Strategies for Australia

[atm]

Wow, is Australia super OP. I read a lot of posts saying they were somewhere between boring and awkward, but having done an immortal playthrough I can definitely say they are my current favorite civ if used right. Thought I would share some of the tricks I discovered.

-Outback stations are not just as good as they look on the surface, they are actually almost game-breakingly good. Their only drawback is the fact they appear in the mid game and it would be nice to have them early.

• They provide +1 food +1 prod immediately in any circumstance, including on desert and desert hills.
  
• They gain +1 food per adjacent pasture, but also GRANT +1 food to that pasture once the required tech that causes adjacent stations to buff their own food is researched. I am not sure if it is a bug, but if built in a ring around a pasture (and it can be any pasture, even those crappy ones on desert hills), it will grant +6 food to that tile, while also gaining +1 food on each of the surrounding tiles. Same applies to production with the prerequisite tech, so you can end up with a single pasture providing like +7 food +6 production.
  
• If you build large swathes of stations, you will gain up to +3 food +3 production of any tile (in the mid-late game with adjacency bonuses), and I had some amazing pure desert cities that were nuts as a result. Desert hills is +3 food +4 production off the bat - combine with petra for craziness. It's even higher on plains and grassland of course, although not being able to build on plans and grassland hills messes up your arrangement a bit.
  
• Perhaps most importantly, this insane resource output (e.g. empty desert being better than even improved bonus resources) means you can freely chop every forest and jungle you see, and also harvest pretty much every bonus resource around your cities for huge boosts and STILL have more resource income than if you had left them. Late-game, harvesting stone and other stuff gives you a large amount of production. I don't know any other civ that can basically stripmine the entire map and still end up with superior resource income at the end of it.

-It seems out of character, but if you majorly annoy every other civ in the game, you will be in the brilliant situation where they are declaring war on you frequently. On island plates maps, you will even get two distant civs declaring war and neither of them actually coming to attack you. Every time they do it you get 10 free turns of production, which is as good a truly epic boost, particularly if you get it often.
What might not be obvious is that you seem to get it when an enemy becomes suzerain of a city state and the city state declares on you as well.
Even better, of course, is liberating enemy cities, which is 20 turns of production boost. On my first playthrough, Kongo had taken three city states which I liberated at a careful pace for a ton of extra production. I have a feeling this will get nerfed at some point.

-Digger is fantastic. Has more bonus strength than any other unique unit I can think of, and comes right at the time you are ready to do some expanding.

-+4 yield for culture, science, faith districts on breathtaking is a strong early bonus, but it also means you can plan to put your districts on those poky peninsulas that would be no good for outback stations because they aren't adjacent to enough flat land. Being adjacent to ocean increases appeal, so almost any peninsula sticking out to the sea will be a perfect spot for one of those districts, and (I think?) the +4 counts as an adjacency bonus, so also gets doubled by civics that double district adjacency.

I have read some people say that the bonuses seem to compete with each other, but I am now convinced that the bonses work perfectly together. Australia can be a little slow to get started as the outback station only appears in the mid game, and is only fully upgraded in the late game, but it is the only civ I am happy when war is declared on me.

In conclusion, if you haven't played Australia you should try it.

[-=Maure=-]

Thank you, it's very insightful, they already were one of my favorite civs before I had considered half the thing you share here. I've also noticed harvesting resources the better option with this CIV, something I almost never do with others. And the districts on peninsulas may make it worth it to settle near them even if you get a lot of useless water tiles.

The only drawback is it is a late game civilization with the Outback stations additional bonuses and ability to improve tiles' appeal.

[mitchincredible]

Australia is OP just like in real life.

[Steven]

Hard to believe people call them boring or awkward. They are one of the strongest civs in the game.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

No one would ever release an OP DLC and then nerf it after everyone buys it. That would never happen.

[Zblugg]

My science victory was never in doubt. From the get-go I had the upper hand, thanks to those breathtaking tiles. Outback stations ROCK.

Yeah, Australia is phenomenal.

And wow, Monado, you're fun. I do want Canada. How are the States more relevant that Canada or Australia, for that matter? They've all "existed" for about just as long, in the grand scheme of things...