One thing that annoys me about great generals/admirals is that they provide bonuses to units of their era and the one after, but not to the era before. This means when you initially recruit these generals, they’re not going to be helping much. It also leads to a weird dichotomy for some generals like Joan d’Arc and Horatio Nelson, who are both just barely defined by Civ terms as being Renaissance/Industrial, respectively, so they don’t get any bonus to the units they led IRL.
That FLOORS me. It makes it so you have to pocket the atomic era great generals because you can't upgrade modern ATs and machine guns to information level units.
One use for the barbarian converter, is you can just never use it, and leave it in a city for most of the game. Clicking on it allows you to see which tiles in the Fog of War are viable activation tiles, which in turn can help you track barbarian movement.
honestly these Great People tier lists just go show how uncreative some of those Great People are, seriously why do we have 4 "give a promotion level" GGs?
Good list overall, but I feel that there is a reason to consider the passive ability. The late game generals are better used as the passive combat strength and movement buffs. All early and mid game generals will eventually be out dated and their only use will be the active ability. Many of the late game generals will always be useful with their passive buffs though, meaning you have to always consider if the active ability is better than the passive. In many of my games I tend to keep late game generals around since the stats are better with my play style.
I like Sun Tzu (also Jeanne d-Arc and Ana Tzinga to a lesser extent) because sometimes you end up in an early war or two in a non domination game, and unlike the other generals their bonuses have versatility towards other victory types, even if the rewards aren't great at least they are versatile
I find the 4 Atomic Era/2 Information Era Great General thing quite annoying, but I guess the reason for that is that the more recent the war, the more controversial the general will be, and the devs tend to err on the cautious side on these matters.
I saw the thumbnail of this list, and already, I feel it is total crap. Both Sun Tzu AND Jeanne de'Arc have a rating of 1. As Great Generals for military purposes, it's true they deserve a 1, but for a tourism (and/or a religion game in the case of Jeanne de'Arc) game, they are (almost) THE SOLE REASON TO BUY ENCAMPMENTS (or have a VERY strong faith gain). Sun Tzu is the ONLY way for the Maori to get a Great Work of Writing (atleast as far as I can tell), and relics are pretty hard to get in general, and none of them completely reliable. For example, you can be Suzerain of Kandy and discover a Natural Wonder, play the Khmer and kill off your missionaries built from a temple, have the Martyr promotion on an apostle either through Mont Saint Michel or just a random promotion, or VERY RARELY get one through a tribal village. And the Martyr ones require they die in Religious combat. I've played Khmer games where other religions apostles would ignore my missionaries and wounder apostles. Sun Tzu in particular can be gotten earlier than you could get great writers, so getting him would jump start your tourism game. It's not going to be huge, but it could be enough to push you over the line. Given your screwy rankings for some of the great people I find awesome, I was a bit surprised you gave the Ana Nzinga (the envoy one) the same ranking you gave the great merchant 1 envoy ranking. Any you misspelled Cavalry as Calvalry... on on that note, the guy deserves a 4, because whenever I get him, people are still running around with coursers. And light cavalry may not have the combat strength of heavy cavalry, but they have the better promotions (and they can completely cripple the enemy that they pillage). And their 4th level promotion allows them to move builders or settlers quickly where you need them. The loyalty guys are completely worthless. It might help in the short term, but what's the point? The way you deal with loyalty problems is to continue the offense. If you use all 3 generals in one city AND stick a governor AND keep a garrison unit with the right policy cards slotted MIGHT allow you to have enough time to continue an offense, but so what? You'll just have the same problems in the next city you capture, or the next civ you go after, and then you don't have it. As far as the limited great generals goes, these are real people. It's kinda hard to create the next influential general, when modern wars are pretty limited, and hard to see how the military theory works in practice... And Douglas MacArthur should be Patton or Rommel. If Rommel is too offensive, go for Guderian. MacArthur really wasn't that great a general, and due to where he fought, didn't have much of a use for tanks compared to Europe. Dwight Eisenhower's bonus is crap. 5% is a rounding error. Does that production matter when it costs 600 production to create a helicopter?
if you have a Unit attacking an enemy Unit, you get +2 Combat Strength per ally Unit adjacent to the one you're attacking. example: you have a Warrior attacking an Archer, that Warrior gets +2 Strength per Unit you have adjacent to the Archer.
