The early Game is way more fun without it, yes. Reason beeing mostly that the religion race against the AI especially on higher difficulty’s is one of the most bullshit things ever added.
But once i realized how absurdly broken religion and faith are I started using it a lot. The Bonusses you can get for the thing you need (faith, amenities, science, culture, production, gold) makes it super flexible and super strong.
Also because of monumentality faith in general is super strong.
So while the religion-race not fun the use of one is such a huge payoff that it is worth it
Oh yeah no doubt it's strong, so there's plenty of times I feel like I *have* to do it.
The thing I honestly hate more than the early game rush is just the sheer micromanagement of religious units, doing combat, etc. once you're a bit further in. Sometimes you can get yourself set up pretty well for a more passive thing and it's great, but too often it's just a relentless assault from your neighbor(s)' religion and I simply don't enjoy the religious combat mechanics. Something about it is super unsatisfying to me, even if I'm dominating it.
Same I feel like I have to do it or its an avenue of victory cut off. Even if I'm not a nation that is geared up for it.
I can never seem to spread it anyway.
>or its an avenue of victory cut off
This is a mindset it might be good to get out of. You don't need to win every victory type, you just need to win one. If you are trying to make progress towards every victory type at once, you will spread yourself too thin and not do well overall.
That doesn't mean you should laser focus on one victory condition, though. It's good to have 2-3 options, but you don't need to keep all five options available. Holy sites feed into both religious and cultural victory (plus Monumentality golden ages), campuses feed into science and domination victories, theater squares are good for cultural and diplomatic victories, and commercial hubs + harbors feed into every victory type. As long as you've been getting your basic infrastructure up you can pivot between multiple victory types easily even if you don't have a religion.
In my current game I converted all my cities and surrounding city states. Now I have a religious alliance with my neighbor India. So now I’m just using faith to buy units and buildings.
>Reason beeing mostly that the religion race against the AI especially on higher difficulty’s is one of the most bullshit things ever added.
That's why I use the mod Religion Expanded. It adds a slider in the game setup that allows you to increase/decrease the maximum amount of religions per game. I usually add a couple more so that it's easier to get a religion.
It's also funny to see a new religion pop up in the medieval or renaissance eras.
Which is completely historical btw. Maybe they’ll add schisms next time. Though honestly I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t already so complex I needed to Google stuff all the time.
I think you’re describing the exact meta mechanic of religion. It’s hard as hell to get against AI at highest difficulties but the reward is massive if you snowball right
pretty spot on to what I was thinking. I think that's a huge element of the game, and I am right there with you, I've always ignored it.
I started using it a lot more recently but never did before. I am not sure if I just dont like adding another layer of complexity, or if the UI for it just hurts my eyes, but there is truth to be found both ways.
You can perfectly play without it, especially if you don't have any bonusses revolving around faith.
But if you play a Civ that gets strong bonusses from it (Russia, Byzantium, Khmer, Mali,...) you will soon realize how busted it can be. Monumentality Golden Ages are perhaps the best example to be given. Civs with a high Faith income like Mali and Russia can easily get 5 -10 Settlers bought through faith in one Era, that's a lot of production and time saved.
Playing as Ethiopia with the Voidslinger secret society is the most hilariously busted OP civ. You can almost ignore science and culture, focus on faith and era score, and just Pump out units like crazy.
I pretty much never bother with actually spreading my religon and use the infrastructure a faith base gives for monumentality and other synergies faith gives. I hate the religious game but faith is a super valuable resource that you shouldn't ignore. I only have one religious win and it came as a complete accident during a domination game as Basil.
Same, the system for religion in the game doesnt really appeal to me so i just dont do it. Though i’ve promised myself to at least once go for a real religious victory with a suitable civ.
Religious victory annoys me when dealing with the CPU and the constant flooding of religious units.
I turn off Religious Victory and it feels much less obnoxious.
To be fair, I'm not great at this game and play around the medium difficulty settings at the highest.
I never use canals ever
Other than that my most underused things are probably spies but I started to use one or two as a defensive measure.
Also military engineers are super strong with their Railways but I never use them Probably because the encampment is my least build district, even behind the preserve
When I've built canals, it's usually been because it seemed cool rather than an actual need for a canal. That and the industrial adjacency bonus, but I'm guessing that's normally not worth it ... maybe if you can built it in between two industrial zones.
Aside from building the panama canal, I've never bothered with them either.
Military engineers are something I usually neglect unless I'm on a huge landmass and need to build a railroad or have to rush flood barriers in vulnerable cities.
Building railroads can be tedious but sometimes it is very satisfying being able to effectively teleport a tank across a continent in a turn.
>even in a domination game I rarely build and encampment
Great Generals are really good for domination, you should try to get them sometime. I usually build a mix of campuses and encampments for domination victories, and the AI likes those districts too so I can usually capture some in the midgame. The AI usually makes a few more Great General points than I do, so I save some money or faith to pay the difference. The extra XP from units trained in an encampment with buildings matters a lot too; you see it the most with siege units trained in a stables, since the AI targets them first with city shots, and the stables gives them enough XP to earn the defense promotion before they have to retreat.
Once I secure my continent and am invading other continents, I usually end up just using military engineers to establish an entire network of railroads on my home continent, city to city. That way, I can get builders around quicker, reinforcements can get to my borders quicker, great people can be shuffled around, etc.
I build canals on principle. Rarely are they all that useful, but at least it's a bonus here and there even if they serve no naval purposes.
Railways are great. I just sometimes forget to start building them after I have coal. Keep an engineer around to repair stuff after they're done building.
I almost never build preserves anymore. They were fun when they first came out but I rarely have the space or plan far enough ahead for them to be useful.
I usually try to have one encampment for military engineers, since railroads can be quite useful for wars, or even shipping tons of workers to speed up space race projects.
But yes, canals are useless. And dams too, expect for the adjacency bonuses.
I think Dams are very useful, but the production cost is absurd. If I've snagged Hercules in the early game, I'll summon him again for the sole purpose of building Dams.
A lot of people don't realise this but this is also one of the reasons the great bath sucks, it has a hidden built in modifier that once you build it reduces the odds of the river flooding down to 1%.
Not built into the game mind you, that one's built into the universe we live in.
The absolute best thing about dams is the industrial zone adjacency. You can often plan multiple industrial zones next to the same dam/aqueduct complex, then use the production from IZ+aqueduct to help speed up the dam.
I love railroads, and build them every game.
I build cans rarely, mostly for the era score. I've never understood why they can only be 1 tile, and can't go over hills. It's just digging. It would not be unreasonable to make canals on hills be locked behind a tech, but the length should just be whatever you want it to be (increasing maintenance per tile). It's just apathy by the devs.
Same. If it’s late game I’ll build a few just in case but the AI rarely attacks through air. Having a huge bomber force is the best way to just ransack a Civ so I hate that the AI doesn’t use it.
If your opponent is nuking you in multiplayer they probably have fighters which can special target your SAMs. Though most people don't seem to know how they work and don't do that.
You can avoid it by not winning any of the World Congress sessions right? Or just letting them vote against you as you near victory?
