was exactly one Treasure resource, and I have never seen any AI Civ with more than 10 Treasure Points by the end of Exploration: they just don't compete for them the way they compete to build Wonders or fight wars.

 

[Morgawr]

Is it possible to make the AI more consistently cash in their treasure fleets? Or is that a DLL thing?

I hadn’t noticed a problem with this until my last game. I had full vision of this one town and watched my ally spawn 3+ treasure fleets during exploration. His mainland coast was literally six hexes out / 2 turns sail time , all clear, peace friendly waters, but the age ended and he still had 0 treasure points, never cashed them in!

Might be a bug where AI gets confused and don’t know what to do with their treasure fleets? It’s classified as a support unit I believe , like commanders. They were just swimming them around the distant land town or the waters between distant and mainland, or idle.

 

[Taefin]

Not related to RHQ, since this would be in .dll, but let’s be honest, where else would FXS AI team be reading for ideas. I feel like units need to have a passive state that can toggle between defense, pillage, and team. Currently it seems like if they aren’t in a city attack team, units just sit passively on defense, missing opportunities to pick off undefended settlements. If instead they could be in a pillage state, that would pillage or independently attack fortified districts or whatever was near them (perhaps if they detected numerical advantage), I suspect AI would be much more effective in war. Treasure fleets default needs to be moving to friendly territory to cash in. As is, I imagine most units just sit around waiting for an order to miraculously slip through too many disqualifying conditionals.

 

[Yzman]

I tend to lose to the AI for lots of resources but I also noticed that the middle islands just don't have many. It would be hard to win treasure fleets without taking some distant land cities from AI.

I'm my last game I found some good islands that had a bunch and I literally had to travel 20+ turns to get.to my border. Not worth it. The continent went straight across north to south with no water way.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I tend to lose to the AI for lots of resources but I also noticed that the middle islands just don't have many. It would be hard to win treasure fleets without taking some distant land cities from AI.

I'm my last game I found some good islands that had a bunch and I literally had to travel 20+ turns to get.to my border. Not worth it. The continent went straight across north to south with no water way.

Original resource spread was designed for options, which are now called "balanced". The new default option has much less intermediate islands on Continent+, so it's possible to found zero resources there. I hope new resource distribution in the coming patch will make it better.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I tend to lose to the AI for lots of resources but I also noticed that the middle islands just don't have many. It would be hard to win treasure fleets without taking some distant land cities from AI.

I'm my last game I found some good islands that had a bunch and I literally had to travel 20+ turns to get.to my border. Not worth it. The continent went straight across north to south with no water way.

I had this issue on a Terra Incognita map. The distant lands had long, thin, landmasses with little gaps at either the north or south ends. Most were two hexes wide, so putting a settlement there wouldn't act as a bridge / pass through. Yes, the TF that spawned on cities I captured from the Distant Lands AI never made it home... way too many turns.

I achieved some milestones for that legacy path with my fleets from islands, but couldn't reach it.
That's one of the elements one cannot plan for -- what Distant Lands will look like.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

That's one of the elements one cannot plan for -- what Distant Lands will look like.

- And this is one of the greatest defects in the game right now, IMHO: an entire Legacy path in Exploration is utterly dependent on the map generation, which does not become apparent until you reach the Exploration Age, start exploring the Distant Lands and discover that short of an in-game Miracle, there's no way you will ever see 30, or even 20, Treasure Resources.

This is the primary reason I have finished twice as many Antiquity Ages compared to Exploration Ages: I see no point, usually, in playing a game in which 1/4 of the 'paths to victory' are closed off by map generation before I play the first turn.

This defect in the game as rendered is made worse by the fact that there is no effective alternative currently: without generation of Treasure Resources with some kind of availability there is no alternative path to an Economic Legacy completion in Exploration Age.

 

[tedhebert]

- And this is one of the greatest defects in the game right now, IMHO: an entire Legacy path in Exploration is utterly dependent on the map generation, which does not become apparent until you reach the Exploration Age, start exploring the Distant Lands and discover that short of an in-game Miracle, there's no way you will ever see 30, or even 20, Treasure Resources.

This is the primary reason I have finished twice as many Antiquity Ages compared to Exploration Ages: I see no point, usually, in playing a game in which 1/4 of the 'paths to victory' are closed off by map generation before I play the first turn.

