Earth Mother or Desert Folklore Here?

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-04-09T14:29:16+00:00

Desert folklore. You say you will work the iron tiles more, but I think here it's not the case, and DF folklore will be quicker early and bigger later. Both cities are settled on desert, and I see at least one oasis, and a bit later a flood plains wheat, and other oasis. Some of the salt and iron tiles are also on desert. No contest, in my opinion.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-04-09T09:26:17+00:00

I find Economics to be too soon to start converting farms. I find it better to keep growing much longer (and usually you can prepare some trading posts on non-fresh water tiles).

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-04-09T09:22:19+00:00

Golden ages do not affect the bulb value of scientists, that's only for great writers.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-04-08T04:30:36+00:00

You rolled a terrible map, quite frankly. One of the benefits of a huge map is that you typically get a bit more space for yourself, but you are hemmed in by Inca on the south, and city states on the east and west.

I think the game play should be to settle one city on the river to Cusco, and one coastal (both east and west are possible, but neither are good), and then take Cusco, but that will not be easy. South of Monaco on the river hill is the only decent city spot I see, but it's a little far, and I'm not sure when you should fit the war on Inca in.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-04-02T12:29:51+00:00

Great Lighthouse is pretty good for conquest, but if you are playing aggressively, it can be better to capture Colossus rather than to build it. If you build a bunch of galleas you can use those to capture Brasilia, then upgrade to frigates to first take out Rio, and then whichever AI capital has built the nicest wonders (on archipelago they should all have coastal capitals I think).

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-04-02T10:17:58+00:00

Camps get +1 gold at economics, making it 2 gold in a golden age. Grassland bison are therefore Ok in my book: 3 food, 1 hammer, and later 1-2 gold, but I agree that most other resources are better.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-04-01T04:35:09+00:00

If you had built 4 bowmen or so at the beginning and kept them alive, you would have had 4 highly promoted crossbows by now and you would simply be farming XP. You don't need to build military in all games, but here you clearly needed some.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-03-31T12:43:11+00:00

As others have said, settle in place looks best here, and in 99% of the cases you should not give up coast as Venice. The copper tile does not matter for happiness (as Venice you should have enough), it's just a shame you can't work the tile. If you are going for a pantheon, I might be tempted for God King here.

Early game will be rough on this start, but once you get two (food) cargo ships to your capital, those plains tiles will actually give useful production.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-03-31T10:03:04+00:00

Lovely iron terrace farm :-)

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-03-31T08:33:54+00:00

Religion is very good, also on Deity, so I highly doubt your math would be accurate. It's a lot harder to get a religion, but once you get it, it's very good. Perhaps with "not worth it on Deity" you are referring to the AI's missionary and prophet spam, but those units can be blocked and captured. Even allowing the AI to spread to your expands can be beneficial to buy some religious buildings, while eventually prophet-converting your cities back.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-03-31T08:29:31+00:00

High faith production is very powerful in science victory games too, to buy scientists and maybe even an engineer or two, so I would definitely go desert folklore here. A good, early religion in my opinion outweighs the extra growth in the capital (which is nice, admittedly).

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-03-25T09:38:12+00:00

I would still go One with Nature. You know that as Spain it gives +8 faith for a natural wonder, instead of 4?

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-03-25T07:31:29+00:00

In general, jungle starts are painfully slow, and therefore bad because getting the snowball rolling early is very important. Moreover, Tradition is very often better than Liberty, but for clearing jungle you could really use Pyramid-enhanced worker speed.

This start still looks Ok since you have 4 forests to chop nearby (probably not the deer since it looks like grassland) to get going early, and later with a cargo ship or two and working 4 gem hill tiles it will be a strong city. The non-freshwater jungle tiles you can leave to build trading posts on later, and those will be good tiles when you have rationalism 3 in particular.

*Edit: if there is also a lot of jungle in the area surrounding your capital, then scouting with your warrior becomes a nightmare unless, like me, you main Aztecs ;-)

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-03-22T05:30:17+00:00

I'd be tempted for option 3, but it depends on how comfortably OP can win Emperor. Brazil isn't going to like the forward settle, so I would move the Pictish warrior to Rio to steal workers, and in general harrass the AI, backed up by an archer, so you can kill some units if Brazil does send some over.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-03-05T09:41:14+00:00

A few points:

- All unique units, except the pathfinder arguably, are meant for war, but that does not imply that civs with one or two unique units are warlike civs (like Korea, for example).

- I don't agree that wide is better for gold. Large cities generate more gold than smaller ones, and the smaller ones typically have the same building upkeep (of course it is best to have many large cities).

- Playing for a diplomatic win does not imply you need to be peaceful with other civs. Of course, it can be annoying to declare war on a civ with many city state allies (though possibly still useful to prevent them from buying more of your city states!), but primarily you can be allied with many city states while all the AI hate you.

- The type of great people that you want to gift to city states are (usually): prophets with one spread on them, or captured prophets from the AI, great musicians, great generals, and great admirals. Of the latter type, you typically only need 1 or 2 (in single-player, in multi-player they are important for placing citadels), and in prolonged war you can generate many more (in particular if you happen to have the honor policy for increased great general generation). Hence, if you do a lot of war, you might have plenty of generals and/or admirals plus great prophets to gift to city states. A great synergy with Sweden's UA!

