TSG82 After Actions

WaveOfDoom - CS resources can only be received if the CS has sufficient technology to find the resource themselves. Afaik, CS technology depends on the average/majority level of advancement of all civs. It isn't a bug, it's a game feature. But yeah, you werent' the only one limited by that (read the previous comments)

Mechanic seems more complexe. In a GoTM, Prince, SV, I was able to improve and have access to coal, alu in CS when I reached indus or electricity.

I know that in this game in the last doezn or more turn when I removed my spy from my capital and let all the AIs rob techs a plenty, a number of AIs moved into and onward through inustrial era and the CSs very quickly started supplying me with coal and then aluminium. Maybe just a coincidence, but I always understood it to work somewhat similar to the World Congress - depends on the overall level of scientific development.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 82
Date submitted: 2014-03-31 07:06:20
Reference number: 30873
Your name: wazzap
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1942AD
Turns played: 362
Base score: 1525
Final score: 2118
Time played: 3:26:00
Submitted save: TSG82_Washington_0362 AD-1942.Civ5Save
Renamed file: wazzap_C508201.Civ5Save

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Mehh bad for me i guess. I'm a regular Emporer player.

Spying
I knew spying would be worthless from start so i put them for CSs to gain early culture advantage.

Policy
I messed up with Rationalism opener with Ren. Era so i had to give 1 point patronage. Games goes on I thought CSs would be helper for my Science Output. What a fail
I went Freedom bcoz of that CSs Science Output thing. Fail 2!! I should have gone Order

Religion
I thought gaining Science from cities with diferent religion, gonna help me. But my lack of faith production had failed me. Therefore I couldnt be able to do anything usefull with my religion.

Wonders
Rushed to GL, Oracle and HG. Used my Oxford for Satellites. I made sooooo many useless wonders like Machhu Pichu, CN Towers etc. Fail 3

Raging Barbarians
They havent made any problem until late game. Then they had started to chew my cargo ships.

As for all, I need a lot of thing to learn. I started Civ games with Civ V in 2013 so... It's ok i guess.

Maybe a new time finishing record !


Game: Civ5 GOTM 82
Date submitted: 2014-04-01 07:54:29
Reference number: 30877
Your name: beto_java
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 2004AD
Turns played: 424
Base score: 2244
Final score: 2671
Time played: 7:36:00
Submitted save: final_Washington_0424 AD-2004.Civ5Save
Renamed file: beto_java_C508201.Civ5Save

Apart from losing Aluminium when building space parts, a standard 4 city tradition opening. Also added Edinburgh before T100. Finished turn 267 with about another 40 years of Golden age so not the best timing.

My first GOTM since GOTM22 a couple of years back I've had a break playing CIV, but read good reviews on BNW and thought I would give it a go again. And no better place to learn new game mechanics and tactics than this forum and especialle GOTM, which I enjoy very much. Really good concept.

On to my game:
Opened with tre cities and Tradition. Had only 2 military units almost the entire game, and thougt that would get me in to a fight without diplo hits. But noone attacked, so I changed strategy (probably a bit too late) and instead began to settle 5 more observatory cities on the big island to the east.
So I had no wars the entire game, ended with 8 cities and around 1800 science/turn. But my midgame science was bad, and I had to wait a long time for the last space-tech in the end. I could have won a diplo victory a couple of times, but I had to stall to get the space victory.

Ballcrusher said:

My first GOTM since GOTM22 a couple of years back I've had a break playing CIV, but read good reviews on BNW and thought I would give it a go again. And no better place to learn new game mechanics and tactics than this forum and especialle GOTM, which I enjoy very much. Really good concept.

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Welcome back to Civ5 and GotM! I hope you enjoy the new game features.

