TSG8 - Game in Progress

Welcome to the TSG8 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.

Once you've completed the game, head over to the TSG8 After Action Report thread.

Almost finished my game. Really enjoy the patch so far



I really feel the ''one more turn'' syndrome, even in a singleplayer game! I started the game to play like 1 hour before bed, but i ended up to play more than 4 hours! I'm tired now...need sleep...but i will play after work for sure!

I decided no fancy stuff, just a solid build up. Was startled to find Rome close by so I decided to go liberty (the free settler is amazing) and throw down some aggressive cities before I lost my opportunity. One by the gems/horses to the south and the other in the midst of the western jungle, my future scientific megaplex.

Just as I established my cities I finally got to iron working and boom. Iron pops everywhere in my lands, Rome has none. I'm giddy with excitement! We are already mutually denounced so I upgrade a few warriors to swordmen and strike while the iron is hot. Once his army is wiped out he makes me an offer I can't refuse and I make a peace deal.

I used a golden age to build up and 20 or so turns later, I have 5 swordmen, a catapult and a hop on Rome's doorstep. I attack again and Rome falls right at 25AD.

Feeling really good about my prospects now, just about to hit longswordman and I am definitely going to roll Rome and Darius with ease. I also have a maritime city state firmly on board, solid happiness and financial standing.

Hopefully the turtling science fest that folllows won't be too boring.

played up into the early renisance (spelt wrong I'm sure) so far. What appropriate neighbors I went down the tradition tree, grabing everything but the garrison bonus and am now going down partronage. I am friends or allies with each city state on the initial continent. Athens is doing fantastic, I got the Library of Alexandria, National College, National Treasury, and Iron works. The city is currently size 15 and still growing fast. I just used a GS from the Porcelien tower to get fertilizer early to speed up growth even more. I concentrating on having a few core cities built up high, but also will be grabbing many puppets soon. I'm building a few cannons, longswords, and muskets right now to deal with my one remaining neighbor.

A good training map for people who are comfortable with Prince/King and want to up their game to Emperor. It's also good for trying out different starting strategies (discussed in spoilers below).

Initial strategy:



Future plans:



Edit: By the way it would be interesting if people would post their beakers/turn, gold/turn and culture/turn at turn 100 and every 50 turns thereafter so that we can use it for comparison of different strategies. I will post what I have at 100 when I get there tomorrow (way too late now - "just one more turn" syndrome did me in).

After running several games in the new patch I went with the "old and trusted" civ4 opening style and worker first. It depends on the map, but with the changes I think it is a very strong strategy. Knowing that alexander shines in early game combat, I decided to fast build 2 settlers while going into the tradition tree while skipping the NC.

Currently I think the NC start is a bit overrated, unless you do very specific strategies.This is mainly because early techs and buildings are way better then they used to be, and they allow you to rack up your production very high.
High production allows you to make stuff faster, which nets you more income.
More cities + more production == more possibilities and flexibility.
I ended up finishing my NC I think around 1000 AD, and 4 turns later started finishing Universities which boomed me up about 150+ science in about 20-30 turns. (More or less like the education + civil service slingshot of old).

Caesar got overrun somewhere around 1000 BC by a horde of hoplites (took rome sacced 2 cities), and I ended up settling a total of 6 selfbuild cities with rome being a puppet as 7th.

My plan was thwarted a bit when I noticed that Darius was OCC'ing, and stomping out wonders like a madman.
Coupled with the fact he was in a semistate of permanent golden ages, plus him being able to keep tech parity and the RNG not granting me a General after stomping over Caesar + barb encampments made it very hard to take over Darius.

After engaging through several scrims up to 1200 I managed to finally take down his capital which granted me 7-8 wonders under which the stonehenge, forbidden palace and the chapel. CACHING!!!

Stopped playing at 1400 AD, got the entire continent for myself, all the other civs are trying to be BFF's, and city states fall under my influence as flies.

