Is keeping the same civilisation really a choice ?

[Surprise]

I mean i feel that the added bonnus is of fame is so weak and the bonus of new civilisation is so strong that you don't really have to think twice before switching civilisation.

Im i the only one to think that way ? Did you find a good reason to not switch civilisation ?

[VDmitry]

Originally posted by archonsod:

What's the strength of switching to a new civilisation? Unique units are only slightly better than the one they replace (in most cases not to an extent that can't be countered by good terrain). The unique buildings can be slightly more useful, but you retain access to the one you have. Civilisation abilities themselves are much of a muchness; in a lot of cases you're just swapping +1/10% bonus production around.

There are different units, some are OP. For example Spanish units are +4 comparing to Arquebusiers, and also can move and attack the same round unlike them.

Emblematic districts are restricted to one per territory. And so when you switch cultures you can build new emblematic districts when you already have previous one built.

Switching cultures you may also adjust your playthrough to your current needs. Like if you need to prepare to war to get some territory/resources then it may worth to get Militaristic culture.

[jonnin]

Originally posted by archonsod:

Originally posted by Surprise:

I mean i feel that the added bonnus is of fame is so weak and the bonus of new civilisation is so strong that you don't really have to think twice before switching civilisation.

What's the strength of switching to a new civilisation?

balance and development.
My favorite is to do builder first, egypt can build districts faster on top of its production. Follow that with food theme (harbors count) to drive your population up. Then you can do science, for example, ... by the third era you are doing everything well. ITs not like civ where you only want to od 1 thing well, you need to be solid at several things, esp science, building, influence generation, money generation are all important.
if you keep 1 culture, you can only do 1 thing well, and probably not even that since you don't get any new cultural buildings or bonuses. EG zhou... how many +20 mountain schools do you need to get that 10k/turn science you need? Vs swapping to say turk and getting +1 for all your population times each territory (so a 50 population city with 5 territory gets 5X50 science from their building) .. times 10+ cities... zhou can't keep up with that if you keep promoting.

[UR ESTROGEN DEALER]

No, you need to progress to a new culture every single era.

The stacking bonuses of the emblematic districts is way too powerful to skip over even for 1 era.

[abonamente]

Originally posted by Surprise:

Did you find a good reason to not switch civilisation ?

Yes, I play on the largest maps, slowest pace and I'm too lazy to keep track of what I've built on every tile. Details following. Also, every strategy game, I only play the highest levels of difficulty out of curiosity, not on a regular basis, so, here, switching cultures brings me more headaches than benefits.

Switching cultures might be an option after playing a lot more and knowing in detail various cultures' characteristics, so everything becomes intuitive (yay! no thinking required!). I don't like to count stuff and rethink everything. Specifically, keeping the old culture, I won't need to comb the entire huge map again and again just to decide where and when to place some new emblematic districts without ruining what I've accomplished during the previous eras.

There were two exception so far: Persia (I think) for the +2 city cap and Australia for its mines. I had to overextend in the previous era and at the time the +2 cities were the best way of dealing with the negative consequences. The Australian mining district came in handy once, so far, when I was slightly behind someone on a different continent, who was going to destroy the world anyway, through pollution. So, this was a sure, fast and less tedious way than starting a war to jump ahead - took a lot of space projects and stuff, got builder fame bonus etc. The world died, but who cares, I got my fame, right?

[Elvis]

Well... it depends.

If you have built all the emblematic quarters you wanted out of your currect culture, then picking a new one that is good, is pretty much your best choice.

However, if you have only poor choices left or have stuff left to build, you might wanna stick around on your current culture (or just now switch yet) to pick up a couple of more stars or finish a building.

The +10% points bonus is pretty much the worst bonus in the game, BUT some of the emblamatic quarters might be worth building in cities/terretories you are planing to add in the next few turns.

Edit: Some cultures that come to mind: Ming, Germany, Khemer. I have spent extra turns on all of these my last game, just to finish a few more emblematic buildings.

[Darkpumpkin21]

I would enjoy a change that makes this slightly better by allowing you to build a second of the unique district in each territory. You give up the new unique unit and district and bonus in return for the fame multiplier and another copy of your unique building. This may be broken for some cultures with very powerful districts.

