I think what would make Hermetic slightly better is if as soon as you discover it, you can see the Ley lines, just not use them. In fact they should also show up in unexplored parts of the map. You can then make an informed decision about how many you can realistically expect to get. In fact this should only be done if you have not already chosen another secret society as yet.
You don't even need the lighthouse if you have the Guilded Vault, you just need a Harbor to get the bonus trade route. You'll already have one from your market which is a prereq to build the Guilded vault. Once you build a Harbor in a city with a Guilded Vault you will get the additional trade route without needing any additional buildings. (Not that you probably wouldn't want to build a lighthouse anyways as they are very beneficial as is.)
Hermes is definitely niche, but I've made it work, I think it works best with desert civs, since ley lines will only appear where there are no passable features (like trees). Also might work with the Maori, since you're likely to know where the ley lines are before you settle your first city. The game where I made Hermes work, I started near two ley lines and the Uluru natural wonder. Made a cluster of holy sites around them, took the pantheon that gives holy site adjacency for desert. When I formed a religion I took work ethic, and as soon as possible I took the policy that doubled holy site adjacency bonuses, and at that point my ley-line desert fueled holy sites were making at minimum 20 faith plus 20 production a turn. I picked up a lot of great people, and when I hit the industrial era, each of my ley lines was making from 30-40 yields a turn. And since I prioritized settling near deserts and ley lines, I had 8 or 9 ley lines at that point. And as Mali, my money income was so huge I literally couldn't spend it as fast as it was being generated. It's pretty fun exploiting a resource only you can see. But yeah, you're entirely at the mercy of random ley line placement. Most of the time there are better choices. And a less obvious penalty is, it's maybe the rarest society to qualify for, so other civs will hate you.
I will stand up for Hermetic Order. The trick is to ignore it early and pick up other governors like Amani first. If you are forced to spread in featureless terrain, then pick it up when you can unlock Alchemical Society. It's still weaker than the others on the average, but there are definitely games where it is superior.
Agree, CivLifeR even said as much in this very video, so I'm not sure how that rates "F tier". C maybe, but definitely not F--especially if you get two adjacent ley lines that stack those bonuses!
I have tryed it maybe 2 times on deity level and it has been useless on both times. Its just too luck based. First you have to pick it and then you discover that tere are 0-1 ley lines near you. Totally useless. And on deity level it is much harder to get great persons.
I played a game with Babylon, and went for every great engeneer in the game. My ley lines gave me 17 production each. And I had a city with 8 of them. It was an eazy science victory with a industrial zone of +13 and 8*17 pruduction.
Has anyone else noticed how the VAST majority of ley lines spawn in desert and snow? If you play the mediterranean large map for example, the Sahara desert is FILLED with ley lines, often with 3 or 4 of them right next to each other. I think it has something to do with how ley lines can't spawn on top of other resources, so they end up spawning in places with much fewer resources to get in the way. If ley lines were to spawn more evenly across the map, it would go a long way towards making the Hermetics less horrible.
My experience with Hermetic is that Leylines were super common. I often had at least one per city, and 2-3 in several cases. I had godly yields in my industrial zones playing as Germany that game lol.
Hermetic Order can be REALLY good. IF, you're lucky. I had a game where I started really close to about 11 Leylines (they're surprisingly common in desert areas usually). There were a fair few clustered around every other tile so not only could a fresh city get close to 3 within the first ring of settled territory, but the adjacency bonus for most districts ended up being +4 to +6. In the late game, each of those bad boys was churning out 18 Culture, 15 Gold, 9 Science and 10 Production, which is kinda crazy when you've got a bunch of them in close proximity. HOWEVER, I will admit the Hermetic Order is entirely luck based. Usually, I can find one or two Leylines near my capital, but there are definitely times that's all there is. Not being able to see them before picking a secret society really hurts their viability. ...of course, you can save scum with auto-saves and pick a different SS if you get dicked over.
One thing to note on Voidsingers...if you are also using Heroes and Legends then a Obelisk in a city that recruits a Hero will have THREE great work slots, two for the Hero relics and the one free slot. This is important if you are playing as Kristina/Sweden because it counts as a building with three great work slots and can be automatically themed! And the Reliqueries religious belief will affect any relics in the Obelisk. You can generate a ton of faith and tourism very early in the game this way by just building as many obelisks and Heroes as you can and filling the obelisks with relics. I think its like 88 tourism for an Obelisk filled with relics this way by Kristina with Reliqueries, which is a game winning amount early on.
The Hermetic Order has two main problems: firstly, you've got to get lucky with your leyline discovery. Contrast with the very reliable early-game bonuses of things like an extra economic policy slot, or super monuments. Secondly, while the Industrial era bonus yields on your leylines are very powerful, because they come in as late as they do, and because they're reliant on you already having a strong Great People production game, they're kind of a "win more" button. As opposed to a "turn the game entirely on its head" button like Chorus. Saying all that, if you get lucky and build your great person snowball well, they can still be good. I had a really fun multiplayer game as the Dutch with them shortly after the Secret Societies game mode came out, and good leyline points next to rivers led to some great adjacency bonuses, and that was even before the buff to them. But that's kinda it, I got lucky. And importantly, picking them means you aren't picking any of the others. I feel like the obvious buff would be the ability to see the "ghosts" of leylines in the period between discovering the HO and choosing which society you want. It would at least let you make an informed decision on whether to pick them or not, without having to savescum (not that there's anything especially wrong with that, but it's not an option in multiplayer unless you have *very* tolerant friends). A small percentage boost to great people generation, maybe one that got stronger as the stages of the secret society progressed, might also be welcome.
