Realms Beyond Forum

Quickly opening up a thread. I'll post some thoughts on civ choices tomorrow.

All lurkers wanted, ded or alive. Make yourselves comfortable.

Right.

So we're using the continents map script which will place us on two large islands, 3 civs on each. We can expect the islands to be separated by ocean.

The successful civilization will need to find a working balance between army and navy. In particular, a strong navy will almost certainly decide the conclusion of the game. The seeds for this will necessarily be sown relatively early: it is much easier to build galleys and quadriremes and upgrade than to build better ships. However early on the focus must necessarily be on land combat. There will be plenty of non-coastal areas to claim and to defend against two rivals on the same continent, and probably only limited opportunity to use ships against those opponents early on.

Of course the ideal game would involve quickly dominating your own continent, then producing lots of ships and defeating the other continent, which would hopefully still be squabbling. I don't see that as a likely outcome of this game though: it's just too hard to win a war in a 3-sided situation. As soon as you start doing well, you'll face a 2v1. Alternatively, it's possible that 2 civs might co-ordinate to destory a third, but then they'd immediately be at loggerheads.

Rather than this scenario, I see it as more likely that the early game will be about claiming the most and best land and being able to enforce that claim through strength of arms. A decisive developmental and economic lead might give the chance for an opportunity to attack a weaker civilization that is a generation behind in technology without being exposed to danger from a 2v1 situation.

Well, that's one theory, anyway.

I need to provide an ordered list of 6 civs I want to play. Right now I have 8 civs on my shortlist, unordered:

• Arabia
  
• Brazil
  
• China
  
• Germany
  
• Japan
  
• Norway
  
• Rome
  
• Russia
  

Regulars will recognise these as the most powerful economic civs combined with some civs that give a naval advantage. (Note that Sumeria, Scythia and England are banned for this game, and we're playing with base civs + Aztecs only.)

Next up, I'll look at these civs in greater detail.

Arabia
Arabia has a strong science and religion focus. It eventually wants a holy site and a campus in as many cities as possible because its unique university provides extra faith while its leader power provides bonus science, faith and culture in any city with its religion-specific worship building (which is also made super-cheap).

All this takes until the renaissance to really get going, before which Arabia has very few advantages. If still in the running at that point, with the necessary infrastructure in place, Arabia can become a monster. That's a big if though.

No naval advantages at all.


Brazil
Brazil has a focus on amenities and great people, using its unique entertainment district. Not really the strongest of civs, with only very weak economic advantages. Brazil is in this list because of its monster unique battleship, the Minas Geraes. This ship becomes available well before the normal timing for battleships and has extra strength to go with it. Regular battleships rule the sea at the worst of times, so an early, stronger battleship forces opponents to field a much larger navy if they hope to contain it.

If Brazil can get all the way to its unique unit in a competitive position and with a sizable group of frigates ready to upgrade, it could dominate the seas and win the game. Again, that's a really big if given the lack of economic help.


China
A true power civ in multiplayer, China gets two huge advantages. First all tech and civic boosts are worth 60% instead of 50% of the total cost. The total value of this over the course of a game is difficult to overstate. Second China can spend builder charges to build ancient and classical wonders (15% of total cost per charge, modified by production modifiers). This gives a virtual lock on wonders through the early game, as few players will be willing to risk such a vast amount of production for a wonder that China is presumed to be chasing and might finish at any moment.
Oh, China gets an extra charge on all builders too, which is a really strong advantage by itself. Particularly when combined with the same boost from the Pyramids.

China does need to take care not to spend too much time on wonders and too little time on expansion, military and other development. Its cities are very tempting prizes, after all.

No direct naval advantages, though a couple of early wonders provide some boosts here.


Germany
Germany is an extremely strong civ for production and gold thanks to its unique industrial zone, which is cheap and pretty much demands to be placed next to as many commercial hubs as possible. Given time to get this all going (the late medieval era, typically), Germany will be able to produce more of whatever it wants than its rivals.
It also has a useful early-game bonus in the form of +7 strength against city states, and a nice game-long advantage of an extra military policy slot in all governments.

Germany's game plan has to be to build up military early on and conquer a couple of nearby city states before anyone else (except the Aztecs) can even contemplate it. The lead in development this gives should be used to reach key scientific targets early and dissuade aggression until the vast production and gold income comes online.

They need to make sure they don't neglect science and culture in their urgency to follow their main game plan. They also have something of a target painted on them as a civilization not to allow to come into its full power.

