Holy Warriors - Civilization 5 (BNW) Succession Game

[yuris125]

I think the general approach against AI is archery units + 1 or 2 melee (or mounted) to capture cities after archers got it down to no health. AI is bad at military, but is particularly bad against bombardment from distance, and archers are better than catapults for doing that because they're good against units as well

[T-hawk]

Iroquois as first target may make sense, yes. Depends on how mad Morocco gets after some prophet squelching.

You need siege to take cities. Archers worked in vanilla Civ 5, but then they got a penalty against cities (-33% I think) along with cities getting buffed. You need the 200% city modifier on siege. You need typically 3 up-to-date siege units plus foot support to take an average city and 5 to take a capital, and expect to lose one since the AI got smarter about focusing fire.

I assume faith bought units get full XP. Cash bought units do and there's no reason faith should work different. Yes we do want one barracks for that. Either capital or Devotion will work, whichever can slot in the build order easier.

[yuris125]

Can't say I did too much warring in Civ5, but when I did, I never built a Siege unit. Except when playing as the Huns, as their UU is insane. But I'm fine with including 1 or 2 siege units in the army if we have enough faith to buy them

Oh, and I actually saw comments on forums that Archery units got better again in BNW. Mounted rules G&K, then got nerfed, and archers became the best units again

[timmy827]

Turns played. Busy day, so report, pics, reasons for unmoved units etc coming late tonight.

[timmy827]

Turn 120: Enhance with the preacher range and +2 faith from wonders.
Wasn’t sure if Chichen was a great build, the primary effect is pretty weak with the golden age nerf in BNW, but left it.
Decide to sign one RA (rome). Take a loan from Morocco, buy Universtiy in Devotion since it will have slow production + need the writers guild. Assign scientists

Rome wants Open Borders swap, accepted as we need it soon.

121: Ugh, barb boat near divinity. Will probably lose work boat and not much we can do. Engineering in, decide to pause Colosseum at Piety for the caravan build.

122: Borobudur done and missionaries head out as per Thawk’s rec, University next.

123: First prophet squelch in Morocco’s capital.
IBT: Cathy does Great Wall. morocco complains about prophet, I say ‘we do what we want’ as we will be hitting his other city. Still Friendly though.

124: nice, one missionary use is enough for Rome! happily kill the barb galley with our city, it didn’t pillage for some reason. Also note:

I chopped the forest since the worker was there and our culture was not...and removing the forest made the culture picker go here. I know the food hits diminishing returns but this and the tile west of it are rivers, so I think 3F1H still > 1F2H, and repeat this move on the other forest.


IBT: oops, spoke too soon on Morocco.


Also a popup says we are tied for lead with 23 techs.
125: Decide to send food to the capital with caravan (this was an expiring TR, not a new one). We aren’t quite to Metal Casting yet.

IBT: Caesar comes to us:

I decide to go ahead since no one like Iroquois and we want to keep Rome friendly.
Also Iro’s Reform (something about gold to city states, not the one we want eventually). The - for morocco denounce disappeared by end of the set, not sure what happened there but I’ll take it.

126: horses expire, sell to Iro for only 1gpt (no one else giving anything). Hanging Gardens done, onto writer’s guild.

128: Loan from Rome. Need to buy Ragusa - aren’t quite to Chichen yet and happiness will crunch if I don’t renew alliance. In retrospect maybe I should have just gifted a worker for 5 influence - they are running low on tasks.

IBT:

Agreeing with Maria seemed good. Russia and Brazil (appropriately are also Maria’s friends and gave us ‘attaboys’. Not too much happened the last couple turns, built a workshop in capital, rest of cities finishing longer builds (writer’s guild, Chichen, colosseum).

Exploration: Scout found one more natural wonder, Geneva (religious), Prague (cultured), sort of stuck in a dead end. I haven’t bought OB with Brazil, maybe should have. Note that we should easily win Geneva’s faith quest in 25 turns so don’t trespass there too much. Not much else of note in CS quests. If we get Chichen that locks oup Ragus forever. Still two wanting cocoa, and never saw it on offer from Caesar.

WB found Kiev (Cultured) and hints of an unreachable island in the far NW, but is turning back due to ice.

Religion spread: 3 Roman cities, Devotion, and 2 russian cities done by missionary. I left Moscow alone b/c russia will likely found the last religion, and I think that would wipe out all our presence in Moscow when it happens. Both Moroccan cities by prophet (2 uses left). 2 roman cities done by pressure alone! Our two southern and the two south city states close to converting from pressure too. Already 18 Faith/turn from Pilgrimage!




Decisions: Left a few units unmoved for these reasons:
Missionaries - we have a 2 and 1 use near Sweden. Sigtuna needs 2 spreads to convert, so we can probably only do one of that and Stockholm, both have significant Protestant minorities (hah!). Not sure which one is better.
Prophet: was on its way to Iroquois (assume we squelch their two largest cities) but they spawned one as well.

