Weak UAs

You are wasting your UA by trading away your last resource unless you're acquiring 200 gold OR an equal luxury resource.

Which is not difficult to do... Just pick a trading partner who has something you want.

Why the hell should I handicap myself because of a ******ed AI?

You pretty much answer your own question: the AI is ******ed, it needs every advantage it can get.
 
We all know that if you play England on Archipelago or something similar, you can make full use of their UA. I've tried that (more than once), and even still I always thought that, unfortunately, England's UA was probably the worst. Then I played on someone's Earth map with True Start positions. That was probably the most fun I've had in Civ V.

The whole of Europe has been settled. Trust me. France, Germany, Spain, the Danes, and even Rome were fighting over it. Africa had mostly been claimed by Askia and Egypt. And of course the New World had been gobbled up by the "natives." :) So guess what that leaves for England?

You can found about 3, POSSIBLY 4 good cities on the British Isles. I shudder to think what the Celts would do to that possibility. Anyway, this game was before the expansion pack. So you look for places to settle-- South Africa is a great spot. Though not historically accurate, I settled Madagascar as well. Unfortunately, as India was one of the strongest civs in the game, there was no chance of colonial "settlement" there, so I looked further. For some reason, Siam and Polynesia had not grabbed the East Indies, Australia, or New Zealand. Out go the settlers; Sydney, Darwin, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, and Wellington are founded.

So, what is the geography of my empire again? I have about 8 or 9 far-flung outposts (quickly turning into very large, productive cities) ranging from 30 to 90 tiles from my capital. Think about the historical British Empire-- I had actually managed it quite well simply based on the fact that they were the only places left to colonize. Suddenly their UA made PERFECT sense. With such a far-flung empire, the ONLY security was in fleets. Moving units around would've been a NIGHTMARE without those +2 moves (this is applied to EMBARKED units as well, by the way-- at Optics, your embarked units have 4 moves!). With the new expansion, the threat of melee ships is incredible (have you noticed how the AI loves to spam them?!?!), and even more so to such an empire.

If you're still reading this, try playing England on such a map (King or higher!), then come back with your analysis of their UA. Personally I think it's strong, particularly so in the new expansion. It's not Tier 1, but it's strong enough.
 
England has such powerful UUs and a free spy so they are very strong on anything but pangaea. Even on pangaea plus range gatling guns and machine guns are very good and an extra spy is quite useful. On a start with any coast Ship of the line has 20% combat strength, 25% ranged, extra sight and costs 15 :c5production: less. they rip apart anything now. England is a very strong civ now.
 
The case for why Sweden doesn't suck.
Thanks to the advent of religious, mercantile, more culture from culture city states and less useless militaristic city states, there's more use now to befriend city states rather than conquer them.

Giving away your great generals, great prophets (after spreading the religion 3 times) and great artists is an easy cheap effortless way to gain favor.

However,

I said this before release, and I will say it again - 10% is useless. If you think it's useful in any sort of way, go and rip up your high school diploma, because your understanding of percentages is mediocre at best. In a hypothetical scenario, a 10% boost on a 6 GP generation is useless and trash.

As has been said before, this bonus stacks. It isn't 10% that we're looking at, it's 30-50% or more if you play it right - give gifts, DoW common enemies, etc.

Certainly it's a much better in the mid-range difficulties where the AI is more likely to DoF. With the change to research agreements it got better as well. It equates to a free Garden and LToP/National Epic in each city - plus having those, too.

Either:

A) You're having trouble getting 3 Friends in your games. What on earth are you doing, and how are you getting any progress without RAs?
or
B) You don't like Gardens, to the point where you don't like maintenance-free, empire-wide Gardens.
 
As has been said before, this bonus stacks. It isn't 10% that we're looking at, it's 30-50% or more if you play it right - give gifts, DoW common enemies, etc.

Certainly it's a much better in the mid-range difficulties where the AI is more likely to DoF. With the change to research agreements it got better as well. It equates to a free Garden and LToP/National Epic in each city - plus having those, too.

Either:

A) You're having trouble getting 3 Friends in your games. What on earth are you doing, and how are you getting any progress without RAs?
or
B) You don't like Gardens, to the point where you don't like maintenance-free, empire-wide Gardens.

Is it the community consensus that it stacks now? I remember some people being confused so I went ahead and assumed it didn't stack, so my thinking was more along those lines. If somebody has gone through the xml files though or empirically proven it, then I withdraw my claim. It's pretty decent, actually.

