Caste System is THE early enabler for Artists and Merchants. Except no-one ever uses Caste, I feel half of this reason is the overpoweredness of Slavery, but the other half is that if you get Code of Laws early, the Great Propet Civil Service lightbulb is the near-perfect move - if you're going to lightbulb something, why NOT CS? And if you're going to lightbulb CS, why not use a Prophet?
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Exploits?
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I think moving slavery over to Masonry is atleast a solution we should look at. This has 2 balancing effects. #1, it makes masonry that much more useful, and #2, it makes Bronze working that much less overpowered.
I would easily be willing to play a RB mod with this simple change. Good idea uberfish...
CoL takes as long to get to as either drama or currency. If I want an early artist for culture bomb, I'd rather get it through drama and have a shot at getting Music for free while I'm there. If I want an early great merchant... ok, I'm having a hard time thinking of a reason why I would want one excepting the more bizarre variants.
CoL is early if you got it from the Oracle, but if you go that route you already have a headstart on prophet generation and will want a shrine at some point, so there's no incentive to switch to a different GP track - Unless you are going to slingshot to philosophy as well which you want a scientist for.
CoL can be got to via a very linear research path:
Mysticism->Meditation/Polytheism->Priesthood->Writing->Code of Laws All those techs except CoL itself are really quite cheap. It's possible to oracle CoL between 1800-1500BC, it's reasonable to say it's one of the fasted techs to oracle, since writing is researched while the Oracle is building. Furthermore an "unlimited" number of merchants/artists can be run 0 or 1 turns after getting CoL - no need to build a theatre or marketplace. This allows them to be popped out incredibly early - so much ealier than via the enabler building. PS. A fast Great Mercant can lightbulb worthwhile techs like Currency, Metal Casting, Monarchy and Civil Service - those are in order of preference - so if you want Civil Service you need to research Monarchy and avoid Bronze Working and Mathematics.
First time posting, no more lurking I guess
 According to this thread at Civ Fanatics, workers that are stolen can no longer be moved on the same turn they were taken. I guess that makes it a bit harder to steal workers, yes? Also, is my sig too long/unwieldy? Not sure what the rules are here on that.
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"I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain." Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear wikdwarlock Wrote:Also, is my sig too long/unwieldy? Not sure what the rules are here on that. Griselda is the final word on all things RBCiv-Forum. For my part, I don't have a problem with it, though. I've run in to signature limits/rules/issues at other forums, and found myself wishing their rules could be a little looser. Frankly, this is the first time I ever remember the issue even coming up at all, here. If Gris doesn't give you the (gentle) boot over it, then you're in like Flynn.  - Sirian
Fortune favors the bold.
AFAIK the following have been fixed/change in Warlords:
The main whipping bugs - hammers gained are now consistent per population point (if you have a 25% bonus, you get 37 hammers per population killed, period), the zero-hammer rush - you are now always penalized correctely. The truncation error and whips only giving 44 hammers on epic have also been fixed. This does not make whipping a "Just do it" system - there are still benefits to sandbagging your production to kill more population at once in order to minimize the happiness hit and maximize overflow (ie whipping an axeman between 31 and 34 hammers to kill 2 pop and get a load of overflow), production bonuses can now be a negative thing (with a 25% bonus you lose the option of whipping axemen for 2 pop @ 30 hammers each, instead you can only do 1 pop for 37 hammers). Rather than being outright bugged it's now simply arcane, rather like GPP lightbulbing. On the whole it is much easier to use though and I wouldn't say that whipping is weaker than before - for the casual user it's definitely stronger, while for the expert user the new gains are in bigger overflows. The gpt "subsidies" exploit has been fixed, there's really not much to say about it - the AI simply updates it's finances after recieving new gpt during a turn. The exploit using a transport to erase AI cities has been fixed. A good-faith effort has been made to fix worker poaching - it's now hard to poach a worker next to the AI city - but if it's in the outer-fat cross and there are no roads you can safely poach. The real issue is in the AI reaction to worker poaching (or lack of reaction) - this has not been fixed. Something not on the 'sploits list: Hammers from chopping now get added to the build in much the same way as overflow from the last turn of production (basically in the city screen under hammers for this turn there's a new category for yield from chopping) - in effect you can no longer change production mid-turn to land the chop hammers on a different build. The Integer rounding issues of commerce have been fixed - commerce of all types (including culture) are now tracked to 2 decimal places. This does reduce the benefit of Binary Science Rate - I say reduce, it's still always worth using for tech trading and tech discount purposes - you probably wont feel inclined to use it when ahead in tech, though. On the whole this is a very positive thing - just a pity it wasn't done for hammers too. AFAIK nothing has been done concerning great people tech preference and such - lightbulbing appears to work in exactly the same way as CIV vanilla. I don't consider that this nullifies Sirian's (and now my) concerns regarding masonry - it may not have come to the devs attention, or they might have considered strats like CS Slingshot to be too entrenched and that changing it would be too upsetting. There may also be other issues that have been resolved, or have not been resolved.
Hi,
Blake Wrote:AFAIK the following have been fixed/change in Warlords: [...]Thanks Blake! I'm not following the news about Warlords on CFC, so that list was quite interesting. I'm very glad to hear that they not only added new features but actually tried to fix some arcane and hidden bugs under the hood. I'm more inclined to buy the expansion now... -Kylearan
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
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