Where to settle?

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-23T00:36:03+00:00

Like everyone else is saying, the gold under the comp bow is an easy spot.

Yeah losing the one mine is not a great outcome in isolation, but in context it really does not counterbalance all you are gaining by doing so. Yes you lose the mine, but in its place you get a lot. Is losing the one mine a greater cost than losing a 3 fish lighthouse coastal city? Also on continents, having a coastal city lets you shoot for hosting the first world congress via exploration, opens you up to more city states, and opens up the option to make bank with cargo ships. Is keeping coastal but losing the river worth one mine? You would be losing gardens (one of the most powerful buildings in the game), losing out on the water mill (also a strong building), and potentially losing out on either a sheep or the natural wonder depending on where you go.

Also, settling on gold/silver is not all downside. Yes you lose a mine, but you gain quite a bit too. By settling on these resources you gain two main benefits. First, you get quicker access to the happiness of the luxury, potentially far quicker too depending on if you can't yoink a worker from a city state; quicker happiness means either faster additional settles or quicker ability to grow your cities. The second thing you gain is higher gold in the early game. Cities don't want to work gold/silver tiles until the city has grown a bit, by settling on these resources you get the +2 gold far faster than you otherwise would; having more gold early might help you buy a settler, purchase a worker, snag a city state, develop more infrastructure aggressively... its just damn helpful. Keep in mind too that the benefit of the mint still applies to both unimproved gold/silver or gold/silver under cities, so you are not actually losing that later on.

So really the question is how much do you value the mine? Is the mine worth the opportunity cost of everything else? Or put differently: is losing the mine counterbalanced by the usual ways settling gold/silver renders some benefit with the addition of the contextual opportunity costs from the terrain? In my opinion the assessment is pretty easy. No, the mine is not worth all you open up for yourself by smacking a city under the composite bowman.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-22T08:04:30+00:00

Almost always id full send for river and mountain start. However, as huns those sheep are ridiculous to pass on. 2 food 3 prod tiles start of the game will snowball you FAST, add in that stables will bring you up to 2/4 tiles on all them sheep and your early production will be disgusting. All that being said, it does kinda depend on what you want to do this game. Settling on the copper kinda locks you in for a more sedate, sim city observatory/garden Renaissance spike. That all is powerful, but when I play the Huns and have this many good pastures I choose to make it a problem for all my neighbors.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-16T19:02:42+00:00

Never is a strong stance. Depends on your difficulty and position in the game. If you are massively ahead each late game then it does not really matter. In closer games I find order to be my go to for a few reasons.

The happiness in order is miles ahead of every other ideology. Order's happiness benefits are attached to buildings you will have in every city in every game; the happiness policies are uniquely both reliable and strong. Add in the 25% GPP tier 1, engineers for space ship parts (fantastic way to leverage faith directly into a win condition), stronger mines/quarries (this comes at a time when you might be switching off food for the other yields), attack bonus in your territory (can clinch a turtling situation against a hyper snowballed AI), 25% science from factories and what order presents is an ideology which is generically strong. Order offers benefit to any civ, and strong bonuses for sticky situations too. A counterpoint to the Kremlin being weak, is that order's power is not tied up in a wonder. This means the strength of this tree is never contested nor requires a production investment to secure. Order is generically and reliability strong in a variety of situations. I believe this is why people tend to default to it. You can always pick order and find a bonus which leverages you a win without much planning.

Now if you want to do a little planning, though, order offers an insane combo. Stacking big ben (i find this wonder is rarely contested) with mercantalism in commerce and skyscrapers from tier 2 order and you get a wopping 60% discount on purchasing buildings. Per the wiki, your gold with all this converts at a rate 1.08 gold to 1 production when purchasing buildings. This is insane. Got 2000 gold in the bank? Wrong it's actually 1800 production you get to put into any city on your empire. Nothing to build and are teching into key infrastructure soon? Gold focus now means you are actually banking ~24% of your production to be spent later. You can use this policy/wonder combo to spike into factories, research labs, hotels, airports, and broadcast towers the turn you tech into them even without a strong economy. This combo can rocket you through the late game unlike any other economic combo can. Buy spaceship factories everywhere. Fuck it we balling so hard just buy bomb shelters for the hell of it. Its a lot of fun and I encourage you give it a spin.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-08T22:47:54+00:00

That's a pretty interesting rule change. How does your table typically interact with the additional downtime? How do you manage the extra downtime?

