gmajor 5 walkthrough (epic, emperor, culture, arabia)

a checkup on mecca, currently with 9 citizens and lots of growth:



after building a settler i started on monastery, which will be 8 culture immediately and 10 soon when the fourth incense is picked up; more than stonehenge.

my settler escorted by two workers arrives at the location for my next city



given that i'm less than four turns (temple and monastery are both about to complete) from another policy, i just fortify the units to wait out the policy acquisition.

on turn 149 medina completes the temple (and i assign an artist to it), and mecca completes the monastery. i check out the engineer situation in mecca:



i signed my second wave of RAs starting on turn 117 so they're going to start resolving on turn 163. i really want the engineer complete by turn 161 and at the current rate it'll be complete on turn 164. there's not enough time to complete hagia sophia or of course porcelain tower directly so i am forced to rush buy a garden to reach that goal, which increases the gp points from 4 to 5 which will give the exact 161 finish date i need.

mecca starts on a watermill, mainly for the raw +1 production. an aqueduct would probably have been a better choice, it's basically equal to +40% of your excess food (and i'm at around 15, so that's +6). i end up not getting to it for a while, but i want the raw +1 production. after the watermill completes i will be building a temple.

i get my policy soon thereafter and choose reformation for an immediate +33% boost to culture in both my cities:



unfortunately the folks at firaxis have made the same mistake regarding this policy they previously made and fixed with the sistine chapel: the +33% ends with the values being rounded down, so my 24 base culture in mecca gives me +7, and my 12 base culture in medina gives me +3.

since i've now got this policy i also plant damascus, which starts building a monument while the two workers start improving the cows and marble.

i receive yet another lucky request from sidon



i wonder where i can find a natural wonder?

i start turn 158 to this



poor askia, i hardly knew you. thankfully i hadn't signed a second RA with him. i did sign RAs on 136 with catherine, 137 with wu, and 144 with darius. i wish i could say i avoided askia out of foresight, but it was just dumb luck and him being broke. i was really not paying any attention to the wars other civs had been engaged in. at least washington went north instead of east.

hanoi requested iron, and rio was getting close to lack of any friendship



i gift them 500 gold to get ally status, and gain their iron which boosts my status with hanoi the following turn.

meanwhile i've completed teching chivalry



this opens up the top three renaissance techs. i can't wait to build the Knight. i start teching machinery as i like the ironworks.

my archer previously gifted by belgrade randomly stumbles upon a natural wonder



i was in no danger of losing ally status with sidon, so i could have waited longer to hope for a doubled up wonder request, but any quest clearing resets the queue for getting a new quest from the city state. this is one of the main advantages players can exploit on the longer speeds, gold gifts are less efficient than normal but quests are given starting around the same number of turns and at the same frequency as standard or quick speed.

mecca started on the hagia sophia after completing the temple. right on schedule, turn 161, my engineer pops and i switch to porcelain tower and rush it



thank you for your sacrifice charles augustin de coulomb, somehow your death has resulted in the porcelain tower, which will bump all future RAs to 75% of median values. i move the scientist into the capital to wait for a dark day when i need a bulb.

Incredible posts. I've been playing along with your files, trying to replicate your success!

What was your tech order after the RAs gave you Trapping and Civil Service? Was it Education, Chivalry, Machinery?

Also:

1. After the RAs you signed on turns 117, 119, and 123, did you sign any more between those and turn 161, and if so, with whom?

2. What does Medina start building after completing the temple?

with the porcelain tower having been completed on turn 162, i'm ready for some RAs to complete. this is how the tech tree looks



my median is between 16 and 25 turns worth, so i get about 16 turns worth of research (75% of 21ish). this finishes machinery plus some. i didn't actually preselect acoustics, so the extra 2ish turns floated into astronomy. oops.

with machinery done my median is now the low renaissance techs, so i'll be getting closer to 20ish turns. i start on acoustics and after my RA with washington fires on 165, i'm mostly done with acoustics



i switch to physics after this, as i'm still building the temple so i can't get legalism for opera houses anyway, and if i finish acoustics first my RA median drops back down to 21ish

let's check in on damascus. i rush bought a workshop there sometime before it completed the monument and started it on a temple. medina started on a workshop after finishing its monastery.



the workshop rush buy is not only speeding up the acquisition of the temple for legalism, but will allow me to build ironworks in the capital. i'm a couple turns from next policy, which will be mandate of heaven for an extra 3ish culture per turn. woo?

