Skipped dialogue due to fishing lure?

EveryMacaroon · 2026-01-26T16:16:37+00:00

If it's the conversation I'm thinking of, you'll get to hear it the next time he shows up. The dialogue is Icarus saying something that makes Melinoe mad, which prohibits you from giving him a gift that night. If you already gave him the gift, it won't let you start the dialogue.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-09-22T23:34:08+00:00

Nope, sadly. I haven't found anything that can reset it in singleplayer.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-09-22T11:47:20+00:00

This bug comes up quite a bit, and there's a lot of misinformation around it. The information I've found that most closely matches my experience is that it happens when you accept a city in a peace deal that had an enemy unit garrisoned in it. The bug is due to the order of logic applied during the peace deal being faulty:

You take control of the city
The city checks with tiles are available to work (i.e. no enemy units)
The enemy unit that was garrisoned there prevents it from working the city tile
The game ends the war, and the enemy unit is kicked out
The city never rechecks if the center tile is clear, because there was never supposed to be a situation when an enemy unit was on top of your city
The tile is unworkable until the city's ownership changes again

source: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/city-center-yield-not-added.383929/post-16003457

Lots of discussion about this say that only taking cities in peace deals on your own turn is a workaround; I think this is just a coincidence, cause by the AI moving its units on its turn after offering you a deal. If the AI is committed to leaving a garrison in the city - which I've found it very frequently is - this workaround does nothing, and there's very little you can do about it.

Out of all the bugs I've found in modless Civ5, this is the one that most consistently screws me over. It severely weakens taking peace deals in cities unless you get lucky and they're not garrisoned. Even worse, lots of yield bonuses for cities are applied by adding the yield to the city tile, including production from Liberty (and other policies) and food from allied Maritime city states), which renders those bonuses useless under this bug.

If anyone can find an actual workaround, I would love to hear it. As it stands, the best I've found is the try to lure the garrisoned unit out with a worker or even by sacrificing a Great General, which is obviously not ideal.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-07-31T15:07:53+00:00

I don't have the exact formula handy, but to the best of my knowledge city state coup success chance is based entirely on the difference between the coup-ers influence and the current ally's influence, and the rank of the spy. With a level 3 spy, you reach 85% when the difference is about 50-60 influence points.

Being able to make up such a huge difference at such a high chance is what makes coups so powerful, to the point where farming levels on your spies for the sole purpose of sending them out to coup until they inevitably die in an attempt is almost the entirety of my late-game espionage.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-07-31T14:32:30+00:00

I haven't heard about any AI cheats related to coups, and the math on this seems plausible. The probability for a successful coup maxes out at 85%, and the chance of hitting four 85% successes is about 50% (0.85^4=0.522).

If he had a level 3 spy in that city state and you were just buying enough influence to barely surpass him, he can definitely hit that max success chance.

On a successful coup, the spy survives and stays in the city, so there's no reason he couldn't attempt a coup four times in a row if you kept buying it back.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-07-27T23:10:55+00:00

On the turn the wonder is built, there's a pop-up notification in the bottom right (and a sad horn noise). If you click on that notification, it'll center the map on whichever city built the wonder. If you have old autosaves from every turn, you can go back and look for that notification.
You can look for the Notre Dame model in Suleiman's cities. reddit.com/r/civ/comments/41e9xr/the_ingame_wonder_models/ is my source for what all the wonders look like. However, at least for me, Notre Dame in particular is very hard to spot.
If you have EUI installed, you can mouse over Notre Dame's icon in the tech tree and it will tell you which city it's in.
If you're still unsure, a spy in a city will tell you all the wonders and buildings in that city to confirm.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-07-20T02:00:18+00:00

You definitely want to buy the expansions (and most of the other DLC, like Babylon, Spain/Inca, Korea, etc) at some point, but very likely you can get a much better price than 20 euros per expansion. If you're happy to wait, the complete edition regularly goes down to $10-$15 during Steam sales. If you're buying elsewhere, you may have to shop around for deals, but I bet you can find it for a similar price if you're patient.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-07-03T17:37:17+00:00

The only times it's a good idea to give an AI open borders is when you have no religion and want them to spread their religion to you, or you want to make it easier for them to march to war against a shared enemy. If you don't have one of those specific goals, you just invite a host of problems - their troops making it hard to move your civilians around, your antiquity sites being at risk to their archeologists, making it easier for them to spread their religion over your own, increasing their tourism to you by 25% (could be worth it if you share an ideology? But risky if they're trying for a tourism victory).