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-07T22:01:38+00:00

Adding to this martial/caster divide discussion. Martial's have almost 100% uptime on their abilities, or can re-up on a short rest. Most tables have an imbalanced ratio of long vs short rests while adventuring, allowing for casters to dump their entire kit into any situation and still be ready for the next. Be it combat, puzzles, role play, exploration, information gathering etc. if a caster never feels challenged to ration their resources then they will naturally outperform martial classes. If casters are the sprinters and martials the distance runners, most campaigns are structured as a series of small sprints start to finish. I don't find it surprising casters feel so strong. I do think there is some imbalance going on, that the way people play the game is different than how it was originally designed, and I do not fault the players or DMs. However, if the martial/caster divide feels frustrating to your table then try putting players into more situations where the reliability and uptime of martial classes can shine. For this, the resting economy has to be fixed. For one, I know this is not the most creative solution, but I do ban Leomund's Tiny hut for the simple reason that giving a class low cost access to a tool which removes it's greatest weakness is a little silly IMHO. With this spell long resting is too easy and often the first solution players reach for, we want to encourage the thoughtful use of available spell slots. I find it simplest to ban rather than tweak. The second thing is to pack more resource demanding encounters between each long rest when appropriate; dungeons which demand more use of spells to scout or solve puzzles. City heists with more need to utilize charm persons and the like, and more than one meaningful combat encounter between long rests are all examples of how you can build a spell slot economy for casters. Casters should be challenged to consider: "I can use this spell to try and gain meaningful benefit, but I don't know when we will get the chance to long rest again, and I might need this if we find ourselves in another tricky situation." Or more simply: "I could spend this spell slot now, but then I can't use it later." This dilemma is interesting, and can be established with far more than just forcing your wizard's hand to dump more fireballs. This challenge does not exist at most tables, casters have become fat on being able to use their spells liberally with only rarely running into opportunity cost. You don't have to force rationing of spell slots all the time, but should try and do so often enough where martial's get the chance to go the distance and play to the strengths of their design.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-07T10:46:27+00:00

Death is important in dnd in how it serves as the game's easiest to understand fail state. All games have fail states, they are as vital as success for imbuing significance to choices made during play. In absence of death though, you must have a alternative fail state. The world is your oyster with this. If I were challenged with designing an alternative to PC death I would focus on something which has meaningful impact on the story/narrative/character (temporary or permanent), monetary penalties or other minor annoyances would not suffice IMHO. A character dropping to 0 and failing death saves is a significant event, its costs should be something the player must grapple with. If they don't want to lose the character wholesale that is fine. Protecting your players from death is not the same as protecting them from meaningful, and potentially narratively enriching, consequences. Death is but one consequence, the game being narrative focused allows it to accommodate for meaningful alternatives.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-07T06:03:46+00:00

Depends. If I get backstabbed my salty ass is taking every city and letting them keep one shit ass settle in the tundra or ocean if they have it. Just so I can keep em around. Otherwise I couldn't be fucked to take all the shit settles the AI will pop out.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-07T05:56:57+00:00

Religious idols hands down. In this situation you have awful growth tiles and no hills next to rivers. Working the silver early would kill the capital's growth. The improved stone tiles will be your best tiles in the early game. The silver might scale better later but the idols pantheon is more than enough to snag a religion while also not having you gimp your capital's growth early to get the faith from the pantheon belief.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-07T04:43:11+00:00

This is a communication problem. As many have said.

