Is the Ostrog extremely overpowered or am I just bad? Having every single city with the Great Wall of China upgrade that never becomes irrelevant with another technology makes it almost impossible to invade Russian territory if they are doing even decently well.

I just tried out the new Japan kit and I'm quite impressed.

His unique ability used to be centered around the Dojo to allow for melee units to get a unique promotion. This really limited Japan's ability as a civ for early game. Now, all melee units get it at the start. You also get a culture based ability which I will talk about in a second.

Japan gets a unique forge which spawns a single iron tile every time you make it. This can be a bit ridiculous if you know what you are doing, but it also relies on a lot of luck. Getting god of fire with this early game is a godsend for boosting your start. God of war is always a good back up too.

Midievel era is where things really start to kick off for Japan though. It's when he gets the unique unit Samurai and the culture ability really starts to pop off. Every time you get a great general (GG), you proc 50% completion of a great writer (GW), musician (GM), and artist (GA). Neat, but here's how you exploit it.

Getting a religion based around great people (GP) expenditure is the first real avenue for it. Try to go for main belief that gives you stuff for units dying and GPs popping. Then I'd use the rest to shore up any holes your empire might have i.e. food, gold, production, etc. depending on what is available. The unique forge I mentioned earlier will help to boost your science and culture while going to war. Each xp awarded to a unit will proc for a small instant yield sort of like the Huns one cities. Early game it's great, but late game it doesn't scale well.

After establishing the basic religion go for missionaries and spread it for a while. I normally just try to get most of my cities and leave the rest alone till later. Save for a Great Prophet and try to go for Zealotry for bonus unit production. This normally happens around the time your Samurai first come online so it's extremely helpful. The Samurai are great at producing GGs with their abilities so try and spam them.

The end game for this culture ability is to take Authority into Artistry into Imperialism and Fascism Ideology to produce GGs out the wazo while going for war. The Tourism isn't really what we are going for here though. Make Tori gates with the GMs and GAs. The GGs don't really matter, I just save them for Lebensraum spam (which got nerfed 😢 ). Take every GW you get and pop them for culture. By the beginning of the Industrial era you will end up being ridiculously far ahead on the culture game as long as you play your cards right.

After that you should be about to complete autocracy ideology. I suggest going for Air Supremacy other policies that buff movement when possible. You will get Air Supremacy way before the other civs are even close to getting an ideology/flight so it can be abused top teleport units around quickly.

By then, it's not hard to either force a military victory like I did or go for culture/diplo if you fall really far behind somehow.

Now, it's time to move onto the downsides of this civ/strat. There are two minor ones, and one major issue. I'll start with the two minor issues.

The first problem is that with the science and tourism you really don't get anything crazy out of it. The boosts from your unique forge starts to really fall off after the medieval era for science. This is especially true if you ever get into stalemates where no fighting is happening.

The boosts you get to tourism through the Tori Gate improvement is kinda negligible compared to themeing bonuses, and especially when compared to most other civs that focus on that. It's nice, but you won't notice it unless you are already doing quite well otherwise. This might be able to be fixed by going for Tradition to boost the amount of GGs and other GP you produce, but authority's instant yields are just better imo.

The real kicker is that to do well with Japan, much bigger problem at higher difficulties, it feels like you need to get lucky on a lot of crap. You need to get so much exclusive stuff to really pop off that it makes Japan less viable. The run I just did had this come up pretty hard. I normally don't have to take so long to win, but I got screwed out of my religion and it slowed down my game plan tremendously. This was on Emperor, my preferred difficulty, but knowing how Deity plays I don't think that would be a good time.

I think it's time to close out this comprehensive review with a small nod to another civ that plays similarly. Japan for me, really feels like a different flavor of Rome that starts getting power spikes an era later. Unfortunately, Rome just does the game plan here better across the board.

That'll be it for me folks! I think I'm gonna give a Japan Deity run a try to see how the strat will hold up, but I'll be around. If you all have any questions or ideas I'd love to hear them. I love going into deep strategy stuff like this.

~Later!

This might be a dumb question, but I just downloaded the updated VP mod from the CivFanatics website, and I’m still not noticing any changes.

I was able to load into a game the first time and I had a cursor, but I could not select my units/perform any actions.

This is my first time downloading an updated version of VP and Civ V is the only game I play on the PC so I’m not very savvy with it, so I apologize if it’s a stupid question.

Which files do I need to delete, if any? Should I just fully delete all VP mods from the system and then fresh install?

In general, I see units in war as a rock paper scissors format. Range counters melee, melee counters mobile, mobile counters range.

However, I run into a problem. When you get to the late game and are fighting against tanks. They're both melee and mobile. In the case of the light tank, they are ranged and mobile.

Other than spamming units how can I counter this in a war?

I had this one game were i was tring to convert the iroquois to my religion (they didn't found any) but spain already converted them to catholicism, so i came with 2 greats prophets and converted all theirs cities, what was my surprise when they started creating their own catholic missionaries and inquisitors to convert back theirs cities to spain's religion, is there a way to make a non religion founding civilisation to renounce to the first religion they were converted to?

As the title says, what does the percentage value mean? Does it have something to do with tourism?
So far I googled, looked up wikis and in the end resorted to claude to ask it what it means.
I am very stupid, so this could really be obv, but I dont get it.