My ranking is Owls first (the card policies are just too much to ignore, and sending a trade route to a city state to gain an envoy is OP if you go Democracy with Wisselbanken Screw communism, Democracy with Suzerain city states is the way to win a Science victory. If you also get Amani, then any and all envoy problems are solved. Voidsingers are next (and although not having the policy card slots of Owls, for certain civs Russia and Ethiopia come to mind) they are better. Eleanor certainly can make best use of cultists, but there's a bug with them. If you aren't exerting any loyalty pressure (not sure if they have to have negative loyalty, or you just exerting loyalty), the city won't flip. Vampires are third. Not great, but not bad. Vampires + Cyrus' wars are scary. Vampire Castles would work if you could place them outside your territory. Not sure if you can or can't though. Just think of them as Nazca lines that work on any tile, but only benefit your Capitol. Hermetic Order sucks dick. They have the unworkable tile of the vampire castle (and unlike castles, they are like luxury or discovered strategic resources, meaning you can't place a district on them). That dam that would make your IZ awesome will be blocked by a ley line (or worse, that perfect IZ would be blocked by a ley line). In several games, Potato has KNOWN horses would spawn in a location he didn't want, and refused to research Animal Husbandry (and when he did, of course horses would block his Mausoleum).
I was reluctant to pick hermetic order because so many content creators have trashed it but both times i ended up picking it i had great games. I used them in my Japan and Germany games and won both games easily. I think Civs that already have extra district adjacency bonuses seem to work well with Hermetic order - it takes what those Civs are already good at and enhances the bonus. As Germany i was regularly finding +4 adjacency bonuses for my Hansa before even putting down a Commercial Hub or Aqueduct I also found adjusting my settle locations to fit well with the random lay lines on the map helped a bunch. That’s not always possible but oftentimes it is and those cities can become very powerful, especially with a civ like Japan who already gets extra bonuses for building districts next to each other. even with a regular civ settling on top of lay lines gives your city center a default 2.5 adjacency bonus. with japan it’s 3. that’s pretty powerful The other 3 secret societies are easier to make work and are less risky but with the right Civ and a little luck Hermetic Order can be really fun to use and can for sure help you win games
One broken thing I found out about Vampires is if you play Tomyris your vampires get +5 combat against damaged units and they heal 30hp each time they kill a unit, making this already broken soul sucking unit into an absolute deity.
Ley Lines are way more common in desert and tundra/snow. So for civs like Arabia, Nubia, Mali, Russia or Canada it can be a very viable option. And yes, I've actually put Russia there, because whenever you get bored of the Voidsingers, you have the option of going for some juicy 10-12 adjacency Lavras with Work Ethic and the +100% policy card. Another category of civs that make the HO very viable are the naval focused ones. Not only you get to colonize all the good islands that will always have some juicy Ley Lines, but you're also very likely to build a monopoly over Great Admirals, making all those Ley Lines yield you a ton of science. For Scotland and Sweden, the Alchemical Society can further boost your Great Scientist/Engineer points. Even for any other civ, if you spawn in a zone of less (rain)forests, marshes or other resources, chances of getting some Ley Lines become pretty high.
Skipped out on the Vampire Castles counting as airports! If you have a split civ / colonies on other continents the Castles are so important to travel the glove quickly.
I feel like if the ley lines were improvable(potentially with their own improvement or just with the improvements the tile they're on would have) and let you place districts on them even after you unlock them the Hermetic Order would be pretty good for science games, or at least more fun than they are now, though making them a bit more common as well would be nice. As is it's sort of like adding another strategic resource you need to rely on actually spawning near you in order to gain anything from them outside of the alchemical society
i dont usually go faith in my games as id rather go for a science, dom or diplo victory and i dont usually play faith civs so i would rank vampires above void but just for me
Not me looking up a video on general descriptions having not used societies and seeing Hermetic Order F-tier lmao I’m playing as Vietnam with a science/mercantile focus, those ley lines put in hella work, I was able to get off planet before 1940 with all those great people I was getting. But I got pretty lucky, I got like 3 ley lines in my capital off rip. I think they’re great to help push science beyond it’s normal bounds early-game and it really catapults your production mid-game. Im about to win with a science victory while defending against a literal dreadhorde of cultists. Don’t sleep on the Hermetic Order !!
