Why are you running full cav armies anyway? Unless you're playing Huns or Mongols that's just not optimal. And with Huns and Mongols the above issue does not exist since those are archers.
Tried another different strategy, which involves completely ignoring science quarters and market quarters until Industrial era, and picking only the stronger food and industry cultures, and ending by finishing the tech tree. The plan is roughly:
- Spam build nothing but farmers and makers quarters until stability becomes a problem. Completely ignore science or money related quarters and infrastructure.
- Allocate pop in all cities to industry > science > money > food, to shore up science in the meantime.
- Pick only food and industry-focused cultures until Industrial era, with maybe a war culture (if AI are a problem) or a stability culture (if they aren't). In Industrial and Contemporary, pick only scientist affinity cultures, i.e. French and either Japanese or Swedes. I went Harappan > Huns > Khmer > Mughal > French > Japanese.
- Focus on getting high thousands of industrial production in all cities. Once stability becomes an issue, pivot to building infrastructure, wonders, holy sites, and/or commons quarters.
- From Industrial onwards, use the scientist affinity ability to convert all industry, food, and gold production in cities into science, allowing you to produce tens of thousands of science every turn.
- End by researching all techs.
It seems to work fine, though still not as fast as I'd hoped:
What cultures are people picking on Early Modern? I can't find one which I really like. Joseon/Mughal seem decent, but the selection in general feels a bit weaker than other eras.
- Spam build nothing but farmers and makers quarters until stability becomes a problem. Completely ignore science or money related quarters and infrastructure.
- Allocate pop in all cities to industry > science > money > food, to shore up science in the meantime.
- Pick only food and industry-focused cultures until Industrial era, with maybe a war culture (if AI are a problem) or a stability culture (if they aren't). In Industrial and Contemporary, pick only scientist affinity cultures, i.e. French and either Japanese or Swedes. I went Harappan > Huns > Khmer > Mughal > French > Japanese.
- Focus on getting high thousands of industrial production in all cities. Once stability becomes an issue, pivot to building infrastructure, wonders, holy sites, and/or commons quarters.
- From Industrial onwards, use the scientist affinity ability to convert all industry, food, and gold production in cities into science, allowing you to produce tens of thousands of science every turn.
- End by researching all techs.
It seems to work fine, though still not as fast as I'd hoped:
What cultures are people picking on Early Modern? I can't find one which I really like. Joseon/Mughal seem decent, but the selection in general feels a bit weaker than other eras.
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I don't know exactly what decides the calculation for war support at the end of wars, but looking at your total there it seems that you declared that surprise war much too soon. Just pace out your wars better (or juggle them) and you'll easily be able to annex any enemy in two or three wars.The bug I posted above corrupted the Autosaves of 9 turns urgh.
edit: Ok this has to be a joke? Declared surprise war waltzed in took their city they got nothing and
200 gold isn't nothing but why can't I keep the city I conquered...
The bug I posted above corrupted the Autosaves of 9 turns urgh.
edit: Ok this has to be a joke? Declared surprise war waltzed in took their city they got nothing and
200 gold isn't nothing but why can't I keep the city I conquered...
and my units are stuck now
If you won't have enough war score to demand a conquered city on a forced surrender, I think you could just ransack the city tile with your own units (before their war score goes to 0) and then build an outpost on it.
It's a bit weird that you can ransack your own cities, but there isn't a raze function in the game so I guess it's fine? I sometimes end up ransacking my own cities even during peacetime because absorption costs far, far too much influence.
Just got this recommended on YouTube
God, late game seems so cool. Too bad every time I get there I don't have 100+ turns left to fuck about in it. I need them to put in a way to get rid of max turns like yesterday.
EDIT: Oh, and also change the spawn rate of resources or add a way to manufacture multiple strategic resources from a single source. Kinda hard to build an army of tanks and planes if each of those units need 2 oil and there's only one oil somewhere hidden on the map. Last game I was running around with elephants and swordsmen in the final era simply because I didn't have salpeter or oil anywhere in my empire and I couldn't trade them either.
God, late game seems so cool. Too bad every time I get there I don't have 100+ turns left to fuck about in it. I need them to put in a way to get rid of max turns like yesterday.