EDIT:
Somehow the website currently does not like my screenshots. Converted them to .jpg but it says it isnt a valid image file.

Fluxx said:

EDIT:
Somehow the website currently does not like my screenshots. Converted them to .jpg but it says it isnt a valid image file.

Click to expand...

The forum is not allowing any uploads of attachments at this time. It is under investigation. For the near term, users are asked to use photo sites such as imageshack or photobucket and link their screenshots directly from these services. Sorry for the inconvienence.

@Fluxx

For me the NC start has been very strong in games of Emperor difficulty or lower (which is what I have played since the patch), but I still need to experiment more with a Liberty and 3-4 city start prior to NC. The REX strategy would seem to be more important if you have a neighbor that is spamming cities toward you. Also, it would be more important on a map where there are unique luxuries at several close sites.



The issue I have had to date with early REXing prior to NC is that I inevitably run into both cash and happiness issues at around turn 100 if I have placed 3-4 quick cities. It forces you to beeline Currency, picking up Construction along the way to start building coliseums, unless you have picked up a unique luxury at each city site (to alleviate unhappiness issues) plus some duplicates to sell to neighbors for cash. I have just found that creating a strong capitol first (through Tradition policies - Monarchy is great) works better for me.

I am tempted to try a REX strategy with this same map to see how it compares.

Update - turn 285 (spoiler free)

A war was faught with a certain southern neighbor once my muskets where upgraded to riflemen ( and infantry before the war's end ), I took 2 cities, and with the peace treaty got 3 more ( I could have had them all, but my happiness would have when down in flames). I screwed up royally and chose a wrong city in the deal, it was so worthless I annexed it just to raze it as soon as possible . A long with the cities I was also getting 57GPT from the peace treaty, which led to my economy gaining such speed that it is still growing.

By the time the GPT ended, I was making plenty without it. Over the course of 50 or so turns, my science output has incresed from around 350 to ~1080 per turn. The massive gold influx allowed me to buy many research agreements and most importantly city states, I'm getting around 300 of my science from my CS allies thanks to the partronage tree. I also recently adopted the Rationalism policies that increses science from specialists and happiness. Athens and Sparta are massive powerhouses thanks to the tradition branch. They have populations of 24 and 22 repesctivle, both with research labs and set to science focus and producing "research". I also recently annex the a long since puppeted city with a population of 18 to set to science focus. Most recently I've finished Christ the Redeemer ( Christo Rendento? I can never remeber how to say it lol ) with an engineer so that I can get the next two rationalism policies before its too late for them to even matter.

On turn 287 I will complete the apollo program in Athens, and with two cities at over 120 production each I can't imagine the space ship parts will take too long to complete.

I feel like this is one of the better, and also most enjoyable games I've played. I don't know if its the map, the patch, or the fact it is GOTM, but i'm simply really enjoying it.

By the way, how am I look turn count wise for completion? Slow? average? fast? ( I doubt fast )

@Tabarnak

RedRover57 said:

@Tabarnak

Spoiler :

I'm beginning to agree with you. NC start got me some extra beakers per turn early on, but around turns 100-150 after finally founding my other cities I ran into a big slowdown as I worked on getting them up and going. However, one big mistake I made was to settle my second city to the west as it took a long time to get going with such poor hammers and almost no gold on the tiles (only on the one spice tile was there any gold). I should have settled my second city south on the river near the gems and horses (I actually founded that one third). That is a much more productive spot and would have taken some pressure of of my capitol as my only production city and allowed it to grow faster. My fourth city is over by the dyes on the east coast. My economy is finally starting to crank and it certainly helped that I made a caravel and found some more trading partners.

Meanwhile Darius is still turtling and pushing out wonders (he picked up Himeji and Chichen Itza - now fighting him on his turf is going to be a real pain as he also has Oligarchy). He founded one other city to his west at the gold, but his capitol is massive. He could probably take some cities from me now if he pushed hard during a golden age with all his pike-upgraded immortals. At least I have some longswords and trebs now, plus Oligarchy. But he doesn't seem very aggressive so far at least. I'll have to figure out when to take him down.