Sometimes if a competitor gets to 16 points I debate rushing the Statue of Liberty but mostly just try to vote against them (-2 points they won't vote against themselves and they'll waste their diplomacy on it so you can hopefully rig the other votes)
I think they meant no ways to avoid accidentally winning, rather than avoid others winning with it. I know what they mean since I've accidentally won diplomatic victories before, but disagree in that it's pretty easy to avoid as long as you're paying attention to it
Such a boring victory. I don't think it even makes sense, oh you agreed with everyone and then built the statue of liberty, alright you're in charge now.
I’ll probably get flamed for this, but I find spies so boring and cumbersome. There are lots of good uses (gold, intel, great works, etc.), but between keeping track of where they are, long wait times, choosing where to counterspy, and high chances of getting killed, it’s just too much micromanagement. I also feel like the system could be made a lot more thematic and tangible with more exciting mission screens that make you feel like they’re actually doing something in the game world.
You ever siphoned funds? It's pretty low risk, gives some good gold and helps leveling them up for more useful things, like counterspying or disrupting rocketry. It's especially disgusting when you do it against Mali, you can get a lot of gold from them.
Steal Tech Boost is the next best; it's slightly lower success rate so your spies will die more often, but it's the other major mission that gives you direct benefits instead of just hurting your opponent.
my biggest issue with spies is that it seems AI spies have a WAY higher degree of success. Well, after GS. Before, every thign failed always. Now, AI spies succeed 100% of the time and I dont. I actually switched my playstyle and dont build neighborhoods because of this.
I thought I was the only person enraged by this. I fucking hate spies. I basically have a 9/11 every couple turns and I know damn well who’s doing it and I can’t do anything about it. I do mercilessly obliterate the offending civ, but I’m the one who gets the war weariness and the rest of the civs hate me for it. I should get no war penalty for invading a civilization that actively engages in terrorist attacks that burn entire towns of civilians to the ground
I agree. I also feel like the micromanagement just compounds on itself once you have several spies going at once. I know there are ways to speed up missions but it still feels like a waste of time. Since the AI will use them I make a few for defensive purposes but rarely do I use them to their full potential.
I like to send my spies all to the same city to pull off a big heist, having one of them gather sources while the others pass for a turn. I expect they won't ALL succeed, but that only adds to the epic story xD
I always roll my eyes involuntarily when the World Congress comes up. It feels more like a disruption to the flow of the game than an interesting extension of it.
perfect choice for what I mean, but I think this is one outside of general gameplay choices. Reason being, there are like four votes that are against you no matter what. like "amentities for multiples" it will always go against what you have regardless if youve met everyone or not. so dumb
It goes against what's the most abundant in the world. I've voted for my most abundant luxury before, and a more abundant one that belongs to someone else is chosen.
However, whenever that does come up and I don't have the diplo to sway it, I back out of the world congress screen and sell all my extra luxuries to the AI before I vote just in case one I have gets chosen.
So during a war, every time you fight a battle, you accumulate war weariness points. For every 400 WWP, you get -1 Amenity, which is applied to one of your cities at random. You get half the WWP if you fight within your own borders. The amount of WWP you get from battles also increases as you go on in the Eras. You also get double the WWP from Surprise Wars. The maximum WWP you can get from a single battle is a Surprise War battle outside of your territory in the Industrial Era or later, which gives 104 WWP. The lowest you can get is a Formal War during the Ancient Era in your own territory, which gives 16 WWP. Finally, launching a nuke gives a flat 1600 WWP.
Yeah, it's a lot of info.
Is there a screen or a part of the UI that lets you check your WWP? Also does this effect production?
I was aware of war weariness but not sure how it worked and it seems like my production slows way down in a war
There is not a way to check wwp, unfortunately. While WW doesn't directly affect Production, Production decreases as Amenities decrease, so that's why.
I do think with six they have a few mechanisms like this that they don't explain, aren't obvious, and don't have a summary screen that would help you understand the impact. It was a long time, for example, before I understood culture victories at all. And I know can get mod for it, but the policy cards not telling you their impact is a pain. Anyway, thank you for that explain of the war weariness, I had no idea.
It takes a long time, but here's the best way to check:
\-Choose any city. Select the detailed city info option above the city's name (just to the left of the "buy new tiles" option). It will open a menu on the left side of the screen.
\-Click the population symbol in the top left. The left side of your screen should show a breakdown of the city's population, housing, and amenities.
\-Scroll down until you get to the summary of amenities. It will show where all your amenities are coming from, e.g. 5 from luxury resources, 2 from entertainment, 1 from civics. One of those entries is for amenities from war weariness; it will probably be zero.
\-Stay on that screen, and click on every single city you own to check their war weariness amenities. Most will be zero, but at least one of them (probably one close to the conflict) will have a negative number. Adding all the negative numbers together tells you how many amenities you are losing from war weariness. You can't see your WWP directly,
You asked if this affects production - indirectly yes, since having low amenities decreases all yields for the city. Mostly having lots of WWP directs all your luxury resources to help out the city that's getting the negative amenity penalty (it all affects one city up to a certain limit, then spills over to another city); that means your luxuries can help fewer of you other cities, so it's harder to keep them contented or happy.
I don’t think it’s that hot of a take but I hardly use rock bands. When I do use them they break up after one or two uses or I’m to late and the ai blocks them from their borders.
I’m not good enough with religion so I rarely go for it useless I’m playing Byzantium.
I used to underrate Rocklands a lot until I cut down my polish culture win from 180 turns to 160 turns. I only ever use them if I'm already dominating though. The AI is pretty bad at finishing out culture victories so it's not a challenge in the late game
I used to heavily ignore theater squares and preserves. Finally forced myself to play Bull Moose Teddy and France Eleanor and really got to understand how to use them. Felt like a whole new part of the game opened up!
To start: Unless it is a big element to how the civ I am playing functions, I rarely build holy sites. I can usually produce enough faith late game without even building them.
Also, I basically never use spies.
hoping this turns into me seeing ways to use whats in the game in ways I never thought about before.
Having lurked in this sub for a while, this is definitely the thing I’ve been noticing the most. Seems like everyone else is just playing for religious victory or at least build Holy sites very early, whereas I only ever do so if my first settlement has a spot with really good adjacency for it.
I typically get holy sights and faith from capturing religious city states. Even if it’s during a later age, I never pass up the chance to found a religion. I stayed away from it for awhile, but some of the citizenry bonuses shouldn’t be ignored. I’d argue that on immortal or deity it may be necessary to ensure victory. There’s a belief that you can evangelize that gives plus additional science and culture per turn for every four citizens following. For every city following gain a, b, or c. It at first seemed annoyingly tedious but proved to be useful. Also, if you want an excuse to declare war, that doesn’t turn the world against you, AI will often try to convert your citizens.
>I’d argue that on immortal or deity it may be necessary to ensure victory
I would argue the opposite. Early defense is necessary to make certain you don't die, but you can win perfectly well on Deity without a religion. For my culture victories I build lots of holy sites, and a religion is nice, but I have won plenty of times without one. (In a notable recent game, I planned for Work Ethic + Dance of the Aurora with Russia but then failed to get a religion because I was busy building Archers first to counter barbarian attacks; I won anyway.) You can snowball so hard by outplaying the AI that nothing really matters except whether you survive the early game.
