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In the interest of making this a more educational LP, I will note that all the provided options are bad - presumably due to some combination of roleplaying and attempting to wring challenge out of the utterly helpless AI. The non-bad traits are (in alphabetical order): Agricultural, Financial, Idealistic, Industrious, Megalomaniac, Philosophical, Scientific. Essentially, due to the immense amount of buildings, individual building discounts are meaningless. Because said buildings provide ridiculous amounts of, well, everything, static bonuses are meaningless. Yes, even happiness bonuses. But even then, anything that gives culture is meaningless, because while you could always use more hammers or science, the flood of culture from buildings quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns. Similarly anything that gives gold or affects maintenance/upkeep is meaningless, because you'll be swimming in gold regardless (note that gold != commerce. Commerce is the god-stat). Anarchy modifiers are pretty close to meaningless if you use golden ages properly. Crime/disease effects are meaningless, because you can just stack more police/doctors in your cities. Finally, anything that affects units/military is meaningless, because the AI is helpless. Oh and the same for diplomacy effects. (I hope no one was still under the impression that this mod contained balance) In a nutshell, look for percentage bonuses to food, commerce, hammers, and science, and stay away from penalties to same. So, this means that only option D is actively harmful, and it mostly comes down to what gameplan you prefer (if SJM was stacking religions properly the happiness penalty from C might also be large enough to be harmful, despite being a static value).
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Aug 14, 2019 18:16
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THRILLMASTER
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Abyssal Lurker posted:In the interest of making this a more educational LP, I will note that all the provided options are bad - presumably due to some combination of roleplaying and attempting to wring challenge out of the utterly helpless AI. I appreciate posts like this since, in case it wasn't clear, I am certainly no expert on all the idiosyncrasies of this mod and in some ways I'm intentionally playing suboptimally for the sake of a halfway interesting LP (if I were playing maximum tryhard I'd have a lot more cities despite the happiness penalty, Guangzhou would be mine and Carthage would have long since been eliminated). On the other hand, in many other instances I'm just making poor decisions due to laziness and/or inexperience with the mod so also don't think I'm some mastermind in complete control or something. One thing I will say though is that in a previous playthrough I did run into massive gold issues much later in the game due to long, long periods of abusing gold rushing for getting new cities online faster. Much as in real life, inflation is a pain in the neck  Not sure if utilizing that playstyle will lead into those same issues in this version of the mod but I guess we'll see.
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Aug 14, 2019 20:31
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Super Jay Mann posted:....Carthage would have long since been eliminated.... cato the censor disapproves of this post
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Aug 15, 2019 00:21
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Votes totals are in A. Imperialistic - 3 votes B. Seafaring - 18 votes C. Spiritual - 13 votes D. Remove Megalomaniac - 0 votes, as it should be  Looks like we're ruling the seas, at least in the near term.
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Aug 15, 2019 03:43
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You'll regret turning away from the gods! You've doomed us all with your lack of faith!
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Aug 15, 2019 13:26
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Randalor posted:You'll regret turning away from the gods! You've doomed us all with your lack of faith! 
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Aug 15, 2019 22:31
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Aug 15, 2019 23:25
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Super Jay Mann posted:One thing I will say though is that in a previous playthrough I did run into massive gold issues much later in the game due to long, long periods of abusing gold rushing for getting new cities online faster. Much as in real life, inflation is a pain in the neck That's a fair point (not sure why you'd spoiler that, but I'll follow suit), gold can eventually become useful by being turned into hammers. But the option doesn't appear until the point where you should already have effectively won the game - settled everything that needed settling, razed everything that needed razing, etc. At that point, with a choice between micromanagement and innumerable trade-off calculations, versus just relaxing and hammer-maxing, I choose the latter. Rushing is what the hundreds of captives are for.
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Aug 16, 2019 20:26
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C2C Gameplay Chapter 18: ~This is the tale~ ~of Captain Super Jay Mann~ Opening the save in v39 forces the usual asset update thing where it recalculates all my yields to accommodate all the changes in the mod. In this case, our gold output remains the same but our science output is slashed by about 10%. Food and production are adjusted slightly but not in a very noticeable direction either way. Not a huge deal all things considered.   What is is a huge deal can be seen in the city screen. First off, culture % modifiers from buildings and wonders have been slashed significantly. To the tune of 1/4th what they originally are according to the SVN commit note. I'm okay with this change since culture could easily go out of control the way the modifiers were now. You may notice one other change though compared to the culture gain from before, and that's that odd "-12 culture from specialists" deal  Another major change since the last update is that slave specialists have been nerfed a bit. Along with their normal yields they also now reduce science, culture, and GPP by -1 each. Or at least it should be -1 culture, it seems to be misreported as each slave seems to reduce culture by -2 instead. Dunno what the intended value is supposed to be there. I'm less enthusiastic about this change just because slaves, while being quite powerful, still require a significant investment in time and manpower and some luck to gain so softening the impact they have on your empire to this extent seems a bit harsh. It's still not a huge deal all things considered but I just wanted to point it out.    That's not all that changed about Slavery though. Enabling Slavery allows sacrificing population again! As I said before I'm not going to use it because of how much of a premium food is in the current state of the mod but I like the option being there. In addition the way Slavery is phased out seems to follow a more gradual path. In its previous incarnation, Slavery blocked the building of the Factory, the prerequisite building for almost all industrial era production buildings, severely hampering your ability to industrialize when you reached that age and forcing you to end it to be able to get into the mid-game supply chains. It no longer does that, instead opting to simply double the time it takes to build the Factory, giving you the option to begin industrializing while under Slavery if you so please. In its place though, as you can see, is that Slavery starts to incur some rather severe science and culture percentage penalties as you move through the tech tree. It's not shown but the first penalty comes right when you hit Medieval Era, garnering -5% science and culture at that point, and it only gets worse from there. For reference, Assembly Line is where Factories actually come online. This is a change which I do quite like. Before it felt like there was no reason to bother ditching Slavery until you hit Industrial era and are forced to do so to get your industrial building chains up since the unhappiness hits weren't nearly strong enough. I'm not sure the current penalties are balanced enough (depending on what my other science bonuses look like when the time comes, I can't see myself keeping Slavery past Renaissance) but I like the idea behind it nonetheless.  Enough of that though. Between play sessions I realized that I'm sick and tired of waiting for Bactrian to grow to size 2, so I'm going to kill it. I set up two Horseman+1 units (for future reference, I'll be referring to merged units using +/-x designation where x is the number of Groups above or below where the unit is built at. In this case, the Horseman starts as a Company (21-100) so at +1 it would be a Battalion (101-600), the maximum possible this era) with Might I and maxed out withdrawal to deal with the only problem unit of the stack, a 6 strength Archer. Both have about a 75% chance to withdraw and while the first does so successfully, the second dies, but not before weakening the unit enough for my 12 strength Elephant+1 to finish the job. The rest of the city stack is significantly weakened from turns and turns of bombardment by my War Galley fleet but that doesn't change the fact that they have six units in the city while I have only two attackers. How unfortunate for me.  Oh hey, remember this guy?   Well then! I was hoping to get more than 3 kills from the trample but I'll take this result. My Axeman+1 in the area takes out one of the remaining defenders leaving two weakened units that I can hopefully take out next turn with my Elephant+1 and Axeman+1.  Huh, here's an interesting change. They modified the movement rules for rough terrain a while back in ways that I don't quite understand so I didn't pay it much mind at the time, but it turns out they also added information to the terrain tooltip about what the movement cost of a specific tile is! And it even includes the movement cost for whatever road improvement is on the tile as well! This should hopefully reduce confusion in the future regarding if I can move to specific tiles or not.  v39 also moves the obsoletion of Culture (Neanderthal) to later in the tech tree, so it ends up getting built immediately by an AI (Brazil in this case) in about 2 turns.  