Boudica is better than "3" because (1) she is a Barbarian Detector when used passively (just the Spearman or the Spearman, the Scout, and 2 Horsemen/Swordsmen) and (2) she can take Quadriemes, Swordsmen, Crossbowmen, and various units for Eurekas, Inspirations and City-State Quests.
Think your thinking is off on Ike. For him to be better than the free unit from MacArthur, you’d need to be building more than 20 units after activating him (because 20 units*5% per unit=1 unit worth of production). Given when he shows up that’s unlikely, even if you burn him right away. Plus that bonus is spread out over time and probably doesn’t get you individual units much faster, whereas MacArthur can give you a power spike when it’s needed
I think by looking at the abilities independent of their useage as a passive general you are missing an important point of synergy in how well the bonus stacks up AFTER you are done using it. For this I think Sun Tzu compares favorably to the spec ops one, as it has time to be relevant as both a general and an active. Also a point against Boudica as you might not want to keep her with your barb cleanup crew but with your actual army.
Amateur tip: Never activate atomic/information era generals, they don't go obsolete: Eisenhower - 0 You can't even save 1 single turn when producing units with a 5% boost, you get a free unit every TWENTY units, why would anyone not produce any units with your encampment (costing 3 gpt min) for the whole game, just so that you can get a 5% bonus late game and spam unit? Zhukov - 0.5 The only reason why anyone would sacrifice +5 strength and +1 movement for +1 flanking bonus is because they are fighting multiple fronts, but that still doesn't add up. You are still better off moving 1 unit to the group without the great general and keep the passive bonus. I wouldn't activate Zhukov unless I have more than 3 clusters of units spreading across the globe.
Watching this video made me google who Ana Nzinga was. After finding out who she was and where she ruled, I feel that Firaxis will add her to the game eventually, if not in the New Frontier Pass. This is due to her being an African ruler (because Firaxis has only a handful of them) and because they have a penchant for adding tons of female leaders. She’d probably be a domination civ.
One other thing, the later eras are not as valuable because you can get a supply chain and observation balloon which go a long way to negating the value of great general passive bonuses.
That ǽ symbol is pronounced somewhere on the spectrum between the A in ‘bat’ and the E in ‘bet’, depending on local dialect. It’s called ǽsc, pronounced ‘ash’. The accents shouldn’t be there, by the way, but this is the best my version of Word can do.
They should make the art of war give a conbat bonus to all units within 9 tiles of the city with it that way its good ans you can put it in a nearby city to make the battle a little bit easier also anythin under 9 tiles is too little then you cant use it offensivley and its not op because you cant move it to often
Saxy , I’m pretty sure great works of writing have a yield of 4 culture per turn and not two. I think by you underrated Sun Tzu . He’s good for giving your culture a little bit of a boost when you are too busy to Invest in theatre squares and you’re moving in to the mid game.
Today in my rome domination game i had over 1000 science per turn next competitor had like 80 prince difficulty turn 230 ish i struggled at higher difficulties but now i think i can move up lol
I generally agree with most of what you said. They've made these guys a fair deal more interesting but they are still not super interesting in my mind...I'd like to see the use ability good enough where the +5/+1 move vs the use ability is a harder choice. I do have one comment. If you get Boudica and then you are also going to get a religion she can be quite valuable to hold onto. Boudica is a bit of a barbarian blood hound and when you click on her tiles near where barbarians are near light up with a white boarder even if you don't have the outpost revealed on the map. For that reason she can be very good with an Apostle that has the heathen conversion promotion. You can then you can use both Boudica and an apostle to raise a massive army. It's super situational though. To have Boudica and a religion somewhat of a catch 22 because if you are getting a lot of great general points then you aren't getting many prophet points likely. I've done it with Greece a few games though, and have raised massive armies with her both games. Kind of cool. So, Boudica's ability to see in the fog of war in and of itself is somewhat useful in my mind. I mean even sniffing out outposts for vampire kills potentially. Of the early general's I prefer her the most because of this and will keep her around for long into the game. I have a comment on the generals that give a relic and great work of writing. While both of these are somewhat useless for a domination game, there is a chance you could sell the Art of War in an emergency to either fund some military upgrades you really need or just finance your army for 30 turns. These things would be very valuable to the right AI at the right time. So, just a thought there....look at those as gold maybe? I mean I've watched some of your dom games, and I've played quite a few myself to know that when the Art of War is around is around the time sometimes early militaries become difficult to finance. I generally get some decent use on the loyalty guys tbh. They aren't great but nice to have. I've even used one to flip some cities. The situation was that Indonesia and I settled right next to each other near a tundra wonder within one turn of each other. This was on tundra a site I prepped myself for late settlements with like 5 soothsayer charges to burn and fertilize the forest. I was PISSED. I quickly popped Victor in and had a +4 loyalty general and used him. Then I burned down the lumber again as more was in their boarders to kill the population off. I wasn't playing domination. The Indonesian city flipped to me shortly after. Then I flipped the nearby Mayan city shortly thereafter. The free cities didn't make it better as Indonesia flubbed placing the city and the settlements bothered me for the remainder of the game lol. Totally ruined how I wanted to settle. That's the thing with loyalty and population. If you burn a forest cluster and it wipes someones population you could flip their city and then inherit nicely fertilized tiles haha.