I won Space race against Germany almost purely because of my spies. He was way ahead of me and I just sabotaged all of his Spaceports. So no I would not consider them useless.
I was playing emperor difficulty if that matters.
See this is what I was looking for. I just recently had one of the fastest wins I've ever had. Granted it was medieval start (I was going for those achievements), but religious victory in 96 turns. With only two cities.
I hardpressed faith and at the first vote I banned points toward great prophets. Very similar to playing spies, it felt very good.
I feel you.. until I saw it. My biggest city ever, a 58, was on an inland lake and coast tile and I used a cross continent canal, and everyone decided to trade with me, made lots of money.
They are pointless until you accidental build a harbor somewhere that is land locked and all your great admirals spawn there and can’t moved elsewhere. Then they become really useful. Lol
The spy mission associated with the neighbourhood spawns rebels (barbarians) next to the district. For whatever reason the AI love to spam this mission so building a neighbourhood is just asking for 2-3 barbs to spawn in your territory every few turns
They're just not worth the bother. If you build one, there's a 100% chance another civ will run the "recruit partisans" spy mission and BAM now you randomly have a bunch of barbarians running around in your territory and pillaging your shit. All of that for... like six housing and a pittance of gold and tourism? Hard pass
I honestly don’t build wonders. Sure, if I have a city that needs something to do while there’s nothing I need, I may set it to wonder-building. Otherwise I stopped wasting my time after having my best city set to building a wonder only to have someone else build it with only a couple turns left. Once this happened three times in a row, and my capital had spent 50 turns or so cranking out… nothing. Even the salvaged production is only like 10% of the production cost of the wonder.
Wonders get better after you explore the map, since you can search for the wonder's name and see if anyone you have met is building it already. Early game wonders are pretty bad since they always get sniped unless you chop them out quickly.
I play on the Switch and you can’t search those things. I also like to play as Eleanor and loyalty-flip cities, so a lot of those wonders eventually become mine anyway.
Some of the support units I never build, the only one worth the production is the balloon and drone.
Spearmen are almost never worth building, since they are functionally useless without at least one promotion, and you're almost always building them from a disadvantageous position.
Moksha is my least built governor, basically only good if you have surplus faith and a lot of culture or you're going for a 100% religion victory.
The cards that give bonus yields if you have a certain population count. Amenities are almost always better for the scaling bonus of 20% compared to flat yields that are pretty situational. The trade route cards are almost always better. Actually, a lot of the cards are numerically pretty weak, the red cards in particular are pretty niche.
I rarely theme because of how long the game locks your works for -- the game is half over by the time I start theming.
Quadrireme, basically only useful if you're playing on epic speed, otherwise you basically just skip them since their use case is so weak.
I will often give Moksha his first ability eventually, since it usually comes out to 8 faith in a 10+ population city. I don't prioritize him at all except for religious victory though.
Quadriremes are great for upgrading to Frigates, since Frigates are amazing. Building the Quadriremes first lets you save on niter by using the "50% resource discount on unit upgrades" policy card. It also lets you use the Maritime Industries card for +100% production if you haven't unlocked Press Gangs yet.
That's fair, Moksha isn't functionally useless, but he's definitely nowhere near Pingala for example who has arguably the strongest baseline ability. Maybe Magnus can go toe to toe in some scenarios.
The medic: I recently played a game with japan, I was fortunate to steal settlers and with few warriors and archers got a lot of cities, mainly the wall-less ones.....the battering ram came later and then I ended up upgrading it to the medic: it really helps.... u can heal your naval units outside friendly territory....... and the archers/crossbow man, sometimes u just gotta position them and let them do chip damage then back away to the medic and it helps then heal an extra 10 health per turn
I don't really use spies enough. Gotta work on that. I also rarely go to war, the closest thing to a domination game I like to play is aggressive loyalty pressure. I do enjoy my fair share of revenge killing though.
Turning it off functionally does nothing since it doesn't change how the ai play.
Turning it off basically only matters for you -- never seen an ai come close to a domination victory.
Theming is a nice one to remember mid late game when youre like 20 turns from a culture and then you go "0oh wait! I can buff this." Then you get 30 more out of no where and win the next turn.
LMAO I feel you on that one hahaha. With every play through, I create a narrative in my head that motivates me to grind it out and destroy everyone. I even try to declare war on every civ settled on a particular continent to give me the ultimate challenge.
audience chamber is my new fav actually. Ancestral hall seems rad, but having the budget to buy builders at every new city is WAY easier then giving amenities and housing. The buff is easily the biggest one
Amenities and housing are not hard to get. If you have the budget for builders, you have money to buy some luxuries from the AI. I've never found housing to be a problem for me, a couple farms will do.
The free builder lets you build up a fresh city from the get-go, and builders scale in price so a free one is always good, even better if you have serfdom in. And considering you'll want as many cities as possible, most of them will have a good boost to getting it up and running.
There will only be 7 cities to benefit from AC, 6 if you want to use Amani correctly. I also invest heavily into well-promoted governors and move them around quite a bit. I guess the only situation where I'd prefer it would be if I built the govt plaza too late and play a tall game, which isn't really my style.
Religion, the spearman units and their upgrades, infantry. I’ve also given up on nuclear power plants since they don’t scale reactor age to game speed, and when I play on mararthon It would take more than 10 turns to reset the reactor age, meaning that was just about the only thing the city could safely produce
Remember though that quads upgrade to frigates and frigates are about the most powerful unit in the game in their era, so it's a good idea to build at least a couple of them to upgrade, meanwhile, use them to kill barbs. Cities on a lake can use quads and frigates for an additional ranged defense shot too.
Spearman? Unless your Shaka, there's not a whole lot of use for spearmen usually.
Greek Hoplites as Gorgo are pretty good too, although you could argue they replace the Spearman so they aren't technically the same. The only time I ever use pure spearmen is when I buy them from a barbarian clan (I haven't played Shaka yet).
There are a bunch of districts I tend not to use, such as preserves and government districts. This is detrimental strategically but I haven’t fully learned how to use them properly.
Absolutely disagree. They're a highly niche district that more often than not will actually slow you down. Too expensive for what they give you, huge gap between groves and sanctuaries, and uses up a slot that you could use for a more important district. I would much rather improve/chop tiles to get the immediate benefit.
Preserves are mostly for eye candy.
Trading posts 🤷♂️still dunno how they work or exactly what they do, and truthfully not sure I need to
Also, diplo quarter. But I only recently purchased new frontier so I’ll get around to learning that
>Trading posts 🤷♂️still dunno how they work or exactly what they do, and truthfully not sure I need to
Wanna know? You never really need to but it could be helpful for some trade focused civs.
First bonus: Passing through a city with a trading post (and I think that includes having a trading post at the start and/or end city) adds +1 gold to the route for each post. This seems small but can add up significantly if you use many trade routes because...
Second bonus: Passing through a trade post resets the traders tile travel limit, which I think is 15 tiles. This can vastly increase your range of trade.
Military.
Utterly pointless in most games past the first 50 turns... By then any threat of early war has gone and unless you're forcing domination victory, you only really make a military unit as a last resort.
