What's a recent thing you learned or changed in your playstyle that improved your game?

[MutilationWave]

For me, it's packing a scout in every army commander. There's a sort of secret fifth slot for a civilian unit, or seventh slot if you're upgraded to six. Now I can deploy all my troops while retaining the maneuverability bonuses. Or I can pop up a lookout tower to see what the enemy has coming earlier, to identify a weak point in their line, a hidden healing unit, or an attack that I need to shift my troops to better repel. Also in modern they can be used as spotters for your artillery or aircraft.

Now if we could just stop having them lose all movement on entering zone of control. What's that all about anyway? I can accept them being affected by it, but I want to get right up in an enemy units grill and unload my troops from there.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Placing a new settlement will often cause some hostile IP units to appear and attack.

 

[MutilationWave]

Placing a new settlement will often cause some hostile IP units to appear and attack.

Are you sure they're appearing? I thought the same, then I realized I had settled too close to a neutral IP. They became hostile and came right out of the fog to attack.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Are you sure they're appearing? I thought the same, then I realized I had settled too close to a neutral IP. They became hostile and came right out of the fog to attack.

I think you are right, it just feels like they come out of nowhere.

 

[evonannoredars]

City-planning has become a lot more fun and less same-y once I started consciously 'specialising' cities.

I'll look for a good spot that has potential for great natural adjacencies for two kinds of buildings (eg an area with both winding mountains and coastlines), then prioritise maximising adjacencies and specialists for those tiles, sometimes not even bothering to build buildings for the third kind (in the case of my example, science/prod buildings). Harder to do initially when the specialist limit is capped at 1 in antiquity and is probably isn't improving my game strategy-wise, but it's more fun knowing that a city is a 'culture and gold' city.

I hope they someday implement an actual way of 'specialising' cities tho that has a presence on the world map, rather than through invisible stuff like resource allocations. Also am desperately waiting for being able to hover over the yields in the top-right to see a yields per settlement tooltip like in Civ 6, would make being able to compare settlement yields and recognise which are the best sources of which yield wayy easier.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

City-planning has become a lot more fun and less same-y once I started consciously 'specialising' cities.

Funnily enough I came to this realisation last night as well!

 

[vorlon_mi]

For me, it's packing a scout in every army commander. There's a sort of secret fifth slot for a civilian unit, or seventh slot if you're upgraded to six. Now I can deploy all my troops while retaining the maneuverability bonuses. Or I can pop up a lookout tower to see what the enemy has coming earlier, to identify a weak point in their line, a hidden healing unit, or an attack that I need to shift my troops to better repel. Also in modern they can be used as spotters for your artillery or aircraft.

Now if we could just stop having them lose all movement on entering zone of control. What's that all about anyway? I can accept them being affected by it, but I want to get right up in an enemy units grill and unload my troops from there.

Packing a scout! That also addresses the issue of the scout's fragility when wandering around alone.

Keeping it packed -- most of the time -- lets the commander keep its maneuverability bonus as you said, even when all of the combat troops are deployed. Brilliant!

 

[MutilationWave]

I had another realization just now. All this time I have been thinking that quarters have adjacency bonuses to all city halls. It is only the palace that gets this benefit. I can't imagine how many suboptimal choices I have made so far.

It's so obvious too because it shows the science and culture you get when completing a quarter next to the palace. I was thinking it just wasn't showing up.

 

[sonicmyst]

Selecting a cultural dark age legacy in Modern Era made my Modern game interesting.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Selecting a cultural dark age legacy in Modern Era made my Modern game interesting.

Do tell! I've frequently seen the Science Dark Age option for starting Modern, but I have not see the Cultural Dark Age.

 

[sixty4half]

I recently took a different Momento for a spin. I used the +400 Gold per City Returned in a Peace Deal Momento. I ended up getting 1200g with it in Antiquity which felt good. I had planned on taking Roma and Fred just happened to build a new settlement right in front of me while I was prepping my troops (military exercises, I promise). So i took the expansion and Roma after 14 turns of chewing thru his armies. I returned Ravena and kept Roma.

10 turns later I declared on Fred again. This time taking 3 of his 4 expansions. I contemplated removing him from the game but the happiness crisis popped up. Roma was 1 turn from Revolt so I gave him 2 cities back in this peace deal, keeping Ravena this time to complete the border connections. Got 800g and immediately bought a Villa and Alter in Roma and Happiness was restored!

Im not sure how that compares to things like the +gold on resources or trade routes or other momentos but it feels powerful. I didnt start my warring until well into half way thru the age. Im sure with more focus the gold could be double what I got if not more. The momento does not mention "per age" so it'll always be 400g, this might make it less viable in later ages.

 

[RaidandTrade]

Hub towns.

When I learned about them, that was a game changer for influence generation. Especially useful for settlements that have awful production.

 

[CliffCo]

In my current game i was receiving free medieval walls in new settlements but found that if the wall gets destroyed i don't get the ability to repair it, i am only able to fortify the tile.

 

[evonannoredars]

In my current game i was receiving free medieval walls in new settlements but found that if the wall gets destroyed i don't get the ability to repair it, i am only able to fortify the tile.

Assuming ur playing as the Normans, the Sokeman settler unit grants free walls. As for repairing, were you being attacked? That might be why you didn't have the ability to repair them. Also is this the right thread?

 

[CliffCo]

Yes, i'm aware of why i was getting them. Even after the war was over there was no way to rebuild or repair it without converting it to a city. I believe it's the correct thread as by learning this it has given me the knowledge needed to adjust the defense of certain settlements bordering an aggresive AI.

 

[ShadedSkies]

Unlike previous civ games you can use buildings more actively in gameplay. You get to reassign rural tiles when they're converted into urban tiles, so the sub-par tile you used to "reach" far-away tiles is just temporary; you don't even have to finish the building you use to get the pop back with. For example, if you grow to the 1st ring, then the 2nd ring and put a building over the 1st ring, you can grab the 3rd ring with just 3 pop, getting to valuable resources much faster. Work farm tiles until mines provide better yields, and then just replace them. Can use this to turn everything into specialists too later on.

Also outdated buildings still provide +2 of their base yield after an era change. This is absolutely not insignificant, especially in terms of influence, science and culture, and the times I've neglected infrastructure late in an era I've had a much harder time getting started in the next age.

Oh, and I try not to move my founder around since I'm losing a whopping 10 culture and science every single turn. Since starts are generally balanced it would take a long time to recouperate that loss.

 

[CliffCo]

Also outdated buildings still provide +2 of their base yield after an era change.

Thought i'd mention that outdated buildings from the antiquity age do give a +2 base yield, but that outdated buildings from the exploration age actually give a +3 base yield.

 

[sonicmyst]

Do tell! I've frequently seen the Science Dark Age option for starting Modern, but I have not see the Cultural Dark Age.

Explorers get more movement and dig artifacts faster when you select the cultural dark age in modern.