i check on the political climate



most everyone loves me =) =) =) except darius, which is expected since he has been expanding in my direction.

i set up yet another RA with washington, lending him some money to do so



since i haven't quite finished acoustics i don't have to pony up extra gold for being in renaissance. my turn 169 RA with suleiman finishes both physics and acoustics, so unfortunately i will have to start paying extra - with better play i would have switched to steel and avoided that, to get in another cheap RA. on epic speed it doesn't matter too much.

i finish up the hagia sophia in mecca and choose a great engineer



i have options; i could rush sistine chapel with it and significantly boost my culture immediately. i have a lot of things i want to build so instead i build a manufactory on one of the riverside floodplains, for the 4 production boost (which is about a 15% increase), and start building a stoneworks for the two production boost it will give. there's a theme here.

mecca is sitting pretty. i've gone into a pretty high production focus, even working an unimproved 2 hammer tile. medina finished its workshop and started on a watermill, so i've started on the ironworks in mecca after finishing the stoneworks.




the hanging gardens is still giving me nice growth even though half the tiles i'm working are production, and i'm a couple turns from another policy

i notice washington sitting near my borders.



i guess he's on his way to pick on darius.

on turn 181 i get my 10th and 11th policies (with my 9th bought policy)



damascus finished the temple and started on stables for the 3 production boost. for policies i choose free religion because it's free, and legalism because it provides a bigger culture boost than the 10% reduction in policy cost will grant. i fill the opera house in medina with an artist.

the 8 raw culture boost from free religion and extra from opera houses and artists have boosted me to above 100 culture per turn



that's close to 1 culture per picture in this thread =)

Yes!! I've been waiting for these posts all week! Happy Friday!

bgoodma06 said:

Yes!! I've been waiting for these posts all week! Happy Friday!

Click to expand...

+1 was refreshing this page waiting for update for years imho!
how about a civ blog, vexing?

avl8 said:

how about a civ blog, vexing?

Click to expand...

haha... no thanks. i am however busy knowledge dumping for the civ 5 war academy; i wrote the combat article detailing the formulas used, and most of the social policy articles will have been written or vetted by me

turn 185 rolls around and the general status update tells me my army is #1



to be honest i dismiss these without even looking at them, and only noticed this in the replaying.

i've finished the ironworks for a nice 8 production boost, and finally start on hermitage



there are still a lot of things i want to complete but it's at least getting faster and faster to do so

washington never moved on, and has fortified troops near my borders...



i upgrade a couple of my chariot archers to try to dissuade him from canceling our RA
sidon gifted that swordsman to me the turn before i finished gunpowder =/ the knight i got from hanoi a while ago, and hanoi gifted a musketman after gunpowder that i'm moving over.

after completing gunpowder an RA finished most of astronomy, and i hard teched the rest to get to this research spot:



having gunpowder finished to open up chemistry and metallurgy, with astronomy finished to open up navigation and two or less other techs open is an optimal research path for RAs. in a culture game you'll want to have acoustics done, in space or diplomatic game generally do printing press, though you can go a lot lower like having this basic position without having finished currency. in those games 3 RAs can finish nav/chemistry/metallurgy (all which have a tech afterward) and make your median late renaissance, which lets you fill in the middle of the tree with just a few more RAs. in a culture game, you don't have the benefit of rationalism, you don't need to finish metallurgy ever, and you probably want archeology earlier, so things play differently.

washington declares on turn 193. i guess he doesn't care for ptolemy's geocentric views of my military might =/ really washington? are you going to take my 18 str city with four 7 str spearmen?



i've also finished the hermitage, boosting my culture up to a sweet 141 per turn. mecca starts on an aqueduct (finally). i shift around production and stuff there. medina has meanwhile started on a university.

since he declared on me and broke all my trade agreements with him, i take the opportunity to sell regained resources to other civs.

i bombard the scout with the lower camel archer, kill the archer with the swordsmen, kill one of the spearman with the other camel archer, upgrade the chariot archer (just west of mecca) to another camel archer, and start moving in general toward washington.

washington is already in retreat mode.



i kill the general with the pike, and keep moving forward. i upgraded a horseman i had been gifted for a fourth camel archer and have moved it up.
i got another policy and finish off the piety branch, to gain theocracy's sweet +4 gold per turn... or maybe it was for the finisher's 10% reduction in policy costs.
damascus starts on a water mill for the +food.