I played an apocalypse mode game for the first time recently. I thought I would cheese the appease the gods thing by repeatedly sacrificing my vampire to the volcano, but just ended up down a vampire for the rest of the game lol
Though you have to kind of sacrifice using it early game, you instantly win at level 3 with Hermetic order as Russia. Since you'll get a billion great people easily I ended up with 60+ yield ley lines by turn 200. Also, I find they spawn frequently in tundra and you can easily get 10-15 in your empire. It becomes so broken when you have a city with 2-3 lines around it
@@jyutzler oh 100 percent agree. I guess I'm just saying from a perspective of trying to maximize score Hermetic order is broken the further the turn number gets because of the snowball ley lines and great people provide
but if you are doing a faith based game with Russia (dance of aurora + tundra lavras) you can have bonus science/faith/culture/gold in the 100s by the end of the medeival era with voidsingers. Having 2000 fpt is not that difficult for Voidsinger Russia by the end of medeival era, and that alone would give 400 science/faith/culture/gold per turn. Really hard to top that benefit.
@@wvman2374 I wasn't saying it's the most optimal, just that if you have a game make it super deep in turn count it becomes impossible to beat the bonus that ley lines get. When you have 15 of them in your empire each giving 60+ total yield by turn 200 it's disgusting. Especially considering at that point between regular great people points and faith you could easily get 1 great person per turn and easily have 100+ yield ley lines by turn 250
herm order is the only save scum im allowed to do in a game of civ. Thats my rule, just cause otherwise i would never play it and its fun to do when the stars align just cause of how rare it is that i do pick it. Even still it increases the chances from 0 to like 1/50 games for me to pick them because you have a peak at where the laylines are and then reload you save 19/20 times. Even when you go for it its still usually a less optimal pick because they are mostly just become a "win faster" in the late game society and early game is more important. Ideally what you want to happen is to be able to see minumum 3 lines all nice distances from each other in decent locations to settle cities on or near to. Ideally on, due to it then not wasting a tile. Then also they need to have some nearby features such as geotherms or something so that your districts can be insane. I This then makes their early game at least better and for a laugh you can go for it just for a change. But as i say its probably still not optimal. In addition you probably plan all your districts out and get excited only to tear your hair our when horses and iron fuck it up
Not sure if it is luck or some weird quirk of different world generation, but for me Ley Lines aren’t nearly as rare for me as you described them. I usually had 2 near basically every capital, and well enough everywhere else. Regardless though, I love Secret Societies, especially because it greatly buffs games focused on faith, something usually overshadowed by science in regular games
I'm currently in the middle of a science game where I decided to go with the Hermetic Order despite knowing how bad it is. Kind of works out, though. I'm playing as Australia, which gets adjacency bonuses for tiles with high appeal, so add the ley lines to the mix and you can get some pretty awesome districts that benefit from the civilization bonus, the secret society bonus, and the baseline mechanics. So with all my 6+ adjacency campuses in almost every city, each with an alchemical society in it, I've got a pretty good game going. Cruising through the tech tree, making ~250 GPT (epic game speed).
Hermetic order can be good, but the trick is to quicksave just before picking it. That way, if the RNG gods fuck you over and you get zero ley lines, you can simply reload and go for a less RNG-dependent society. I had a ridiculously good roll once where I had like 12 or 13 total in my (relatively small) empire.
Ley Lines have a much higher spawn rate in deserts. If you have a lot of deserts near you there is a higher chance of a large number of Ley Lines spawning. It can turn deserts into high yield areas late game. So it is situational on terrain on whether to gamble on this one.
Please create a video about unique buildings tier list, about religious believes tier list like Choral music vs Work ethic, about governors, and also play a game as Mathias/Tamar via diplomatic quarter and barbs clans and show how much yields you can get in that city with the quarter. Also there is secret 1 on million strategy when playing 1vs1 if I get a relic I go triple tourism from relics religion and win turn 30 in online mode. I need more videos to watch here.
Yo big dog can you please do a video on alliances and alliance points .. why should I get alliances and why do they matter ? Or is mean nothing . Please help
owls of minerva: best secret sociaty by far, them habilitns are op and help you in every situation, but they have no bonusess toward any type of victory. voidsinghers: is for cultural games, and helpfull with some civs (if you dont are going for a cultural a game or you dont are a reliquic civ or ethiopia do not pick this one) sangunie pact: they have a prety spesificc play style, but it works too wood for that, only viable in domination games. hermitic order: its prety hard to make them work, ley lines can be good and give you insane yields in the right cituation. their habilities are focused toward a ciencie victory, but honestly i pick owls instead if that are you what going.
I think since you always play on deity, you always get horrible luck for lay lines. On my prince, king and emperor games you get between 1 and 3 lay lines per city when strategically settling
had a korea game where ley lines gave +8~ bonus to commercial and science districts i exploded to well double everyones gold and science i was shocked to hear its a bad one
had a crazy game with hermetic order with sweden once. +20 culture ley lines and not to mention the other yields. but besides ley lines, i'd only recommend even considering getting it if you're playing a civ with a high potential number of great people ( eg sweden , brazil ). also , i think they changed it so that there are more ley lines. still weakest society in my opinion, even as someone who goes culture often ( tons of great people ).
i'm baffled at the hermetic order slander, the ley lines aren't that rare, i almost always wait until after i've built at least two or three universities until i promote them to get free alchemical societies, and if you have divine spark as your pantheon you'll have had plenty of great people to make the leveled up ley lines actually worth it. i agree their final upgrade kinda sucks, but i almost never use any of the secret society's final levels anyway.