Mesopotamism is spread pretty quickly in our empire as I am able to have missionaries out in 1 turn and heading out to all my cities in earnest. My capital is finally following the true faith!  Bactrian is razed as expected, leaving me free to resettle it at a better location. And I even get a Captive - Civilian out of it!  The reduction in culture actually delayed my third trait for a bit from where I placed my last save which is why you're not seeing it being taken until now. As voted on in the thread, we'll be taking Seafaring and focusing on taming the high seas with our primitive wooden boxes.  Meanwhile, in other parts of the continent, I take advantage of the wandering defender I mentioned earlier to take out the defenders of this barb city and raze it, netting me yet another Captive - Civilian. I'll take the free population, thank you very much.  One interesting thing I didn't notice before is that the Stalker actually has the Archer Sub Combat Type, which if why this unit has a sizable bonus against mine.  Sedna is an Inuit goddess of the sea. Somewhat appropriate given Carthage's extreme northern start position.  On the same turn we get our next great general, Askia. I'll keep him in reserve for now as I'm unsure what to use him for.  France is finally out settling its third city, it's a miracle   Chichen Itza is more of a filler wonder than anything else, but it does give more trade routes and it does offset the -20% city defense from Seafaring for what it's worth.  Oh and we get this thing, the Fine Stoneware Carvers which provides a unique luxury resource and some artist slots.  Brazil revolts into some much better civics, greatly improving his economy. I wish I could meet the last civ already so I can see just how well he's doing compared to everyone else, but that's still a ways off it seems.  Hubishna is founded in a somewhat better spot than Bactrina was. Good access to resources and coastal to benefit from the Seafaring trade route.  So I mentioned some useful religious wonders that come with Dualism, let's go over some of them.  The Nimrud Palace is a Mesopotamism-specific wonder that provides some rather large military bonuses. +3 experience to Melee and Archer units, +25 military production, along with a flat -25% maintenance.  The real crown though is the Hammurabi Stele of Laws, a Mesopotamism wonder that provides a FREE courthouse in every city. I love free buildings, even in a mod like this where there are too many buildings in general.  The Courthouse reduces maintenance by 25%, allows some unique specialists that provide interesting bonuses I'll get into later, and reduces crime by a lot. The main drawback is the flat -10 gold, but given the maintenance reduction and the fact that gold is easy to come by anyway, it's a wash financially. I'll be building both these wonders promptly.  Negotiation unlocks the first Diplomatic unit, the Diplomat - Negotiator, which... honestly, I don't actually know what diplomats do, except that they're used for missions in other nations, whatever that means. Looks like I get to find out by good old trial and error!  Germany manages to settle a city in a way that would piss off both Carthage AND me  Guess he really, really wanted that Jade for some reason.  Oh hey China actually gets the Ming culture, how nice.  Huh, Guangzhou only has one defender in its city. Must not overabuse AI must not overabuse AI must not overabuse AI  Mesopotamism spreads all the way to Assyria's empire down south. He also has a city with Tengriism nearby as you can see, so I'll be interested to see which of our religions (if either) he decides to adopt in the long run.  Not a bad spot for a city, especially if France wants to culturally pressure that ridiculous Chinese city down as much as possible. We've been remarkably conflict-free so far in this game, I wonder how much longer that will last.  Negotiation additionally provides +2 espionage points per Chief's Hut, which synergizes nicely with our wonder that gives every city a free Chief's Hut.   Stronger mounted units from this Ancient Way wonder, in case it wasn't obvious.  Trade somehow is very obvious in what it does and yet incredibly not so obvious. Hopefully I can unwind everything as we go along but the most important stuff is we get the next in the Caravan unit line, a trade route in every city, two new Civics, and a bunch of commerce added to improvements to replace the science lost from certain myths. Oh and a ton of buildings, who could forget that?   There's been a bit of difficulty getting this captured civilian back to my territory with some fairly strong barbarians roaming the land above Germany's nearby Jade city. I've sent a Stalker to pick up the Civilian if needed so I can heal the dogs and go roaming the countryside some more.  A missionary spreads Mesopotamism in Hubishna and now our entire empire is following the faith. Still need to get all the buildings in there which should be a lot of extra happiness when all is said and done. The extra production is welcome as always.  Carchemish gets started on The Oracle, which I will use to pop... something in the near future, not sure how far I want to push it. Divination was a pretty deep beeline as is.  Oh hey, Carthage has manage to build the very first Heroic unit.  Khyan is the hero of the Hyksosi culture, whatever that is, and has a bunch of different abilities as you can see here. It's also a straight up 12 strength Melee unit which is pretty dang tough for this period of the game. Only War Elephants and some other specialty units can get that high via Merging if I recall. I'll get more into its various non-obvious abilities when we create our first Hero unit, but I want to keep an eye on how Carthage uses this one.  It seems Dido is electing to put him in the field rather than use one of this economic abilities, which I agree with. He's not going to be killed by anything any time soon I reckon.  Oh, well, it seems that Captive - Civilians have a Cargo Volume of 100 which is larger than any of my Stalkers can hold. That's rather annoying, but the barbs played nice for a while and now I'm able to pass through anyway.  An interesting thing I noticed a while ago is that surrounding a neutral tile with your own defensive structures will confer control of that tile to you as if you had built a structure on it. I made use of this to grab this Incense quite a ways from any of my cities. I'll certainly plant a city in this area eventually, but securing the resource early is fine nonetheless.  Also it turns out I was right, stepping into an empty defensive structure gives you cultural control over that tile. Not useful at all in this case given how close to Germany this spot is, I just wanted to see what would happen.  I don't even know how this Spearman got here. Barbarian spawning rules are really odd in this mod, let me tell you.  Say hello to some of our new best friends!  Pavlov, Lobo, and Duke.They'll be put to work shortly.  Huh, so you can build mines or quarries on rocky terrain. That's good to know, makes those terrains a lot more valuable than they appear, though still not desirable.  Some of my extra captives finally show up in Hubishna, ready to make the city more productive. Oh hey, remember how Guangzhou only has one defender in its city for some reason? Well it's still like that.   Yeah, I couldn't resist.  ---------------------- NEXT TIME: WAR! And also some trade, for what it's worth. Kind of a shortish update but I figured this was a good a time as any for a dividing point. I wish I could say there will be a lot of action but considering the circumstances there probably won't be much. And now for something completely different! And possibly way more boring!
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Sep 6, 2019 07:56
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C2C Overview: Religions of the Prehistoric And Ancient Eras In base Civ 4 BTS, religion was more or less an extension of culture. It revolved around the use of temples, monasteries, and cathedrals built in cities in which the religion is present, as well as a special Shrine wonder that could only be built by a Great Prophet that provides gold for every city in the world that has said religion. Diplomacy among the AI in the early game many times hinged on whether two players had the same or opposing religions and how much each specific leader cared about that sort of thing. I mention all this to point out the general nature of that description. While there were seven possible religions a player could adopt, among them early religions like Judaism and later ones like Islam, besides the name and associated iconography, all religions functioned identically and had no other distinguishing features attaching them to whatever baggage specific religions have in real life. If I recall correctly, the Civ 4 team confirmed that this was by design, so as to not step on any toes and keep away controversy. As you might be aware by now, this is not base Civ 4. So yeah, C2C comes with an astounding 29 religions, starting with the earliest of the earliest, Druidic Traditions, all the way down to uh, let's see here... Scientology?? And while they almost all have the basic functions of what you would expect coming from Civ 4, that being temples, monasteries, cathedrals, shrines, etc. many of these religions diverge in what kind of specific bonuses their generic buildings give, as well as in more unique ways as we'll soon see. Additionally, specific religions also unlock unique buildings and World Wonders that can only be built and work if that religion is adopted by your empire. There's a lot to take in so, naturally, I'm not going to do them all in one update! Here, as the title implies, I'll be focusing only on religions that can be founded in this or the previous era. I'll first describe whether the religion has any unique gimmick to worry about that differentiates it from other religions. Then I'll go over the bonuses conferred by the holy city, the buildings, and the shrine. Finally I'll show off any unique wonders or buildings unlocked by the religion, with brief remarks about each one if necessary.One note regarding Cathedrals: rather than requiring a number of temples to be built in your empire, Cathedrals (unless noted otherwise) can be built in any city with a temple provided the city has a high enough tier Administrative building. So no spamming Cathedrals in newly minted cities, need to wait a while for those. We'll be covering, in alphebetical order, Andeanism, Caananism, Druidic Traditions, Hinduism, Judaism, Kemetism, Mesopotamism, Ngaaism, Shamanism, Shinto, Tengriism, Yoruba, and Zoroastrianism.  