besset
Warlord
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2017
- Messages
- 206
Ever since i started playing vox populi and tried authority for the first time and won, i have found it to be the best and easiest way to win in vox populi. Especially on higher difficulties i feel it really shines. I may be wrong though but these are some of my thoughts.
First of all the AI in vox populi will never be as good strategically as a human player. It just doesnt have the strategic overview and decision making that a human player has, like focusing on certain victory conditions but perhaps even more so in terms of trading units and min maxing that part of the game. In higher difficulties with the AI having all it's bonuses the one thing they don't have is the better unit trading and unit movement logic that a human player has.
On higher difficulties, the land in the earliest stages of the game gets settled much faster and this makes authority a very lucrative choice since you can just grab your neighbours cities. This means you dont need to waste production on settlers and instead use that production on building units. This gets even more crazy when you play a civ with a strong early game unit (like songhai). If you invest in a sucessful early army and you never let your units die you are free to build every infrastructure building in your capital and satellite cities for the rest of the game pretty much and also try your luck at wonders more easily.
If you play your cards right and never let your units die, they become unstoppable killing machines that pretty much never die (this gets even more fortified with the % combat bonuses in the authority tree. It also allows more easily for mistakes to be made, since authority has such a nice early production boost so if you lose a few units it might not be the end of the world (thought sometimes it can be on deity). Then if you get god of war you can very easily get a religion, and we all know how good religion is in vox populi. Eventually as you take more and more cities you will be able to use inquisitors in your captured cities along your war path. This allows for a very easy reform, much more so than when using other policy trees (im always able to reform using this strategy as authority) and then taking cities becomes even better when you reform and get culture and GA points alongside more culture and science from the authority tree when capturing cities and insane combat % increase on your units. If you lose units at this stage of the game it doesnt even matter that much, you can very quickly build more upgraded units especially if you for example manage to get alhambra. These wonders shouldnt be a problem to get either as you will have very small wonder cost (and really nice production as authority). And when you get to autocracy it becomes even easier (25% attack bonus for 50 turns and various combat improvements). Diplomacy doesnt matter that much either when you snowball as authority and neither does supply cap (especially if you get all the "authority" wonders which will not be that hard). Also monopolies are very easy to get as you take your opponents cities and the bonuses get absolutely crazy as you start snowballing which makes you snowball even harder (imperialism boosts this more). Vassals are also really nice and give plenty bonuses, and you will have many of those. Science never feels like a problem and neither does happiness or culture. The bonuses from the AI just feels like they are nullified, even on deity and this is not that hard to achieve compared to trying to win with the other policy trees atleast in my experiance. It just feels like you are more in control as opposed to for example playing tradition and praying to god that you dont lose a particular wonder.
Overall the policy tree and strategy of warring feels really good and its really fun, but maybe it should be tweaked a bit. I dont know where to start though, it just feels like this policy tree should be a bit harder than the other trees since you can outplay the AI in terms of unit trading and overall war strategy and this policy tree improves your ability to do so by a lot. Things i can think of that could be tweaked include: making the anti warmonger bonus for opponents stronger/ tweaking happiness for warmongers so that it's harder to stay happy/ removing or tweaking combat bonus % from authority tree/ nerfing god of war/ nerfing the % combat bonus in opponent lands and yields for taking cities reform/ tweak lower unit supply bonus for authority.
Let me know your thoughts!
First of all the AI in vox populi will never be as good strategically as a human player. It just doesnt have the strategic overview and decision making that a human player has, like focusing on certain victory conditions but perhaps even more so in terms of trading units and min maxing that part of the game. In higher difficulties with the AI having all it's bonuses the one thing they don't have is the better unit trading and unit movement logic that a human player has.
On higher difficulties, the land in the earliest stages of the game gets settled much faster and this makes authority a very lucrative choice since you can just grab your neighbours cities. This means you dont need to waste production on settlers and instead use that production on building units. This gets even more crazy when you play a civ with a strong early game unit (like songhai). If you invest in a sucessful early army and you never let your units die you are free to build every infrastructure building in your capital and satellite cities for the rest of the game pretty much and also try your luck at wonders more easily.
If you play your cards right and never let your units die, they become unstoppable killing machines that pretty much never die (this gets even more fortified with the % combat bonuses in the authority tree. It also allows more easily for mistakes to be made, since authority has such a nice early production boost so if you lose a few units it might not be the end of the world (thought sometimes it can be on deity). Then if you get god of war you can very easily get a religion, and we all know how good religion is in vox populi. Eventually as you take more and more cities you will be able to use inquisitors in your captured cities along your war path. This allows for a very easy reform, much more so than when using other policy trees (im always able to reform using this strategy as authority) and then taking cities becomes even better when you reform and get culture and GA points alongside more culture and science from the authority tree when capturing cities and insane combat % increase on your units. If you lose units at this stage of the game it doesnt even matter that much, you can very quickly build more upgraded units especially if you for example manage to get alhambra. These wonders shouldnt be a problem to get either as you will have very small wonder cost (and really nice production as authority). And when you get to autocracy it becomes even easier (25% attack bonus for 50 turns and various combat improvements). Diplomacy doesnt matter that much either when you snowball as authority and neither does supply cap (especially if you get all the "authority" wonders which will not be that hard). Also monopolies are very easy to get as you take your opponents cities and the bonuses get absolutely crazy as you start snowballing which makes you snowball even harder (imperialism boosts this more). Vassals are also really nice and give plenty bonuses, and you will have many of those. Science never feels like a problem and neither does happiness or culture. The bonuses from the AI just feels like they are nullified, even on deity and this is not that hard to achieve compared to trying to win with the other policy trees atleast in my experiance. It just feels like you are more in control as opposed to for example playing tradition and praying to god that you dont lose a particular wonder.
Overall the policy tree and strategy of warring feels really good and its really fun, but maybe it should be tweaked a bit. I dont know where to start though, it just feels like this policy tree should be a bit harder than the other trees since you can outplay the AI in terms of unit trading and overall war strategy and this policy tree improves your ability to do so by a lot. Things i can think of that could be tweaked include: making the anti warmonger bonus for opponents stronger/ tweaking happiness for warmongers so that it's harder to stay happy/ removing or tweaking combat bonus % from authority tree/ nerfing god of war/ nerfing the % combat bonus in opponent lands and yields for taking cities reform/ tweak lower unit supply bonus for authority.
Let me know your thoughts!
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