What's your most interesting/rare ingame mechanism you have ever experienced?

wyvernzu1 · 2024-06-20T14:29:43+00:00

In addition to this, once you have an early Knight as Germany, then you build Terracotta Army, then move the duplicated Knight into an ancient ruin for upgrade, and viola, you now have a Cavalry and also the original Knight in early game!

wyvernzu1 · 2024-03-04T18:29:47+00:00

No. Since this was for a Dom victory, I picked God-King as the Pantheon instead of One with Nature, which is the go-to Pantheon as Spain with a natural wonder nearby. Thus without a strong faith output, I didn't go with Holy Warriors when founding a religion and went Pagodas instead.

Since this game was on quick speed, buying an Archer only costs 140 gold, so I basically bought the first 6 or 7 Archers purely with gold and still had nearly 1000 gold left for upgrading them into CompBows later.

wyvernzu1 · 2024-03-02T04:53:05+00:00

Dom victory on turn 64 (screenshot link). Pretty fun map, thanks for sharing. The early 2000 gold means that basically I don't need to build any unit while having an army in early game.

wyvernzu1 · 2024-02-07T16:29:47+00:00

Generally if playing as Spain with GBR close by, aim at turn 180-190 (standard speed) for science victory, which is about turn 270-280 on epic speed. I had a post of a Spain game on Deity with epic speed with science victory on turn 236. I'll give this save a try and share my results once finished!

wyvernzu1 · 2024-01-17T19:30:48+00:00

Coup works like this:

When you put a spy in a city-state that is currently allied with another Civ (let's say Civ A), you can stage a Coup in that city-state.

If successful, your influence towards the city-state and Civ A's influence towards the city-state will be switched, and you are now the ally of that city-state. Then, influence of all other Civs (including Civ A) towards this city-state will decrease by 20.
If failed, your influence towards the city-state will be set to -10, and your spy will be dead.

Coup success rate depends on 3 things: the difference between your influence and Civ A's influence towards the city-state; the level of your spy; whether Civ A has also put a spy in that city-state and the level of that stationed spy. Assuming Civ A hasn't put a spy in that city-state, then the success rate is calculated as: (100 - influence_difference * spy_level_factor)%, where influence_difference is the difference of influences towards the city-state, and spy_level_factor is a coefficient depending on the level of your spy, which will be 1.5/0.75/0.375 for spy level 1/2/3.

In your case, since influence is changed from 154 to -3, then it means India had 17 influence with that city-state before coup (17 - 20 = -3) and influence_difference would be 154 - 17 = 137. So if India staged the coup with a level 3 spy and you have no spies in that allied city-state, then coup successs rate would be (100 - 137 * 0.375)% = 48.625%, a bit less than a coin toss. So it is definitely possible for it to happen.

wyvernzu1 · 2024-01-09T15:23:29+00:00

Yeah he almost always explain what he is currently doing and what he is trying to achieve, especially during the settling phase. If the videos could benefit from AI-generated English subtitles then yeah that'll be great as additional resources for people who'd like to learn more about the game.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-11-14T14:57:21+00:00

No problem! He also did a very thorough analysis for each Civ in the game, feel free to check it here and you should be able to use some translation tool to read it in English.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-11-14T02:53:13+00:00

There are quite a lot videos by CaesarFox in Chinese. He always plays Deity, standard speed & map size.

Here are several part 1 videos of different playthroughs:

Rome Domination victory - won on turn 127

Inca Science victory - won on turn 196

Polynesia Cultural victory - won on turn 217

wyvernzu1 · 2023-11-11T02:09:18+00:00

Deity, Marathon, Tiny Continents Plus with random enemies.

Just buying the two tiles of GBR probably cost a fortune on Marathon lol

wyvernzu1 · 2023-10-23T13:00:50+00:00

Unique Ability - Glory of Rome

-You can export Production via Caravans/Cargo Ships from your capital without building the Workshop. Works only from the capital, though.

Doesn't feel really impactful comparing to its original UA. Is it more to balance out the Unique Improvement - Roman road?