They have one naval advantage, the unique U-boat. This is cheaper than a regular submarine, with a strength bonus when fighting on ocean tiles. Not game changing, but not to be trifled with.

Japan
Japan has a very strong economy thanks to extra adjacency bonuses for all districts from being next to other districts. No longer does terrain adjacency matter much, you just want to cluster as many districts together as possible into a giant urban sprawl. To synergise with this, Japan also gets half cost encampments, holy sites and theatre squares.

The gameplan is unsurprisingly to use the incredible economy to snowball as hard as possible. Japan can lay claim to the first great general, whcih should make them tough to conquer.

Navally, the Japanese do have one big advantage: +5 combat strength in shallow water (and for land units adjacent to the sea). This is really strong on a fully water map, but not to be sniffed at here.


Norway
Norway is a dreadful civ, frankly. It has no economic advantages at all and nothing with any value for fighting on land.

Norway's only place is on water maps. The longship is a faster, more powerful replacement for the galley. All Norwegian naval melee units have the ability to do coastal raids (i.e. pillage undefended coastal tiles for the regular value). These combine to be a terror on full water maps, though they are less valuable here.

The big boost on this map is +50% when building naval melee units. Combined with maritime industries, that means +150% . If you've been following the recent meta, what that really means is vast chop output. Almost everything a coastal or near-coastal Norwegian city builds early on should be with overflow from chopping longships. That gives a strong navy, plus whatever else you might want to build. Other civs can do this at +100% of course, which is still powerful but not quite so supercharged.

Worth it compared to the other civs on offer? Probably not, but it might sneak into my list.


Rome
Another of the multiplayer power civs, this time with a gold, culture and population focus with a side order of military. Rome gets a free monument in every self-founded city, powering a huge early culture lead and quick border expansion. The Romans also get road connections from every city (founded or captured) back to the capital and free trade posts, with extra from trade routes passing through these trade posts. Then there are the baths, cheaper than a regular aqueduct with a housing and amenity bonus, which mean all your cities can smoothly grow larger than those of your rivals. Lastly, the Roman legions are more powerful than swords, if a bit more expensive.

So all in all a grab bag of nice abilities that work together to form a great civilization. They don't have any naval advantages, so would be looking to win by snowball.


Russia
Russia is another very powerful civ for multiplayer, with a strong religious focus. Cheap unique holy sites provide a virtual lock on the first prophet of the game, which will give some excellent military or economic advantages. Russian cities have bonus territory granted as they are founded (or conquered, I think), freeing up the choice of city sites a little or saving money on tile purchases. The cossack is an incredible industrial era unit, very strong and with the ability to carry on moving after an attack. Waves of cossacks rule the battlefield on land, if you can get that far.

Russia has no naval advantages, so would have to look to its religion for an economic advantage and the commensurate strong military. I guess it would be hoping to grow quickly and stay competitive until the industrial age, when it would roll over its neighbours. Feels pretty slow.

Conclusions

Civ	Economy	Skill	Navy	Overall Rating
Rome	Very strong	Easy	Very weak	8
Japan	Strong	Medium	Strong	8
Germany	Strong	Medium	Average	8
China	Very strong	Difficult	Weak	8
Russia	Strong	Medium	Very weak	6
Brazil	Weak	Difficult	Strong	5
Norway	Very weak	Medium	Very strong	4
Arabia	Average	Difficult	Very weak	2

As you can see, I'm having some trouble deciding about the top of the order. If I have any ded-lurkers about, any thoughts or suggestions?

You have!

(May 18th, 2018, 09:29)rho21 Wrote: [ -> ]Brazil
Brazil has a focus on amenities and great people, using its unique entertainment district. Not really the strongest of civs, with only very weak economic advantages. Brazil is in this list because of its monster unique battleship, the Minas Geraes. This ship becomes available well before the normal timing for battleships and has extra strength to go with it. Regular battleships rule the sea at the worst of times, so an early, stronger battleship forces opponents to field a much larger navy if they hope to contain it.

If Brazil can get all the way to its unique unit in a competitive position and with a sizable group of frigates ready to upgrade, it could dominate the seas and win the game. Again, that's a really big if given the lack of economic help.

The increased adjacency bonus from jungles can also mean an early science lead. You'll want to chop them eventually, but getting a leg up in the early turns is pretty good. Unfortunately, the map has to play along here, but if it does, things can get pretty ridiculous. In my last game with Brazil, I placed a +5 campus, with two mountains and three jungles. (And one of the jungles was on a hill with diamonds, so I could mine it without chopping.)

