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a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I've started playing on Deity mode regularly for the first time in my civ history and get pretty frustrated that every single game seems to go the exact same way. First the AI starts aggressively boxing me in and out teching me so I have to rush an army and go to war with everyone around me, and when that is under control one civ starts snowballing on science and I have to go to war to stop them, and then when that is under control I have to go to war with civs that are approaching religious and cultural victories, and then by the time I deal with that I just go gently caress it and end up building a bunch of jet bombers and finishing everyone else off rather than waiting to grind out another victory type. It just seems so impossible to deal with anything if you fall behind on tech. Are there any tricks about keeping up without going to war?

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a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Cultists are pretty hilarious. Egypt went into a dark age next door to me, and I flipped half their empire just with cultist spam.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

If you put a city to 0 loyalty with cultists but they have a positive loyalty growth rate, will that city flip the next turn or will it gain it's loyalty rate first?

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Can someone explain to me how ley lines work. I've read the in game explanation and the wiki one and am still a bit confused.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

One trick I read about that makes religious victories easy is to build a wagon wheel of 6 apostles with a guru at the center. March this into the center of the civ you are converting and use it to fend off the enemy apostles while you send in a stream of missionaries and replacements until their cities are wiped out. Eventually you'll have enough apostles to build a couple of these wheels so you can attack multiple civs at the same time. I've done this a few times on Diety and it is definitely the easiest victory type for me to get there.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Let me pop an airplane on my border and see what's going on over in my neighbor's land.



:stare:

So uh, does the AI actually use these.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I'm having a lot of trouble getting culture victories on immortal+ difficulties. Every time I've tried I've had to purposely not go for a science victory and end up winning a diplomatic one before I get even close. I basically turn my whole coast into seaside resorts and put ski resorts on every mountain I can and toss up a few national parks, but I can never seem to make my tourism grow fast enough. I am a little confused on rock bands too. I spam them towards the civ with the highest internal tourism, but they never seem to put a dent in it at all. I think one area I am screwing up is having everyone pissed at me so I can't get open borders, but it seems like I always have to put a stop to someone else getting another victory type. Does anyone have any tips for this?

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Shooting Blanks posted:

What civ are you playing? Have you gotten culture victories on lower difficulties and you're having trouble optimizing, or is this a win condition you generally struggle with?

I cycle through civs and any time there is one with a culture bonus I try to go for it. I've gotten a couple culture wins on immortal, but those might as well been domination wins. I think I am struggling on the proper techs and culture to prioritize and get started on my tourism too late. Most of my early and midgame seem to be me frantically trying to keep up with science so I don't fall eras behind the AI and get steamrolled in any military engagement.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

My new strategy I've been trying out has been beelining Flight and then rage quitting when I don't have any oil or aluminum.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I remember a couple games I resorted to building a human wall of lovely warriors and scouts to block the other civs from getting to the other side of my continent.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I was playing a Kongo game today and was putzin around the map with one of my worthless apostles that had the convert barbarians promotion when I decided to go check out what was going on at the north pole. As soon as it got in sight I saw the entire landmass up there was covered in barbarian modern armor, helicopter and AT units. I immediately converted about a dozen units and marched my new barbarian army to the south to start razing the Incan homeland who I was in a war with like Stannis coming around the wall. I think convert barbarian may be my favorite apostle upgrade now.

edit: What are you actually supposed to do with Kongo apostles? It seems like most of them were of different relgions, and I don't see any purpose in going around converting other people's cites or fighting holy wars with them.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I really miss playing tall and wish it was more viable in VI. Having to manage 30-40 cities in the end game every time is a pain in the rear end. I also really miss not being able to play Venice.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

My problem is that you can win with a handful of cities in VI, but you are just playing with a self-induced handicap. There is no disadvantage at all for having another city, and you can build a large well developed city regardless of how many other cities you have. In Civ V you could have 4-5 cities and go blow-for-blow against another Civ with 20 cities in science and culture. You can set up a one-city win megacity in VI, but you could have done the same thing while still building out an empire with other cities. In V building out actually gave you penalties for your new cities to overcome.