Andeanism Description: The Incan religion. Is structured like a typical Civ 4 religion but has more of a focus towards science generation. Coricancha: Incan Shrine. Provides +2 gold/science/culture, +1 Great Prophet point. Also provides +1 gold/culture per city with Andeanism in it. Andean Temple: +1 science/culture, as well as +2% science. +1 Happiness if state religion and priest slot as per usual with temples. Andean Monastery: +2 science, +1 culture, +5% science, allows building of missionaries Andean Cathedral: +1 Happiness (+2 if state religion), +2 science/culture, +5% science, +15% culture, +1 Happiness from Incense and 2 priest slots   Wonders: El Dorado, as you might expect, is primarily concerned with gold generation and has no other special requirements aside from religion. Machu Picchu on the other hand is another beast altogether and I'm still not entirely sure how it works. My understanding is that when the wonder is completed, it puts a Machu Picchu improvement on one of the Mountain tiles in the city, giving that tile +1 food and +16 commerce in addition to the mountain bonuses listed here. You also get something called Machu Picchu Plans though which seems to sllow workers to build Machu Picchu improvements elsewhere? Or maybe not? I dunno, it's weird, but an interesting wonder nonetheless. ----------  Canaanism Description: A completely vanilla Civ 4-type religion. Shrine, buildings with boring effects, no wonders. Listed here for posterity but don't expect anything interesting here. Canaanite Shrine: +4 culture, +1 prophet point, 3 priest slots, +1 gold for every city with Canaaanism. Canaanite Temple: +1 Happiness if state religion, +1 culture, 1 priest slot. Canaanite Monastery: +2 culture, +5% science, allows building of missionaries. Canaanite Cathedral: +2 Happiness if state religion, +15% culture, +1 Happiness from Incense, 2 priest slots. ----------  Druidic Traditions Description: One of the two primary Prehistoric religions, this functions quite a bit differently from other religions and emphasizes making better use of your land more than the typical expected static bonuses of most religions. Also has no wonders. Nature Answer: Druidic Shrine. +4 culture, +1 prophet point, +1 culture per city with Druidic Traditions, 3 priest slots. Nature Altar: Basic Druidic Temple. +1 health/culture, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Allows the creation of additional Nature Altar sub-buildings corresponding to every crop resource on the map if said crop is in the city's vicinity. Each of these buildings provides +x% food with that crop resource acquired, where x varies depending on the crop. Nature Circle of Power: The second Druidic Temple though it acts more like a Monastery, I just list it as such because it requires having a Nature Altar in the city to build. +1 health/culture, +1 Happiness if state religion. Allows building of missionaries. Allows the creation of additional Nature Circle sub-buildings that work the same way as the aforementioned Nature Altar buildings. Each of these buildings provides an additional +1 science. Nature Alliance: The first tier Cathedral. Requires two Nature Circle of Powers in your empire per instance of this building. +1 Happiness (+2 Happiness if state religion), +2 health, +6% culture, +0.05 health per citizen in the city, 2 priest slots. Free Guerrilla I promotion for applicable land units. Nature Legacy: The second tier Cathedral. Requires two Nature Alliances in your empire per instance of this building (so 4 CoP -> 2 Alliance -> 1 Legacy). +1 Happiness (+2 Happiness if state religion), +2 health, +6% culture, 10% defense, 10% GPP, 2 priest slots, +5% food each from Barley, Corn, Potatoes, Rice, Wheat. Free Woodsman I promotion for applicable land units. ----------  Hinduism Description: Very similar to its base Civ 4 counterpart in its core components, but does have some additional goodies to play around with and confers a slightly higher amount of culture overall. The Kashi Vishwanath: +4 culture, +1 prophet point, 3 priest slots, +1 gold for every city with Hinduism. Hindu Temple: +2 culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, +2 culture, 1 priest slot/ Hindu Monastery: +2 culture, +5% science, allows building of missionaries. Hindu Mandir: Cathedral. +1 Happiness, +20% culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, +1 Happiness from incense, 2 priest slots. Elephant/Cow Shrine: +1 culture, only buildable with the respective resource connected. Brahmin Library: +1 science, +2 culture, 1 priest slot, 1 scientist slot, requires Caste System civic.    Wonders: The Brihadeeswarar Temple is a Super Shrine of sorts, giving plenty of happiness and yield percentage bonuses to the city that builds it while also providing +10% espionage to all cities. The Akshardham and the Meenakshi Temple are two sides of the same coin, providing similar bonuses with the former focused on science bonuses while the latter focuses on culture. ----------  Judaism Description: Another base game holdover that's similar to its original incarnation though the changes here are uh... well let's sidestep the questionable implications and look at how they function in-game. The Temple of Solomon: +10 Happiness, +5 Health, +4 culture, +7% gold, +1 prophet point, 3 priest slots, +1 gold per city with Judaism. Jewish Temple: +2 Happiness if state religion, +2 culture, 1 priest slot. Jewish Monastery: +2 culture, +5% science, allows building of missionaries. Jewish Synagogue: Cathedral. +1 Happiness, +20% culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, +1 Happiness from incense, 2 priest slots.    Wonders: Solomon's Temple, which is totally different from The Temple of Solomon for some reason or another, is a solid science producing wonder. The Ark of the Covenant and Masada both help supercharge priests by providing +1 hammer each along with their own bonuses so they can be useful if you're planning on running the Prophets civic for a long time. ----------  Kemetism Description: The Egyptian religion, has plenty of nice buildings and wonders to play with and also our first instance of unique religious units! Otherwise follows the typical religion model closely. The Karnak Temple Complex: +4 culture, +1 prophet point, +1 culture per city with Kemetism, +1 culture per specialist in all cities, 3 prophet slots. Temple of Amun: Temple. +1 gold, +2 culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot Temple of Chons: Monastery. +1 Health, +1 culture, +5% science, allows building of missionaries and the unique units. Temple of Mut: Cathedral. +1 Happiness, +12% culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, +1 Happiness from incense, 2 priest slots. Obelisk: Monument replacement. +1 culture, 2 priest slots. Cat Shrine: +1 culture. Must have Cat resource. Temple of Isis: Unique National wonder. Cannot be stacked with the other two in the same city. +2 culture, +1 health in all cities on the continent, +2% culture in all cities, 2 priest slots Temple of Osiris: Unique National Wonder. Cannot be stacked with the other two in the same city. +2 culture, +2% culture in all cities, +25% food if you have Wheat, 2 priest slots. Temple of Seth: Unique National Wonder. Cannot be stacked with the other two in the same city. +2 culture, +2% culture in all cities, +10% Great General emergence, +25% military production, 2 priest slots   Wonders: Two science focused wonders here, with the Temple of Ptah giving a free School of Scribes in every city and the Temple of Toth giving +5% science in all cities along with +20% in its own city and some scientist slots, plus a free scientist.   Units: Nothing particularly special about the Ra Fist and Ra Knight that isn't obvious from the tooltip. Being able to only have one of each is kind of a bummer, and I'm not really sure how they actually stack up to similar units in the same era. Starting with March and Blitz is a pretty sweet deal though. ----------  Mesopotamism: Covered in the main update, but for posterity a recap. Rather than having the typical temple/monastery/ cathedral formation this religion has five different temples that can all be built and all confer the standard bonuses of a temple plus some nifty unique promotions to certain units. Babel Tower: +4 culture, +1 prophet point, +1 gold and culture per city with Mesopotamism, +1 Happiness per city. Temple of An: Prerequisite for other temples. +1 culture, +5% culture, +1 prophet point, +1 Happiness if state religion, +15% defense, 1 priest slot, allows building of missionaries. Free Assistance of An promotion for certain land units plus Wooden Ships. Temple of Enki: +1 culture, +5% culture, +1 prophet point, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Free Assistance of Enki promotion for Wooden Ships, +2 XP for Wooden Ships. Temple of Enlil: +1 culture, +5% culture, +1 prophet point, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Free Assistance of Enlil promotion for Archers and Throwing units. +2 XP for Archers. Temple of Inanna: +1 culture, +5% culture, +1 prophet point, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Free Assistance of Inanna promotion for Melee units. +2 XP for Melee. Temple of Ki: +1 culture, +5% culture, +1 prophet point, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Free Assistance of Ki promotion for several land unit types. Temple of Ki (Wheat)/(Corn)/(Rice)/(Potato): Requires Temple of Ki. Each provides +5% food with their respective resource and must have that resource in the city's vicinity to be built. Ziggurat: +2 culture, 2 prophet slots. Promotions: Assistance of An: Heal +7% extra damage per turn in enemy/neutral/friendly lands. Assistance of Enki: +15% Withdrawal chance, 1 extra first strike. Assistance of Enlil: 1 extra first strike, +25% vs Archers. Assistance of Inanna: +10% city attack, +15% XP from combat. Assistance of Ki: Immune to first strikes    Wonders: The Ishtar Gate is a pretty pointless wonder, especially in this gate. Hammurabi Stele of Laws, as already explained, is quite good however and provides courthouses loooong before they're available to be built. The Nimrud Palace is a pretty nice military-focused wonder as well. ----------  Ngaiism Description: Ngaiism is a unique religion gameplay wise, kind of similar to Mesopotamism but not quite as involved. I'm including the entire description just to be safe. From what I can gather, unlike other religions, you can't build missionaries unless Ngaiism is your state religion, and all of the "buildings" have unique attributes that require the initial Ngai Bless as a base. There's a Shrine but no wonders so it's pretty basic despite having an