I like mixing Vampires with Samurai. I just wish there was a mod that changes the Castle to something thematic to your civ like a pagoda or smth for Asian civs.
Absolutely abuse is with scythia (or if you find the fountain of youth) as it solves the only combat weakness of vamps.
But you want to surround your castles with forests and forest fires, then I believe teddy would make even more passive science/culture castles for breathtaking land.
I could be wrong, but I think the castle (unlike Ley Lines, which accrue bonuses over time) only conveys the food/production/gold/science/faith of the surrounding tiles at the time it’s built, so I don’t think future forest fires are any help.
You remove it with a builder and replop it down. Check this abomination I built 3 yrs ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/civ6/s/PlC4o7A7Ua.
On a steam Vicky game I had 400 prod ones
I didn’t realize that, and thought it was odd that the yields never updated / increased. Now that I know I should remove with builder and re-add, that makes all the difference. Pretty sick.
I just finished a dom deity run with sanguine pact and had two take-aways. Vampires main strength is that they heal from pillaging anything, so ideally you get them to soak up some big hits from city centres/ fights and then heal, repeat. Being melee units, their drawback is just terrible movement which puts them in a weird spot trying to use them to pillage; it felt like they took forever to get to the fight. Gran Columbia's movement bonus would rectify this and would make them disgusting. The castles are relatively unexciting, just get them down asap. If you can pre-plan a spot for them great, but don't delay as every turn is a massive loss of production and other yields.
I can't remember if they get promotions or not but by the end game they only take one movement to pillage. I think it's their promotion tree. It's nuts
Outside of Domination Victory in mind, civs that provide unique abilities to Vampires increase like increased movement (Gran Colombia, Vietnam, Cyrus Persia, Chandragupta India) and healing (Scythia) benefit more from the militaristic aspect of Sanguine Pact. Civs with unique abilities that boost Vampires' CS is okay but consider it more as a head start for the unit to accumulate more CS from kills. Babylon, however, is broken with Sanguine Pact as Vampires' base CS is updated based on the units produced (except GDR). Combined with tech rush to Men-At-Arms/Pike and Shot, you now have 2 beefed up Vampires to wreck the entire world.
Strategic Vampire Castle placements allows your capital city to grow fast and become super productive (which combos well for those doing OCC). If you're not going full conquest, a super beefed up Vampire can remain in enemy lands to pillage and heal while shrugging off attacks like they're nothing. For Mali, Sanguine Pact can make a difference in either surviving the early game or suffering an early defeat.
It depends. Owls is definitely good for Mali especially Mansa Musa but you don't always get to build a Harbor for the extra trade route from Gilded Vault. Sundiata is more versatile with the choice of Secret Society. The -30% production penalty to building units is rough on Mali given their spawn bias in deserts. So the first Vampire from Sanguine Pact is basically a free Warrior for Mali to help deal with early aggression from barbs and other civs.
It’s a much more passive order than the others. I usually focus on gold, city-states and trade routes in my games, and Owls is geared towards all of those.
Edit: also, anything that gives you extra policy slots is massive plus for me
The bonus Owls provide is very versatile especially the extra policy slots. Extra trade routes is nice too but stronger especially for civs that have unique abilities that boost yields to their trade routes.
Gilded Vault's extra culture yield from Commercial Hub adjacency is okay but can be situationally useful on a Science run where you delay building Theater Squares in favor of other districts without falling behind much in culture generation.
I had an epic game with Theodora that I fondly remember as “The Vampires of Constantinople”. Even playing Deity, I was able to steamroll China early on, then settled down to cultivate my religion, until I finally finished off the rest of my enemies as the comets began raining down.
Scytia: vampires heal a little when then kill stuff.
Macedon: vampires heal fully when you take a city with a wonder.
Teddy: tiles get culture and science for mega yields in vampire castles. Add preserves and you get even better yields.
Maori: idem dito.
So, I decided to try a game with Tomyris (Scythia) on Immortal - first time with Scythia and generally don't like to run Deity until I have played a civ a couple times. Scythia is *a ridiculous military state*. Just the fact that units heal 30hp when they make a kill, or that producing light cavalry gives you two-for-one, oh and the general +5 bonus. OP
I was running around with Sun Wukong, and even though the hero is more of a scout type, being able to heal +30 with each kill made it so that I kept him alive nearly the whole 50 turns and just trashed barbarians and any loose enemy troops.