when mecca finishes the aqueduct it's nearing completion of a great artist.



i fill the opera house to boost it to +12 points and get the artist next turn. i also start up on a university in mecca to boost my beakers.

i am making my way to new york and get in range to start pegging it with camel archers.



this spawns a great general which i start moving toward the action. i don't yet have a road to damascus though i'm maybe 5 turns from completing that.

after getting 4 camel archers in position to peg new york, i finish it off with my knight



new york comes with no buildings. boo. i do gain 2 cotton at least.

i take a look at washington and decide i won't be able to take an 18 str city.



not really =) it'll be falling soon enough. i start positioning troops and start the captured worker on a road to damascus.

turn 200 checkup



finishing university has boosted my science a bit, my first landmark has boosted my culture a bit. i sign an RA with wu this turn. i'm getting worried about missing out on chichen itza, i find it very helpful for ending the game in a continuous golden age, so i start that up in mecca.

hanoi gave me a quest on a camp i had left sitting near my borders, so i sent one camel archer back that way. the other three i've got lined up so they can all use the road network to hit washington on the same turn.



even though they're washington's roads, since he doesn't control the hill plot i get full use out of them. i back the spearman out to safety, move the swordsman up to the forest, and the archer onto the hill. the musket and pike are fortified and preventing anything from attacking the ranged units.

on turn 202 i get some bad news =(



oh well. i don't have a view of the city that completed the wonder, so it just says "has been completed in a far away land".
i finally start mecca on the sistine chapel.

i open up the diplomacy -> global politics screen to find out who built it



darius!
what a fool, taking four policies in tradition and not finishing the branch =p

the great general reaching washington has significantly sped up the damage output. since the archers have a -25% penalty vs cities the general is a 27% boost.



i bring it down to 8ish health then attack with my musket and capture it with my pike. i could have been attacking earlier with musket, but there wasn't any big rush - a delay between capturing multiple cities prevents some "rapid expansion" hatred that can happen, and earning more exp for my camel archers is always a good thing (both for their power growth and for more great generals). i don't immediately make peace with washington but set up so i can kill that last spear on the next turn.

i've also gotten to the kill requested encampment.



i start dropping it safely with my camel, while the horseman watches safely behind a marsh tile.

the next turn, after killing washington's last spear to decrease his unit maintenance costs and increase his gpt i make peace. he happily offers me everything he's got except the 3 former songhai cities that comprise his empire.



my troops start heading back east. the silk causes a wltkd in mecca and the gold and gpt are significant boosts to my economy. i ally with the maritime i'm friendly with soon after.

i get an encampment kill request from vienna in the north west part of the map.



i send one of my camels that way.

huh. my troops end up near persia's borders.



i make sure to not concentrate too many too close, as i'd hate for darius to look too closely at my camels' toes and question me about my intentions. lying is a negative diplo hit with everyone and bad positioning can lead to death.

after converting another gifted horseman to camel archer and getting my gg within range, i give darius the bad news on turn 210.



he looks upset.

ecbatana falls quickly



i start setting up to take persepolis



my positioning is poor, thankfully i did keep the river between me and the pike or i could have easily lost my camel



i take a pot shot at it and move back to the desert stone tile within ecbatana's borders to heal up

i finish sistine chapel in mecca and a garden in medina, as well as gaining a social policy on turn 215. this goes in the freedom branch.



all together the 25% and +2 per wonder gives me a nice boost to 234 culture per turn. 10 turns from next policy on epic speed is a decent pace. mecca starts on the kremlin (don't ask me why), and medina starts on a colosseum.

i position myself safely around persepolis and continue the barrage



the knight is preventing any iranian troops from attack my camel archers

the camel i sent north to get vienna's barbarian camp kills the occupant with its second bombardment and captures the camp



i supplement the 50 influence with another 50 via 500 gold to get up to ally status



unfortunately the sugar doesn't really help as i've already got some. i'm up to 256ish culture per turn with this ally gained.

i've successfully researched navigation



this is an unfortunate spot cultural games reach. the median is metallurgy. in the current state completing archaelogy first would drop the median below metallurgy, or it can be bumped to between metallurgy and archaelogy by completing banking or printing press first. i should have switched to banking or printing press at this point, as i have two RAs coming in fairly soon... but i stick with archaelogy instead. it was late =/

damascus completes the colossus... i queued up the cheapest wonder to get it the +33% bonus. the wonder ends up granting about +8 culture.



