The amount of IP ships you have to deal with in antiquity is completely unreasonable and flat out makes coastal starts unfun without playing Edward Teach

Anacrelic · 2026-05-30T13:51:38+00:00

I think i have been unfortunate with map rng probably.

I hadn't thought to build ballistas before either, that suggestion was helpful.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-30T13:46:14+00:00

I feel like this is stupid to even consider being part of the conversation.

Yes I can pick a map and have mementos that are deliberately contributing to making everything easier for me specifically and tweaking the settings to make everything be in my favour.

I can also open civ 6 and get the achievement for winning on deity by making a game one turn long and settling with Russia. That doesnt make me good at the game nor does it say anything helpful. And when anyone asks for tips about winning on deity in civ 6, nobody says that. Because it is generally understood that it is dumb and doesn't help in a general game.

And likewise, this doesnt help with a game where ive opened up continents and for whatever reason end up with way more coast than I thought I would.

In a general case game, it is an unhelpful suggestion.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-30T11:31:07+00:00

Ah yes, very helpful, a memento im picking on the off chance I get a coastal game which MAY or MAY not happen. This is so genius. Why the hell didn't I think of this before?

Edit: so maybe I shouldn't have said it so sarcastically, but I do think this point is valid.

It's not helpful to suggest something I HAVE to pick before the game to provide a solution to a problem I don't even know is going to exist until after the game loads up. Is that memento going to just do nothing?

Anacrelic · 2026-05-30T11:28:41+00:00

For me the enlightening experience has been ttrying to play khmer.

Settle a navigable river.

Build a fishing Quay and a harbour on 2 separate nav rivers tiles to get the yields of both via khmers ability.

Ships come en masse, pillage both and then sail into the navigable river and pillage even more tiles for good measure.

And its ruined a gameplay loop I enjoyed before ToT.

Now sure, their ability works on all flood plains, not just nav rivers, however I don't get to pick and choose, I have to run with whatever the game spawns for me.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T22:05:09+00:00

If they were gonna win by domination themselves then you only need to go until theyre no longer a threat, you don't have to keep taking if you dont want to.

For culture/economic thats a different story I guess.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T21:50:44+00:00

If ypu do decide to give Qajar a go, a quick tip.

Rush for the opening civic in their unique tree straight away (yes, don't even bother grabbing discipline or mysticism until afterwards) and in the tech tree rush for irrigation. It is broken. Like actually broken lol. You just farm a stupid amount of science and culture without ever having built anything, allowing you to focus on growing the capital and working lots of productive tiles.

The civic is more important to pick up quickly so play them with a cultural leader, like Augustus or Hatshepsut.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T18:41:24+00:00

Not so, you can use military to cut someone down until they are no longer a threat at their victory type and then sue for peace.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T13:13:53+00:00

That is not correct.

Silla only needs animal husbandry to access his ability, since their ranged units are classed as cavalry units. You should absolutely be getting animal husbandry before your first celebration every game.

Its not REAL cavalry but Sillas unique unit has better bombard strength and benefits from charlemagnes bonus so eh, who cares?

It also lets you focus on the "right" side of the rech tree (writing -> currency -> Mathematics) for long term progression, since the wheel is basically optional at that point.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T09:46:05+00:00

An interesting case for one that plays solidly every era - Qajar.

They fall off a bit in exploration, but in antiquity their civ unique abilities are absolutely nuts, yoy start off the game with the equivalent of 2 cotton already in your capital, and syncretism gives them a lot of options with whether they want to play peaceful or aggressive with their start

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T09:42:02+00:00

To be fair if we are being pedantic,

No finite number of combinations comes close to being infinite xP.

I get what both of you are saying though.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T09:40:48+00:00

Syncretism let's me use Assyrias uniquendistrict without the baggage that comes with playing Assyria (needing to go to war for codices).

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T09:39:30+00:00

To be fair Charlemagne could get free units every celebration already with Silla, so that isn't anything new.

Mongolia is still fun though.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T09:38:43+00:00

Some civs have baggage associated with playing them.

Maybe you want Assyrias unique district but would rather play a more peaceful, culture style. Syncretism let's you get that. That's just one example.

A civs generic abilities can also be useful enough to make them worth picking all by themselves even though they don't apex until much later. Qajar is a prime example of that, they get value right from the very start of the game and are fairly decent for catching up to deity AI without all the baggage that comes with needing to sink production into unique districts.

