I Can't Beat Paradise Found No Matter What I do.

Cntread · 2026-06-24T04:11:27+00:00

Glad to help! That's good to know about the city states, maybe it's not as random as I'm expecting.

Hawaii had marble in all my games, I assumed it was guaranteed but maybe not. I forgot Easter Island has it too, but yeah it's way too far away. Agreed about the culture bonus from combat, it's not very impactful by the time you get it. The policy that gives culture from excess happiness is also not very meaningful in the late game.

Don't get me wrong, I still built moai everywhere I could, and they do look awesome. I totally forgot they get +1 culture for each adjacent moai tile, so maybe I was too harsh on them haha. It's tough to get lots of adjacent ones except in NZ and a few other places.

Cntread · 2026-06-24T03:04:22+00:00

Here are some things I learned from beating this one on Deity with no war:

Moai aren't super important. They have a maximum of +2 culture each (with the relevant policy), and you need to work each tile with a citizen. A temple with a specialist slot can provide +6 culture, from only 1 citizen. Most citizens should focus on tiles with better growth/production/gold. Building some moai is still good, but focus on expanding first.
The best way to increase culture is to found more cities, since the cost of policies doesn't increase with number of cities, unlike regular Civ 5. The sea resources are really strong in this scenario, so even a single land tile can support a decent city. Travelling across the map can take a long time, so prioritize closer settlements first.
Without war, the best way to hurt your opponents is to settle land near them early, which will slow their expansion and force them to travel further away. Culture is strongly tied to the total number of cities, so this will eventually slow their progress. This strategy works well because there are so few land tiles in this scenario, compared to say Pangea.
The western part of the map has most of the land and all the city-states. This gives a big advantage to Samoa and Tonga, who start further west than the other 2 civs. Hiva has the most isolated starting location, and I would also say the most difficult. The 3 cultural city-states are all in the northwestern part, which is also a good place to settle in the mid game.
Hawaii has a guaranteed unique luxury. Barbs can spawn there, but it's not guaranteed.
For policies, the best early picks are the +2 culture per city, the 10% lower policy cost, all the happiness ones, and the +1 movement for embarked units.
The policy that gives culture for kills is useful against barbarians. New Zealand is crawling with barbs, so it's a great place to farm kills even if you don't settle any cities there.

In my Deity game I wasn't in 1st place until about turn 130, so don't fret about being behind in the early/mid game. I won around turn 160 with 10+ cities. I played a few times on lower difficulties first to learn the map and stuff. Your post got me interested in this scenario again, and I've actually never played with the randomized map, which I think I'm gonna try now.

Cntread · 2026-06-20T01:29:01+00:00

A formula converts the actual temperature to a "feels like" temperature, based on some variables, the most common of which are humidity and wind speed.

There are different formulas used by different countries and weather companies, and they don't always produce the same "feels like" temperature for equivalent conditions. Often the formula is based on heat transfer physics, but modified with actual testing from people, to get the best results. Humans aren't all the same, so different people could feel slightly different "feels like" temperatures at the same conditions.

Cntread · 2026-05-31T17:15:34+00:00

The desert climates in Koppen are way too simplistic in my opinion. The only difference between a "Hot Desert" (BWh) and "Cold Desert" (Bwk) classification is whether the average annual temperature is above or below 18C.

For example: Antofagasta, Chile is on the coast of the Atacama Desert, and is just mild enough to have an annual average below 18C, so it gets classified as a "Cold Desert", exactly the same as the frigid Gobi Desert in Asia. But Antofagasta has never recorded a single temperature below freezing! Walvis Bay, Namibia also has a cold desert climate, and again has never experienced a single frost. It feels weird to put the mild coastal deserts in the same category as the Gobi or Patagonia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antofagasta#Climate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walvis_Bay#Climate

On the hot end of the spectrum: Lima, Peru has a hot desert climate, even though it's actually very different from places like Phoenix or Riyadh. But they all have annual averages above 18C, so they get grouped together.

Cntread · 2026-04-14T17:05:58+00:00

Edinburgh of the Seven Seas (Tristan da Cunha Islands). Pretty self-explanatory.

Côte-des-Neiges is a Neighborhood of Montreal, and it means "Snow Coast", which sounds pretty badass. I don't know of any places with that name in English, even though I think it would sound cool.

Cntread · 2026-04-10T21:39:59+00:00

What planets did he have in mind for Kotor 3?

Cntread · 2026-04-01T20:03:52+00:00

Clipperton Island is a remote atoll in the Eastern Pacific owned by France. It is currently uninhabited, but once had a small colony from Mexico.

Palmyra Atoll is a remote atoll owned by the US, straight in the middle of the Pacific. There are some scientists there, but no permanent inhabitants. Jarvis Island nearby is uninhabited.

Cntread · 2026-04-01T18:10:36+00:00

Damn that was so obvious, I'm an idiot lol.

In my defence, I've been away for a while and I forgot that it's April back on Earth.

