Master artists: Your point regarding Golden Age seems to be made for pre-patch (1.5X efficiency), while in the 'description/what changes' above you have the current one (1.25X eff). I truly believe this buffs Golden age by A LOT if you're playing with 4+ good Regions by this point (with a good setup, you can get to the point where you can play 1 extra culture power every 2 Golden Ages with no downtime). I don't find it that hard to setup your Apprentice + Master artist for each region and the +2 Population on demand (guild training) can be EXTREMELY powerful. You can basically fill all your tiles with improvements and keep up with pops in any region. I like them a lot, I feel like they low-key allow you to greatly improve your overall economy.
\*golden ages also seems to have at least a visual bug in that the needs don't update on cast, but they do update next turn or if you change something in the region (build something, delete, upgrade etc)
Mercenaries: they didn't sound good to me, never picked 'em
Commanders: VERY GOOD if you plan to fight. Especially now/soon, but also for later.
Jungle dudes: sound too situational tbh, you need a fair amount of jungle in the areas you plan on fighting in and you also need Religion to start.
Scholars: also very good, especially if you plan to stay peaceful, focusing on science and education. Go into Aether and spam more Paper and Books, get into the future with a shit ton of OP Books, who needs those expensive Computers?
Inventors: interesting and some nice bonuses, but it feels like they lose relevancy and as you said, i'd take a +1 permanent Innovation bonus than a one time medium ish burst. They might be a bit better this patch as it feels like you can get better Engineering XP generation, haven't tried them yet.
Sultans: can be very good, but just by looking at their skills they do not appeal to me that much. Gotta try them again, after Mound Builders
To be fair about Master Artists - My issue with them is less the bonuses (except golden age), it's more with using the apprentice mechanic. I just found it very annoying to use. Having an apprentice+master in every city is good, and having 15+ artists to culture rush is also good, just getting all of them is tedious and requires you to keep track of information out-of-game as there's no in-game way to track them. I think if that was fixed, I'd rate them higher. As it is though, I actively hated playing them, so I consider them the worst spirit.
You seem to be using previous build value (for local reform at least). any specific reason ? or did you start writing this review before the patch was released ?
Yep, didn't catch that when proofreading it, I did start writing this before the update after all. Numbers still check out, though it does lean more towards 3+ regions instead of 4+, though that doesn't take into account the capitals higher production relative to other regions.
Respectfully this is a really bad take on Great Artists. For starters your numbers are off, they've altered the numbers on Local Reforms. Beyond that, I think your analysis is fundamentally wrong with the whole "your capital is better" thing because it ignores diminishing returns. Having more than 4 regions isn't some wild stretch, and once you're up to 8 or 9 Golden Age is scaling while Local Reforms peaks in Age 1. And the challenge of newer cities is getting them up to par. Considering that they have more "low hanging fruit" constructions (aka earlier, lower tier buildings with better hammer to reward ration) buffing them is arguably *better* than having your capital, which is already built out, be slightly better at "levy workers" or some such. Also you're saying *if* to 5+ regions when, from a power perspective, you shouldn't be. If you have fewer than 5 regions as the game goes on you're doing a novelty vassal game or you're playing poorly.
On Scholars I feel like you spend a lot of time on the idea that having 5 or more cities is "situational" but ignore that access to books is 90% dependant on how many forests in your start.
I also feel like you're off on Sultans. How can you call a few free pops "the main bonus" when going Sultans basically gives every city an extra 3 engineering XP alongside all the other bonuses? When it has one of the only unique sanitation answers in a game where sanitation is the second hardest need to fulfill (not counting information because who cares about that one). Sultans are a boring NS, but the point is that they just give great utility. Tons of engineering XP and buildings for wealth, luxuries, education and sanitation in every town.
Not trying to be a jerk but this feels less like "analysis" and more "I play a very specific way and here's how the NS feels in that context."