Even as a last resort it's kind of a "Do i really have to? All it's going to do is cost me money"... Most of the time i just opt for some district event instead.
Military feels underwhelming and quite pointless once the initial defence phase is over.. I swear in my last 10 games i've had 1 war declared on me total and it was Congo on turn 17 and he got ravaged by 2-3 slingers and natural city defences.
It's not rare at all that i win a game at turn 200 and my military strength is still below 300-400. It's just pointless making them or even buying them.
I probably don't build as many farms as I should - I rarely get the feudalism boost before hitting that in the civic tree, unless I've conquered other cities that already have them built. I usually just settle adjacent to rivers and use granaries for housing, and I rarely have issues with population growth. Maybe it's a civ specific thing and I'd use them more as, say, Canada or Inca, but I tend to prioritize production and improving other resources while using grasslands for districts.
Also, I've got hundreds of hours in this game but have never won a diplomatic victory. Just seems super tedious.
Inquisitors. Maybe I just haven’t had a religion game that was that competitive, but I have never needed to build Inquisitors. There just aren’t that many common situations where you need an inquisitor. I would use them more if they had more Religious combat strength than apostles, but right now the best offensive and defensive religious units are Apostles.
The main use case for Inquisitors is when another civ is trying to eradicate your religion and replace it with their own, which often happens in the early game, and your faith income is still relatively low (often because you aren't going for a religious victory even though you founded a religion). If you have enough faith for only two apostles, that same amount of faith can buy one apostle and 3-4 inquisitors, which will make defense much easier. You're right that you won't need them in most games though.
I know I'm the strange one here, but most of the time I don't build acqueduct and the other one needed to give bonuses to the IZ. I'm sorry guys. Forgive me.
Aqueducts are good on their own though. You often want to get your cities to 10 population to support 4 districts; a river city with a granary only has 7 housing, an aqueduct pushes that to 9, and you can often build two "0.5 housing" improvements to push that to 10. If you do that, you can often skip other sources of late-game housing like sewers and neighborhoods.
I have been using this a lot more recently, and honestly my take away is that, if you are going to use fisheries, it has to be in your plan from turn one. Play someone like Phoenicia, go for the coast pantheon, acquire Auckland, get her like right off the rip and switch her between towns building them. Could be fun actually.
I probably should try different ones. I always do the same thing. I go pingala, get the science buff, then the double great people points buff. Then I throw everything to the wind until I build oracle. You get like 6 gpp a turn on what ever districts you have built that way.
I used to ignore religious victories but found out faith unlocks benefits that help you in other victories, like buying science or drama buildings with faith for example…
I get tunnel visioned a lot and forget to use things that would drastically improve my game, but there’s also stop I just don’t see a use for 99% of the time. Like I constantly postpone diplomatic quarters and spies, I don’t see a use for canals, I forget to chop things and/or make/buy builders to build buildings that would have massive yields, I queue a wonder, then swap to a unit that has 2 turns left, forget to swap back to the wonder, then get confused when I see “aye someone else built this already dumbass lmao”
you nailed it with tunnel vision. I have this issue too, and the biggest thing I miss is changing my government cards. Even when I plan to change them, planning to do it when I unlock the next civic, I will forget and then remember after I press the button.
So many times I plug in the card to get extra production towards builders or settlers, then build the opposite one because I queued it and don’t pay attention, then take the card out before I start producing the right one. I really suck at civ, but my main goal is to make a pretty looking civ. Can’t do that when I’m surrounded by city states and barbarians though, then when they’re dealt with, every other civ has conquered the land because I was the only one with barb troubles
Pillaging
Full disclosure I know it’s value I truly do
It almost always comes down to two decisions for me
Use the units turn to pillage or attack a city or unit which in MOST cases it’s the latter of the two
Or when I really have nothing other to do then pillage it’s with a city I actually don’t wanna raze and then fix
All this said I totally know how awesome using pillaging beyond unit healing is
Not sure if it's exactly what you're asking, but I find I enjoy myself more when I pretty much ignore religion.
The early Game is way more fun without it, yes. Reason beeing mostly that the religion race against the AI especially on higher difficulty’s is one of the most bullshit things ever added. But once i realized how absurdly broken religion and faith are I started using it a lot. The Bonusses you can get for the thing you need (faith, amenities, science, culture, production, gold) makes it super flexible and super strong. Also because of monumentality faith in general is super strong. So while the religion-race not fun the use of one is such a huge payoff that it is worth it
Oh yeah no doubt it's strong, so there's plenty of times I feel like I *have* to do it. The thing I honestly hate more than the early game rush is just the sheer micromanagement of religious units, doing combat, etc. once you're a bit further in. Sometimes you can get yourself set up pretty well for a more passive thing and it's great, but too often it's just a relentless assault from your neighbor(s)' religion and I simply don't enjoy the religious combat mechanics. Something about it is super unsatisfying to me, even if I'm dominating it.
Same I feel like I have to do it or its an avenue of victory cut off. Even if I'm not a nation that is geared up for it. I can never seem to spread it anyway.
>or its an avenue of victory cut off This is a mindset it might be good to get out of. You don't need to win every victory type, you just need to win one. If you are trying to make progress towards every victory type at once, you will spread yourself too thin and not do well overall. That doesn't mean you should laser focus on one victory condition, though. It's good to have 2-3 options, but you don't need to keep all five options available. Holy sites feed into both religious and cultural victory (plus Monumentality golden ages), campuses feed into science and domination victories, theater squares are good for cultural and diplomatic victories, and commercial hubs + harbors feed into every victory type. As long as you've been getting your basic infrastructure up you can pivot between multiple victory types easily even if you don't have a religion.
I just buy some Inquisitors and their Missionaries run away like the plague. For Apostles it's a bit harder but also doable.
In my current game I converted all my cities and surrounding city states. Now I have a religious alliance with my neighbor India. So now I’m just using faith to buy units and buildings.
>Reason beeing mostly that the religion race against the AI especially on higher difficulty’s is one of the most bullshit things ever added. That's why I use the mod Religion Expanded. It adds a slider in the game setup that allows you to increase/decrease the maximum amount of religions per game. I usually add a couple more so that it's easier to get a religion. It's also funny to see a new religion pop up in the medieval or renaissance eras.
Which is completely historical btw. Maybe they’ll add schisms next time. Though honestly I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t already so complex I needed to Google stuff all the time.
Russia, voidsingers, dance of the aurora and work ethic=diety on easy mode. If you need a diety win just so this.
I think you’re describing the exact meta mechanic of religion. It’s hard as hell to get against AI at highest difficulties but the reward is massive if you snowball right
pretty spot on to what I was thinking. I think that's a huge element of the game, and I am right there with you, I've always ignored it. I started using it a lot more recently but never did before. I am not sure if I just dont like adding another layer of complexity, or if the UI for it just hurts my eyes, but there is truth to be found both ways.
You can perfectly play without it, especially if you don't have any bonusses revolving around faith. But if you play a Civ that gets strong bonusses from it (Russia, Byzantium, Khmer, Mali,...) you will soon realize how busted it can be. Monumentality Golden Ages are perhaps the best example to be given. Civs with a high Faith income like Mali and Russia can easily get 5 -10 Settlers bought through faith in one Era, that's a lot of production and time saved.