irregular structure. Oldoinyo Ngai: +4 culture, +1 prophet point, +1 culture per city with Ngaiism Ngai Bless: +1 culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Allows building of missionaries. Naiteru-Kob Bless: +1 culture, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Free Guardian Spirit promotion for various land units plus Wooden Ships. Ngai Na-Nyoke Bless: +1 culture, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Free Vengeance promotion for various land units plus Wooden Ships. Ngai Narok Bless: +1 culture, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Allows further buildings. Ngai Narok Bless(Cow)/(Pig)/(Sheep): Requires Ngai Narok Bless. Cow provides +10% food and +5% hammers and Pig/Sheep provide +5% food and hammers. Requires their respective resource to be in the vicinity of the city. Promotions: Guardian Spirit: +10% Withdrawal chance. Vengeance: +1 extra first trike, +10% city attack. ----------  Shamanism Description: The other primary Prehistoric religion, it serves as a direct counterpart to Druidic Traditions and in fact functions identically to it, except where Druidic Traditions enhances agriculture, Shamanism enhances Pastoral work. Spirits Answer: Shaman Shrine. +4 culture, +1 prophet point, +1 culture per city with Shamanism, 3 priest slots. Shamanistic Temple: +1 health/culture, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Allows the creation of additional Shamanistic Temple sub-buildings corresponding to every animal resource on the map if said animal is in the city's vicinity. Each of these buildings provides +x% food with that animal resource acquired, where x varies depending on the animal. Invocation Hut: The second Shaman temple, requires the Shamanistic Temple to be built. Works similarly to a monastery otherwise. +1 health/culture, +1 Happiness if state religion. Allows building of missionaries. Allows the creation of additional Invocation Hut sub-buildings that work the same way as the Shamanistic Temple buildings, though with a narrower set of available animals. Each of these buildings provides an additional +5% food to the city. Spirits Alliance: The first tier Cathedral. Requires two Invocation Huts in your empire per instance of this building. +1 Happiness, +2 Happiness if state religion, +2 health, +6% culture, +0.05 health per citizen in the city, 2 priest slots. Free Guerilla I promotion for applicable land units. Spirits Legacy: The second tier Cathedral. Requires two Spirits Alliances in your empire per instance of this building (so 4 IH -> 2 Alliance -> 1 Legacy). +1 Happiness, +2 Happiness if state religion, +2 health, +6% culture, 10% defense, +10% GPP, 2 priest slots. Free Woodsman I promotion for applicable land units. Totem Pole: Replaces Monument, requires Woodcarver's Hut. +1 culture, +3 XP for Archers. ----------  Shinto Description: The Japanese religion  . Shinto follows the typical Civ 4 religious structure closely though its effects have their own unique flavor.The Ise-jingu: +4 culture, -25% maintenance in the city, +1 gold/culture per city with Shinto. Shinto Temple: +1 health, +2 culture, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot, -10% maintenance. Shinto Monastery: +1 health, +2 culture, -10% war weariness, +10% military production, allows building of missionaries. Shinto Jingu: Cathedral. +1 Happiness, +15% culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, +1 Happiness from Incense, 2 priest slots. Free Honour promotion for various land units, -15% maintenance, -15% war weariness. Honour Promotion: 10 Cultural revolt protection, 25% less gold to upgrade.   Wonders: The Matsumoto Castle combined with the Shinto Shrine and buildings means completely free Maintenance for the city without even needing a courthouse. Free Looter is fun too though there are other ways to get that. Itsukushima Shrine is a rare water-focused religious wonder, having a Colossus effect on water tiles along with other minor economic bonuses. ----------  Tengriism Description: This was the other early religion I was tempted to get, but I decided I didn't want to lean too heavy into the war stuff this early in the LP. And boy, does Tengriism have some war stuff, let me tell you. Not really structured like other religions so let's get to it. Khan Tengri: +4 culture, +1 prophet point, +1 gold/culture per city with Tengriism. Shaman's Yurta: Temple/Monastery combo of sorts. Requires Leather. +1 health, +2 culture, +1 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot, allows building of missionaries. +15% military production. Eje Song: Requires a Shaman's Yurta. +1 health, +2 culture, +5% culture, +1 Happiness if state religion, +1 Happiness from Beavers, 2 priest slots. Free Wind Horse I promotion for Mounted units. King Gesar Song: Requires a Shaman's Yurta. +3 culture, +15% culture, +1 Happiness if state religion, 2 priest slots Tengri Song: Requires Shaman's Yurta and Eje Song. +1 health, +2 culture, +15% culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, +1 Happiness from Incense, 2 priest slots. Free Wind Horse II promotion for Mounted units. Ger: Requires a Stable or Knight's Stable. +4 XP for Mounted units. Tengrii Horse Trainer: +1 culture, +1 espionage. Promotions: Wind Horse I: 1 extra first strike. +10% gold from pillaging. +10% XP from combat. Wind Horse II: 2 first strikes. +25% gold from pillaging. +25% XP from combat. Note that these are part of the same promotion line so Wind Horse II effects replace the first level. ----------  Yoruba Description: The counterpart to Ngaiism. Very similar in structure but has one slight difference in that the main prerequisite building applies its prerequisite to the subsequent buildings in any other city once. Or in other words, if you build a Pattaky of Olofin in city A, you can then build one (but only one) of each of the other Pattakys in whatever city of the religion you want. In practical terms this doesn't mean much since you generally want to build every building in every city anyway, but given the effects of these buildings I can see the minor boon to flexibility being welcome. Pattaky of Olodumare: +2 gold, +4 culture, +1 prophet point. +1 gold per city with Yoruba. Pattaky of Olofin: +2 culture, +6% culture, +2 Happiness if state religion. Allows building of missionaries. Pattaky of Obatala: Requires one Pattaky of Olofin per instance of this building. +3 culture, +1% culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, +10% GPP, -10% maintenance. Pattaky of Oggun: Requires one Pattaky of Olofin per instance of this building. +1 health/culture, +5% science, +1% culture, +1 Happiness if state religion. +10% military production. Pattaky of Olokun: Requires one Pattaky of Olofin per instance of this building. +1 culture, +1% culture, +1 Happiness if state religion. +5% food each from having Clam, Crab, and Fish. +5% commerce with Pearls. Pattaky of Oshosi: Requires one Pattaky of Olofin per instance of this building. +1 culture, +1% culture, +1 Happiness if state religion. +5% food/production/commerce with Deer. ----------  Zoroastrianism Description: Last but not least, the Persian religion. Has a typical religion structure, though I believe it does have the most religious world wonders of any religion on this list, so there's that. Also of special note here is that if you have Worldview - Slavery active while in this faith, every city with Zoroastrianism incurs extra unhappiness as a result. Pir-e Sabz: +4 culture, +1 prophet point. +1 gold per city with Zoroastrianism. +2 culture in all cities. 3 prophet slots. Zoroastrian Fire Temple: +2 culture, +3 Happiness if state religion, 1 priest slot. Zoroastrian Shrine: Confusingly, the monastery. +2 culture, +5% science, allows building of missionaries. Zoroastrian Pantheon: Cathedral. +1 Happiness, +20% culture, +2 Happiness if state religion, +1 Happiness from Incense, 2 priest slots Tower of Silence: Requires Burial Tradition (Sky). +1 Happiness, +2 health, +1 prophet point, 1 priest slot. Order of Ormazd Promotion (See Below): +15% city attack/defense.     Wonders: The Apadana Palace is nice since it acts as, well, a palace for calculation of maintenance distance. Those are always handy, as is the free promotion detailed above. Behistun Inscription, Pir-e Naraki, and Seti Pir each provide some nifty empire-wide bonuses, though the third of those is the most notable, providing a general -50% reduction in upgrade costs and a staggering -75% war weariness in ALL cities. And it never obsoletes! I might have to diverge to this religion at some point just to get this wonder, though I'm not sure if the effects apply if it's not my state religion. ---------- Well that was quite a mouthful, and we still have plenty more to go. But that's for another era altogether, for now feel free to argue among yourselves for which one of these is the best/worst of the bunch (hint: Canaanism is the worst )
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Sep 6, 2019 08:01
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Am i missing something or did we just have an entire narrative BE LP start and finish between the updates of this one? Also zorostrianism is notable because it's missionaries can end slavery, if it's your state religion. Regallion fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 08:20
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Regallion posted:Am i missing something or did we just have an entire narrative BE LP start and finish between the updates of this one? In my defense I am way way lazier than Cythereal. Wait that's not a defense at all. For real though, the way he's powering through that game, narrative and all, is quite impressive. Everyone go read that LP, it's good
Super Jay Mann fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 08:23
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Super Jay Mann posted:I might have to diverge to this religion at some point just to get this wonder, though I'm not sure if the effects apply if it's not my state religion. By default there's an option called religious disabling turned on which makes most religious buildings effects (all but tourism I think) only work if it's your state religion including wonders. This is pretty important for balance as having just a few religions' buildings running at the same time would give you some ridiculous bonuses. However there's also a leader trait called Progressive that overwrites this and lets you go completely crazy with it. Sure just have +100% food, +30% production, +200% culture, priests with +4 hammers and 10 free promotions for military units in every city what's the problem?
