Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

On one-time bonus wonders: doesn't the Terracotta Army only do its thing once?

That's it most importantly benefit, but it also allows archeologists to enter anyone's lands, which can be useful if you've pissed someone off to the point of denouncement.

I never find that there's a lack of digsites in my own land or in the wild, even before shipwrecks become available. It's more the opposite: I build museums to clear out these digsites and make the tiles usable again. There is a problem that 90% of the digs I find are of me fighting barbarians, which hinders theming, but usually the AI has dug up a few I can trade.

Speaking of museums, I find that I run out of civics before technologies. In my last game I noticed I had at times twice as much culture output as science. I think it's because museums are so much interesting than universities and I build more of them. I wish Great Scientists could give campuses some flavour.

I just won my first Science Victory, as Portugal. It was close, Bolivia was on the verge of a Culture Victory, requiring me to rejig my policies to maximum culture, after they were set to maximum science. I knew they were ahead in tourism (and I managed to steal some of their works), I just didn't realise how much they could grow in the time it took to launch. I have to grant that the AI is competent in this matter, it chooses one victory and puts all efforts into it.

I thought England was sea and trade oriented, but it's nothing compared to Portugal. For much of the game I had twice as many trade routes as cities, and I was making 2000 gold a turn at its peak. Conversely, any city not on the coast is gimped. Definitely a civilisation for Islands and Fractal maps.

Archeology Museums are only really good in games where you've had a lot of wars. And I think only two Civs have bonuses for them; base game England and Ethiopia.

Usually there's enough barbarians roaming about in the early game that there are plenty of digsites. Also I'm likeliest to get into war early on, I'm sure because the AI sees that I'm vulnerable and I'm not able to cater to their agendas. And whatever the mechanical benefit, I love the feel of visiting again what happened long ago. I wish this were expanded upon, that after you dig up an artifact it preserves an account of where and when it was made. I also don't like that digging up a shipwreck removes its science yield; after all archeologists rarely raise entire wrecks, they just take samples and leave the rest for later viewing.

Is it ever worth adding proposals to the World Congress to ask for assistance for your own disasters? As far as I can see, the help is pure fluff, and it only gives other a chance to earn Diplomatic Points.

It's kind of weird because, as far as I know, the Send Aid project does nothing for the target. Seems like a gross oversight but who knows.

Diplomatic Victory in general feels like the concepts are laid out but the implementation is lacking, making the eventual victor feel arbitrary. Coming in an expansion might be part of it. I hope they build upon it for the next game to make the objective building up and strengthening the World Congress, not knowing how the AI votes.

For starters it really should be starting later on or at least be more localised early on.

I disagree with it starting later. If it's going to be a victory type, it does need to be something the players work towards for the entire game.

Then regional diplomacy probably works better as a start.

Yeah, it's always weird to me that the first sessions happen when half the participants are unknown to me. The United Nations is not the all-powerful unelected government conspiracy nuts want it to be, it is little more than a forum for national governments to talk and organise among themselves. Having participants you can't talk to defeats the point.

I would like a game in which you have to have good relations with several other leaders to build the World Congress, and where having the same religion or a lot of tourism makes them more cooperative. It would give a reason to spread another civ's religion, though you'd have to be careful to not spread it so much as to make them win (then again, I think religion would work better as a means to other victories than as its own victory condition; it feels weird for it to be so important past the Renaissance).

I thinks that a consequence of the Science Victory being very straightforward. Everything around it is straightforward and doesn't really require a lot of thinking.

That's ultimately why I prefer cultural victories over science ones, and even domination and religious victories can be much more complex than science, even if those two get bogged down in the warfare part.

Strangely, I've found that if you have no combat in your lands, the game will pull from religious battles to generate archeological digs.

Send Aid does work, I've seen myself and any AI being sent aid has a good amount of extra gold in their pockets when an aid request is ongoing. For y'all, it just might not have been much more than you were earning.

I've done a Religious Victory in the Ides of March scenario, and it underlined to me another problem: relic generation doesn't make sense. It's fine if you have the Mont Saint-Michel, but otherwise I see no reason to choose Martyr because it feels like I'm setting them up to fail. Nor does it trigger if the apostle is killed by "Condemn Heretic", which is counter-intuitive. It would work much better if any religious unit's death by any means had a chance to create a relic, and the Mont Saint-Michel increased that. Even Kandy poses the problem that I put my exploration on hold until I have Suzerainty.

