[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[aetryn]

i don't know that RP is too far away to matter - for whatever reason it's way earlier than in every other game in the franchise, just after printing press, and it's on the beeline for rifling which i'm sure is the most important tech of the late renaissance even in MP. if the game goes long it should have time to make some impact, though it'll depend heavily on how many rivers we have and in what configuration

i don't understand PHI either and unlike SPI i feel like i don't even have a plausible way to derive an underatanding of it i guess the main point is to get a very early academy or shrine (on the theory that is accelerates the FIRST gp moreso than providing extra gp due to cost scaling)? but i don't have much sense for how strong that is really

for wonders i've only really looked at the oracle because the other early marble wonder (parthenon) seems way too expensive and i haven't thought much about industrious. but maybe i should? ind/spi could compete for tarkeel's holy grail of pyramids + religion + spi, and much of the midgame value of religion seems to be tied up in those monk wonders. but does there exist a trait combo that screams "eat me" more strongly than spiritual and industrious

The primary bonus of founding a religion is its shrine, which provides raw gold to the city it's built in based on how many cities in the world share its religion. In a large game if you can manage to spread your religion to others, this can power a decent chunk of your economy letting you run your science slider higher. (Note: you need to work out a plan to get a Great Prophet to build the shrine in the first place).  The only other real bonus of founding a religion is the massive culture bump in the holy city, which can be very important but is difficult/impossible to predict the value of beforehand.

All other benefits of religion don't really care whether you are the founder or not. The monk wonders work off your state religion whether or not you founded it. The happiness bonus and any civics also don't care, though all of these things prefer that your cities all have your state religion, and that's generally easier to accomplish when you also founded the religion. Of course, by turning all your cities a religion you didn't found you are feeding the other person shrine gold. Of course, the monk wonders require you to build religious buildings and SPI does make temples cheaper, but it's not a major factor - IND, access to stone, tech path, and production micro are far more likely to matter for the monk wonders than whether you can build cheap temples in combination with them.

Windmills are fine tiles in Serfdom even without Replaceable Parts.

I wouldn't consider Parthenon a very early wonder and since it's basically just mini-PHI, if you don't want PHI you probably don't want Parthenon either. The other key marble wonder is generally considered Mausoleum at Calendar.

[ljubljana]

im afk but quick note:

i just discovered in the cth changelog that the celts got their UB (walls replacement) buffed to give +1 culture, and it already gave guerilla 1 to all land units, on a highlands map. and they have mysticism/hunting to start, the same as HRE. pair with SPI/PRO to quick change to vasslage + theocracy and spit out a nauseating number of guerilla 2, CG1, drill 1, + 1 flex promotion gunpowder units? or with tokugawa for a similar effect w shock on everything if we stay in theo semi-permanently? and since all our cities will likely be founded on hills, our longbows would have like +145% defense in such cities. it's hard to think of a combo i'd less want to attack into, and protective duns w stone (if available) add early fast border pops to the allegedly already decent spi/pro econ combo...

(btw what happens when you move a guerilla unit on roads? just the normal 3 movement right

also: am i reading this correctly that in a city w a dun the gallic warrior literally gives no benefit over a swordsman? wtf)

[ljubljana]

Ok, apparently according to CFC gallics are the only melee unit that can take the guerilla line, so spamming duns wouldn't give the thing i really wanted which was a stack of g2 pikes that could bumrush and annihilate enemy knights. but swords, longbows, crossbows, and maces that can keep up w mounted units are pretty ok! not to mention the musketeer is considered strong as a UU just for the extra movement and if highlands is sufficiently hilly we could plausibly replicate that.

if we do go celts i'd probably want an early religion specifically to avoid wasting mysticism, and then saladin to make optimal use of the religion . but even with Tokugawa of Celts i'd still like a religion for the econ benefit of the shrine (agg/pro seems to still want SOMEthing extra economically imo) and to probably permanently adopt theocracy in the midgame, which would get us over the 5 xp threshold on new units to take G2 and either shock/cover/etc OR the hilarious guerilla 3 (is that good? idk but it's hilarious, and +50% withdraw chance is more than both flanking promotions added together?).

i definitely don't mind the warpath as i imagine that, like in civ6, nobody really wins these games without conquering SOMEone and of course the warrier the picks, the harder we'll be to stop via coordinated assault if we do reach a strong position.