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Sep 6, 2019 08:55
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Three new dog friends!
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Sep 6, 2019 13:06
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In my experience you can build missionaries for Ngaiism without it being the state religion, but that might have been edited out in a later patch or was a hidden feature of one of the more tolerant late game religious civics. Druidism is kinda fun to have as a religion because it's so early to get and so growth oriented, but it's probably less fun to show off, especially if they changed the thing where you could build Nature Altar subbuildings in every part of your empire so long as it was connected to the appropriate resource instead of within the city's vicinity, leading to truly explosive growth at the cost of each city having another 5 buildings (but cheap on hammers) to build.
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Sep 6, 2019 14:46
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 Fun Fact: The Hammurabi Code contains what is considered the first insurance contract! The king agreed to pay any farmer a year's worth of wealth if their harvest was lost to catastrophe or war.I'll... I'll go home now with my weird insurance history.
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Sep 6, 2019 15:42
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If you can't talk about weird insurance history with goons, then where can you? Never not post weird insurance facts
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Sep 6, 2019 17:27
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Regallion posted:Am i missing something or did we just have an entire narrative BE LP start and finish between the updates of this one? I'm not done yet (granted I will be by this time next week). Super's also going way more into depth about this mod than I have about BE, and clearly knows a lot more about the nuts and bolts of Civ than I do. This is a really good LP and I'm not trying to compete with it. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 17:30
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Cythereal posted:I'm not done yet (granted I will be by this time next week). Well to be fair you also started before the previous update so that wasn't meant as factual admonishment but rather a playful jab.
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Sep 6, 2019 17:35
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Super Jay Mann posted:In my defense I am way way lazier than Cythereal. Can someone link it? (Can't seem to find it, also, I'm an idiot) Never played BE but I think I'd enjoy reading about the mechanics and lore.
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Sep 6, 2019 21:17
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JeremoudCorbynejad posted:Can someone link it? (Can't seem to find it, also, I'm an idiot) I think this will work but I'm terrible with BBCode
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Sep 6, 2019 22:17
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Deadmeat5150 posted:
Actually it's pretty interesting. Legal systems from the edge of known history are amusing because they don't give a poo poo about a pretend universality in their principles and basically go "and, of course, if the harvest is poo poo, your creditors can go gently caress themselves for this year at least, maybe the next as well, if it is exceptionally bad in the western delta" and I like that.
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Sep 7, 2019 01:13
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Super Jay Mann posted:Temple of Toth Better than the Temple of Thot at least.
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Sep 7, 2019 08:01
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Regallion posted:Am i missing something or did we just have an entire narrative BE LP start and finish between the updates of this one? Pretty easy when you've only got 100ish years (?) to cover vs. 188,000!
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Sep 7, 2019 11:25
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To be fair, BE is also a lot quicker. The victory conditions are pretty easy to chase, and once you've picked an affinity you don't have to many reasons not to focus on the related techs.
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Sep 10, 2019 18:49
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''Some features only function if X is your state religion" is almost always a big fat lie, at least for the things that matter (mainly food and science). Thus you pretty much want to land every religion. Some are mostly good for their wonders and don't necessarily need to be spread universally. But at the very least you want druidism and shamanism everywhere, for that sweet early game food. Make sure you spend some time with each as your state religion too, so you can build both versions of each building - the second one requires state religion to build, but not to provide its bonuses. Then do the same for ngai later.
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Sep 12, 2019 18:31
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Abyssal Lurker posted:''Some features only function if X is your state religion" is almost always a big fat lie, at least for the things that matter (mainly food and science). Thus you pretty much want to land every religion. Some are mostly good for their wonders and don't necessarily need to be spread universally. But at the very least you want druidism and shamanism everywhere, for that sweet early game food. Make sure you spend some time with each as your state religion too, so you can build both versions of each building - the second one requires state religion to build, but not to provide its bonuses. Then do the same for ngai later. Depends on your pre-game set up. Assuming no changes, then yes you're absolutely right. But one of the choices you can select, who's name escapes me right now, drastically raises your empire's instability for each holy city you found past two or three. Under that scenario you'd have to wait for the AI to establish the religion and then spread to you. Additionally, if you are going to cycle through religions then save an upgrade or two for any hero or other important unit that's led by a warlord so you can stack each religion's unique unit upgrade. Some are meh, but others are almost game-breakingly powerful.
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Sep 12, 2019 19:16
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It's hard to remember exactly what I was thinking at the time but I was actually planning on getting Druidic Traditions and exploring that religion some but the AI beat me to it. That's when I decided I'd just wait for an Ancient Era religion. And in case it wasn't clear before, I definitely don't plan on staying Mesopotamian forever. I won't be going for overly silly religious building stacking (not least of which is because it can be micromanagement hell) but with 29 of them to choose from I'd be remiss not to mix in at least a few of those throughout this game.
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Sep 12, 2019 21:15
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C2C Gameplay Chapter 19: I Need a Hero! I'm Holding Out For a Hero 'til The End Of The Night In the absence of any sort of siege units I'm gonna be relying on ranged assaults from archers and my Stalker to soften up city defenses, for what it's worth. The AI should be pretty fast at making units even from this city so I have to hope this quick strike will succeed before anything goes wrong.  Trade comes in and, as said before. It's quite a doozy. A bunch of new economic bonuses, some Civics, a bunch of cultures including some we can even build, trade units, cultural trade units, buildings galore, the list goes on.  Two things to note, a Caravan Post is needed to build the new trade units, which itself needs some sort of animal-related work building to be built. Given the trait we chose I definitely want to prioritize getting these in my cities when I can.  The other thing is that we get new Slavery buildings! The Slave Market is of questionable importance, though at the very least it'll have the same effect minimum as simply settling the captive. The other building not shown is Slave Compound - Commerce which allows us to settle commerce slaves.  The Hammurabi Stele of Laws completes, and while it does result in a temporary loss of gold income, it'll be well worth it as maintenance costs rise. Note that building maintenance itself is a part of what gets reduced.  Copper Working allows us to finally make use of the Copper in our territory at the cost of making our Stone Tool Maker building less useful. A worthy trade.   The Market and Grocer also show up in Trade which, as you can see, provides quite a bit of extra gold if we spent the time to develop our proto-industrial base. Not that we're hurting for gold of course, but it's wise to be safe.  And in yet another addition, Trade introduces Enclosures, which can be built by the animals we have lying around as long as we have some prerequisite buildings that are easy to get. They provide 1 Happiness and 3 culture initially, which is fine, but the 2 science at Scientific Method is what catches my eye. I'm not sure how much impact that will truly have by the time we get there but I want to squeeze out as much science as possible if I can.  The next turn Nimrud Palace finishes, making Kanesh an even stronger military producer.   With that wonder done, I revolt to the Trade and Trade Language Civics, both strict upgrades, immediately. As usual, the anarchy time is a bother but I'll live with it. It'll be a while yet before we get another golden age unless a wonder that grants one graces my presence unknowingly.  Huh, well this is a surprise. Apparently, using my Stalker to capture an AI city actually makes it into a Barbarian city instead of my own city, no doubt cause of Hidden Nationality. I wonder if this is a holdover of the original game as this is a situation you would normally never see as the only Hidden Nationality unit Civ 4 has is the Privateer, and boats can't capture cities. Either way, executive decision dictates I reload the turn and capture the city properly.  That's more like it The army ended up being overkill, but in the event that China tries to send a counterattack of some sort I'll have enough units around to protect this area. And now we've got a proper connection to our Southern area, woo-hoo   Oh, what do we have here?  Random chance gets us a peculiar unit. I could use it to immediately pop borders of a captured city, but I'm quite interested in seeing just how much production it offers.  +480 hammers. Not terrible to be honest. I'll probably hold on to it for later and see where things take me.  