One of complaints in pre-patch was that gold was pretty useless. I always had a big surplus, so when the choose were spend a bunch of $ to get something, it was no brainer. I started a game as Rome at Glorious and quickly went broke. Definitely a harder game now, expansion is much slower.
Thanks. I never saw that anywhere, and it helps to know.
First I lost on Glorious, then I lost on Noble. Now I should try Strong and if I fail there keep on moving down…
Does anyone understand how the Herbalist +2 Health is applied?
I think that +2 bonus stacks on the +5 (or whatever it is) bonus from using the heal action.
I believe that that means that when you heal, you heal for two more points than you would otherwise.
Thanks, I’ll watch for that next time.
I was hoping they would heal 2 pts at rest in the field instead of needing to come back to a city and heal.
And thank you as well, kind sir! You’re a gentleman and a scholar, and there are damn few of us left. ;-)
Thinking further about this, and I really, really like it.
In the past, it made absolutely no difference where you went for your raw materials, the assumed infrastructure to get the stone or lumber or ore back to where it could be used was the same, regardless. But now, if you go someplace remote with very low civics, it will be nigh impossible not to pay high overhead, whereas if you are in a city with really high civics, you can knock out a specialist fairly easily… And specialists are now returned to the game as something worth doing, outside of the rather gamey use of them to expand borders.
Not positive, but I think herbalist leads to another promotion which does a bit of that.
I’ve already been thinking I need to classify some cities as second tier and limit them to running the project to create more gold and civics. Previously this was to cut down on micromanaging, but now it seems like it’ll also help with maintenance.
Not sure how to interpret your reasoning on civics, though. Civics go into a global pool, right? Couldn’t you fund specialists in a low-civics city with a civics producing city? Or do I have it wrong and you have to pay for specialists locally?
I also think this is a great change. Previously it didn’t seem like there was a downside to building as many improvements as possible.
Each turn in each city, one of Growth, Training or Civics is consumed to build the current build target. The splits in the build options box indicate which builds eat which type of production. (This is why Militia can be worthwhile: you build them with Growth instead of Training, which is often in more plentiful supply.)
If unused, Growth goes towards making new citizens in that city, Training and Civics go to the global pool.
OK, since everyone was so quick to answer last time I’m back with a tougher question to stump you with.
What’s the meaning of “Opinion from Distance (+/- #)” when you’re about to found a new city?
And probably related, what is the meaning of “Opinion Preferences”? When I delve that I see things like “Leader’s Spouse +40” or “Missing Olives -10/city”. I gather that events or acquired technology are in play but I don’t understand the relevance.
Once again, preface this with a big ol’ “I think”, but it looks like the opinion bonus you get from founding a city for a family decreases the further you get from the family seat. So if you’ve been neglecting those poor Barcids for most of the game, you can’t make it up to them by giving them a newly conquered city on the other side of the continent.
Okay, so let’s use settler as an example. They have a food cost (which is paid when the unit is started) and a growth cost, which determines how many turns it takes a city to make them Right?
So, does a specialist follow the same model, only with civics? There’s an upfront civics cost you pay from your global civics pool, and then the turns-to-completion is determined by the city’s local civics production?
Thanks for your comments, btw. I’m still having trouble understanding the nuts and bolts of the economy.
I think the opinion preferences is just a list of things that can affect that family’s opinion. So if you are missing olives, their opinion goes down by 10 per city they head.
Yep, growth is generated by the city each turn and goes towards the production. The time to build is based on that and could potentially change mid-build (say if you had a resource pillaged or your governor changed).
Essentially. The upfront cost for a specialist (the first level anyway) is 1 civilian, I don’t know if they also have an upfront global civics cost.
Investing in civics production (forum, courthouse buildings, scribe specialists) I see as really important because specialists are so valuable later in the game and take pretty long to build otherwise. When you can go from an empty urban building to one containing an elder specialist in 6-8 years total, those “control 20 elder specialists” ambitions feel rather less out of reach.
I’m not certain what happens with overflows at the end of a build. I believe they will roll over to your next build if it’s the same category, and I guess if it isn’t they go where they normally would if unused.
The current test-branch build apparently has a nasty new bug: when you capture a city, you’re no longer given a choice of what family should control it, and the game hangs without letting you finish your turn.
I haven’t seen it myself: in my current game, I haven’t captured any cities yet, and I may need to as I’m on my way to a peaceful victory. But if the bug reports are accurate, it might be a good time to take a break and wait for the next test-branch build, or play on the main branch.
What size map do folks usually play? I’ve always stuck to Medium - but my current game has a rival capital only 17 hexes away. My second city’s border bangs right up against the border of their capital.
Might be time to give Large a whirl.
The current Game of the Week is on a Dual map, interestingly. It’s obviously a smaller map, but there’s still room for a dozen or more cities. I’m enjoying it.