Unification of China Review

[joncnunn]

I didn't see any threads about this so I guess I'll start one.

There are lots of features that are different in this conquest compared to the main game, but I won't go into them into detail, but instead concentrate on how they affect strateges.

Religion

The main religious difference is that your "blood line" is being used similar to how religions are in the main game.

Diplomaticly, this makes this quite similar to a standard game where both you and your neighbors each found an early religion.

The same principles apply, if you want good relations with your neighbors, kick your blood line out of office.

In addition, blood line spreads at a much faster rate than normal, and there may be somewhat of a preference for your "state bloodline" based on what I saw.

A second difference is that there is no religious shrine associated to your blood line, so Great Prophets are much weaker than normal.

A third difference is that there are only two civics that care about bloodline at all. Ad only one is positive (Pacifism). Legalism is the anti-Free religion. One unhappy for every bloodline in each city.
So should you notice someone in Legalism, send them your bloodline just to make them unhappy!

Civics
The Civics are highly situational dependant. You can easily play one civ and see no point in one of the civics only to start with another and find that same civic highly useful.

Galleys

I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature but the cities forming canals block Galleys from being built in further upstream. Existing Galleys can however move across them.

In a related issue, cities that are upstream that don't have a fish type of resource in their inland bodies of water can not build Lighthouses nor Harbors but those with resources can.

Consequntely, empires starting with coastal cities can succesfuly attack upstream cities at lower cost much earlier in the game than those upstream attacking downstream. (Galleys are adviable much earlier than Catapults)

Civ choices

The Chu is perhaps the easist for the non war path to victory. Good resources, several barb cities near them, one in fact is spliting their empire. Post Court houses, lots of productive city sites, particularly west.

In addition in at least my game the neighboring northern civ let a barb city form between our empires in a very productive city site.

For those more offensive minded, I would again pick the Chu as perhaps the easiest. You only start with your northern border to defend as opposed to other civs starting with several.
After clearing barbs, attack the coastal red civ, sending up a few Galleys to bombard his defenses down to 0. Rinse, repeat.
Then attack upstream along those rivers. Rinse, repeat.

The second easist is perhaps that coastal red civ. Bulid military units, build galleys, attack upstream to secure your river valleys. Rinse, repeat. Attack the Chu from the coast. Rinse, repeat.

[Blaupanzer]

Thanks.

[sparkyal]

I was wondering why my cities couldn't build galleys...I started as purple (wei). Yes, that are in the middle, but it really isn't too bad. I have attacked south to wipe out green and then they became a vassal of orange. Once green was destroyed I turned my forces on orange, took 1 city and went to peace. My empire got too big too fast and my economy stinks now. I'm down to 10% science to make money and I only have 100 gold.

I'm also playing on Prince for the first time.

anyone else play this one?

sparky

[Will9]

I played a good game as Wei. At first I started building workers (2 per city) and sent some extra troops to take the barb city to my west. Ignoring military at first I quickly drew the greedy of the green to my south. First I started using the powerful economy I had from so many workers to build polarms. I ended up vassalizing green. I then started building up swordsman to attack light blue. The war was a strugle. I barrly had enough troops to take the first row of cities. I then had to make many more troops to finish them off. It would have gone much easier if I would have had waited afew turns turns for catapalts. Next I attacked red. I ended up taking all their cities exept some on the edge of the map and vassalized. I had five cities with 20+ people so winning the vote was esay.

[Kuciwalker]

I found the civic that lets you build troops with food to be incredibly powerful.

[CarnalCanaan]

Any confirmation/disconfirmation on the Galley problem from the higher-ups?

[Jon Shafer]

Yes, it's a bug which will be fixed in the upcoming patch.

[joncnunn]

Depends on your food situation I guess; but it does have it's own built in drawback: no city growth on cities training troops, so it's certaintely not unbalancing.

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I found the civic that lets you build troops with food to be incredibly powerful.

[joncnunn]

There's an additional way to win than the ones I mentioned above, there's a sufficent number of turns in the game to research the entire tech tree, and then start building the army, and still conquer enough cities and get enough AIs to capulate to win the game diplomacy a few turns before time will run out. Again, Chu is a particularly good choice. Part of this tactics is to purposely let barb cities form and then capture then.