EDIT: Oh, and also change the spawn rate of resources or add a way to manufacture multiple strategic resources from a single source. Kinda hard to build an army of tanks and planes if each of those units need 2 oil and there's only one oil somewhere hidden on the map. Last game I was running around with elephants and swordsmen in the final era simply because I didn't have salpeter or oil anywhere in my empire and I couldn't trade them either.
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Too used to Civs early aggression I guess. Also got a war declared on me and it took so many of my resources to survive and by the time I fended my opponent off and they had to surrender I had no claims and got 900 gold.
Opponent destroyed like 3k worth of units and 10+ population.
Good idea, that districts remain is a little weird when that happens.
Also reminds me of an annoyance that ruins hide the exploitation values but you can build over them w/o spending a turn to clear the ruins. Imo using the clear ruins should clear an area like a hamlet to be worth it.
Yeah I was sieging. The issue is *they* attacked me while I was sieging. Then I think I stopped making siege units because I was "in battle" for turn after turn.
Because this wasn't a thing in other civ games, and nowhere in the game does it tell you this while you're building units that this is as thing. Also I upgraded all my scouts into my Frank unique unit, which happen to be cavalry, since I sent the scouts to the other continent, that's what I had there.
I think technically I had a couple pikemen or something, but they got too damaged during the fight with the units outside so they wouldn't be able to take the city proper by themselves without the cavalry units.
It literally says in the unit description of cavalry units that they can't scale walls though...
Wait what? I swear I've re-read it multiple times and keep missing it.
Edit: I see it now.
I dunno, maybe cavalry should just get a heavy penalty when attacking fortifications so you at least still have the option. I guess I'm too used to Mount and Blade where even if all your units are cavalry they can just dismount.
It ends the game if it reaches inhabitable levels. You can use that to your advantage. I was winning a game by a lot and wanted to just end it so i went with australians and built as many of their unique district as possible and then just spammen aerodromes till the world was rendered inhabitable.
What do you do if you have a city with minus population because as far as I can tell the city is dead and populated with either ghosts or zombies. This was the city with -308 food even though I was producing 256 and consuming 172. Can't remember if this was pre or post patch but assuming it's a bug I hope it's fixed/will get fixed (haven't played for a week).
LOL. I'm not sure that's working as intended but sure, I guess that's another thing :D
Thematically "win the game by making earth uninhabitable" just doesn't sound right to me...
So, uh, don't try to rush an AI civ before they build at least one city. I tried a Harappan Runner rush, burned all their outposts, killed all their tribes, but they just kept coming. Turns out the AI just spawns a stack of tribes in fog of war whenever you kill their last unit. This happens even when they progress to Ancient, when they just spawn 4-unit stacks of scouts instead. You can vassalize them, but they basically can't be eliminated.
On the plus side, tribes don't usually stand a chance against runners, and scouts get destroyed by any UU in Ancient/Classical, so I guess you can turn it into a decent military star farm.
On the plus side, tribes don't usually stand a chance against runners, and scouts get destroyed by any UU in Ancient/Classical, so I guess you can turn it into a decent military star farm.
Its definitelly intended. When you go to select an end game condition its listed there. Its not a win condition tho. Its an end game condition. You dont win the game because you've done that. Whoever has more fame wins when the game ends. And there are multiple things that trogger the game to end. Max turns, space race, finishing tech tree, rendering world inhabitable, all players get conquered etc. But at the end it will always win who has the most fame.
I don't think this is just AI. I think this happened to a streamer multiplayer stream where they lost their first unit to a mammoth and got a 4 stack of tribes. I think it's a safety feature to make sure people don't get eliminated super early. Can probably be exploited under the right conditions to get a super fast start
That's odd - does it trigger every time you lose your units without having founded a city? I'm sure I killed the respawned scout stacks repeatedly during the Classic era, and they just kept respawning.
I know, but "I was leading in fame so I turned the earth uninhabitable to win by building a ton of airports" just sounded funny to me :D forcing a win by rendering the planet uninhabitable. Pollution should have some negative connections, not just be an end-condition IMHO. Pollution, religion and society are all essentially the same system right now - just something to generate minor grievances with no real gameplay relevance.
