Civ V Beta 1

While the general Hall of Fame is an ongoing competition, we like to run time-definite competitions between updates that we call Gauntlets. Standard Hall of Fame rules (*) still apply, but any games meeting the settings will be counted towards the Gauntlet.

*There is no Civ V HOF Mod as of yet, so please play these games in the spirit of the Civ IV Hall of Fame Rules. Please review these before playing.

Settings:

• Victory Condition: Cultural (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Prince
• Starting Era: Ancient
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Continents
• Speed: Normal
• Civ: Arabia
• Opponents: Any, 7 opponents only, default option (8 civs in total), 16 City States only
• Resources: Standard
• Must Not Be Checked: No Barbarians, New Random Seed, Random Personalities
• Date: 29th September to 29th October 2010

The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

While each map can only be played once, players are more than welcome to generate new maps and submit multiple games. Also, as everyone is playing their own distinct maps, there is no need for spoiler limitation within the thread. In fact, we encourage detailed posting of strategy and gameplay.

Banned Tactics:

• Selling/giving away cities at any time

We are going to run gauntlets in the lead up to there actually being a Civ V Hall of Fame Mod, so we can get an idea of gameplay and allowed/disallowed options. We would love as much participation in these as possible. The Civ V Hall of Fame site is currently a work in progress so we can't accept submissions as yet, so would ask that you post your game (with as much information as possible about the game as well) in this thread and attach the 4000BC save and the victory save. The hard working HOF staff (looks nervously at Denniz and Methos ) will take it from there...

The results so far...

1 youralex 1535
2 erajah 1545
3 Neuro 1555
4 pagh80 1560
5 Sarassin 1600
6 WC-Ente 1615
7 Yannarosh 1620
8 oPlaiD 1650
9 iggymnrr 1660
10 Mikeydlew 1660
11 Lexad 1710
12 vontos 1725
13 sanabas 1730
14 Kamino 1740
15 Bullrog 1745
16 Rudianos 1760
17 t0b4cc0r04d 1760
18 Buddha Rebellion 1765
19 vcdragoon 1780
20 Luger9 1802
21 krakedhalo 1808
22 TowerWizard 1810
23 DonChipotle 1820
24 Lormax 1832
25 vitorbaixinho 1832
26 mpm2342 1838
27 TheIceSentinel 1852
28 KCMcG 1854
29 Sumorex 1858
30 garthmeisterj 1862
31 ori 1864
32 Dhaeman 1866
33 Alraun 1866
34 Juxtapose 1872
35 cas 1874
36 Xicivilian 1874
37 Drakbak 1876
38 Temo 1876
39 mushroomshirt 1882
40 Nidhogg Fr 1882
41 fizbankovi 1890
42 SK Ren 1898
43 Ozbenno 1901
44 Wilburn 1907
45 Sabrenita 1911
46 Septimus Octopus 1913
47 mcmpan 1913
48 zehcoutinho 1914
49 Chuvi 1914
50 Tyshalle 1915
51 Hammy 1917
52 titanvol 1919
53 DJMGator13 1922
54 Drool 1922
55 Haggbart 1925
56 Xger 1930
57 PrA 1933
58 fredkilbourne 1935
59 MasterDinedan 1936
60 Melth 1946
61 LazyKnight 1947
62 Denniz 1952
63 edpovi 1953
64 Sun Tzu Wu 1954
65 Kinch 1954
66 aftrubeliever 1955
67 Van Ukkel 1961
68 nervous 1963
69 JonoLith 1969
70 anklebiter 1970
71 RockinT 1971
72 Travis Freeman 1972
73 Silver44Guy 1973
74 afa2000 1978
75 Rammones 1984
76 Krystalshield 1986
77 Meatdaddy 1994
78 ArbogLi 1995
79 markh 1996
80 wakrob 2002
81 Emstinson 2003
82 Robkun 2011
83 piderman 2016
84 12agnar0k 2019
85 car stuar 2019
86 Hecubus 2021
87 Jenarie 2021
88 LukeUW 2022
89 SLayMan 2025
90 IneffableBob 2026
91 Mr Washington 2026
92 Wing 2035
93 elijahtary 2038
94 Boukev 2040
95 Suliz 2042
96 luciferius 2043
97 kiahoga - ???
98 Kmtravis - ???

As a note, I would ask that it be mentioned people do or do not mess with the other things. I assume all standard things apply [normal resources, start bias enabled, etc]

I will give it a shot =)

Where do i send then my savegames?

You should be able to post files on the forumn in the advanced post mode .

I hope this is ok!

Ozbenno said:

We are going to run gauntlets in the lead up to there actually being a Civ V Hall of Fame Mod, so we can get an idea of gameplay and allowed/disallowed options. We would love as much participation in these as possible. The Civ V Hall of Fame site is currently a work in progress so we can't accept submissions as yet, so would ask that you post your game (with as much information as possible about the game as well) in this thread and attach the 4000BC save and the victory save. The hard working HOF staff (looks nervously at Denniz and Methos ) will take it from there...