I understand why they did what they did with VI, because the optimal strategy in V involved turtling up with a handful of cities which got pretty boring after a while, but I wish they would at least toss in a few more civs focused on tall play.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

The one last thing I will say I dislike about the Civ VI wide-game emphasis is the way the strategic resources are spread out you can get completely screwed if you don't control large swaths of land. 90% of the end game units take oil, and you can't build an airforce without aluminum, so if you don't have either you're stuck with machine guns and modern ATs. I like the implementation in theory, but I have never been able to get any other civ to consistently trade me strategic resources if they will let me have any at all, and usually most of the city-states are wiped out by the end game.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Does anyone know the rules on establishing a trading post? I've been pounding trade routes into Japan for two games in a row to get the Portuguese achievement but I can never seem to establish a trading post there.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Yeah, I'm thinking it must be a bug. I had trade routes running non-stop both games and never got a trading post. It happened with Japan both times, so I wonder if something in the patch screwed it up. I'm still in awe they haven't fixed the bug where if you decline a friendship request it goes through anyway.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I don't want to flood this thread with weird things I've been noticing since the last patch, but has anyone had a game where the AI doesn't want to build any wonders? I'm playing my first Diety game in a while and I noticed it is turn 282 and the Colosseum is still available and it doesn't look like the AI has built almost anything except the pyramids.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I have no idea what the Lautaro AI has been doing the entire game. Not a single one of his cities is over 10 population and I'm going to loyalty flip his entire civ without even doing anything.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Calico Heart posted:

FYI, there are mods that make Tourism less completely bonkers dogshit broken in Monopolies mode.

I played a few games with monopolies on, and then I randomly ate a sub-turn 200 culture win loss out of nowhere and have never tried it again. The only mode I play with all the time is secret societies, but I have stopped the last few games because having a neighbor with 50 voidsinger cultists randomly wandering around your empire is just about the most annoying thing ever.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

My starting build order in almost every game is scout->slinger->settler. There is going to be a barb camp somewhere around you, so send your warrior out in a tight circle in one direction of your city and you have a 50-50 shot of catching an incoming scout if you are unlucky and they beeline towards your city. Send your scout out in the opposite direction immediately when he pops out, and when you get your slinger you can work a tight circle outwards until you find the camp. If a scout sees your city and gets away just pump out another slinger and you should be good. 2 slingers and a warrior should be able to hold off almost any amount of barbarians on lower difficulties. A single archer and city walls will take care of the problem even on deity level.

It's really important to uncover a lot of the map around your cities so you get the notification when a new barbarian camp pops up so you can preemptively block scouts and clear out the camps ASAP. Barbarians are much more than nuisance in this Civ and it is vital to control them.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I started a game the other day with a Medieval start and a crew of barbarian coursers came rolling through my empire when all I had was a single crossbowman and no walls and they razed half of my civ in a few turns.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

In Civ V I had to declare war on Germany to prevent them from getting a culture victory once. They were on the opposite side of the world so I had to build a navy and sail across the ocean to attack them. As soon as I took Berlin, Bismark launched a retaliatory nuke on his former capital and took out my entire navy with it and it was loving rad.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

showbiz_liz posted:

I've been meaning to ask-

When I was playing on lower difficulties, I found culture victories so easy to get that I often got them by accident. Now that I'm playing Immortal/Deity, I basically can never win a culture victory because even if I'm completely, crushingly dominant on culture/tourism, I still can't actually win before three other people get a science victory. What is the trick to culture on higher difficulties? Besides exterminating people?