Yeah i agree that the system is not too fleshed out rn. Pollutipn has 3 levels tho which bring different negative effect. Uninhabitabe planet is the final stage but yeah the other two are not very impactful and i dont even remember what they are
Does anyone have any general tips on district placement?
I love the adjacency district planning in Civ VI with the map tacks they give you, but I'm kind of lost with how to best district in this game. For example, it seems like you shouldn't put your districts on rivers because there's a lot of city infrastructure that really improves those tiles and placing districts on them will just kill those improved yields (I think?), and so therefore it's better to leave those tiles be and instead place your extraction districts next to them, right? Or should I just not care about killing tiles that I've improved through infrastructure and instead focus on more on creating dense clumps of similar districts since they get bonuses for being next to others of the same type?
I love the adjacency district planning in Civ VI with the map tacks they give you, but I'm kind of lost with how to best district in this game. For example, it seems like you shouldn't put your districts on rivers because there's a lot of city infrastructure that really improves those tiles and placing districts on them will just kill those improved yields (I think?), and so therefore it's better to leave those tiles be and instead place your extraction districts next to them, right? Or should I just not care about killing tiles that I've improved through infrastructure and instead focus on more on creating dense clumps of similar districts since they get bonuses for being next to others of the same type?
I feel like they could iron the game out a bit more. Maybe in future patches.
Anyway, I got some questions about exploiting yields with districts.
1) Am I right in assuming that each type of yield on a tile can only be exploited once? Like if a tile gives 2 industry and you put a maker's quarter on it it gives you the 2 industry, but if you put down an adjacent maker's quarter it doesn't give you an additional 2 industry.
2) If a tile has, say, 2I2S you'll get the industry if you put a maker's quarter on it or the science if you put a research quarter on it. Will you get the other yield if you put the appropriate district adjacent to the tile or will the tile's district "overwrite" it?
Anyway, I got some questions about exploiting yields with districts.
1) Am I right in assuming that each type of yield on a tile can only be exploited once? Like if a tile gives 2 industry and you put a maker's quarter on it it gives you the 2 industry, but if you put down an adjacent maker's quarter it doesn't give you an additional 2 industry.
2) If a tile has, say, 2I2S you'll get the industry if you put a maker's quarter on it or the science if you put a research quarter on it. Will you get the other yield if you put the appropriate district adjacent to the tile or will the tile's district "overwrite" it?
Do you mean buildings that provide e.g. +1 industry on rivers? Those bonuses apply to all exploited tiles, including districts.
As I understand it, (1) is yes, and (2) is no - putting a district on a tile overwrites any yields that aren't exploitable by the district. (However, if you had a 2I2F tile that's exploited by an adjacent Makers Quarter for the 2I, another adjacent Farmers Quarter will exploit the 2F.)
I find it hard not to take Mughals every time, +2% industry per territory in your influence, when I usually have around 15-20 by that point is really powerful.
Though I only played on Nation difficulty, I guess with harder difficulties it isn't as powerful, as AI will contest your influence more.
I encountered some bug with ports: you can build them on tiles where you can't move onto (like ice in water) then the port is created (the ice disappears) but you can't use it with your units, they go around it and when you point your cursor over it, it's both a port and impracticable ground...
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Lol, just saw a streamer cheese the start that way: intentionally die, you get 4 scouts + the era star for population... Depending on how fast you find a mammoth to die on, that can be event faster than the auto explore exploit.
Played "a bit" yesterday (7 hrs or so, around 100 turns), I think I like it more than I expected given that I'm not a big Endless Legends fan. Still too early to delve into details. One thing I certainly don't like is that it maxes my gpu at 100% all the time, while running and looking worse than civ 6.
Yeah I learned this in the Beta. In fact, I basically learned to avoid war as much as possible due to bugs and quirks.
On my current (and probably last for awhile) game, I'm playing on Humankind difficulty concentrating only on industry civs on Endless mode. Though I got more, primary Wonders I targeted were Giza Pyramids and Manchu Picchu . I am about to enter the last era and am currently in first place over the other civs by about 4,000 fame so I think this game is on lock for a win. I pulled away in the medieval period mainly by aggressive outpost spam. The "pink AI" is in second as expected with its "super powers" but I've learned how to manage them fairly well. I do get annoying "osmosis" messages every turn from that Civ though...
