One hundred thousand Mohawks - Chief Mist of the Iroquois

[Mist]

I think this might turn out to be prophetic...



Anyone has a clue how to play this weird game?

[Mist]

Riight. Iroquois.

This guy is apparently the boss



and he makes them use forests as roads. Which is good. Roads apparently cost money in upkeep and good old forest is there for free I'm sure it's an oversight that should be patched out.

They also come with UU that replaces swordsmen. Said UU is resourceless, which is brilliant because I'm not guaranteed Iron in any serious quantities and being limited to say, 4 Swords in a war blows.

The UB replaces workshop and brings 1h per forest tile worked. This makes lumbermilled forest ( 1/3/0 ) strictly better than mined hills ( 0/3/0 ) and I intend to spam it everywhere.

What else...

Liberty seems like *the* choice for social policies - free worker, free settler, free golden age AND a free Great Person at the end - yeah, this is so remotely balanced and comparable to the other two options out there.

I'll be also going Monument first. Yes. I am not kidding. Monument first. That gives me a t14 settler from abovementioned balanced social policy tree.

Wonder targets? Great Library sling into Civil Service if I have marble around or Pyramids if there's stone ( 'Mids give a free worker after completion and cut down improvement time by 25%, now ain't that a lovely idea? We absolutely need to make it happen in RB Mod ). Oracle, for a free policy is also good.

Apart from that... Great Improvisation?

Hell knows, we'll see how the game rolls

[Mist]

Accursed Opposition ( I do have to get into the spirit of things after all )

[SIZE="3"]Seven Montezumas of the Aztec[/SIZE]

I considered this pick too. UU replaces a warrior, UB a watermill giving +1f on lakes. Civ ability gives him culture from defeated enemy units, might be strong if there's a lot of fighting, might suck if there's not.

It just occurred to me that you can milk City-States for this purpose though. So yeah, it's going to be strong. Sigh.

[SIZE="3"]Great King OleDavy of Persia[/SIZE]

+50% GA length... Yeah, civs are balanced in this game too
UU is a spear replacement with higher strength and healing rate. Nifty and requires no resources.
UB is a bank replacement with +2 happy. Pretty meh.

[SIZE="3"]Virgin King Yuris of England[/SIZE]

Gets faster ships. On a Pangaea. Yeah, I don't know how's that going to work out either.
Two UU's, one replaces Crossbow ( Longbow - longer range ), other replaces Frigate ( Ship of the Line - cheaper, stronger, sees farther )
Longbows might be a pain.

[SIZE="3"]President Fire&Ice of the US[/SIZE]

More vision on units and 50% discount on land purchase. Vision's good, land... I think there are better things to spend gold on.
2 UUs again, one replaces Muskets ( Minuteman, no rough terrain movement penalty ) other replaces Bomber ( B17 - can evade interception, hits harder ). I'm sure we'll see loads of B17s.

Personally I don't understand this pick, there were better option on the table.

[Mist]

Apologies in advance for poor screenies quality. My laptop actually chokes on CivV engine in better details

Start:



Shitty, as much as terrain can be good or bad here. I'll struggle for food and there's tundra to the south. Still, plenty of hammers to work with and farmed plain is actually decent GA tile here.

Move NE to settle ( hex grid NW-NE-E-SE-SW-W ), saves a forest and I don't want to work unimproved gold early ( that's not commerce, it doesn't do research ) warrior on the gold hill.



And there we go. Mining first. There's another sheep down south, but tundra sheep is a bad tile. Let's go scout for proper land.

[Bobchillingworth]

Haha, this game still has the solid blue rivers and a green-only minimap? Christ.

[Mist]

Haha, this game still has the solid blue rivers and a green-only minimap? Christ.

It has mountains and ocean too But yeah, nothing, to see there, move along please

[Commodore]

Okay, I'll ask some never-played-CiV questions if those are permitted here.

Move NE to settle ( hex grid NW-NE-E-SE-SW-W ), saves a forest and I don't want to work unimproved gold early ( that's not commerce, it doesn't do research ) warrior on the gold hill.

Okay, what is that if it ain't commerce? I assume the standard grow > build > coin priority is still in effect here.

And there we go. Mining first. There's another sheep down south, but tundra sheep is a bad tile. Let's go scout for proper land.

So tundra sheep is...2/0/0, how much improved? I thought ICS was the name of this game, but is that only after the city states are abused?

[Mist]

Okay, I'll ask some never-played-CiV questions if those are permitted here.

Fire away, if I won't know something I'll try to find out since it's probably going to help

Okay, what is that if it ain't commerce? I assume the standard grow > build > coin priority is still in effect here.

It's gold. You use it for buying infra, land, upgrades and paying maintenance. Beakers come directly from number of citizens and have absolutely nothing to do with any of the cashflow issues.

So tundra sheep is...2/0/0, how much improved? I thought ICS was the name of this game, but is that only after the city states are abused?

Tundra Hill Sheep ( because sheep are only on hills ) is 1/2/0 or 2/2/0 with pasture. And yes, I do remember luddite's essay on ICS, but I think that was nerfed out of the game by now. Thy did try hard to kill all viable strategies after all.

[Ilios]

What have you gotten yourself into this time Mist? Good luck!

[Mist]

No idea to be honest Ilios. No idea

But Commodore wisely reminded me that ICS is, in theory, the name of the game. So I had a poke around to see if it's still possible.



Non-exhaustive list of problems :

*Happiness is global
*Blowing past happy cap stalls growth
*Each city adds 3 unhappy
*Each pop adds 1 unhappy
*Each unique happy resource adds 4 happy
* +happy buildings cost maintenance
*For city to be profitable it needs to work a specialist at minimum.
*Buildings unlocking specialists cost maintenance

All this adds up to following -

Average ICS city is a size 4, -2 gold, -7happy proposition
Average ICS city gains me 4 beakers, 2gold, +specialist output

To make ICS work I need a way to mitigate that -7 somehow.



This button is unfortunately broken

But I could do this :
*Meritocracy in Liberty tree gives +1 happy for every city connected to capital. Nice, that's -6.
*Unlocking Order tree gives +1 per city. But that's Industrial Era, so pretty late. Still, -5.
*I can build Colosseums everywhere for +2happy and -1 gold hit. -3.
*I can build Theaters for +3happy, -2gold. 0!

So in theory, once I get to Industrial Era, all my cities of size 4 or less can start going happy neutral. Every one of them can have Walls and Castle ( no upkeep ), Market and Bank ( +4, +50% gold ) which more than offsets expenditure for Happiness.

The snag is with specialist slots. When Sullla and co. destroyed the game, there was a Scientist slot at library. It does not exist any more. Earliest slots are at Currency ( Merchant ), Metal Casting ( Engineer ), Philosophy ( Artist ), Education ( Scientist ). Apart from Philosophy, that's all deep into Medieval Era.

Sigh.

There's good chance I'm going to play this as an OCC for quite a while, there's absolutely no incentive to go and claim land before you hit Renaissance.

Culture Victory anyone?

Should have picked China ( walks away grumbling ).