Wasn't expecting him to accept peace so fast, but I ain't complaining. I got my access to the Southern bay so I'm cool with letting him do his thing. For now.  This one strengthens Archer units. Cause you know, fletching and stuff. Nice to see my religion spreading outside my borders.  Even with tons of S&D bonuses my Stalkers can't really touch Khyan, not unless he ends up on an tile with no terrain defenses possibly. Will keep an eye out on him.  Hmmmm, that is definitely not a settling party. Are we gonna see some fireworks from the AI this time?  See, now this is more like it  I said sending out the hero into the wild was a smart move. Sending him towards me however, was less so.  Whoa, hold on, say what now?  Oh, of course. Guangzhou was a Chinese city. That means by capturing it I have acquired Asian as one of my primary cultures. And that means I have a whole new set of Cultures to build  Copper Working gives us the Javelineer and Spearman unit as well. Which is kind of worrying to be honest since I've seen these units as barbs already which means the player we haven't met yet has probably gone down this tech path already. I really wish we could meet him/her.  Metal Casting allows further refinement of our existing metals as well as revealing Iron and Platinum. It also gives us access to the Forge, which in this mod is a straight 15% production boost. Quite nice.  We also get this, another appropriate culture for our Mesopotamian empire.  Mine (Copper) is being built in Kanesh, a necessary prerequisite for the Smelter (Copper) which is the building actually responsible for producing Copper Ingots, the material needed for a bunch of buildings and units. Wait no I lied, Copper Ingots doesn't do any of that, what we actually want are Copper Wares, a further processed step in the supply chain and that is what will enable all the good Copper stuff we're missing. But we need a building in Metal Casting for that. Totally simple, I know!  With our flood of new cultures we also get a bunch of new unique units, including the first Hero unit I've built, Kim-un Kamuy, courtesy of the Ainu culture. He was actually available way back in Hunting so it was a relatively cheap build. 11 strength at Hunting would have been massive, at this point though it's merely very good.  As you can see in the previous shot, there are a bunch of exclusive promotions for Hero units with a green icon all with interesting and unique effects, and you better believe I'll devote an update to detailing those. This Hero starts with Bard (Hero) which makes him lean towards more of a support role in combat, not that I plan on using this guy for fighting.  One additional use of Hero units is settling them as super specialists, the options of which depend on the hero in question. Kim-un can be a military instructor, a great prophet (he's an Ainu hunting deity evidently) or, shown here, a Celebrity specialist! Spoiler: celebrity specialists are kinda completely useless I don't plan on settling him as a specialist either. So what is he gonna be used for? Give it time, we still need a bit more technology to get where I want to go...  Okay so it turns out the Trade Caravan, along with trade missions, can actually hurry production in cities as well. That's incredibly useful information I could have used a while back As with the food caravans, I plan on abusing this as well for trying to expedite long builds.  As mentioned, Metal Casting allows us to make Copper Wares, but it also allows us to smelt Silver and Gold into ingots and then into Wares as well, which will be useful for both current and future buildings. And of course, Forges go up everywhere ASAP.  Sculpture is kind of a filler tech that allows access to Sculptures, but has a couple of important wonders that I want to get to ASAP.   Carchemish and Tuwana are the big winners here as they both get an Iron Ore node. There's also a Platinum Ore node a bit further out that I can grab with a city later on.  Zarathustra is the founder of Zoroastrianism. I imagine the Tengri shrine is coming next.  Tarsa is founded and we're actually losing gold again! Expenses can add up quick if you're not careful. Should probably get those Markets up sooner rather than later. Also note Harappa being 2 pop. I definitely plan on taking that city for myself rather than burning it.  Priest King is the Indus hero. This one starts with the Priest promotion so combined with his pitiful strength he's clearly more tailored to a support role. Unlike Kim-un, I am gonna be using this one in the field.  Adana is founded on the other end of the empire to prevent Germany or anyone else from pulling anything in the Southeast bay. China could technically ferry a settler over but  AI and naval anything. RIP Stoneworker's Hut, you were a good early production option.   The real prizes of this tech though are these two wonders, the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx of Giza. The Sphinx is nothing particularly special, just granting extra Happiness and some tourism, but the Pyramids provide a free Irrigation Canals in every city. This building, available at a nearby tech we haven't gotten yet, grants +1 food to all river tiles. Of course, while the building itself requires explicit river access, the free building from the wonder cares about no such thing. But this isn't even the best part.  Upon completing both of these wonders in the same city, we're automatically given the Valley of the Kings which, yields aside, is simply a free Golden Age and a free tech in one. Quite a nice haul, don't you think?  If you'll recall, Heritage is the tech we would have needed to gain access to some of the other unique animal units. If I understand correctly, these heritages would also allow said units to be built in any city rather than only the one that built the Trainer wonder.  Harappa has been under siege for some time now from my massive War Galley fleet. Just using Ranged Assaults every turn to keep the defenders' HP down and it pays dividends at this point as my capturing party arrives and starts picking off the weakened units one by one. Harappa will definitely be ours in a couple of turns.  Hey, remember this guy? Turns out his rush production is actually 400 + 40 * the city's pop, so using it to expedite the building of Giza is well worth it.  Just as planned. And I even got a Captive for my troubles to get the Slave Compound going  This tech also unlocks the Grammaticus, a building that provides +1 science base and +2 science at the Linguistics tech. It does have a pretty steep building maintenance cost though.  Alright see, here's where the overexpansion penalty can start to become dicey. It's nothing a couple of temples can't fix but I have to be wary about getting any more cities until I get better government civics.  Chariotry allows access to all the chariot type units, unique or otherwise, but more importantly it gives access to Culture (Hittite) which, you know, would be pretty silly to not get at my earliest convenience!  Jan Łaski was a 16th century member of the Reformed church in Poland. Shengdu is a hero of the Hemudu culture.  One down, one to go. Funny enough, the Happiness that I called "nothing special" a while ago actually comes through in a pinch here, helping to mitigate the unhappiness in several of my newer cities stemming from overexpansion.  From this tech we also get the Cartwright, which is the mechanical equivalent of the Healer/Shepherd. Useful when we start using siege engines in warfare.  Matriarchy enables a single Civic. That's it.  incoming  Cahokia Mounds is a pretty pointless wonder, especially considering how cheap the Tumulus is. It does mean the unknown civ is doing something though, so there's that.  The Pyramids of Giza are finished in record time due to copious use of Trade Caravans. Spamming them from Kanesh lowered the build time from about 11 turns to 5. So yeah, pooling production from multiple cities together for a single large build is a thing we can do in this mod  It takes an extra turn for the Valley of the Kings to be built, but when it does we get our free tech and golden age. So what exactly am I getting with this free tech?  Ornamentation isn't very noteworthy. Some marginal wonders and a bunch of extra culture added to certain production buildings and it's one of the prerequisites to the Kemetism tech. Well that was disappointing! Not really worth the trouble.  A total disappointment for sure.   Writing is... well, much like Trade, there's a lot to unpack here. And a lot that changes as a result of reaching this tech. There's so much to cover in fact that I'm leaving you all with a cliffhanger here, sorry! ---------------------- NEXT TIME: Literacy for the people! but at what cost? Also worth noting that we ended up with a bunch of unique units this update due to the influx of cultures. I'll do periodic posts updating us on any new cultures we get over the course of several updates as well as the uniques that come with them rather than including them in the main update. It won't be anything in-depth, just sort of a catalog of screenshots. If I make use of a specific unit in the LP proper I'll do a more in-depth look when we get to it.
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Sep 20, 2019 04:12
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That invasion ended just as we expected it would Also I guess we're ancient egypt now??
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Sep 20, 2019 06:58
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Worse, the time should be around... pff, 9000 BCE? We´re Atlantis, we´re the lemurians, we´re the guys that Platon will write about as the great kingdom fallen from grace despite the wonders and marvels they wreaked. We´re....aliens!
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Sep 20, 2019 08:08
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Writing? You... You fool! Writing just leads to *gasp* GOONS! 
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Sep 20, 2019 12:15
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Ain't playing the game right unless you're shooting off rockets into space hundreds of years ahead of schedule.
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Sep 20, 2019 14:10
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drat kids and their writing https://fs.blog/2013/02/an-old-argument-against-writing/
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Sep 20, 2019 14:17
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Slaan posted:Writing? You... You fool! Writing just leads to *gasp* Enabled by researching the internet. Crime unit. Generates massive unhappiness in the borders where they are located.
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Sep 20, 2019 19:13
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paragon1 posted:Enabled by researching the internet. Crime unit. Generates massive unhappiness in the borders where they are located. YOU LAUGH! 
