Which civ do you think loves the preserve the most?

[iammaxhailme]

Anyone who can build quick appealing districts (uniques, Dutch for dams, China for early Canals, Japan in general) or appealing tile improvements (especially the +2 ones like Sphinx) could get some niche use out of it by getting the tiles to breathtaking appeal, but that's generally a bit too situational. Brazil gets +1 appeal from rainforest instead of -1, and I think rainforest grows in denser clumps than woods does.

This is on another topic, but I think Teddy Roosevelt's +1 appeal to cities with a national park could apply to preserves too, as they're thematically similar... but he's strong enough already!

 

[679x]

I'd add Vietnam to the list of civs that enjoy the preserve. They can plant woods far earlier, guaranteeing that you can get 6 tiles of woods around a preserve, which is the best way to maximize the yields while also increasing appeal. Also, I think the woods that remain under districts will still increase appeal of adjacent tiles, so if you're a bit strapped for space, it's not as much of a problem to put negative appeal districts like industrial zones adjacent to the tiles surrounding preserves.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

If I could, I'd vote both Maori and Bull Moose Teddy. But I'd go with Teddy more than the Maori.

 

[UWHabs]

To me, the Inca have the most guaranteed usage. As much as Bull Teddy can make use of high appeal, or that Kupe can better work unimproved tiles, Inca are the only civ who have a large sample of guaranteed breathtaking tiles.

Granted, I have not really played Brazil recently to know what the reversed appeal can mean for them. Other civs that can use them better would be civs who can generate appeal, so, Canada, Persia, and Egypt all have UI which give +2 appeal, so that certainly helps to kick it up and get useful preserves.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I'd add Vietnam to the list of civs that enjoy the preserve. They can plant woods far earlier, guaranteeing that you can get 6 tiles of woods around a preserve, which is the best way to maximize the yields while also increasing appeal. Also, I think the woods that remain under districts will still increase appeal of adjacent tiles, so if you're a bit strapped for space, it's not as much of a problem to put negative appeal districts like industrial zones adjacent to the tiles surrounding preserves.

Ah, I didn't even think of Vietnam. Good call. I think I would still not vote for them, but yeah they're a reasonable choice

 

[KayAU]

I went with the Inca, I think the reasons are fairly obvious:

• Will generally spawn next to high appeal mountain ranges
• Can work mountain tiles for decent yields, but can never put yield improvements on them
• Rapid population growth means they need more housing, while they also get to work more tiles

Others can make good use of Preserves as well, but the Inca are pretty much guaranteed to have a large number of great spots for them.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention. Even though mountain tiles can be great for the Inca, they are bottom priority for natural border growth. The Preserve's culture bomb ability is a great way to grab a bunch of them for free.

 

[Josephias]

Probably not to "the most" level, but I'll add Tundra civs (Canada, Russia) to the mix. At least, that's what I'm trying in my current Russia game, to make use of that tundra space for planting forests and supercharge-them with preserves, then build National Parks on top.

 

[enKage]

I don't know why Teddy is leading, as he has no tools to boost appeal available before parks. Of course the yields are better, but it is not all.

I voted Brazil as rainforests are one of the greatest appeal problems and Pedro fixes it without removing that nice yield and it is the only civ that can really spam it together with Inca.

There are also a lot of civs thar should be here instead of Mapuche - Mapuche want chemmamulls on braethtaking appeal and it conflicts with preserves, as they have no tools to rise appeal.

Unlike for example:
Persia,Egypt - spammable UI to rise appeal
Cree - no need for mines at all
Russia, Greece, Japan - cheap districts to rise appeal.
Especially Russia with free land, so you don't have to buy a tile, additional faith from tundra and with a bug allowing you to use Moksha to buy preserve before population 4, you basically can go everywhere with: settle - fauthbuy preserve for housing - build cheap Lavra at 4

 

[Leucarum]

Persia,Egypt - spammable UI to rise appeal

While it's not as spammable the chateau increases appeal, and with the ability to turn money into natural parks (with hockey rinks also adding appeal), Canada can get a lot of tourism from preserves.