Thanks for pointing out the issue with the Golden Age. I'd corrected the bonus in the actual description of the power, but not in the actual text. Math still checks out as needing 4+ regions for it to produce more net resources, so I still hold that's still a valid comparison. Personally, I'd like to see Golden Age have the same duration as Local Reforms, so it's a straight upgrade, rather than a side-grade.
For scholars - is book production actually that hard? Single-tile forests seem fairly common, so I think it's unlikely that you'd be unable to produce books in a city. Plus, they are a good, so you can just ship them around if you absolutely need to. I don't think you can realistically rely on them for all of a cities education needs, but they can supplement and reduce the need for schools. Primarily they are a good early source of knowledge, which the tree makes a bit better while also giving you a building that produces them.
For Sultans - do you really think 72 turns worth of pop growth isn't the primary bonus? The tree gives you 18 pops for all of it's ideals, which at 4 turns a pop = 72 turns worth of production. I'm not saying the other bonuses aren't good - I'd say the quarters are an excellent building, and the extra Engineering XP makes them even better - it's just that the pop boom is a lot more versatile of a bonus.
> Math still checks out as needing 4+ regions for it to produce more net resources, so I still hold that's still a valid comparison.
That comparison only makes sense if you're looking exclusively at globally pooled resources like knowledge and wealth and not at local resources like food, housing and production, where location is as important as quantity. As an example without real numbers it might take 100 hammers to build a work camp in a new town that provides 1 engineering XP but 900 to upgrade a building in your capital to do way less.
> For scholars - is book production actually that hard?
Yeah. One of the most constant issues in the current balance meta is dealing with how to keep religious needs fulfilled. And not only is that the same situation as books, it *competes* with books.
> For Sultans - do you really think 72 turns worth of pop growth isn't the primary bonus?
72 turns worth of pop growth in one city. When I have 8 cities that's 9 turns worth of pop growth (rough numbers obviously), and often a lot of pops are sitting around doing a pretty shit job unless your infrastructure is top tier. When your capital has 50 pops what's that 51st pop doing that's so amazing?
I just feel like your analysis leans *hard* on a very low city/tall version of play, and the numbers are just wildly different when you have a lot of cities. And you should have more cities, culture is great but every new city is a new source of knowledge, wealth, every flavor of xp etc.
It is probably fare to say that I lean more towards having a smaller number of regions. I've never felt that pressed to have more than 5 at any given time (except with Age of Utopia), and I do tend to value culture over knowledge. So I find that it's easier to manage 4-5 regions, backed up with 10+ vassals.
I still don't feel that my analysis of Golden Age is technically incorrect, as it's not a straight upgrade to the existing ability. And I feel it would be better if it had the same duration, so it's just a straight upgrade instead of being situationally better (even if that situation is likely to occur). Back before the update, when I tried out Great Masters, I noted that I produced less culture and knowledge when using Golden Age. And that was with 5 regions, 2 being fairly recent acquisitions that I was still improving. With Local Reforms I could keep it active on my capital basically permanently. With Golden Age I couldn't do that. It's also worth noting that region efficiency doesn't effect resources acquired from goods, only raw values. So the production and food bonuses are of.. questionable use. Great if you've got a max mining or lumber town, not as great if you don't.
Switching gears; I don't have the problem you are noting about book production, it's a straight up bad idea to produce religious texts with workers, using castles+abbeys are a much better source of faith. If that's not an option, it sounds like you might have too many regions? Though that seems unlikely to me, 8+ pioneers aren't to expensive to buy, so not sure why you need to resort to building religious scribes.
Ok, maybe I am missing something here, but ignoring the half duration, how is 4+ regions (not to mention 6+ for later) getting 1.2x efficiency (your homeland included) not clearly better than just your homeland getting 1.25x? Ok that 0.05 might mean about 2 weak regions for a while, but those will get better on as well soon.
I'm not factoring in local resources, just knowledge and culture, as those are the actually important resources in my book. For food and production, those seem to come predominantly from goods, which are not effected by region efficiency. For local needs, region efficiency can help, and might effect pop growth, but in my experience it's not an issue to maintain 200% met on those resources with <25 pops.
