News: TSG6 Announcement

Welcome to the sixth game in the GOTM V Training Series! There are plenty of new features in Civilization 5 to explore and the Training Series games will allow new and old GOTM fans to try out these new features in a friendly environment. You are all encouraged to post your questions, stories, advice, tricks and failures in the dedicated game threads described below. You can read more about the GOTM and Training Series concept in this thread. Before going into the details of this game, we would like to ask you to abide to our most sacred rule: don’t replay any turns. If you make a mistake, accept it and try to recover. It’s better to do the bad moves in the Training Series instead of in the actual GOTM competition once it starts.

In this game, you may select the victory condition of your choice. Good Luck!

In this game you will play as Catherine and lead the Russians to a magnificent victory. It’s a standard sized Archipelago map played at Emperor difficulty and at standard pace. Victory condition is your choice, and all victory conditions are enabled.

A note for Mac players. Your version of Civ5 is not yet compatible with the Windows version. Results from the two version would not be comparable given the extensive game play changes. We hope your next patch comes out soon.

Please note that you are only allowed to build Oxford University one time.

Civ V - TSG6 game settings
Playable Civ: Catherine - Russia
Number of AI Opponents: 7
Number of City-States: 16
Map type: Archipelago
Map Size: Standard
Difficulty Level: Emperor
Temperature: Temperate
Game pace: Standard
Game options: Quick Combat is disabled. Did not enable Policy or Promotion saving.

Playing as Catherine, you possess Mother Russia. Strategic resources provide +1 production and Horse, Iron and Uranium resources provide double quantity. You can train Cossacks, which replaces Cavalry. They fight more effectively versus wounded units, otherwise they maintain Cavalry's characteristics. You can also build the Krepost. It replaces the Barracks and, besides the Barracks' features, the Krepost reduces the culture cost of acquiring new tiles by 50% in the city in which it is built.


Information about threads associated with TSG
TSG Announcement thread (this one). This thread is used to announce the game and clarify the settings and rules (don’t be afraid to ask questions). It’s also used to discuss the game before you start, and post problems with opening the save. Please don’t post any information from a game you have started. Instead use the next thread.

Game In Progress thread. This thread is used to discuss the game once it's on the way. 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.

After Action Report thread. In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state (preferably in the post title) your victory date and score, as recorded in the Hall of Fame, and the most important: your path to glory! Please also attach a .Civ5Save file made the turn after your victory or defeat (by using the "lemme play one more turn" feature, as we have the beginnings of a parser working that will check your game saves. We will create a separate thread with the results at the end of the three week period (sorted by date and score). Players are encouraged to provide feedback on the game. Some players like to replay the game, and although we will not record the results from a replay, you can still post your new experiences. The game will not be closed as such, but after three weeks, the results will be compiled, and will not necessarily be updated with reports coming in after the finish date.

This game runs for two weeks and ends Monday 31 January 2011.

The Save can be found here.

Thanks for the game guys

Can't wait to get started! Never had any incentive to try Catherine on an archipelago map before.

Just a quick query:

Will score determine winner in each category? I think score is the best... but in the past you have used earliest finish (which I think depreciates the game to tricks).

JungleIII said:

Just a quick query:

Will score determine winner in each category? I think score is the best... but in the past you have used earliest finish (which I think depreciates the game to tricks).

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That's funny, I think score depreciates the game to tricks.

JungleIII said:

Will score determine winner in each category? I think score is the best... but in the past you have used earliest finish (which I think depreciates the game to tricks).

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DaveMcW said:

That's funny, I think score depreciates the game to tricks.

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Sounds familiar, we have this discussion in the Staff forum as well.

For now, it is fastest finish.

At some point, perhaps we can have this discussion in a separate thread. For now, we are watching dates and scores.

Is it fastest time, period? Or are you breaking it down by fastest in each category?

Domination would normally be the quickest, but on an Archipelago map, I'm not so sure. I might have to try Diplo or Science!

We shall find out.

Would like to break it down b y vc, but we'll see what we get for data and whether we have to break it down manually.

While we are all learning to play, we are also learning how to compile data and present results.

edit - to answer you question, overall winner will be fastest time (earliest date).

You can also build the Krepost. They replace the Barracks and, besides the Barracks' features, they reduce the cost of acquiring new tiles in the city in which they are built by 50%

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Shouldn't it be "they reduce the Culture cost of acquiring new tiles"?

BuddhaBubba said:

Shouldn't it be "they reduce the Culture cost of acquiring new tiles"?

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Corrected.

Here is what the Civilopedia says:
"The Krepost reduces the culture cost of acquiring new tiles by 50% in this city".

its on.

My first, I'm in

Welcome to CivFanatics and the GOTM.

