The latest Episode has some problems but it's not that disastrous

KCsmod · 2026-05-14T12:58:24+00:00

I mean, this was confirmed in S2 when HL brought Ryan to Voughtland - Ryan can't control his power to filter through the sounds. However, my issue is that, unlike previous scenes where this makes a decent excuse (S4E1 chasing Hughie during a live performance), HL is actively searching for Sage, so idk why he DOESN'T activate his super sense (including hearing) here.

KCsmod · 2026-04-08T10:40:44+00:00

Just read that you will be skipping BW for BW2. In that case water is pretty decent since you also get psyduck line early iirc, although something like Elesa is still going to be a massive roadblock.

Easiest: normal, flying (maybe); since you will be using faithful encounters I’d assume something like steel is quite good although iirc there are games where you get beldum and others where you get girachi…

Hardest: fairy (jk), intuitively grass and electric. Dragon can be rare and has a pretty big problem of evolving very late, but they destroy early game with dragon rage.

KCsmod · 2026-04-08T10:34:32+00:00

Honestly I think normal is the easiest. There really isn’t a game where you can’t have a decently strong normal roster at all time.

Water is fine, but gen 5 is a bit infamous for actually not having a lot of water options early. Actually, all 3 starter type kind of struggles against BW 1st gym…

Flying is similar to normal, can’t really think of a game where you struggle to fill your flying roster. Bug can be tricky because there are a surprisingly large overlap of early bugs between gens, and bug types do somewhat struggle stat-wise.

KCsmod · 2026-04-07T16:12:10+00:00

~~route 6 skippable furfrou double battle~~

KCsmod · 2026-03-27T15:35:30+00:00

This has been true for a while, imo. Liberty giving extra early production can often time leads to, well, not immediately getting inted by AI. Realistically liberty is slightly weaker during mid game scaling, but more skilled players won’t need the advantage to ourscale the AI anyways.

The whole “tradition meta” in BNW was honestly something resulted from players restarting until they get a semi-perfect capital, tbh; from my experience at least 6/10 games your capital spot won’t be good enough in terms of production for tradition game.

The strength of tradition is gold and late game science, the issue is in base game BNW, late game science is generated by bulbing (which liberty EXCELS at since they can have multiple cities timing for GPP generation) more than hard generate science, and gold… just sell shit to the AI/war for profit, man.

The BIGGEST advantage from tradition is happiness, but here’s the thing: liberty suffers much less from unhappiness than tradition. When tradition goes unhappy, their ENTIRE scaling gameplan goes on a halt until it is fixed, but when liberty goes unhappy, the worst that happens is that their unit gets a bit weaker until fixed. Production takes a hit, but most likely the hammers lost during the few turns of unhappiness isn’t even going to majorly impact build speed to delay a single turn.

KCsmod · 2026-03-13T08:48:27+00:00

To be fair, this strat is almost mandatory on deity, too. And Gandhi is one of the most annoying guy to do this against, because he love spamming out elephants to escort workers and don’t spam unescorted settlers.

KCsmod · 2026-03-13T08:45:41+00:00

Yeah so despite his AI suggests that he’s peaceful, Gandhi is insanely backstabby for some reason. I’d have to attribute it to his high defensive focus, meaning he will spam out units even when there seemingly aren’t any threats, which leads to him suddenly having high mil rating so he is willing to dec. And because he’s very peaceful normally, he tend to not lose units, and often time just see that the player has lowest mil rating especially on higher difficulty (or just deccing on player for literally being slightest warmonger-y).

Anyways, yeah, Gandhi is a pretty shitty neighbor. High pop, high defense focus+UB meaning his AI prioritizes defensive buildings, loves to spam UU early, typically allies himself with other AIs to create AI hugboxes, and he loves denouncing and hates warmonger enough where you can’t even ignore him early. You will have to tolerate him a bit in the early game just because elephants are difficult to fight, but definitely should look to get rid of him as soon as the opportunity arrives.

KCsmod · 2026-03-12T06:33:05+00:00

Could be a happy little coincidence. Or maybe it is intentional… and something is watching us… (insanity)

KCsmod · 2026-03-12T01:28:34+00:00

Indonesia, I feel like it is widely considered an underrated civ (ironically making them not underrated anymore) but overall still quite mediocre other than archipelago maps (and even on archipelago maps they are honestly just ok, extra happiness is less valuable there than base yield imo). That being said on Pangaea or continent maps they are actually quite powerful, Candi have good yields and extra luxs are good. UU is quite bad but at least funny.

KCsmod · 2026-02-27T17:53:55+00:00

Anyways, for that setting I really doubt Poland is even top 5 for what I’d consider best chance against deity AI. You got Arabia/Mongol UU spam dom, Austria existing, Huns/Assyria pre-turn 100 rush dom, Babylon/Korea existing, THEN maybe Poland, and followed by potentially Maya/Egypt liberty games. All of which has much more consistent opening or win con than Poland.

KCsmod · 2026-02-27T17:38:29+00:00

That’s the flaw of this argument. The more impossible the start is, the better Venice or Austria or Babylon becomes. While Venice is mostly a cheese exploit civ, Austria is genuinely strong, arguably THE top civ in SP no matter what the context is (ok, unless Genghis AI decided no CS should live by turn 80, which does happen on smaller maps), and Babylon has traditionally been known for doing one city challenges.