HR

Game: Civ5 GOTM 82
Date submitted: 2014-04-10 22:07:53
Reference number: 30935
Your name: Acken
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1715AD
Turns played: 253
Base score: 1470
Final score: 2940
Time played: 3:14:00
Submitted save: TSG82_Win.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Acken_C508201.Civ5Save

So I sticked with my 3 city plan to see how well I could do and it was okay I guess getting a 253 turn to victory. Little mistake at the end with rush buying which could have got me.

I was able to have a lot of WLTKD which made my 3 cities quite big by the end (39 Capital 28+ other 2).

Like many people, whatever the strategy, the lack of coal was annoying waiting for CS cities to get to industrialisation. I was at industrialisation around T175 but had to wait turn 210 before someone had coal. Almost considered conquering Bratislava.

In retrospective I should have just gone for one or two more cities even if the spot weren't that good. Mountain still save the day I guess. Another mistake was scholastism being very late in my game I opted to get rationalism and order faster but I would probably have got a lot more out of scholastism earlier since there was just no coal and the order policy sat there useless for a long time These two mistakes are probably the difference that made Tabarnak and IronFighter get better timings. I also ended up with one extra scientist sadly. I even wonder if freedom wouldn't have been even better... getting more food in the process instead of the factory policy that only was useful post turn 210 in my game.



- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
I use spy for city states on Prince, there is nothing worth stealing at AI. Religion was used to get Tithe, a lot of faith through Divine Inspiration and additional food.
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Having not a lot of room ended up hindering me. I also did not noticed the isolated city states on the right for like forever.
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Well I can make 0 units and be 100% safe, I can get every wonders and it's easier to grab city spots. But AI has no gold and RA are terrible.
- Did America's unique traits factor into your Science game plan? If so, how?
No use for america's unit. Sight helps while exploring but nothing to do with a science game.

I did not even notice raging barbarians was on -.-

Totally drunkplayed the first 3/4 of this game after a late night out. So I didnt plan on deliver or even complete the game. But when the deadline came upon I fired it up again.

Victory @ turn 295. So nothing to write home about
Played peacefull. 3 cities NC, should have planted more cities close by afterwardsm instead I ended up with two on the "new eastern world". Wonderwhoring. Completed tradition, commerce and rationalism (2 points in rationalism asap) and went order.

Q: I settled 3 cities on the mainland, and then 2 on the eastern continent. I didnt have a costal city on my main island. What I'm asking is, would it have been worth it [settling early] a costal city beside my capital for a harbor/road-connection between all my cities?

Observation: oh my I plowed recourses into Worlds Fair and International Games Not any help to get at this level.

Raging barberians: didnt notice...

Lambatatte said:

Q: I settled 3 cities on the mainland, and then 2 on the eastern continent. I didnt have a costal city on my main island. What I'm asking is, would it have been worth it [settling early] a costal city beside my capital for a harbor/road-connection between all my cities?

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I considered the same thing but happiness was always tentative and the AI was so backwards they weren't a reliable luxury trading partner. Without a unique luxury to settle next to I opted for the late game cities like yourself to get the coal/aluminum. Also considered it for the extra gold income but ended up not being necessary.

Date submitted: 2014-04-15 16:37:09
Reference number: 30961
Your name: pvtjava
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1872AD
Turns played: 306
Base score: 1719
Final score: 2818

Oh, so close to sub 300. I feel pretty good about this as my first Science Victory attempt. All parts but one purchased. 400 gpt and 100 fpt w/1400 bpt at the end. All much higher than my usual games. Still, lots of Wonders though. This game showed me the power of four cities. I can see how quicker(4 cities) is better too.

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
Religion - Kept and held my four. Converted a few CS for quests.
Spies - Moved around to bunch of CS.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Cool map. I wished I had found that extra continent quicker.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Built all my favorite culture wonders and others. I just didn't stock them all with GW as usual.

- Did America's unique traits factor into your Science game plan? If so, how?
Bought some tiles. Extra sight always helpful. Unable to use GA points boost.

I know I'm passed the deadline but I did finish my game so I figured I'd give my post-mortem. This was actually my first Brave New World game and I hadn't played Civ 5 in a couple of years and never played all that much, though I discovered when I looked through my achievements that I had won on Prince level before.