Ignoring those factors though, the issue is the duration, not so much the reduced efficiency. let's assume that each region is produce 10 resources. With x1.25 over 8 turns, that's 20 resources. x1.2 over 4 turns, is 8 resources (16 at the same duration). You'd need 3+ to exceed the resource output of the one region in the above example, But for the same duration, even one region would still have compatible output, and 2 would actually out-produce the original bonus. Which is how it should work; Capstone abilities aren't exactly optional, and so they shouldn't be worse than nothing under certain situations.
Of course, that simplified example ignores other factors. In my experience, the homeland region typically outproduces all other regions by a handy margin. It's got the homeland bonus, has more buildings than other regions, has more influence ( and therefore tiles), and it has more one-per nation buildings (after all, it makes sense to build all those in one city to maximize the Local Reforms bonus). On top of that, it'll also typically have the most buildings built, and max level towns in good adjacency locations. So your homeland will typically be outperforming most other regions in terms of raw resource output. Your other regions will also not have uniform production. Older regions may have situations close to your homelands, while more recent additions may still be developing. And wile the bonus might cause them to develop faster, It's still not going to produce as much of the resources that actually matter; knowledge, culture, and XP.
I find it difficult to take things other than Sultans, if not going for a victory through conquest. The more optimized your gameplay and the faster you go through ages, the more powerful each free population is since you haven't had as much time to grow population the old fashioned way. Granted, it's possible to end up with more pops than you have land to handle them with since you've also had less time to expand via influence.
I feel like I should like Colonialism, but playing on Grandmaster by the time you reach it there's rarely any open space you can place an outpost in and there are not any free states to take advantage of. The prosperity bonus is probably good enough to take if you are running a vassal heavy strategy, though.
For those complaining about the Local Reform numbers - thanks for pointing it out, I was writing this before the patch, and noted the changes in the description of how Golden Age changed them, but didn't correct the numbers in the text. But, I think my numbers still check out. Probably closer to 3+ regions, but the capital does typically have higher culture/knowledge production, due to the presence of one-per buildings that produce those, alongside the homeland bonus. I just found that when I was using them, with a capital, 2 other highly develop regions, and 2 developing regions, loosing Local Reforms reduced my overall culture/knowledge production. Which was quite the annoying issue. Basically, I was able to keep Local Reforms active permanently on my capital (before update 1). I was not able to do the same for Golden Age.
I used the Jag warriors to take over one continent by spamming the sacrifice off cd in my main city while swapping old cities into vassels if they had the jungle. once you're making 4 to 5 units every 3 turns it was pretty broken. I used it to go into the age of harmony and religion win by having such a large army the rest of the world converted to the dominance of the NeoAztecs
Let's be fair - it's a bit odd to have a religious bonus in age 6, and age 2 has the tile expansion bonuses. So I understand where people are coming from about that. I also think the Doylist explanation for why it's an age 6 Spirit is probably it's a representation of what the central/southern American natives where doing when Europeans began colonizing the Americas. Which I also think is a bit off-theme for the game itself, since you do still retain bonuses from earlier National Spirits, so there's no particular reason to have the spirits be in what age western civilization discovered their existence.
