Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

A man can still dream.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Diplomacy win

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

Who is still playing Civ 2 like me? I wish they would reboot it as a native app for tablets like Ubisoft did with Heroes of Might and Magic 3

Science is my most favorite subject, especially the Old Testament

Full list of new wonders:

Golden Gate Bridge: Modern; connects two coasts; boosts tourism from improvements and national parks; grants amenities and tile appeal.

University of Sankore: Medieval; Desert or Desert Hills; bonuses to science and faith; domestic trade routes yield bonus science and faith; international trade routes yield extra gold and science

Machu Piccu: Medieval; grants gold; adjacency bonuses for commercial, theater, and industrial districts near mountains

Great Bath: Ancient; Floodplains; adds faith to every tile where flood damage was prevented; city tiles are now immune to flood damage

Meenkashi Temple: Medieval; build next to holy site; grants free gurus; gives gurus an ability which adds more religious combat strength and movement to adjacent religious units

Országház: Industrial; next to river; provides culture; additional diplomatic favor each turn when Surzerain of a city-state

Panama Canal: industrial; flat land; extra gold for trade routes that cross your canal district; connects canal districts so ships can cross land.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

Finally updated that Disney Civ list a little...

Agrabah - Sultan/Sultana Aladdin & Jasmine, Jafar

• Civ Ability - Crown of the Seven Deserts: +1 Trade Route with Horseback Riding. +1 Trade route with Castles. +1 Trade route with Cartography. All trade routes passing over a desert tile yield +2 Food, +2 Production to domestic and foreign cities.
• Leader Ability - Diamond in the Rough: +50% yield from Oasis and Natural Wonder tiles (or additional effect, for those without yield). Discovery of a natural wonder gives a gold bonus (scales up across ages)
• Leader Ability - Jafar: All spies operate +1 level higher, +2 with access to diamonds.
• Unique Unit - Riders of Ramond (replaces Knight): Stronger than a Knight, +20% combat bonus when within two tiles of an Agrabanian trade route.
• Unique District - Bazaar (replaces Commercial District): Each Bazaar building gives an additional +1 gold if its city has an outgoing trade route, another additional +1 gold if it also has an incoming trade route, and and additional +1 great merchant points if it has both.

Annuvin - The Horned King

• Civ Ability - The Land of Death: Land units’ base power cannot be reduced.
• Leader Ability - Black Joy: Great Generals and Admirals all have ability - “Reduce adjacent enemy’s power by 10%” in addition to their inherent abilities. Similar abilities stack, up to 30%. Gain a Great General point upon production of a Cauldron Born.
• Unique District - Black Cauldron (replaces Encampment on first build): Can only be built once. Any units (regardless of origin) killed within three tiles of Annuvin borders, or any Cauldron Born anywhere, has a 25% chance to respawn at this district under Annuvin control. Each building gives +1 Great General points.
• Unique Unit - Cauldron Born (replaces Swordsman): Does not require iron.

Arendelle - Queen Elsa

• Civ Ability - Born of Cold and Winter Air: Snow and Tundra tiles yield +1 Food, +1 Production, +1 Gold. Improvements can be built on Tundra and Snow tiles as if they were Grassland/Plains respectively.
• Leader Ability - Frozen Heart: Can convert tiles to Tundra/Snow with Faith. Unique district, replacing the Holy Site - Ice Palace. Converts all adjacent tiles to Tundra. Snow and Tundra tiles in Arendellan cities with an Ice Palace yield an additional +1 Food, +1 Production, +1 Gold.
• Unique Unit - Snow Golem: Replaces Bombard. Does not require Niter. Can only be built in cities with worked snow or tundra tiles. +20% strength when attacking on a snow tile. +20% strength when defending against gunpowder units, +10% all other kinds of units.
• Unique Improvement - Ice Cutter: Replaces mines on Snow or Tundra Hills. In addition to mine yields, +1 Production. +1 Production if adjacent to a river. +1 Production if adjacent to a Mountain.

Corona - Princess Rapunzel, King Frederic

• Civ Ability - Secret of the Sundrop: Cities gain +1% growth for each point of Faith and Culture output from Districts, up to 15% each. All units trained in a city with a Temple heal an additional 5 pts per turn.
• Leader Ability - Rapunzel - At Last I See The Light: All great works, artifacts and relics generate faith and loyalty equal to their culture output.
• Leader Ability - Frederic - Safe From Harm: Units escorting support units have +20% strength. Units garrisoned in and adjacent to cities give +1 loyalty each.
• Unique Unit - Maximus’ Elite: Replaces Knight. +25% when facing barbarians, +10% when on Coronan tiles. Generates culture boost when capturing units or defeating barbarians.
• Unique Building - Royal Gallery: Replaces Art Museum. Unlocks at Medieval Faires. Socketed great works give an additional +4 loyalty. Gives double the Great Artist points.

