Social policy game 2: Commerce

As discussed earlier (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=396298), I want to play a series of games to highlight each branch of social policies. Additionally, I will aim to win the game with all policies in the branch, especially the ones that you never use because they are “obviously” weak. I am here to prove or disapprove your pre-conceptions.

I'll track my progress here, the 2nd game is COMMERCE (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=398085).

Here are the others:
Tradition (coming soon)
Liberty (coming soon)
Honour (coming soon)
Piety (coming soon)
Patronage (coming soon)
Commerce (coming soon)
Rationalism (coming soon)
Freedom (coming soon)
Autocracy (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=396526)
Order (coming soon)

I will play as Arabia, small continents map type (under “advanced setup”).
The rest are fixed: standard size, emperor difficulty, standard speed.

Links to my progress is as below:
4000BC-2520BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9899935&postcount=2)
2520BC-625BC (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9900315&postcount=4)
625BC-275AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9903216&postcount=14)
275AD-1180AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9928294&postcount=19)
1180AD-1565AD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9931819&postcount=23)
1565AD-1888AD (endgame) (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9947186&postcount=31)

Any input is welcome, just remember NO SPOILERS! Read the savegame but do not issue any commands.

Starting in the desert sucks, it’s worse than frozen tundra because you get less food and luxuries. If you have to choose between being stranded in the middle of Siberia or the Sahara desert…

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/4117/civ5g2p1s1.jpg

The deities answered my prayers, and found me a wetter land to settle. Unfortunately, it’s all hills and jungles, without rivers, so it doesn’t solve my food shortage.

http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/9048/civ5g2p1s2.jpg

Since this is not planet of the monkeys, I cannot feed my empire with just bananas either. We are a civilisation, here to build great thing (Note: spearman from ruin upgrade).

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/4467/civ5g2p1s3.jpg

Well okay, marble helps us build great things, except how do you settle there?

2840BC: popped sailing out of ruins.
2640BC: met Geneva (cultural, gems, neutral) in the North.
2520BC: Calendar completed. My settler is 1 turn to completion. I will stop at this point.

Maps of explored region:
http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/3286/civ5g2p1s4.jpg
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/589/civ5g2p1s5.jpg

My tech tree: pottery, animal husbandary, mining, sailing, calendar.

My next planned tech is writing but this can change. What’s important is a) where I settle and b) which tech I discover with my great scientist. Suggestions are welcome, just please be aware I have a feeling a) and b) require coordination.

I'm interested to see how this one plays out. Can't say I'm a fan of Harun or Commerce, but I can see at least some synergy between the two there.

I'd probably settle to the south first to get a very hilly city up and running. You'll be sure to find some good Maritime CS's with your commerce-charged navy.

Since it’s raining heavily, I’ll play a few more turns.

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/8828/civ5g2p2s1.jpg

This is my 1640BC picture. I’ve opted for a conventional start of sticking my initial cities together. This is generally efficient except for the sake of the social policy I need to build monuments, even though I won’t be working tiles in the 2nd ring. I also want the Arabia UA to kick in earlier. Also, in reference to my previous post, I switched to wheel before writing. I really need trade route income.

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/7290/civ5g2p2s2.jpg

Some turns later, I get a golden age. They should be awesome but getting it this early is a total waste. I only have 9 total population and most of my tiles only produce hammers or gold, not both. I felt like I just took someone home and then had a case of premature... *sigh*

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/9824/civ5g2p2s3.jpg

The year is 850BC and this is my tech-tree. So far I still have not met any maritime city-states or players. I won’t take astronomy though, I want a good economy first. Plus I have plenty of luxury resources already.

650BC: my great scientist finally arrives. I take civil service with it, propelling me to the medieval era. It’s just the most expensive tech, and I’m short on food. It’s not illegal if I don’t take education with it.

