Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

Since the video was at the bottom of the previous page:

Council of Ministers

• Receive Science and Culture equal to 15% of your Faith generation in cities founded on Hills. Units receive +4 Combat Strength when fighting on Hills.

Akusmite Legacy

• Ethiopia's International Trade Routes grant 0.5 Faith per resource at the origin. Improved resources provide +1 Faith for each copy the city owns. Can purchase Archeological Museums and Archeologists with Faith.

Oromo Calvary

• Ethiopian unique Medieval era light cavalry unit. Stronger and greater sight than the Courser. Receives no movement penalty from moving in Hills.

Rock-Hewn Church

• Unlocks the Builder ability to construct a Rock-Hewn Church unique to Ethiopia. +1 Faith. +1 Faith for each adjacent Mountain and Hills tile. Provides Tourism after reaching Flight from Faith. +1 Appeal. Can only be pillaged (never destroyed) by natural disasters. Can only e built on Hills or Volcanic Soil not adjacent to another Rock-Hewn Church

Edit: Menelik's AI agenda is Ethiopian Highlands: likes to build cities on Hills and hates Civs who do so.

Edited by tclittle on Jul 16th 2020 at 2:21:06 PM

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

A new defensive, faith-and-culture-based civ that loves hill. Isn’t this a better version of Georgia?

I'm not as witty as I think I am. It's a scientifically-proven fact.

Thanks to the recent dev livestream, we were able to get the exact specifics for the Saguine Pact. I stole this from Reddit:

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

I just realized that the release date of the Ethiopia pack is also Haile Selassie's birthday. Do you think that was intentional?

Patch Notes.

Bull Moose Teddy really likes his Breathtaking Appeal tiles.

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

I have to wonder if the devs cut a few corners in designing and animating the leaders for the New Frontier patch. Menelik's general look and posture seems rather similar to Cyrus, while Lady Six Sky's movements are quite reminiscent of Amanitore.

And Simon Bolivar with Pedro.

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

It's pretty clear they recycled the animations.

Maybe I'm not reading the patch notes closely enough, I'm still confused. Does the new "Antiquities and Parks" ability replace Teddy's "Roosevelt Corollary" even if you didn't buy the Persona Pack? Can I still defend my home continent in a suit, or am I forced to spend money and play dress-up if I want Teddy's original playstyle?

Current earworm: "Time of Death"

They also have the exact same body, just with different skin tone and clothes.

Optimism is a duty.

Nothing changes with Teddy if you don’t buy the pack, they confirmed that during the stream that’s now on You Tube.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Good to hear. The alternative would be kind of scummy.

Current earworm: "Time of Death"

So, Menelik is a real faith producing machine and that pairs really well with the Voidsingers secret society bonuses. Specifically their second promotion that turns 20% of faith output into science and culture. The cultist and dark summoning project turns out rather underwhelming unless you plan to spam it (though there may be some subtelties to the mechanics that I missed).

Also the secret societies mode has some interesting side benefits. You only get to choose one secret society. But you get a free govenor promotion for unlocking them, even after you've locked one in and it can be used to promote your regular govenors which can really boost your start.

My first game as Menelik isn't quite going optimally, mostly because the game stuck me in a wiry, snaky region with tons of hills and mountains but only big enough for maybe two and a half cities, with lots of wide open spaces beyond with barely any hills at all, forcing me to choose not to take advantage of Ethiopia's perks for much of my expansion.

But otherwise, I really like him. He's basically based around my usual playstyle, which is to create and sustain religion for the express purpose of boosting my empire, using faith to purchase things, while turtling and defending like a mofo and eventually going for culture victory.

And on the upshot, the Civ VI Ethiopia theme is even better than the Civ V one holy crap.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 26th 2020 at 11:38:55 AM

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

I hope the Sioux get another chance as one of the remaining five civs. They've been relegated to "kinda-offensive blob civ" status twice before. Definitely want a west-of-the-Mississippi Native civ in any case.

At this stage apart from that the only one I think is really really needed is Portugal. With how many Greco-Roman spinoffs there are already I could honestly do without the Byzantines this time, or just make Theodora or somebody an alternate for Rome - the real Byzantines didn't see themselves as different from the Romans at all.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Jul 26th 2020 at 12:30:11 PM

So, late in the game playing as Maya after the recent updates. Thoughts:

• Maya are a great late game civ. After you survive the initial Early Game Hell with the lack of housing that's usually given by settling near the bodies of water, once you get the population increase that +10% production bonus really adds up. Their unique district is great, too - currently I'm heading for the science victory, benefiting from the civ's unique abilities;
• The secret societies really limit your diplomatic options. No one shared my type of society, and almost every other civ has denounced me. Even before I started a war with Poland!
• I built Chichen Itza in Chichen Itza. Where's my achievement?
• Seriously, Maya really can build their cities tall. Playing as other civs, I usually have only two cities by the end of the game that have double-digit number of citizens - the capital and the designated trade hub. Here, it's, like, 4-5 large cities. If you add to that the bonus building that the Owls of Minerva gives there's a potential to have the double amount of trade routes than usual.

Edited by Millership on Aug 2nd 2020 at 1:34:00 AM

Spiral out, keep going.

The only other civ that can get multiple cities as tall as the Maya (or even taller) are the Inca, thanks to the multitudes of ways you can get a ton of food with them.