On turn 150 I'm at 109 beakers/turn, 43 gold/turn, 6 happy and 33 culture/turn. Not great yet, but much better than at turn 103 (46 bpt, 1 gpt, 9 happy and 35 cpt). I'll probably replay the map using the Tradition only strategy to see if I can do better.

Click to expand...

There didn't seem to be enough good land in the initial position for my liking. Also, I figured the neighbors would be a problem eventually, so I decided to take them out ASAP, especially since the Greeks get two early units. I went for Liberty for the quick start. However I'm not convinced that it's worth it compared to Tradition, unless you're planning to ICS. I actually ended up with more workers than I needed (captured from barbarians), and an extra settler because happiness became a problem more quickly than I expected - not many city sites with luxuries nearby.

Anyway, I placed my second city south along the river to capture the horses, with some tile purchasing. My third was south-east of that to grab a luxury (or two). I stopped after that because I anticipated (correctly) that happiness would be a problem when I started to capture cities.

Interestingly, Rome decided to go after Persia before I was ready to DoW. I think he went after Darius instead of me because I had already built up a significant army already. He asked me to join him and I agreed, with 4 companion cavalry at the time. My first target was really Rome, but I saw the war as a chance to let them weaken each other, and I didn't really mind taking Persian cities first instead.

I stayed clear of the route between Rome and Persia. Instead, I tried to take the Persian capital, but it quickly became clear that 4 companion cav weren't enough. That and he got walls in two of his cities and a spearman pretty fast. However, I did eventually easily take a small city that he founded north of his capital.

I soon made peace with Persia. Meanwhile, I had produced maybe two swordsmen and two catapults, and moved them into position to attack Rome, which I did when everything was in place. I was able to run him over fairly quickly, especially since I don't think he ever built any spearmen. I wanted to attack Persia again after that, but I had to build some happiness margin.

What really helped here was sending out a trireme and finding the other civs. I regretted not doing so much earlier. Through diplomacy (and allying with maritime city states) I was able to acquire enough luxuries to let me resume my conquest. I also got research agreements from all of them.

Then I upgraded my army a bit, and attacked with 4 companion cav, 3 trebuchets, 3 longswordsmen, a hoplite, and a GG. Darius was pretty hard to crack - he had lots of pikemen (maybe he didn't have iron, or was it my horsemen?) - and city walls in 3 of 5 cities. I declared war and waited for him to move his units into my territory, allowing me to weaken him a bit without losses. Then I laid seige to his capital, which took a while due to high city defense, reinforcements, and him allying with Bucharest which threatened my flank.

After securing my continent, I proceeded with a plan to tech peacefully. I have 4 cities under direct control, with a lot of puppets. I think I will found one more city east of Athens. I'm allied to all the maritime and cultural city states I've come into contact with. I try to get research agreements and trade for luxuries whenever I can. I've been able to grab at least half the wonders, with the help of several great engineers. With regard to social policies, I went to freedom to reduce the cost of future policies (not sure if it's worth it), and then to rationalism.

The main problem I'm having is happiness. I've had to limit the growth of my cities quite a bit because of it. I wish I could prevent the puppets from growing. Maybe it makes sense to not care too much about being in unhappiness. I think it might make sense to slowly annex the puppets so that I can direct them to build happiness buildings. It just seems really hard in this game to control happiness, especially if you have puppets.

Status:
Turn: 232
Beakers: 296
GPT: 184
Happiness: 10
Culture: 177
Cities: 4
Puppets: 10
Techs: Everything before Industrial Era except for two techs
Social Policies: Tradition 1, Liberty 5 (this was a mistake, as only representation seems really nice - better to instead go tradition and patronage), Freedom 3 (for free speech), Rationalism 2

@lightsedge

Started this one today, went for my ususal Stonhenge start but the detours for mining and AH to have some hammer improvements for the worker led me to miss it.

