TSG25 Game in Progress

[leif erikson]

Welcome to the TSG25 Game in Progress thread. This thread is used to discuss the game once you've started playing. There are no reading or posting restrictions as such (apart from normal decency), although we encourage players to use the spoiler tags for screenshots. Here you can post questions related to the game and share your achievements/anger/frustration/victories while you play. Please remember that we are running a family friendly site, so express anger or frustration with this in mind.

Please use this thread to discuss your goals for the game and your opening moves through about the first 80 to 100 turns.

- What were your initial priorities?
- What Social Policies did you choose and why?
- What tech path did you follow?
- Did you prioritize any Wonders?
- In this game, more City-States were added, how did this affect your strategy?
- How does the larger map size and Epic game speed affect your strategy

Once you've completed the game, head over to the TSG25 After Action Report thread.

 

[thio]

Already want to stop the game .. 1 turn to colossus and then someone else built it. I started an early war, that provided me with 2 workers, and while i manage to kill anything my enemy throws at me, it's kind of impossible to actually conquer any land. I have a warrior, a swordsman, a trireme and another swordsman in production, but that is it for iron (only 2 available). I guess Suleiman will connect his own iron soon and then its over. His city is in a hard to reach spot, and i doubt i can take it without a lot more ranged support with all his warriors around. Where do they get them all? i already killed about 5 and 1 trireme , and there are still 3 left. Plus he built two more workers for himself. High difficulty is just unfair :/

Maybe i should be happy i got the Great lib at least.

 

[thio]

Turn 150:

Got 2 of Suleimans minor cities, capital has a bit high defense at the moment. Germany is the strongest force around, i'm glad we're friendly.

I managed to build the NC after i failed the Colossus. It doesn't look quite as grimm as i thought it would at this point. Army is at 1 warrior, 2 swords, 1 archer, 2 chariots, 2 trireme. I will try to get the capital now, which will likely fail. If it works out i will probably integrate it instead of just puppeting to get one more source of iron. I might have more iron soon from the minor city north of ottomans capital.

Moneywise i'm quite strong (Suleiman sued for peace at 1500g once), and i have two RAs going at the moment. I need that Iron...

Research is okay thanks to the two wonders, but could be better. I'm trying to get Longbows right now.

 

[trueblue]

heavy use of the F10 key...

 

[trueblue]

doesnt Suleiman know that all he is doing is granting my Triremes xp while i wait for Navigation to come online?

 

[trueblue]

Complete kills: the victory progress tab is showing the ottomans as out the game, their capital city lost.


so do i, or do i not, have to wipe out the rest of the Civ to qualify for domination?

 

[leif erikson]

so do i, or do i not, have to wipe out the rest of the Civ to qualify for domination?

Domination requires only that you capture or destroy the starting capital city of each civ.

In fact, as far as I understand, if another civ takes a rival's capital, you do not need to retake it unless the original owner gets it back.

 

[trueblue]

cheers boss!


it does beg the question then, why bother with the complete kill criteria?

 

[leif erikson]

it does beg the question then, why bother with the complete kill criteria?

Not sure, so I'll speculate. (and probably get into trouble)

In past games in the series, one of the VC's was Conquest, where all the civs had to be destroyed. Playing for conquest with complete kills was a nightmare!

Suspect that complete kills is a hold over from the series.

 

[thio]

Turn 200:

I took Ottomans Capital with 3 unit losses (warrior, trireme, swordsman), then realized that the only foreign land i could see was german, and i didn't want to go for them. So i bid my time, scouted around, finally found greece and went there once i had built/upgraded me 3 longswords. Looks good so far, took the nearest city easily (though its a crappy city, but it gives me a base of operations). Theyre mainly fighting with pikemen. Army is at 3 longswords, 1 longbow, 2 trireme, 2 chariots.

Policywise i don't have much anyway, not really bringing up culture. I took liberties worker settler and production, then started to expand on commerce.

Also i am thinking that i should maybe have built archers instead of chariots (found out they upgrade to knights instead of longbows *cringe* mounted units are so useless most of the time..), but on the other hand, their mobility came in handy a few times.

 

[qutsemnie]

Just lost my second founded city on turn 144. First city I have ever lost in Civ 5. Happened fast too. Think this one is over! I shouldn't have gone for 4 cities. Went for a founding at Ivory, at Sugar, and at Banana's. Stayed Happy but hard to defend all that with the investment in settlers to boot.