i am a bit scared to take PRO or the Celts with no visible stone though...without it celts don't exactly have fast border pops, just pops tied to a building you'd want to eventually make anyways (in border cities or troop producing cities, which i think will be most of them) instead of a worthless monument. i wonder if the fact that we have marble at the start should be read as indicating we likely DON'T have easy stone access

[ljubljana]

The wiki also says that the dun gives guerilla 1 to "all land units constructed in the city".... but a bunch of (VERY old) CFC threads claim that this is a mistake in the civilopedia and it only gives it to land units that are otherwise eligible to take it - archery, gunpowder, scouts - and not to melee units besides Gallics. Allegedly melee units have access to G2 and G3 but not G1, so they can promote further down the line if they get G1 but only gallics and maces upgraded from them are able to do that...? Gallics and maces are probably good enough attackers but it's scary to not take pikes if the meta is that everyone will throw big knight stacks at us.... i guess maces with +50% hill defense still have odds on them defensively but not the same kind of odds as pikes would have had, and not on offence unless we take G3 and catch them in a hilled city...

What is "pulling off a mackoti"? Does that come from a specific incident or are they just really good at sneaky and successful warfare?

Sadly (or maybe not sadly from the perspective of IV's game balance) it doesn't seem remotely possible to get unit losses as low as yours in PBEMs 19/22 in this game... I really have no sense at all for how much the "withdrawal chance" of mounteds helps to preserve them, though the 20% chance a horcher (horchata?) gets by default is way lower than we're considering here. Maybe I'd better run, like, an actual test game with these guys on large map highlands vs monarch AIs and test this stuff manually...

No idea how the math works for PRO+stone lol. I'd guess a third of the base cost but only because production multipliers in IV seem to generally be additive. I guess for cities that want walls in ordinary circumstances (eg, eventually instead of right now), PRO is relatively better without stone since it gives larger hammer savings.... but if we need these walls for border pops, that logic might flip since it seems to be so urgent to do that absolutely ASAP in new cities...? Idk, I'm not so scared of it that I wouldn't pick them, especially now that I'm (temporarily?) tunnel-visioned onto it lol

[ljubljana]

hang on do we actually KNOW that the map base is highlands? on double-check i'm seeing a bunch of suggestions for "lakes or highlands w lakes added" but not sure it was officially confirmed to be one or the other anywhere...?

[aetryn]

hang on do we actually KNOW that the map base is highlands? on double-check i'm seeing a bunch of suggestions for "lakes or highlands w lakes added" but not sure it was officially confirmed to be one or the other anywhere...?

If you have questions about the map you should ask them before picking. The worst the mapmaker can do is decline to answer.

[aetryn]

The wiki also says that the dun gives guerilla 1 to "all land units constructed in the city".... but a bunch of (VERY old) CFC threads claim that this is a mistake in the civilopedia and it only gives it to land units that are otherwise eligible to take it - archery, gunpowder, scouts - and not to melee units besides Gallics. Allegedly melee units have access to G2 and G3 but not G1, so they can promote further down the line if they get G1 but only gallics and maces upgraded from them are able to do that...? Gallics and maces are probably good enough attackers but it's scary to not take pikes if the meta is that everyone will throw big knight stacks at us.... i guess maces with +50% hill defense still have odds on them defensively but not the same kind of odds as pikes would have had, and not on offence unless we take G3 and catch them in a hilled city...

What is "pulling off a mackoti"? Does that come from a specific incident or are they just really good at sneaky and successful warfare?

Sadly (or maybe not sadly from the perspective of IV's game balance) it doesn't seem remotely possible to get unit losses as low as yours in PBEMs 19/22 in this game... I really have no sense at all for how much the "withdrawal chance" of mounteds helps to preserve them, though the 20% chance a horcher (horchata?) gets by default is way lower than we're considering here. Maybe I'd better run, like, an actual test game with these guys on large map highlands vs monarch AIs and test this stuff manually...