Edit: I checked, and it does stack. I withdraw my statement.
 
its been stated multipul times sweds 10% stacks. dont ppl read.

ductch u trade u last resource fo another resource u enud up wit MORE HAPPYNESS. think about it.

Moderator Action: Please try to write in proper english.
 
Regarding Sweden, I wonder how many DoF's you can consistently maintain before you are hit by too many "you are friends with my enemy" penalties?

Some possible options:

1. Play a Huge map with the max number of civs. (Gives you the most potential for DoF's, and maybe you can have fairly large friend blocs).

2. Play Archipelago or Continents (or other maps with isolated starts) and use the suggested "Liberty finisher -> Great Admiral" trick. With your Great Admiral, you can meet all the other civs, who ideally will not have met each other, which could potentially allow you to DoF more of them without having to worry about "you are friends with my enemy" penalties.

If you can manage, say 5 DoF's, that's a 50% Great Person bonus. It might be even more challenging but if you can keep 10, that's 100%. That could be useful (especially for GA's in a culture game or GE's for wonder building).

Also, while the gifting GP's isn't *great*, it might be a viable option for surplus Prophets, Admirals, Generals, and maybe Merchants. Although the new Citadels are cool, you are likely to have surplus GG's now that they can't trigger Golden Ages. Even more than GG's, I often end up with way too many Admirals. Before Industrial (when Prophets automatically spawn when you have too much space, even if you turn off the automatic purchases), it's something to do with them. Maybe you can even do a "diplomacy through religion" strategy with Sweden and Papal Primacy where you generate lots of Faith and use it for Prophets to gift away?

I'm not saying that these uses are super powerful, but I like how Sweden's UA encourages innovative playstyles - approaches that are completely different than what any of the other civs can do.
 
hal ive had up to 50%, only on large maps and the remaining warmongers seemed to get denouced by everyone makeing it hard to dof them. but ill tell u put a garden and the tower of pizza combined wit that 50% u realy pump out the gp





Looks like your biggest problem is writing a coherent sentence.

good idear make personal attacks, that realy contributes
 
It really depends on the map. England was one of my favorite civilizations to play even before the extra spy because it is very easy to dominate the seas. The +2 movement really adds up in the long run. You are the usually the first to circumnavigate, exploration is faster, and it leaves you in a more defensible position than other civs that build up their navies. Being able to outrun other ships at low health, or race your ships back home faster if war is declared are both fantastic assets. Coupled with the Longbowman, England is great. The only problem is if you are on Pangea, England becomes almost worthless (entirely so without longbowman or the extra spy).
I found the +2 movement to be especially strong for embarked units.

Before G&K (which now has melee ships), England was awesome for taking cities with embarked (preferably amphibious) units.

In the early game (when embarked movements just have 2 movement), English armies move twice as fast across the ocean.

Yeah not so great on Pangaea, but a bit better on Pangaea Plus (which has most City States on islands).

While the Great Lighthouse is nice (and can be built by anyone), note that it only provides +1 movement to *military* naval units. Embarked units aren't helped at all. Naval Tradition works on Embarked, but you have to wait until Medieval and the Commerce branch isn't well-suited for all games. In vanilla, Naval Tradition is rather sucky though G&K makes it much better.
 
For the record, I love Spain's ability. Then again, I enjoy settling near Natural Wonders even when I'm not Spain (though for many Natural Wonders, like Mesa/Barringer it's sort of equivalent to having a free great person improvement and not always that amazing).

Yes there is a much higher degree of variance and unpredictability with Spain's ability (due you could also argue that about other UA's, like Byzantium needing to get a religion first).

However, I like how the special really, really encourages Spain to explore, which I feel *is* very thematically appropriate. You explore very early on - ideally you find all the natural wonders first but even if you don't, you still find them and then send a settler to go settle the spot. The double tile yield is *really* good. Cerro de Petosi, Fountain of Youth, Great Barrier Reef, are all really sick with Spain. Even mediocre wonders become great with Spain (Grand Mesa's 2 production + 3 gold is okay but not earth shattering, but having a 4 prod + 6 gold tile from the start is strong). I haven't played Spain in G&K, but the faith Natural Wonders would be amazing when doubled.
 
Wait, why are people even suggesting that the Celts UA is weak? Having the first Phanteon pretty much guaranteed (Turn 4 Phanteon? All but guaranteed given their start bias) and by extension often having the first religion is massive. The Phanteons themselves may not appear particulary powerful at first - but their small advantage can easily snowball. I'd say due to this, the Celts are my favorite religion to play.
Being pretty much guaranteed Holy Warriors helps a lot too...