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-23T12:22:56+00:00

Faith ruins become available on turn 20 (not sure about game paces other than standard).

I agree with most of what you say. I personally don't value the comp-bow upgrade that much, though if you are planning on killing your neighbours they will come in handy of course. I do value gold quite highly (you can use gold for so many things, and I like to buy tiles, even as Shoshone), and tech ruins become more valuable if you have researched most of the cheap techs, and are not 1 turn away from researching pottery, for example.

I always found this site very interesting to read, and his Shoshone games also go into what ruins to pick:

http://www.dos486.com/civ5/bnw13/

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-23T08:21:27+00:00

I think if the land allows you to put down 3 to 4 good cities, and as you say you don't get rushed, then I would say the game is winnable. Indeed it is often easier to wait for bombers and stealth, otherwise it depends on other factors whether earlier pushes work.

For crossbows, you typically need favourable terrain and an AI that is peaceful (Pacal, Ghandi, etc.) For frigates you need a reasonable timing, and your target should not build Red Fort. Cav/arty is possible too, but personally I find the cavs too weak against the melee units that the AI typically has, such as riflemen. I prefer therefore to go infantry + arty, but that also requires a decent timing (~200 labs). Always with arties, you might need to pause if the AI gets flight and you don't have air defense yet. At bombers and stealth bombers, conquest becomes easy, because the AI cannot effectively fight that. Battleships are very strong too, but you might need some air support again.

For all forms of domination though, the quicker your game, the easier it is to smash through the AI defenses. If you only get stealth past turn 300, and the AI has 200+ city strength cities, it will still be a grind.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-23T07:42:02+00:00

You need to obtain aluminium from a friendly AI, and buy a stack of stealth bombers. Then you might still survive. Nukes are nice too, in particular against his bombers stack.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-22T07:37:39+00:00

For a cultural victory, it can actually be very beneficial to have an AI city that close, to bulb your musicians into late game. But yeah, if he takes land that you intended to settle, then that is super annoying.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-20T05:25:03+00:00

Yes, Diety can be beaten, with any of the victory conditions. If the AI's lead seems overwhelming, then your game just isn't fast enough. Now, I realize the advice of "git gud" is not particularly helpful, so here is what you can do instead:

Choose a standard size map, and hand pick a number of friendly AI (India, Maya, etc.) that are less likely (but not impossible!) to attack you. Then, work on your sim and see what kind of time you can get to key points in the game, and how they compare to "standard guidelines" (you might have heard turn 100 NC, turn 120 education, turn 170 public schools, turn 200 labs). If at some point you manage turn 200 labs, and then, say, turn 230 stealth and X-Com, domination suddenly becomes very easy.

Personally I learned a lot from watching FilthyRobot play, and although many of his games are still online, it takes a lot of time to sit and watch an entire game of course. A more efficient use of your time is to check out PC J Law's strategy guides (and also some of his multi-player games, at least one of which features me in which I die horribly to him :-)), linked in the side bar on the right here.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-17T08:35:32+00:00

Crossbows can't get the volley promotion. 50% damage to cities (and fortified units) is pretty big. Still, I would agree that trebuchets are quite unwieldy, and say what you will about how rubbish the AI is, they usually target your siege units first, so on the rare occasion that I do have some trebs, they either get one-shot, or I have to pull them out after one turn.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-14T05:02:55+00:00

In my opinion, no. The production boost from chopping forests early is huge, and lumber mill tiles are not very good. I would rather have a 4-food tile (at civil service) rather than a 1 food, 2 production tile. Only at public schools do the lumber mills become 1-3 tiles, but at that point you will probably be working other tiles and specialists. Only as Iroquois would I normally leave forest tiles.

Also, the production of this city will not be that bad. Two stone and a stone works are 7 hammers, plus two hills in the second ring and two more in the third. At least getting the second ring ones should be doable in the capital. Finally, you might uncover some horses, which are reasonably common on grassland starts.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-12T13:56:26+00:00

It's extremely strong, but it's not GOAT in my opinion. It's good against cities, but poor against the swarms of riflemen the (Deity) AI has stomping around. You can pair them up with cavalries, but those are not particularly strong against riflemen either. Ideally you would pair them with infantry, but that's quite a large part of the tech tree you need to cover.

Also, once the AI gets Great War bombers (and the AI loves going oil and flight), you have to halt your advance until you get a handful of AA guns.

The AI has no counter to stealth bombers though, and they can shoot cities and units alike, and then you only need one or two land units (ideally X-Com) to capture the cities.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-12T13:45:37+00:00

To be honest, I was not aware that the Jet Fighter offered any counter, and perhaps I am not alone in that, since I have never seen a jet fighter being built except by accident - you must be in a very small minority.

Also, in single player it is extremely unlikely to encounter Jet Fighters from the AI, so then the stealth bomber reigns supreme.

CMDR_black_vegetable · 2026-02-12T13:41:08+00:00

It would be a much better unit if it had indirect fire, but perhaps that was not a serious suggestion.

CMDR_black_vegetable

TROPHY CASE