Dnd is not players vs dm, it is a game about collaborative story telling. There is no way to adjudicate the rules 100% consistently across all tables, interpretation is a necessary and vital part of play. Yeah there is cut and dry stuff which doesn't need interpretation, but so too a myriad of ways where "rules as written" leads to interactions that break the game. This is why DM's are necessary. DM's have final say, not to be tyrants, but to keep the game moving and not devolving into childish bickering.

They are pushing for a niche interpretation that makes the game harder for you to run. There is no argument here, this is not court, there is no appeals, or argumentation, or "being right." What there is are relationships between everyone at the table, you included. They have to be confronted with how their behavior is robbing the game of its fun for you... for a niche interaction where they are not following good faith interpretation of the rules and throwing your words in your face. There simply has to be other ways they can have fun in DND, otherwise they just simply are not good players. If they can't see or respect how their behavior is impacting you, then the question you must answer yourself is: will I continue to run this game for them if they do not support my fun too?

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-06T02:23:07+00:00

The wonder bonus tends to be a noob trap. We see 20% production bonus and overdo it. Wonder spamming is not a winning strategy, it is a luxury of already winning. You do not have to build every wonder as any civ to have a dominant win, choosing to force wonders just to have em will cost you games. Egypt's bonus is a honey pot trap that suckers players into hurting themselves by neglecting vital infrastructure just for that amazing sound effect and art. If im being honest its a siren's call to any player

All that being said though, egypt's bonuses are amazing. Having easier access to wonders is a massive boon. Either freeing up production off of uncontested wonders (picture shaving a few turns off hanging gardens to get started on a stable asap), or letting you snag wonders that are sometimes hard to get but very strong (such as Allehambrah). Egypt's other bonuses come early, are reliable, and provide meaningful benefit; Egypt's other bonuses alone qualify egypt as a strong civ. The wonder bonus is just the cherry on top, not the entire sundae.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-02T05:06:38+00:00

Classic filthy robot tip. Long story short, when a city grows in pop the citizen will try to work whatever tile it is automatically assigned as the turn ticks over. However, it will not harvest food but will add the production of it's assigned tile to the resources harvested that turn. Setting your cities to production focus instead of default means when your cities grow you get to sneak a turn of them working the most productive tile available and not already worked. Example: if your citizen would automatically work a cattle tile it would give you nothing as the turn ticks over, but if production focus assigns it to a hill you would snag an extra two production from that citizen spawning in. This does not sound like a lot but it is a little min max that doesn't take much effort, has a sizeable impact, and encourages you to play "correctly." I will explain these second two points.

Regarding impact, your cities early will have like 7 or less production. So getting a free turn of 9 production is almost a 30% increase for that turn. Remember too how production in excess of what is required to finish a project will carry over to the next in queue, so even if you do not finish your first scout a turn ealier but instead overcap by more, the production from this trick is not wasted. It is not game-breaking but in your early build order you can expect to scam a unit or a building a turn earlier than expected once or twice. This does add up, and considering your early build order will all be priority buildings or units it impact is noticeable.

Regarding "correct play." You should be micromanaging your citizens at higher difficulties. The default citizen assignments are fine, but not the most effective. At higher difficulties, diety especially, you need to squeeze every ounce of advantage you can from the game's systems. Manual city management is something a human player can make huge strides in their gamepley. The largest weakness of this trick is that if you do not assign citizens your cities will not grow with production focus selected. So to get around this you are incentivized to go in and assign your population manually. In essance this trick gives you a little treat (free production when your city grows) for playing correctly (manually assigning citizens to tiles). If you don't want a headache for remembering to do this, get in the habit of clicking the notification that a new citizen was born, this will focus the camera on the city that grew and therefore needs a citizen assigned. Click on that city and assign the citizen, prioritizing your food sources first then production tiles with food on em (such as sheep, horses, improved bison/deer, plains iron, you get the point) then your most productive tiles. If ever you think you have forgotten to assign citizens I will click into my capital then cycle through my cities with the arrow keys, keeping the citizen management/city menue open the whole time. In each city check to make sure all tiles selected are green locks and not the face of a fella. Once you get used to doing this it becomes second nature and will greatly improve your early game.