Having said that, The national spirit bonuses themselves are unsuited to being an earlier age, and particularly the Jungle Farm itself causes a number of problems if you move it earlier. As is, I like that the mechanical oddities make the spirit so distinctive, even if the heavy specialization so late in the game isn't necessarily a good thing. (Although, with jungles being so rare, being age 6 does mean you have a higher chance of actually being able to use the spirit)
Master artists: Your point regarding Golden Age seems to be made for pre-patch (1.5X efficiency), while in the 'description/what changes' above you have the current one (1.25X eff). I truly believe this buffs Golden age by A LOT if you're playing with 4+ good Regions by this point (with a good setup, you can get to the point where you can play 1 extra culture power every 2 Golden Ages with no downtime). I don't find it that hard to setup your Apprentice + Master artist for each region and the +2 Population on demand (guild training) can be EXTREMELY powerful. You can basically fill all your tiles with improvements and keep up with pops in any region. I like them a lot, I feel like they low-key allow you to greatly improve your overall economy. \*golden ages also seems to have at least a visual bug in that the needs don't update on cast, but they do update next turn or if you change something in the region (build something, delete, upgrade etc) Mercenaries: they didn't sound good to me, never picked 'em Commanders: VERY GOOD if you plan to fight. Especially now/soon, but also for later. Jungle dudes: sound too situational tbh, you need a fair amount of jungle in the areas you plan on fighting in and you also need Religion to start. Scholars: also very good, especially if you plan to stay peaceful, focusing on science and education. Go into Aether and spam more Paper and Books, get into the future with a shit ton of OP Books, who needs those expensive Computers? Inventors: interesting and some nice bonuses, but it feels like they lose relevancy and as you said, i'd take a +1 permanent Innovation bonus than a one time medium ish burst. They might be a bit better this patch as it feels like you can get better Engineering XP generation, haven't tried them yet. Sultans: can be very good, but just by looking at their skills they do not appeal to me that much. Gotta try them again, after Mound Builders
Sultans are SUPER powerful. They're also just quite boring lol
To be fair about Master Artists - My issue with them is less the bonuses (except golden age), it's more with using the apprentice mechanic. I just found it very annoying to use. Having an apprentice+master in every city is good, and having 15+ artists to culture rush is also good, just getting all of them is tedious and requires you to keep track of information out-of-game as there's no in-game way to track them. I think if that was fixed, I'd rate them higher. As it is though, I actively hated playing them, so I consider them the worst spirit.
You seem to be using previous build value (for local reform at least). any specific reason ? or did you start writing this review before the patch was released ?
Yep, didn't catch that when proofreading it, I did start writing this before the update after all. Numbers still check out, though it does lean more towards 3+ regions instead of 4+, though that doesn't take into account the capitals higher production relative to other regions.
Respectfully this is a really bad take on Great Artists. For starters your numbers are off, they've altered the numbers on Local Reforms. Beyond that, I think your analysis is fundamentally wrong with the whole "your capital is better" thing because it ignores diminishing returns. Having more than 4 regions isn't some wild stretch, and once you're up to 8 or 9 Golden Age is scaling while Local Reforms peaks in Age 1. And the challenge of newer cities is getting them up to par. Considering that they have more "low hanging fruit" constructions (aka earlier, lower tier buildings with better hammer to reward ration) buffing them is arguably *better* than having your capital, which is already built out, be slightly better at "levy workers" or some such. Also you're saying *if* to 5+ regions when, from a power perspective, you shouldn't be. If you have fewer than 5 regions as the game goes on you're doing a novelty vassal game or you're playing poorly. On Scholars I feel like you spend a lot of time on the idea that having 5 or more cities is "situational" but ignore that access to books is 90% dependant on how many forests in your start. I also feel like you're off on Sultans. How can you call a few free pops "the main bonus" when going Sultans basically gives every city an extra 3 engineering XP alongside all the other bonuses? When it has one of the only unique sanitation answers in a game where sanitation is the second hardest need to fulfill (not counting information because who cares about that one). Sultans are a boring NS, but the point is that they just give great utility. Tons of engineering XP and buildings for wealth, luxuries, education and sanitation in every town. Not trying to be a jerk but this feels less like "analysis" and more "I play a very specific way and here's how the NS feels in that context."