625BC: Here’s the policies I took [I was 4 culture short last turn because I forgot to gift the cultural city-state when I had the gold]

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6169/civ5g2p2s4.jpg

My intention in this game is to highlight the money side because I fail to see why naval abilities belong here at all. To be realistic though, I think most players would not give up +3 hammers per city in the BC era so I have to reflect more mainstream playing styles. I did build a couple of workboats and settlers for holding until I get the policies, but only for a few turns. It’s just a substitute for sloppy micromanagement on my part.

http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/9377/civ5g2p2s5.jpg

The above is the state of my kingdom (calling it empire is a gross exaggeration). It’s small, my people are happy, but I really need start building this place up. I’ve been struggling greatly just fighting the nasty barbarians!

For research, I just finished mathematics, which is useless by itself, but I really want to get Machu Pichu. I know it’s emperor but the sheer massive number of hammers should allow me to complete it. AI can tech like crazy but I’ve noticed they are not good at production.

I always go merchant navy before the money side of commerce ..
Using the extra hammers to build money making stuff like markets or work boats generates the income.

Being able to save money when buying stuff doesn't help much when there isn't as much money to begin with.

Also, on maps with lots of water, I've found that it's very useful to send out a ship early.
Bazaar would be rather useless without trading partners.

Finally, sea resources can be amazing.
If Baghdad has a lighthouse and seaport, it'd be an amazing city despite being in the middle of a desert.
Just sayin'

I'm totally clueless when it comes to strategic view (I never use it) .. but is that an oasis next to the 2 desert/hills?
Does that mean you can make farms on those hills for 2 food + 2 hammers?
Hmm .. haven't tried it myself, but can you put great person structures on an oasis?
(I probably should know the answer to these questions, having played Arabia several times)

I think it makes much more sense to take the naval route first, instead of the money route. Early on, you can't really afford to rush buy much, and you don't have enough roads for the road savings to be worth much. However, +3 hammer/city is huge-it'll help a lot in your expansion- and the +1 movement/sight bonus will also be somewhat useful for exploration.

You might consider halting your expansion for a while, though, just so you can pick up the rest of the commerce policies in a reasonable time frame.

Especially with crappy land, +3 hammers/city is huge.

You're doing the right thing. This map just screamed out for Merchant Navy and ICS.

My first civ5 win was using commerce, as Elizabeth. Broken :) commerce, lightouse and ship of the line, it's total domination (seawise)... Of course the computer can't seem to do anything decent on an archipelago map, but I didn't know it at the time. It's supposed to be better now :)

Norm

I beg to differ: Merchant Navy is bad. It is useful only if you have coastal cities, which you won't have many of unless you play Archipelago (although small map size may help here). Even if you settle more coastal cities because you have Merchant Navy, the cities are usually not stronger than if you settled them inland in the first place, unless you get a lot of culture to grab more land tiles. Normal water tiles are plain useless, and the +3 hammers don't make up for it unless you have no maritime CS.

The money side is a lot more useful. -25% rush buy cost is great because it makes buying things like colosseums a lot more interesting. -20% road maintenance is not great (usually saves a couple gpt only, if you have 20 roads it saves you 4 money), though. Protectionism is quite decent and will typically yield something like 10 happiness.

Edit: I would have chosen India for synergy. Why? Because you have fewer, but larger cities. This means you will rely on rush-buying more (and more expensive buildings as that), the -20% road discount matters more because of a larger city distance and the additional happiness is more useful. Of course if you go ICS it basically doesn't matter, and the policies won't exactly slow you down.

With a long, thin strip of land like this, most cities will be coastal whether you like it or not. I wouldn't recommend chasing Merchant Navy under most circumstances, but this is the map for it.

I like the commerce tree, I remember a game on prince as Babylon, went about with a crazy bulbing beeline towards all kinds of useless wonders and navigation technologies and so on.