I would rank voidsingers first tbh. Those first 2 promotions are just to good, and the third one is actually quite decent, while with owls the second promotion is kind of useless. Oh and vampire scale terribly, since their movement speed doesnt increase, so 3 movement is the max you can get
I think ranking them is the wrong way of looking at it because none of them are flexible enough to work in all situations. I think of it in terms of the likelihood of them being the best for a particular game. My assessment is Voidsingers 35%, Owls 30%, Sanguine 25%, Hermetic 10%.
depends on the civ and situation/victory type. I've seen Voidsingers give 1000 science/culture/gold per turn by renaissance era, so if going religious or culture thats kind of a no brainer. But I've also seen civs with 60-70 trade routes, suzerainity of 25 city states + Kilwa, pulling down 5000 science/culture/gold per turn by the same point of the game. And its really hard to match the level of food and production that many trade routes can give if they are stacked. I did a portugal game the other day and Lisbon had over 700 production mostly from its 40+ trade routes; it was doing spaceship missions in 2 turns, projects in 1.
Anyone have any idea why I never get the option of appointing my society to tier 2 or above? I get the first, but never see how to get the second. I know it needs to be medieval or higher, too.
If its your capital city or in a vampire castle, then yes that can kill the vampire permanently. The mechanic is that the vampire will try to flee to that location when it hits 1 hp, but since that location is no longer valid because its just been occupied, the vampire is removed. Vamps can also be killed by nukes and Beowulf's special ability, and in Apocalypse mode also by comet strikes and getting scarified to a volcano.
question 🙋♂️ since I can put my vampire castles in any city do the yields go to that city or only to your capital city? Also sometimes I can play vampire castles and other times I can’t; can they only go on specific tiles or in a certain radius from your cities or do the vampires have to be at a certain health percentage? I haven’t had time to science it curious if you know? Thanks
Owls number 1 for sure vampires not a fan of the vampire building is great but comes later in the game Voidsingers are great for Russia and like 3 others and there is only 3 secret society’s not 4 never heard of the 4th
There is a mod called Hermetic Order Unleashed that makes the Hermetic Order extremely fun. More lay lines, great people yields applied from start, the ability to put tiles improvements on lay lines, as well as being able to harvest lay lines for science, culture, faith, production, and gold(arguably broken). I have it on for all my games as it makes it viable even for the AI to use
You saying hermenic order is F- tear, while in a 'science mistakes' video you used that society, and win... Altrough i say: 1. Play on a smaller map (because the ley line is based on a "true" theory); 2. It would be better to change the society a bit... I don't say that H.O is better than everything, but atleast it would get a B/C, based on basicly everything. P.S: If the whole comment section would be civ leaders, everyone denounced you, decleared war on you, and even started an emergency to capture your capital because that insult counted as a nucklear device on the hermenic order... Shortened: The comment section turned into twitter.
I think what would make Hermetic slightly better is if as soon as you discover it, you can see the Ley lines, just not use them. In fact they should also show up in unexplored parts of the map. You can then make an informed decision about how many you can realistically expect to get. In fact this should only be done if you have not already chosen another secret society as yet.
I really like that idea.
Guilded vault also can give you an extra trade route even if you already have a lighthouse in the city. It’s a nice extra bonus on top of the culture.
Yep, that's the main reason to get it. The yields for those extra trade routes scale very well if you have a number of river/coast cities.
also good for coastal civs, since you will have a harbor in almost every city and likely not many commercial hubs (if any)
You don't even need the lighthouse if you have the Guilded Vault, you just need a Harbor to get the bonus trade route. You'll already have one from your market which is a prereq to build the Guilded vault. Once you build a Harbor in a city with a Guilded Vault you will get the additional trade route without needing any additional buildings. (Not that you probably wouldn't want to build a lighthouse anyways as they are very beneficial as is.)
The Queen Elisabeth joke hit different now.
💀
Comedy is timing😀
Hermes is definitely niche, but I've made it work, I think it works best with desert civs, since ley lines will only appear where there are no passable features (like trees). Also might work with the Maori, since you're likely to know where the ley lines are before you settle your first city.
The game where I made Hermes work, I started near two ley lines and the Uluru natural wonder. Made a cluster of holy sites around them, took the pantheon that gives holy site adjacency for desert. When I formed a religion I took work ethic, and as soon as possible I took the policy that doubled holy site adjacency bonuses, and at that point my ley-line desert fueled holy sites were making at minimum 20 faith plus 20 production a turn. I picked up a lot of great people, and when I hit the industrial era, each of my ley lines was making from 30-40 yields a turn. And since I prioritized settling near deserts and ley lines, I had 8 or 9 ley lines at that point. And as Mali, my money income was so huge I literally couldn't spend it as fast as it was being generated.
It's pretty fun exploiting a resource only you can see. But yeah, you're entirely at the mercy of random ley line placement. Most of the time there are better choices. And a less obvious penalty is, it's maybe the rarest society to qualify for, so other civs will hate you.
