There is a disgusting Scythia combo. God of the Forge pantheon for +25% Ancient/Classical production, the card that gives +100% to Ancient/Classical Cavalry. You are now producing cavalry at 250% production, and whenever you build a Horseman or Scythian Horse Archer you get 2 instead of 1 (for functionally 500% production). It's quite impossible to match the sheer cascade of military units this produces, and combined with their mobility being cavalry, you can sweep your entire continent before Medieval easily.

 

Wouldn't that be 225% production rate, though? Unless they actually do combine in a multiplicative manner. Which is silly, but not an entirely surprising coding accident, if true.

 

I think it's multiplicative, but I cannot confirm.

 

Anybody up for a multiplayer game now?

 

I've been playing a few with some other friends, already. Would certainly be up for a more populated DLP game.

 

So! Anyone still playing this?

The New Expansion Pack (Rise and Fall) is looking sexy. They are adding the following:

-Dark/Golden Ages for your civ. Complete objectives to prolong a golden age or leave a dark age. Basically gives you a buff if you manage to leave a dark age with your objectives in tact.
-City loyalties and governors. Basicaly you can lose cities now for lack of happiness.
-More alliance options
-Historic moments
-New Civs

Everything I'm seeing is to make the late game more balanced and give you a reason to play even if one person is ahead. In a lot of multiplayer games people quit before renaissance because its obvious who will win. So...this should be fun to see more change in the late game...

 

I still play a game every once in a while, though I don't think I ever have or will play a multiplayer game of civ. I've definitely been keeping an eye on that expansion though, it looks pretty sweet, and I'm probably gonna get back into the game once that comes out.

 

I still play semi-regularly, as I'm trying to work my way up through difficulties, but I need to take a break after a win because otherwise I get too bored.

This looks like it adds another level of randomness to gameplay, which should add to replayability.

Also, I read somewhere yesterday:
- Coming out of a Dark Age straight into a Golden Age turns it into a Heroic Age, which is like Golden Age ^2.
- Ages are worldwide, not just Civ based. So your Golden Age lasts the length of your opponent's Dark Age.

 

I’m lookong forward to the new civs. So far Mongolia and Netherlands look pretty sick.

My top civs currently are:

Russia: slow science start but you’re almost always first to found a religion.get defender of the faith and send out your missionaries. Or get theocracy and buy ALL THE COSSACKS!

Germany: a sleeping giant. Starts mediocre at early stage and if on any difficulty higher than king taking city states isn’t worth it, but if you get Hanzas you can become a powerful industry by mid to late game.

Rome: Strong early start but not OP like Gilgamesh/Alex/ or Tomy.

Those are my top three civs.

America is useless imo

 

I would agree, but dem Rough Riders dough. It's kinda irrelevant by that stage in the game, but w/e, playing as TR makes it worthwhile.

That said, America is kinda stupid for the culture victory. Whenever I play them, I tend to accidentally win the culture victory halfway through my world conquest.

 

See in multiplayer The game rarely makes it past renaissance level before an early war based civ gets so far ahead.

It’s why I’m loving this expansion. It provides dynamics which change the late game

 

Ah, that explains it. Yeah, I don't play Civ multiplayer, mostly because waiting for people to finish their turns drives me nuts.

 

So who's bought the expansion, and has any thoughts?

I've tried playing through a few games with it, and it does feel like it's adding to the game, which is nice. So far, the only time I've had to worry about avoiding a Dark Age was going into Modern Era with Scotland, but I ended that game anyway, as all the other civs on my continent declared war on me, and there was no way I was coming out of it.

The Governers are interesting, and Loyalty is a cool mechanic, but I've not yet seen many cities change hands. I also feel that the Governers are quite limited - there's 8 (?), and they all have their own skill tree, and are all accessible to everyone. I feel if there was a stable of ~13, and some rotated depending on era, and some semi-randomly it might be more interesting, but as is they're not bad.

It also feels like the combat AI has taken a slight turn for the better, even though it's still not very good. It often used to be that you could have war declared on you, and literally nothing happened - their units didn't bother coming over, and they'd surrender 30 turns later to a white peace. Now, I've seen units being moved to the edges of borders before declarations, and whilst my cities haven't been truly threatened, that's only because allies (both city-states and civs) have piled in to beat the crap out of enemies.

 

I’ve enjoyed the update. Barbs are more of a threat on lower levels. Playing Germany on giant earth mod I conquered France in early age. Marathon speed.

