Game: Civ5 GOTM 109
Date submitted: 2015-05-07 18:01:00
Reference number: 32714
Your name: Maxerman
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1949AD
Turns played: 369
Base score: 1892
Final score: 2591
Wow, I don't know how you guys do it Acken and Olodune. This is only my second game of the month game and third ever BNW game to be fair, but still.
Questions:
- Did you use your UU's?
Nope, not at all.
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
No coups. Didn't need to. Allied with everyone anyway. Stole some techs from William and Darius but mostly used as diplomats on same two and then Pedro, Suleiman, and Maria as well.
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Was really tough reaching Darius and Haile with Tourism. Me and Darius became such good buddies and I performed so many concerts in Persia that it worked out anyway once Haile had been annihilated.
- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
Religion helped make money above all else with Tithe, and used that money to buy all the city states. Also bought two writers to defend against Darius tourism and three musicians in the final tourism push against Darius.
- Did you utilize Nobel Prize? How and why?
Gave a GW to Monaco really early in the game that I couldn't use. Otherwise, didn't need to.
Start:
After what I thought was a pretty good start; 5 cities at turn 101 (settling by river/Uluru, S coast, far SE coast and E coast) and wonders GL, Parthenon, Mauseoleum of Halicarnassus, Pyramids, Oracle and Petra, I started falling behind in tech a little bit and struggling with happiness. Seems like it would have been better to go Tradition rather than Liberty and steal workers rather than build them and build Pyramids. Also NC came way too late.
Summary:
Social Policies: Liberty - Aesthetics - Exploration - Order
Religion: God-King, Tithe, Religious Art, Swords into Plowshares, Itinerant Preachers (biggest religion throughout large part of the game occupying entire small island)
Diplomacy: Kick ass! Friends with all civs and city-states, except when annihilating Kasimir and Haile.
Wonders: GL, Pyramids, Mausoleum, Oracle, Parthenon, Petra, Machu Pichu, Neuchwenstein, Kremlin (really quite bad after the start)
Military: 3 units (until last 40 turns when I built like 40 Rocket Artilleries)
Long Story:
Opted for a very peaceful game with DOF with William, Pedro and Kasimir already around turn 100 as well, and lasted throughout the entire game. Gifted everyone things to make everyone as happy with me as possible. That way, I went almost the entire game on just 3 military units.
The many research agreements with all of them and Maria and Suleiman as well once I met them allowed me to almost keep up with research, and get a 50-60% great person bonus for most of the game. With Darius joining the great alliance later on, after a short period of dislike towards me after I used a spy to steal a few techs.
However, being behind on tech I missed out on several important wonders and I tried but couldn't seem to get happiness quite under control. So my cities didn't grow until very late at which point tech started picking up again, and could finally start building stuff faster in my 4th and 5th cities and start building all the national wonders.
Haile and Darius had quite a lot more culture than I had and Darius was the one picking up most of the tourism wonders as well. It looked like Darius might be the one to win a cultural victory for a while. On top of that I lost out in the international games to William.
Things started to look a little brighter when my cities started to grow, started earning 300+ gold per turn and ended up buying the love of all the CS left on the map, not already taken by Maria. William started as the powerhouse of the congress but after helping Pedro become host, I then took it for myself and dominated it from there on. Having 35 delegates at the end with no one else having more than 12. Got world religion, world ideology, scholars in residence, and arts funding mainly.
All this diplomacy got me security (6 defensive pacts at once at one point), nice bonuses to tourism output and the congress. It was only Haile who never wanted to be my friend and he got almost comically ganged up on throughout the game. However, it was when everyone adopted Order (and I did for diplomatic reasons) and Haile adopted Freedom and Kasimir adopted Autocracy that the grand alliance started ganging up on Poland as well. It didn't take long when everyone declared war (me not helping so much with my 3 units) for him to become extinct. Then I realised that I didn't have to beat the culture output of the civs that were eliminated. (Keep in mind, a bit of a beginner at BNW)
I was influential with everyone except Darius and Haile already around 1700-1800AD. Darius was just a cultural stronghold and Haile, I had no bonuses with, in fact was at -34% most of the time with him. So the plan was to wipe out Haile and use the faith I'd been saving to buy 2-3 GM to use on Darius. The plan was good, exceeded Darius culture quite easily with 3 GM. Defended against Darius tourism by using archaeology and GWs to create culture. Built my army way too late and took ages to get them across to Haile. So spent an additional 30-40 turns just wiping Haile out. Even though all the others were at war with him as well.
In the end the biggest threat was Darius and William's potential science victories actually and they were both just once piece away and had all techs, (everyone did except Haile) but I just managed to snag the win.
Interestingly, I got reports constantly at the end about everyone plotting against me, but there was no backstabbing in the end.
Finished the game with only the 5 cities I already had at turn 101 now with populations:
27, 27, 33, 31, 27. Plus Poland gifted me Krakow in peace treaty and took final city Medina. Btw Darius finished the game with 36,000 gold, is that supposed to happen?
Hope someone reads my very long post, haha, and if so, thanks
How do you add screenshots in the post btw? Just added them as an attachment now if anyone is interested.