that religious play with a great general is actually common enough. xange xi or whatever it is called near your start basically means you are getting a religion, since thats a stupid strong wonder to get inside your borders, and will be a stupid strong holy site bonus.
In my last game I used one scout and rather quickly got to the +20 strength promotion and with the earlier terrain promotions that little dude was BADASS don't underestimate them lol. Anyway I wanted to say I typically find the loyalty generals pretty pointless. I mean at least I use the writing and relic (and maybe even the air slot!! though that's not likely) I don't even use the loyalty boost most games I can get by with a temp policy card or something until population becomes stable those guys are typically worthless! (besides passive and you forgot the era score they give you and I think that's regardless of if they are used only need to be within vicinity!)
By the way saxy, Aethelflaed is a SHE. She was daughter to Alfred the Great and was very involved in the defence of Mercia and Wessex against the Danes.
doesnt matter, the elons son joke was because he named his son the AE symbol with a number, i cant recall what it was, but it was the model number of the stealth plane that inspired him when he was young.
Don't use any active bonus unless it is actually beneficial, +5 strength and +1 movement is a lot. Eisenhower and Zhukov are basically useless, do the math first before pushing the button
I think using any of the active abilities on any of the early great generals before they get outdated is a mistake. Great generals' passive ability is really strong and getting a great general is a big investment since Encampments don't do much else otherwise (or you run a wildcard policy slot for it). So, I think the best way to use most of the great generals is to keep them till they run out of units to affect. With this in mind, I think Boudica is pretty useless. Her ability is so situational to use early, if I'm producing a great general, I'm also producing units and I want my general to buff the units rather than give me a few more units that are probably just worse than the ones I'm making. By the time Boudica is outdated, her ability basically does nothing. On the other hand, Hannibal lets you get to tier 4 promotions at exactly the right time, his ability is great. El Cid is a big exception. A corp on your most recent unit like say a Knight, is a huge combat buff since it allows you to more effectively focus fire. I would use his ability basically as soon as I get him, and it's the strongest great general ability imo, along with Napoleon. Rani Lakshimbai and Gustavus may also be worth instantly activating if you get them early enough. For the later era great generals, my tech usually outpaces my general acquisition so anything producing a single unit is probably not worth activating. I think all the abilities post the industrial era are largely useless, aside from perhaps the promotion levels. I think my list mostly agrees with yours on the whole. One thing I'd say is while loyalty affecting a city is roughly the same in value as you move through the eras, the value of holding on to a city is not stable in value. My early game wars are about gaining land. This means I generally want to hang on to any cities I capture and extra loyalty can be a huge deal here. Especially on deity, sometimes the AI will get crossbow tech or walls just before you can take their capital so you have to make do with the other cities you captured. Once you peace them out, the grievances can cause big loyalty issues, and loyalty bonuses of even 2-4 per turn here can be a huge deal, as it can buy you time to get monuments, governor promotions, policy cards and stabilize the city. Later in the game, my goal with war is to just win domination victories by taking capitals. Loyalty becomes irrelevant, I will be either capturing cities too quickly or will just cut through territory fast and go straight for the capital.
i dont know why people shit on early encampments. they have housing and production for the city. and then of course producing better units from it. if you have suz of valetta and cheaply buy walls, it makes it really well fortified.
@@JamesMichaelDoyle Just very expensive early investment, when you have so much you need to build between Settlers, Builders, Monuments, Granary. It also takes a district slot, so competes with govt plaza, campuses and commercials/harbors. The housing tends not to be that useful early, the production too small to make a very big impact. The units don't even come out that much better and you have to build another building to get that benefit as well. Encampents are for defensive positioning and great generals only imo, especially early ones. Also, if you have to defend early, you're usually better off just building units. Encampments are for offensive pushes.