England’s cities broke for rebellion and freely joined me. I then conquered Scotland. Rome declared on me in late classical age but I was in a golden age and had defender of the faith.

By turn 150 I’ve got 19 cities and Europe sans Spain is German.


Naturally Judaism is my religion.

The ability to buy settlers with faith during that golden age is huge. Played Russia in a multiplayer game and had 10 cities before Middle Ages. Stomped everyone

 

Most of the way through a game as Gilgamesh, and deliberately aimed for a dark age/heroic age in the midgame, to see how powerful it was.

And it's crushingly so - you get to pick three dedications to make (I still don't understand how these are rolled. Are they random, scripted, based on your current outputs?).

But it does seem like it could be really easy to swing from Golden age into a Dark age, as you only gain era score from completing things in dark/normal ages. In Golden, you can still get score for great people, building uniques, completing wonders, and finding new civs/natural wonders; but you can't really push for it, the same way you can on the dedications: "kill things", "convert cities", "earn inspirations" are all much easier.
It's actually something I've noticed with the AI - they seem to drop into dark ages after a golden age, and are more likely to be in dark ages in the later game.


I find loyalty a mildly annoying mechanic, to be honest. It makes sense - you need to build your empire up, you can't just settle haphazardly around the globe, but you need to go really wide to avoid any issues in the instances of a Dark age. And if you don't, you're not getting that city back unless you use force.
Having said that, I do like not having to worry quite so much that nearby civs are going to forward settle quite so much.


I wonder if you could get a domination victory without actually fighting any cities?

 

The dedications you can pick depend on the Era (with some being available over multiple era).

Yeah this also happens to me though I think it is mostly a result of the fairly unequal research between civs which becomes more noticeable towards the late game where often 2-3 civs dominate teh science and push into new eras before the rest has any chance to catch up.

 

Fuck Scythia and the horses it rides in on. When I see that cunt Tomyris in a game I do my best to get the fuck away from her. I'm only playing on king difficulty, but her ability to wreak early game havoc is stupefying.

Anyway, Civ VI s far too addictive. I slept far too little yesterday because I played hours on end building up the ultimate Egyptian empire (they do make it easy with their ridiculous trade bonuses) and fending off the paltry attempts by the English, and that idiot Khmer who never thinks twice before running in front of my walled cities to die.

The dark age loyalty probably made me quite miserable though; there was one city I lost and had to recapture several times. And Peter, that good-for-nothing-Russian, is sweeping the goddamn continent with his apostles. My eyes bugged out when I saw about fifteen of those land on my shores to disseminate their inferior religion (when everyone knows the only true faith is that of the Turtles).

In other news, Mongolia is, as always, amused by my paltry cavalry. Well, the joke's on him because I'm done researching tanks, and maybe, if he says shit like that again, I'll send some over to convince him of Egypts power.

That about sums up my latest experiences in Civ VI.

 

So...doing a YNAMP Marathon Match on King Difficulty as the JFD Winston Churchill Mod. (Churchill is beastmode compared to Victoria)

Its the Giant Earth mod which is 180X106 and is a real life earth map. 40 civs on the map.

Spawn right next to the cliffs of dover, but cannot use their culture yet else Scotland's pop to the north and Franch/Netherlands Pop to the south will cause me lose my capital.

Rushed sailing and conquered scotland with my Galley's. So the British Isles are safe. Currently on turn 100. Hit a golden age, but I've got awhile before that age hits.

Time just to develop the british isles and wait for the inevitable French/Norwegian invasion.

Got God of the Sea, so my religion's doing pretty swell.

 

Won my first game on emperor difficulty (as Cree). The start was pretty rough -- fuck Trajan and his inexhaustible legions -- but I stabilized eventually, and even managed to corner him into a high-paying peace treaty. That, together with an isolationist dark age, gave me a pretty big boost where I could focus on infrastructure, wonders, etc..

When that got boring I bombed the shit out of Scottland, nuking them to the stone age while consolidating my science victory. Perhaps the best part of the game was when I dropped the first nuke, and immediately after got offers for peace from France and those filthy Mongols. Honestly, I expected them to declare an emergency. Instead they tucked in their tails and played nice. I suppose it's the hair. Poundmaker's got a crazy good stylist.

 

Just curious, but anyone down for a Civ VI DLP game sometime soon?