However, I (gulp) lost in 1968. I didn't see it coming until the final few years. I thought everything was under control. I had a decent lead in tech, had built the Apollo Project, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Space Ship Cockpit, and thought I would be coasting to victory, albeit later than the rest of you folks. I was in the lead in score and in the top 3 in all demographics. But I hadn't been paying much attention to the City States (i've just always found them annoying), and Brazil allied all sixteen of them. I tried accomplishing some missions, rigging the elections and paying them off, but Brazil was able to get its allies back as fast as i could take them down. I don't remember the A.I. being good at focusing on victory conditions in the past and wasn't really expecting to have to defend against an early AI victory.

I'm not really sure where I lost it. I did make a blunder early agreeing to attack Boudicca with Morocco hoping to secure its easternmost city and get myself some room. I'd forgotten how much harder it is to take cities in Civ 5 than Civ 4 and I ended up agreeing to peace in return for 30 turns worth of dyes and some cash. So that probably slowed me a bit. I also discovered afterward that I didn't need the space because of the unoccupied land masses to the east and plopped two more cities there, giving me a total of 5 for most of the game. I ended up building a 6th city late for coal. Would I have been better building fewer cities and relying on City states for my luxuries and resources? I did do missions if they were easy (bringing my religion or making a trade route).

Liberty was probably a bad choice for social policy, but I didn't expect to be doing a lot of warfare and (as i said above) I don't really enjoy fussing with the city states so I didn't want patronage, and I wanted to be able to take rationalism later so I couldn't take piety.

I built a lot of wonders, partly because I seemed to have a lot of manufacturing and not that much to do with it since I didn't need to build much in the way of armies to stay at or close to #1 in that department. I built Angkor Wat, Borobodhur, Hubble Space Telescope, Neuschwanstein, Notre Dame, Oracle, Red Fort, Stonehenge Taj Mahal, Kremlin, Himeji Castle, Eiffel Tower. Was it a waste? I topped up all my cities science buildings, factories & power plants, but didn't go all the way with economics and culture buildings. Should I have built more of those or spent production on research?

Diplomatically, I was friends with Morocco, Carthage & Brazil for most of the game. Nobody ever declared war on me, though Carthage mysteriously denounced me at one point. Other than that first war I stayed out of it and basically everybody else dogpiled Rome. Maybe I should have been more aggressive? I didn't build nukes and Brazil was on the other side of the map so hard to go after conventionally (and probably impossible by the time I realized they were a threat). I guess I could have razed or puppeted a couple of the city states at the end to stop Brazil, but I'd heard so much about the warmonger penalty.

So--what's the strategy for avoiding an AI diplomatic victory? Do you just have to make sure that you always have a bunch of city state allies topped up? Or do you just make sure you win before it has a chance to get the world congress thing going?

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
I had a pretty high faith civ and converted a bunch of city states, most of them in response to quests. Also pumped out two great scientists on faith late in the game and built monasteries in every city.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
The start position was very cramped and it stampeded me into an early war that I managed poorly. Had I built a coastal city and colonized the continent to the east early, I expect I'd have done better.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Prince was where I played back when I played Civ 5 vanilla.

- Did America's unique traits factor into your Science game plan? If so, how?
It didn't really. I didn't find its traits helped me much at all.

magritte said:

... and I wanted to be able to take rationalism later so I couldn't take piety.

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Rationalism and Piety are no longer mutually exclusive in BNW. Any policy can be taken with any other. Only Ideologies are not permitted together.

Ah, well, that was one of my mistakes then. Liberty wasn't all that helpful going from a science victory. Since I was generating lots of faith anyway, converting it into more culture would have hurt Brazil with the city states I suspect, and gold is always helpful.

Science victory turn 323.

As i said on the other topic, no settled scientists, bubled everyone, and as soon as i got them so no saving scientists either.