However the problem I find with religion on high difficulties is that the Prophets are taken up early on, when the AI has the biggest advantage. In my latest game I built two holy sites just to secure one, I was on track to getting the last but then another civ snapped him up. And I'm playing as Philip II, who has some strengths that depend on founding a religion (or picking on, I suppose, but I don't want to help someone else's victory).

One thing that occurs to me: it's a good idea to have separate civilisation and leader traits, allowing some degree of mix-and-match, but they don't do much with it. It ought to take up very few resources to give each civ four to six leaders with only still images, that are never taken by the AI, to give players more choice. It would also allow for separate drop-down menus, cutting back a bit on how long it is right now.

Fireaxis didn't really start going hog wild on multi leader civs until the Leaders Pass.

• Base game had just Greece.
• Rise and Fall only added in India.
• Gathering Storm added two in England and France, but that was because Eleanor.
• New Frontier Pass added America, China, and Mongolia and gave France 3 leaders with the Personas and Kublai Khan.

Super weird too, since the setup seemed practically built for it from day one. I’m somewhat surprised we didn’t get more.

Most of my victories on higher difficulties are Diplomatic, for the simple reason that it scales much less than the others with difficulty. However it may scale with the disaster intensity, since it means more aid requests (unless the game compensates for this in some way) and since I usually put the disasters up a notch this may explain why these games tend to end prematurely, well before any spaceports are built. It's an underdog's chance at winning, which I wouldn't mind if it didn't feel so arbitrary.

Like the counterintuitive tactic of voting for myself to lose points in the World Congress if I'm ahead: usually I can't outvote the others, they will vote for it anyway, and doing so means I only lose one point.

Honestly I tend to go for Science or Diplomatic cause Religion and Domination feel like hassles and Culture feels confusing.

It's confusing if you go by the in-game manual, which doesn't explain what "domestic tourists" and "foreign tourists" are, and gives the impression that one is a function of the other. They are actually independent: foreign tourists, your offensive stat, comes from Great Works, National Parks, and various improvements, modified by policies and technologies; domestic tourists, your defensive stat, is equal to one percent of the culture you've generated throughout the game. For a culture victory, build theatres and entertainment complexes, recruit Great Persons or trade/steal their works from others, build National Parks, seaside resorts and ski resorts, and pick policies that increase tourism. Set up trade routes to every civilisation and convert them to your religion, both increase tourism. All Wonders generate tourism, but the Bolshoi and Sydney theatres are especially powerful. And to stop another from dominating your civilisation, maximise culture. Hope that helps.

I occasionally get a spy whose missions are given as "0 turns", which I think is some kind of glitch. Their missions are done by the next turn. It's obviously powerful, except for Siphon Funds: because it takes the money made over the duration of the mission, the money is also zero.

There was an amusing misadventure when I was rallying my forces to a war but my Rocket Artillery went in the wrong direction, likely due to some misclick during a moment of lag, and I only noticed when they were in the midst of a swarm of barbarians. (Barbarians can get quite plentiful if there is only a city-state nearby, because for whatever reason they will often refrain from attacking each other.) Despite being a siege unit, they beat them all. I picture the conversation when they returned:

"Sorry we're late!"

"The war is over! Where were you guys?"

"We took a wrong turn at Caguana and ended up fighting a half-dozen infantry and destroying their camp."

"Yeah, they must have drunk too much the night before and hallucinated it all."

The 0 turns on spy missions isn't a glitch, it's a byproduct of Fireaxis giving additional bonuses to spies.

• The base game has both the spy promotion (Linguist) and Policy Card (Machiavellianism) that reduces mission time by 25% each.
• Rise and Fall added the late game Golden Age dedication Bodyguard of Lies which also reduces mission time by 25%.
• The April 2021 update (last update for New Frontier Pass) added additional bonuses for culturally dominating another civ which includes reducing spy mission time by 50%.

Also, are you playing on Barbarian Clans mode? I've noticed that city-states that "evolved" from barb camps don't attack barbs, only those that started in the game do so.

Right, the cultural domination thing must be it. I kept looking for what could be reducing them so much and could only find 50%. Makes cultural domination quite dangerous, I could steal all their Great Works until my slots were full.

That distinction would explain some of the weirdness I've seen.

Great Work stealing sure feels like it's broken for me, since actually trying it has the AI just move the work. Fair and balanced.

I don't recall encountering that problem.

In fact, my spy once stole the Sistine Chapel ceiling somehow. Ponder that for a while.

Carmen Sandiego moment.

In my experience, offensive spy missions are seldom useful becuase my spies always fail and get killed. I train spies almost entirely for counterespionage.