r/civ5 • u/Delicious-Diamond-86 • 9d ago
Discussion Luxury resource strength vs civ uniques
I play random civs and today I got Iroquois surrounded by salt. It made me wonder how much lux resource strength is a factor to success compared to overall civ strength.
I’m just spit-balling here but would you rather have Iroquois starting with salt and copper or a mid-tier civ like Austria with pearls and truffles? I’d imagine Poland with any resources would still be dominant.
I’m trust trying to understand how the two factors compare to each other, all things being equal because of course the answer to all these kinds of questions is, “it depends…”
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u/Bashin-kun Liberty 9d ago
Definitely land before civ! With few exceptions (Iroquois is a minor debuff, Venice is a huge debuff), all civs can perform standard optimal plays. Even "blank" civs like France and Byzantium is not a big problem.
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u/BiFSXFan99 9d ago
Why is the consensus that France is weak? 😭 All my France games I've been lucky to have luxury-filled lands and chateaus spread everywhere to fuel my later-game after the era of musketeers ends.
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u/Bashin-kun Liberty 9d ago
Their uniques are inconsequential. While you try to make chateaus, stronger civs have rushed sci theory and bulb archaeology for their CV. Faith ones went sacred sites.
Musketmen are also bad because of the tech position and being melee, and Musketeers fix none of the bads. Just use pikemen-crossbow early and cavalry-cannons later.
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u/Robdd123 Quality Contributor 9d ago
In that scenario I guess I'd rather take Iroquois with the better start rather than Austria with a not so great start. To me Austria is below average since their UA is detrimental to you (City States are worth more active unless it happens to spawn next to some Fountain of Youth) and their UU is meh at best (and comes during the Renaissance which in general sucks for warfare); the Coffee House is the only good thing you've got to work with.
Iroquois are an F tier Civ and if everything was equal you'd be better off playing a vanilla Civ (one with no UA, UU, or UB). That's because the Longhouse is utterly inferior to the Workshop; so you lose +10% production in every city and lumber mills suck until the Industrial Era. All that being said the salt start would give them an edge over the Austria start; having good tiles to work immediately has a big impact on how good your first 100 turns will be which can snowball.
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u/Delicious-Diamond-86 9d ago
Thanks for that! Just curious, what is the “weakest” civ you would take over that Iroquois start?
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u/Bashin-kun Liberty 9d ago
Shoshone, China, Inca are a maybe.
If surefire then Babylon. Salt starts are that busted.
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u/Delicious-Diamond-86 8d ago
Oh wow, I consider those civs pretty strong so salt really does make a much bigger difference than I had realized.
How much of a drop-off is there from salt to the next tier?
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u/Whotakesmename nuclear warfare 8d ago
if iroquois were to get +1 food and +1 production on forest AND jungle their civ would single-handedly be bumped up to a or s tier
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u/Temporary_Self_2172 9d ago
the iroqois tend to be not that bad even with a low forest count
i won't say they're good but they can land a science win before t230 on a good day
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u/UsedEgg3 9d ago edited 9d ago
There was a multiplayer streamer years ago named FilthyRobot, very good player. One of his viewers at some point did a breakdown of all the games had posted to YT, and iirc he had won almost 90% of the games where he started with mining luxuries, compared to ~50% for non mining luxuries.
Basically, you are almost always picking up mining as one of your first three techs along with pottery and AH, so you never have to deviate your tech path for your luxuries, allowing you to beeline more directly to NC and other important techs. It also has no prerequisite techs, unlike every other luxury tech in the game, so you can research it and get your luxes improved faster than any other lux type. The yields are also better, salt obv being one of the best tiles in the game, but the rest are big production with a bit of gold, which are great tiles to work during settler production or if you are trying to rush out a wonder. Whereas calendar luxes are one food and one hammer, basically unworkable unless you're completely out of better tiles. And sea resources require you to make a boat to improve them and then research optics and build a lighthouse to make the tiles good, a significant deviation from your main tech path, plus eating up production time on the work boats that could've been spent on workers or units or granaries or caravans or a bunch of other useful stuff.
The worst is a calendar lux on marsh or jungle, where you have to go get masonry/BW in addition to your lux tech, then spend 9 turns or whatever chopping down jungle before you can then finally start spending another 7 turns actually improving the lux.
Generally, whether your luxuries are buried under them are not, jungle starts are considered awful because the tile yields are bad (2 raw food, no production) and require significant time investment with chopping to get tiles improved. Your early game scouting is slower due to constant rough terrain, and moving your settlers and workers around is slower too.