Horseman rushed pretty much my own continent bar the city states, fought a defensive war at a chokepoint against Turks, my Babylonian fregates eventually tipped the tide against Janissaries and my knights took their cities, Turks surrender their lands to me. I built the Big Ben and decided to play in a decidedly British fashion for the rest of the game for the lulz! :P

Most of my cities were coastal and had some pretty good workable sea resources so I got some good production out of them with seaports. Eventually I invaded Germany with carriers, fighters, mech infantry and some random cavalry, in 1939! Gotta try some other policies for a change though...

With a long, thin strip of land like this, most cities will be coastal whether you like it or not. I wouldn't recommend chasing Merchant Navy under most circumstances, but this is the map for it.

Yes, on a map like this I can see where you're coming from. However, posters above you said that taking Merchant Navy over the commerce side is always good choice, which I don't agree with on most maps. You don't have to be landlocked for Merchant Navy to be pretty bad. I think it's only good if you are forced to settle lots of coastal cities, like on Archipelago or on a degenerated map like this ;)

First off, some maths: if I have 15 cities, my next 3 policies will cost me 835+1280+1815=3930. Assume a monument plus temple in each city. I get my next 3 policies in 53 turns. Since it takes time to set it up, I think I’ll get all my policies right before the game ends, a hundred turns or so. As for the sprawling setup of my kingdom so far, that is definitely not my style or intention. I’m just being plagued by barbarians to the point that it feels like a civ is attacking me.

600BC: I am also beginning to meet some neighbours. Persia in this case.

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/3729/civ5g2p3s1.jpg

575BC: Met India, signed PoC. Persia offered mutual open borders, I refused. You don’t open borders when you’re too weak to even fight barbarians.
450BC: Not really an event, but I lost my spearman against swarms of barbarians in the South. Not happy losing elite units like that. *sigh*.
300BC: Capital started on Machu Pichu. Will take 40 turns, good luck. By the way, in case you are wondering how much it is, I’m currently earning 4.5 per city because they are 2 pop each. Sounds pathetic but I’m sure in the future it will be 20% of a much bigger number.
250BC: Met Germany. No, I’m not signing PoS against India. In fact, I’m trying not to declare war on anyone this game.
75BC: Met Greece. I looked at his cities and he looked weak. If it’s just a bad start then it’s fine, otherwise it means that someone out there had the strength to beat them up. That’s not cool.

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/9316/civ5g2p3s2.jpg

25BC: India asked me for gold resources. What choice do I have? Piss off my only friend?
1AD: Took trade unions. I save… um… 3 gold per turn! Woohoo! I also don’t like the game stating it as “0AD”. There’s no such thing! 1BC, then 1AD, no zero in between!
225AD: Rome met me via a trireme. So I can circumnavigate the globe without ever researching astronomy, awesome. I also met France, but they only have 1 city! Still it’s a very big city. I wonder what they are doing?

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/738/civ5g2p3s3.jpg

I also feel that this game is very slow-paced. Nobody even declared war on each other, that’s the amazing thing. This game is extremely peaceful. The question is, why is my development so slow then? I’m not sure if it’s the terrain, the other continent sure looks very green to me.

275AD: Met the United States. Now I’ve met all the great empires across the oceans, I will stop. State of the union:

http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/9606/civ5g2p3s4.jpg

I am stopping because I need to decide what to do with my money.
a) First off, I have settled on all the luxury resource types on my own continents already, further expansion will only be on good land. I have 1 settler just completed, none in progress.
b) I have 1108gold in my treasury. Why didn’t I gift a maritime city-state? Because I only found one out of dozens earlier! Not only that but they are hostile, and they have gems which my current ally already has. Most of the rest are military. My current ally is also exactly on 60 influence. So city-states are one way to go.
c) Another way to do it is to buy bazaars, sell the spare resources, earn money, then do it again. A bazaar costs 580 gold, I can sell a resource for 250-300 gold, or equivalent GPT. A bazaar also generates +25% gold income but that’s only 1 or 2 GPT. I could do it now, I could wait for mercantilism in 17-20 turns or I could build those things. But most of my cities are already building colleseums except 2 that just finished their previous project. Those +3 hammers are a real life saver!
d) I can throw all my money away for research agreements. It speeds me up but also speeds everyone up.