Germany - Princess Snow White / Queen Grimhilde

• Civ Ability - Seven Jeweled Hills: Receives double the mount of strategic/luxury resources from mines and quarries. Units stationed on mines receive a defensive bonus.
• Leader Ability (Snow White) - Fairest of Them All: Open borders with all City States. Enemy civilizations receive 30% more weariness and receive increased loyalty pressure from Germany when at war with Snow White. Cities captured or converted during war instantly spawn a melee unit.
• Leader Ability (Grimhilde) - Through Wind and Darkness: Instantly discover the whole of a civilization’s borders (but only the border) when meeting them, and gains defensive bonus on land discovered this way. Spies accomplish missions 33% faster. +1 Spy capacity, instantly granting a Spy with Mercenaries - this spy will never killed upon failure.
• Unique Unit - Huntsman: No movement penalty on woods/rainforest (woods/rainforest promotion gives additional movement points instead). Reveals support units adjacent to field of vision, and all tiles adjacent to them.
• Unique Improvement - Dwarfen Mine: Replaces mine. In addition to mine yields, +1 gold, +1 production. Becomes +2 production, +2 gold on tiles with bonus/luxury/strategic resources, in addition to resource yields.

France - Princess Cinderella & Prince Charming

• Civ Ability - The Magic Kingdom: Gains additional Era points in any situation in which Diplomatic Favor points are received, and vice versa (*).
• Leader Ability - A Wish Your Heart Makes: No work penalty or decrease in happiness/loyalty for a deficit of amenities for ten turns after the deficit begins.
• Unique Unit - Coachman: Replaces Trader.
• Unique District - Grand Ballroom: Replaces Theatre Square. Allows a unique project - Grand Ball - which delivers culture points, great musician points and Diplomatic Favor when completed.

(*) Numbers pending until my knowing exactly what the scaling is for Diplomatic Favor.
France - Aurora & Philip

• Civ Ability - Sword of Truth: Pre-Industrial melee units receive a +7 bonus against units with a higher combat score than themselves. Bonus doubles post-Industrial Era. Defensive buildings can be purchased with faith. Free Prince with Stirrups.
• Leader Ability - Once Upon A Dream: Gains access to three unique governor with Medieval Faires (pun) - Flora, Fauna and Merriweather - who begin with unique title Fairy Patronage: -20% enemy spy chance, -15% combat strength for enemy units adjacent to city, +15% friendly combat strength in city borders, +25% production towards defensive buildings.
• Unique Unit - Prince: Replaces Great General. +2 Movement points (can match pace with Knights). Increases defensive combat strength of adjacent units by an additional 15% in addition to other bonuses. When garrisoned in a city, generates +5 culture, +5 faith per turn. Faith bonus doubles at the year 1300 AD. Generates same bonus when a unit affected by AOE defeats an enemy unit.
• Unique Improvement - Enchanted Forest: Unlocks with Mysticism. Must be built on Woods. +2 faith. +2 culture with Medieval Faires. Provides fort defensive bonus.

France (again) - Frollo

• Civ Ability - The Bells Of Notre Dame: If you have founded a religion, it will always maintain at least one follower and a small amount of religious pressure in any city that has converted to it. Religious pressure from cities is 25% stronger (and/or cities with a Grand Cathedral continue to exert normal religious pressure of founded religion, even if converted to another).
• Leader Ability - Iron Clutches: Can purchase Inquisitors with Temples, without the need of Apostles. Performing Inquisitions increases religious and loyalty pressure upon surrounding cities, and does damage to any enemy religious unit adjacent to the city. Every unit trained in a city that has had an Inquisition has 10% more combat strength.
• Unique Unit - Sallet Helm: Replaces Swordsman. If you have founded a religion, +15% combat bonus around any city with at least one follower of that religion. Exerts religious pressure when garrisoned in cities belonging to France.
• Unique District - Grand Cathedral: Replaces Holy Site, with Castles (Holy Sites built previously are automatically upgraded). Exerts zone of control, has fort defensive bonuses in addition to district ones, and deals 10% damage to enemy units and religious units of opposing religion (even in peacetime).