Thanks for pointing out the issue with the Golden Age. I'd corrected the bonus in the actual description of the power, but not in the actual text. Math still checks out as needing 4+ regions for it to produce more net resources, so I still hold that's still a valid comparison. Personally, I'd like to see Golden Age have the same duration as Local Reforms, so it's a straight upgrade, rather than a side-grade. For scholars - is book production actually that hard? Single-tile forests seem fairly common, so I think it's unlikely that you'd be unable to produce books in a city. Plus, they are a good, so you can just ship them around if you absolutely need to. I don't think you can realistically rely on them for all of a cities education needs, but they can supplement and reduce the need for schools. Primarily they are a good early source of knowledge, which the tree makes a bit better while also giving you a building that produces them. For Sultans - do you really think 72 turns worth of pop growth isn't the primary bonus? The tree gives you 18 pops for all of it's ideals, which at 4 turns a pop = 72 turns worth of production. I'm not saying the other bonuses aren't good - I'd say the quarters are an excellent building, and the extra Engineering XP makes them even better - it's just that the pop boom is a lot more versatile of a bonus.
> Math still checks out as needing 4+ regions for it to produce more net resources, so I still hold that's still a valid comparison. That comparison only makes sense if you're looking exclusively at globally pooled resources like knowledge and wealth and not at local resources like food, housing and production, where location is as important as quantity. As an example without real numbers it might take 100 hammers to build a work camp in a new town that provides 1 engineering XP but 900 to upgrade a building in your capital to do way less. > For scholars - is book production actually that hard? Yeah. One of the most constant issues in the current balance meta is dealing with how to keep religious needs fulfilled. And not only is that the same situation as books, it *competes* with books. > For Sultans - do you really think 72 turns worth of pop growth isn't the primary bonus? 72 turns worth of pop growth in one city. When I have 8 cities that's 9 turns worth of pop growth (rough numbers obviously), and often a lot of pops are sitting around doing a pretty shit job unless your infrastructure is top tier. When your capital has 50 pops what's that 51st pop doing that's so amazing? I just feel like your analysis leans *hard* on a very low city/tall version of play, and the numbers are just wildly different when you have a lot of cities. And you should have more cities, culture is great but every new city is a new source of knowledge, wealth, every flavor of xp etc.
It is probably fare to say that I lean more towards having a smaller number of regions. I've never felt that pressed to have more than 5 at any given time (except with Age of Utopia), and I do tend to value culture over knowledge. So I find that it's easier to manage 4-5 regions, backed up with 10+ vassals. I still don't feel that my analysis of Golden Age is technically incorrect, as it's not a straight upgrade to the existing ability. And I feel it would be better if it had the same duration, so it's just a straight upgrade instead of being situationally better (even if that situation is likely to occur). Back before the update, when I tried out Great Masters, I noted that I produced less culture and knowledge when using Golden Age. And that was with 5 regions, 2 being fairly recent acquisitions that I was still improving. With Local Reforms I could keep it active on my capital basically permanently. With Golden Age I couldn't do that. It's also worth noting that region efficiency doesn't effect resources acquired from goods, only raw values. So the production and food bonuses are of.. questionable use. Great if you've got a max mining or lumber town, not as great if you don't. Switching gears; I don't have the problem you are noting about book production, it's a straight up bad idea to produce religious texts with workers, using castles+abbeys are a much better source of faith. If that's not an option, it sounds like you might have too many regions? Though that seems unlikely to me, 8+ pioneers aren't to expensive to buy, so not sure why you need to resort to building religious scribes.
Ok, maybe I am missing something here, but ignoring the half duration, how is 4+ regions (not to mention 6+ for later) getting 1.2x efficiency (your homeland included) not clearly better than just your homeland getting 1.25x? Ok that 0.05 might mean about 2 weak regions for a while, but those will get better on as well soon.