Some more screenshots:
http://img574.imageshack.us/img574/1245/civ5g2p3s5.jpg http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/9052/civ5g2p3s6.jpg
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/5863/civ5g2p3s7.jpg

This trading business can get complicated.

i've done a number of searches on this but can't seem to find an answer. is there a way to edit the save you posted to change the difficulty level?

with the shared civ 4 games in the past you could load the game as a custom scenario and change it but i can't figure out a way to do this in civ 5.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Normal water tiles are plain useless, and the +3 hammers don't make up for it unless you have no maritime CS.

I really don't have maritime CS. Population growth is slow after single-digits, l never run out of land tiles to work in coastal cities. No downside to taking the +3 hammers.

The money side is a lot more useful.

I told the random map generator what I wanted, it just refused to cooperate!

Edit: I would have chosen India for synergy.

India's UA is just extra happy once you reach average size 6, no need to work around it.

Of course if you go ICS it basically doesn't matter, and the policies won't exactly slow you down.

Being isolated means you get hit hard by barbarians. I was forced into ICS for defense!

Real life getting in the way, I'll start playing again in about a week.

Being isolated means you get hit hard by barbarians. I was forced into ICS for defense!


How does ICS help with Defense?
Isn't fewer city to protect easier? But ya...isolated, if no ICS, research prob too slow.

How does ICS help with Defense?
Isn't fewer city to protect easier? But ya...isolated, if no ICS, research prob too slow.

No. Having cities close together means your opponent can't surround them and suffers fire from multiple cities if they try to. It also means you can move your units from city to city quickly because your empire is more compact. Think of an ICS cluster as a big super-city with multiple shots and you can see why they're easier to defend.

The new patch is coming out, I better get started on the game, although my strategy would not be affected by it (thankfully).

The next turns are also incredibly boring: building collesseums everywhere, waiting for the next wave of settlers, libaries… etc. I don’t really need tons of new cities, I just don’t want anyone settling on the continent. Commerce doesn’t force you into a particular strategy, it just greases the wheels (and the palms). I spent it on my old cultural ally and later a research agreement with Rome.

520AD: start spamming my hills with trading posts rather than mines. I know there are gold penalties to rushing certain buildings and units, but the bazaar gold bonus makes up for it.
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/3371/civ5g2p4s1.jpg

I also refuse all open borders with anyone. My only exception was with India very long ago, which they never made use of. If you are on your own continent and nobody ever sees you, other countries are very hesitant to attack you. Even on deity I got away with 2 warriors and 2 archers for the whole game because I had my own landmass and never opened borders with anyone.

580AD:

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/8207/civ5g2p4s2.jpg

I still haven’t discovered Rome, despite them being the first in everything that counts. Maybe I should trade with everyone but them, I should have paid attention.

760AD: France asks for Arabian gold resources again. Why not - they don’t have the cash to buy those resources anyway.

1020AD: Persia stole The Porcelain Tower from under my feet! Now I have to build up my capital’s scientist points the old-fashioned way, with granaries and watermills.

1180AD: Finally finished a bunch of bazaars. So I went off 4 units of gold, a marble and a dye resource for around 1300 gold plus some gold-per-turn for those that maxed out their credit card debts. I bought the maritime state with it. Now that the good lands are used up, I could benefit from some vertical growth.

State of the kingdom of Arabia:
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/7571/civ5g2p4s3.jpg

I also have a size 6 city beyond the Northern desert.

My military is still non-existent but I intend to keep it that way unless I’m forced to otherwise. I think my victory condition is just to bribe out the city states and go diplomatic. It’s cheesy but this game is about cash. There’s just two problems with this plan. 1) The AI’s are out of cash but I still have spare resources. 2) I can’t really highlight the power of mercantilism unless I start buying things. There are no discounts for city-states though. I got the cash, what do I buy after I get Big Ben?