Inca - Kuzco and Yzma

• Civ Ability - A Perfect World: Individual cities do not earn amenities: rather, all amenities are transferred to the capital, and every city receives one amenity for every three present in the Capital City. The capital city generates +1 gold for each amenity earned from non-capital cities.
• Leader Ability - Cuzco - Beware The Groove: Land units generate an amenity when garrisoned in the capital. Generates a great person point of every category in the capital for every five amenities in capital. All great people, when acquired by Inca, are Kuzco.
• Leader Ability - Yzma - Brilliant!: +25% spy operations chance against less technologically advanced cities. With Engineering, can build a Secret Lab in a capital city with a Campus - generating +10 science plus an additional point for every 4 amenities in the capital.
• Unique Unit - Elite Guard: Replaces Spearman. Causes a city to operate at a higher happiness level when garrisoned there. Provides +1 amenity when garrisoned in the capital city.
• Unique District - Kuzcotopia/Yzmopolis - Replaces Entertainment Complex: 2 slots for great works of art/relics. +1 additional amenity generated by every building. +1 gold for every amenity generated by every building.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 13th 2019 at 10:29:36 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

So, I've finished my first game of the new expansion earlier today and just some impressions. Played as Australia because... that's just what I do.

Floods seem to be the most common type of natural disaster you'll be dealing with, depending on the map type at least. But conversely they are also the most easily mitigated, though it will cost you a tile. But given that dams can be upgraded to hydroelectric dams later on there are upsides. And mitigated floods still give you at least some of the upsides while removing the negatives.

Sea level rise seems to be impossible to avoid completely, you can only hope to mitigate it with coastal flood barriers when the relevant tech is researched. Especially since coal burning power plants are kind of a necessity and there seems to be no way to decommission them (or oil burners) without upgrading to nuclear power plants. That being said building more renewable sources does reduce the upkeep on them. And I was playing on a hot map, I imaging it's going to be worse on temperate and cool settings.

For Australia at least with our strong coastal bias, offshore wind farms (power and production) and sea steadings (food, production and culture bonuses to fish resources) are your friend. I imagine they'll be similarly useful for the Maori, Indonesia and other civs who focus on ocean and coastal regions.

The world congress starts early. In the medieval period for my game at least and I can't tell if its a case of one civ meeting all the other civs like in V. Maybe. I didn't but Harald might have. Diplomatic Favour seems to be fairly easy to earn as long as you manage to stay suzerain of at least a couple of city states. The International Games are back and rather than a certain amount of production to complete it's turn based with the most production committed being the winner. Production itself takes the form of a repeating district project available in every city.

I just won a game playing as Sweden, on Prince difficulty because I don't want to be at a numerical disadvantage against the AI while learning the new mechanics. I wanted to go for a Diplomatic victory, since that's what Kristina seems designed for, but ultimately won a Religious victory instead, a few turns before I would have won a Cultural victory, and with at least two sessions of the World Congress to go before I could win with diplomacy.

My start position was awful: stuck in a corner between mountain ranges and Indonesia. I could have been wiped out easily but Gitarja decided to be friendly, and later became a reliable ally, so that particular crisis was averted. Frederick, on the other hand, was cleaning up on the middle of the continent, expanding like crazy, and I foresaw a war on the horizon. I was not wrong.

It ended up being Gitarja and me against Germany and the Maori, and the resulting conflict saw Frederick driven back, losing massive amounts of territory, until I occupied the entire middle of the continent. I later befriended Kupe (he wasn't really into the war thing, and I was taking care of my land, satisfying his agenda) and it became a three-way assault. Germany crumbled, but I left him with two cities that I expected would fall to loyalty pressure so I didn't have to get large Grievance penalties.

Of course, I couldn't avoid that entirely, and the midgame saw my Apostles spread out across the world, spreading Zoroastrianism to the Spartans, Persians, Zulus, Dutch, and so on. They didn't like that, and so Grievances continued to pile up. However, my Great People and persistent control of city-states saw my lead in Diplomatic Favor continue to grow. I won every Nobel Prize, increasing my diplomatic dominance.

I had been afraid that the Zulu might win a Scientific Victory, but all those German cities helped me get my science up and even scrape ahead of him. As sea levels rose, triggered in no small part by my enormous consumption of coal, my Apostles beat down attempts at restoring any other religions, and then I discovered the late-game power of Rock Bands.

