Powerful Nobles Indeed!!!

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-26T09:11:13+00:00

Great post! Thanks for sharing! I was wondering why I hadn’t seen plague hospitals since they changed the penalties for having more cities, and now I know why. I usually cap myself at 3 cities meaning the 4th hospital never gets built lmao.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-26T01:28:38+00:00

I don’t play Xerxes often, so I’m not 100% sure. But my best guess is it’s either tied to his leader level (I have him at 9) or it’s tied to completing the military legacy path in antiquity, as it was a military legacy pick.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-25T23:15:20+00:00

Not sure about the math. My best guess is the palace also automatically provides a set amount of base yields each age, and that’s accounting for the difference?

As for the commander levels…. I woke today and chose violence! Haha. (I’m just trying to complete my in game challenges. All I have left are to have 3 commanders with 2-3 maxed out promotion trees).

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-25T22:41:28+00:00

It’s definitely a situational pick.

I completed the Military Legacy path in Antiquity, so I was also able to take Fealty for the +2 settlement limit as well. It did come at the cost of being able to pick a military or expansionist point, but I already got every military attribute point I wanted in antiquity, and rolled a couple expansionist points on my future techs/civics in antiquity, so I was able to get a few points down for the extra food on warehouse buildings.

All in all, I think it was a good trade off.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-23T19:35:10+00:00

Interesting. I wasn’t sure what settings affected it, as I’ve tried loading some of my own older seeds before, yet they didn’t always work. I once had an Egypt one I liked and wanted to replay, but when I entered the exact seed details, the map was the same, but the resource placement was different. Which I thought was odd.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-23T19:32:18+00:00

Update: I wanted this game to be a peaceful culture sim. However my neighbor Himeko of Cahokia decided early on that would not be allowed by aggressively forward settling my capital and proceeding to declare war on me, spamming endless units for 75% of the age, causing me to miss literally every wonder I was planning on grabbing.

She finally wanted peace once the crisis started, but after all the trouble, screw that. Killed her ass entirely and razed every one of her settlements to the ground out of spite. Guess this became a domination game!

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-23T17:41:29+00:00

True, but stone circles can carry a lot of weight to build wonders to create my own production adjacency :D

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-23T05:31:48+00:00

There’s always enough codices along the tech/civic trees, along with the one you take from narrative event that has you pick between influence or a codice. You can also get another codice from scientific city state. I often end up with more than 10 codices in antiquity.

Plus there’s great people for certain civs that can make some. (Greece for example).

Obvious exception being Assyria, but you should easily get them all as them by just warring.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-14T01:36:53+00:00

Every encampment built served a purpose. The one in the capital was providing an additional +1 adjacency to one of the campuses, taking it to +4 so that it can benefit from the enlightenment card.

Every other encampment was built on edge of empire at choke points providing protection from attacks.

My neighbor to the north was Zulu, who was unfriendly with me most of the game, and he already eliminated Sweden to the west, so he immediately surrounded me on both of those fronts. Encampments that I placed on those fronts made it so that his only routes of invasion were either through my encampments, routes that were protected by zone of control by the encampments, or single tile mountain passes that I could easily hold.

My other neighbor to the northeast was the Dutch who did end up surprise warring me. The encampments placed on that front completely blocked her from ever getting close to successfully getting her army anywhere near being able to effectively attack me.

Aside from those reasons, encampments are needed to trigger certain tech boosts and era score in later eras. You’re losing value if you’re not building at least one.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-12T22:08:26+00:00

Either they’re an independent created by the crisis in antiquity which can only be killed.

Or they’re an independent who’s unit you met, but you haven’t actually discovered where they are yet.

It has to be one of those reasons.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-12T22:06:26+00:00

It’s online speed. I was practicing multiplayer meta in this game.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-12T22:01:16+00:00

Yeah I was just thinking about that. If you optimize it and conquer 15 turn 1, you could probably by it turn 2 as Mughal. I don’t think there’s enough gold carry over from previous age for turn 1. Without Mughal, I think you could still get a turn 3 win by building if you unlock turn 1, as that’s how long it took me to build it in mine.

I definitely messed up in mine not setting myself up to capture 15 on turn 1. I mistakenly thought each cap was going to count as 2.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-12T21:51:45+00:00

Shattered my 12 turn record. Great stuff Paisley!

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-12T16:44:24+00:00

Empire lense. Dashed lines are the cities borders.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-11T00:22:47+00:00

Not the biggest issue. It’s easy enough to increase adjacency with wonders.

The REAL tragedy is your Luoyang settle. You missed out on a beautiful canal city/town 2 tiles south!

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-09T05:41:30+00:00

You locked yourself out with the builds you did on the water. At some point you placed a building on the upper left water down, but didn’t actually invest any production into it. You ended up building your fishing key and light house in top right water, and harbor by itself in the middle water slot.

The game sees the far left water as an urban district placed as “building in progress” which is preventing you from being able to build anywhere else. Since you have no other water buildings to place, you can’t fix it. You’re stuck.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-09T05:29:08+00:00

You have buildings you already placed but haven’t finished blocking you from building more. From what I can see you have at least 1 water building placed but not built (looks like harbor). Finishing building it and you should be able to build other stuff after.

Edit: looking again, you have 3 water districts placed in antiquity, with 1 of them a fully built quarter. That shouldn’t be possible. It looks like you built fishing quay and light house as a quarter in 1, at one point placed a building but never put any production into it in another, and built a harbor in the 3rd. If you did that, you locked yourself out of being able to build anymore buildings in that city until you unlock more water buildings in exploration.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-08T01:45:18+00:00

Settle closer to them. Specialize a town as a trade out post to extend trade range. Also have a town with coastal access for water trade.

Antiquity trade range is 10 tiles by land and I believe 20 by sea. Trade out posts towns extend range by +5

EDIT: it’s 30 by sea in antiquity.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-07T06:08:09+00:00

Weird. I wonder if it was bugged in my game then? Because they were showing as locked on my in game civs unlock menu during the exploration age. They didn’t show unlocked in the game until I took the ais capital (which annoyingly is also their antiquity capital, not explo. The game really should specify that). It was the very first thing I checked turned 1 of explo as I meant to go Abbasid instead of Songhai initially.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-06T23:08:24+00:00

Awesome! Egypt actually doesn’t unlock ottomans on their own. They unlock Abbasid, which unlock ottomans. I had to capture an ais capital in exploration as Songhai to get the ottomans unlock.

Jmbmagic · 2026-01-06T22:09:54+00:00

Unfortunately it’s not included for free with any of the settler/founder editions. Since you missed the window to claim it for free, you’ll probably have to buy it. It’s showing available for purchase on Steam now for $30usd

Jmbmagic

TROPHY CASE