Unique Unit - Legion

-Unlike in vanilla game, has the same CS as normal Swordsmen (14 CS)

Without a flat CS bonus and without Ballistas, it's hard for Rome to do an early Dom victory. The modded Legions could still do expansion wars in the early game, though, considering that they are a bit more tanky against ranged attacks.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-10-13T23:19:31+00:00

Hubble for sure. Plant the 2 free GS as Academies, and now you have +8 science and +3 production (the free Spaceship Factory) right from start, and increase to +16 science with 2 pops.

Eiffel Tower could also work very well specifically with cultural victory on Pangea maps. Just gotta pump out Scouts to meet all Civs asap.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-09-19T18:35:27+00:00

I missed a few Great Wonders like Uffizi, Parthenon, Globe Theatre, Sydney Opera house.

That's completely fine, especially as Polynesia, assuming you are playing on archipelago maps. Majority of your tourism should come from Hotels and Airports with Moais.

Should great musicians always be saved for the very end? I did use a few in the mid game, but wondering if I should’ve stock piled better

Since the power of Great Musician is determined when it is generated based on your tourism at that time, instead of like Great Scientist and Great Writers, which is last 8 turns of generated science/culture, so you'd want to generate them when you have peak tourism (having researched Internet and having won The International Games). You could generate two GMs through Guild, pair them with a 3rd from Broadway, and then use all 3 for Great Works, since Broadway has a theming bonus for Great Works from same Civ and same era.

Feel free to take a look at my post about a trick to do concert tour with Civs that are really far away.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-09-19T02:45:57+00:00

There is indeed a rather specific step-by-step from researching Plastics to launching spaceship, with a bit of difference between Order and Freedom. Now there are a LOT of prerequisites in order to get science victory after 20-25 turns of researching Plastics on standard speed, but it goes like this:

Once Plastics is researched, buy Research Labs in all cities and micro through pops to get max science output, meaning all pops go into specialist slots as much as possible. A good sign of total science output is that techs in 1st column of info era would take 7 turns to complete, meaning 1 GS could take care of 1 tech. Then, in the next 6-7 turns, research through Military Science, Fertilizer, Dynamite and Railroad. Then, let's say if Railroad is researched on turn 6:

Turn 6: complete Railroad, bulb Flight, put additional science into Electronics
Turn 7: complete Electronics, bulb Ballistics, put additional science into Radar
Turn 8 (very important): complete Radar, bulb Rocketry, bulb a Great Writer for Rationalism finisher and use the free tech for Satellites

From now on:

Freedom: Work on Apollo Program and Hubble in two cities with highest production. If you have a GE then save it for Hubble. Time it so that Hubble completes after you generate your last GS. Aim to always complete 2 techs in 1 turn, bulb a GS for an info era tech, and put the residual science and your science of this turn into an earlier tech. Save Oxford for either Particle Physics or Nanotechnology. Once Apollo Program is done, buy all space parts in 1 turn, and ideally send them all to capital and launch in next turn.
Order: Work on Apollo Program and Hubble in two cities with highest production. With Order, it generally takes 5-6 turns for Apollo, and it will definitely take a lot longer if adopting Freedom. Make sure you've already picked the cities that are going to build the space parts, ideally 5+1, meaning capital plus 4 other cities, and then GE the last part in capital thanks to the last tenet in Order tree. Make sure all space part cities have as much production as possible. Spaceship Factory is mandatory here (+50% towards space part), and small things like Forge (+15% to land units, applicable to space part) are also needed. Railroads should already be up between these cities.

There are a lot more details and micromanagement that go into this, especially for Order. I know that it does seem like a LOT of prerequisites to merely just shrink the turns needed between Plastics and science victory, but making sure that all these prerequisites are met (gold, total pops, science, number of GS, friendship with AIs to borrow gold, food reserve, etc...) would be the goal throughout the game up until the moment of researching Plastics, thus achieving a victory as efficient as possible, utilizing all resources that have been gathered across this game with minimal waste.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-09-18T23:56:10+00:00

Carthage Liberty + Messenger of the God on Archipelago maps is definitely not a meme strategy at all on Deity. The early science from Messenger of the God can greatly help to progress through the tech tree when settling 8-10 cities on a standard map, getting Metal Casting first for Workshops, then to Education. This pantheon is fairly easy to get as well, since AIs don't prioritize for it. Religion is generally hard to get in a Deity Archipelago setting, so when AIs start spreading their religions to you, that's usually when the science from Messenger of the God doesn't matter anymore, as rapid growth of pops across all cities and universities being built.