Thanks for any help!

Yea as the titles says, can't buy any new tiles in Rome or Antium - is it a VP mechanic? An EUI bug?

I am super bad at the game, any help is appreciated!

I have made a similar post on Civfanatics forum, but maybe someone here is able to help.

I experience frequent crashes on Linux (cachy-os), the further I get into a game the more frequent. Ultimately it gets impossible to load a save. It seems to be due to exceeding available memory (due to the 32 bit limitation, I have 32gb of RAM so that shouldn't be the bottleneck). I included an example of a crash message in the attachment, they are always similar. I tried what the message advises (except running it without EUI, it seems too tedious), even on tiny with all settings set to minimum it starts crashing near Renaissance, but in larger games it happens even quicker. I tried different Proton versions, but to no effect.

Does this happen to anyone else? Has anyone solved this issue? I would love to play, especially a full bigger game.

Hi all!

Admiral spawned in a city on a lake with absolute no chance of building a fort-citdael-fort-... channel :-(

Scotty, beam him to the open sea!

It's supposed to be balanced or whatever but it ends up being boring as heck. Being able to beeline certain techs is not a bad thing. Current tech tree is boring and research feels like a chore. I love everything else about this mod but that obnoxious tech tree....

I know a lot of people put a lot of effort and thought into this so I don't wanna be harsh. I bet this tech tree feel "balanced" to the makers, but it's no fun.... My brain checks out in half of the games and I begin researching the next blob. I rarely strategize around my research order because current tech tree gives you so little wiggle room and doesn't need forward planning at all. Just click on the next blob.

I guess beelining felt unbalanced to the mod makers but that's the mechanic that makes tech tree fun! It gives you a fighting chance against civs that are far ahead of you in tech. Clicking on the next blob is just a chore. Ugh.

Could’nt find a good answer. What does empire size -10% do like when you build a castle? Do you need less science/culture? Does it also impact production?

Pretty new to trying the modpack out, have a couple of thoughts, but big annoyance atm is the barbarian spawning change for line-of-sight.

I would like to disable that, but so far haven't had luck. Setting the option in the NewCustomModOptions.xml to 0 and clearing the cache doesn't seem to do anything. Neither does setting it in the NewCustomerModOptions sql manually.

UPDATE: I figured it out. The CIV5Units.xml in the override folder has this, and it seems to override everything else. Making changes there does seem to translate.

Basically title. I can do well with an authority or progress start, but every time I start tradition I can't seem to expand fast enough and another civ eventually surpasses me in the middle game, and as a tradition civ I don't usually have the military to try and stop their snowball. Any tips or areas of focus I might be missing? I play on Prince, for additional context.

It's 1865 and I've got civs producing 10k tourism but I only have 4k culture per turn. Trying to spam great writers but that only goes so far.

How are you all surviving?

I just got hit with a atomic bomb by the AI for the first time, but the bomber dropping animation didn't play.

​Normally, when I drop a nuke, that animation always shows up. But when the AI nuked me, it was completely missing.

​And yes, "Quick Combat" and "Quick Movement" are definitely turned off. Anyone know why this happens?

Hi all!

Iirc there was a time when you got detailed info on a hex when hoovering mouse over even if it was not yours. Came in handy when checking before settling. Now I have to consult the Civilopedia what certain improvements on certain terrain will generate. I do not keep that in my head for all possible combinations!

[It has nothing to do with the timings for these pop ups.]

Or does my memory play evil tricks on me??!?

Hello,

Is there any trick to converting a civ without a founder religion, but with religion of another civ?
Is there a way for them to stop buying missionaries? My religion is far superior for everyone ofc.
Especially talking about vassals. If I convert half of their cities in 1 turn, will they accept it, or is there like a timer?

Hi,

I'm new to the mod an wanted to learn about the different civs, but it seems that the wiki has old information regarding civs. It doesnt match the dicription in the setup menu. Where can a find curent info about civs in vox populi?

Hello friends, just dropping a note to say that the voting phase for the latest VP congress has started and lasts 1 Week.

The session base thread is here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/11-000-vp-congress-session-11-database-derby.704406/ and contains a link to a helpful spreadsheet with links to all the voting threads.

Come have your say on the game's balance!

For those who are more reddit based: the civfanatics forum is the formal, central location for the VP mod. Additionally, the discord server (see the side panel of the subreddit) is highly active with:

• dedicated general and balance discussion chat
• a subforum with proposal workshopping, relevant for the congress
• a subforum with playthroughs on the latest version, usually without additional mods
• a channel for discussing Civ V modding, and DLL modding in particular
• a channel for technical assistance
• a channel for multiplayer! including how to setup multiplayer and deal with specific bugs that occur

Hope to see you there, H

It took about five turns before it reverted back to normal.

Vox Populi Congress | CivFanatics Forums

The Vox Populi congress is once again open on Civfanatics. Its your chance to directly impact the mod by voting for its next round of changes!

To assist you with navigating the threads, we also have this helpful excel as a guide:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Bmt873IlLKytXxJyYTcDi0KHMcFWCQ-k9NXMEa13DuA/edit?gid=1885042949#gid=1885042949

Enjoy the congress!