 

[thio]

I give up.. I could survive just fine, maybe settle a little, but conquering cities, especially the capitals seems just plain impossible. How am i supposed to take a 35 defense city with longswords?

I mean, my army has a technology advance, but it just doesn't work.

 

[NZL]

Not sure, so I'll speculate. (and probably get into trouble)

In past games in the series, one of the VC's was Conquest, where all the civs had to be destroyed. Playing for conquest with complete kills was a nightmare!

Suspect that complete kills is a hold over from the series.

I'm gonna speculate too, cause I'm not sure about the rules, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

If you turn complete kills ON, an AI is still able to recapture his original Capital and thus re-enter the Domination race, even after you've taken the last city of that AI.
If complete kills is OFF, all the AI units disappear when you've taken it's last remaining city

Can this be correct?

 

[qutsemnie]

I give up.. I could survive just fine, maybe settle a little, but conquering cities, especially the capitals seems just plain impossible. How am i supposed to take a 35 defense city with longswords?

I mean, my army has a technology advance, but it just doesn't work.

I didn't do as well as you because I didn't tech well, but I have done well with this civ before. The longbows are OP (overpowered). 3 range == don't even have to exchange to bring a city down to 0 defense. When you said 3 longswords and 1 longbow I thought to myself, "mix is wrong." This civ should be 3 longbows and 1 longsword, and from previous experience 3 longbows + horse is OP. The longswords have to exchange one turn to get in range. 3 longbows + 1 horse can take cities with no exchanging whatsoever and also the horses scout nice for longbows. I never have any trouble mowing down AI civs with the English if I get rolling they were one of two civs I sort of learned the game on. In addition you can get Ship of the Line up to 3 range too with vetting (frigates in general), its worth aiming for but its a ton of vet.

 

[thio]

yeah, i should have built more longbows, but they only take 2 or 3 points of a city, and the city regenerates about 5 or so per turn, so even with 3 longbows, even if they arent having any other units you have to deal with, 3 longbows wouldn't suffice, it would take forever. I also have 2 Ships in the fight by now, doesn't help. Well, and that i'm at -11 happiness right now doesn't help either..

 

[Aaronius]

- What were your initial priorities?

My initial priorities were to hook up resources and explore the map. The city-states and ruins had me salivating. The size of my landmass and the presence of at least one neighbor complicated those initial priorities quickly. Ultimately I decided on a quick two-city, exploration and defense opening strategy.

More recently I founded a third city on the island to the west with sugar and Hanoi. I’m waiting for Iron to pop to determine my final city cite. I’m hoping some iron will pop within the radius of my existing cities, or on the part of my continent due north or the big island to the NW .


- What Social Policies did you choose and why?

I decided that I should expand as rapidly as possible to get the second city spot I wanted:

Liberty → Collective Rule (fast second city with Ivory) → Honor (plenty of barb killing to do) → Republic (don't need the worker yet)→ Tradition (bit more culture)

Next I will likely take the tradition policy that makes the soldiers in the cities free. Then I will finish out the right side of honor for the culture and happy bonus plus cheaper upgrades. All of my units will need upgrades before I go on the attack.

After that, I'm thinking commerce for once?...



- What tech path did you follow?

Mining (gold and gems)→ Pottery → Sailing (tri's and workboats)→ Animal Husbandry → Trapping (ivory)→ Optics (ruins)→ Wheel → Archery (archers, eventually longbows)→ Calendar (sugar)→ Iron (swords eventually LS)



- Did you prioritize any Wonders?

Because it dovetailed with my tech order I chose to go for Great Lighthouse. Even chopping the one available tile I missed by 8 turns. Originally I was going to target Hanging Gardens but other tech priorities derailed that one as well. I will still try for Hagia Sophia maybe. I might go all out for knights and Longbows and not do any wonders until late. I'll be conquering everybody so RAs will suck. The capitals should have my wonders in them when I conquer




- In this game, more City-States were added, how did this affect your strategy?

More city states and ruins, along with the archipelago map and me being England all point towards a sea exploration strategy. I’ve met Greece and Siam so a patronage strategy will be highly contentious. I'll focus on killing some neighbors then when everyone hates me anyway, I'll go for some CS allies.


- How does the larger map size and Epic game speed affect your strategy?