Good Luck!

Technically, I've finished my game, but I wanted to give some of my insights into the game prior to playing it, so those who haven't yet started might get some non-spoiler advice.

With this opening location and the game type (Archipelago), the primary decision facing me prior to starting the game was which victory condition to go for. Here's how I broke it down:

Catherine isn't particularly disposed to one victory condition or another. Perhaps she's slightly better at Domination, getting more iron and horse than others, but Domination on an Archipelago map is *slow*. Not only do you have to keep island hopping, you have to patrol for barb triremes AND protect against enemy ships. I recently played some HOF Gauntlet games using Tiny Islands, and it's a pain in the rear keeping sea lanes clear. The only Domination strat I could think of was to beeline to Chivalry and send out knights to some Ancient Ruins littering any small islands and hope for an upgrade to Cossack, but even that seemed slow.

So that leaves Culture, Science, and Diplo. Diplo and Science are both tech races, but Diplo is always quicker. Culture can be quicker than Diplo, but you need 7-8 puppet cities for a fast culture win, mainly because you need LOTS of gold for it. You not only have to buy the Cultural CSs, you will be building Wonders the entire game (Stonehenge, GL, Oracle, Chichen Itza, Sistine Chapel, Cristo, etc) so you need cash to buy your Science AND Culture buildings. Since the starting location did not have a river, and you can't really build new cities, the only way I could go Culture is if I started on the same landmass as 1-2 other civs and/or a couple of City States.

So, my plan was to develop as if I were going Culture, and see if there were enough civs near me to go Culture, and if not, switch to Diplo.

Continued in the After Action thread!

Helpful analysis, thank you. I don't understand this one point:

Neuro said:

Since the starting location did not have a river, and you can't really build new cities,

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How does a river affect building another city? Does it relate to the cost of the SPs?

I think he meant that since there isn't a river you won't have much gold in the capital and if you go culture you can't build any additional cities so that's why you need cities to capture on your starting island.

In case anyone is interested, here are the hotfix notes:

1.0.1.167
Released 1/20/2011
[CRASHES]

* Dead interceptor crash fix (occurred frequently in late-game, usually on the AI turn)
* Movement limit crash fix (occurred when any high-movement unit, a gunship in this case, made use of the railroad bonus and moved beyond the engine visualization limits)
* Crash fix for diplo AI. When the player witnesses an AI leader buy a minor ally, and aggressively purchased them back, the game would eventually crash when the AI leader would correctly try to complain to you about it.
* The following crashes were all discovered via the Steam Crash Reporting system that Civilization V utilizes:
* Crash - pCitizens->GetCityPlotFromIndex(iPlotLoop); is returning NULL in the CvPlayer: DoRevolt loop.
* Crash - Occasionally strange values are sent to the movement cursor code. Wrap and clamp the values before they get to the pathfinder.
* Crash - Fix to divide by zero crash with AI buying plots.
* Crash - In RouteValid, the CvTacticalAnalysisMap cell thinks a plot is claimed, but the plot itself has no owner.
* Crash - Era out of bounds during a reload.
* Crash - During a resync, a crash happens when GameplayUnitCreated calls CvPlot::GetActiveFogOfWarMode apparently because the game's ActiveTeam is NO_TEAM (-1).


[GAMEPLAY]

* Fix to Golden Age length (for Reformation policy with both the Persian trait and Chichen Itze)
* Corrected duration of golden ages generated from Taj Mahal and when a Persian player has Chichen Itza (Before the multiple 50% additions were "compounded" rather than added together into a 100% bonus.)


[UI]

* Fix to blank science victory details screen

leif erikson said:

Game options: Quick Combat is disabled. Did not enable Policy or Promotion saving.

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These settings are good, allows players to plan social policies.
But Huts really makes a huge difference early game...maybe take those off in the future?

Neuro said:

... The only Domination strat I could think of was to beeline to Chivalry and send out knights to some Ancient Ruins littering any small islands and hope for an upgrade to Cossack, but even that seemed slow.

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For Emperor, Triremes and Pikes are enough. Knight is too late for super early domination. Upgrade as you go.

Airey said:

But Huts really makes a huge difference early game...maybe take those off in the future?

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I don't agree. The ruins are on everyones map. It's not like the Hall of Fame where players can keep starting over to find better ruins. Sure, it adds a bit a luck, but I think that's part of the game.

I started playing this game after a few months away from C5 because of numerous reasons including the game itself. Now I have a question that I was hoping to get some help with.

Game options: Quick Combat is disabled. Did not enable Policy or Promotion saving.

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I am not able to save Promotions or Policies in this game it appears either.

Here is my save file if someone would care to take a look.