Holy moly, I definitely need to try this out
I will stand up for Hermetic Order. The trick is to ignore it early and pick up other governors like Amani first. If you are forced to spread in featureless terrain, then pick it up when you can unlock Alchemical Society. It's still weaker than the others on the average, but there are definitely games where it is superior.
Agree, CivLifeR even said as much in this very video, so I'm not sure how that rates "F tier". C maybe, but definitely not F--especially if you get two adjacent ley lines that stack those bonuses!
I only had luck with it stacking it with Japan.
I have tryed it maybe 2 times on deity level and it has been useless on both times. Its just too luck based. First you have to pick it and then you discover that tere are 0-1 ley lines near you. Totally useless. And on deity level it is much harder to get great persons.
I played a game with Babylon, and went for every great engeneer in the game. My ley lines gave me 17 production each. And I had a city with 8 of them. It was an eazy science victory with a industrial zone of +13 and 8*17 pruduction.
Has anyone else noticed how the VAST majority of ley lines spawn in desert and snow? If you play the mediterranean large map for example, the Sahara desert is FILLED with ley lines, often with 3 or 4 of them right next to each other. I think it has something to do with how ley lines can't spawn on top of other resources, so they end up spawning in places with much fewer resources to get in the way. If ley lines were to spawn more evenly across the map, it would go a long way towards making the Hermetics less horrible.
My experience with Hermetic is that Leylines were super common. I often had at least one per city, and 2-3 in several cases. I had godly yields in my industrial zones playing as Germany that game lol.
Hermetic Order can be REALLY good. IF, you're lucky. I had a game where I started really close to about 11 Leylines (they're surprisingly common in desert areas usually). There were a fair few clustered around every other tile so not only could a fresh city get close to 3 within the first ring of settled territory, but the adjacency bonus for most districts ended up being +4 to +6. In the late game, each of those bad boys was churning out 18 Culture, 15 Gold, 9 Science and 10 Production, which is kinda crazy when you've got a bunch of them in close proximity.
HOWEVER, I will admit the Hermetic Order is entirely luck based. Usually, I can find one or two Leylines near my capital, but there are definitely times that's all there is. Not being able to see them before picking a secret society really hurts their viability.
...of course, you can save scum with auto-saves and pick a different SS if you get dicked over.
One thing to note on Voidsingers...if you are also using Heroes and Legends then a Obelisk in a city that recruits a Hero will have THREE great work slots, two for the Hero relics and the one free slot. This is important if you are playing as Kristina/Sweden because it counts as a building with three great work slots and can be automatically themed! And the Reliqueries religious belief will affect any relics in the Obelisk. You can generate a ton of faith and tourism very early in the game this way by just building as many obelisks and Heroes as you can and filling the obelisks with relics. I think its like 88 tourism for an Obelisk filled with relics this way by Kristina with Reliqueries, which is a game winning amount early on.
The Hermetic Order has two main problems: firstly, you've got to get lucky with your leyline discovery. Contrast with the very reliable early-game bonuses of things like an extra economic policy slot, or super monuments. Secondly, while the Industrial era bonus yields on your leylines are very powerful, because they come in as late as they do, and because they're reliant on you already having a strong Great People production game, they're kind of a "win more" button. As opposed to a "turn the game entirely on its head" button like Chorus.
Saying all that, if you get lucky and build your great person snowball well, they can still be good. I had a really fun multiplayer game as the Dutch with them shortly after the Secret Societies game mode came out, and good leyline points next to rivers led to some great adjacency bonuses, and that was even before the buff to them. But that's kinda it, I got lucky. And importantly, picking them means you aren't picking any of the others.
I feel like the obvious buff would be the ability to see the "ghosts" of leylines in the period between discovering the HO and choosing which society you want. It would at least let you make an informed decision on whether to pick them or not, without having to savescum (not that there's anything especially wrong with that, but it's not an option in multiplayer unless you have *very* tolerant friends). A small percentage boost to great people generation, maybe one that got stronger as the stages of the secret society progressed, might also be welcome.
Maxed out Dark Summoning hits for -30 Loyalty per use. 3 cultists can almost destroy a city in 1 turn.
My ranking is Owls first (the card policies are just too much to ignore, and sending a trade route to a city state to gain an envoy is OP if you go Democracy with Wisselbanken Screw communism, Democracy with Suzerain city states is the way to win a Science victory. If you also get Amani, then any and all envoy problems are solved.
Voidsingers are next (and although not having the policy card slots of Owls, for certain civs Russia and Ethiopia come to mind) they are better. Eleanor certainly can make best use of cultists, but there's a bug with them. If you aren't exerting any loyalty pressure (not sure if they have to have negative loyalty, or you just exerting loyalty), the city won't flip.
Vampires are third. Not great, but not bad. Vampires + Cyrus' wars are scary. Vampire Castles would work if you could place them outside your territory. Not sure if you can or can't though. Just think of them as Nazca lines that work on any tile, but only benefit your Capitol.