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Sep 20, 2019 20:36
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Jossar posted:YOU LAUGH! If they had a unit that could turn computers into bombs through hacking I don't think I'd ever download another mod for any other game
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Sep 20, 2019 20:38
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Slaan posted:Writing? You... You fool! Writing just leads to *gasp* I'm flattered you consider the vomit of words we all collectively throw haphazardly onto this dead server as "Writing" 
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Sep 21, 2019 01:53
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C2C Gameplay Chapter 20: While You Were Learning How To SPELL YOUR NAME, I Was Being Trained To Conquer Galaxies! To Do Anything Less Is A Disgrace To My Family Name Alright, so, Writing. Where do we start? I guess we can just go down the list for now. A couple of early science buildings are obsoleted, which is unfortunate, but we do unlock two new diplomatic options, Open Borders and Embassies. Open Borders does what it always does, but unfortunately for us it's not something we can just sign with anyone, unlike in the original games. Instead, because we have an option called Advanced Diplomacy on, it will be necessary for us to establish diplomatic ties with an empire before doing things like Open Borders, and that's what Embassies are for. Signing an Embassy with another civilization is what unlocks all of the upcoming diplomatic options, OB included, but the catch it that both civilizations must have Writing tech for an Embassy to be established. Not ideal as the AI is pretty far behind in tech at this point, and also unfortunate cause I had been hoping to make use of my Treasure Fleet I still have hanging around in French territory. Additionally, as stated before, Writing removes the science from almost all of our prehistoric Myths and replaces it with culture. Our science output is now expected to be properly decentralized, forgoing the science stacking present in our capital with improved commerce and infrastructure in all our various cities. The massive boost in culture is not a terrible compensation for what it's worth.   Of course, in the short term, simply getting Writing cuts our science rate (in a Golden Age mind you, so there's more of a contribution from commerce than usual) by about 20%, which is pretty dang steep.  Speaking of our Golden Age, it's 37 turns. Not as long as it sounds since this is on quite a slow game speed but still longer than previous GAs due to wonder-induced GA length multipliers. It's my understanding that said multipliers have since been nerfed from where they are here, or perhaps this is already the nerfed version, I can't recall.  Writing also unlocks the Spy, our first Espionage unit. We've dabbled in Espionage stuff when we were using our Criminal units in foreign cities, but Spies are more directly specialized in this field, bearing much similarity to their BTS counterparts. They're straight Civilian units, so they don't engage in combat and they have the full breadth of Espionage missions available to them which... well, we'll get to that in due time, just know the option is here now. And best of all, no National unit limit!  Writing is also where the brunt of the early Cultures Heroes come into play, including more than a few we now have access to. They're quite expensive though, and it only gets worse the farther down the tech tree we go.  Speaking of Heroes, Writing also unlocks one of their common core abilities, one of the primary reasons you want to bother building many Heroes in the first place: Achievements. Achievements are special national wonders that can only be built by Hero units, and each one focuses on a specific facet of our economy or military power. Achievement (Agricultural) gives +1 Happiness and +4% food in all our cities when it's built, for example, so they can be quite powerful. There are twelve of these Achievements in all, though not all of them get unlocked right now with Writing. As an example, Achievement (Environmental), an Achievement that greatly lowers pollution in all cities, doesn't become available until Wildlife Conservation, an Industrial Era tech.  Next up at Writing are Stories, a sort of replacement for Myths. Every animal that has a Myth available to be built with them now also has a Story that can be built on top of that Myth. Each one provides +1 Education in the city that it's built. And unlike Myths, they can be built in every city if you have the animals to spare, though that's generally excessive and unnecessary for reasons that we'll see when we finally get Libraries. These Story buildings are at the very least a solid source of free Education without needing to spam Story Tellers and their subsequent units everywhere, but I figure they aren't super vital to keeping that property going strong, at least not until much later in the game.   The Scroll Maker provides a new manufactured Resource which, among other uses, allows the building of the School of Scribes, our primary science building for a while. They aren't a perfect replacement for the science lost from Myths and the Elder Council's 5% modifier but they are something. Needing a size 6 city is kind of a bummer though.   And finally we get two new Civics. Nothing much to say here, they're slightly better versions of the Civics they replace so it's worth switching to them ASAP. Not quite yet in this game, since I am teching towards another, more important Civic I want to switch to.  Kim-un Kamuy immediately makes himself useful by creating the Achievement - Scientific, which provides +1 health and +8% science to every city. It's a start to make up the science lost in the transition to Writing.  It's also worth mentioning here that some Heroes can only build some of the available achievements, or even none at all as is the case with Mursili II, the Hittite Hero! I suppose it depends on what the Hero was known for or what kind of culture it was a part of, so I suppose I'll be using Mursili as a military leader of some kind. Not sure yet.  Oh, I didn't know this was a thing. I guess completing Achievements also fires events that provide benefits. Not that +1 Happy for 10 turns in anything special but hey, it's the thought that counts  One thing that I realized I should be making more use of is the Breeding Pair class of units. I mistakenly built some Breeding Pair - Wolf units thinking they'd be useful combat units but I didn't really explore what they'd actually be useful for. Turns out that Breeding Pairs, like this Breeding Pair - Horse unit, are basically Subdued animals you can build. They have many of the same abilities as a subdued animal as far as city buildings go, and they're faster too, so when available they're what I presume to be the intended way of spreading common animal buildings around your empire in lieu of hunting. Breeding Pairs can even create new resource tiles of that animal type at later technologies, though I'm hesitant to use that since there are a ton of map resources yet to be revealed and won't be revealed until much, much later on. But it's an option worth having.  And now we have Matriarchy which does absolutely nothing except obsolete a building we don't care about anymore and provide us with a single Civic. It also leads to a tech right afterwards called Patriarchy. Three guesses as to what that tech does.   And here's the Matriarchy Civic, which along with Patriarchy is a whole bag of unto themselves. Both are functionally the same thing, incremental upgrades to the entirely worthless Strongman Civic, just the bonuses they provide differ. Matriarchy improves birth rate, growth rate, and dislikes war while Patriarchy improves GG emergence, military production, and economic yields. Both are fine enough and the bonuses aren't so strong so as to prefer one over the other. I'm going with Matriarchy for the sole reason that it came first and I want to triple swap into Matriarchy, Written Tradition, and Interpreters ASAP.And cause we're in a Golden Age, no anarchy    Apiculture is about harvesting honey from bees and whatnot. This tech does give us the Candy Shop, which gives us Candy and is another resource-dependent gold-generating building, and the Apiary will be useful later on, but for now there's not much else to see here.  Orchards lets us build, well, Orchard improvements. They're on the Plantation line of improvements and improve the yields of all our fruit-based resources. We also get each fruit's associated Orchard building as well, which function pretty much the same as the Farm buildings.  Being so close to France means I've been getting a bunch of Exiles trying to cause trouble at my borders. This alone is one reason to always keep around your borders with enemies. The Captives you get sometimes don't hurt either  The Orchard improvement can actually get pretty beefy with some of the new Complex Traits introduced in v39, though none of that is relevant here as this game was started before that update. All those potential commerce upgrades are pretty nice though.  As with the other improvement upgrades, it's better to fix them up ourselves rather than wait for the city working the tiles to do it.  Bread Making. We can bake bread. Not sure how this wasn't a thing we could do already.  Enkidu, hero of Mesopotamian lore, shows up at Kanesh's doorstep. His Adventurer (Hero) promotion which doubles his movement in various rough terrains make him an excellent scout.  We promptly refuse his services and tell him to start shaking down the merchants for, uh, "back taxes". Yeah, that's it.   (My usual tech screenshot got eaten somehow) The Bakery provides Bread, but it also provides +3 food and some extra gold so I do want to build them in most cities if I can. And now the Flour we made eons ago finally has a use!  I don't plan to switch to Andeanism any time soon, but I do want Machu Picchu so I might as well get the religion now so I don't have to rely on AI spreads to do so when the time comes.  My first Spy arrives in Carthage (I made one for each Civ I could reach) and right now he has all the usual missions and stuff available. Sabotage Research is a thing that I don't think was in original BTS, and sounds like it can be quite devastating with how long many researches can be in this game. I'll weigh my options as I wait for the usual 5-turn intel gathering.  !  Awww snap, it actually happened. A Minor Civilization has been formed from the culture of a prospering Barbarian city! In this case, the barb city near China from waaaaay long ago has formed the Persian Empire  This is quite a ridiculous set of units they have here. FIVE Neanderthal Elephant Riders and ELEVEN Neanderthal Obsidian Swordsmen, a settler, a bunch of workers, some trade merchants for rush building/gold acquisition, and evn a Horseman because why the heck not. Even after inevitably merging many of them away, as long as the AI doesn't do anything stupid there's no way this city can be dislodged any time soon. As a Minor Civ Persia can't perform any sort of diplomacy with anyone and is in a constant state of auto-war. They won't promote into a full Civ until I think Writing? I'll have to research this more closely, but it's nice to see this happen. I was hoping we'd get a Minor Civ or two to show up over the course of the game, and this one is relatively early!  