Game Report #2
Purpose: I want to underscore that I had a couple specific intentions in mind when playing this game, as I was running it as a test. The goals I had set for myself were the following.
1. Continuing to test new Pantheon changes (this time, God of the Expanse).
2. Testing the effectiveness of the change in Authority, whereby the faster border expansion was removed, and replaced with a superior yield on a standard expansion rate.
3. Test the impact and effectiveness of the new Holy Sites.
I decided that all could be done simultaneously.
I'll also note that this was the most hilariously fun game I have ever played.
Civilization: Ethiopia.
I wanted a Civilization whose base Culture and Faith were strong, so this seemed like a good choice.
Victory Type: Walk in the park. In this game, I could have had any victory type I wanted, but eventually "quit" by attaining a Culture Victory somewhere around turn 270 (I was anticipating a Science Victory by about turn 350, in the early 20th Century). Will explain more later.
Speed: Standard, on a Standard Communitas map. I upped City-States to 20 and Players to 11.
Relative Rank: Compatible (Immortal).
Play Style: Aggressive Warmonger.
Game Notes And Explanation
I played the early game by pumping out 3 (or was it 4) expansions as quickly as I could to make use of as many Steles as I could. With them, I picked the God of the Expanse Pantheon.
On top of that, I took Tradition, and went for the 1st Policy that increases Border Growth by 20% and gives +2 Faith in the Capital.
Then, I no longer took Tradition anymore, and instead deflected off to Authority, and got the yields-for-border growth Policy as soon as I could, followed by the Garrison Policy that adds +3 Culture in a city.
Later on, I would go down the Piety tree for the Policy that gives +100% Border Growth to cities during Golden Ages/WLTKD. And later than that, I took Autocracy with the Ideological Tenet that rewards Culture and Golden Age points when your borders expand.
Let me tell you that the combination of all these policies (even WITHOUT God of the Expanse, as that's only a mere 20%) unleashed a hell beyond what I could have ever imagined (I saw it coming, but not THIS well). My worry about God of the Expanse was this: it seems okay on its own, but should the Faith that it offers scale with Era, when basically no other Pantheon's Faith generation scales with Era? (that is to say, if you have 2 Plantations near a city with Oral Tradition, you're getting 4 Faith, forever) After this experience, my answer is a definite NO!
Imagine that your borders expand at most every 5 turns, with scaling Faith (starts at 25 per expansion, and increases by 25 after you get past Classical, and keeps increasing). Throw on top of that the bonus food and production from the Authority policy. The results are these.
1. Unimaginable amounts of Faith.
2. Massive amounts of early-game food, but especially production. I had basically all buildings built in all cities very fast and could crank out as much military as I wanted. (the scaling for the food/production for this policy is near-useless late game even with super border growth as it's only adding what would be the equivalent of half a turn's yield at that point: but the early game is much different)
3. The only reason I might have wanted to keep playing after the victory is out of curiosity to see how far borders can expand. Every tile was filled so quickly that I'm no longer sure if certain cities were expanding, or - if they weren't expanding - whether they were getting yields from it anyways.
Suffice it to say, once I had Autocracy up, the only reason I wasn't in a continuous Golden Age for the remainder of the game was because I had nothing to increase my Golden Age length - the border expansions were otherwise sufficient to fill almost every point of Golden Age points I needed after a Golden Age was over.
Anyways, I played as a Warmonger simply to get more cities so I could expand to more tiles and gain more Faith. I'll explain the things I did with my Faith.
1. First off, while I was definitely spreading the Faith, I didn't super prioritize it - but could have easily taken over the world if I had wanted to.
2. I decided to stop purchasing extra Great Prophets after something like the 7th or 8th, and bear in mind that these Great Prophets (I bought one in excess of 10,000 Faith in cost) were all purchased before turn 150. I turned them all into Holy Sites. Yes, Holy Sites are much cooler now, but I will admit that I still found them underwhelming (and not just because my Faith yield was awesome). The Tourism helps - but it's not enough Tourism to differentiate the GP from some other kind of GP; same with the Culture yield, and the Faith yield was nerfed from previously, though the Gold works. I feel like there needs to be Food in there, too. Anyways, my point is that it's still weak.
3. I should note that while my Tourism was in the lead by far throughout the game, I never really did bother much in generating Great People or making too many Great Works - most I did have were pillaged from other people. I was generating about 338 Tourism by turn 250, and this is with Airports. It would have taken me a while to win the Cultural Victory at this rate (I was Influential with two players).
So how did I win Cultural Victory? I'll note that I took the Reformation Belief that allows me to purchase any kind of Great Person. Somewhere around turn 200, I just got bored of spending Faith, and let it pile up. By turn 270 or so, I had about 34,000 Faith to spend. A Great Person was randomly born in my Empire one turn, and I noticed that it gave me in excess of 5000 Tourism with all other Empires (about 17 times what I make in Tourism in a single turn). So I'm like, "What the hell," and just dumped all of my Faith into every kind of Great Person I could, going from the cheapest up. I believe I purchased 12 Great People in a single turn, for a total of 60,000 Tourism with all other Empires. This moved me from being Influential with two players, to being Dominant with everyone in the game except two, who were now Influential, and I won. (I saved the game at this point if you'd like to see it.)
Well, all that being said, I'd like to draw a few conclusions from this, because it's not just about the Faith generation.
1. Firstly, God of the Expanse shouldn't have scaling bonuses by Era. I don't know about the one that gives Faith for each birth or the combat one, but this one definitely shouldn't.
2. The Social Policy in Tradition that gives faster border expansion is too strong a buff to other things in the game, and its convenience of being only one slot in makes it deadly powerful, and this is besides the +2 Faith it provides, which I think gives Tradition a leaning towards acquiring a Religion that it just doesn't need. This Policy needs to be Tier 2.
3. The Social Policy in Authority that gives yields for Border Expansions is so dang powerful now that really ANY Civilization (even ones that aren't focusing on border bonuses) can get huge jumps with it so long as they put a little attention into Culture - such cities will be booming fast. Again, I think this needs to be a Tier 2 Policy. This goes without saying that the Culture/Science bonuses from Authority for killing things are generally just so convenient, as one usually gets in wars in most games, anyways.
4. At least the Policy in Piety that gives super border growth is Tier 2, but maybe it ought to be Tier 3. It doesn't strike me as overpowered under normal circumstances, but the moment you combine it with things that give bonuses for border expansion, it's insane.
5. To summarize the above points, I'm not saying to eliminate or change any of the bonuses these Policies provide, but just to put them into slightly more inconvenient locations so a player can't just "dip" into each Policy Tree a little and get all the best advantages (I'm confident I could run the same strategy with most any Civ and crush everything effortlessly).
6. Holy Sites are better and actually worth getting now, but still weak. More Food! More Culture! More Tourism! Maybe Science, too?
7. It strikes me as odd that Great People generation basically creates more Tourism than Tourism does. Even if I didn't have wads of Faith to spend, even a "normal" amount of Faith would have put me in a position to basically win the game by just buying Great People, as this seems to bypass most Tourism modifiers and is at a totally insane value. Why invest in Tourism per turn when I can do this?
In any case, very fun game, and if you haven't already tried doing what I just did , I suggest you do. You won't regret it.