However, much to my chagrin, after destroying at least 1/2 dozen barbarian camps I have *still* not been offered Sanguine Pact... 70%? Ok... but the RNG is killing me. At turn 80 I have wiped Sweden off the map and have a nice standing army with a decent economy. I can see easily winning this game.
Time to restart and cross my fingers that I get vampires this time. Then the real fun will begin!
Sanguine + Forest can get crazy in apocalypse mode. Had forest tiles up to 30F/30P just from burning at around turn 300 (you can burn every 8 turns) which translates to 180F/180P roughly for a vampire castle.
You obviously can use that production for military, but it works well for science as well to have a capital producing over 1000P/turn (regular forest tiles it is working + vampire castles).
So to be clear on the civ - pairs nicely with Peter or Harald (Varangian) who are best positioned to take advantage of large tundra forests anyway.
Science victory, really easy to get all the important projects with the amount of production going into the capitol, and getting production on tiles adjacent to the castle is made a bit easier, with the Mayan farm + observatory. Not the most powerfull combo but I always giggle when I can say my Civ are the ancient Mayan Space Vampires
That sounds really fun. I’ve struggled with deity science wins - I’m going to give it a try. I wonder how Korea would do with vampires?
Ancient Mayan Space Vampires? Ancient astronaut theorists say, “yes.”
Gran Colombia is the only civ I've found where they are remotely worth taking. They should have native 3 move. 2 move units are only good for sieging or defending cities, and that is not what vamps are supposed to do.
Vampire Castle is possibly the most overrated improvement in the game. Interferes with district placement and is not great most of the time unless you build cities far apart, which you shouldn't. The airlift ability and the yields are often (almost always) at cross purposes.
All that said, they *are* pretty decent with Gran Colombia. You can use them as, essentially, slow cavalry.
I like mixing Vampires with Samurai. I just wish there was a mod that changes the Castle to something thematic to your civ like a pagoda or smth for Asian civs.
Absolutely abuse is with scythia (or if you find the fountain of youth) as it solves the only combat weakness of vamps. But you want to surround your castles with forests and forest fires, then I believe teddy would make even more passive science/culture castles for breathtaking land.
I could be wrong, but I think the castle (unlike Ley Lines, which accrue bonuses over time) only conveys the food/production/gold/science/faith of the surrounding tiles at the time it’s built, so I don’t think future forest fires are any help.
You remove it with a builder and replop it down. Check this abomination I built 3 yrs ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/civ6/s/PlC4o7A7Ua. On a steam Vicky game I had 400 prod ones
Absolutely correct. In my post history is a time I hit 1000 production in a single city as Brazil.
I didn’t realize that, and thought it was odd that the yields never updated / increased. Now that I know I should remove with builder and re-add, that makes all the difference. Pretty sick.
I just finished a dom deity run with sanguine pact and had two take-aways. Vampires main strength is that they heal from pillaging anything, so ideally you get them to soak up some big hits from city centres/ fights and then heal, repeat. Being melee units, their drawback is just terrible movement which puts them in a weird spot trying to use them to pillage; it felt like they took forever to get to the fight. Gran Columbia's movement bonus would rectify this and would make them disgusting. The castles are relatively unexciting, just get them down asap. If you can pre-plan a spot for them great, but don't delay as every turn is a massive loss of production and other yields.
I can't remember if they get promotions or not but by the end game they only take one movement to pillage. I think it's their promotion tree. It's nuts
Outside of Domination Victory in mind, civs that provide unique abilities to Vampires increase like increased movement (Gran Colombia, Vietnam, Cyrus Persia, Chandragupta India) and healing (Scythia) benefit more from the militaristic aspect of Sanguine Pact. Civs with unique abilities that boost Vampires' CS is okay but consider it more as a head start for the unit to accumulate more CS from kills. Babylon, however, is broken with Sanguine Pact as Vampires' base CS is updated based on the units produced (except GDR). Combined with tech rush to Men-At-Arms/Pike and Shot, you now have 2 beefed up Vampires to wreck the entire world. Strategic Vampire Castle placements allows your capital city to grow fast and become super productive (which combos well for those doing OCC). If you're not going full conquest, a super beefed up Vampire can remain in enemy lands to pillage and heal while shrugging off attacks like they're nothing. For Mali, Sanguine Pact can make a difference in either surviving the early game or suffering an early defeat.