It's a lot like France, really. The advantage peters out (Eventually you'll want to turn those forests into something productive), but at that point you already got what you needed and you're good to go. Is it the best UA? Nah. Is it strong? Yup.
I definitely agree.

Funnily enough, I've been having similar arguments about Religion Beliefs. I think Monument to the Gods and Holy Warriors can both be very good even if they do eventually become obsolete due to their snowballing effects.
 
You can war pretty decently while maintaining dofs with smart diplomacy. Build a group of friends find mutual enemy/ies and denounce/ bribe into mutual wars to friendship. I've maintained multiple friendships with civs while gaining territory quite a bit and thats on King so it should work up to emperor.
Yes, I've found that warring can be a valuable part of a diplomatic game.

In terms of you warring, you do have to be careful about the DoW penalty and of the severe genocide penalty. Ideally, you'll mainly be warring with nearby civs who DoW'ed you first. Playing against aggressive civs, building lots of cities near them, and having an extremely experienced army (but relatively few units so the AI's underestimate you) is a fairly consistent way to get them to DoW you. That way you can be fighting without major penalties. To avoid the genocide penalty, just make sure an allied CS or another civ deals the fatal blow. I like to leave my enemy at one city, and them bombard it down to 0 HP, just so someone else can waltz in and finish off the civ.

Sharing a wayr("we fought against a common for") is a cheap and convenient diplomatic bonus. In fact, sometimes I will bribe a friend to war against a common enemy - not because I necessarily need help but for the diplomatic bonus.

As an aside, even if you don't plan to war a lot, I find that a good diplomatic game benefits tremendously from getting the AI's to constantly war with each other. I did that A LOT in Civ IV and still A LOT in Civ V.

It keeps AI's at each other's throats and wastes their resources. Especially in vanilla Civ IV, you can use it to cancel other civ's RA's (harder in G&K because they will likely be friends, but if you are willing to pay extra you can often still get friends to DoW each other). If there are particular civs you are worried about that might attack you, sic them on another civ so they won't attack you instead.

Also, lots of AI's will be friendlier to you if they are embroiled in lots of other wars. Many a time a Guarded/Hostile AI becomes Friendly when they are fighting others. Yet as soon as they declare peace with the other Civs they go back to being Guarded/Hostile with me.

Spain has a useful musketman uu, you know on the main line of infantry and good knight, which is a very useful unit. How is that fail on all levels. Useful UUs on good units is not fail. UA gives some happiness, natural wonder happy for finding is also doubled and with the ability to kill city-states without having all others permanent war you finding and grabbing natural wonders can be done. Any of the faith wonders, FOY, petosi, even old faithful can be quite good.
Also note that sniping Natural Wonders without resorting to war is a lot easier in G&K due to the Great General's Citadel culture bombing.
 
How is it that some people still haven't figured out the use of the Dutch UA, despite the fact that it's been pointed out numerous times here already? It's quite simple.

You have 1 Sugar, the AI has 2 Spices; you don't have any spices, so you trade your last sugar, keep 2 happiness, and get 4 happiness for the Spices - suddenly you've got 6 happiness instead of 4. Repeat this for several luxuries and the happiness bonus becomes not insignificant. (Or you could trade them for money if you want.) It's not the most powerful ability, but it's hardly worthless.
I think it's a useful ability. Not among the best but certainly not useless.

I've really enjoyed playing the Arabs due to the Bazaar. Lots of diplomacy and resource trading with the AI's. I imagine the Dutch would employ a similar strategy.

Also, in addition to trading your luxury for the AI's luxuries or gold, if they don't have any of those available you can always trade your luxury for other things. Give it away for free for the diplomatic bonus (which I often do). If they are resource poor, trade it away in return for them DoW'ing some other civilization (in vanilla, it works really well to get people to DoW city states - I haven't tried that much in G&K yet).
 
First of all, Holland is a province, not the name of the country.

Being Dutch myself, I know this. But I use Holland online as more people seem to recognize it, thank you very much. But nitpicking.

You're missing the point. A already UA should not be negated by a civilization meeting a religious city state first. This is a comment on it's mediocrity. A UA is meant to be unique, not something that can be matched at random by being lucky and meeting a city state early.

Great so they met a city state early. They're still 2 faith short. You, on the other hand, with the Celtic Bias, have the Pantheon in 5 turns. 10 if you're unlucky. Don't give me that "But they'll just buy the CS for faith" BS, because they won't have enough money for it. The only way they can outrace you is a Faith Hut, and those are rare.

That sentence does not mean what you think it means.

Maybe I shouldn't have added Russian to it. Point is, if you want to outrace the Celts to a Pantheon, you need to play Roulette in that you need a city state or faith hut.