You can use the spare resources as bribes for war. Pick a threatening rival, make pacts of secrecy aginst them with everyone, then bribe someone to attack them. The attacker now gets warmonger hate from everyone so you can make pacts aginst them. Basically you play the AI to be constantly at war with each other while staying out of it yourself.

In a recent Pangea game I used this general method (combined with a Sword rush against Arabia) to great effect. I was playing Emperor difficulty and didn't get a single DOW throughout the entire game because the AI was too occupied fighting each other.

Another upside is that if you win a diplomatic victory the description will be actually accurate.



Another thing is I've been thinking. If you really want to show off social policies it would actually be best to start a game, make a save and then play each demonstration from that one initial save. That would show off the differences between social policies much better than a fresh game ach time. And you'd probably want to do it with a civiliazation that's as "vanilla" as possible. Something like America, England, or Germany.

How about buying units and conquering? Or buying production and hospitals and building huge cities to go for a ship victory.

"I also refuse all open borders with anyone. My only exception was with India very long ago, which they never made use of. If you are on your own continent and nobody ever sees you, other countries are very hesitant to attack you. Even on deity I got away with 2 warriors and 2 archers for the whole game because I had my own landmass and never opened borders with anyone."

In that case I'd do just the opposite - sell my borders to everyone at 40-50 bucks a shot. They're never going to use then against you anyway.

BTW I found Commerce->Merchant Navy very powerful in combination with a beeline with the top-tier "sea" techs, for the purpose of linking all my cities (laid out ICS style to the extent possible) by harbor rather than roads, eliminating the need for Liberty->Merito. Of course this was a start on a long peninsula 2 to 5 hexes wide, opening onto a larger continent containing Siam and (beyond) Germany. It also helped that I was the Mongols, of all things - Mongol horse don't need no stinkin' roads - and that a large stretch of desert lay between me and the Siamese at the base of the peninsula, convenient for posting a rapid reaction Keshik force to keep the AI at arm's length while I build up a core of ~12 cities, all coastal. These kinds of coast-heavy starts are encountered more often than you think, and knowing how to leverage them can come in handy.

Keep in mind that Commerce comes fairly early, and the top tier is one of the quickest ways to get there. Follow Harbors up with Seaports and you have at least 5-7 hammers extra in almost every coastal city, plus the coin boost from workboats, long before Communism. Since you will have Caravels well before the AI, you can scout out unsettled islands and coastline to plop down more coastal cities far from your core.

I think I know what to do with the money: spend it like it’s free. What I mean is every time I hit unhappiness, I’ll throw money and make a new building. Let’s see how well Keynesian economics fare in medieval Middle East.

Case in point in 1240AD:

http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/4879/civ5g2p5s1.jpg

I am earning around 100 gold a turn, a collesseum costs 510, gets me 4 happiness. Protectionism will come in a while which nets me even more happiness, and if lucky the forbidden palace as well if nobody beats me to it.

1320AD: got protectionism. First time I completed the policy tree! +7 happiness is no joke. It’s even better than meritocracy or planned economy because even small kingdoms benefit. Vertical growth is working well.

1430AD: got Forbidden Palace. I’m now on 15 happiness. Now if only have more maritime city-states…

1490AD: A significant year, because all my trading agreements expire. Here’s the resources I have for the next round of the Mecca rounds:

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3557/civ5g2p5s2.jpg

My national accounts:
a) gold for silver with Greece
b) gold for pearls with Persia
c) marble for 9gpt with Persia
d) dyes for 9gpt with Persia
e) incense for 9gpt with Persia
f) gold for 9gpt with France
g) gold for ivory with America
h) silk for 300gold with America
i) gold for cotton with Rome
j) marble for 300gold with Rome

I still have spare shiny rocks left but nobody had enough gold or gpt to give me a fair price anymore, so I’ll leave it there.

My people are now at 30 happiness. Which means I will get a golden age soon, except it also means I am under-utilising my potential. The problem is my remaining lands are mediocre, and if I start attacking someone then nobody will trade with me anymore. But I got gold, happiness and hammers to spare, what do I do?