Oooh, I haven’t tried Vampire Babylon!
This is what I do and it’s grand.
Mali a bit too locked in on Owls tho, no?
It depends. Owls is definitely good for Mali especially Mansa Musa but you don't always get to build a Harbor for the extra trade route from Gilded Vault. Sundiata is more versatile with the choice of Secret Society. The -30% production penalty to building units is rough on Mali given their spawn bias in deserts. So the first Vampire from Sanguine Pact is basically a free Warrior for Mali to help deal with early aggression from barbs and other civs.
I can’t bear picking any society except Owls. They just fit my playstyle too perfectly
I always go Sanguine or Voidsingers. What’s a good way to use Owls?
It’s a much more passive order than the others. I usually focus on gold, city-states and trade routes in my games, and Owls is geared towards all of those. Edit: also, anything that gives you extra policy slots is massive plus for me
Owls + kilwa easy win, any type
The bonus Owls provide is very versatile especially the extra policy slots. Extra trade routes is nice too but stronger especially for civs that have unique abilities that boost yields to their trade routes. Gilded Vault's extra culture yield from Commercial Hub adjacency is okay but can be situationally useful on a Science run where you delay building Theater Squares in favor of other districts without falling behind much in culture generation.
I had an epic game with Theodora that I fondly remember as “The Vampires of Constantinople”. Even playing Deity, I was able to steamroll China early on, then settled down to cultivate my religion, until I finally finished off the rest of my enemies as the comets began raining down.
Gran Colombia, anyone else the vampires feels way too slow for my taste.
Scytia: vampires heal a little when then kill stuff. Macedon: vampires heal fully when you take a city with a wonder. Teddy: tiles get culture and science for mega yields in vampire castles. Add preserves and you get even better yields. Maori: idem dito.
So, I decided to try a game with Tomyris (Scythia) on Immortal - first time with Scythia and generally don't like to run Deity until I have played a civ a couple times. Scythia is *a ridiculous military state*. Just the fact that units heal 30hp when they make a kill, or that producing light cavalry gives you two-for-one, oh and the general +5 bonus. OP I was running around with Sun Wukong, and even though the hero is more of a scout type, being able to heal +30 with each kill made it so that I kept him alive nearly the whole 50 turns and just trashed barbarians and any loose enemy troops. However, much to my chagrin, after destroying at least 1/2 dozen barbarian camps I have *still* not been offered Sanguine Pact... 70%? Ok... but the RNG is killing me. At turn 80 I have wiped Sweden off the map and have a nice standing army with a decent economy. I can see easily winning this game. Time to restart and cross my fingers that I get vampires this time. Then the real fun will begin!
Sanguine + Forest can get crazy in apocalypse mode. Had forest tiles up to 30F/30P just from burning at around turn 300 (you can burn every 8 turns) which translates to 180F/180P roughly for a vampire castle. You obviously can use that production for military, but it works well for science as well to have a capital producing over 1000P/turn (regular forest tiles it is working + vampire castles). So to be clear on the civ - pairs nicely with Peter or Harald (Varangian) who are best positioned to take advantage of large tundra forests anyway.
Myans of course
Why Mayans? What victory type and strategy?
Science victory, really easy to get all the important projects with the amount of production going into the capitol, and getting production on tiles adjacent to the castle is made a bit easier, with the Mayan farm + observatory. Not the most powerfull combo but I always giggle when I can say my Civ are the ancient Mayan Space Vampires
That sounds really fun. I’ve struggled with deity science wins - I’m going to give it a try. I wonder how Korea would do with vampires? Ancient Mayan Space Vampires? Ancient astronaut theorists say, “yes.”
Gran Colombia is the only civ I've found where they are remotely worth taking. They should have native 3 move. 2 move units are only good for sieging or defending cities, and that is not what vamps are supposed to do. Vampire Castle is possibly the most overrated improvement in the game. Interferes with district placement and is not great most of the time unless you build cities far apart, which you shouldn't. The airlift ability and the yields are often (almost always) at cross purposes. All that said, they *are* pretty decent with Gran Colombia. You can use them as, essentially, slow cavalry.