Education fell turn 108. First scientist turn 111. Astronomy turn 123. Second scientist turn 135. Rationalism picked turn 135. Secularism turn 146, science is 200 per turn already. Humanism turn 162. Third scientist turn 164, same turn proposed science funding on world congress. Used oxford to pop scientific theory turn 167. Free thought turn 171, 312 science per turn now. I am in a 27 turn golden age. Sovereignty turn 182. 4th scientist turn 190. Ideology picked order turn 191, 25% great people birthrate + 33% cheaper buying buildings with gold. Maxed rationalism turn 195. Finished pisa to get my 5th scientist. Used faith to get 6th scientist. Turn 201 i pick ideology to get 25% science from factories. Turn 202 i get plastics. Currently at turn 202 i am making 476 research per turn.

Haven't secured a source of coal yet, Kuala lampur has it, but it is not granting it to me for some reason... the world must be too behind technologically to unlock it i guess. I should maube not have been running a counter intelligence spy in washington, oops. 7th scientist turn 208. 9th on turn 209 from porcelain tower. Beelining penicilin for the atomic era (i thought advancing eras boosts science i get from city states through patronage but for atomic it didn't... oops.) followed by rocketery. 8th scientist turn 218, that gave me penicilin and atomics, research per turn is 661. 10th scientist on turn 225.

Still no coal anywhere, already wasted 30 turns waiting for it, so i decided to found a 4th city on the other continent that has no AIs on it, settling on the coal on turn 231 for insta coal so i can get the factories, taking loans with the AI so i can rush buy them instantly. Research is now 793.

11th scientist on turn 241 from third level order. 12th turn 248, gave me rocketry. 13th bought with faith, hit information era. 14th bought with faith too turn 266. 15th turn 269. Turn 275 just now the city states gift me coal, good thing i didn't wait for them it would have been 75 wasted turns. Turn 277 vote for world leader came up, i have enough votes to win... 16th scientist turn 285. 17th and 18th from hubble space telescope turn 292. 19th turn 316.

Science victory turn 323. I could have won diplomacy three times over.

I should have done what i usually do and settle the early scientists as usual. This was an experiment to see how late i would be if i bulbed all the scientists. Holding on to the scientists instead of insta bulbing them would have been better also, but i was in lazy mode going for an approach that let me skip turns fast without obsessing over the details.

If i have one objective in civilization is to do speed runs, because i don't have much life time to play 16 hours on each map. If i win 50 turns later but i cut my IRL game time by half, i am a very happy person.

Of course, brain-dead AI offering no science from trade early, no techs to steal through spies (i had them on city states all game, except one in my capital killing a ridiculous amount of enemy spies), and no research agreements didn't help. The easy difficulty levels actually hurt science victories.

Mistakes :

- Should spend less gold allying cultural city states early, more gold into rushing science buildings. Also is it just me or the science from CTs is weaker on prince? I need to read up on how that works exactly.
- I had a single trade route until turn 160+, only then used the 5 available trade routes. Up to that point it seemed there was always something more important to build than caravans.
- I should have gotten at least one coastal city.
- Should have gotten routes for food early. i tend to think coastal food or nothing, but it's wrong, should have skipped a wonder and worked on internal food routes much earlier.
- I didn't start building internal roads (connecting cities) until turn 180, mostly my workers were too busy upgrading tiles to keep up with the fast growth, should have made / stolen more workers than 1 per city. =x
- Should have taken a 4th city early, maybe grabbing that spot with 3 ivory + mountain + river next to china before she expanded there (and even then i could have taken it from her, but was lazy). There are plenty of good spots on this map i should have exploited, and i should not be so cautious to expand "out there", this is only prince level. I was #1 militaty for half the game and i was not even trying to build units. Besides i was in information age while all the AIs were stuck in renaissance, didnt anticipate prince to be this brain-dead on science to be honest.
- Only made three cities. Had military units, and had excess happiness. That could have been an extra two cities running specialists. Seeing the amount of excess happiness, it seems 5 cities are the magical / optimal number, 4 being the minimum.
- Went turn skipping happy, didn't optimise the details as much as i usually do.