@@Sidnv yes and? there are tons of starting situations that make it good. military envoys specifically, everything you just listed is boosted by early encampment. they do give straight production, no other district can that early, and if you have some envoys in, unit production including those settlers and builders gets even more. its also housing. its not bad at all. some of your cities will not have any good campus placements etc. and as you said, they are fantastic for offence on the border, both for the actual push, and for what i mentioned, just fortifying afterwards. unless you are going domination, you will not be warring the whole way through the game. you should always get at least 1 encampment anyhow, even if you want to be peaceful. you do need to maintain at least some military, and as you said, shitting out builders and settlers. an early encampment is good, i dont know why people shit on it all the time. its not mandatory, but its good. and certainly not deserving of the shit people give it. not to mention some of the suz bonuses from states that the ai dont really contest, like the one that gives you 2 loyalty per encampment and building in it. also the veterancy card is great, boosting both harbor and encampment districts and their buildings production speed by 30% you unlock that card real early too. i normally slot that card in when i unlock it and get an encampment, and if i want harbors i spam those out with it too. also encampment training projects are a good early way to grab cash if needed. havent done it too often, but i remember specific games where i was able to snipe things with cash, one was a golden age through buying a unit, another was dodging dark age. sniped a few great people that i knew i wouldnt earn normally. when you need it and have that option available, its really nice. its mostly that its got a bit of everything that i like about it, adds production without requiring placement adjacency, adds housing, both of which are big in early game. and good overall later in cities with no good adjacency placements for anything.
@@JamesMichaelDoyle I've tried it, and it always creates a less smooth game unless I'm specifically going domination. In domination games, one encampment is great, the rest of my cities are better off spamming horsemen. The production you gain is way too small for the amount of investment imo. The main value is still in the general. If you're not going for early domination, you're just better off spamming settlers out of your ancestral hall city, while everything else builds up monument into granary into builders/campuses. Taking up a district slot is a big deal. Campuses and trade route districts are super important and then you often want a theatre or holy site. Delaying a critical district till pop 10 is awful.
@@Sidnv i dunno, depends on your start. if i get 2 or more quick military states found, i definitely put one down fast and early. the whole "district slots are valuable" is a very one sided statement. if you are expanding, you drop an encampment in a city that has no good district adjacencies. or on your forward border.
Saxy, it takes 30 seconds to learn how to pronounce these extremely famous people. You’re not doing yourself any favors by butchering well known names.
I typed the spreadsheet and spelled cavalry wrong, y’all can blame me not saxy 🤭
simp
Ideas for future tier lists:
- Policy cards
- Districts, incl. the unique ones
- Techs/civics (in terms of importance)
One thing that annoys me about great generals/admirals is that they provide bonuses to units of their era and the one after, but not to the era before. This means when you initially recruit these generals, they’re not going to be helping much. It also leads to a weird dichotomy for some generals like Joan d’Arc and Horatio Nelson, who are both just barely defined by Civ terms as being Renaissance/Industrial, respectively, so they don’t get any bonus to the units they led IRL.
That FLOORS me. It makes it so you have to pocket the atomic era great generals because you can't upgrade modern ATs and machine guns to information level units.
Samuel Tiscareno That might explain why there’s 4 atomic era general and only 2 information era generals
Samuel Tiscareno yes, you’re right. Fixed.
Don't forget that Samori Touré - a West African leader from the late 1800's - somehow gives out free Spec Ops units.
When will be the Great Writer tier list?
Niccolò Machiavelli ez S-Tier
Haha Jane Austen is an S tier too
Obviously after great prophet tier list
Kupe is crying
When he is done reading all of their works of writing
Ana Nzinga and Jeanne d’Arc would be much cooler choices than Mvemba and Catherine respectively
One use for the barbarian converter, is you can just never use it, and leave it in a city for most of the game. Clicking on it allows you to see which tiles in the Fog of War are viable activation tiles, which in turn can help you track barbarian movement.
honestly these Great People tier lists just go show how uncreative some of those Great People are, seriously why do we have 4 "give a promotion level" GGs?
Good list overall, but I feel that there is a reason to consider the passive ability. The late game generals are better used as the passive combat strength and movement buffs.