 

[CromulentRomulan]

Seeing as Earth Goddess is a given for the Inca I am heartened to see them in second place. In the midst of a game where I try for a cultural victory using Inca and preserves, of those in the poll it feels like the Inca gain the most from Preserves in terms of viability at a new win condition

 

[Leucarum]

One nice thing about preserves is that there are plenty of civs who use them for different things.

Australia/Mapuche to get more adjacencies
America/Maori/Inca to supercharge their terrain bonuses
Persia/Egypt (and similar) to make their UIs do double the work
America/Canada and civs that tend to go heavy on national parks...
Brazil/Russia/Vietnam/Canada to take advantage of terrain bias which is higher appeal or to create higher appeal terrain

 

[greenOak]

Inca seems like the civ that can most reliably take advantage of the preserve. Grove boosted mountain tiles becomes at minimum 3 food, 2 production, 2 culture, and 2 faith.

In the one game I played with Bull Moose Teddy since the January update, I found preserves to often be overkill. You often have so much science and culture coming in from breathtaking tiles already that you're instead looking for ways to boost production with lumber-mills, and mines & quarries in strategic spots.

 

[KayAU]

Inca seems like the civ that can most reliably take advantage of the preserve. Grove boosted mountain tiles becomes at minimum 3 food, 2 production, 2 culture, and 2 faith.

I think you're off by 1 food there. The minimum yield for a mountain tile is just 2 production. The Grove adds 2 food, 2 culture and 2 faith. Still, a typical early game mountain tile in my games looks like this:
Inca: 2 Production
Grove: 2 Food. 2 Culture, 2 Faith
Earth Mother: 2 Faith
1 adjacent Terrace Farm: 1 Food
That's a total of 3Fo, 2P, 2C, 4Fa, or an 11 yield tile, quite early in the game. I've also had situations where I've had mountain tiles boosted by more than one Grove, at which point it gets really crazy...and then Sanctuaries come along, and those same tiles become 28-29 yield tiles.

 

[Datian]

I don't know if I should start a new thread about preserves, or open a new discussion in this one.

Beside the civs that have a very good reason to let tiles unimproved (like Maori and the forests, Inca and the mountains, Roosevelt and his amazing tiles...), do you think preserves are worth it for, say, France or Maya or Spain ? Early game, late game, as a replacement for neighbourhoods ?

I recently had a preserve surrounded by tundra forests, in a St Basil city, so obviously it was great, and the different yields brought by Earth Goddess / Sanctuary / Grove more than made up for the mills I could have built ; however, it took a district slot, and took forever to be worth it. But then, it still looked like the best use for a tundra city.
Apart from this specific example, preserves, do you think they are worth building ?

 

[UWHabs]

I don't know if I should start a new thread about preserves, or open a new discussion in this one.

Beside the civs that have a very good reason to let tiles unimproved (like Maori and the forests, Inca and the mountains, Roosevelt and his amazing tiles...), do you think preserves are worth it for, say, France or Maya or Spain ? Early game, late game, as a replacement for neighbourhoods ?

I recently had a preserve surrounded by tundra forests, in a St Basil city, so obviously it was great, and the different yields brought by Earth Goddess / Sanctuary / Grove more than made up for the mills I could have built ; however, it took a district slot, and took forever to be worth it. But then, it still looked like the best use for a tundra city.
Apart from this specific example, preserves, do you think they are worth building ?

My last game, other than a couple late game tundra cities, never really found a good spot for them. It didn't help that it was a very islands/snaky continents map, which while decent enough for appeal, didn't lead to a lot of good preserve spots since most would only impact 2-3 tiles at most.

I do think if you can get, say, 4 big tiles out of the preserve, it can be worth it. Because if you can find 4 breathtaking tiles, even if they're only tundra forests or plains base, can easily turn into 3 food/1 production/2 culture/2 faith tiles early, and more later on, which is solid enough to work. That's going to be pretty much as good of a yield as you can get out of any other district, so nothing wrong with simply working tiles rather than getting yields from districts. But to find a case where you have 3-4 tiles or more that are worth it, that you won't want to place districts on later, and that have the appeal, is rare.