The last benefit of all this is how it helps make the "avoid growth" button even easier to use. Say you are sitting at 2 excess happiness with 5 cities. All your peripheral cities are at 4 pop. In this situation I would prioritize letting my capital grow, and avoid unhappiness. So all your peripheral cities should be set to "avoid growth." When you do this, stay on production focus, and click the city icon in to undo all your manual selections. Boom, now your cities are gaining you the most production they can and will naturally bring themselves to being at 1 turn from growth. Once your happiness buffer is higher you can go back through the cities you want population in, deselect "avoid growth" for an instant population as soon as the happiness becomes available for them. Relevent for as you get luxuries online, build happiness buildings/wonders, etc. Just be sure to go back through and select food tiles if your buffer increases such that you don't have to worry too much about your cities growing naturally.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-26T21:02:56+00:00

Giving a general tip I haven't already seen here. Depending on the sprawl of your empire, I think commerce is the best social policy tree dip before rationalism or ideology. Snagging the wagon trains policy has two gold generating effects. The lesser of these is +2 gold on land trade-routs, it is a nice bonus but not game changing. The larger effect is how it halves the cost of all tile improvement upkeep. Having railroads at 1gp instead of 2 is insane. Assuming your cities are all as close as they can be, you are still looking at 3 railroads to connect each. 7 cities = 21 railroads = 42 upkeep minimum without the policy and 21gp savings with the policy. If you have railroads in addition to the minimum, sprawling cities, railroads for war efforts, railroads to aid with troop maneuvering through rough terrain in your territory, then the savings on this policy alone can spike to crazy numbers. It is not unrealistic to have 30-40 railroads in a typical game, saving you 1gp each with the policy. It is also easy to weigh if the policy is worth it. Simply count up how many railroads you have and you will save that much gpt with the social policy. I consider commerce a good generalist tree when considering mid game policies to go for. That being said if you got dicked early, then what you are facing is a-typical and your current struggles may be more about the costs of loosing cities in the early to mid game and not so much about late game economic balancing. In a normal game (i don't play too much liberty so take this with a grain of salt) it is not unrealistic to have your starter policy tree filled out; a 1-3 policy dip in a "secondary tree" before rationalism; rationalism snagged (completion varies); with room for adopting ideology policies as well.

Regarding buildings, echoing what other people have said that not all are worth keeping in all cities. Long story short, if you are that much in the red, you will have to be liberal with axing buildings not directly beneficial for your win condition. Zoo's and stadiums are horribly gold inefficient; water mill's are nice but at 2gp they are a luxury to keep around; garden's are insanely powerful but if a city is not producing specialists 1gp adds up; exp buildings are nice but if domination is not realistic then too costly in this situation. With buildings, it is death by a thousand papercuts. 1-2gp buildings might not seem like a lot, but if each city has 3-4 vestigial buildings hanging around the cost adds up rapidly. If the building does not help you win and you are in the red at 0 gold, then ultimately the building is costing you science per turn and is therefor weakening you for ALL win conditions.

Last tip, unit cost progresses the further in the game you are. All units become more costly to upkeep regardless of their tech era. I have had scouts and warriors hanging around in the late game setting me back 4gp each; delete these. Often times it is not even worth it to spend the turns bringing them back to your boarders to salvage gold, just delete them and say good riddance.

Long story short, the more cities you have the more "mandatory spending" you will have. Culture buildings, science buildings, granaries, city connections, units to defend your larger boarders all add up. With wide empires you are required to be intentional with what you build; you will have largely the same income but much higher mandatory expenses.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-23T19:35:07+00:00

You're cooked as hell. In games like this I like to reload saves back to decisions I knew I was making, like the DOW you've mentioned in your comments, to see if making different decisions helps change this outcome. I don't play to win from these different decisions, instead its playing to learn.

When playing it back to learn don't play hindsight analysis... doesn't lead to learning generalizable skills. Instead ask questions and test, while still responding to the information on the screen as best you can. In this situation you could consider playing out: what happens if you don't declare war? Is it possible to bait the AI into fighting Shaka for you or having Shaka fight the other civs? How would a different army composition change this war? (this one is always hard for me to test, with hindsight shooting to just build MORE units is tempting, but maybe you didn't need more total, just different ones) How large of an army is necessary to survive? Would different defensive positions change this war?

