1.17f strategy

[Allemand]

But a Legionary can't be promoted, can it?

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Now the horsemen can upgrade to Samurai, War Elephant, etc.

Even though the Samurai replaces the knight for japan, I can't help but think it might be better to upgrade from a swordsmen to samuri then to say... tank?

[Grim Legacy]

I think there will indeed be a welcome change of strategies. No more Despot pop rushing and uncertain fast unit retreat will have a huge impact on the early game.

I guess those Jaguar Warriors are suddenly a lot less attractive!

I'm hoping for a renaissance of Builder strategies.

[Arathorn]

Premature

I think a fair bit of reassessment is going to be required after the patch. I know I personally need to play with it for a while before I can determine how much it changes my strategy.

Some things are only vaguely described by the patch notes. Only experimentation will tell us about ....

- a die roll for fast unit retreat

OK, how likely is it? 90%? 30%? Depends on terrain? What? Without knowing this, it's hard to give an impact on strategy.

- pop-rush eliminated for despotic

How, exactly? Does it just mean an extra MP in each city I poprush? The explanations given just don't make much sense to me.
Can I still poprush ad infinitum and then disband the city?

- enough military prevents culture flips

What is "enough"? Is it one per pop unit? Two per pop unit? One for every two pop? What? This was actually true before, it's just that "enough" was probably in the 200 range, since military was such a small factor.

- elimination of size six strategy

How, exactly? Does it still work if I have 20 extra food? Do I have no food after a worker build? Is it half the size 6 food box? Is pop growth checking before builds now?

- fixed AI bug with giving value to worthless tech

What is "worthless tech"? Free Artistry after Shakespeare's has been built? Sure. Is Physics "worthless", though? How will this affect the "pope" strategy of tech brokering?

Are there other changes hidden in some of the words? Quite possibly (and probably unintentionally. I'd hate to make a real quick list of all the changes in a set of code).

I expect to see a review of a lot of strategies once the patch has been played with for a few days to get a better evaluation.

My $.02,
Arathorn

[Drefsab]

All I can say is, I love upgrading warriors that have reached elite status by killing barbarians to elite immortals for 40 gold. This little strat got me a leader 50 turns into the game...

[DrSpike]

Nice. A distinctly 1.17f strat. Keep 'em coming.

[Aeson]

When you upgrade your elites they become veterans right?

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis
I just wanted to clarify a few issues.

First, pop rushing has not been eliminated. A few change, however, have been made. You can not sacrifice over half the population of you city anymore. Also, city unhappiness can "go negative," which means if your city has 1 citizen and 4 have been sacrificed recently, you will need 4 happiness points (from temples, luxuries, military units, whatever...) to keep that 1 citizen from being unhappy. In previous versions, just having a spearman in the city was enough to keep that 1 citizen content, even if you had sacrificed an infinite number of citizens.

Second, the AI will no longer trade techs during your turn.

I haven't applied the patch yet, as I wanted to finish my current game first, so forgive me if these are mute points.

Has anyone tried pop rushing using a city with 1 entertainer and adding workers right before applying the rush? It would seem that a size 2 to 1 rush is still possible (50%), and that your size 1 city could just make its only citizen an entertainer to deal with happiness problems. This would allow for pop rushing to be self sustaining even with the patch. Razing cities for captured workers would become even more of a priority. Also in some instances (+5 food, +5 shield cities) a two turn worker factory could still be set up, to pair with an 'entertainer' military camp. This would result in 4 turn military camps (2 turns x 2 cities), which is on par with the average rate a pop rushing city could sustain prepatch.

The tech trading part should make it much easier to catch up to the AI. Soren later went on to say that the AI no longer trades anything during the players turn (maps, resources, or tech), but just trades more aggressively on its own turn.

[DrSpike]

Yeah I thought a unit lost one rank when upgrading as well.

[pchang]

1 entertainer

how fast can you grow with no workers? can you grow? Also, if you can turn unhappy people into specialists, why not just turn the 1 guy into a tax collector or scientist?

[player1]

Re: 1 entertainer

Originally posted by pchang
how fast can you grow with no workers? can you grow? Also, if you can turn unhappy people into specialists, why not just turn the 1 guy into a tax collector or scientist?

Only with floodplains, or grassland in monarchy.

Low chace for growth in despotism.

[Aeson]

You can grow every turn with just 1 entertainer. All it takes is adding workers. Since there is close to an unending supply of captured workers on higher difficulty levels, this would make pop rushing still extremely useful. I normally end up with anywhere from 100-500 captured workers in a game depending on map size, that allows for a lot of 'entertainer' rushing if it is possible.

[pchang]

unit rushing still viable

With unhappiness boosted for pop rushing, special unit rushing cities become even more important. You build nothing and just pop rush units from them. When pop rushing unhappiness becomes untenable, you pop rush a settler to disband the city. Found a city on the same spot the next turn and start over.

[Worthingtons]

My god I Love this patch!!

Started out with the Romans, Poor Starting Posistion , fell considerably behind, but kept plenty money coming in at the expense of Tech, Promoted a zillion warriors to Legions and the fun started there. about 15 turns into my war with france (who were nearly twice as powerful as me!!) and I've got 3 good cities, THREE Leaders, with the leaders I got the GL with which i caught up on all tech, Built an Army of Elite and Vets Legionares (That is going to hurt them btw ) and just built the Herioc Epic with the last one....


So my game is set up for some good wars alright!!

[Ironwood]

You know, I've seen a lot of posts talking about the new advantage for religeous civilizations, but I've also read both the readme for the patch and the announcement over at CivFanatics. What is this new advantage for religeous civs everyone's talking about?

[Worthingtons]

Iron, Religious Civ's only have one Turn of Anarchy, and since Switching Govt's earlier is so important now, it makes them better.