TSG93 Opening Actions

Welcome to the TSG93 Opening Actions thread.

STOP - Please do not continue reading this thread until you have completed at least 80 to 100 turns in your game.

This thread is used to discuss the game once you've started playing through your first 100 turns. Apart from normal decency, the only posting restrictions are to please not post videos until the deadline is finished and 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 the first 100 turns. Anything after that should be posted in the After Action thread once you have completed your game.

- Where did you settle and what did you build first?
- How did the terrain and map settings affect your early decisions?
- What were your initial priorities?
- What tech path did you follow and why?
- What Social Policies did you choose and why?
- Did you make a plan for how to achieve your CV? Was Sacred Sites a part of that plan?
- Was Faith a big part of your early game?
- Did you use Faith to gain an advantage? If so, how?

Well, I settle in place. Problem with choosing strategy with Celts is that one need to do it on turn 5, when land around is unknown. In addition, map designer make is extremely hard to early explore.

So, I choose liberty - piety stat, and had to do it before I know how many ai are on continent, how easy to attack them. First I meat Portuguese and steal worker form then. after that I had bad luck all the time.
First, couple turn late my scout moved from one forest tie to other suddenly there are 3 barb archers next to it - dead scout. Next First religion was founded when I had 225 fault, my prophet did not spawn until 3 turn late and my religion was 4th. By that time I was well committed to liberty piety strategy to no return. Map however designed strongly in favor 3-4 cities tradition tradition- aesthetic. When I finally got enchanted religion all fault and happiness was gone, I had to choose +2 culture form temples. So, I had no chance to achieve below 300 turn win. I did develop strategy with liberty/piety to achieve about 280 turn culture victory with some setbacks, but map build such ways to make even that impossible. And no, plan was not based on SS.

Well my first game of the month and its not gone well. Currently 100 turns in...

- I settled in place and settled on the coast to the west and to the north
- built scout scout monument worker granary
- I chose the culture from plantations and enjoyed it
- main focus was on getting a 3 city tradition start based around national college
- didnt manage to steal a worker which hindered me as lot of forest to chop
- did get early friendship with byzantium and portugal
- im gonna use my early culture to open peity after tradition
- I need cargo ships and lighthouses up, I need shrines and temples, I need guilds and universities, ill plan more after that
- faith will be a big part of my game, great musicians will most likely be crossing the ocean at some point

But im looking at a best estimate 115 education. For the purposes of learning I might try these first 100 again

Agree with Mutineer, it's quite a bad map for liberty/piety start, which was my plan as well. All of the city states below you block expansion and that narrow land bridge to the right is a tough choke point protecting Portugal unless you rush super early.

My problem is that I sent my first scout south instead of towards Portugal. I assumed that area was a coast and not a long 1 tile land bridge. By the time I met Portugal (and scouted that area) they had already settled Porto blocking off the land bridge making it really tough for me to expand anywhere or go to war.

Anyway, I'm probably going to abandon my game. I might replay it for fun later to see what happens. I think if you go liberty/piety and rush the right side harassing Portugal stopping them from settling a second city near the land bridge you could have a lot of success. The problem is I think most people will instinctively scout south because it seems like there will be more land down there.

e: I would also be interested to see what Pantheon people took. There seems to be no great choice for this start. I took Oral Tradition (+culture from Plantations), which I feel is one of the weaker ones... perhaps it would be better to take Stone Circles or something similar to prevent someone else from getting early faith?

I took God King, made a shrine and even found a 60 faith ruin. That's 4 FPT which means religion circa t55-60. Mine was probably earlier.

The problem was I made Stone Henge when I should have made a settler to take the GBR site. I was going to do it after but it was too late.

Elizabeth started pulling away on culture and she beat me on Worlds Fair. In the end she had over 50K and I couldn't over take it with my modest science output.

No Oral tradition is a right think to do if one go liberty/piety. Limited factor is culture, because you have to take full piety tree. in addition, it does transfer to tourism, because it is culture from improvement.

I went Tradition. My test games seemed to do better on 2 or 3 city Tradition.

I'll skip SS since its probably too much of a gamble here.
So plan is simple, make a strong science game and use celts bonus to pick a good religion.