I used to hate them, but I do culture victories almost exclusively now. What I do is tech straight for steel to get the Eiffel tower, and then tech straight for beach resorts and then Computers. Every single coastal tile I have has a beach resort surrounded by planted forests, every mountain i have has a ski resort, and I put down as many national parks as I can. Some cities have 4+ natural parks with governors and the Wish You Were Here golden age bonus. I also make sure to have all the tourism cards plugged in. Make sure to have open borders and trade routes with every other civ.

If there is another Civ that is running away with culture on Diety sometimes you have to take them out, but last Diety culture game I did I ended up building the Biosphere and clearcutting my entire empire and filling it with wind turbines and solar panels with an army of spies sabotaging every Space Port I could. Otherwise I find culture victories still way faster than Science ones on higher difficulties.

I know people always say Rock Bands, but they never seem to do anything for me. They usually grab me maybe a tourist and die, and after I've sent a couple the AI usually locks them out with that policy card that bans them from entering their territory.

a_gelatinous_cube fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Apr 26, 2021

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Nosre posted:

Do you bother with Renaissance Walls where possible for that path, or ignore them entirely? I'm always torn on pushing off Steel before I get a bunch, either for tourism or for the +science Military Research card

I try to get them started if I have nothing else to build but getting that level of wall up seems to take so many resources that I'm not sure it's worth it. My priorities are usually Eiffel Tower, Cristo Redentor, and grabbing every square inch of coast I can. As soon as I hit conservation I have an army of builders just turning my entire empire into a giant forest.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I will say most of my culture-focus games end up being surprise diplomatic victories. Once you can intuit how the AI votes on the world congress it can be incredibly easy to get up to 16 victory points and then build the Statue of Liberty which none of the AI seem interested in building. Add on top of that playing a peaceful game I usually end up being suzerain of every city-state on the map in the mid-game it makes it easy enough where I've thought about just turning diplomatic victories off.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

I've always assumed the AI just gets insane culture and tourism bonuses on the higher difficulty levels. They never seem to build any tourism infrastructure but get loads of it.

a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Ever since the Lady of Reed and Marshes change, I think marshes have been my favorite terrain type. I was able to make the strongest starting city I've ever made today with that and Etemenanki, and then hosed it up by not leaving enough space of the Mauesoleum.



Fractal was always my go to map type, but I always hated how there really weren't islands on most of them. I've been doing Primordial starts a lot recently and have been liking them a lot more. It seems like the maps seem way more random and chaotic.

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a_gelatinous_cube
Feb 13, 2005

Elias_Maluco posted:

Religion is still bad even after all the DLCs imo

edict: Im bad at Civ 6 even though I have soime hundreds of hours on it and never played MP but always wanted to try and a full MP game seems a lot more fun. It would be my first time seeing how is civ 6 experience is when not playing against a braindead cheating AI

I almost always go for religion on my diety games because I think the early game benefits can range from good to amazing depending on where you start. I almost always go for cultural victories so I need a massive faith generation for naturalists and rock bands late game, but you can leverage it for extra production and military units too. I used to go tithe right away to boost my gold, but gold is so plentiful I started switching to world church to get a massive early game culture boost. I find stupas giving every city a free amenity pretty big too. Religion seems pretty critical to holding onto peripheral cities during dark ages and flipping other civs' cities during golden ages, and an early game monumentality settler rush can snowball you from the start.

My most recent game was a random leader/shuffle map game that gave me Nubia with a really bad tundra start. Religion let me salvage the start with some amazing work ethic holy sites.



edit: Woops, if you are talking about mechanically, yeah it's kind of garbage. AI can not defend against a religious victory at all and it is like you are playing a really simplistic domination game. I kind of wish the AI would at least declare war on you and kill all your apostles at least instead of just sit there and watch while you steamroll your religion across their empire. I guess at least they put religious units on their own layer so you can sort of ignore them. But god why are void cultists not on the religion layer. Sometimes the AI will just build dozens of them and just park them all across my territory so I can't move around in my own borders.

a_gelatinous_cube fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Oct 9, 2023

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