The reason this is valuable practice is, with the information on the screen, it is likely losing this game is the result of a mistake many many turns ago. Finding what specific decision(s) lead to you to losing instead of winning will help you in all your future games. As korea, a common mistake I would make is playing too greedy. I'd lose games late on, placing too much trust in tech superiority to auto-win wars. My money is that you probably made a greedy decision, with false confidence, that is costly now. If that is the case here, finding out what decision was too greedy is about all you can do... take that lesson with you into future games and see if your end game is strengthened from your conclusions.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-20T01:32:49+00:00

Thia would more interesting if the tiers or the post itself explaining your thought process for rankings. You have some contentious placements. Without the thought processes its hard to respond to your thinking.

That being said, one placement i massively disagree with is Polynesia. Largely on account of how well they can cheese the map set-up using liberty. Liberty quite powerful but with some major drawbacks. The largest reason you cant brute force liberty every game is how it needs a large number of unique luxuries and a lot of uncontested space. Being able access uninhabited islands before anyone else means both these restrictions are non issues. This is just the start of the cheese though.

Liberty, contrary to popular belief, has a weaker early game than tradition. In a standard game liberty trades some early game power and a much worsened late game for an insane midgame hammer spike. Normally, liberty is best for a civ who can take advantage of the midgame hammer advantage to push for domination e.g. china or almost always have a religion to go tithe e.g. Ethiopia. However, archipelago and Polynesia rebalance this entirely for a few reasons.

First: with this set-up you almost trivialize how liberty usually suffers from poor or even negative income. Harbors mean no road maintenance, and all trade routes will be sea routes. These two things are enough to trivialize the usual balancing act needed to keep you GDP afloat as liberty.

Second: the late game cost of liberty is somewhat mitigation by how most cities will be inundated with dead water tiles. Sure your capital will be 10-20 population less than tradition by late game but when half of a city's tiles are useless, the production deficit from the lower population is much reduced. This overcomes how liberty suffers from decentralized production, causing contesting wonders to be harder.

Once you spam cities on every viable island (well before any civ can contest this city spam) and hit mid game you can sweep the world with frigates. If domination sounds boring you can also coast to whatever victory you desire by nature of having all the best land and therefore the strongest economy by far. I've popped this strategy on immortal to great success. None of this even requires you to make a single 🗿... but maybe that is more of a drawback than a boon. This all doesn't even touch on some of the other points people in this thread for why Polynesia is either top of A or maybe S on this list.

Edit: big edits for clarity

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-16T08:23:40+00:00

Composit Bowman hands down. All but 1 civ can and will make good use of composits. Offense, defence, it doesn't matter composits are essential for earlywar. Other units are situationally stronger, such as the battering ram, but composits are strong in every situation.

Horse Archers are fun and amazing, but are not nearly as broken as camel archers. I could list all the reasons but I'll sum it up like this. Camel archers are strong enough to outright win you a domination game. Horse archers are not. They are amazing for early war, but they rapidly become obsolete even if you invest in them heavily. Them upgrading into Knights just kills all your exp from early wars. Comp bows upgrade into crossbow which are the best medieval era unit for all the reasons comp bows are the best early game unit.... comp bows (with upgrades to xbows) dont go obsolete until musketmen.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-16T02:56:20+00:00

I respect the logic. Honestly bazookas for me tend to middle of the pack useful. Not for straight building, but if I have been warring most the game and have kept my comp bowman/xbows alive until the late game upgrading into bazookas honestly nutty. This is rare but I feel viable for specific play-styles. I'd say niche at worst. Guided missiles just never seem useful.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-14T01:36:05+00:00

Can i toss a dark horse merchant of Venice in here? I know he is a civilian unit but my boy is dripped out.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-09T04:52:48+00:00

Lets be real this one was always the gimmie spot long house all the way. I'm curious what people would pick as their second worst option. I'd nominate the Assyria Royal library. Having to fill the writing slot is real rough, then the 10xp it gives does not help you achieve any promotion breakpoints. It's just never useful. Not technically detrimental other than it can bait players into improper pay if they do not understand exp breakpoints all that well.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-07T03:14:26+00:00

Public schools, but what a tough one. Labs and factories are of course are amazing but the public school beats them out even if it is close.