I'll maybe post some more final thoughts after I complete this max difficulty run.
Okay, so it's totally possible to sprint at the finish line fame-wise due to how ridiculous the Contemporary cultures are and how incompetent the AI apparently is at using them.
I was playing a game trying to focus on money when I noticed that when every player was still fucking about in the medieval age, an AI had somehow managed to race its way to the industrial age and so he entered the contemporary age when I was only just about to enter the early-modern age. Looked at the fame score and saw he was 2.5K ahead of me in fame, so basically impossible to keep up with, or so I thought. As soon as I entered the contemporary age and started to seriously pump up my science with the Swedes, I managed to overtake him easily and finished the game by researching all techs.
I have no idea what the AI was doing during all of this. It almost seems like he just gave up as soon as he entered the contemporary age. It's kinda ridiculous that the AI two eras ahead of everyone, totally able to research the stuff that ends the game and win... but just didn't.
I was playing a game trying to focus on money when I noticed that when every player was still fucking about in the medieval age, an AI had somehow managed to race its way to the industrial age and so he entered the contemporary age when I was only just about to enter the early-modern age. Looked at the fame score and saw he was 2.5K ahead of me in fame, so basically impossible to keep up with, or so I thought. As soon as I entered the contemporary age and started to seriously pump up my science with the Swedes, I managed to overtake him easily and finished the game by researching all techs.
I have no idea what the AI was doing during all of this. It almost seems like he just gave up as soon as he entered the contemporary age. It's kinda ridiculous that the AI two eras ahead of everyone, totally able to research the stuff that ends the game and win... but just didn't.
I too have come to the conclusion that the way fame works lead to a universalist approach that makes the games feel a bit samey. There should be more tiers of each approach so you can truly go at it as a builder or an expansionist or an agrarian, or a militarist.
Population and Army size should be separate too although maybe that causes issues since they work against each other.
Population and Army size should be separate too although maybe that causes issues since they work against each other.
I don't think it's the fame system necessarily that does this. In fact, I think pretty much every 4x game has the problem of things becoming to samey at the end, with the possible exception of Endless Legend since that has vastly unique civilizations to pick and through the missions system every civilization/culture has a basically unique win condition.
But Endless Space and Civilization definitely also has the issue of things becoming too samey in the same way that Humankind does. In the end anybody going for a science/economy/wonder/supremacy/diplomacy victory will also need to be universally strong to keep up and actually achieve those things. In fact, I think Humankind might have the edge on Civ IMO because at least in Humankind with the changing civs, you will have unique units/districts each era instead of Civ were every culture is only really unique for one or two ages.
And I don't think the star system is really that restrictive or forces a player into a general playing style. For example, in my last game (mentioned in my earlier post), I never once fought a war (or really fought anyone, except a few independents here and there), hardly expanded before the medieval era (when I could reach the New World via the Norse culture) and focused mainly on earning a lot of money and still ended up in first place while being very specialized. And I do really like the way the fame system works. It makes every part of the game count instead of just the end, since a player that did extraordinarily well in an earlier age and slowed down a bit in the later ages can still reasonably win.
I think the main issue I have with the way the endgame plays out is that the way resources are distributed makes it hard to really go for anything except for the ending where the max turns are reached or where you research everything (or destroy the earth via pollution, which is a bit of a half-assed mechanic in itself). But the other two are much too difficult to achieve right now because you might just randomly get fucked out of resources.
Like, in my last game I wanted to go for the Mars mission victory, but to actually finish the second stage of that route you need two oil. Now, I had one oil due to a trade with the one AI that raced to the Contemporary Age, but the one other oil on the map belonged to another civ that was still two eras behind so he had no way to actually exploit the oil and trade it to me. And sure, I could've broken the alliance, got my war support up and attacked him (something something Gulf War), but I didn't want to because I was playing a pacifist game. So that ending condition immediately became impossible, because there was no way that that civ would reach the age in which he could exploit the oil before the game ended.
