understanding snowballing and map roll

[Thibix Magnus]

Not sure the balance section is the best for that but just to share some thoughts about snowballing and map roll.

I’m having an easier time in one of my first immortal attempts (normal speed and map size, fractal) than most emperor games before. My surprise is not about snowballing (that’s the objective at some point) but that it started in classical era.

With Sejong and Council of Elders I got (no reload) pyramids, gardens, great lib, oracle, then sankore, sofia, itza, globe, piza, porcelain (yes, Globe + Itza is such an overkill for perma golden age ...). Neighbours DoW me but were more than an era late and didn’t dare to seriously attack, I even felt bad about conquering them, just casually let two Hwachas fend them off.

Tradition start, capital location felt decent but not outstanding: hills and crabs. However I had comfortable room in a 3 player continent and settled 5 cities total for the crab monopoly with two natural wonders while keeping reasonable distance with Assyria. I wanted gardens after pyramids but took a detour by fishing boats to get god of the sea (less sustained synergy with Korea than goddess of beauty, but stronger start). Still finished the wonder before anyone got to classical, which started looking weird in immortal. Being the first founder, I again ditched Inheritance synergy to rather further my advantage with CoE and went wonder spamming. I was in Renaissance before most were in Medieval. I am tied for first score with Huns but with a sizeable science and culture lead.

The point of the thread: I don’t know what led to such an early, peaceful snowball. I almost felt the AI was bugged, Assyria was stuck in classical without having an aggressive neighbour. Don’t know if it was because of the pantheon or the founder.

So maybe it’s just a matter of map? If you are surrounded without early war benefits, you can go with tradition but will have to invest quite a lot more in military than if you weren’t surrounded, without benefit other than surviving. So in any case it's a disadvantage, not an alternative strategy. With authority you are a generic civ against ancient/classical era monsters.

While if you have room to peacefully expand you can snowball, there is no tailored strategy to follow, tradition with room is really better than tradition without. Maybe the map roll simply obliterates any other consideration about compound yields and does this pantheon or building gives one more or one less yield.

It is of course legit to consider a surrounded start as if you’re simply playing a higher difficulty, but I think balance should account a bit for that. I certainly don’t have enough experience about what to nerf (if anything). But I wonder if there could be more paths that would actually fare better in a surrounded situation (besides being Aztecs or grabbing the very AI popular god of war). Vanilla BNW was maybe too tradition-favored, but it did give it more defensive power while penalizing expansion more than in VP. There was also the fun piety “small” start playing the underdog with 2 cities and using religion as diplomacy and catch-up tool. And in VP there are additional constraints like monopolies and population requirement for national wonders that still skews tradition towards at least 3 good cities.

To summarize, it is good that VP gives more flexibility about empire shape, but does it give too much benefits to expansion in every configuration, even tradition? Hence giving much more importance to the map roll for pacific strategies? Would it be good or even possible to have more catch-up tools that ONLY benefit small, surrounded starts, ideally without new code? Or maybe rebalance the tradition tree, penalize a bit more expansion, while removing population constraints for national monuments, relaxing monopoly requirement and/or additional benefits for war near the capital?

The whole point being in fully playing the map uncertainty instead of homogenizing that part or restarting when you have no early war bonus.

Sorry for the long text, I put details in case I'm totally wrong or I just had a very weird game that can't be generalized or used some specific OP stuff.

 

[tu_79]

It is as designed.

Tall empires should have at least 3 cities, we even modified Venice to allow her a couple of settlers.

If you start surrounded by other players, then you'll have a harder time going peacefully. But it makes it easier for warmongering. So, you know that this start is gonna be frantic from the beginning. In this case, progress is a bad choice, since it takes too long to shine.

Going aggressive makes me want to use Authority, the extra production makes a very strong game, the rewards for successfully warmongering good to keep me going.
But I also may go Tradition and puppet slowly the biggest threat while defending from the other neighbors. Not as shiny, but doable. And much better later, if I decide to stop expanding.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

yeah I guess settling for war is the way to go when surrounded. But the worst case is when surrounded by natural warmongers or classic era powerhouses, sometimes you can just hope for survival. I wonder if it's worth mixing 1 or even 2 authority policies that benefit killing units, with tradition. Otherwise there is no payback to invest a lot in defense, letting other culture civs run away, and missing on tradition benefits for e.g. Arabia or Korea. So.. I guess I should just see map roll as a difficulty level on its own.

Still I don't get why there is this 3 cities floor design, it feels a bit shoe-horning against laying low, while VP seems to favour flexibility. In particular I don't see the use of pop requirement for national wonders, there are already enough drawbacks for a small empire (1 or 2 cities).

 

[Gazebo]

yeah I guess settling for war is the way to go when surrounded. But the worst case is when surrounded by natural warmongers or classic era powerhouses, sometimes you can just hope for survival. I wonder if it's worth mixing 1 or even 2 authority policies that benefit killing units, with tradition. Otherwise there is no payback to invest a lot in defense, letting other culture civs run away, and missing on tradition benefits for e.g. Arabia or Korea. So.. I guess I should just see map roll as a difficulty level on its own.

Still I don't get why there is this 3 cities floor design, it feels a bit shoe-horning against laying low, while VP seems to favour flexibility. In particular I don't see the use of pop requirement for national wonders, there are already enough drawbacks for a small empire (1 or 2 cities).

1-2 cities isn't an empire, it's a city-state.

G

 

[Thibix Magnus]

1-2 cities isn't an empire, it's a city-state.

G

damn, that's what I wanted to play all this time

 

[Thibix Magnus]

Anyway the input I wanted to provide is that my sejong immortal game was in the pocket by classical era and wondered if it was relevant for the team. I don’t know if it belongs to the balance section, meaning something was wrong - e.g. the AI, even an aggressive one like Assyria, not trying anything to stop me - or it’s just something that can happen (so next time I’ll ask the strategy section instead, if I was just too lucky with my map roll).

 

[CrazyG]

Anyway the input I wanted to provide is that my sejong immortal game was in the pocket by classical era and wondered if it was relevant for the team. I don’t know if it belongs to the balance section, meaning something was wrong - e.g. the AI, even an aggressive one like Assyria, not trying anything to stop me - or it’s just something that can happen (so next time I’ll ask the strategy section instead, if I was just too lucky with my map roll).

Which version are you on?

There have been several people reporting a lack of AI aggression lately, and the AI was made notably stronger in the March 1st patch.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

oh well that could be the reason then, my game was previous to that update.