All early and mid game generals will eventually be out dated and their only use will be the active ability. Many of the late game generals will always be useful with their passive buffs though, meaning you have to always consider if the active ability is better than the passive. In many of my games I tend to keep late game generals around since the stats are better with my play style.
“Elon Musk’s son, Kyle!” 😂
4:21-4:25 SHAKA WOULD LIKE TO SHOW YOU HIS IMPI HORDES.
Sun Tzu I think deserves a 2. Agree with you about Jeanne d'Arc. But a writing when there're no Theatre Squares is pretty neat.
Agreed. I found a lot of use selling it to the AI to fund an early war with my closest neighbor
@@stephenwillis2751 yep +3 gold per turn at the begining of the game can be very useful. Or the culture generated by the art.
Thank you for creating this interesting video. After the third commercial break I dropped out but I will watch the rest of it some day.
"Instantly creates a Calvary unit with one promotion level"
Yep I call out another typo for you Saxy always eagle-eyed hehe ;P
Hannah typed up the list for this one, I still missed that it was misspelled though XD
I like Sun Tzu (also Jeanne d-Arc and Ana Tzinga to a lesser extent) because sometimes you end up in an early war or two in a non domination game, and unlike the other generals their bonuses have versatility towards other victory types, even if the rewards aren't great at least they are versatile
I find the 4 Atomic Era/2 Information Era Great General thing quite annoying, but I guess the reason for that is that the more recent the war, the more controversial the general will be, and the devs tend to err on the cautious side on these matters.
I saw the thumbnail of this list, and already, I feel it is total crap. Both Sun Tzu AND Jeanne de'Arc have a rating of 1. As Great Generals for military purposes, it's true they deserve a 1, but for a tourism (and/or a religion game in the case of Jeanne de'Arc) game, they are (almost) THE SOLE REASON TO BUY ENCAMPMENTS (or have a VERY strong faith gain). Sun Tzu is the ONLY way for the Maori to get a Great Work of Writing (atleast as far as I can tell), and relics are pretty hard to get in general, and none of them completely reliable. For example, you can be Suzerain of Kandy and discover a Natural Wonder, play the Khmer and kill off your missionaries built from a temple, have the Martyr promotion on an apostle either through Mont Saint Michel or just a random promotion, or VERY RARELY get one through a tribal village. And the Martyr ones require they die in Religious combat. I've played Khmer games where other religions apostles would ignore my missionaries and wounder apostles.
Sun Tzu in particular can be gotten earlier than you could get great writers, so getting him would jump start your tourism game. It's not going to be huge, but it could be enough to push you over the line.
Given your screwy rankings for some of the great people I find awesome, I was a bit surprised you gave the Ana Nzinga (the envoy one) the same ranking you gave the great merchant 1 envoy ranking.
Any you misspelled Cavalry as Calvalry... on on that note, the guy deserves a 4, because whenever I get him, people are still running around with coursers. And light cavalry may not have the combat strength of heavy cavalry, but they have the better promotions (and they can completely cripple the enemy that they pillage). And their 4th level promotion allows them to move builders or settlers quickly where you need them.
The loyalty guys are completely worthless. It might help in the short term, but what's the point? The way you deal with loyalty problems is to continue the offense. If you use all 3 generals in one city AND stick a governor AND keep a garrison unit with the right policy cards slotted MIGHT allow you to have enough time to continue an offense, but so what? You'll just have the same problems in the next city you capture, or the next civ you go after, and then you don't have it.
As far as the limited great generals goes, these are real people. It's kinda hard to create the next influential general, when modern wars are pretty limited, and hard to see how the military theory works in practice...
And Douglas MacArthur should be Patton or Rommel. If Rommel is too offensive, go for Guderian. MacArthur really wasn't that great a general, and due to where he fought, didn't have much of a use for tanks compared to Europe.
Dwight Eisenhower's bonus is crap. 5% is a rounding error. Does that production matter when it costs 600 production to create a helicopter?
List looks pretty solid to me 👍
Why did they chose Douglas MacArthur for the free tank unit bonus? When I think tank general I think of George Patton or Erwin Rommel not MacArthur
that general will now always be elon musks son
It can't ever be anything else at this point
BTW Æthelflæd was English queen during the Viking age, so... Do they show gender in the great people? I haven't noticed
Watch The Last Kingdom, so you know how to pronounce Æthelflæd of Mercia!
