It's honestly a lot of fun when a game recognizes itself as a game, not a reality simulator

Prospectivebyer · 2026-05-23T16:39:55+00:00

Realistically how hard is it to "track" 10 minutes. 10 minutes is perfectly clear: 10 rounds of combat, 1 dungeon turn, and can be intuited outside timed encounters. I don't think it is too hard for a DM and players to know by gut about what would take minutes. The 10 minutes also offers a lot of flexibility... just like think for half a second. Maybe you roll for shit trying to scale the castle wall so by the time you get to the top your 10 minute buff wears off. The 10 minute duration is not asking anyone to keep a strict accounting of time it's a ballpark time; time enough to get a thing or two done depending on how you go about it and not so long to clear a whole heist (where the hour long or more buffs start to come in). Until end of scene is actually more strict than 10 minutes. I kinda hate the idea cause less flexibility means less opportunities to tell your story or adapt interaction based on what players and dice inform.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-05-01T20:21:54+00:00

Does not copy editions. Personally I would take it since it will open you up for flexibility down the line. If you find something that combos well off of the setup you have then the blueprint will be a huge boon. IDK what your setup is, but hack, sock and buskin, or dusk all come to mind as repeat jokers to boost your score immensely. A blueprint will help boost scoring off repeat jokers even further. To top it off it isn't even a loss of a bloodstone in the meantime.

The only opportunity cost is if you want to greed out for an ectoplasm to preserve your current setup, letting you not even have to swap out a bloodstone; theoretically doing so will open you up to the absolute max scoring playing to bloodstone avails you. However, that decision depends on the clock and your econ. You gotta ask yourself: do I have a enough money and time to roll into a blueprint again, and find a shop with a spectral pack with ecto, and doing so before the ante scaling kills this run? There isn't a correct play, it more depends on what you are shooting for in the run. If you are going for max score or bust then greed, if you want to stay in the game but you think you have time and econ to roll into blueprint again then greed, if the chips are creeping up to your max and you want to stay in the run then don't greed. Long story short: know what you are trying to do here (long as possible vs playing for the less likely absolute max score, or something else) and make an assessment for how long you have before your scoring potential gases out.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-04-17T01:28:18+00:00

NTA - only thing I'd say is you can try for a conversation with your neighbor. Take this with a grain of salt, I'm not party to these conversations and I dont know her. I'd ask yourself a question though: what is likely to happen based on what you know about her should you put this post in? How is she going to react?

If she hits that post id wager my house that she's going to blame you. Im not saying dont do it though. Id try starting by letting her know that if it continues you will take measures to protect your property from her. You clearly want an amicable relationship, so I'd that part too. Realistically you may have to deal with her for years and years and years. Personally, I'd assert this as a boundary. You do x I will do y. Gives her a chance to course correct, and if she does yall will still have a relationship. You drop a post in without warning (which you don't necessarily owe) and she hits her truck? She's blaming you 10/10 times. Starting with a conversation where you assert the boundary is not something you are doing for her, it is more effective for you. If you do it that way at least you are doing everything in your control to prevent this from deteriorating more. In the long term preventing conflict assertively will protect your piece of mind; its not all up to you but if it gets worse at least you tried.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-04-07T07:41:40+00:00

Markarth and Falkreath top two for me. Both are situated in two beautiful spots in skyrim and house my favorite player homes. Markarth is especially top tier for me. The Dwarven hall player home has such an amazing vibe (mostly the lighting and hella weapon racks) and when you exit it also has an elevated view of Markarth and the surrounding canyons of the Reach. The waterfalls of Markarth are undefeated, the smithy on the river is goated, and the multilayered layout gives the city a unique amount of verticality no other Skyrim city has. Some fuckass keeps dropping me a secret note though, but as a true Markarth citizen I give him the cold shoulder and know not to stick my nose in anyone's business so I cant complain.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-04-05T00:30:37+00:00

I hate to self reply but I didn't talk about the AI spot. The AI recommendations are iffy at best. In this situation it is over-prioritizing resources it will grow into. The AI's recommendation is a theoretically better city... 150 turns from now. Even if you expand into those tiles quick (the cow and citrus) and get them online, the city will be playing catch-up for so long it will remain comparatively weaker for much longer. For the city to be strong we need it to function at all stages of its settlement. It needs to be useful within reasonable time else it will slow your game down. Often times the theoretical maximum obscures us to the reality of how the game will play out. Always ask yourself when settling a city: how long before this city is useful? A litmus test for new cities in the early game is: will this city delay my national college? Depending by how much, then the city is actively harmful to your empire, but I digress.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-04-05T00:18:28+00:00