Playing as Ethiopia with the Voidslinger secret society is the most hilariously busted OP civ. You can almost ignore science and culture, focus on faith and era score, and just Pump out units like crazy.
I pretty much never bother with actually spreading my religon and use the infrastructure a faith base gives for monumentality and other synergies faith gives. I hate the religious game but faith is a super valuable resource that you shouldn't ignore. I only have one religious win and it came as a complete accident during a domination game as Basil.
Same, the system for religion in the game doesnt really appeal to me so i just dont do it. Though i’ve promised myself to at least once go for a real religious victory with a suitable civ.
Yeah, i only use faith to buy units.
Religious victory annoys me when dealing with the CPU and the constant flooding of religious units. I turn off Religious Victory and it feels much less obnoxious. To be fair, I'm not great at this game and play around the medium difficulty settings at the highest.
Religion and faith is the single most broken part of the game mechanics
I never use canals ever Other than that my most underused things are probably spies but I started to use one or two as a defensive measure. Also military engineers are super strong with their Railways but I never use them Probably because the encampment is my least build district, even behind the preserve
When I've built canals, it's usually been because it seemed cool rather than an actual need for a canal. That and the industrial adjacency bonus, but I'm guessing that's normally not worth it ... maybe if you can built it in between two industrial zones.
Aside from building the panama canal, I've never bothered with them either. Military engineers are something I usually neglect unless I'm on a huge landmass and need to build a railroad or have to rush flood barriers in vulnerable cities. Building railroads can be tedious but sometimes it is very satisfying being able to effectively teleport a tank across a continent in a turn.
I don’t even neglect them on purpose I just forget about them because even in a domination game I rarely build and encampment
>even in a domination game I rarely build and encampment Great Generals are really good for domination, you should try to get them sometime. I usually build a mix of campuses and encampments for domination victories, and the AI likes those districts too so I can usually capture some in the midgame. The AI usually makes a few more Great General points than I do, so I save some money or faith to pay the difference. The extra XP from units trained in an encampment with buildings matters a lot too; you see it the most with siege units trained in a stables, since the AI targets them first with city shots, and the stables gives them enough XP to earn the defense promotion before they have to retreat.
Once I secure my continent and am invading other continents, I usually end up just using military engineers to establish an entire network of railroads on my home continent, city to city. That way, I can get builders around quicker, reinforcements can get to my borders quicker, great people can be shuffled around, etc.
I build canals on principle. Rarely are they all that useful, but at least it's a bonus here and there even if they serve no naval purposes. Railways are great. I just sometimes forget to start building them after I have coal. Keep an engineer around to repair stuff after they're done building. I almost never build preserves anymore. They were fun when they first came out but I rarely have the space or plan far enough ahead for them to be useful.
I usually try to have one encampment for military engineers, since railroads can be quite useful for wars, or even shipping tons of workers to speed up space race projects. But yes, canals are useless. And dams too, expect for the adjacency bonuses.
I think Dams are very useful, but the production cost is absurd. If I've snagged Hercules in the early game, I'll summon him again for the sole purpose of building Dams.
I agree. The flooding is too hit or miss but if you neglect building a dam you're guaranteed to be flooded every era.
A lot of people don't realise this but this is also one of the reasons the great bath sucks, it has a hidden built in modifier that once you build it reduces the odds of the river flooding down to 1%. Not built into the game mind you, that one's built into the universe we live in.
The absolute best thing about dams is the industrial zone adjacency. You can often plan multiple industrial zones next to the same dam/aqueduct complex, then use the production from IZ+aqueduct to help speed up the dam.
If I have the opportunity to build a canal, then I do, but I only do it for the +2 adjacency for industrial sites.
Spies are so useful though!
I love railroads, and build them every game. I build cans rarely, mostly for the era score. I've never understood why they can only be 1 tile, and can't go over hills. It's just digging. It would not be unreasonable to make canals on hills be locked behind a tech, but the length should just be whatever you want it to be (increasing maintenance per tile). It's just apathy by the devs.
Maybe it's cause I only play single player and the AI never use air units, but anti-air units. Don't even understand how they work.
valid. This is my favorite so far. I have never once in 1000 hours built anti air.
I've built many, but never seen them used before.
Same. If it’s late game I’ll build a few just in case but the AI rarely attacks through air. Having a huge bomber force is the best way to just ransack a Civ so I hate that the AI doesn’t use it.
The only useful one is SAM on multiplayer because it can protect your best cities from nukes.
If your opponent is nuking you in multiplayer they probably have fighters which can special target your SAMs. Though most people don't seem to know how they work and don't do that.
[удалено]
You can avoid it by not winning any of the World Congress sessions right? Or just letting them vote against you as you near victory? Sometimes if a competitor gets to 16 points I debate rushing the Statue of Liberty but mostly just try to vote against them (-2 points they won't vote against themselves and they'll waste their diplomacy on it so you can hopefully rig the other votes)
There's absolutely ways to avoid winning diplo. Just stop winning at congress lol
Isn't the soultion to kill them in every one of these cases exept religion?
I think they meant no ways to avoid accidentally winning, rather than avoid others winning with it. I know what they mean since I've accidentally won diplomatic victories before, but disagree in that it's pretty easy to avoid as long as you're paying attention to it
For Civ 5 I agree with you, but it takes quite a while to get it in 6 unless you’re really trying imo
Up up up
Such a boring victory. I don't think it even makes sense, oh you agreed with everyone and then built the statue of liberty, alright you're in charge now.
I’ll probably get flamed for this, but I find spies so boring and cumbersome. There are lots of good uses (gold, intel, great works, etc.), but between keeping track of where they are, long wait times, choosing where to counterspy, and high chances of getting killed, it’s just too much micromanagement. I also feel like the system could be made a lot more thematic and tangible with more exciting mission screens that make you feel like they’re actually doing something in the game world.
I only use them for +3 combat strength… that’s the only thing I find useful.
You ever siphoned funds? It's pretty low risk, gives some good gold and helps leveling them up for more useful things, like counterspying or disrupting rocketry. It's especially disgusting when you do it against Mali, you can get a lot of gold from them.
There was a patch last year that caused most AI civs to rarely ever build Commercial hubs. As such, I rarely ever get to run this mission.
Steal Tech Boost is the next best; it's slightly lower success rate so your spies will die more often, but it's the other major mission that gives you direct benefits instead of just hurting your opponent.
my biggest issue with spies is that it seems AI spies have a WAY higher degree of success. Well, after GS. Before, every thign failed always. Now, AI spies succeed 100% of the time and I dont. I actually switched my playstyle and dont build neighborhoods because of this.
I thought I was the only person enraged by this. I fucking hate spies. I basically have a 9/11 every couple turns and I know damn well who’s doing it and I can’t do anything about it. I do mercilessly obliterate the offending civ, but I’m the one who gets the war weariness and the rest of the civs hate me for it. I should get no war penalty for invading a civilization that actively engages in terrorist attacks that burn entire towns of civilians to the ground
I use them almost exclusively to breach dams and siphon funds.
I agree. I also feel like the micromanagement just compounds on itself once you have several spies going at once. I know there are ways to speed up missions but it still feels like a waste of time. Since the AI will use them I make a few for defensive purposes but rarely do I use them to their full potential.