@@KFGustavo I honestly haven't seen the show, but I've really enjoyed reading the series. I think he eventually said it right
Make a video about flanking bonuses 👍
if you have a Unit attacking an enemy Unit, you get +2 Combat Strength per ally Unit adjacent to the one you're attacking.
example: you have a Warrior attacking an Archer, that Warrior gets +2 Strength per Unit you have adjacent to the Archer.
Boudica is better than "3" because (1) she is a Barbarian Detector when used passively (just the Spearman or the Spearman, the Scout, and 2 Horsemen/Swordsmen) and (2) she can take Quadriemes, Swordsmen, Crossbowmen, and various units for Eurekas, Inspirations and City-State Quests.
Think your thinking is off on Ike. For him to be better than the free unit from MacArthur, you’d need to be building more than 20 units after activating him (because 20 units*5% per unit=1 unit worth of production). Given when he shows up that’s unlikely, even if you burn him right away. Plus that bonus is spread out over time and probably doesn’t get you individual units much faster, whereas MacArthur can give you a power spike when it’s needed
I think by looking at the abilities independent of their useage as a passive general you are missing an important point of synergy in how well the bonus stacks up AFTER you are done using it.
For this I think Sun Tzu compares favorably to the spec ops one, as it has time to be relevant as both a general and an active. Also a point against Boudica as you might not want to keep her with your barb cleanup crew but with your actual army.
Last game i had Boudica General and as he was outdated i send him alone across the ocean and get a Settler and a Crossbow and expand my empire there
As a native spanish speaker, you pronounced El Cid in the same way twice.
Amateur tip: Never activate atomic/information era generals, they don't go obsolete:
Eisenhower - 0
You can't even save 1 single turn when producing units with a 5% boost, you get a free unit every TWENTY units, why would anyone not produce any units with your encampment (costing 3 gpt min) for the whole game, just so that you can get a 5% bonus late game and spam unit?
Zhukov - 0.5
The only reason why anyone would sacrifice +5 strength and +1 movement for +1 flanking bonus is because they are fighting multiple fronts, but that still doesn't add up. You are still better off moving 1 unit to the group without the great general and keep the passive bonus. I wouldn't activate Zhukov unless I have more than 3 clusters of units spreading across the globe.
Also Sun Tzu is much better than 1 because 2 culture and 2 tourism for 150/250 turns is a lot of culture and tourism.
Watching this video made me google who Ana Nzinga was. After finding out who she was and where she ruled, I feel that Firaxis will add her to the game eventually, if not in the New Frontier Pass. This is due to her being an African ruler (because Firaxis has only a handful of them) and because they have a penchant for adding tons of female leaders. She’d probably be a domination civ.
One other thing, the later eras are not as valuable because you can get a supply chain and observation balloon which go a long way to negating the value of great general passive bonuses.
That ǽ symbol is pronounced somewhere on the spectrum between the A in ‘bat’ and the E in ‘bet’, depending on local dialect. It’s called ǽsc, pronounced ‘ash’. The accents shouldn’t be there, by the way, but this is the best my version of Word can do.
You see, the horde of children does not stand for this.
They should make the art of war give a conbat bonus to all units within 9 tiles of the city with it that way its good ans you can put it in a nearby city to make the battle a little bit easier also anythin under 9 tiles is too little then you cant use it offensivley and its not op because you cant move it to often
sun tzu is not so bad that early in marathon is big.
Saxy , I’m pretty sure great works of writing have a yield of 4 culture per turn and not two. I think by you underrated Sun Tzu . He’s good for giving your culture a little bit of a boost when you are too busy to Invest in theatre squares and you’re moving in to the mid game.
No, sadly writings got nerfed at one point to be only 2 culture, they did used to be 4 though
its still pretty good if you are not planning more warmongering. or get the general points from the xange xi wonder.
Today in my rome domination game i had over 1000 science per turn next competitor had like 80 prince difficulty turn 230 ish i struggled at higher difficulties but now i think i can move up lol
I generally agree with most of what you said. They've made these guys a fair deal more interesting but they are still not super interesting in my mind...I'd like to see the use ability good enough where the +5/+1 move vs the use ability is a harder choice.
I do have one comment. If you get Boudica and then you are also going to get a religion she can be quite valuable to hold onto. Boudica is a bit of a barbarian blood hound and when you click on her tiles near where barbarians are near light up with a white boarder even if you don't have the outpost revealed on the map. For that reason she can be very good with an Apostle that has the heathen conversion promotion. You can then you can use both Boudica and an apostle to raise a massive army. It's super situational though. To have Boudica and a religion somewhat of a catch 22 because if you are getting a lot of great general points then you aren't getting many prophet points likely. I've done it with Greece a few games though, and have raised massive armies with her both games. Kind of cool.