Not sure. I tried two marathon games before this. Overall, I notice that longer games make me a more competitive player with the AI. Everything goes frustratingly slow, but it makes me give more thought to every decision as I'll be waiting forever for each little thing. This ends up causing me to play smarter relative to AI. My mistakes as an average player are less amplified when time goes slower b/c I have more time to realize my mistakes as well. Compared to Marathon, Epic seems fast now



I got mixed luck early with only one ruin on my landmass and the Sully beat or blocked me to the others. However, the barbs got one of Sully's workers and he ultimately fell into my lap.

More recently I got to five more ruins on other islands. Of the six ruins I got one unit upgrade, one tech (Bronze), two citizens joining my population, a map, and the location of an encampment… no gold, no culture.

I think the game is broken in certain ways. I have a spearman, two warriors, two archers, and four triremes; yet the game says my military is 13th out of 16, and half the average… can this be? It also says I have zero % research even tho I have nine techs completed. Something is a bit broke somewhere…

Sully declared war on me the very next turn after he paid me for my gold for the second time . I’m fighting a purely defensive battle with an archer and a galley near my second city. I’ve got DOFs with Ramses and Wu. Sully won’t give me an even peace so I’m waiting for Iron to pop and hopefully can upgrade my two warriors to swords. Maybe he’ll give me a better deal then. I’ll beeline military techs soon and try to attack Sully with Longswords and Crossbows... maybe add a knight thanks to my super smart fellow posters above

 

[danglading]

Not sure, so I'll speculate. (and probably get into trouble)

In past games in the series, one of the VC's was Conquest, where all the civs had to be destroyed. Playing for conquest with complete kills was a nightmare!

Suspect that complete kills is a hold over from the series.

Leif: I guess I assumed that you were the map maker, but based on your response above I'm thinking that's not right. So, out of idle curiosity, where do the GotM maps come from? Who makes them? I noticed that there was some fairly spot-on speculation in the "What to do with GOTM 25?" thread the day before the game was actually posted, so are the games based on another series somewhere? Again, I'm just curious about these sorts of things.

Excellent map so far! I'm something like 90-ish turns in and will post a status report when I get home and can jot down a few notes.

 

[Aaronius]

I had to restart my game for a reason that I think should not disqualify me. I was exploring with a trireme thru french territory. I decided to go thru paris to get to the water on the other side. I chose a square that was not revealed but the program allowed it. When the unit moved inside paris it was revealed that the tile I was moving to was actually land. Both adjacent water spaces had a unit in it, and my trireme only had one move left. Thus I was stuck and the game could not continue. I believe that the game was in error by allowing me to move a trireme onto a land space, so I think I should be able to restart. What do you guys think?

 

[danglading]

I had to restart my game for a reason that I think should not disqualify me. I was exploring with a trireme thru french territory. I decided to go thru paris to get to the water on the other side. I chose a square that was not revealed but the program allowed it. When the unit moved inside paris it was revealed that the tile I was moving to was actually land. Both adjacent water spaces had a unit in it, and my trireme only had one move left. Thus I was stuck and the game could not continue. I believe that the game was in error by allowing me to move a trireme onto a land space, so I think I should be able to restart. What do you guys think?

As a humble participant, I would say that's a slam dunk. You should have an autosave within 5 turns (unless you've disabled them or changed the settings), so I would just open the most recent save you have available and replay the turns as honestly as you possibly can up to the glitch. I've reloaded an autosave before when Civ crashed to desktop and didn't think twice about the ethics of it.

Again, this is just my completely unofficial opinion, but it seems well within the ethical constraints of GOTM to reload in this situation.

 

[Aaronius]

As a humble participant, I would say that's a slam dunk. You should have an autosave within 5 turns (unless you've disabled them or changed the settings), so I would just open the most recent save you have available and replay the turns as honestly as you possibly can up to the glitch. I've reloaded an autosave before when Civ crashed to desktop and didn't think twice about the ethics of it.

Again, this is just my completely unofficial opinion, but it seems well within the ethical constraints of GOTM to reload in this situation.

I appreciate your humble opinion. I feel like it is a game error. I did go back to my autosave b/c I couldn't part with a veteran trireme for no good reason. If it is actally the way the game is supposed to work, then I will just be a cheater I suppose. I have lots of game errors in this game. It says my military is the second weakest but I know its strong b/c everybody wants friendly relations with me. A lot of the demographic info is screwed up actually.

Good luck in your conquest!