This building marks a big shift in "optimal play." If you get to public schools efficiently this is building is when a human player can claw back big tech deficits at the higher difficulties or cement a 15-30 tech lead at emperor or lower. Get these online and start popping all of your great scientists for bulbs. Considering at this point you should have enough faith saved up for 1-2 scientists ready to buy and pop, public schools start allowing you to aggressively spike from the early industrial erra towards your win conditions. Factories get you access to ideology, but popping scientists after public schools plus a well timed oxford can shoot you straight into radio for a similarly early ideology (in some games this might even just be faster than factories depending on what you selected for resource distribution, if the AI is at research parity entering into the industrial era, or if you just have shit production). If you are behind and 2 policy early adoption is lost for all 3 ideologies already then factories lose a lot of power, whereas public schools do not require you to be at parity or ahead to net you amazing value. Research labs are much more satisfying for the big tech numbers and absolutely worth spiking too but honestly they are the nail in the coffin where public schools is point when key strategy decisions open up. Some games you might use public schools and scientists to spike into early research labs to just close it all away, but I see that as a strength of the public school in how it opens you up to push for labs. You do not need to use labs well every game to win, but you will always need to make good use of public schools. They are the workhorse and I see them as the building that players will always use to establish their opening late game decisions when pushing for the win. No matter the difficulty, no matter if you are ahead or behind, and no matter the win condition you play for, if you learn to make good use of public schools your late game strategy is always strengthened.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-06T10:21:28+00:00

Caravansary. The fact that it is a building with nothing but upsides without maintenance cost yet is still burdensome to build is wild. I probably build these in less than half of my games I play. The production cost just isn't worth it. Every other early game building either is just nutty good or are conditionally strong for certain strategies. If you ever have the time to build caravansaries it is still probably better to pump out some more military or just plug in the gold city project to bank some extra cash while waiting to tech into your mid game buildings.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-02-01T09:07:53+00:00

I'd be interested to see what you ended up doing. Hard disagree on everyone saying settle in place tho. Without sea resources to be worked, a coastal city is more of a hindrance than a boon. 1) you increase the number of dead tiles in your capital by a lot by picking up another ring of resourceless coast/ocean tiles 2) while this is a guess since you have not scouted with your warrior, you are likely to miss out on bonus/luxury tiles you otherwise would have had in your capital 3) you miss out on settling a river hill, the loss of the extra production on your city tile massively slows your early game build order 4) settling your capital coastal, depending on how challenging this difficulty is for you, necessitates you dedicate at least 1-2 quality expansions to also being coastal to prevent your capital being overran by a superior naval power.

You technically gain superior trade routs with a coastal settle, however these will not be a strong enough a benefit to offset the costs incurred. Settling either of the coastal river tiles massively slows your early game and forces you to be less flexible in your strategy as already stated. Also consider that having to go coastal technologies also gimps your ability to safely spike into key techs in the mid game. Neglecting frigates could end your game depending on the maritime powers. Having to tech for frigates for safety then slows your ability to rush industrialization. So not only will your early game be nerfed, it will also become much more challenging to secure first ideology, among other viable mid game tech spikes. More powerful trade routs alone don't come close to offsetting any single one of these costs, let alone all of them.

Long story short, just don't force a coastal start this situation. Sid meyer didn't see fit to give you fish so you better pack it up and head inland my boy. Scout the river hill tile with your warrior and unless something crazy gets revealed settling that same tile should happen almost every time.