Of course, it is my responsibility as the great and glorious leader to keep tabs on what my new neighbors are doing   Tish-atal is a Hurrian hero that's useful for  Yeah yeah whatever, you look like a strong guy. Go move some rocks for me.   Persepolis has a pretty good complement of buildings to start with, so Persia should be able to hit the ground running once it gets out of anarchy. It also has Worldview - Slavery already active, that's pretty peculiar.  Labarna is the other Hittite hero. I could totally just use him for another Achievement but I figure just to stay in proper character I'll keep this guy around and use him on the field. Messenger - Hero is whatever, extra visibility and capture chance is nice as are the first strikes.  Germany makes Tasius, a Roxolani hero that apparently invaded Crimea at some point? That aside, I don't see Tasius in Berlin so either he's moving about in the fog or Frederick used him for an achievement/specialist.  Shakushain, an Ainu hero that led a revolt against Japanese control of Hokkaido between 1669 and 1672. I'm pretty sure it failed, but that's just a guess  I like Espionage. I like free specialists even more.   Andeanism ends up in Kummanni and I send the free missionary to Tuwana since it seems to be the best equipped to make Machu when the time comes.  Monotheism is the stepping stone to Judaism and Zoroastrianism, among other things. It also unlocks a useful new civic that I want to revolt into before my golden age ends.  Frederick does a massive Civics swap. Notably, he's in Divine Cult now so he's likely going to convert to a religion right after his anarchy ends. As far as I can tell he only has Mesopotamism and nothing else in some of his cities so I may be getting a new friend!  It took a while, but with copious use of Food Caravans I was able to push Guangzhou to pop 6 so it can build its own Shipwright. I intend on taking control of this bay China oh so helpfully gave me access to, and I'm gonna need plenty of boats to do it.  A Great Scientist! I was hoping for one of these. Also wow this dude lived to 100 years old   Oh for goodness sake  I guess I shouldn't complain since I haven't made a real combat unit in forever but I still find it funny.  The Academy is quite tempting as 25% is nothing to sneeze at in this mod. Gotta take care of The National Standard of Measurement first, this will improve my overall economy quite a bit in the long run.  Seems like Spies still have the problem in this game of not sticking around long enough to do anything useful  I'm not interested in doing any real damage to Persia right now. What I am interested in is farming some XP for my boats in the Hittite-Chinese bay.  Along with the other stuff, Monotheism has a couple other interesting things including a peculiar wonder, the Pergamon Altar, which increases Great General points within borders by 50% but also allows you to steal GG points when you kill units, whatever that ends up meaning.  Oh, and I guess I got this somehow? Folk Dance is mostly a filler tech, though it does allow the March promotion which, as in regular Civ 4, allows units to heal every turn whether they performed an action or not.  Oh, I see. Tarsa expanded its borders to grab a nearby Unexplored Island that was unreachable by my sea units.   State Church allows me to build missionary type units without a Monastery, though I don't get the 200% production bonus Prophets gives me. The economic benefits are pretty robust, especially if you have Shrines of multiple religions strewn about, so it's certainly worth revolting to this instead of Prophets when you can. The one big downside is losing access to the Shrine building (confusing, I know) which can hurt if you relied on its gold production effects. Revolting to the civic alone cost me a lot of gold per turn, though I'm still positive which is the only thing that really matters.  Yu the Great is a Hero of the Xia culture, an ancient Chinese dynasty. He was evidently known for advancements of flood control and may not have existed.  Doesn't matter, he gets a desk job like the rest of them.  Pulley is another filler tech, though it is one of the techs that improve our Mining Camps.  Same as Germany, Assyria goes for a massive civic swap and will no doubt convert to a religion soon afterwards. Which one he converts to, however, is anyone's guess.   Chariot units have some commonalities, that being really strong against Melee but terrible attacking into forested terrain, as well as some withdrawal chance. The Hittite Chariot, a national unit of a culture that should be obvious, supplements this by also completely ignoring terrain costs when moving, making this almost like a mirror universe BTS Impi. I'll be building a couple of these.  Actually, I'm a total idiot, Pulley also unlocks the Pulley Wheel building, which provides 10% hammers towards non-military production, something I completely missed when looking over these techs. This is definitely something I want to build in all my larger cities.  Textile Looms allows us to make Tapestries, another Manufactured Good used for various purposes.  As expected, Frederick converts to Mesopotamism as soon as the anarchy from his civic switch ends, which might help us in diplomatic overtures in the future, depending on Frederick's personality weightings.  Naram-Sin Akkadian hero, grandson of the famous King Sargon. You all know the drill by now.  I... think I made enough Forges for this quest already? Maybe? I guess we'll see on the next turn.  Our Golden Age Ends, costing us about 10% or so of our science output and I imagine quite a bit of production. Being able to revolt into four important Civics at no anarchy cost made it well worth the effort of getting it. The Brazen Bull is a wonder that improves Espionage output by the way, among other unimportant details.  Oh look, another barbarian city to kill   Hmm, another interesting event. I'm intrigued by what this Guild (Apothecaries) does so let's go with that.  Huh, so not much right now. Apothecaries come in Classical Era and this National Wonder isn't even available until Medieval. Nice to have though, if only for the culture and Doctor point.   The Tapestry Maker's Workshop provides quite a lot of additional gold based on stuff we already have. The fact that it requires a Size 13 city though means we're starting to get into the slightly more advanced sets of yield-generating buildings in our supply chains.  Fungiculture let's us do stuff with mushrooms, which is fine I guess.  Huh, so evidently with all the modifiers from all its various Sub Combat Types this chariot starts with a 85% chance to capture units on the field. I think I might start employing these a bit more liberally. So basically the thing with all these buildings is they provide +1 food, gold, and sometimes health to a city and can only be built if the city has both Mushrooms and a certain specific Resource either in its workable radius or manufactured. There is one additional extra thing but I don't think I quite have the terrain for it to matter.  Fermentation allows us to build a Winery, which we can use to improve the Grapes in our territory further. And once we have wineries, we also have booze!  Dido does her mass Ancient Era Civic switch, though she had already been in Divine Cult.  These civilian captives really do make taking out these barb cities worth it. When I get them that is.  Aside from booze, we also get access to the Orchard (Olive) and the Olive Press, the components to making Olive Oil, which doesn't allow much but that I wanted to mention anyway cause Olive Oil is awesome and makes food that it's used in awesome as well  The Pergamon Altar in Carchemish finishes this turn for what it's worth. We'll see how useful it is in the long run.  Assyria chooses Mesopotamism, so we've got a pretty substantial religious block going here, with the Assyrians, Carthaginians, and Germans joining us in our faith. Might not matter anyway so long as our Megalomania turns people off though  Oil Lamps let's us use out different types of oils (Olive Oil included, though it is by no means a necessary source) for various tasks of burning. Or really only one task, as I'll get into very soon...  Maccabeus is a Jewish Hero which means yeah, I did build the Israeli culture which unlocked at Monotheism. He can't build any Achievements but he starts with plenty of solid promotions and will get many more, so he's gonna be used on the field.  Wait, what?  Oh wow, Scorpio (20% chance to survive a lost combat) saves Doge from dying to a 4 strength hippo horde with 1 HP, leading to the hippo's untimely death instead. I believe this merits a memoriam to this feat of strength and bravery  There we go ...hey now, if I'm gonna have rules against obscenities, I should at least be consistent about it.   So there was a barb city nestled in the fog between my Southwest territory and France/China. Four defenders killed by two chariots plus dogs = 4 military captives and a civilian captive. I can get used to this.  The Forge quest finishes, and we get a choice. The second option gives Shock I to all our swordsman units which is pointless, and the last one gives a free Engineer specialist in Kanesh. I think I'm gonna go for the source of Copper.  Boksi nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I don't even know where this unit came from, it must have spawned on the Copper and attacked immediately, or maybe I just didn't notice the notification. Regardless, RIP to one of our best boys   So yeah, with Oil Lamps we can make Fish Oil, Ghee Oil, and a building that gives happiness and Crime reduction but the REAL star of this show is crystal clear.  This guy  This. Guy. ---------- NEXT TIME: Turns out there are a lot of problems that can be solved by setting things on fire. Also we get a better government, some better boats, and even a better version of C2C (wait, really?)
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Oct 16, 2019 22:26
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I loved this guy so much in my game, you have no idea. For a very long time he was the only meaningful way to break stalemates in city sieges, and so I ended up with near max max-stack Arsonists running around setting cities on fire before pillaging the living daylights out of said cities. Arsonists can pretty much end the game right now if you're careful with how you use 'em.
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Oct 16, 2019 23:04
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