1545AD: I use the great scientist born a few turns ago to pop rifleman. Rome and America are isolated, after all, so no border clashes even after conquest.

Also, both took over city states, so I have a pretext for holy war. The trouble is I only have 6 units of iron resources and no empires have any to spare, so my frigate support will be weak. I could bribe a city-state and get more but that will antagonise other nations that are already allied to them.

1565AD: My golden age has arrived so I think I’ll stop at this point. I have two expansion options:

America
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/7258/civ5g2p5s3.jpg

Rome
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/7326/civ5g2p5s4.jpg

They are both at similar technology. One has ballista and muskets, the other has catapults and minuteman. I have rifles now but so would they by the time my forces land. I do not have the iron for siege support, merely enough for the ships to protect my landing forces from enemy ships. I need to consider which place is easier to attack versus which is the richer target. Rome is slightly stronger in strength but also has 2 city-states subjugated that I could liberate. Of course I need to build up my army first, but I need to decide now so I do not trade with my future target when the next trading round comes.

Also, my city will finish the Taj Mahal in 5 turns. Do I waste the golden age effect if I am already in a golden age, or does it add on for a massive golden age? Or must I stop construction until the first one wears off?

I attached the save-file for further analysis, if interested. Just… please don’t accept any requests or open borders. Especially open borders - even if you are the strongest, if you are weaker than the collective strength of a web of pacts of secrecies, you will get dogpiled.

It just adds time to your golden age, you don't lose anything.

Rome via Dublin looks good. Might be a bit of a rough landing but once you liberate you'll have a nice staging area and it's only 2 turns via boat to resupply, right? Or does Naval Tradition not apply to embarked land units?

Park one caravel off the coast of Genoa. Pay America to declare war on Rome. That should distract the Roman Navy.

Three or four turns later, hit Dublin with an amphibious assault. There should be few troops in the area, since they have been moving north towards America. You'll have time to heal, fortify, and set up a good defensive position before the counter attack. Use the open tundra for easy kills. Sail your warships northeast along the coast and clear out any triremes.

Use your second wave to open a second front in Genoa, also amphibious. There should also be little resistance here, as the troops either sailed for America and got sunk by your caravel or are heading to be chewed up by your defense in Dublin.


The hardest part is establishing the beachhead, which is why America's distraction is worth the money it will cost you. At equal tech, it's easy to get pushed back into the water, and that costs a ton of time and hammers.

I was wondering if you could include a bit more detail on the commerce SPs and how they aided you this game? I learned a lot about autocracy in your last game, but it is less clear to me this time around how commerce is helping.

I was wondering if you could include a bit more detail on the commerce SPs and how they aided you this game?

Commerce SPs are passive, it's hard to show what they are doing, but they are definitely working. It's up to you to turn it into technological or military power.

Commerce: +3gpt for me, could be a lot more but my capital wasn't suitable.
Naval tradition: (once I go to war)
Merchant Navy: Infrastructure and training rifleman.
Trade unions: +6gpt a turn for about 30 roads.
Mercantilism: 25% of the cost of my purchases. So far, 1 granary, 1 watermill, 1 university, 1 bazaar, 6 collesseums, 2 caravels... maybe some others.
Protectionism: +10 happiness, turn it into golden age or more people, as you wish.

Hm is it worth rushbuying bazaar after you got mercantilism?
And how much doest it cost after a discount?

Commerce SPs are passive, it's hard to show what they are doing, but they are definitely working. It's up to you to turn it into technological or military power.

Commerce: +3gpt for me, could be a lot more but my capital wasn't suitable.
Naval tradition: (once I go to war)
Merchant Navy: Infrastructure and training rifleman.
Trade unions: +6gpt a turn for about 30 roads.
Mercantilism: 25% of the cost of my purchases. So far, 1 granary, 1 watermill, 1 university, 1 bazaar, 6 collesseums, 2 caravels... maybe some others.
Protectionism: +10 happiness, turn it into golden age or more people, as you wish.