Horses were far down south, so used second liberty policy to get free settler and build another fast to chain two cities to the horses. 3 iron resources showed up in those places. Build library in those cities ASAP to get NC in capital.

I used Honor (1st policy) and a warrior+scout pair to take several barb camps for the gold, solid ally of nearby maratime with the money.

Shocked that at 3 cities, I have the points lead over my two continental partners. Are they asleep at the switch? Or, what monsters are growing overseas?

I am still getting the feel of the patch changes, but ... dare I say it ... it may be starting to feel like Civ again!

dV

RedRover57 said:

@lightsedge

Spoiler :

How did you have room for 10 puppets on the one continent? Or did you also conquer some other civs on the other continents? At most, it seems to me that the continent can support maybe 7 cities:

Original capitol (city 1)
Jungle area to the SW by the mountain (city 2 for description purposes, not necessarily the order of settling)
Forest/river area by the gems and horses to the S (city 3)
Dyes area on the east coast to the SE of city 3 (city 4)
Roman capitol puppet SW of city 3 (city 5)
Persian capitol puppet in the far SE (city 6)
Gold area in the far S (city 7) - could be a third puppet if Darius settles here earlier, otherwise a 5th founded city

So that's 4/5 founded cities and 3/2 puppets. Any other conquered cities would just be razed, All of the other "important" tiles would be covered by massive culture expansion, particularly if you build Ankgor Wat. Both of the other capitols are so good that I would probably annex them eventually - that way Rome would expand enough to get the marble to the SW for example.

Any happiness issues could be alleviated by building coliseums plus Circus Maximus in the founded cities, plus taking Monarchy in the Tradition line (since your capitol will get huge). You could also trade excess luxuries 1-1 with other friendly civs for luxuries that aren't on your continent, e.g., sugar, incense - or just bribe CS's that have them.

Try as I might I can't come up with any good strategy using Liberty on this map. Tradition just seems so much better.

If you have that many puppets then you really need Piety for Theocracy, which works against the idea of a science victory since you can't take Rationalism then.

Maybe I'm missing something and someone can show a viable Liberty strategy on this map.

Click to expand...

I guess I didn't think much before puppeting. I should have razed almost all of them instead and resettled in better locations. I think I would have only kept Persepolis for the wonder, and maybe Rome. I'm annexing them slowly (razing would set me back too much now) and purchasing happiness buildings, which is not too bad, but it sucks that courthouses cost GPT. In the future I will definitely raze most early-game conquest, unless going for domination.

I agree that Liberty is pretty bad. I think it may be worth it if you can get the settler very quickly, to create a long-term advantage of getting two cities up early. And definitely worth it if you go for ICS. Otherwise the tree is weak, except for the culture cost reduction for additional cities.

This is my report as of turn 150.

Quick and dirty: I have founded 4 cities and conquered four cities, destroying the Romans. I kept two puppets for a total of 6 right now. I am allies with two maritime cities states and friends with one cultural city state.

Science = 120 beakers/turn. The farthest tech I have is navigation. I am number one in tech, 2 in military, 3 or 4 in other areas, except popularity, where I am last. I've completed 3 research agreements with Darius, which will be it, since I plan to attack him in about 15 turns. His capital has a ton of wonders, and I am about to set sail for the other civs and, hopefully, their research agreements and luxury resources. So time to take out the Persians.

More soon maybe. For now, I am back to the game. I had quit playing CiV, but I'm enjoying it now with the patch.

First time ever playing a Civ GOTM for either 4 or 5.

I figured by now I was winning games on King so I would give this difficulty a try and what better way than the GOTM!

Played to turn 75 so far.

Played up to turn 200 so far, here's what happened so far:


Not sure if this should be considered an exploit??
It's just happened that in my capital I am producing ~20 gpp/turn for both Science and Engineer. If I tweak the gpp production when approaching the threshold for generating a great person, I can generate a Great Scientist and Great Engineer each time I hit the pop threshold.