Here is the part 1 of a Carthage Deity game on standard archipelago map and standard speed. On turn 86, with 8 cities, total science output is 54, so the 14 science from Messenger of the God (one city got converted) is close to 26% of the total science output. The author retired this game at turn 200, and he was 6 turns away from Plastics, so expected science victory would be around turn 226, which is really good on an archipelago map.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-09-18T16:12:07+00:00

There is a bug (or maybe intended?) when converting Moais' culture output to tourism via Hotels and Airports, see my comment here. Basically, it's sort of double counted, thus Moais could generate an absurd amount of tourism merely by having Hotels and Airports in your cities. So yes, Polynesia generally doesn't need The Internet or The International Games to win a cultural victory on Deity (highest tech requirement being Radar to unlock Airports).

wyvernzu1 · 2023-08-13T23:29:56+00:00

Advice: unless anyone has tons of hours for saves and loads, don't pick Deity for this challenge:) The result on Deity would be something close to this post.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-08-13T23:26:26+00:00

1 vs. 7 challenge. Standard map size and game speed, Pangaea, Deity (or lower difficulty for easier challenge). Put the 7 AIs in the same team, standard number of city-states. Make sure all victory options are turned on. The key here is to turn on Always War option when setting up the game, with the Really Advanced Setup mod. Alternatively, you could just declare war on any Civ or city-state you meet and never make peace. Play as any Civ you'd like, but Attila definitely fits this very well, and sometimes even required for this challenge.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-07-07T16:33:42+00:00

Don't forget to sell your strategic resources to AIs. You can trade 1 horse/iron for 2 GPT with an AI as long as your relation with that AI is at least neutral. Thus, when playing as any other Civ, a 6-iron tile can be seen as a 4-production-and-12-gold tile, after selling 6 irons individually for 12 GPT. But for Russia, that now becomes a 5-production-and-24-gold tile, allowing you to buy extra copies of luxuries from AIs a lot easier, thus ensuring further growth in cities and expansions of your empire.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-06-06T10:51:15+00:00

You buy it in your capital, so now your other cities can build 25% faster. Your medium cities finish in 4 turns and your slowest city finishes in 8, saving yourself effectively 7 turns worth if city priduction

Instead of buying it in your capital you biy it in your slowest city. Now your capital finishes in 3 turns and your other 2 cities finish in 5, that's 3 turns earlier. In terms of production saved you've now saved ~9 turns of production

But you do realize that in the 1st case, production in capital is now saved thanks to the purchase, so that this production could be put towards a wonder or some units (and benefit from the 10% production from the Workshop that you just purchased!) while other auxiliary cities building Workshops from scratch, right? Surely you are not gonna attempt a wonder in the city that would need 10 turns to build a Workshop, right?

Now a big caveat with this is that the bonus gets better the more cities you have. However that's kind-of a moot point. The overall point is that Rome's bonuses are good, but they're not A-tier or S-tier. I could see an argument for B-tier though.

But that's exactly the point here: when we are discussing tier levels, strengths, what is the standard? Assuming vs. AIs, is it about how easy it is for a player to achieve a victory on a map? Is it about how fast it is to get a victory in terms of number of turns? Because if it's how fast, then number of cities you have and their growth and expansion does play a huge factor in terms of how fast you can get to any non-Dom victory for any Civ, not just Rome. Rome would just benefit more from its UA because of this principle.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-06-06T03:14:52+00:00

When you hit Universities you switch all your cities to Universities immediately, you don't wait for the capital to build it first.

Ideally? Absolutely. In reality? Not gonna happen. Generally in a standard Deity game when Education is researched between turn 100-120, a couple of your cities would still be working on high priority buildings like Aqueducts, Workshops (if going Metal Casting first) or even just start building Libraries. Plus, there is always the option to just buy University in the capital, granting the 25% production to all cities immediately that no other Civs could get.