Thanks! Seems like this tree is best if you have a strong commerce capital; however, overall, it looks better than I initially thought.

My decision is to attack Rome because it’s got more hills. Yes, I repeat: I will attack an enemy situated in more rugged terrain. My reasoning is that if I don’t have siege and naval support, I don’t want my rifles caught in the open. There’s also two other reasons.

1) Germany attacks Sidon, another city state. I think I might hit them after Rome, rather than America. I need city states get my diplomatic victory.
2) Taking on America will be very, very tedious.

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/9102/civ5g2p6s1.jpg

I am not about to hunt down every last city they have in the arctics. If I do attack them it will just be for their capital. The question is, what’s my real intention of attacking everyone all along? Conquest? No, it’s science. Science is tied to population, but my lands just cannot support many people. If I don’t take more lands I will take forever to research globalisation.

1615AD: Time to attack Rome. I am also pleased to see that Germany stopped attacking Sidon. I’m not too surprised though. City-states are tough.

http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/3680/civ5g2p6s2.jpg

1645AD: Taj Mahal completed, another 15 turns of golden age. This should help recover some losses, which are inevitable if you try to advance quickly against an enemy with tech parity.

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/3734/civ5g2p6s3.jpg

1650AD: The next trading round. I only made a few deals this time so I won’t detail it. The world is running out of money to buy Arabian gold.

1655AD: Big Ben complete. My world conquest is not.

1670AD: Steam power researched, entered industrial age. I pick autocracy, for the gold savings. The theme here is saving gold after all.

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/6852/civ5g2p6s4.jpg

After selecting the policy, I pay 85 gold in unit maintenance. That means I saved about 40gpt. That’s better than trade unions or commerce ironically.

1680AD: I was asking earlier what to do with all the cash. Now I have an idea: setup a new city very, very quickly by buying everything I need.

Location of new city:
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/931/civ5g2p6s5.jpg

Receipt for military infrastructure:
monument 190, harbour 210, barracks 210, factory 460, lighthouse 210, bazaar 290, granary 250, windmill 390, watermill 290, armory 300, military academy 510. All these are at 50% discount from original price. I’ll add hospitals and medicine labs soon.

1680AD: Finally captured Rome. Now I declared peace, leaving them with a city in the tundra. I’ll wait a few more turns before my screenshot though, after I raze a couple more cities.

1720AD: Persia asked me whether I was attacking them. That was my intention but now I have to attack someone else. I don’t get it, my units were very far away from their borders and they had the pointiest sticks on their continent.

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/7691/civ5g2p6s6.jpg

1750AD: Hit some ancient ruins in an island with my cavalry. It upgraded into tanks… awesome except I don’t have oil! So I’m still at 25 strength, except with one more movement. Do they burn fuelwood or something?

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/4149/civ5g2p6s7.jpg

More seriously, this is the force I am about to use to invade America. You don’t want your land units to be in neat formation for amphibious assults because neat formations usually mean your units are concentrated by type one way or the other. Instead, what you want is a jumbled mess so whatever defense your enemy has, it won’t be an exact counter to your formation. It’s diversification.

But… urgh, the Americans have oligarchy. 33% defensive strength on their own lands. Not cool.

1745AD: This, my friends, is why 1UPT does not work:

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8347/civ5g2p6s8.jpg

I could play the game properly and navigate my way around neutral countries, but… alright, I’ll play properly then. It’s annoying though. Open borders with India is easier because they have less units, which helps.

1795AD: Hitting the “very unhappy” limit again, now I have to negotiate peace with America and Germany. As in, 37 unhappiness. Now, I could throw money into more theaters but this is getting tedious, so I just want to end the game by United Nations. In short, I am saving gold.