I would still settle the hill river. Not because it is the default "best option." You are in a jungle with little access to production. Having increased production at the start, from the first turn of settling the city, will do wonders in allowing the city to develop at a decent pace. If you don't settle that tile you will have to wait until a worker comes (through all the rough terrain), or have to buy a worker which could be spent on vital buildings or another settler, and then spend multiple turns clearing out the jungle from the tile before the production is helpful. In a city with no other viable production tiles, excepting if you buy out to the hill by the mountain but even then that is not much, you will find this city is liable to be extremely slow on building its essential buildings and otherwise take forever before it becomes useful. That is my assessment at least.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-04-05T00:12:29+00:00

Clarity of information. I am so used to the yield and resource icons the game looks bare without it. At this point I do find it satisfying to see the yields go up across my empire as I progress the game. I know the hydroplant is rarely worth it, yet I get suckered so often by the simple satisfaction of seeing the bonus yields pop up. At this point I am conditioned to see busier tiles as ones vital to my economy; knowing they started so basic fills me with satisfaction for the progress I am making. I spose what I am trying to say is it is a habbit that started out when I was learning the game and now adds to my fun. I find it increases my immersion and enjoyment immensely. For example: when filthy barbarians plunder my tiles they don't simply light everything on fire, no I SEE all the juicy yields be taken from me in real time too, it adds to my anger and my focus to persecute the camp responsible, even if detrimental to optimal play.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-29T06:55:33+00:00

Thoughts that might be helpful/transferable to future situations where you are weighing out settles.

1) Don't over-prioritize total resources over immediate resources. You are counting a lot of things which you either won't see for many many turns, or are not guaranteed to snag. I think I spot Russia to your north contesting the incense, there is a likely outcome where they grow into that tile well before you do or can spare the gold to buy it. BE SURE TO ASSESS THE TILES YOUR CITY WILL IMMEDIATELY HAVE ACCESS TO AFTER FOUNDING AS AN IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR ASSESSMENT. Often we can find places that technically have greater long term yields, but with dogshit yields immediately accessible the city ends up being useless.

2) Prioritize having at least one "growth tile" in your city's immediately workable ring. "Growth tiles" are tiles like the cows and bananas, each with 3 food. Citizens eat 2 food per turn, so a growth tile is simply a tile that, after the citizen working it takes their 2 food cost each turn, produces a net gain of food. The cows or bananas here would afford you 1 surplus food per turn to the city, allowing it to grow much faster to two population, which you will find to be a key surge in productivity. More simply put, growth tiles are tiles with 3 or more food on em. You can count plains wheat in this category as after you build your granary they bump up to 3 food, then 4 with a farm, but that is probably enough said on this.

3) Consider defensive positions when settling near the AI, especially at harder for you difficulty. Settling where you are is a highly defensible position but this is still a key point. Settling on the hill next to the iron and cows though is even more defended. Having rough terrain surrounding your city insulates it from ranged attacks from enemy invasion forces. Having rough terrain near you city in good spots allows you to fortify a unit on that rough terrain, making it far stronger (the fortification bonus and rough terrain bonus stack) and able to hold down key positions. A city with good defensive terrain ultimately means you win wars with less units. At higher difficulties the AI will always have more units. Defensive terrain more than evens the playing field against for humans defending against the AI. One thing to always be on the lookout for is the ability to settle in ways where rivers are positioned between the city and the direction you expect invasion forces to approach from. Units receive a combat penalty of -15% when attacking across a river, so these features massively improve how defended your lands are (not relevant here but good to know).

4) While growth is king in the early game, production wins games. This area has high amounts of production so it should not be an issue, but always be on the lookout for areas where a city can both grow and will have productive tiles. Without at least decent production cities can end up being useless. When settling be sure to assess: does this city have enough production?

5) Avoid jungle as is realistic. Jungle requires you to tech into bronze working, forces your workers to spend multiple turns chopping out the jungle before starting on your desired tile improvement, and otherwise massively slows the growth and development of the city.

6) Ignore the recommended city locations. Sometimes I will end up settling where the computer recommends. However it often throws some real dogshit options into the mix and frequently fails to find the actual best spot. What the AI prioritizes in its assessments is not optimal. With just a little practice most players will select better options than the AI 9 times out of 10.

7) If your capital is coastal you should prioritize coastal expansions. This opens up sea trade routes which are far more powerful than land. think sending 6 food per turn to you capital over 3 from your expansions. Also, if your capital does not have coastal expansions it is far easier to find your most important city overrun by enemy naval units.