Military victories have a similar issue, with the final tier units needing so many resources that it's basically impossible to build them unless you get very lucky with the resource generation or have already pretty much conquered most of the map. Like, the helicopter gunship needs 2 oil and 3 aluminium. How the hell are you supposed to get that when the average map spawns maybe two oil in total. At least this follows the rule that if you can't build it, the AI probably also can't, but it ain't great.
Finished my final game on the hardest difficulty, again blowing past the AI once you hit Medieval.
And once again, zero oil spawned on the map (but I still got the "get access to all resources" achievement...go figure). No oil literally ruins the end game. You can't upgrade most units. You can't build anything unique. You can't do the space victory. It just is a rush to finish science first.
And getting three stars in influence in the Contemporary Era is a massive time sink (at least on Endless). Was looking at ~30+ turns a star. So once again, just finished the tech tree and done.
And outside of maybe the first Food culture, the rest are completely worthless due to how manchu picchu works. The 2nd place AI chose food the entire game (while I chose industry), and I past him in food production mid-medieval and then crushed him once I got the wonder. Industry, save for a few exceptions, is by far the best on slower speeds. I was able to build multiple districts a turn by era 4 in almost every city on Endless speed. Stability is a joke on the hardest difficulty so my opinion of those Civs has gone down a lot.
Also the unique buildings that require specific placement are pretty underpowered, especially water based ones, which is counter-intuitive for how they need planning to place. The mountain ones I wouldn't recommend ever taking unless you played on "Steep".
Era 1: I'm still debating the best Ancient Culture: Egyptians or Babylonians, with Harrapans close. Personally liking Egyptians.
Era 2: Persians
Era 3: Khmer (not even close)
Era 4: Probably Mughals, especially if going Tall/Gigapolis. Dutch and Edo are ok but the unique building is hard to place effectively.
Era 5: If going for a win by all Era stars, Italians for Influence. If not, French if you need science or German/Siamese for Industry.
Era 6: Turks or Swedes (just to finish the damn game when no oil spawns...)
And once again, zero oil spawned on the map (but I still got the "get access to all resources" achievement...go figure). No oil literally ruins the end game. You can't upgrade most units. You can't build anything unique. You can't do the space victory. It just is a rush to finish science first.
And getting three stars in influence in the Contemporary Era is a massive time sink (at least on Endless). Was looking at ~30+ turns a star. So once again, just finished the tech tree and done.
And outside of maybe the first Food culture, the rest are completely worthless due to how manchu picchu works. The 2nd place AI chose food the entire game (while I chose industry), and I past him in food production mid-medieval and then crushed him once I got the wonder. Industry, save for a few exceptions, is by far the best on slower speeds. I was able to build multiple districts a turn by era 4 in almost every city on Endless speed. Stability is a joke on the hardest difficulty so my opinion of those Civs has gone down a lot.
Also the unique buildings that require specific placement are pretty underpowered, especially water based ones, which is counter-intuitive for how they need planning to place. The mountain ones I wouldn't recommend ever taking unless you played on "Steep".
Era 1: I'm still debating the best Ancient Culture: Egyptians or Babylonians, with Harrapans close. Personally liking Egyptians.
Era 2: Persians
Era 3: Khmer (not even close)
Era 4: Probably Mughals, especially if going Tall/Gigapolis. Dutch and Edo are ok but the unique building is hard to place effectively.
Era 5: If going for a win by all Era stars, Italians for Influence. If not, French if you need science or German/Siamese for Industry.
Era 6: Turks or Swedes (just to finish the damn game when no oil spawns...)
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There are no 'win conditions' per se, instead you have the Fame system (the points score you can see) and you get these points by achieving certain things in the game like getting the age objectives (the stars), building wonders, doing certain things first (the deeds) and unlocking certain late-game techs. So the score is the only thing that decides whether you win or not.
The other "win" conditions you mentions (military and science) are not actually win conditions, but ways to end the game. You could defeat (or vassalize) every other player and not have the top score because you neglected other stuff. Same with the Mars Mission, you could do that and not win.