Again, I know I spent thousands of gold constructing a military city that I never used. I *am* able to navigate through neutral units and territory, but it’s very mentally consuming. I find myself getting pen and paper to map out possibilities before moving my army. And every time I remove some fog to see other units or terrain, I have to do my maths all over again. If I like chess I would play chess. I am also very convinced that pathing is a major problem for the AI because they cannot use heuristics like a human can. Every time I tell a unit to move to a distant location, even in the sea, there’s a few seconds loading time.

I suggest this change: only 1 neutral unit, 1 military unit and 1 general/great person unit per tile. Even with 12 civs in a huge map this is still only 36 units in 1 tile, most of it irrelevant. 36 units is very far from the stacks of doom in Civ4. This will help pathing tremendously and does not affect tactical combat in any way.

But back to my economy: after peace with Germany, I am at 50 unhappiness. Guess what I’ll do: annex all cities, and SELL all happiness buildings. I might as well ignore it completely. My unhappiness will reach several hundred but I save hundreds of gold a turn.

Only catch is the UN will take twice as long to build but… meh.

1802AD: Nobody has any gold to trade with me, so the trading games are over. How disappointing. I also switch my entire empire (yes, it’s an empire now) to science focus. Once globalisation is done, the empire will switch to gold focus so I can bribe all the city-states. I also have something even more cheesy up my sleeves, hope I don’t have to use it.

1834AD: globalisation complete, but the UN takes 32 turns. That’s too long. Look: if I’m going to cheese this because of boredom, I’ll do it rigourously and properly.

Step 1: bribe all the city states now. I had around 8000 gold, should be enough to buy me victory.
Step 2: GIVE all your cities away, remove the production penalty for unhappiness. But it’s not so simple, because the AI won’t take tons of cities just to see it’s unhappiness skyrocket. This took a while.
Step3: Gift all my units to a city-state ally. If anyone attacks they will have to talk to my pet dog first.

After all said and done: here’s my happy little kingdom:

http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/9683/civ5g2p6s9.jpg

I took order and socialism. My next policy will be patronage to slow down influence decay. The rest is just burning great generals for golden ages waiting for UN to be constructed. I also noticed that the AI is rational in the sense that if you just gifted them lots of cities, they will be very unhappy and will not attack you because the last thing they want is more cities. I gifted it to India for that reason.

Hmm… I have 1 more policy. I think I’ll get united front: India tried to bribe some of my allies away. The results were pleasing: they were losing allies very quickly after that. I think this policy is very underrated.

1888AD: UN victory.

So that’s the commerce tree for you. It doesn’t give you gold, it saves you gold. But a dollar saved is a dollar earned, and throughout this game I earned thousands of dollars. It doesn’t lend itself to any sort of victory either, it is up to you to bribe or conquer your enemies.

As for my next policy, I will wait for the next patch first. It’s not impossible to focus on later policies, I just have to delay getting culture until I reach that age. I am thinking about piety but it would be better if someone can come up with a more useless branch that I can try to make more useful.

The remaining options are:
- Tradition
- Liberty
- Honor
- Piety
- Patronage
- Rationalism
- Freedom
- Order

Of these I think Tradition is generally considered to be the most useless on high difficulties. All the others are generally considered to be pretty strong, though Piety is a niche for cultural victory.

Was lurking again, from tough start to happy (!) end :)

Nice write up, seems like commerce policy branch has some uses.

Does it help you alot till you got Big Ben actually?

Was lurking again, from tough start to happy (!) end :)

Nice write up, seems like commerce policy branch has some uses.

Does it help you alot till you got Big Ben actually?

I played with Commerce a lot earlier, it's really useful. After you get Big Ben it's great. You buy the high-tier buildings for little money. Unfortunately, once my games began to end shortly after I finished the wonder, I stopped using it ;)

Big Ben is great if you get or get no commerce policies, your Iroqois 0 culture ICS proved it :)

Imagine its a regular ICS game, not great educational policy game #2. Did going Commerce is worth paying lots of culture in it comparing with other branches?
And what was unique advantage of getting those policies?