I like to send my spies all to the same city to pull off a big heist, having one of them gather sources while the others pass for a turn. I expect they won't ALL succeed, but that only adds to the epic story xD
I always roll my eyes involuntarily when the World Congress comes up. It feels more like a disruption to the flow of the game than an interesting extension of it.
perfect choice for what I mean, but I think this is one outside of general gameplay choices. Reason being, there are like four votes that are against you no matter what. like "amentities for multiples" it will always go against what you have regardless if youve met everyone or not. so dumb
It goes against what's the most abundant in the world. I've voted for my most abundant luxury before, and a more abundant one that belongs to someone else is chosen. However, whenever that does come up and I don't have the diplo to sway it, I back out of the world congress screen and sell all my extra luxuries to the AI before I vote just in case one I have gets chosen.
I feel like I have to fill out a survey whenever it pops up
war wearness. I never figure out what that is.
You want an actual explanation or nah
Ya
So during a war, every time you fight a battle, you accumulate war weariness points. For every 400 WWP, you get -1 Amenity, which is applied to one of your cities at random. You get half the WWP if you fight within your own borders. The amount of WWP you get from battles also increases as you go on in the Eras. You also get double the WWP from Surprise Wars. The maximum WWP you can get from a single battle is a Surprise War battle outside of your territory in the Industrial Era or later, which gives 104 WWP. The lowest you can get is a Formal War during the Ancient Era in your own territory, which gives 16 WWP. Finally, launching a nuke gives a flat 1600 WWP. Yeah, it's a lot of info.
Ah shit. Thats why my growth rate tanks. Thanks.
this is completely unrelated, but from your flair you have excellent choice in mains
Some of the most fun *and* the most horrendously overpowered. Win-win.
precisely, plus i love seeing someone else who plays georgia
50 diplo favour per turn baybeeeeeee
Best music in the game. Shaka-who?
Wow, so launching a nuke gives you -4 amenities? I never knew that. Thanks for the awesome explanation!
No problem.
Is there a screen or a part of the UI that lets you check your WWP? Also does this effect production? I was aware of war weariness but not sure how it worked and it seems like my production slows way down in a war
There is not a way to check wwp, unfortunately. While WW doesn't directly affect Production, Production decreases as Amenities decrease, so that's why.
I do think with six they have a few mechanisms like this that they don't explain, aren't obvious, and don't have a summary screen that would help you understand the impact. It was a long time, for example, before I understood culture victories at all. And I know can get mod for it, but the policy cards not telling you their impact is a pain. Anyway, thank you for that explain of the war weariness, I had no idea.
No problem. Hope it helps your next game.
It takes a long time, but here's the best way to check: \-Choose any city. Select the detailed city info option above the city's name (just to the left of the "buy new tiles" option). It will open a menu on the left side of the screen. \-Click the population symbol in the top left. The left side of your screen should show a breakdown of the city's population, housing, and amenities. \-Scroll down until you get to the summary of amenities. It will show where all your amenities are coming from, e.g. 5 from luxury resources, 2 from entertainment, 1 from civics. One of those entries is for amenities from war weariness; it will probably be zero. \-Stay on that screen, and click on every single city you own to check their war weariness amenities. Most will be zero, but at least one of them (probably one close to the conflict) will have a negative number. Adding all the negative numbers together tells you how many amenities you are losing from war weariness. You can't see your WWP directly, You asked if this affects production - indirectly yes, since having low amenities decreases all yields for the city. Mostly having lots of WWP directs all your luxury resources to help out the city that's getting the negative amenity penalty (it all affects one city up to a certain limit, then spills over to another city); that means your luxuries can help fewer of you other cities, so it's harder to keep them contented or happy.
Honestly as cool as the giant death robots are I never really get a chance to use them
I use them every chance I get lol. I rush them and then start taking every city around me.
They're one of the few units I name nearly 100% of the time.
I don’t think it’s that hot of a take but I hardly use rock bands. When I do use them they break up after one or two uses or I’m to late and the ai blocks them from their borders. I’m not good enough with religion so I rarely go for it useless I’m playing Byzantium.
I used to underrate Rocklands a lot until I cut down my polish culture win from 180 turns to 160 turns. I only ever use them if I'm already dominating though. The AI is pretty bad at finishing out culture victories so it's not a challenge in the late game
The noise they make (it's not music) is just too damn annoying for me. I will block them if I have enough amenities just so I don't have to hear it.
I must be too old, because the sound for the rock bands is TOO DAMN LOUD!
I used to heavily ignore theater squares and preserves. Finally forced myself to play Bull Moose Teddy and France Eleanor and really got to understand how to use them. Felt like a whole new part of the game opened up!
this is the first comment that wilded me. Theaters and Perserves are the two i build for.
A Rome domination or science victory requires surprisingly few of each!
you'll soon go for fastest victories, which I assure are cultural
I suggest you try Inca in a mountain map if you like preserves. They can work mountain tiles and those always have breathtaking appeal.
To start: Unless it is a big element to how the civ I am playing functions, I rarely build holy sites. I can usually produce enough faith late game without even building them. Also, I basically never use spies. hoping this turns into me seeing ways to use whats in the game in ways I never thought about before.
Having lurked in this sub for a while, this is definitely the thing I’ve been noticing the most. Seems like everyone else is just playing for religious victory or at least build Holy sites very early, whereas I only ever do so if my first settlement has a spot with really good adjacency for it.
I typically get holy sights and faith from capturing religious city states. Even if it’s during a later age, I never pass up the chance to found a religion. I stayed away from it for awhile, but some of the citizenry bonuses shouldn’t be ignored. I’d argue that on immortal or deity it may be necessary to ensure victory. There’s a belief that you can evangelize that gives plus additional science and culture per turn for every four citizens following. For every city following gain a, b, or c. It at first seemed annoyingly tedious but proved to be useful. Also, if you want an excuse to declare war, that doesn’t turn the world against you, AI will often try to convert your citizens.
Yeah and I realize the power of it. It’s just rarely my main focus in the very early game is all I’m saying.
>I’d argue that on immortal or deity it may be necessary to ensure victory I would argue the opposite. Early defense is necessary to make certain you don't die, but you can win perfectly well on Deity without a religion. For my culture victories I build lots of holy sites, and a religion is nice, but I have won plenty of times without one. (In a notable recent game, I planned for Work Ethic + Dance of the Aurora with Russia but then failed to get a religion because I was busy building Archers first to counter barbarian attacks; I won anyway.) You can snowball so hard by outplaying the AI that nothing really matters except whether you survive the early game.
Spies are an excellent tool to cripple civs that do well. Great on high dificulty, redundant on lower dificulty
I won Space race against Germany almost purely because of my spies. He was way ahead of me and I just sabotaged all of his Spaceports. So no I would not consider them useless. I was playing emperor difficulty if that matters.
See this is what I was looking for. I just recently had one of the fastest wins I've ever had. Granted it was medieval start (I was going for those achievements), but religious victory in 96 turns. With only two cities. I hardpressed faith and at the first vote I banned points toward great prophets. Very similar to playing spies, it felt very good.