This may be my favorite new mechanic. Some of their promotions are downright broken, such as the one that causes loyalty to drop by 50 points in a city that hosts a concert, or the one that automatically converts a city to my religion. Rock Bands are freaking insane, and finally give us something useful to spend late-game Faith on.

I'm loving this expansion, with one possible exception: the rate of climate change feels a bit too high. Now, admittedly, I wasn't helping, but with a consumption of maybe 12 to 15 Coal per turn (I was starting to switch over my power to oil and hadn't even started on nuclear yet), and the only civ consuming significant fossil fuel resources, I was in Stage IV before we'd even gotten much into the 20th century. One of my cities was built on coastal lowland and lost several tiles to flooding, including a full Archaeological Museum. That hurt. The mechanic feels overtuned.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 17th 2019 at 10:54:38 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The game really made settling to lakes more favorable due to the lack of floods.

I've found something awesome. Apparently, mountain tunnels join any tunnel to any other tunnel in the same mountain range for the same movement cost. It is absolutely hilarious, never mind absurd, to pop a unit into a tunnel and have it pop out twelve tiles away.

It also seems to me as if the default world generation algorithm has been weighted to generate more mountains in ranges.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 20th 2019 at 6:24:10 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Aspyr, the people behind the Nintendo Switch port of VI, has possibly accidentally confirmed and then edited out the fact the expansions are coming to the system while on the Switch subreddit.

Since this looks true, I may end up double dipping when the expansions come out.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

Also apparently water units can enter and pass through mountain tunnels too. Probably a bug?

there are rivers and lakes beneath mountains

New theme music also a box

I've found a bit of an exploit in the Grievances mechanic, I think. If you capture cities in a war with another civ, they earn grievances against you. These attach to the specific civ, and other civs' dislike of you is based on the net negative grievances you have with all others. If you declare peace, the initial capture grievances are doubled, which can cause a large spike in global disapproval.

When a civilization is wiped out, their personal grievances disappear completely. Capturing a civilization's last city creates a very large grievance for all other civs, which is intended to mitigate this. However, if a civilization is wiped out by loyalty pressure (their last city flips), you aren't credited with any grievances, even if you are at war with them at the time, and even if you immediately capture the resulting free city.

So, as long as you can sustain the immediate diplomatic penalties earned for fighting a war, you can completely erase them by letting the opponent's final city flip instead of capturing it. This is a big change from pre-Gathering Storm, wherein everyone would remember your accumulated warmonger penalty regardless of how the war ended.

Another way of saying this is that it's more diplomatically advantageous to never declare peace and fight the war in such a way as to cause your opponent's last city to flip, than to capture a few cities and call it quits. This is assuming you don't give the cities back at the peace table, which... I've never done. I don't know about anyone else.

---

Related, the diplomatic penalties for grievances double-dip a bit. When you have offended a civilization, you take a diplomatic hit for the action you took and for the accumulated grievances from all of your actions against that civ. It can make a minor infraction explode quickly.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 22nd 2019 at 12:46:41 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I dunno about you, but generally if I'm ruthlessly conquering one nation in its entirety, 99% of the time I intend to conquer every other nation as well and therefore don't care how much they hate me.

But it's good to know for when you're stuck next to a nation that's cutting off your growth and want to take their land for yourself, but still want to go for a non-conquest victory.

You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!

Yeah, that's a situation I find myself in quite often.

I should have mentioned that the other way to negate the bonus grievances from capturing a civ's final city is to liberate that city — this trick precedes Gathering Storm. Of course, that only works if the city you're capturing originally belonged to a different civ (or is a city-state). For this reason, I will often plan wars to ensure that my target's last remaining city is a city-state, which isn't difficult considering how aggressively the AI conquers them in the early to mid game.

City-State Emergencies are the best if you want to retain diplomatic relations with other civs, because there are zero grievances no matter how many cities you capture, as long as you follow the last-city rule above.

---

Edited to add: Something funny happened in my game as Pachacuti the other day. This is the same game where I built lots of his early tunnel improvements (whose name I won't try to type from memory here). Kongo declared war on me due to the proximity of my empire, and while I had anticipated this and set up a city specifically for forward defense (with walls and an encampment district), what I didn't expect was for several units to teleport right next to my relatively undefended capital, using my own tunnel network.

It got a bit close as to whether they were going to capture it.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 22nd 2019 at 3:59:58 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Okay, using Rock Bands to force opponents' cities to loyalty flip in the late game is so broken that it's kind of scary.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Truth in Fiction?

Damn, Mansa Musa shits gold.