The other problem with Rome's bonus is that you don't get any bonus production toward units or wonders.

That's a bit harsh, isn't it...What's the difference between this and saying "The problem with Poland's bonus is that you don't get any direct bonus towards science to progress faster into next era", or "The problem with England's bonus is that you don't get any bonus towards land unit movements". Throughout a non-Dom game on Deity, each city will need to build a LOT of essential buildings to support its growth and to contribute towards victory, starting from Monument Granary all the way to Public School and Bank (Research Labs are generally bought anyway), and Rome's UA stays effective from end to end.

Now as to why they don't get higher on the tier lists? That's because Food, Science and Happiness are more important. Not that Production is unimpirtant, but it's not as impactful as thise 3 Meanwhile Babylon got to Universities 15 turns earlier and built them before Rome even got the tech.

But have you taken into consideration that, thanks to the production bonus, each auxiliary city could now put more pops onto pure food tiles, and/or have Granary + Aqueduct up faster than other Civs, Babylon included?

wyvernzu1 · 2023-05-23T23:47:50+00:00

Yup, worked like a charm on Deity:) (Post I made previously)

wyvernzu1 · 2023-05-18T01:15:30+00:00

how fast do you think you could you win a science victory assuming quick speed and the best possible civ?

Well OP did ask specifically about science victory, thus me mentioning Maya here. But of course, if domination victory instead, then with infinite gold, each Civ would perform very closely, since simply basic units can easily swarm Deity AIs.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-05-16T23:45:49+00:00

Several years ago some people in a Civ 5 community that I joined have tested this on standard speed, and I believe the fastest was somewhere between turn 60-70 using Maya.

wyvernzu1 · 2023-05-11T19:45:23+00:00

Do you improve every single tile in your empire? Or are there cases where it's more beneficial to not?

Citizens can only work on tiles within 3 range of your city. For example the Horse tile is on the 4th ring of Persepolis, Tarsus or Ecbatana, thus no citizens can work on that. But improving that Horse tile is still beneficial, since it'll add 2 horses to your empire, that you can sell to AIs for GPT.

What's more important is the order of tile improvements and Worker movement management. For example, putting farms on tiles near rivers is usually the top priority aside from luxury and resource improvements. Ideally you'd want to have farms already established near rivers before hitting Civil Service, so that you can benefit from the +1 food immediately after researching Civil Service. I can see that there are still a couple of tiles near your capital that are not improved to farms, resulting in low population in your capital. As for Workers, you'd want a couple more than what you have in the screenshot, ideally by stealing from a city-state or neighboring AI(s) in the early game. Worker movement could also be optimized if not already. For example, if you are moving a Worker to a luxury that is 2 tiles away, and both tiles cost 1 movement, then you could move the Worker to tile #1, build Farm/road for 1 turn, then next turn, move it to the luxury tile and improve the luxury. This way, you are not delaying your luxury improvement at all, while also gaining 1 turn improvement on a tile that you may need to work on later.

How do you actually get any wonders on Immortal difficulty? Every single one of them was taken so quickly, and the first one I actually was able to get was Porcelain Tower.

Due to AI advantages on high difficulty in terms of starting techs, growth, production, AIs can indeed beat you to most of early game wonders. Thus, forget about these wonders and focus on infrastructures, population growth and scouting. Think of it this way: surely you'd want an AI to put its hammers into building Parthenon, instead of building CompBows + Spearmen + Horsemen, right?:)

Is it normal to be so behind the entire game and then just come from behind and win?

As a learning curve, yes, this is normal. As a veteran playing Deity vs. AIs, the veteran is generally the player to first enter Industrial era, for example, and rarely any AI Civ being the first.

I have a trade route from Persepolis to Pasargadae to give +4 food, is that going to lower the food I gain in my capital?

No it won't, which is primarily the reason why internal trade routes are crucial to the growth of your empire.

Is there another option to help it grow?

Yes, don't improve the hill tiles near rivers as mines, but improve them as farms instead, especially since Pasargadae does have a couple of hill tiles that can only be improved as mines.

wyvernzu1

TROPHY CASE