I basically treat them a little like a sort of random option. If I can find spots for it, it can be worth it. And if you have lots of plus appeal, then they can be absolutely fantastic. But you're probably going to have 1/2 or 3/4 of your games where you could ignore them completely and you won't notice a difference. I certainly wouldn't use them if all I'm getting out of it are housing boosts, or even if the nearby tiles are only "charming" appeal - the bonuses there are definitely not enough to justify. Maybe if they were similar to the diplo quarter/government plaza and basically came at roughly half price, that might be a little better. But at full price, they run into the problem that to truly make use, you need lots of unimproved tiles. But if you have lots of unimproved tiles, that's probably a city that doesn't get a lot of production, so is slow to build.

 

[Baigan]

Are Preserves actually worth the district slot early in the game? I played a few starts trying to force them and come to the conclusion that it's best saved for later once your cities are established. Germany has no obvious interactions with Appeal but I wonder whether they like the Preserve more than vanilla civs on the basis that they have the district cap space to afford building it at pop 4 or 7 (after Hansa, CH, and victory district).

 

[bengalryan9]

I don't know if I should start a new thread about preserves, or open a new discussion in this one.

Beside the civs that have a very good reason to let tiles unimproved (like Maori and the forests, Inca and the mountains, Roosevelt and his amazing tiles...), do you think preserves are worth it for, say, France or Maya or Spain ? Early game, late game, as a replacement for neighbourhoods ?

I recently had a preserve surrounded by tundra forests, in a St Basil city, so obviously it was great, and the different yields brought by Earth Goddess / Sanctuary / Grove more than made up for the mills I could have built ; however, it took a district slot, and took forever to be worth it. But then, it still looked like the best use for a tundra city.
Apart from this specific example, preserves, do you think they are worth building ?

One thing I really like about this district is that there are some games where you will get a ton of use from them and some games where you won't use them at all. If you're playing a civ that benefits from appeal or if you start near an unimprovable multi-tiled natural wonder preserves are amazing, while if you're building mines all over the place or are surrounded by floodplains and jungle (for anyone besides Brazil) you might not build them at all. That's a fun addition.

 

[ShakaKhan]

I've waited a couple of days and still no one has stated the obvious so I'll do it - what do you want on the tiles adjacent to the preserve? -> Woods - not only do they increase the appeal of their tiles and surrounding tiles (which may also be adjacent to the preserve) which helps you get to that essential +4 appeal rating which qualifies for the big grove/sanctuary bonus, but they also give those 6 tiles 1 more of the most important yield in the game - production. The only drawback is that you can't place a lumber mill on those woods tiles to get even more of the most important yield in the game without sacrificing the huge bonus of the preserve's buildings. So who is the only civ that can get the big bonuses of the preserve's buildings and not miss out on the extra production of not lumber-milling those tiles? Obviously the Maori - who get extra production from unimproved woods tiles that scales throughout the game. Honorable mentions to Vietnam (who can make all 6 surrounding tiles be woods much earlier) and Bull Moose Teddy (who gets incredible extra culture from breathtaking tiles ((which hopefully all of the preserve tiles are)) from being adjacent to woods, which they are, and hopefully a few tiles will also be adjacent to a mountain or natural wonder for even more of the second most important yield of the game - science.)

 

[Deadly Dog]

As part of the strategy of getting yields directly from the land instead of from districts and buildings, the preserve is awesome for both Teddy and Kupe. I've yet to get a game going where all the stars align and I can make my science ecotopia of Preserves and Alcazars. But I got this going by mid classical era, although I'm not happy with the placement of the preserve.

Spoiler :

The preserve and grove are under the popup.

I'll do this with Kupe as well for sure but it's going to come layer for him as you need 2 districts to get all the bonuses from Marae and Preserves, and Kupe already wants harbors ASAP so I think Teddy gets more from gonig Preserve early. Anyway in this game I am just getting past 4 cities with Monumentality and have so far a Preserve in Washington and a Gov District in Boston. But keeping up with AI in science and culture nonetheless. This is Deity, Epic, large continents map with 9 civs 18 CS.

 

[RealHuhn]

If you don't have any good spots for preserves, their addition to the game actually has an adverse effect on you.
Unlocking preserves through Mysticism increases the amount of districts you need to unlock district discounts. But unlike other specialty districts, building preserves doesn't help to unlock discounts for other districts.
It's a double negative, probably even a bug because this means the preserve doesn't follow the same game rules as the other specialty districts.