[DavesBarbaricCookie]

if you stick longer with one civ it can actually add up quite nicely. Sticking with one civ also gives the additional small bonus that you get to build their emblematic district later down the line in new cities, which depending on the emblematic district can be quite the advantage

[SBA77]

From what I can tell Humankind is very board game like and has a big focus on score (fame). From that standpoint transcending sounds like those mechanics they have in board games where losing players make a risky play with a big sacrifice to catch up or turn the game around. Maybe if the fame bonuses isn't big enough for transcending to be seen as analogous to this, they should increase it.

Originally posted by The Doctor:

If you're not playing competitively, then of course it's a choice. It's the AI so just have fun doing whatever you want to with the game.

Competitively, no, it almost certainly isn't so don't do it.

The fact that transcending is like this is ironic and probably counterproductive on what it's supposed to be, assuming the above reasoning is correct of course.

[Trolleur_Durden]

I've tried transcending once or twice because I'm a perfectionnist and feel like I'm missing out if I fail to build a good emblematic district in a recently built city, but I'm not convinced it was really the best thing to do, strategically-wise. What about delaying the next era pick for a few turns in order to finish milking out the current one for some more easy to grab fame and districts instead?

[VDmitry]

Originally posted by Trolleur_Durden:

I've tried transcending once or twice because I'm a perfectionnist and feel like I'm missing out if I fail to build a good emblematic district in a recently built city, but I'm not convinced it was really the best thing to do, strategically-wise. What about delaying the next era pick for a few turns in order to finish milking out the current one for some more easy to grab fame and districts instead?

It doesn't make much sense to go to the next era as soon as you can. There are pros and cons.

What you get:

- new culture
- usually better choice of cultures
- ability to research techs of next era (but do you need that now?)
- better rewards from POIs (questionable for Neolithic)

What you loose:

- current culture
- fame from remaining stars of current era

So in many cases it's better choice of cultures vs loosing fame. And delaying next era is normally good thing. The question is rather for how long to delay.

You mostly have to advance when there are no techs left to research, as you start loosing your RPs.

[Trolleur_Durden]

Alright thanks, I'll try to stall things longer during my next playthrough and see how it goes!

[The Doctor]

Unless there's a culture that you really MUST have, I always check to see how close I am to earning more stars before I advance as well as how close the AI is to advancing. If I'm way out in front, I am happy to wait as long as possible and get as much fame as I can from each era.

But I've become a little less desperate to get a culture now playing against the AI and will still wait until I've got all my specialist era stars at least. There are no real duffers there and I've often found taking a Mercantile civ helps me to focus more on generating gold for a while which really helps later in the game. Or a militarist civ to bust some chops with my neighbours.

As long as I'm ahead in fame, I usually just roll with it and take the best I can get. In my last game, I picked the Ming because the ones I wanted were already picked. It sounds pretty wimpy but their Tea house district is really, really good at pumping out masses of influence and stability.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

My two cents:

Transcending misses out on stacking both

#1) Another unique district on what you have
#2) Another unique ability on what you have

Because the unique abilities stack and all *built* districts stack (you can't build earlier unique districts, but those already built remain), you give up a lot if you transcend with your current culture.


That being said, I've found a couple of cultures, all builders or science, that can transcend until the penultimate era:

Khmer - Oh wow is that district powerful on rivers. Between Khmer and a few of the choices immediately after them, the Khmer have the upper hand if there are rivers in areas you inhabit or plan to expand into.

Babylon - Others already mentioned it, but spamming their district also scales quite well.


Cultures I'd never transcend:

Huns - Even after you pick a new culture, you can still hard-build their Horse Archers at least, should you really need any more later on.

Mongols - Same as Huns. Unless you still desperately need to buy 4 Horde at a time with influence, never transcend.

And all others that lack a unique district and instead have a unique outpost.


I also tend not to transcend agrarians... agrarian is good to pick as a culture maybe once, maybe twice per game, but I'd never transcend one because food is great and all but you eventually want to stack some other bonuses that add production or science per pop or whatever.

[Matthew]

I'm starting to lean towards the opinion that Babylon should transcend.

You need a certain amount of production early on to stay competitive. There is no realistic way of avoiding this. Mass buyouts can help, but you need Nubians for that, and Nubians still get decent production. The problem with Babylon is that you simply don't have the time and stability to both keep boosting production and getting a decent number of emblematic districts.

Since their emblematic district scales so well it is competitive with classical options, the ability to get it in all your classical era regions along with 10% fame for the rest of the game probably makes it worth.

[View The Phenom]

Transcending is a choice, just not a good one.