I settle in place since 3 forest + deer + mountain seems like a no brainer. I see many calendar luxuries so Oral Tradition seems the best choice here.

The map quickly shows up as being very narrow with rather poor terrain. I guess GBR is nice.

I steal one from portugal and 2 for genoa.

Build is a fast 3 city into NC and +1 city,

I get education T111 built Oracle and Borobodur. And T126 Astronomy.

Map isn't very good, will see how it ends.

Nice place to practice cultural games.

Moved warrior to the east. Settled on the hill. Warrior moved east again and found the great barrier reef! Had to put a city there asap and pick +4 fpt from natural wonders so it will make 8 fpt right away.

Stole a lone worker from Maria. Peace and DoF like 15 turns later Picked Tithe and Cathedral. Allied 2 cultural cs early due to favorable barb camps. Also DoF with Byzantines. 2 cities with 2x caravans NC start.



Oracle built turn 85 before i put hammers on it. Tried Chichen Itza but lost 2 turns away from Byzantines... Expanded to 3 more cities. Eventually picked Sword into Plowshare and Itinerant Preachers. Next faith points are for cathedrals.

Education turn 109(rush bought a university in capital). Needed gold to buy some tiles and stay happy. I traded 4 luxs...for more unique luxs. I badly need happiness and every kind of them are good for my empire.



Will dip a 2nd policy into Aesthetics before moving to Rationalism. I'm going for Astro for extra exploration and observatories.

I like your city placement Tab. Its what I wanted to do but was too slow.

I have nearly identical city placement to Tabarnak

I didn't see the GBR before the pantheon decision so chose the always solid God-King. Easy religion into Tithe and Pagodas. Nantes is a post NC settlement that had to wait for a workboat to hook up the whales.

Built the Oracle (Aesthetics Opener) and going for Borobudur. Cities are alright, but production is low outside the capital. Culture is too fast for Trad->Rationalism so I will take the policy that gives production for culture buildings first.

T100 screen


Edit: Stole two workers from Maria, peace and a quick DoF followed. In the south I got lucky with a camp/worker clear for the religious CS. Later that CS wanted my religion so the first missionary went wandering that way.

When I saw the VC and difficulty level, I knew that I wouldn't do very well on this one, but to my surprise it's not going too badly yet.

I settled in place and sent my warrior east and found the land bridge and on the turn that I found the GBR I was prompted for a pantheon, I took +4 culture from plantations and so far that has worked out. I created a settler and tried to make a city on the other side of the bridge, but Portugal moved in first, so I settled right in the center of the bridge, which turned out to have an iron mine under it and I was able to snag both GBR hexes.

I missed every wonder of course and ended up going straight through the Liberty tree, I chose an engineer and parked him in my capital and then started on Aesthetics. England was 8 techs ahead of me so my first spy went to London, and in the meantime I managed to ally with Bogota and Brussels (Bogota was luck, my scout found the barbarian camp unguarded and with a captured worker which I returned). Once I discovered acoustics I immediately switched to Sistine Chapel and popped my Engineer for a 1 turn build, on that next turn I also stole Guilds from England and renewed my DoF with Portugal. I have no expectations of winning this one, but for me on immortal, its a better start than I expected.

Didn't do well on this one. Settled in place and manged to build 2 more cities, one near the marble and the other on the coast to the west, in the same locations that most others who have posted before built them.

For some reason it didn't even occur to me to settle near GBR

Went for a Tradition/Patronage mix. In retrospect should have done Tradition/Aesthetics.

Got culture from plantations which was cool with all the dies/spices/bananas.

Didn't get any wonders, and had a hard time building slots for my great writers/artists/musicians.

Fell behind in tech and decided the only way to win this was to attack England and conquer London, where they built all the cultural wonders.

Built a small army of about 4 cannons, 3 rifles, a couple of lancers and one cavalry. When I landed on English shores they just entered the modern era

Obviously got my backside handed to me by their Great War infantry and airplanes.

I think I'm gonna replay this one and see how it goes with 5 city strategy. I like the map

Hi, I'm new here!

I've had a rough start on this one. I started out with two early cities to the east, one canal city and one coastal city by the river north of Portugal. The city manegment was executed sloppy and I had trouble stealing enough workers.