SO WHAT?. And no, you are not guaranteed first religion. That happens if and when you generate enough faith to get a chance at a great prophet.

The ONLY way that you can outrace the Celts without luck is by beating them to Stonehenge. Don't get that? Then the Celts will have that first religion. And then we're not even including them using a faith-generating Pantheon. Only the Mayans and the Ethiopians might catch up with them early on due to their Faith-generating UB's.

I don't know how many other ways I can explain this. There is no way in hell that I would settle cities purposely next to a patch of forests to get a faith bonus while the city grows at the rate of the average star.

Right because no city at all will have any forests around them, right? I mean you can't settle on the coast next to fish/crabs/whatever and a few forests around you to still get that food in, or heaven forbid, at a patch next to a grassland/river. You don't have to surround yourself with forest, just enough to activate the bonus.
Also, YOU CAN IMPROVE THOSE FORESTS LATER. All you need is enough faith to get the religion, and then it's done its job. That's all.


Yeah, and if you bump it up to Diety, you'll have plenty more gold floating around!

That extra gold will sure help solve the deity difficulty happiness nerf!! And I can buy other AI luxuries with it too, in the next expansion pack when the programmers finally get around to telling the AI to IMPROVE IT'S DAMN IMPROVEMENTS.

My theory is that the Dutch UA was created with this in mind:

Player 1 is Dutch, and has 1 unique luxury.

Player 2 is <SomeCiv> and has a bunch of luxuries, except Player 1's luxury.

(For simplicity I would have just said they both have 1 unique luxury, but the AI will refuse it's last remaining luxury for a luxury of equal value)

Player 1 trades it's luxury to Player 2 for 200 gold. 2 happiness remaining.


Player 1 uses 200 gold to buy a luxury from Player 2. 2+4 = 6 happiness.

Player 1 gains 2 extra happiness in total.

This works on paper. Now let's look at the real problem:

#1 Cannot trade certain luxuries to AIs early on in the game
#2 Some luxury types are more common than others. Depending on terrain, and #4, you may not run into anyone with a different spare luxury. Especially if you're settling cities next to new luxuries.
#3 AIs often do not have enough gold.
#4 AIs often do not have more than 1 luxury (which they will not trade), because AIs have no idea how to improve their terrain.
(Since I refuse to play on a difficulty that gives illegitimate advantages to AIs, I play on prince.)

Even on Prince, where I started GK as the Dutch with, people had plenty of resources/gold laying around. I really don't see your problem, but if you want to base your argument entirely on theory and probably a single playthrough, that's fine with me. I've seen the Dutch in action on higher levels. They're not the best, but they're far stronger then you give them credit for.
That happiness nerf is not a problem if you know what you're doing.
 
I'm pretty sure the baseline Happiness you start with is the same from Prince onward, so I don't think that the player gets nerfed in any way. Only the AI receives bonuses and advantages.

I don't feel Spain is a terrible Civilization. I actually enjoy playing them because Spain has a unique style. You are rewarded very much for exploring early, more-so than any other civilization. Even if you don't find anything first, that is still +2 Happiness per Natural Wonder and +100 gold. Even the weakest natural wonders are very nice tiles when playing as Spain, and as already pointed out several are absolutely amazing. If they're taken, so what? Go fight for them, they are well worth it. Even if you get no Natural Wonders ever, it's not that big of a deal; UAs aren't required for victory at all.

I also like England quite a bit, and especially now. It should be obvious that England isn't the greatest on something like Pangea, but that's common sense. I'm not sure if many people realize the +2 movement applies to embarked units, not just navy ships. This makes using sealanes for moving workers and such possible when you don't have roads or you are spread out far across the coast. Pick up Great Lighthouse and Commerce, and your ships can literally be anywhere on the map in just a handful of turns.

USA comes across as the weakest Civilization now. Tiles are cheaper to purchase than they once were, so Manifest Destiny isn't saving as much money as it once did. Bombers come later now by virtue of a slower tech tree, but at least they can be upgraded into now. Same goes for Minutmen being upgradeable from Longswordsmen, and stronger than they once were. Egypt is also weak when playing on the highest difficulties, but that isn't anything new.
 
In my first game playing the Dutch I managed to maintain a DoF with every civ on a standard sized map for the entire game and never went to war with anyone. So that's 7 DoF's. Now if that can be done with the Dutch, I'm sure Sweden can pull it off too for a nice 70% bonus.