No idea how the math works for PRO+stone lol. I'd guess a third of the base cost but only because production multipliers in IV seem to generally be additive. I guess for cities that want walls in ordinary circumstances (eg, eventually instead of right now), PRO is relatively better without stone since it gives larger hammer savings.... but if we need these walls for border pops, that logic might flip since it seems to be so urgent to do that absolutely ASAP in new cities...? Idk, I'm not so scared of it that I wouldn't pick them, especially now that I'm (temporarily?) tunnel-visioned onto it lol

You'll want both pikes and maces anyway, as it's a major advantage for the defender to take advantage of. The pikes defend against knights and the maces against other maces (strongest defending unit against whatever is attacking).

[ljubljana]

I see... the first post in the tech thread specified

Thinking something a little bigger than PB65, but not by a ton. Either something similar to that map or maybe a modified highlands or lakes map (add a little water to both).

A PB65-like map seems more than appropriate for Celts; from Cornflakes' thread:





But lakes would probably not be so amenable and I'm noticing the start has way fewer hills than would have been visible at Cornflakes' PB65 start...

I think I probably will ask as aetryn suggested, but that does carry some risk of tipping our hand...

[aetryn]

You said highlands, the only thing I saw as instruction was mostly land but water is still important. From the screenshot the hills aren’t too many. Ideally I guess there would be a mixture so you can double move through a flat tile but still more than on the screenshot.

The civ4 players would know more but I believe mackoti is one of the most renowned warmongers. And I was referring to what you said previously about pulling off a thrawn

Economy would be a serious issue though for Toku of Celts. No civic and city maintenance reductions means fewer spread out higher quality cities I guess, at least the dun will make border popping possible without religion. But while it sounds fun war requires delicate balancing of economy and unit building plus being able to handle fighting well and neither of us knows how these things work in IV so going for a less battle heavy option like HRE might be better, otherwise if a war stalls that can be that.

You can't take bonuses everywhere. It's perfectly fine to survive with one econ trait (PRO or AGG) and no buildings that directly help in economics (Dun might help overall city tempo if you build it quickly to pop borders instead of some less useful or more expensive building), and there's no reason to grab less land... pretty much ever as long as it doesn't immediately tank your economy. The way Civ 4 works is that every city is ultimately profitable, it just won't be profitable for the first N turns as it gets up to speed. For some cities, N can be quite large (especially if it has to pop borders before it can start functioning properly). So there's no real cutoff point where expansion is bad unless you have bonuses to counter it - it's more that expansion has to be measured, so you don't have too many money pits at the same time. Okay, there's probably a point where it won't payout before the game ends, but since 99% of PB games end in concession, and part of concession is having an overwhelming future the other players can't conceive of cracking, continuing to found cities up until that point to show that your strength is only going to get bigger in the future can be part of demoralizing your opponents. This incidentally is one of the reason why some players really like Civ 4's economy more than the newer games, because the newer games really do have a limited amount of happiness available from luxuries/amenities that make it optimal to stop expanding in many circumstances, while Civ 4 does not, but still has limiters built in to make "settle more cities" not the one always right choice. (Note: not necessarily my own belief, just summarizing the argument)

Toku of Celts wouldn't out-tech a FIN/ORG or FIN/PRO player, but if you're taking military bonuses you're plan isn't to just race out to an unassailable position by avoiding all war and hitting the economy milestones first, so that's not that surprising. And besides war, there's plenty of other ways to counter the lack of economic traits. Build more cottages and work them diligently. Build a good religion with a shrine. Get Mausoleum and chain Golden Ages. etc.

[aetryn]

I see... the first post in the tech thread specified

Thinking something a little bigger than PB65, but not by a ton. Either something similar to that map or maybe a modified highlands or lakes map (add a little water to both).

A PB65-like map seems more than appropriate for Celts; from Cornflakes' thread:





But lakes would probably not be so amenable and I'm noticing the start has way fewer hills than would have been visible at Cornflakes' PB65 start...

I think I probably will ask as aetryn suggested, but that does carry some risk of tipping our hand...

Just ask neutrally: "What map script was ultimately used, and how heavily modified was the terrain"? or something similar. Nobody's going to know whether you care about hills or forest or coast or rivers based on that. And generally the meta is wide enough in Civ 4 that nobody will be picking to deny you - they'll pick on their own strategies for the game. You might also want to know how many tiles/player the map has (someone may have already asked this - it's a common request) as it can affect your exploration and expansion strategies.

Once you know the map script, start a few games under that script and look around to get a sense of what the map is likely to have.