I got sacred sites, but I only managed to grab the monasteries. Starting out piety was costly, but interesting.

At around turn 120 Portugal declared war. Since I ran two cities on their side my front was wide and they caught me of guard, so fending them of was costly. On top of that they destroyed my 4 trade routes that I had with them, leaving me broken.

I'm now at turn 200 with 20 turism and I don't have the victory in sight, the war was costly both in economics, but especially since my universities got delayed. I've settled my 6 cities and are back on track, starting to get ready to give them treacherous Portoguise a lesson.

All in all its a interesting game, a game that I normally wouldn't finish due to the harsh start, but I'll see this one through, I believe I'll manage a CV around turn 300.

Welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM!

Good luck in your game and thanks for joining us.

I settled on the hill, and everything has gone really well so far

I have been too busy to play GotM_93 before now, but I have really been looking forward to it

I apologize for only having played 59 turns before posting in this thread, but it seems very natural to me to call this "opening over".

Nice having three cultural city states close by

I stole a worker from the mercantile city state, and built a second city to the west and one to the north by the river, coast and mountain. How can that possibly fail

I am rushing mathematics at the moment, I know it is a long shot, but having the hanging gardens in the capital - pluss an observatory... well let`s just say it will make things a lot easier

I find winning by culture really challenging.
I usually win on Immortal, but only once by culture (and in fact it was because I conquered the other cultural civs).

Settled in place.
Built: scout, monument, pictish, worker, pictish...
Pictish warriors are futiles. The religion you get through their killings is negligible.

Pantheon = God King.
This was another mistake, as oral tradition was probably the right choice.

I opened tradition and then tried to complete piety... maybe for the first time since I played CIV5...
Though, I was third in completing piety. That's bad!
One civ took Jesuit Edu and another Sacred Sites.
Please, could someone explain me if any other reformation beliefs make any sense?
I took evangelism, but really failed to grasp the point of it.

Founded one other city, than NC, than 3 other cities. NC was early, but Education was really late (later than 120!).
City positions are exactly the same as all the other shown in the post, but I preferred to create a canal in front of the GBR. Probably I tend to over estimate the value of this kind of placement...

With one Civ with SS (already 6 tourism)... I think I will never win culturaly.
I love GOTM beacuse, it challenges you to play in new ways.
However, this is not my cup of tea.
Does any one have some suggerstion on where to learn high level - cultural play?
Any particular posts ore videos?

This link will take you to the Let's Play forum where there are numerous games and videos posted.

Good luck.

Oh my. I scouted in such a way that I thought the land-bridge was not a land-bridge, but simply an uninteresting coastal settle spot. I can't see the iron yet and didn't think to go look more, since the silk is stupid and the deer is already in my capital. It took me ages to find the only other way out via the bananas and the marble, which is my first settle. Giving up this game, made some horrible choices with scouting and a lot of other things. No way to keep up with AI at this rate.

Very interesting concept this GotM contest. New to the forums and I am liking this type of competition. Going to try next's months for sure

This is my first immortal game. I tried to follow Tabarnak's 3 city guide and settled exactly as Sempronius (first 3 cities). Didnt manage to build more of them.

Buil scout, scout, settler. Warior went west, first scout east, so I settled the GBR quickly. The scout took a ruin next to a barb camp. Next time the camp spawned a brute, which blocked my scout an with the archer in the ruin they cilled my scout in open terrain. So not much exploration around Portugal early.

Had to build a worker myself and took 2 from Portugal. Killed their 2 wariors later and got gems and some gold for peace. then became friends a little later.

I had trouble with happiness all the time, which hinders my growth, city size is 10,10,5 at T120.

Pantheon was oral tradition, was second to religion (islam founded by somene unknown). Took mosques and tithe. Bad luck was that it took 9 turns to spawn the prophet. Did not enhance yet, build two mosques and 2 missionaires (after the 20% discount). Only one reformation belief taken yet, so I try to get that as well soon (need 2 more policies). Took tradition 4 policies then piety 3.

Barbs were killed soon, so almost no city states quests available. I am at T130 now, I wonder what to do next. I build NE, NC, Grand temple, writers guild and have one great art now. Bought university in capital and finishing astronomy now.