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

Picked up Civ 6 and expansions during the summer, and have been playing it steadily. I'm trying to win one full game as each civ, starting with the ones that were in the game first.

I started a game as the Aztecs (I lump them in with the others the game shipped with, since their DLC came free), I'm barely into the medieval era, and it's been... interesting so far.

• I start off on one end of a thin stretch of coast, with mountains behind me. However, I find out that I've got at least three different luxuries within spitting distance of my capital, and I've got potentially a fantastic city-campus-harbor triangle at my capital thanks to nearby reefs and fish, so I'm determined to make this work.

• I take my eagle warrior south, and find Lisbon at the other end, with only enough room on this beach for one other city. Lisbon's also across the water from me, meaning I can't really take it over early, so I might as well accept the free gold thanks to being the first person to find them.

• I take my eagle warrior through a small gap in the mountains, and I find my neighbor sitting right there. Eleanor of Aquitaine, leading France. I've already determined I'm going to war with whoever is behind the mountain, but she's pretty much blocking me in, so I decide to consider myself lucky that it's not somebody with an early-game power spike like the Greeks.

• Oh yeah, I've also been steadily bumping up the difficulty as I get more comfortable with the game. This game I've set it to Emperor. As I quickly find out after declaring war, the AI on Emperor difficulty gets not just numerical advantages, but they also just start with free settlers and warriors. Oh yeah, and it seems like they're able to just conjure more troops at points. It's not even turn 30, and she's got 3 cities, a few warriors, and suddenly an endless stream of archers out of nowhere. I don't know how she's getting all those archers, because she's clearly not buying them, and they seem to be coming much too fast to be being produced normally. Still, I've got a good feeling about this map, so after a lot of reloading my save from the start of the game, I'm finally able to destroy her without losing too many eagle warriors.

• Unfortunately, it turns out my eagle warriors have a couple of hidden downsides. One, which is the more obvious one, is that they cost much more than a normal warrior. But the second one is that they seem to get outpaced rather quickly. The classical era had already started by the time I finally manage to get rid of Eleanor and start consolidating my new territory.

• I have a scout take one step outside my territory to peek at what's there, and guess what it is? It's a war-cart. Gilgamesh is bordering me to the north, and I quickly find Sweden to my south. This is fine, I think. I don't want to go to war with Gilgamesh while he's still got those carts active, so I'll get on his good side while I work on infrastructure. This works for a few turns, during which he's perfectly friendly, before he declares a surprise war.

• After just barely getting rid of his force of archers, war-carts, and horsemen, I'm ready to march on his territory, when suddenly Sweden (who has also been perfectly friendly up to this point) also declares a surprise war on me. She's at the other end of my territory, and it took all my dudes to hold off Gilgamesh, so I quickly make peace with Gilgamesh and try to intercept her.

• After fighting her off (she managed to take Paris, I managed to retake it, at the cost of a few troops), I start moving towards her territory. The game says I've got an army about twice her size, so it should be fine, right? First thing I see when I finally get to her border is two knights. I'm slowly upgrading my forces at this point, but given my lack of gold income, it's obvious those two knights would hurt before I got a chance to kill them. So I make peace with her, and oh look, I see some Sumerian knights hanging around my other border...

• I save and quit at this point, because it's obvious now that I'll need a solid plan to deal with this. I was not expecting either of these guys to be this aggressive. Hell, in my experience, Gilgamesh never declares war unless I've seriously pissed him off, and we had a good relationship before he decided to attack me.

Maybe you could find a mod that turns off fog of war so you could see if the AI really spawns in units. It's probably somewhere in the code too, but that would be hard to find.

Optimism is a duty.

At higher difficulties, the AI gets bonuses to production and will build units very quickly. I don't think it's cheating directly.

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

The AI does buy units with gold, so it may seem like they are instantly getting a free unit when they aren't.

The only free units the AI gets are extra Warriors, extra Settlers, and an extra Builder, and that's only at the start of the game.

Edited by tclittle on Aug 10th 2020 at 10:25:34 AM

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

IIRC the AI used to outright cheat production and spawn free units on higher difficulty in the older games, but I think - yeah - they just have their production and gold generation, etc cranked up (after the initial advantage of course) now.

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

They also get extra science, culture, faith, a small combat bonus, combat experience, and a few boosts to Techs and Civics. TO counter balance that, you get extra combat bonuses and experience on difficulties lower than Prince.

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

Prince is the "even" difficulty, where you and the AI are on exactly the same footing. At any difficulty above Prince, AI civs get extra units, production, science, faith, money, etc.

Hypothetically, you offset this by playing better than the AI. This is not difficult, mind you.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 10th 2020 at 2:28:42 PM

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

I hold my hand up as someone who regularly gets trounced on Prince,mostly because of getting rushed by the AI because I didn't notice the build up near my borders

New theme music also a box

I don't like playing lopsided games, so I mostly just play on Prince. But I get why the upper difficulties do it.

The AI is bad at handling situations where the player is at an advantage. They don't optimize to try to and catch up, they don't form coalitions against other players, they barely get along with anyone tbh (I can count the number of times I've seen the AI make an alliance with someone not the player on one hand), and just kind of flounder against superior forces.

Once you get to that point where you overtake them, they tend to flounder. And since the series has never been too interested in making the AI smarter, I guess just making have an inherent advantage at higher difficulties that makes overtaking them take more is a decent way to cover that up.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 10th 2020 at 12:39:47 PM

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