Hermetic Order sucks dick. They have the unworkable tile of the vampire castle (and unlike castles, they are like luxury or discovered strategic resources, meaning you can't place a district on them). That dam that would make your IZ awesome will be blocked by a ley line (or worse, that perfect IZ would be blocked by a ley line). In several games, Potato has KNOWN horses would spawn in a location he didn't want, and refused to research Animal Husbandry (and when he did, of course horses would block his Mausoleum).
I was reluctant to pick hermetic order because so many content creators have trashed it but both times i ended up picking it i had great games. I used them in my Japan and Germany games and won both games easily. I think Civs that already have extra district adjacency bonuses seem to work well with Hermetic order - it takes what those Civs are already good at and enhances the bonus. As Germany i was regularly finding +4 adjacency bonuses for my Hansa before even putting down a Commercial Hub or Aqueduct
I also found adjusting my settle locations to fit well with the random lay lines on the map helped a bunch. That’s not always possible but oftentimes it is and those cities can become very powerful, especially with a civ like Japan who already gets extra bonuses for building districts next to each other. even with a regular civ settling on top of lay lines gives your city center a default 2.5 adjacency bonus. with japan it’s 3. that’s pretty powerful
The other 3 secret societies are easier to make work and are less risky but with the right Civ and a little luck Hermetic Order can be really fun to use and can for sure help you win games
One broken thing I found out about Vampires is if you play Tomyris your vampires get +5 combat against damaged units and they heal 30hp each time they kill a unit, making this already broken soul sucking unit into an absolute deity.
When playing Cleo, I choose Sanguine cause it reminds me of Eliza, the resident Egyptian character of the fighting game Skullgirls.
Ley Lines are way more common in desert and tundra/snow. So for civs like Arabia, Nubia, Mali, Russia or Canada it can be a very viable option. And yes, I've actually put Russia there, because whenever you get bored of the Voidsingers, you have the option of going for some juicy 10-12 adjacency Lavras with Work Ethic and the +100% policy card.
Another category of civs that make the HO very viable are the naval focused ones. Not only you get to colonize all the good islands that will always have some juicy Ley Lines, but you're also very likely to build a monopoly over Great Admirals, making all those Ley Lines yield you a ton of science.
For Scotland and Sweden, the Alchemical Society can further boost your Great Scientist/Engineer points.
Even for any other civ, if you spawn in a zone of less (rain)forests, marshes or other resources, chances of getting some Ley Lines become pretty high.
Skipped out on the Vampire Castles counting as airports!
If you have a split civ / colonies on other continents the Castles are so important to travel the glove quickly.
That queen Elizabeth line hit different now 😂
I feel like if the ley lines were improvable(potentially with their own improvement or just with the improvements the tile they're on would have) and let you place districts on them even after you unlock them the Hermetic Order would be pretty good for science games, or at least more fun than they are now, though making them a bit more common as well would be nice. As is it's sort of like adding another strategic resource you need to rely on actually spawning near you in order to gain anything from them outside of the alchemical society
Gods finally. A good guide that isn't 30 minutes of unrelated yapping or promotions.
i dont usually go faith in my games as id rather go for a science, dom or diplo victory and i dont usually play faith civs so i would rank vampires above void but just for me
Wow...I always thought the H. Order was the S tier of the societies...I get groupings of 2 or 3 of leylines all the time.
Not me looking up a video on general descriptions having not used societies and seeing Hermetic Order F-tier lmao
I’m playing as Vietnam with a science/mercantile focus, those ley lines put in hella work, I was able to get off planet before 1940 with all those great people I was getting. But I got pretty lucky, I got like 3 ley lines in my capital off rip. I think they’re great to help push science beyond it’s normal bounds early-game and it really catapults your production mid-game.
Im about to win with a science victory while defending against a literal dreadhorde of cultists. Don’t sleep on the Hermetic Order !!
I picked hermenetic order once, but it seems I got very lucky with ley lines. Had enough to make most of my campuses +4 in adjacency bonus.
I played an apocalypse mode game for the first time recently. I thought I would cheese the appease the gods thing by repeatedly sacrificing my vampire to the volcano, but just ended up down a vampire for the rest of the game lol
Though you have to kind of sacrifice using it early game, you instantly win at level 3 with Hermetic order as Russia. Since you'll get a billion great people easily I ended up with 60+ yield ley lines by turn 200. Also, I find they spawn frequently in tundra and you can easily get 10-15 in your empire. It becomes so broken when you have a city with 2-3 lines around it
Russia is too overpowered for secret societies mode. Winning with them is not remotely a challenge.
@@jyutzler oh 100 percent agree. I guess I'm just saying from a perspective of trying to maximize score Hermetic order is broken the further the turn number gets because of the snowball ley lines and great people provide
but if you are doing a faith based game with Russia (dance of aurora + tundra lavras) you can have bonus science/faith/culture/gold in the 100s by the end of the medeival era with voidsingers. Having 2000 fpt is not that difficult for Voidsinger Russia by the end of medeival era, and that alone would give 400 science/faith/culture/gold per turn. Really hard to top that benefit.