due to it's late founding damascus is still pretty far behind, i queue up an aqueducts as it's going to need population to help rushing sydney eventually.

persepolis falls fairly easily, coming with chichen itza, the pyramids, a water mill and library. unfortunately even at emperor the AI has ridiculous happiness bonuses and thus has no need to build colosseums (which have a 100% capture rate). capturing persepolis has put me near unhappiness, so i switch mecca to building notre dame.



i move down to pasargadae, but unfortunately it's the new capital so it gained the +2.5 defense from palace - it's more efficient to take the capital last rather than deal with shifting palace, but positioning here made that too difficult. darius has three cities at this point. any guesses as to how many he'll have in a few more turns?

mopping up now, eh?

unfortunately the map luck for this run wasn't superb in the city state department; part of the reason i've received so few favorable cultural CS quests is there are only a few cultural city states.



my three cultural allies are providing 36 culture per turn.

i've whittled down pasargadae enough to take it



unfortunately i'll be briefly dipping into unhappiness; notre dame is still 10ish turns from completing. i suck it up and take the city anyway.

susa has two gold mines, so i take that shortly after as i'm already unhappy and the gold offsets enough of the hit that i won't be very unhappy anyway. after that there's nothing to do but make peace.



darius happily gives me everything he has for the chance to live another day.

my empire has grown. 4 puppets, busily working on culture and happiness increasing buildings. i've set up most of my workers to create a road network to these puppets to increase my gpt, and that should be done in not too many turns.



i'm still 5 turns from notre dame completion so i can get back to growing, which is important for damascus, and also 6ish turns from democracy which will also boost my happiness.

turn 230 rolls around, completing an RA with caesar that gives me both banking and archaeology. an RA with catherine will be completing in about 5 turns, and another with wu in 16 turns which should get me close to education. let's see how my relationships stand after all that conquering



darius and washington don't care for me for some reason, but everyone else is friendly. my score is > 2x anyone else with my newly acquired cities.

i sign another RA with caesar via a combination of deals




i give him 360 gold for his spices, which is enough so he can afford an RA, then take the RA and the rest of his money by adding in two of my many extra resources (bazaar doubling makes them appear out of thin air). medina starts on a museum this turn, and damascus will be finishing a stoneworks to start on a museum the next turn.

the next turn i complete notre dame, and both cath and wu declare on me =(



wu had been sitting around bucharest as if she intended to take it, but moves her troops toward damascus after declaring. not sure wtf they're hoping to accomplish with this. they do manage to fizzle my two RAs. mecca starts on the louvre.

oh well. nothing to do but start the trek to beijing. wu must pay for her impudence!



the great wall will be a bit annoying, but a few camel archers should be able to handle it.

wu very ineffectually tries attacking damascus with pikes and archers.



her troops die pretty quickly to the one camel archer and city bombardment.

catherine, after a very brief attempt at taking cape town (where she got slaughtered), offers me all her gold and gpt for peace



considering she's across the inland sea anyway i oblige. i'd have rather had the RA complete =/

Hm cant see pictures in your last post. Using chrome on PC and safari on my ipad. Other pictures seem to be ok :<

they got lost in transit.

on 236 i popped my third artist. i plant it on the best tile i can: non riverside wheat.



it's optimal to plant a GP on a tile you'd be working anyway that provides the most benefit while losing the least from missing its natural improvement. this is a non riverside wheat or sheep; their natural improvements are only +1 food until fertilizer, so you're not missing out on much.

the improvement boosts my culture by about 12.



i'm regretting not getting the aqueduct up earlier, my population isn't as high as i'd like.

on turn 222 i signed an RA with suleiman, and 230 caesar.
a couple turns after making peace cath is friendly again, so on 238 i decide to test my luck and set up an RA with her again.



i get to boost my happiness by 4 through the series of deals. getting a bonus out of funding the other end of an RA is always nice.

my siege of beijing is slowly progressing. i have gotten one of my camels up to logistics to speed things up.



the positioning of that camel isn't the brightest. oh well.

even though wu's pike does attack the camel, i manage to capture beijing on 239



4 civs with capital cities left. i'm over halfway done with my domination victory =0

i could milk more out of wu by killing all her units but i'm ready for peace (and gold), so ask her what she wants immediately after capturing the capital.



i use the gold to fund both sides of an RA with darius, getting all his 6 gpt in the process.

i also make a "deal" with suleiman to boost my happiness



don't worry, i can spare the extra resources.