In all cases it was interesting to see how far you can go solo without any help from the AI on science. Learned a couple of things, can't wait until the next science TSG to practice more.

I played this one last night. (until almost 3:00AM, dammit) Science victory in (I think) 357 turns. It would have been faster if I'd started bulbing GS's sooner. I built 3 academies and saved the rest of my scientists until 8 turns after Plastics, then pretty much one per turn. I didn't faith-buy any scientists, and I still overshot the tech tree (researched Internet just to mess with Pedro, and started on Lasers but didn't finish that one.)

Tradition opener, Honor opener, finished Tradition, Patronage opener, full Rationalism, full Commerce, Freedom(6), almost finished Patronage.

I settled in place and headed for the ancient ruin, and met the Celts on about turn 1 or 2 (I got to the ruin first, barely.) I saw that Edinburgh would be easy to capture and decided it would be my 2nd city. I quickly built a couple of archers, my starting warrior got upgraded to a spear, and I brought my scout back, and that was enough to take the city. Her warrior was out exploring and she had no archers. I think I lost the scout, and one archer had to use a insta-heal promotion. Those were my only 2 cities for about the next 100 turns or so. Edinburgh got beat out of Petra by 2 turns (by Morocco, of course.) It would have been an awesome Petra city. I sent a horse out exploring to the east and found the other continent and saw that it was good. Quickly built 2 settlers and embarked them and sent them on their way, unprotected because I had no coastal cities.

Hammer Rabbi said:

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- Did America's unique traits factor into your Science game plan? If so, how?

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My religion gave extra growth, extra hammers, and extra gold. And it slowed down the influence decay of some hostile CS's I was allied with. I didn't aggressively spread it; I used my 3rd prophet for a holy site, and I waited until I was almost in the industrial era before I planted him to make sure I didn't get a 4th GP. I also faith-bought an engineer and a merchant on the late game, but I should have bought some scientists too. I had a spy on defense in Washington the whole game to catch AI spies (more for the diplo points than to actually stop the tech stealing) and I used spies to influence CS's.

The lack of strategic resources was real funny. I was so far in the lead in tech, I couldn't get oil or coal or aluminum from CS's even if they had it. There was a nice little island with aluminum and oil, but I didn't want to settle a 5th city that late and have it increase my tech costs. Edinburgh had 3 coal, so I bought 3 factories to get the 1st ideology (Freedom.) Later, I built Brandenburg and use its great general to build a citadel on the edge of New York to just reach a 7-oil tile. When it was time for aluminum, I almost declared war on Dido because her closest city to me had oil and aluminum. We had a declaration of friendship, and I tried to provoke her into backstabbing me (proposed embargoing her in the WC) but she didn't bite. I could have easily captured all of her cities, probably in 2 turns, and Carthage would have given me a harbor connection to the other continent. But I noticed that the aluminum on the eastern continent was in the 5 ring of Boston, so I bought a museum and broadcast tower there and loaded them up with great works, and the city's border reached it in time. Worst case, I could have built a recycling center. I never did get any uranium.

The difficulty meant that I could shoot for Stonehenge and Great Library, and I got both of them (and Oracle and Hanging Gardens, and...) It also meant that I never signed a single research agreement; even with Porcelain Tower they would only give one or two turns worth of science because the AI's were so backward. It also meant that I pretty much built the Worlds Fair and International Games by myself.

America is fun to play. I kind of wanted to use my B17's near the end but I played it peacefully the whole game, except for the Celts of course. Everyone wanted me to attack Rome, but Rome was far enough away I wasn't interested, plus he kept Pedro under control. Does Manifest Destiny just decrease the gold cost of buying tiles, or does it also reduce the culture cost? Maybe the UA helped get that aluminum.