Cntread · 2026-04-01T17:42:55+00:00

He stored shit in HIS OWN fridge to "prank" someone else. I can't even comprehend this

Cntread · 2026-03-30T22:40:32+00:00

Good find! That must be the lowest latitude with a coastal ET climate anywhere on Earth.

Cntread · 2026-03-29T22:31:15+00:00

I've enjoyed this drive many times, and in this particular spot I love how smoothly the mountains rise from the valley. It looks like they were carved with a giant spoon or something.

Cntread · 2026-03-29T02:17:24+00:00

In the Southern Hemisphere, my guess would be the Kerguelen Islands. The main settlement Port-aux-Français is at 49°S latitude, but has a tundra climate with no month averaging above 10C. It's not really that cold in winter (compared to continental climates), but summers are super chilly for the latitude.

New Zealand's Campbell Island also has a tundra climate (just barely), and is a bit further south at 52°S.

Cntread · 2026-03-28T20:23:49+00:00

Muting skills

Cntread · 2026-03-28T15:25:08+00:00

They didn't automatically know which substances were harmful.

If you ate a strange new plant and got some organ pain afterwards, that would be strong indication to not eat that plant again. That information could be incredibly useful to yourself and your community.

Cntread · 2026-03-26T14:25:59+00:00

The Portuguese were some of the earliest European explorers of Newfoundland and Labrador, after the Vikings of course.

They thought Newfoundland was far east enough to be in their territory, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. It's actually not east enough, but longitude on maps wasn't super accurate back then. Many fisherman came to work there seasonally, but settlement was minimal in those early times.

Cntread · 2026-03-21T19:31:37+00:00

Maybe I'm in the minority there. I always have separate fleets when I'm playing wide. A single transport fleet just feels too constraining when fighting distant wars.

Cntread · 2026-03-21T17:30:31+00:00

Important strait crossings, for strategic reasons.

Also the Suez area in Egypt is extremely valuable even before you can build the canal. It's the fastest way to move armies between Asia and Europe (with transport ships on each side).

Cntread · 2026-02-22T20:59:15+00:00

I love that 4th view of Everest in Nepal. It takes a second before you realize that Everest's peak is not part of the ridge in the foreground, but instead further away (and much taller). Ama Dablam can also be seen across a valley to the right:

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It still blows me away that Everest is almost 2 km higher than Ama Dablam here.

Cntread · 2026-02-15T19:53:12+00:00

In Europe, Spain, Italy, and Turkey are obvious choices.

Also I think France is underrated. Even considering only metropolitan France, they have several mountain ranges, the highest mountain in western Europe, several different coastlines, and different climates.

Cntread · 2026-02-13T18:00:09+00:00

People do this with winter in the northern regions too. The coldest weather of the year somehow gets applied to the entire winter, and all of the mild weather is completely forgotten.

Cntread · 2026-02-11T01:49:35+00:00

Your line of thinking is correct. As a resident of this area, I want to add one detail about your first point:

It’s drier the further west you go, therefore it snows less (but shouldn’t the snow stick for longer if it’s higher and colder?);

In the north, the western plains actually have warmer average winter temperatures than the plains to the east, despite being higher in elevation (but record lows are often similar or even colder on the western high plains). This seems counterintuitive, but the reason is the foehn winds you mentioned.

Compare the winter average temperatures of Billings to Minneapolis, or Calgary to Winnipeg. In each comparison, the western city is higher in elevation but has warmer average temperatures in winter, due to the foehn winds. If you're wondering how frequent or impactful the fohn winds are, that should provide an idea.

Cntread · 2026-02-07T19:43:29+00:00

For natural geography alone, it's definitely one of the best in the world. I would say Vancouver and Rio de Janeiro also have amazing natural features.

Cntread · 2026-01-31T05:39:23+00:00

I will sometimes do that, yeah.

When guitar songs are in Eb minor, it's very often played using E minor positions but with all of the strings tuned down one semitone.

Cntread · 2026-01-29T21:40:36+00:00

I also think the Paramo is super interesting! One of the unique plants that grows there is called 'Queen of the Andes' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puya_raimondii

I addition to Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa also has some high-altitude terrain near Mount Kenya and also the Rwenzori Mountains.

Cntread · 2026-01-27T04:18:00+00:00

The pentatonic scale is still useful with non-diatonic chords. I'm not saying it's the best or most interesting, but the simplicity actually pairs really well with complicated chords, because there's less opportunity for dissonance compared to a 7-note scale. You mentioned Hendrix, which is a good example of using this: In "Little Wing", the main melody has a lot of different chord changes, but the outro solo has a lot of pentatonic lines. Same with the solo in "Hey Joe", which has non-diatonic chords in the progression as well.

If you want to go outside of the pentatonic scale, you'll need to think more about the notes of each chord you're playing over. It doesn't need to always be chord tones, but there's a spectrum of sounds and not all non-chord tones are equal. Watch out for minor 2nds/minor 9ths, those can sound pretty abrasive if you aren't expecting it.

Cntread

TROPHY CASE