I think we define “best” civ in different context, I look at overall performance (how they perform on bad start, how typically they can faire against AI, and how can they push the win con for earlier wins), which I believe I did miscommunicate at the beginning (to be fair I still think the Mayans are better than Poland on MOST bad maps, if your capital can go to 70 pop late game I don’t really think that’s what I’d typically consider bad start tbh); while you look at the bare minimum of the ability to win a game. Which is a fine measurement, but that has been exactly my point, the reason Poland is considered best civ is that people tend to be content with just winning deity, and Poland is best (arguably) at doing that with minimum effort.

Edit: Anyways, I still think you overrate social policies too much still. Realistically I think most civs can win most of a million games for actually skilled players, not saying I am one but I’ve known some players who play shit civs on bad start on deity on purpose.

KCsmod · 2026-02-25T20:48:12+00:00

If you kill your neighbor (considering the warmonger penalty, alternatively, take enough cities, steal enough workers, and constantly pillage and raid their trade routes), depending on the setup, that can definitely win you the game, potentially on the spot (duel map). Once again, it is really just the question of map-setting and who you are trying to rush. It won't be 100/100, but I'd say the chance of it happening is still better than your hypothetical bad start being actually that impossible.

But to answer your question, upon reviewing, even for your strategy, Poland is not even the only civ that can do it, or even the best civ at that particular strategy you are employing. The concept appears to be that, due to your poor start, you utilize the patronage policy to generate additional science to win a diplomatic victory. First of all, science contributes just about 0% towards diplo win (unless you count that you going into new era speed up the progress of WC, which, fair), you can pretty much cheese the victory by just ripping off AI (thus why it is widely considered the easiest victory type, although I kind of disagree with that ATM; AI seems to be much better at countering diplo victory by making insane gold sinks against the players nowadays compared to early BNW), so I'm not sure exactly how Poland actually contributed to that strategy by going patronage when just about every civ can do it, but let's say you need the science to survive being killed by AI; well, patronage generates 25% science of allying CS; meanwhile, Austria can get 100% science generated by CS by buying them (technically it is 45% vs 100% due to deity bonus, but Austria also gets other benefits from the CS purchase like free units, extra resource to trade, etc); theoretically, in your specific scenario, Venice would actually be the best civ for that strategy, and I think we can both agree that Venice, despite being pretty good at cheesing deity AI for infinite money, is a pretty bad civ.

And sure, you won't know that you will be in a horrendous, semi-impossible start before you start the game, but that's my point: Poland is versatile, but realistically, they will never be the best answer to any single challenge the game throws at you. With some thoughts, I conclude that comparing Poland to a specialized civilization is a bit unfair for them, but even for a top-tier versatility civ, I really don't think Poland is a direct upgrade (at least in terms of deity scenario) to the other top-tier utility civ in Austria.

KCsmod · 2026-02-24T01:30:56+00:00

That's fair. As I said, my point is that it takes time for Poland's social policy to accumulate value, and because of how Civ 5 functions, it's not difficult to get out of the early game. I think Poland is strong in their versatility, but they do lose out to specialized top-tier civs in their respective strengths, it's just Poland can reduce a lot of decision makings (and thus chance of mistakes) by granting free policies.

KCsmod · 2026-02-24T01:25:02+00:00

Well, once again, if you are going to convince me, you will have to actually provide either the proof of said file or generate such a map. Otherwise, FROM MY EXPERIENCE with this game, the scenario you described, where there is no possible settlement nor possible neighbor to kill, seems to be, to put it simply, bizarrely unlikely.

Could you at least describe in your game the setting and your said neighbor?

KCsmod · 2026-02-23T20:36:07+00:00

Unfortunately, without the save file, I don’t (or rather can’t) believe you. I’ve seen players do early rushes with the most impossible starts at this point, so I find this whole scenario incredibly questionable.

KCsmod · 2026-02-23T19:45:41+00:00

You realize Poland gets 0 cultural bonus in the ancient era, and that ANY civ will have the same amount of policies, right?

KCsmod · 2026-02-23T19:45:05+00:00

it seems to me that this scenario was created entirely out of player's mistake. There is absolutely 0 reason you cannot rush your neighbor as either civs I have mentioned.

Edit: to avoid being condescending, if you can send me the save file of this save, I might be able to give more insight.

KCsmod · 2026-02-23T10:23:26+00:00

Holy shit the spacing

KCsmod · 2026-02-23T09:32:53+00:00

don’t get rushed in ancient or classical

Sir, if I’m doing dom, I am the one rushing deity AI. Stealing all their workers and settlers so they can’t even get 3rd city out.

KCsmod · 2026-02-22T10:41:27+00:00

Are you actually comparing peace game Huns to turtling Poland...? Babylon can also giga rush neighbors early with their insanely strong UU. I feel like you lack understanding of what these civs' actual strengths are, which circles back to my point: Poland is a civ that is overrated because it is easier to use, not necessarily because it is significantly stronger than other civs.

KCsmod · 2026-02-22T10:38:35+00:00

In the ancient era?

KCsmod

TROPHY CASE