I don't know why you say it feels aimless beyond mid-game, since the final ages are likely where you will get the most points that decide who wins the game. It's not any less 'aimless' than, say, Civ 5. In fact, as I pointed out above, I would say the way the Fame system works makes the game less aimless as every age matters point-wise and you have to play each age with the intent of getting the highest score possible instead of just going through the motions until your big victory plan pays off.
During a game, open the game menu (esc) then click on "game options":
Yeah, I've been going Mughal a lot too. I tried Haudenosaunee too, which was fine, but they don't really do anything exciting beyond food production.
As far as I can tell, AI science production is anemic and grows linearly, so they're even slower once they get to the Contemporary era due to quadratic tech cost growth. The AI essentially plays the same way on every difficulty, which means you're essentially home free as long as you can fend off early attackers and survive to the later eras with a decent territorial base.
Yeah, I finished a game on Humankind difficulty on normal speed, and it's fairly similar (Harappan > Mayan > Khmer > Haudenosaunee > French > Japanese). Industry strategies seem stronger in general than the alternatives, just because of its consistency. I haven't tried a Money strategy on Humankind yet, but my feeling is it won't be quite as strong. Also agree with the emblematic district placement issues - Siamese looks strong on paper, but then you realize their placement restrictions are awful.
For cultures, I preferred Egyptians on Empire difficulty, but I think I definitely prefer Harappan to any other Ancient era culture on Humankind difficulty. With +2 strength across the board for AI, I find it's a huge pain to defend your territory during Ancient and very early Classical without spending a whole lot of Industry on military units. With Harappans, their +1 strength scouts means you can at least hold territory fairly well just with your post-neolithic units, and gives you time to stall to get your emblematic unit production rolling. For Classical, I still really enjoy either Huns - because their emblematic unit has no pre-requisite tech, and so you have strength 24 movement 6 units straight out of the gate on era change - and Mayans, who have a decent workhorse district and a usable emblematic unit. I want to give Carthaginians a try next.
Yeah, machu picchu is really broken, they should nerf it a bit.
A bunch of stuff is pretty broken. All the end game civs are broken some way or another (lol the yields on the Public School) and some of the wonders also get bonkers. I mean, just in the first era the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are really strong if you get the right luxuries as it counts as a manufactory so you actually get the Wondrous Effect.
Like, getting that wonder on one of the production or science boosting luxuries can catapult you into the lead by quite a big margin.
Like, getting that wonder on one of the production or science boosting luxuries can catapult you into the lead by quite a big margin.
If you can position right, Persian immortals get up to 31 strength by being on higher ground which at that era is devastating to almost all melee, plus they are anti-cav on top. Combined with Persia's +2 city cap and a fairly powerful unique building, I think it is top dog currently. If you want to expand big and fast, land rights is the only way to do it and you need some money for that which Persia's building sets up, plus can support 2 more cities when you do make your power moves in the medival era with the OP Khmer.
I think map size/start goes a long way as I never got into an early fight with the AI. I also just put about 5 scouts on auto explore and had two stacks of warriors by end of the era from curiosities, who mainly defend against aggressive free people. The Harappan's scout's superior movement does play better into this fact though but I just find food not nearly as useful as industry at the start so the trait/unique building aren't as helpful. The Egyptian pyramid +1 influence goes a long way too. I just manually make sure I'm maxing citizens on food production and let the passives do the rest. I will say I didn't give Nubians a good shot yet and they do have a "double unique building" which may play very well in my land rights strategy posted earlier. Problem I see though it relies spawning near a luxury cluster to pay off plus industry/food/science are way stronger in the ancient era versus money. However, if you can keep up with a strong Nubian start into Persia and beyond, you could probably attach 5 or more territories to each city with land rights on the first turn you unlock it in the Medieval era (this may cripple you though if you don't know what your doing due to district scaling costs!).
From my time playing, by far the most OP combo has been Persia/Land rights combo with everything else being industry. You also can capture the majority of wonders post ancient/classical era since you won't be using influence for territory anymore and can build them extremely fast.
All those Mughals, no Joseon love? You have access to Industrial Era technologies, when some AIs are still in Middle Age.
That's a science affinity bonus not unique. But honestly if you haven't maxed out all of your reachable stars by the time you start to run out of techs then you're most likely losing. And beelining techs rarely is worth it.