Click to expand...

Also, if you find bugs & exploits, post them in the bug forum, and I'll personally reload to replicate bugs, because that's one major point of these test games.

Also, there appears to be a major exploit available for cultural wins. Policy costs scale according to how many cities you own. However, it only checks the cost for the next policy when you actually take a policy. So if you don't use your available upgrades until you're ready to go all the way to your final one, you can have a whole empire generating culture, raze all except capitals, and get 20+ of your 30 required upgrades at single city prices. Nobody will do that here though, will they?

Guess I'll take a break from huge marathon maps.

sanabas said:

However, it only checks the cost for the next policy when you actually take a policy.

Click to expand...

You know the first policy trees are worse than the late ones? Especially of interest is the policy "Free speech" in the "Freedom" tree. I am sorry, but it really is a viable strategy to wait with the culture points in order to choose that one as soon as possible. If the game has bugs that makes this strategy an exploit if you happen to build cities before that tree is unlocked, well, that really sucks, but at the same time, it is not my fault the game is an unfinished product? I cannot understand how playtesters did not find these things!

TowerWizard the exploit is not in saving your cultural points for later policies. It is in building a large empire to accumulate lots of cultural points with buildings in many cities and then selling off those cities before spending the cultural points and hence only paying the policy costs based on one city. The HOF staff may have some ideas how to spot this ploy but beyond that is it up to us Gauntleteers to play the beta honourably.

TowerWizard said:

You know the first policy trees are worse than the late ones? Especially of interest is the policy "Free speech" in the "Freedom" tree. I am sorry, but it really is a viable strategy to wait with the culture points in order to choose that one as soon as possible. If the game has bugs that makes this strategy an exploit if you happen to build cities before that tree is unlocked, well, that really sucks, but at the same time, it is not my fault the game is an unfinished product? I cannot understand how playtesters did not find these things!

Click to expand...

Not what I said. Waiting until you unlock the freedom tree is simply a strategy, it will make your first however many policies more expensive than if you started while still a OCC. That's fine.

What is not fine is that to win via culture, you need 30 policies unlocked. You certainly don't need that many to be in position to generate all your culture points and build the utopia project. So once you have all your culture points, and your capital is ready to build, then you can get rid of all your other cities, and pay OCC prices for however many policies you need to buy, significantly cheaper than full empire prices.

So rather than being forced to balance your expansion between how much extra culture you generate v how much extra culture you need to earn in order to win, you simply expand as much as you'd like to, and contract completely once you're ready to build the final wonder.

sanabas said:

Not what I said. Waiting until you unlock the freedom tree is simply a strategy, it will make your first however many policies more expensive than if you started while still a OCC. That's fine.

What is not fine is that to win via culture, you need 30 policies unlocked. You certainly don't need that many to be in position to generate all your culture points and build the utopia project. So once you have all your culture points, and your capital is ready to build, then you can get rid of all your other cities, and pay OCC prices for however many policies you need to buy, significantly cheaper than full empire prices.

So rather than being forced to balance your expansion between how much extra culture you generate v how much extra culture you need to earn in order to win, you simply expand as much as you'd like to, and contract completely once you're ready to build the final wonder.

Click to expand...

This is perfectly within the rules, and "fixing" it will be extremely difficult - for example, setting costs based on the maximum empire size would severely penalize you even for razing cities. So I'd say go ahead and stretch it as much as you can within the current rules.

feelotraveller said:

TowerWizard the exploit is not in saving your cultural points for later policies. It is in building a large empire to accumulate lots of cultural points with buildings in many cities and then selling off those cities before spending the cultural points and hence only paying the policy costs based on one city. The HOF staff may have some ideas how to spot this ploy but beyond that is it up to us Gauntleteers to play the beta honourably.

Click to expand...

I don't see anything dishonorable about doing that - gauntlets are always about working the game legally to the maximum extent possible by choosing the perfect map, opponents, and getting the biggest edge. If the outcome of the gauntlet is closing some in-game loophole - well, that's a good thing. Just write it up!

I've been trying for a culture win for ages now, and its really difficult in Civ V.

I am comfortable with playing on king difficulty, but the problem is how long it takes to build up enough culture.

In my last game I tried everything that I could - Acoustics slingshot with all my policies after taking Aristocracy saved up, taking free speech first, prioritizing culture buildings, spamming wonders, and at 1950 AD, I had 550 culture being generated per turn, but only 4 trees fully unlocked with 4 more policies left to get in Tradition, so I gave up (100 turns left, 19 turns for next policy x 4 = hopeless).