So, Boudica's ability to see in the fog of war in and of itself is somewhat useful in my mind. I mean even sniffing out outposts for vampire kills potentially. Of the early general's I prefer her the most because of this and will keep her around for long into the game.
I have a comment on the generals that give a relic and great work of writing. While both of these are somewhat useless for a domination game, there is a chance you could sell the Art of War in an emergency to either fund some military upgrades you really need or just finance your army for 30 turns. These things would be very valuable to the right AI at the right time. So, just a thought there....look at those as gold maybe? I mean I've watched some of your dom games, and I've played quite a few myself to know that when the Art of War is around is around the time sometimes early militaries become difficult to finance.
I generally get some decent use on the loyalty guys tbh. They aren't great but nice to have. I've even used one to flip some cities. The situation was that Indonesia and I settled right next to each other near a tundra wonder within one turn of each other. This was on tundra a site I prepped myself for late settlements with like 5 soothsayer charges to burn and fertilize the forest. I was PISSED. I quickly popped Victor in and had a +4 loyalty general and used him. Then I burned down the lumber again as more was in their boarders to kill the population off. I wasn't playing domination. The Indonesian city flipped to me shortly after. Then I flipped the nearby Mayan city shortly thereafter. The free cities didn't make it better as Indonesia flubbed placing the city and the settlements bothered me for the remainder of the game lol. Totally ruined how I wanted to settle. That's the thing with loyalty and population. If you burn a forest cluster and it wipes someones population you could flip their city and then inherit nicely fertilized tiles haha.
that religious play with a great general is actually common enough. xange xi or whatever it is called near your start basically means you are getting a religion, since thats a stupid strong wonder to get inside your borders, and will be a stupid strong holy site bonus.
In my last game I used one scout and rather quickly got to the +20 strength promotion and with the earlier terrain promotions that little dude was BADASS don't underestimate them lol. Anyway I wanted to say I typically find the loyalty generals pretty pointless. I mean at least I use the writing and relic (and maybe even the air slot!! though that's not likely) I don't even use the loyalty boost most games I can get by with a temp policy card or something until population becomes stable those guys are typically worthless! (besides passive and you forgot the era score they give you and I think that's regardless of if they are used only need to be within vicinity!)
Actually Raskova was much worse in the base game because aerodromes had twice as much air slots (the airport had 8 slots) and it got divided by 2
Æthelflaed from the Vikings.
She was the daughter of Alfred the Great i.e. a Saxon i.e. the final enemies of the vikings.
By the way saxy, Aethelflaed is a SHE. She was daughter to Alfred the Great and was very involved in the defence of Mercia and Wessex against the Danes.
doesnt matter, the elons son joke was because he named his son the AE symbol with a number, i cant recall what it was, but it was the model number of the stealth plane that inspired him when he was young.
Please do one for policy cards per era
Is it just me, or in all my recent games, every civ and their mums are hogging all the generals?
AI love building Encampments, so they will generate an absurd amount of Great General points
So, 4 and 5 rated generals instantly use his active bonus
3 generals situational use
2 and 1 for pushing in the war
Don't use any active bonus unless it is actually beneficial, +5 strength and +1 movement is a lot. Eisenhower and Zhukov are basically useless, do the math first before pushing the button
I think using any of the active abilities on any of the early great generals before they get outdated is a mistake. Great generals' passive ability is really strong and getting a great general is a big investment since Encampments don't do much else otherwise (or you run a wildcard policy slot for it). So, I think the best way to use most of the great generals is to keep them till they run out of units to affect. With this in mind, I think Boudica is pretty useless. Her ability is so situational to use early, if I'm producing a great general, I'm also producing units and I want my general to buff the units rather than give me a few more units that are probably just worse than the ones I'm making. By the time Boudica is outdated, her ability basically does nothing. On the other hand, Hannibal lets you get to tier 4 promotions at exactly the right time, his ability is great.
El Cid is a big exception. A corp on your most recent unit like say a Knight, is a huge combat buff since it allows you to more effectively focus fire. I would use his ability basically as soon as I get him, and it's the strongest great general ability imo, along with Napoleon. Rani Lakshimbai and Gustavus may also be worth instantly activating if you get them early enough.