Didn't the Minas Geraes come too late in PBEM4 to do much of anything, though?

(May 18th, 2018, 09:29)rho21 Wrote: [ -> ]Norway
Norway is a dreadful civ, frankly. It has no economic advantages at all and nothing with any value for fighting on land.

Norway's only place is on water maps. The longship is a faster, more powerful replacement for the galley. All Norwegian naval melee units have the ability to do coastal raids (i.e. pillage undefended coastal tiles for the regular value). These combine to be a terror on full water maps, though they are less valuable here.

The big boost on this map is +50% when building naval melee units. Combined with maritime industries, that means +150% . If you've been following the recent meta, what that really means is vast chop output. Almost everything a coastal or near-coastal Norwegian city builds early on should be with overflow from chopping longships. That gives a strong navy, plus whatever else you might want to build. Other civs can do this at +100% of course, which is still powerful but not quite so supercharged.

Worth it compared to the other civs on offer? Probably not, but it might sneak into my list.

The bonus production is even better than it looks, because of the way those production multipliers stack. Having +50% means that your output gets multiplied by 1.5 and stacking +100% on top of that means the whole thing gets multiplied by 2 again. So the total multiplier is 3, or +200% ! (And now calculate what pre-patch Magnus would do with that, and weep.)

All in all, it's probably still not worth it to put it high on your list, but it really might deserve to sneak in on the lower end.

Personally, I'd probably put Rome in the top spot because I agree that it's easiest to play. But I'm pretty sure you'd not be the only one to do that.

Japan has no advantage on the open sea, but stacking Defender of the Faith on top of Divine Wind means you can put up a lot of resistance against naval invasions. Together with a great general from your cheap encampments, Japan would be a very defensive choice. And maybe you can catch someone with their pants down when the GG hits. Though I'm not in this game obviously, so you can't rely on that happening!

All the late-game economy civs are rather risky, obviously.

I don't understand what the Overall column in your table means, by the way.

You make a good point about Brazil. With a generated map I'm far from certain to get any jungles, but I guess there's a good chance the mapmaker would add some in.

Brazil was still present in PBEM4 when the Minas Geraes became available. Sadly they couldn't put enough of them in play to have a chance against the giant Japanese navy, and anyway rather misplaced them tactically.

I'll have to test out that chop arithmetic. At 200%, Norway might well sneak onto the bottom of my list.

The overall column (now sneakily renamed to overall rating) was just a number out of 10 I came up with off the top of my head for how much I liked the idea of playing that civilization.

Thanks for your thoughts, it's always appreciated to have other viewpoints. I'm planning to think this over and send my picks in tomorrow evening, so plenty of time if you have any other thoughts or suggestions.

(May 18th, 2018, 16:56)RFS-81 Wrote: [ -> ]The bonus production is even better than it looks, because of the way those production multipliers stack. Having +50% means that your output gets multiplied by 1.5 and stacking +100% on top of that means the whole thing gets multiplied by 2 again. So the total multiplier is 3, or +200% !

I gave this a test in single player. Putting 8 into a longship with Maritime Industries in play resulted in 20 credited, so only +150%. I also tried chopping a forest into it and found the same result, +150%.

Wait, really? I did test it with Egypt's ability and other wonder modifiers. Was I hallucinating? Was this changed in the latest patch? Or is every ability in this game just a unique special case?

EDIT: Sorry for going off on a tangent, but I played a game with Egypt again, picking up all possible bonuses for wonders (Monument to the Gods, Corvee, Autocracy) and chopped a forest into a wonder next to a river. This turned a 50 forest chop into 81 , which is an increase of 62%. It seems that the boni are all added up, except for happiness, which is multiplied. I guess I won't find out if I got confused, or if they changed this in the patch.

Yep, the happiness multiplier affects base production but not chop production, and is therefore multiplicative with the boost cards and other powers. You can guess this is going to be the case because it's included in the city screen... and there is no indication at all of the total production after boosts have been counted.

Anyway, I reckon my true ordering is Rome - China - Japan - Germany, but I'm going to go with Rome - Germany - Japan - China. Why? Because China's game plan is a little too similar to the game I've ended up playing in PBEM10. Also I'm looking for quite a low skill game this time, and I'm much more comfortable with Germany than Japan for that.

So, confirmed order of picks:

1. Rome
   
2. Germany
   
3. Japan
   
4. China
   
5. Russia
   
6. Brazil