Saving up policies is really going to be crucial for this. You just want to take ones that help towards gaining culture first like free speech, top two in Patronage, and the top right in Piety. After that, you need to save up as many as you can until after the Cristo Redentor is built. The other two down the patronage line that give 33% of allied city states science, and free great people are likely still worth taking earlier on, as is the +50% GP birth rate from Freedom, then I would save up the remaining 4 policies in Piety and Tradition until after completing Cristo Redentor, and even try saving a 5th tree until then. I took Commerce for cheaper rush buys which really helps, but wastes culture if taken before Cristo Redentor, so its really a case of finding the most viable method of getting 5 policy trees filled up the fastest, and all my attempts so far have been failures.

feelotraveller said:

TowerWizard the exploit is not in saving your cultural points for later policies. It is in building a large empire to accumulate lots of cultural points with buildings in many cities and then selling off those cities before spending the cultural points and hence only paying the policy costs based on one city. The HOF staff may have some ideas how to spot this ploy but beyond that is it up to us Gauntleteers to play the beta honourably.

Click to expand...

I also think this is very exploitative. Saving up policies is fine and as a fact, going to be required to manage cultural wins, but building loads of cities to farm culture points and then trading them away to the AI before spending your culture is a very cheesy exploit.

I did a Bollywood (Ghandi, 3 cities) win on Emperor/small; it wasn't quick but was doable, finished around 2020. Harvest your local AI capitals, as those locations tend to be nice. Finishing much earlier will require working the social policy costs.

I think shedding cities at the end will be essential given the game mechanics - you could also raze your cities rather than giving them away. Put another way, the costs rise too much with the number of cities, forcing people to adopt a cheesy approach.

See attachment

The ruins weapon upgrade mechanic sucks

The simple solution would be for any city loss to incur a 30% loss of excess stored culture. That would stop that strat dead in it's tracks.

How many turns on normal speed? 540? I just did a completely peaceful, 3 city game for the gauntlet, and was on track to get my 30 policies around turn 450. I was up to 18 policies around turn 250, with next one due in 16 turns. Still had to build a museum & hermitage, plus opera houses, etc, so I think I would have managed to keep similar pace as the cost increased. Also had 20+ happiness, which was good for golden ages and 10 cpt.

I started on a smallish continent, shared with Persia, Rome and ~7 city-states, all of which I ignored. France had their own island, Germany, Egypt, Greece & Ottomans had the big continent. I also saw that Dublin had captured Sparta from Greece when I went past.

Rome wiped a couple of city-states, then went to war with Persia, then declared on my neighbour city-state, which caused all city-states to declare on Rome. So he took both my neighbours, waited quite a few turns, and then came for me. So that's him marked for death in future games.

Egypt asked me to jump in against Germany halfway through Rome wiping me, and then Germany offered me all their money & resources for peace, I instead took their last non-capital city, and so managed to have my capital be a puppet city on a different continent.

I don't think there'll be any problems winning this with peaceful, non-cheesy tactics. Nor with warlike, non-cheesy tactics. When I do it again tomorrow, I'll go the same way. Straight for Stonehenge, minimal cities until I have Hermitage, and then I might go to war and keep all captures as puppets. But this time my military will consist of a little more than the initial warrior and 2 scouts.

Neuro said:

The simple solution would be for any city loss to incur a 30% loss of excess stored culture. That would stop that strat dead in it's tracks.

Click to expand...

This is an excellent suggestion. I can't see any downside to this mechanic being implemented.

oops - your 2nd biggest city just got annexed, you lost all of that culture to the rampaging horde.

Plus more importantly, it gets rid of that cheesy exploit.

Neuro said:

The simple solution would be for any city loss to incur a 30% loss of excess stored culture. That would stop that strat dead in it's tracks.

Click to expand...

Yes indeed. In fact, this would make someone trying such a strategy come out much worse than breaking even, since the increase in policy cost is based additively on 30% of the base culture, while losing 30% of your excess culture is based multiplicatively on your number of cities.

However, I'm concerned that it could be unfairly devastating for someone attempting a legitimate cultural win who just happens to lose a city to an aggressive AI.

Perhaps a more elegant solution would to keep track of how many SPs you've "earned" and then restart the culture pool, so that instead of having "35/25 culture," you'd have "1 policy ready to adopt and 10/45 culture." That way, the cost of SPs is based on the number of cities you have when you unlock them, no matter what the numbers change to when you go to adopt them.

DalekDavros said:

Perhaps a more elegant solution would to keep track of how many SPs you've "earned" and then restart the culture pool, so that instead of having "35/25 culture," you'd have "1 policy ready to adopt and 10/45 culture." That way, the cost of SPs is based on the number of cities you have when you unlock them, no matter what the numbers change to when you go to adopt them.

Click to expand...

This was my train of thought. The only small concern would be getting the last policy cheaply as the 'exploit' could still be utilised. But maybe at this level its more of a tactic than an exploit.