For the later era great generals, my tech usually outpaces my general acquisition so anything producing a single unit is probably not worth activating. I think all the abilities post the industrial era are largely useless, aside from perhaps the promotion levels.
I think my list mostly agrees with yours on the whole. One thing I'd say is while loyalty affecting a city is roughly the same in value as you move through the eras, the value of holding on to a city is not stable in value. My early game wars are about gaining land. This means I generally want to hang on to any cities I capture and extra loyalty can be a huge deal here. Especially on deity, sometimes the AI will get crossbow tech or walls just before you can take their capital so you have to make do with the other cities you captured. Once you peace them out, the grievances can cause big loyalty issues, and loyalty bonuses of even 2-4 per turn here can be a huge deal, as it can buy you time to get monuments, governor promotions, policy cards and stabilize the city. Later in the game, my goal with war is to just win domination victories by taking capitals. Loyalty becomes irrelevant, I will be either capturing cities too quickly or will just cut through territory fast and go straight for the capital.
i dont know why people shit on early encampments. they have housing and production for the city. and then of course producing better units from it. if you have suz of valetta and cheaply buy walls, it makes it really well fortified.
@@JamesMichaelDoyle Just very expensive early investment, when you have so much you need to build between Settlers, Builders, Monuments, Granary. It also takes a district slot, so competes with govt plaza, campuses and commercials/harbors. The housing tends not to be that useful early, the production too small to make a very big impact. The units don't even come out that much better and you have to build another building to get that benefit as well. Encampents are for defensive positioning and great generals only imo, especially early ones.
Also, if you have to defend early, you're usually better off just building units. Encampments are for offensive pushes.
@@Sidnv yes and? there are tons of starting situations that make it good. military envoys specifically, everything you just listed is boosted by early encampment. they do give straight production, no other district can that early, and if you have some envoys in, unit production including those settlers and builders gets even more. its also housing. its not bad at all. some of your cities will not have any good campus placements etc. and as you said, they are fantastic for offence on the border, both for the actual push, and for what i mentioned, just fortifying afterwards. unless you are going domination, you will not be warring the whole way through the game. you should always get at least 1 encampment anyhow, even if you want to be peaceful. you do need to maintain at least some military, and as you said, shitting out builders and settlers. an early encampment is good, i dont know why people shit on it all the time. its not mandatory, but its good. and certainly not deserving of the shit people give it.
not to mention some of the suz bonuses from states that the ai dont really contest, like the one that gives you 2 loyalty per encampment and building in it. also the veterancy card is great, boosting both harbor and encampment districts and their buildings production speed by 30% you unlock that card real early too. i normally slot that card in when i unlock it and get an encampment, and if i want harbors i spam those out with it too.
also encampment training projects are a good early way to grab cash if needed. havent done it too often, but i remember specific games where i was able to snipe things with cash, one was a golden age through buying a unit, another was dodging dark age. sniped a few great people that i knew i wouldnt earn normally. when you need it and have that option available, its really nice.
its mostly that its got a bit of everything that i like about it, adds production without requiring placement adjacency, adds housing, both of which are big in early game. and good overall later in cities with no good adjacency placements for anything.
@@JamesMichaelDoyle I've tried it, and it always creates a less smooth game unless I'm specifically going domination. In domination games, one encampment is great, the rest of my cities are better off spamming horsemen. The production you gain is way too small for the amount of investment imo. The main value is still in the general. If you're not going for early domination, you're just better off spamming settlers out of your ancestral hall city, while everything else builds up monument into granary into builders/campuses.
Taking up a district slot is a big deal. Campuses and trade route districts are super important and then you often want a theatre or holy site. Delaying a critical district till pop 10 is awful.
@@Sidnv i dunno, depends on your start. if i get 2 or more quick military states found, i definitely put one down fast and early. the whole "district slots are valuable" is a very one sided statement. if you are expanding, you drop an encampment in a city that has no good district adjacencies. or on your forward border.
Why can't people spell 'cavalry'?
You misspelled "Cavalry" as "Calvalry".
"It was a typo" Kappa
I dont get what you are trying to do here, perhaps a detailed illustration would be nice
Can you do Civ tier list?
I am too early
Saxy, it takes 30 seconds to learn how to pronounce these extremely famous people. You’re not doing yourself any favors by butchering well known names.
great generals in general (kek) are pretty "meh" just like many things in Civ 6.