This defect in the game as rendered is made worse by the fact that there is no effective alternative currently: without generation of Treasure Resources with some kind of availability there is no alternative path to an Economic Legacy completion in Exploration Age.

I’m a little nonplussed by this affirmation.

After 12 complete games through all ages, playing different type of maps (fractal, continent plus, archipelago mostly) I have never ever failed to complete the treasure fleet path…

yes sometimes it took a lot of scouting with my 3-4 cogs to find the good places to settle, but I always buy cogs and build 3-5 settlers as my first actions in explo (depending on settl limit) and I always find at least 5 treasure ressources

 

[Leucarum]

I’m a little nonplussed by this affirmation.

After 12 complete games through all ages, playing different type of maps (fractal, continent plus, archipelago mostly) I have never ever failed to complete the treasure fleet path…

yes sometimes it took a lot of scouting with my 3-4 cogs to find the good places to settle, but I always buy cogs and build 3-5 settlers as my first actions in explo (depending on settl limit) and I always find at least 5 treasure ressources

- And this is one of the greatest defects in the game right now, IMHO: an entire Legacy path in Exploration is utterly dependent on the map generation, which does not become apparent until you reach the Exploration Age, start exploring the Distant Lands and discover that short of an in-game Miracle, there's no way you will ever see 30, or even 20, Treasure Resources.

This is the primary reason I have finished twice as many Antiquity Ages compared to Exploration Ages: I see no point, usually, in playing a game in which 1/4 of the 'paths to victory' are closed off by map generation before I play the first turn.

This defect in the game as rendered is made worse by the fact that there is no effective alternative currently: without generation of Treasure Resources with some kind of availability there is no alternative path to an Economic Legacy completion in Exploration Age.

Well... Maybe you're both right? It's rare that it would be impossible to score it... But the other exploration legacy paths are close to automatic so you often have to slow down scoring them if you want to complete economic specifically... Unless you get a lucky map spawn.

Legacy paths in general need a rework. Antiquity is perfect, but it's also the most clasically "Civ" so it was the easiest to get right. And exploration is nowhere near as bad as the mess of modern era.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I’m a little nonplussed by this affirmation.

After 12 complete games through all ages, playing different type of maps (fractal, continent plus, archipelago mostly) I have never ever failed to complete the treasure fleet path…

yes sometimes it took a lot of scouting with my 3-4 cogs to find the good places to settle, but I always buy cogs and build 3-5 settlers as my first actions in explo (depending on settl limit) and I always find at least 5 treasure ressources

There's no "in-between", in my experience.

In two games I got 6 - 9 Treasure resources in the first islands or shores of the Distant Lands and sailed through the Treasure Fleet Legacy path well before the Age was 2/3 over.

In 15+ games there were from 0 to 3 Treasure Resources in All the islands between my side of the home continent and the Distant Lands continent, and all the resources on the shores of that continent were already occupied by Distant Lands Civs. In two games I was able to take cities from them in time to set up Treasure Fleets, but it took almost half the Age to build the fleets, deploy them and the required garrisons, and get the fleets started - and in one game, it was too late, too far to complete the Legacy path.

- And in one game I played with No Civs in the Distant Lands, which made it easy to complete the Treasure Fleet Legacy path, but too be honest, Too Easy: I felt that the game was lacking in too many ways.

And I agree with @Leucarum that the other Exploration Age paths are almost comically easy on any difficulty setting, which makes the map-dependent Treasure/Economic path all the more jarring.

I can almost understand if the intention was to focus the entire Age on Treasure Fleets and Colonial Resources somehow, in which case they sort of succeeded. But that resurfaces the old Eurocentric Problem that has bedeviled the game since the beginning. It also leaves out other contemporary Non-European based trade activities like the overland Silk Road, North African camel caravan routes, and Song Chinese sea trade with Indonesian islands and Southeast Asia - all worthy of inclusion, and a set of starting points for providing more variety of execution in the Legacy paths.

 

[Menocchio]

The concept of the Treasure Fleets is strange and incomplete, because not only does it reinforce an abrupt Eurocentrism, it simultaneously forgets that European "treasure fleets" historically brought goods from Asia and Africa as well: the central example of the Spanish Manila galleons, which certainly aren't named for Manila, California. This is to say nothing of Portuguese and Dutch Indian Ocean trade, nor the perhaps second-most famous "treasure fleet," that of the Ming dynasty (which, even though it's in the game in the Exploration Age, doesn't get a special victory condition for this, unlike Songhai...?).