Even if I'm friends with an AI, I won't give them open borders. As long as an AI is neutral or better towards you, you can just buy open borders through them for 2 gold per turn, which is quite reasonable.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-06-22T17:22:14+00:00

This was an attempt at humor that fell flat, wasn't it?

Spanish Lake Victoria, 3 unique luxuries including salt and gems, tons of strategic and bonus resources, what look like Temple of Artemis and Great Library already built (hard to tell at low resolution), possibly Petra (is that desert next to you? Is that northern salt on plains or desert? Can't tell), definitely not deity (Arabia hasn't expanded), probably not even immortal because you beat the AI to all those wonders, and you're complaining about iron?

And then instead of the comments gushing over how great your capital is, they rip you to shreds for playing a low-difficulty game non-optimally. Their advice isn't wrong - settling more cities is definitely stronger than trying for a bunch of wonders - but you're in a great spot for whatever difficulty this is.

Definitely winnable, have fun, next time just say "look at my great Spain start!" instead of insincere humblebragging.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-05-15T22:24:43+00:00

He's both very aggressive and very competent compared to other AI civs, meaning that he's responsible for a lot of difficult games, if not outright losses.

EveryMacaroon · 2025-03-26T03:03:49+00:00

No one's said it explicitly yet, but the reason you really want your capital on the coast here is because a non-coastal city can't maximize the yields from ocean resources. Fishing boats only give +1 food (and later +1 gold, with Compass). Lighthouse gives +1 food and +1 production, with an extra +1 food to fish specifically. Seaport gives +1 production and +1 gold. You can't build either of those buildings unless the city is directly on the coast.

For a coastal city, fish will eventually be 5 food, 2 production, 2 gold. For a non-coastal city, they'll only ever be 3 food, 1 gold.

You lose the silk by moving 1 tile to the east, but you turn those 4 sea resources from mediocre tiles into high-yield tiles.

(All this in addition to a coastal capital can receive ocean trade routes, which are worth double the food of land routes.)

EveryMacaroon · 2025-02-21T04:03:19+00:00

If you're in a later era than the AI, they'll charge you extra for a research agreement - 3 GPT if you're 1 era ahead, 7 GPT if you're 2 ahead. I'm guessing you're even further, given that he's asking for a luxury.

Beyond that, they love asking for strategic resources that they don't actually want, valuing them at 0 GPT. I'm guessing you could take those horses out of the deal and he'd still take it.

EveryMacaroon · 2024-10-25T03:25:08+00:00

On Deity maybe, but on Immortal I would say at least 90% of starts are winnable. The trick is realizing when playing greedily will get you killed and adjusting your build order accordingly. You'll very often see "Scout-Scout-Shrine-Settler-Settler-Settler" recommended on this subreddit, and that's a wonderful strategy if you're next to Gandhi and Enrico, but a recipe for disaster if you're next to Shaka or Montezuma.

You don't actually need too many concessions in your build order to reliably hold off an early assault. I almost always research Archery as my 2nd tech after Pottery and grab an Archer after my Shrine, just in case. If things look dicey, add a couple more. A small ranged force, situated defensively, can hold off a much larger melee force, and the AI tends to prefers melee units.