I just checked and the max number of civs you can have on a huge map is 22. So that's 21 AI civs and the player. Now imagine if you could pull of a DoF with all 21 AIs, that'd be +210% generate rate. Add in a garden, national epic, an the Freedom opener for a possible a grand total of +285% generation rate in one city and +260% in your other cities.

Even if you can only pull that off once in a game for those 30 turns every specialist slot used is generating 11.55 GPP in the city with NE and 10.8 GPP in every other city. So if you're running 5 artist slots (cathedral, amphitheater, opera house and the two in a museum) that's 57.75 GArt points per turn. So over the 30 turns the DoF lasts that.s a whopping 1732.5 points generated. If I'm counting this correctly, that's 6 great artists generated in 30 turns.
 
We all know that if you play England on Archipelago or something similar, you can make full use of their UA. I've tried that (more than once), and even still I always thought that, unfortunately, England's UA was probably the worst. Then I played on someone's Earth map with True Start positions. That was probably the most fun I've had in Civ V.

The whole of Europe has been settled. Trust me. France, Germany, Spain, the Danes, and even Rome were fighting over it. Africa had mostly been claimed by Askia and Egypt. And of course the New World had been gobbled up by the "natives." :) So guess what that leaves for England?

You can found about 3, POSSIBLY 4 good cities on the British Isles. I shudder to think what the Celts would do to that possibility. Anyway, this game was before the expansion pack. So you look for places to settle-- South Africa is a great spot. Though not historically accurate, I settled Madagascar as well. Unfortunately, as India was one of the strongest civs in the game, there was no chance of colonial "settlement" there, so I looked further. For some reason, Siam and Polynesia had not grabbed the East Indies, Australia, or New Zealand. Out go the settlers; Sydney, Darwin, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, and Wellington are founded.

So, what is the geography of my empire again? I have about 8 or 9 far-flung outposts (quickly turning into very large, productive cities) ranging from 30 to 90 tiles from my capital. Think about the historical British Empire-- I had actually managed it quite well simply based on the fact that they were the only places left to colonize. Suddenly their UA made PERFECT sense. With such a far-flung empire, the ONLY security was in fleets. Moving units around would've been a NIGHTMARE without those +2 moves (this is applied to EMBARKED units as well, by the way-- at Optics, your embarked units have 4 moves!). With the new expansion, the threat of melee ships is incredible (have you noticed how the AI loves to spam them?!?!), and even more so to such an empire.

If you're still reading this, try playing England on such a map (King or higher!), then come back with your analysis of their UA. Personally I think it's strong, particularly so in the new expansion. It's not Tier 1, but it's strong enough.

That's a very interesting point; I'd quite like to try this for myself. Is this Earth Real Start map a downloadable scenario or within the game?
 
I said this before release, and I will say it again - 10% is useless. If you think it's useful in any sort of way, go and rip up your high school diploma, because your understanding of percentages is mediocre at best. In a hypothetical scenario, a 10% boost on a 6 GP generation is useless and trash.

Doesn't it stack? 10%'s not a lot, but 50% certainly is. Early on, you get them quicker (good for a wonder rush or an academy). Later on, you get the extra one or two that others won't get. If you're going for diplo, that'll be a boost to a victory condition because 90 points is a virtual lock in keeping a city-state allied.

ETA: I see this was addressed.
 
@salty mud:

This is the one I used, but I'm not sure it has been updated for the expansion pack. I'll have to do a search to see if there is a True Start Location (TSL) earth map that has been updated, because I'd love to do this again with the new features.

The expansion should also help some of the problems I faced last time; you really have to CHOOSE the other civs in the game; quite a few of them are European civs, and frankly, there isn't room for all of them. It also tends to leave Africa and the Americas wide open to rapid expansion from their few occupants, which leads to an interesting (counter-historical) situation where European nations are out-teched by African and American nations due to their larger populations (it wasn't THAT big a deal in the game I played; no ridiculous runaways, but it was still funny). Since they have added 2 more African (Carthage and Ethiopia), that should help fill out that continent without Askia getting too ridiculous, and the Maya might help in the Americas, though I suspect they may simply get one city then be conquered by the Aztecs. It's also possible that the Huns will slow the ridiculous expansion of Russia and China, but we'll see.

Let me know how your game goes! :)

EDIT: I have confirmed that my link is NOT updated for G&K, but if you search the Steam workshop for Maps, Legendary Earth Mod will show up, and it is updated for G&K. Unfortunately it's more limited than I would like; I cannot choose which civs are in the game, and it seems none of the options allow Polynesia (or Greece, Babylon, Maya, and several others). Also note that you need a pretty beast computer for these types of games!
 
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