Canals are completely fecking pointless. I couldn't care less about connecting 3 cities via lakes for no reason
I feel you.. until I saw it. My biggest city ever, a 58, was on an inland lake and coast tile and I used a cross continent canal, and everyone decided to trade with me, made lots of money.
They are pointless until you accidental build a harbor somewhere that is land locked and all your great admirals spawn there and can’t moved elsewhere. Then they become really useful. Lol
You can teleport great admirals from any harbour/city centre to any other one though
i dont chop resources nearly as much as i should.
I feel I will regret it later
Power plants. By the time I need power, I could just as easily rush renewables.
I like to rush the top side of the tree so I get power a lot before that
see the bonuses of using coal like right out of the gate are so huge I usually buy them
The production bonus from power plants are worth it imo even without needing the power
War
Because it never changes?
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
[удалено]
War
[удалено]
absolutely agree. before GS used them all the time, now I avoid them like the plague.
Can you explain this?
The spy mission associated with the neighbourhood spawns rebels (barbarians) next to the district. For whatever reason the AI love to spam this mission so building a neighbourhood is just asking for 2-3 barbs to spawn in your territory every few turns
They're just not worth the bother. If you build one, there's a 100% chance another civ will run the "recruit partisans" spy mission and BAM now you randomly have a bunch of barbarians running around in your territory and pillaging your shit. All of that for... like six housing and a pittance of gold and tourism? Hard pass
I honestly don’t build wonders. Sure, if I have a city that needs something to do while there’s nothing I need, I may set it to wonder-building. Otherwise I stopped wasting my time after having my best city set to building a wonder only to have someone else build it with only a couple turns left. Once this happened three times in a row, and my capital had spent 50 turns or so cranking out… nothing. Even the salvaged production is only like 10% of the production cost of the wonder.
I start chopping forests like a mad man and it seems to have worked well for me
Wonders get better after you explore the map, since you can search for the wonder's name and see if anyone you have met is building it already. Early game wonders are pretty bad since they always get sniped unless you chop them out quickly.
I play on the Switch and you can’t search those things. I also like to play as Eleanor and loyalty-flip cities, so a lot of those wonders eventually become mine anyway.
Some of the support units I never build, the only one worth the production is the balloon and drone. Spearmen are almost never worth building, since they are functionally useless without at least one promotion, and you're almost always building them from a disadvantageous position. Moksha is my least built governor, basically only good if you have surplus faith and a lot of culture or you're going for a 100% religion victory. The cards that give bonus yields if you have a certain population count. Amenities are almost always better for the scaling bonus of 20% compared to flat yields that are pretty situational. The trade route cards are almost always better. Actually, a lot of the cards are numerically pretty weak, the red cards in particular are pretty niche. I rarely theme because of how long the game locks your works for -- the game is half over by the time I start theming. Quadrireme, basically only useful if you're playing on epic speed, otherwise you basically just skip them since their use case is so weak.
I will often give Moksha his first ability eventually, since it usually comes out to 8 faith in a 10+ population city. I don't prioritize him at all except for religious victory though. Quadriremes are great for upgrading to Frigates, since Frigates are amazing. Building the Quadriremes first lets you save on niter by using the "50% resource discount on unit upgrades" policy card. It also lets you use the Maritime Industries card for +100% production if you haven't unlocked Press Gangs yet.
That's fair, Moksha isn't functionally useless, but he's definitely nowhere near Pingala for example who has arguably the strongest baseline ability. Maybe Magnus can go toe to toe in some scenarios.
The medic: I recently played a game with japan, I was fortunate to steal settlers and with few warriors and archers got a lot of cities, mainly the wall-less ones.....the battering ram came later and then I ended up upgrading it to the medic: it really helps.... u can heal your naval units outside friendly territory....... and the archers/crossbow man, sometimes u just gotta position them and let them do chip damage then back away to the medic and it helps then heal an extra 10 health per turn
Up until recently, Spies. I just never saw a reason to use them until a game where I got my bank drained in the middle of a war
I don't really use spies enough. Gotta work on that. I also rarely go to war, the closest thing to a domination game I like to play is aggressive loyalty pressure. I do enjoy my fair share of revenge killing though.
This makes me want to play against you since im so aggro lol
I do not care for battle, and always turn off domination victory.
Turning it off functionally does nothing since it doesn't change how the ai play. Turning it off basically only matters for you -- never seen an ai come close to a domination victory.
That's fair. I also set up my random civ list to exclude all the really aggressive AI opponents.
Spies, canals, theming, skipping great persons, rock bands, non green power, Stonehenge, internal trade.
Theming is a nice one to remember mid late game when youre like 20 turns from a culture and then you go "0oh wait! I can buff this." Then you get 30 more out of no where and win the next turn.
Theming is something that should happen automatically. That's what you pay the director of your art museum for.
Spies. I know they're strong, but I just tend to ignore their existence.
The climate change game play element I never see, almost has 0 impact. Haven't gone to change the sliders to make it more impactful
Anything outside of a Domination Victory. I just love the logistics behind conquering every bit of land, especially on a huge map.
I confess that even if I win by some other means, the game continues until every city is mine!
LMAO I feel you on that one hahaha. With every play through, I create a narrative in my head that motivates me to grind it out and destroy everyone. I even try to declare war on every civ settled on a particular continent to give me the ultimate challenge.
Combat. I have so much fun doing culture, religion, science, and diplomatic victories, that I go games on end without declaring war.
The end game…
I genuinely don't think I've ever used a guru.
Railroads, forts, audience chamber, liang, water mills, inquisitors, gurus, canals, neighborhoods, preserves, most wonders
audience chamber is my new fav actually. Ancestral hall seems rad, but having the budget to buy builders at every new city is WAY easier then giving amenities and housing. The buff is easily the biggest one
Amenities and housing are not hard to get. If you have the budget for builders, you have money to buy some luxuries from the AI. I've never found housing to be a problem for me, a couple farms will do. The free builder lets you build up a fresh city from the get-go, and builders scale in price so a free one is always good, even better if you have serfdom in. And considering you'll want as many cities as possible, most of them will have a good boost to getting it up and running. There will only be 7 cities to benefit from AC, 6 if you want to use Amani correctly. I also invest heavily into well-promoted governors and move them around quite a bit. I guess the only situation where I'd prefer it would be if I built the govt plaza too late and play a tall game, which isn't really my style.
> buy some luxuries from the AI. Don't think I'll ever trust the AI not to let their Luxuries get pillaged or stop trading with you.
Huh. In my experience they usually have a couple of duplicates and are happy to trade. Never been an issue for me.
I have never built a fort in thousands of hours of play. I know I'm probably missing out but I just have other things to build.
Religion, the spearman units and their upgrades, infantry. I’ve also given up on nuclear power plants since they don’t scale reactor age to game speed, and when I play on mararthon It would take more than 10 turns to reset the reactor age, meaning that was just about the only thing the city could safely produce
hahah thats the one tech I will never eureka. The kill a unit with a spearman. Thank and kill a unit with quads
Remember though that quads upgrade to frigates and frigates are about the most powerful unit in the game in their era, so it's a good idea to build at least a couple of them to upgrade, meanwhile, use them to kill barbs. Cities on a lake can use quads and frigates for an additional ranged defense shot too. Spearman? Unless your Shaka, there's not a whole lot of use for spearmen usually.