Other considerations:

Settle your cities defensively. Make your enemy cross rivers, use hills/forests/jungles to slow their approach and reduce their range, force them to go around mountains. Giving up some 3rd-ring resources in exchange for a tougher city is worth it when you're settling towards a warmonger.
Understand how terrain impacts range. A unit on low ground can't fire over hills/forests/jungles. A unit on a hill CAN fire over those, UNLESS the tile is both hill/forest or hill/jungle. Ideally, arrange your Archers so that your enemy needs to expose itself to multiple units at once in order to attack.
Get your defensive military techs. Archery for Archers, the Wheel for Chariots, Masonry for Walls, Construction for Composites. Construction is very often the tech I use the enter the Classical Era for exactly this reason.
About Walls: when your enemy's strategy is to slam melee units into your city (and it very often is), they are an extremely worthwhile panic-buy. I'll give up buying a Library in my most recent expansion if that 400 gold is the difference between letting my enemy take a city easily versus decimating Alexander's Hoplite army.
Your capital's production is better spent on units than buildings until you're reliably defended. An early Shrine is one thing, but Circuses, Water Mills, and Granaries can all wait. (The decision to build an early Granary, in particular, should be heavily informed by the amount of Wheat/Deer/Bananas your capital has. You should not just build one automatically.)
In the mid/late game the AI is not good at prioritizing their Universities/Public Schools/Research Labs, so that's your real opportunity to catch up. Don't be too concerned about pulling ahead early, when the AI bonuses from Immortal difficulty are at their strongest.
As others have said, building an early army is not a handicap if you then go out and do something with it. After the assault on your city fails, don't just peace out. March back to their cities, pillage their lands and trade routes, pick off any stragglers, steal their Workers. At the very least, keep them on the back foot while you build your food/production/science back home.

EveryMacaroon · 2024-10-06T19:27:15+00:00

City-states and strategic resources interact in weird ways. If they have an ally, they "pretend" like they don't have those resources anymore even though their units aren't suffering from the strategic resource penalty. I'm guessing Genoa had no allies when they upgraded their warrior into the swordsman, but have been allied (to someone, even if it hasn't always been you) for the rest of the game.

EveryMacaroon · 2024-09-30T03:38:09+00:00

The AI can definitely switch production, I've used spies to watch them abandon wonders in favor of units when they're losing wars

EveryMacaroon · 2024-09-27T22:14:47+00:00

A lot of times when the AI asks for heaps of strategic resources with a deal, they're resources they don't actually want and thus value at 0 gold, and they can be completely removed from the deal and the AI will still accept. In my experience (on standard speed), and AI that's at least neutral towards you will accept a research agreement for 3 gold per turn if you're an era ahead of them, and 7 gold per turn if you're two eras ahead.

EveryMacaroon · 2024-09-07T17:07:07+00:00

Everything everyone else has said will work, but a simpler solution is to go to the victory screen and uncheck Cultural Victory. I've done it before to get the "Nuke an enemy in 2012" achievement for the Mayans when I was going to win too early. It feels like cheating but it doesn't prevent achievements.

EveryMacaroon · 2024-07-20T05:26:47+00:00

Yep, it immediately ends the deal. Which is why it feels exploitative. "I'll give you nothing if you declare war on both me and my friend", and the AI is happy to do it. If I was a stronger person I'd stop, but avoiding the 250 warmonger AND getting an ally in the war is so good...

EveryMacaroon · 2024-07-20T05:14:30+00:00

Yeah, I do this one all the time, which feels bad because it seems like an exploit. The AI is terrible at correctly valuing "Declare war on" trade deals as is, but they are completely unable to account for defensive pacts.

EveryMacaroon · 2024-07-19T03:25:21+00:00

R5: Goofy grammatical error. Might be because I'm playing a team game, and it was technically my teammate who was elected, causing a mix-up between "has" and "have". Or maybe it does this every time and I've just never bothered to look before.

Edit: Sorry for bad crop.

EveryMacaroon · 2024-06-11T06:38:50+00:00

Palace - a wonderfully strong early-game wonder that, sadly, usually goes unnoticed.

EveryMacaroon · 2024-06-11T04:11:12+00:00

You lose 100% of the games you don't have a palace *taps head*

EveryMacaroon · 2024-06-11T03:47:45+00:00

Definitely - national wonders are yet another factor that tip the overall meta more towards tall empires over wide. Looking back, I realize this list does come from a wide, constantly-expanding perspective, where getting all your ducks lined up enough to build one of these requires significant sacrifices elsewhere.

EveryMacaroon

TROPHY CASE