@@wvman2374 I wasn't saying it's the most optimal, just that if you have a game make it super deep in turn count it becomes impossible to beat the bonus that ley lines get. When you have 15 of them in your empire each giving 60+ total yield by turn 200 it's disgusting. Especially considering at that point between regular great people points and faith you could easily get 1 great person per turn and easily have 100+ yield ley lines by turn 250
The moment you gave the tier list at the end was terrific, bravo!
herm order is the only save scum im allowed to do in a game of civ. Thats my rule, just cause otherwise i would never play it and its fun to do when the stars align just cause of how rare it is that i do pick it. Even still it increases the chances from 0 to like 1/50 games for me to pick them because you have a peak at where the laylines are and then reload you save 19/20 times. Even when you go for it its still usually a less optimal pick because they are mostly just become a "win faster" in the late game society and early game is more important. Ideally what you want to happen is to be able to see minumum 3 lines all nice distances from each other in decent locations to settle cities on or near to. Ideally on, due to it then not wasting a tile. Then also they need to have some nearby features such as geotherms or something so that your districts can be insane. I This then makes their early game at least better and for a laugh you can go for it just for a change. But as i say its probably still not optimal. In addition you probably plan all your districts out and get excited only to tear your hair our when horses and iron fuck it up
My laylines buff would be that laylines do not exist and any flat land tile you settle that does not contain a bonus will have a layline under it.
the elizabeth joke aged like milk
I've had a game with hermetic where ley lines give 5 of each resource type. Other games where science and production are 10+
Not sure if it is luck or some weird quirk of different world generation, but for me Ley Lines aren’t nearly as rare for me as you described them. I usually had 2 near basically every capital, and well enough everywhere else.
Regardless though, I love Secret Societies, especially because it greatly buffs games focused on faith, something usually overshadowed by science in regular games
The Queen won't die joked aged well.... Lol
I'm currently in the middle of a science game where I decided to go with the Hermetic Order despite knowing how bad it is. Kind of works out, though. I'm playing as Australia, which gets adjacency bonuses for tiles with high appeal, so add the ley lines to the mix and you can get some pretty awesome districts that benefit from the civilization bonus, the secret society bonus, and the baseline mechanics. So with all my 6+ adjacency campuses in almost every city, each with an alchemical society in it, I've got a pretty good game going. Cruising through the tech tree, making ~250 GPT (epic game speed).
Hermetic order can be good, but the trick is to quicksave just before picking it. That way, if the RNG gods fuck you over and you get zero ley lines, you can simply reload and go for a less RNG-dependent society. I had a ridiculously good roll once where I had like 12 or 13 total in my (relatively small) empire.
Lived in Vegas for 35 years. I like rolling the dice on Hermetic Order.
2:04 lmao
They really should have reworked Hermetic Order to allow you to build on ley lines and later on to build lesser ley lines.
Ley Lines have a much higher spawn rate in deserts. If you have a lot of deserts near you there is a higher chance of a large number of Ley Lines spawning. It can turn deserts into high yield areas late game. So it is situational on terrain on whether to gamble on this one.
Bruh your jokes are so awkward and uncomfortable lol love it
Love the Amber Turd jab at the end ahahahaha 😆😆😆 lmfao
Please create a video about unique buildings tier list, about religious believes tier list like Choral music vs Work ethic, about governors, and also play a game as Mathias/Tamar via diplomatic quarter and barbs clans and show how much yields you can get in that city with the quarter. Also there is secret 1 on million strategy when playing 1vs1 if I get a relic I go triple tourism from relics religion and win turn 30 in online mode. I need more videos to watch here.
Yo big dog can you please do a video on alliances and alliance points .. why should I get alliances and why do they matter ? Or is mean nothing . Please help
owls of minerva: best secret sociaty by far, them habilitns are op and help you in every situation, but they have no bonusess toward any type of victory.
voidsinghers: is for cultural games, and helpfull with some civs (if you dont are going for a cultural a game or you dont are a reliquic civ or ethiopia do not pick this one)
sangunie pact: they have a prety spesificc play style, but it works too wood for that, only viable in domination games.
hermitic order: its prety hard to make them work, ley lines can be good and give you insane yields in the right cituation. their habilities are focused toward a ciencie victory, but honestly i pick owls instead if that are you what going.
I freakin love the TCLR’s plugs, he surely knows his audience 😂
I tend to play with the vamps, might need to go back and do the owls.
Hermetic Order has been buffed imo but i am am also new to this expansion.
I think since you always play on deity, you always get horrible luck for lay lines. On my prince, king and emperor games you get between 1 and 3 lay lines per city when strategically settling
had a korea game where ley lines gave +8~ bonus to commercial and science districts i exploded to well double everyones gold and science i was shocked to hear its a bad one
Queen Elizabeth joke didn’t age well lol
had a crazy game with hermetic order with sweden once. +20 culture ley lines and not to mention the other yields. but besides ley lines, i'd only recommend even considering getting it if you're playing a civ with a high potential number of great people ( eg sweden , brazil ). also , i think they changed it so that there are more ley lines. still weakest society in my opinion, even as someone who goes culture often ( tons of great people ).
2:06 that didn’t age well
Voidsingers are also really good on any civ that wants to go really wide
i'm baffled at the hermetic order slander, the ley lines aren't that rare, i almost always wait until after i've built at least two or three universities until i promote them to get free alchemical societies, and if you have divine spark as your pantheon you'll have had plenty of great people to make the leveled up ley lines actually worth it. i agree their final upgrade kinda sucks, but i almost never use any of the secret society's final levels anyway.