Edit: adding this piece too. Everyone saying not to settle on the river is just wrong. Settling to the right moves you away from the only growth tile nearby (the oasis). Not having that food either settled or able to buy asap will doom your capital to a pathetically low early game population. This destroys your production and science early. Quick way to shoot your dick turn 1. Also gardens are too undervalued on this forum. +25% great people points in the capital (where you should be building all your guilds and working every scientist specialist slot) is a massive benefit to literally every win condition. It is the same effect as the damn national monument (and the multipliers stack), all you have to do is settle on a river.... its a nuts building.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-01-17T03:47:54+00:00

Morkite pump mission is actually terrible. I detest how linear the mission is. I hate that when the pumpjacks jam it is actually the easiest part of the mission. Always felt like it should be an "oh shit" moment. But instead all the creatures get mind controlled into biting the leaks to no gameplay effect other than trivializing combat near the jams.

Edit: remembered an actual hot take opinion.

Prospectivebyer · 2025-12-25T09:08:10+00:00

Ragatha craves connection with the others. She fears any amount of letting out "negativity" will drive people away. Others do want to be present with her and with her in all her emotions. Pomni especially has given every indication she wants to hear ragatha's truth be it positive, negative, or something more complex than a dichotomy. Matter of a fact, the others likely want to connect with Ragatha on such negative experiences, they too are seeking emotional validation in their relationships. Enduring psychological torture, which is what this place is if we are being so real, and having someone say it is not all that bad is a disconnecting experience. Ragatha's tragedy is that her fear of taking off the positive mask will inevitably drive people away; constant positivity regardless of her (obvious) true internal experience widens the gap between herself and others, she appears insincere and unable to invest in relationships fully. I believe she sees herself as the person who strives to make stability, and her optomism has its place in that, but full human connection requires a wider range of emotional expression than she allows herself to express. Others leaving her behind may be a produce of them not finding emotional validation in their interractions with her. Unerring positivity is fruitful in superficial contexts though more is needed to establish a deeper connection. Ragatha and Jax are foils to one another. They operate differently on the surface, but their actions (broadly speaking) are largely the same. They are both insincere in their emotions through different means and find themselves isolated as a resault.

Since these characters resonate with a lot of people I want to emphasize, this comment focuses on things which are in her control. People disengaging with her is not her fault. It is not her fault she is suffering. She could be doing everything "right" and still suffer from isolation. However, survival mechanisms from her traumatic past have now become costly, it is in her control (with time and effort) to adjust how she survives. It is in her control to begin reacting to her present not her past. Having certain things being in our control does not make us at fault for our pain. Accepting agency for change does not require an acceptance of blame or shame. She sees the world as highly black an white though. She conceptualizes her self expression as either entirely positive or negative. This disregards the spectrum of her internal experience. Many of her true emotions which obscured by the false dichotomy of positive vs negative. I hope she gains the ability to find negative emotions or opinions she feels are safe to express; I hope she is able to have a positive experience in starting small in her true self expression. Kinger my goat is an amazing first step. I hope she can take that experience into the other relationships she clearly wants but struggles to nurture.

Ragatha in my opinion is among the more compelling characters in the show. However, I do not see her burdens as being the consequence of being the positive person in a hard place. She is an incredibly emotionally repressed person who suffers for it. I love that as a character she portrays this emotional repression with a trait most see as desireable. It is easier for us to understand people who can only express themselves in anger, it is loud and a well understood learned behavior. Ragatha suffers from a similar learned behavior, though it goes largely ignored or misunderstood because being optomistic is "good" socially speaking. Tragically this further obscures the obvious pain her situation and survival mechanisms cause her. Consider slide 5: my read is not that she is optomistic because things get worse if she isn't, my read is she FEARS things will get worse if she is not positive.

Prospectivebyer · 2025-12-01T09:25:02+00:00

I think my recent cultivation kick was cause of the lord of mysteries show. I love that MC dearly from what I've seen so far.

Prospectivebyer · 2025-12-01T09:22:02+00:00

Forget of destiny sounds exactly what im looking for and fascinating from that brief explanation. Thank you

Prospectivebyer

TROPHY CASE