Prince, Standard Island Plates map. Spawned on the same continent with Georgia, Sweden, Kongo and (GASP!) the Mongols. Considering it's an island map, things became very cramped pretty soon: I only managed to found three cities before we collectively ran out of space at the end of the Classical era. Initially I've shared borders with Tamar and Genghis Khan, the latter being just south of my capital with a mountain range with a single passage providing reliable defence against him.

Three cities means four trade routes, but thanks to Mansa Musa's leader bonus I've managed to increase it by the Renaissance era to six by entering a golden age and a heroic age. In the Medieval era the World Congress started, and I've managed to pass a rule to give Mali the ability to culture bomb when any kind of district is built. That dealt with the "lack of territory" problem. But not for long.

As soon as Mali's UU were available, I've started a conquest of Georgian lands, curb-stomping Tamar and leaving her with just one city, which quickly flipped to me on its own. With the expansion of the trade route pool my income was around 500 gold per turn and money stopped being a problem at that point. The second war was with Sweden, who are located on the other side of the continent with Kongo squeezed between us. It was already the Modern era, and by that point I've already been allied with the rest of the world: the aforementioned Mongols and Kongo with Phoenicia, Korea and Rome. Conquered Stockholm and another big Swedish city, took two more cities during peace negotiations in exchange for 170 gold per turn and the income was still around 600 gold.

So now I'm halfway to the Diplomatic and Culture victories. Earned 6 points at the World Congress, built the Statue of Liberty with the latest session ending in the rest of the world voting to take away 1 point from me. Seondeok (predictably), Trajan (unsurprisingly) and Mvemba (surprisingly) are going for the Science victory, with the latter also being my only competitor at the Culture victory. Temujin is threatening to attain the Religious victory, but I think I can keep those civs in check and I am aiming to win by points. So far, I'm liking the new expansion.

Thoughts:

• I Like Christina's denunciation animation. Throw the Book at Them Subverted.
• Have they changed the map generation algorithm? There was a point in the game when only Seondeok had full access to oil, which is required for most Modern era units. The lands around my starting position also didn’t have a single source of the power-related resources - oil, coal and uranium.
• Despite starting two wars, I hadn’t had any kind of repercussions for it (apart from the reactions of the conquered states, obviously). I’m not sure if the time when everyone voted to subtract my Diplomatic Victory point counts.
• It’s still 1960's but my trade hub city already has a population of 35. Building Bolshoi Theatre there would take 7 turns. This thing happened in my earlier playthroughs with different civs, but it’s the first time this thing happened so soon.
• I have mount Kazbek and Fuji in my territory, so the eruptions and the resulting fallout are a constant pain in the ass. It doesn’t help that, excluding the aforementioned trade hub, all of my cities either produce mostly food, but little production or go either way around, so its either quickly replenished useless pops for me or slowly replenishing the crucial ones.
• Tiles going underwater on an island map sucks.

Edited by Millership on Feb 23rd 2019 at 11:40:39 PM

Spiral out, keep going.

I don't know; I'm having trouble accepting the verisimilitude of, say, the Beatles and Celine Dion playing back to back concerts in Denver and the city subsequently declaring independence from the U.S. If that really works, though, we should try it on North Korea or something.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 23rd 2019 at 12:42:09 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I like to role play Norway as Norsca from Warhammer. The moment i got Berserker i begin to go to war with the nearest empire. the Berserker take city without wall quite fast as long as you try to avoid taking damage since those Berserker die so fast. Once i finish one country i immediately move one to the next one.

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

Eleanor really works more for France than England.

Is there no way to end a Declaration of Friendship prematurely? In my current game, Aminatore, who's supposedly my "friend", has been repeatedly betraying my trust by sending apostles into my territory and converting my cities, resulting in my religion being nearly eradicated. I've been unable to stop her by "condemning heretics" because we're supposedly friends.

I find this really infuriating. I've repeatedly got her to promise to stop converting my cities, promises which she then instantly breaks. I feel like that I should be able to declare an end to our friendship so I can condemn her apostles given that she's accumulated hundreds of grievance points.

I don't know if it's possible but it would be nice if, in addition to your total CO 2 production you could get an idea of your CO 2 production per turn. Because once you get to the late game and you've got renewable sources coming out your ears it would be nice to know how much effect your carbon sequestration projects are having.

x2 Can you nuke her?

Don't stop, just proceed, 'cause this is what you need-proceed, just proceed, 'cause this is what you need!

Livestream tomorrow at 11 am PDT detailing the next update.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."