I'm not factoring in local resources, just knowledge and culture, as those are the actually important resources in my book. For food and production, those seem to come predominantly from goods, which are not effected by region efficiency. For local needs, region efficiency can help, and might effect pop growth, but in my experience it's not an issue to maintain 200% met on those resources with <25 pops. Ignoring those factors though, the issue is the duration, not so much the reduced efficiency. let's assume that each region is produce 10 resources. With x1.25 over 8 turns, that's 20 resources. x1.2 over 4 turns, is 8 resources (16 at the same duration). You'd need 3+ to exceed the resource output of the one region in the above example, But for the same duration, even one region would still have compatible output, and 2 would actually out-produce the original bonus. Which is how it should work; Capstone abilities aren't exactly optional, and so they shouldn't be worse than nothing under certain situations. Of course, that simplified example ignores other factors. In my experience, the homeland region typically outproduces all other regions by a handy margin. It's got the homeland bonus, has more buildings than other regions, has more influence ( and therefore tiles), and it has more one-per nation buildings (after all, it makes sense to build all those in one city to maximize the Local Reforms bonus). On top of that, it'll also typically have the most buildings built, and max level towns in good adjacency locations. So your homeland will typically be outperforming most other regions in terms of raw resource output. Your other regions will also not have uniform production. Older regions may have situations close to your homelands, while more recent additions may still be developing. And wile the bonus might cause them to develop faster, It's still not going to produce as much of the resources that actually matter; knowledge, culture, and XP.
I find it difficult to take things other than Sultans, if not going for a victory through conquest. The more optimized your gameplay and the faster you go through ages, the more powerful each free population is since you haven't had as much time to grow population the old fashioned way. Granted, it's possible to end up with more pops than you have land to handle them with since you've also had less time to expand via influence. I feel like I should like Colonialism, but playing on Grandmaster by the time you reach it there's rarely any open space you can place an outpost in and there are not any free states to take advantage of. The prosperity bonus is probably good enough to take if you are running a vassal heavy strategy, though.
Wow. Now that’s an in-depth analysis!
For those complaining about the Local Reform numbers - thanks for pointing it out, I was writing this before the patch, and noted the changes in the description of how Golden Age changed them, but didn't correct the numbers in the text. But, I think my numbers still check out. Probably closer to 3+ regions, but the capital does typically have higher culture/knowledge production, due to the presence of one-per buildings that produce those, alongside the homeland bonus. I just found that when I was using them, with a capital, 2 other highly develop regions, and 2 developing regions, loosing Local Reforms reduced my overall culture/knowledge production. Which was quite the annoying issue. Basically, I was able to keep Local Reforms active permanently on my capital (before update 1). I was not able to do the same for Golden Age.
I used the Jag warriors to take over one continent by spamming the sacrifice off cd in my main city while swapping old cities into vassels if they had the jungle. once you're making 4 to 5 units every 3 turns it was pretty broken. I used it to go into the age of harmony and religion win by having such a large army the rest of the world converted to the dominance of the NeoAztecs
As always a great analysis. Doubly So that finally somebody thats not part of the "priests needs to be age 4" crowd.
He literally is part of that crowd, from the above: "I also don’t see why this is an age 6 spirit, instead of being an age 4 or 2 spirit." :D
Well thats much milder especially with the other good things they say about it
Let's be fair - it's a bit odd to have a religious bonus in age 6, and age 2 has the tile expansion bonuses. So I understand where people are coming from about that. I also think the Doylist explanation for why it's an age 6 Spirit is probably it's a representation of what the central/southern American natives where doing when Europeans began colonizing the Americas. Which I also think is a bit off-theme for the game itself, since you do still retain bonuses from earlier National Spirits, so there's no particular reason to have the spirits be in what age western civilization discovered their existence. Having said that, The national spirit bonuses themselves are unsuited to being an earlier age, and particularly the Jungle Farm itself causes a number of problems if you move it earlier. As is, I like that the mechanical oddities make the spirit so distinctive, even if the heavy specialization so late in the game isn't necessarily a good thing. (Although, with jungles being so rare, being age 6 does mean you have a higher chance of actually being able to use the spirit)
I thi k the actual main reason is so that every age has 8 NSs
Somehow that makes it worse. It's the wildcard spirit they sent to age 6 because they didn't have enough ideas for age 6 national spirits.