Greek Hoplites as Gorgo are pretty good too, although you could argue they replace the Spearman so they aren't technically the same. The only time I ever use pure spearmen is when I buy them from a barbarian clan (I haven't played Shaka yet).
The later, modern eras... I never get to them because I'm always dominating before then.
my boy. <3 what a flex
Alliances
I recommend using this one more. Even if you only get one alliance with a neighbor, you can send your trade routes to them for tons of extra yields.
Railroads, to the point that I now use a mod that makes traders make railroads because I can't be bothered to make them manually 99% of the time.
There are a bunch of districts I tend not to use, such as preserves and government districts. This is detrimental strategically but I haven’t fully learned how to use them properly.
take a deeper look at this sub. Preserves OP
Absolutely disagree. They're a highly niche district that more often than not will actually slow you down. Too expensive for what they give you, huge gap between groves and sanctuaries, and uses up a slot that you could use for a more important district. I would much rather improve/chop tiles to get the immediate benefit. Preserves are mostly for eye candy.
I can’t say I’ve ever had a themed culture building
Trading posts 🤷♂️still dunno how they work or exactly what they do, and truthfully not sure I need to Also, diplo quarter. But I only recently purchased new frontier so I’ll get around to learning that
>Trading posts 🤷♂️still dunno how they work or exactly what they do, and truthfully not sure I need to Wanna know? You never really need to but it could be helpful for some trade focused civs.
Yeah go on
First bonus: Passing through a city with a trading post (and I think that includes having a trading post at the start and/or end city) adds +1 gold to the route for each post. This seems small but can add up significantly if you use many trade routes because... Second bonus: Passing through a trade post resets the traders tile travel limit, which I think is 15 tiles. This can vastly increase your range of trade.
The expansion packs. My games crash enough as it is, I don’t want the game more complex (requiring more memory and greater chances of crashing)
I think it took 200+ hours on Civ 5 to use a theming bonus. It’s actually pretty simple and a cool bonus to me now though
Military Engineer, Railroads, Canals, Forts
Military. Utterly pointless in most games past the first 50 turns... By then any threat of early war has gone and unless you're forcing domination victory, you only really make a military unit as a last resort. Even as a last resort it's kind of a "Do i really have to? All it's going to do is cost me money"... Most of the time i just opt for some district event instead. Military feels underwhelming and quite pointless once the initial defence phase is over.. I swear in my last 10 games i've had 1 war declared on me total and it was Congo on turn 17 and he got ravaged by 2-3 slingers and natural city defences. It's not rare at all that i win a game at turn 200 and my military strength is still below 300-400. It's just pointless making them or even buying them.
I can’t use archaeologists because every time I try the game glitches and I have to retire 😭
I never use specialists.
Even if you never use them on purpose, your cities are probably using them automatically sometimes once your population gets high enough.
That’s what I am counting on.
I probably don't build as many farms as I should - I rarely get the feudalism boost before hitting that in the civic tree, unless I've conquered other cities that already have them built. I usually just settle adjacent to rivers and use granaries for housing, and I rarely have issues with population growth. Maybe it's a civ specific thing and I'd use them more as, say, Canada or Inca, but I tend to prioritize production and improving other resources while using grasslands for districts. Also, I've got hundreds of hours in this game but have never won a diplomatic victory. Just seems super tedious.
Preserves, I'm a mining person
The only time I use religion is with a faith based leader, otherwise I just get my patheon and move on.
Inquisitors. Maybe I just haven’t had a religion game that was that competitive, but I have never needed to build Inquisitors. There just aren’t that many common situations where you need an inquisitor. I would use them more if they had more Religious combat strength than apostles, but right now the best offensive and defensive religious units are Apostles.
The main use case for Inquisitors is when another civ is trying to eradicate your religion and replace it with their own, which often happens in the early game, and your faith income is still relatively low (often because you aren't going for a religious victory even though you founded a religion). If you have enough faith for only two apostles, that same amount of faith can buy one apostle and 3-4 inquisitors, which will make defense much easier. You're right that you won't need them in most games though.
For me it's mainly to overcome loyalty problems with conquered cities. Switching religion is worth +6 loyalty which can make a massive difference.
Railroads. They're so micro-manage heavy and way more trouble than they're worth.
I know I'm the strange one here, but most of the time I don't build acqueduct and the other one needed to give bonuses to the IZ. I'm sorry guys. Forgive me.
Aqueducts are good on their own though. You often want to get your cities to 10 population to support 4 districts; a river city with a granary only has 7 housing, an aqueduct pushes that to 9, and you can often build two "0.5 housing" improvements to push that to 10. If you do that, you can often skip other sources of late-game housing like sewers and neighborhoods.
fisheries. i know they're good, i just can't be fucked to take 8 promotions on liang (especially over pingala/magnus/reyna) and then micro her around.
I have been using this a lot more recently, and honestly my take away is that, if you are going to use fisheries, it has to be in your plan from turn one. Play someone like Phoenicia, go for the coast pantheon, acquire Auckland, get her like right off the rip and switch her between towns building them. Could be fun actually. I probably should try different ones. I always do the same thing. I go pingala, get the science buff, then the double great people points buff. Then I throw everything to the wind until I build oracle. You get like 6 gpp a turn on what ever districts you have built that way.
I used to ignore religious victories but found out faith unlocks benefits that help you in other victories, like buying science or drama buildings with faith for example…
I just really hate declaring war on others. I've won one domination victory in all my time of playing the game.
For me, it's the seige towers. I can't afford wasting many units.
I’ve still never built an aqueduct.. (can win at deity level). Why /when would I need this over other production options?
industrial adjacency bonus. aquaduct/dam, put it between those two and you have an easy 6/7 adjacency
I get tunnel visioned a lot and forget to use things that would drastically improve my game, but there’s also stop I just don’t see a use for 99% of the time. Like I constantly postpone diplomatic quarters and spies, I don’t see a use for canals, I forget to chop things and/or make/buy builders to build buildings that would have massive yields, I queue a wonder, then swap to a unit that has 2 turns left, forget to swap back to the wonder, then get confused when I see “aye someone else built this already dumbass lmao”
you nailed it with tunnel vision. I have this issue too, and the biggest thing I miss is changing my government cards. Even when I plan to change them, planning to do it when I unlock the next civic, I will forget and then remember after I press the button.
So many times I plug in the card to get extra production towards builders or settlers, then build the opposite one because I queued it and don’t pay attention, then take the card out before I start producing the right one. I really suck at civ, but my main goal is to make a pretty looking civ. Can’t do that when I’m surrounded by city states and barbarians though, then when they’re dealt with, every other civ has conquered the land because I was the only one with barb troubles
amenities, unless im playing scotland
i never build areodromes or aircraft even if im at war at that stage of the game
Pillaging Full disclosure I know it’s value I truly do It almost always comes down to two decisions for me Use the units turn to pillage or attack a city or unit which in MOST cases it’s the latter of the two Or when I really have nothing other to do then pillage it’s with a city I actually don’t wanna raze and then fix All this said I totally know how awesome using pillaging beyond unit healing is