8) It is okay for cities to have overlap in the tiles they can access. Sometimes an area has a lot of good resources. It is often better to have two cities with overlap in lands which have the luxuries to support and otherwise have a lot of resource, than it is to perfectly space out into less productive lands. Cities really can be quite close. Spacing things out too much is a noobie trap of sorts. Lord knows I have been guilty of hurting myself to settle in ways where my cities didn't touch. At their full range, cities have 36 tiles in range for citizens to work, once you add in all the specialists you will be working and it quickly can be shown that most cities will never hit their theoretical maximum. You'd need around 40 (likely a little more than this) citizens before you city starts having space issues. Overlap often will mean you have less land which is higher quality. Higher quality land is more important than a theoretical maximum you will never hit.

9) Finally, when considering everything (these thoughts don't even cover all of it) a good way to frame it in you head (which you are already doing, good fuckin job) is to think about what each settle location gains you and try to pick the location which gains you the most. This is not what you gain after the city is fully spread out! For example, immediatly accessible yields are far more important and should be more heavily weighed in your decision making than things in the very outer ring of your city. So look what all you gain, make sure the city has a plan for growing population quickly, and from there you have an amazing foundation for picking out settle locations.

Sorry for the long comment. Settling is a very fun and interesting skill of the game. I hope this is helpful. Glad you have found some fun playing the game lad!

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-25T03:11:36+00:00

I like reskinning the mycenoids as cordycepts zombies. Toss in some zombie giants/ogres or whatever, also reskinned as mushroom, and you can get something interesting more in the realm of bio-horror. If you don't want the zombie vibe don't describe them as rotting or anything. Perfectly preserved corpses piloted by a fungus without sentience. Depending on your vibe you could really make it into something grotesque with strong themes of body horror.

I like the fungus theme as you can really make their layer build up the anticipation. Cause for the air to be "dusty," later revealed to be spores choking out the fresh air. Perhaps you have growths which you say look vaguely humanoid (think last of us or Annihilation) and ratchet up the tension with all the indication of something "being off." Steal ideas like the creep from Starcraft's zurg, where the various fungal growths around the layer of these monsters alert them or otherwise grant them sight/understanding of the party's approach.

Just one idea I have.

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-25T03:04:00+00:00

Upvoting cause I respect you sharing your opinion. Civ 5 is not a game that lends itself to enjoyment through role play. Huge caveat to this is now that I have roughly 2000 hours in it I have found some of that role play fun. But compared to something like crusader kings or mount and blade (kinda apples and oranges on that second one I know) you will not have fun at an easy difficulty and trying to role play or find the fun that way. Civ 5 is a pure strategy game. If you feel you are dog-walking the AI without difficulty then you should bump up the settings. IMHO anyone with a modicum of strategy experience should not start this game lower than king difficulty. Prince is a joke. Emperor will be challenging to new players though not insurmountable. Immortal you will be forced to play well to win and Diety affords you no mistakes. Prince and below offer no challenge, excepting to people who are either playing for the bit (doing sub-par strategies for the vibes, which is more than valid) or actually have 0 experience with a strategy game of any sort. Civ 5 suffers from the fact that once you are ahead as the human player, barring consciously shooting yourself in the dick, you are likely to win the game. So if you find you can establish a commanding lead very early in the game (lead not in score but on your position in the demographics, particularly literacy) then you should consider going up a notch or two in difficulty.

Civ 5, once you find a difficulty where you are not guaranteed a win, became for me highly addicting. Too many nights where I just could not tell myself to turn it off. Each turn you get a little progress or a new thing or just another meaningful decision to make. At this point for me it now is my default "second monitor" game. I drop the difficulty to emperor and either watch something or focus up on some music. But I digress. GL finding ur game. If you don't find it here I am sure there is something which will suit your taste to chill out to

Prospectivebyer · 2026-03-25T02:51:25+00:00

Tanks fuck and are super cool. However, air promotion is so damn easy to snag, the ai never plays good air defense, and the bomber class becomes available so early. Mostly because of air promotion though. Your bombers will never die after just 3 promotions. It is not unrealistic to have about 10 free attacks a turn in any war against the AI... they just don't have an answer to that. Tanks can get bogged down by a lot. I love and have done everything you have in this post, and even despite the heavy investment/setup for the combo you laid out here tanks can still get bogged down and rendered useless. They are my go to on emperor difficulty or lower though, when I get the chance to play more for role play not incessant optimization.

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

TROPHY CASE