Assuming he bombs Morocco, maybe it makes more sense to undo those than squelch Protestantism? Morocco already hates us, maybe better for them to really hate us than both dislike us?

Policies: Next choice soon. So all 3 AIs with a religion and Piety have reformed, and the ‘buy industrial+ units’ belief is still there. I think we do Mandate of Heaven now, which pushes the Reformation back from ~25 turns from now to more like ~55. We will probably be Industrial before then but think we can make good progress with muskets/cannon.

Caravan: I held it for a turn so cap could finish workshop enabling a production convoy. My move would be production to Divinity (finishing Chichen, still needs Lighthouse + Uni) but next player can decide.

Cap build: recommend circus then Notre Dame, although I haven’t gotten to barracks yet anywhere either. We have to start spending the faith on units in ~5 turns (at 800 we’d get another prophet). Note I haven’t run scientists yet in capital either, prioritizing builds, but maybe time to change that? Also I had rejiggered tiles to get the workshop done this turn, think I restored back sensibly but please check.

Tech, units:
Almost to Physics/Trebs.
I think pretty clear/direct route: Steel->Gunpowder->Chemistry for killing power (foot and siege, bypass xbows and knights). Slot in optics somewhere if we want that one lighthouse; I didn’t since I left Divinity on the wonder. Hmmm, longswords aren’t much weaker than muskets, apologies as I robotically re-sold our iron late in the turnset, maybe that was bad idea. I did keep one horses near the end in case team wants Chivarly and Knights. If not Cathy will buy them for 2gpt.

Yuris is up! Thanks again for the swap and flexibility.

[Ichabod]

Looks very nice. Our faith production really spiked on this last turnset.

Now that Morocco hates us, perhaps we could kill them before Iroquois. It'll be easier, faster and it'll make killing the Iroquois easier too.

Conquering cities will bring hefty happiness penalties, so I wonder what to do about that. Notre Dame and Chichen Itza will help, but our initial cities are still growing pretty fast. I guess we are going to start stagnating them with specialists, so there's that.

Going for next level military tech makes sense, I guess, especially considering that we have very few stategic resources. Cannons + Musketmen. Attacking before that is a waste of our research capabalities.

Anyway, we need to buy some units soon, to avoid a new prophet, so I guess we buy some trebuchets or composite bowmen? Melee units get a significant boost in strength soon, so I think they are the worst ones to buy now, considering we can't make upgrades.

[yuris125]

See it, good turns! Will look tonight or tomorrow at the latest

[timmy827]

I think trebs make sense as an intermediate buy. Probably most important to have up to date frontliners; I'd think that with a mix of trebs and cannons the trebs would still be useful.

Note that even with the big faith boost, we only "produce" a treb every 3.2T, a musket every 4t, or a cannon every 5t (assuming we take the 20% discount policy in Piety next)

Should we consider the Heroic Epic? It’s a lot of hammers, about 470 between 3 ‘extra’ barracks and the wonder itself, but we will presumably buy all our units in 1 city and this might be a ‘quality making up for quantity’ game.

I've never done a conquest game in civ5, so have little idea on the raze vs. annex vs. puppet decisions. Are we even allowed to puppet cities? do puppet cities build units? (if so, I'd say we can puppet if we just disband any units they build; still no idea if it's a good move).

Not too worried about happiness. Hopefully we get Chichen (+4) in a few turns (although CS has been widely known so still think it's possible an AI swipes it). ND (+10) should be safe, no one has physics yet. We also still can build/are building 2 colosseums and 1 circus (+6), and can then do the Circus Maximus (+5) before we conquer I think. Growth rates will slow and I think that will give us some buffer for conquests. We haven't done anything with the Mercantile CS either.

[yuris125]

Puppets do not build units. I think puppetting is fine. However only puppet or annex good ciites, raze the rest, we can't take big unhappiness penalties to unit strength. Also a remionder that the last enemy's capital must be the final city standing, as we must win by conquest, and therefore can't meet the domination victory condition

[Wyatan]

Puppets do not build units. I think puppetting is fine. However only puppet or annex good ciites, raze the rest, we can't take big unhappiness penalties to unit strength. Also a remionder that the last enemy's capital must be the final city standing, as we must win by conquest, and therefore can't meet the domination victory condition

That's why in the end, when I wanted a conquest game, I played it an OCC game.

Razing takes forever, and the unhappiness will murder you if you raze multiple cities. Purely gamey mecanism meant to slow the player down. It works in that goal... at the cost of fun.
Also beware there's a bug when razed cities still increase your policy cost (although iirc, it only occurs when you raze a city on second thoughts).
Annexing means accepting suboptimal cities that will penalize you ("big is ugly" being the motto of this "empire-building" game).
As for puppetting... why the hell would I want cities I can't manage ? Another design decision directly spawned from the "we're making an empire-building game, but we don't think those games are fun" mindset.

At least, with an OCC, captured cities get insta-razed, problem solved.