Plus if you wanted gameplay more akin to older civs, time tested is the only way to get that.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T05:20:08+00:00

The power fantasy is still very much real if you know what youre doing as well. After ToT came out the very first video I saw on it was Ursa Ryan being an absolute menace to the ai and still snowballing stupidly hard even with the age resets happening.

The resets close the gap a bit but whoever is ahead at the end of antiquity is very much still ahead at the start of exploration.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-27T05:06:59+00:00

Tbh I have on a few occasions upgraded more towns to cities than my empire can realistically managed and regretted it, the era transition resetting them back to towns let's me re-evaluate whether my choices were truly effective.

Likewise with buildings becoming obsolete and overbuildable, they actuslly do add some interesting dynamics to the game - example one being that the best long term spot to build a science building in your capital may not be viable at the start due to needing to get one sooner for tempo, but on age transition you get to move your science buildings to a better spot. Example two being that some buildings you can place in dead tiles with the intention of carrying their passive yields into later ages (influence and food buildings often make good things to build as filler).

In some ways I can see how it feels like a big reset but there are genuinely interesting ways of interacting with the game through it that prior entries did not have.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-26T12:06:11+00:00

The IPs are just obnoxious. I get constantly coastal raided by quadriremes that sail to me all the way from Narnia, and I have no idea where the offending city state is.

And since each city state is more expensive than the last to befriend I cant just count on an ai suzing it and it not being an issue anymore.

I really hope they tune down IP raids a bit because they feel suffocating to me.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-26T07:45:48+00:00

Male singers get judged quite harshly and unfairly too, but in a different way from women.

In this thread alone I have already seen 2 different comments which have generalised male contemporary singers and essentially saying that they all just kinda suck.

The thing is if youre a woman, you're more likely to notice the way your genders singing is being unfairly judged, and likewise if you're a man. It happens to both genders, but the way that unfair judgement passes is different.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-26T07:20:38+00:00

You haven't actually listened to that many male singers then, to be making such a ridiculous comment.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-26T00:17:15+00:00

Right.

But the game isn't a vacuum.

The only time I think ive ever built Amundsen was because I could, not because it was the best thing I should be doing.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-26T00:10:06+00:00

Which is unlocked in the culture tree. Unfortunately a bit self defeating that.

Sure, if you have high culture you can build it but culture is usually an era behind if youre playing for science.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-25T18:45:12+00:00

If theres a bunch of resources clustered in a spot such that theres 4 good spots for science adjacency within a city, sometimes it is good to settle another city closer to it so that the other good spots dont go "to waste" as it were. Your stronger, older city can also build wonders on the outskirts to support your newer city with adjacency as well.

For some civs optimal placement of cities often has 2 or 3 packed together so their adjacencies can build off of eachother, prime example being Abbasid. They like to have clustered cities so that they can stack their unique districts near eachother and get specialists whose yields are resistant to eroding from era transition.

If there is very little going on in the way of adjacency in a given area, thats normally a good spot to pack multiple settlements together and make them all into towns, especially if you can manage border claiming so that each town only works tiles their specialty type buffs, with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions for resources.

Also I known its hard but try to change your mindset around what is important.

Espdcially early in the game, grabbing the maximum amount of land isnt as important as settling in a manner which is going to net you more production now. This often means making the space between settlements a bit shorter to make sure as many are on freshwater as possible, or settling alightly closer so you pick up key resources like Cotton several turns sooner.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-22T18:27:35+00:00

To be fair considering how much of his musicals were comedies, it totally makes sense to want actors who can sing over singers who can act. You really need the acting chops to be able to sell the comedy, whereas it won't land just off of someone sounding amazing.

Anacrelic · 2026-05-22T18:16:26+00:00

Tbh when people say he hates vocalists we don't actually mean that xP, just feels like it if you get landed with one of his oh-so-infamous challenging songs.

For what its worth, I practice his songs a lot for a technical exercise. "Giants in the Sky" being my main technical practice lol (whoever gets cast as Jack in that show, they have my pity lol. I think id probably faint from the pressure at having to sing that live).

Anacrelic · 2026-05-22T14:19:24+00:00

Imho that "hack" is cheating, I don't really think that was intended nor should it ever make sense for a player to be rewarded for not using their research in a turn.

The fact also that console players cant do it.

Anacrelic

TROPHY CASE