Vampire castles give twice the yields of adjacent tiles, so with 3 +10 campuses its 60 science
I would rank voidsingers first tbh. Those first 2 promotions are just to good, and the third one is actually quite decent, while with owls the second promotion is kind of useless. Oh and vampire scale terribly, since their movement speed doesnt increase, so 3 movement is the max you can get
I think ranking them is the wrong way of looking at it because none of them are flexible enough to work in all situations. I think of it in terms of the likelihood of them being the best for a particular game. My assessment is Voidsingers 35%, Owls 30%, Sanguine 25%, Hermetic 10%.
depends on the civ and situation/victory type. I've seen Voidsingers give 1000 science/culture/gold per turn by renaissance era, so if going religious or culture thats kind of a no brainer. But I've also seen civs with 60-70 trade routes, suzerainity of 25 city states + Kilwa, pulling down 5000 science/culture/gold per turn by the same point of the game. And its really hard to match the level of food and production that many trade routes can give if they are stacked. I did a portugal game the other day and Lisbon had over 700 production mostly from its 40+ trade routes; it was doing spaceship missions in 2 turns, projects in 1.
Ugh how do I keep doing this to myself... Dramatic ages mode and I realize my nieghbor lautoro gets plus 10 vs. Golden amd dark ages civs(face palm)
Great jokes. Hermetic can be good. But it's exceptionally rare.
Anyone have any idea why I never get the option of appointing my society to tier 2 or above? I get the first, but never see how to get the second. I know it needs to be medieval or higher, too.
I think vamps can be 100% killed and removed from the game if they are in a city and it gets conquered.
It's true but the odds of the AI pulling that off is pretty much zero. Even in MP it is quite unlikely.
@@jyutzler Yes, but it's good to know when AI has vamps.
If its your capital city or in a vampire castle, then yes that can kill the vampire permanently. The mechanic is that the vampire will try to flee to that location when it hits 1 hp, but since that location is no longer valid because its just been occupied, the vampire is removed. Vamps can also be killed by nukes and Beowulf's special ability, and in Apocalypse mode also by comet strikes and getting scarified to a volcano.
idk why you didn't mention trajan. Trajan voidslinger is other-level.
I have one question, how do you activate the console commands ?
Do Alexander but its a diplo or science victory lol.
question 🙋♂️ since I can put my vampire castles in any city do the yields go to that city or only to your capital city? Also sometimes I can play vampire castles and other times I can’t; can they only go on specific tiles or in a certain radius from your cities or do the vampires have to be at a certain health percentage? I haven’t had time to science it curious if you know? Thanks
Owls number 1 for sure vampires not a fan of the vampire building is great but comes later in the game Voidsingers are great for Russia and like 3 others and there is only 3 secret society’s not 4 never heard of the 4th
There is a mod called Hermetic Order Unleashed that makes the Hermetic Order extremely fun. More lay lines, great people yields applied from start, the ability to put tiles improvements on lay lines, as well as being able to harvest lay lines for science, culture, faith, production, and gold(arguably broken). I have it on for all my games as it makes it viable even for the AI to use
OMG, this was funny.
1. Voidsingers
2. Owls
3. Vampire
4. Hermetic
RIP Queen Elizabeth tho
Sanguine + Rough rider teddy one shots cities early game. It's fuckin ridiculous
"Rarer than a Russian in Kiev" lol
owsl of munev beast
I bought it on ps4 and I still haven't been able to find them and I bought a couple months ago,I got scammed?
"Alchemical society vs GTA6" 😂🤣
Owls+big map+Barb clans+Coastal citys=Diplo victory?
Would you play a huge map ?
You saying hermenic order is F- tear, while in a 'science mistakes' video you used that society, and win... Altrough i say: 1. Play on a smaller map (because the ley line is based on a "true" theory); 2. It would be better to change the society a bit... I don't say that H.O is better than everything, but atleast it would get a B/C, based on basicly everything.
P.S: If the whole comment section would be civ leaders, everyone denounced you, decleared war on you, and even started an emergency to capture your capital because that insult counted as a nucklear device on the hermenic order... Shortened: The comment section turned into twitter.
lol I won with hermetic wasnt necessarily the optimal option
I feel like…some of this might not age very well
.... I have 12 lay lines
Queen Elizabeth joke aged well 😂
No kidding
I never play with SS. I cannot play a historical game with vampires in it.
*snort-laughs at mommy*
My man says like Queen Elizabeth, RIP
Oooh, listening to this after QE2 died.
God damn how many mistakes have we made????
F for the Queen Elizabeth joke
Queen died
Well the QE2 and Kiev jokes have aged like milk
Uuuh, yeah, won’t die, didn’t age well
Queen joke has aged poorly hahaah
Ești un idol BIGASSS.Uno mereu în inima mea 💋 frumos, dragoste, alegere, cultural. Sunt unul dintrey cele mai bune concerte....
Owls is usually the only one I go for