<3 bazaar.

for some reason wu has nearly no money, so i front her some



and sign another ra with her.

finally not much is happening so i cycle through turns. on 247 medina finishes its museum



the museum with artists is a +11 raw culture boost, 17 after multipliers, and doubles great artist production.
of my 202 gpt, about 120 is coming from other civs via peace deals and luxury sales.
i give washington 375 gold to fully fund an RA with him on 248, tacking on a luxury on my end for the per era penalty.

i complete the louvre



what says love more than two artists?

i plop them around mecca and start working the tiles



mecca is back to the kremlin, which i halfheartedly started before. i'm one turn from another policy

president harun chooses universal suffrage



i care little about letting people vote, but finishing off the branch grants a 100% boost to my landmarks and manufactory, as well as boosting golden age length by another 50%.

i've been sitting on my two great generals waiting for this, and pop them both to initiate a 37 turn golden age



i am about 300 xp from another great general if i need one, i still have the taj mahal and brandenburg gate to get other golden ages.

what a difference a turn makes. i bought a museum in mecca with my excess cash.



that base +11 and the 30 from doubled landmarks after multipliers has boosted my total culture per turn by 85, over 20%, about a 15% boost from freedom alone. this why freedom is the second branch i finished.

meanwhile i've been puppeteering. notice the beginning of forts.



my worker built those for one turn to get rid of the farms that were previously there to keep washington from growing excessively and focus on production and gold tiles. puppets like food after gold whenever there is > 0 happiness. when you want to do this a good idea is to start the build, then immediately reclick on the worker and click cancel to ensure the canceling isn't forgotten next turn.

damascus has finished its museum



with the specialists assigned (as i'd like to get an artist there soon) its food supply is really low. these late founded cities take long to get off the ground, i probably should have founded it significantly sooner than i did. anyway it starts up on a granary and after that will build a garden to further increase artist generation.

rio has requested a road, and i've got workers set to build it, and so i've let it decay to just friendship.



unfortunately the workers are going through bucharest, and i wasn't aware at this time that road requests do not work through any city state territory. fail =(

my RA with suleiman from turn 222 is about to complete



i've queued up military science second to open up the top two industrial techs before the next RA fires, which will increase my median to something between fertilizer and biology.

scientific theory uncovers one patch of 3 coal in my territory, near persepolis.



this is one of the big bonuses of having a puppet empire; at anything below deity you can't rely on city states to provide coal in a reasonable time frame, so you need your own supply to get factories up. i have over 2x the land area covered due to my puppets, which pretty much doubled my chances of getting some.

after freedom completed, i shifted to and completed liberty. at this point it's probably wiser to choose a great artist, but i choose a great engineer instead.



the manufactory's doubled production is mighty, and will probably shave a couple turns off utopia... getting to utopia sooner via more culture would probably have shaved more turns, though it's hard to estimate exactly how much extra culture you get from completing wonders and other things sooner via a manufactory.

the art institute of mecca produces another artist



each landmark near mecca is about +25 culture. you can also see i'm working on the national epic after angkor wat completed.



i've gotten steam power via RAs + researching, so i rush buy a factory in mecca and fill the specialists.

with hagia sophia, freedom opener, and garden each raw GE point is producing 1.75 real points. i've got 13 raw points, so the national epic will add 3.25, changing my total from 22.75 per turn to 26.

i'll also mention that i really should have built national epic before creating the massive puppet empire. it costs something like +30 production per city on standard speed.


my tech tree is now here.



i went through pretty inefficiently, at this point the median is between fertilizer and biology. if my last RA had finished fertilizer instead of getting me closer to steam power, i could have both probably signed another RA for a lower price (the cost gets boosted at industrial) and boosted my median for each of the next 3-4 RAs.

instead i end up getting less than optimal beakers in my next few RAs, and the effect magnifies itself via finishing failures. more spacing between RAs can help with this problem in culture games where you're only getting 75% of median.

my next RAs will get most of biology, then the rest of biology and most of fertilizer but not quite enough to push my median up to electricity

getting into industrial directly has some advantages though: city state influence is boosted to 26.

on turn 285 an RA and a few other deals finish...



i end up with literally 30 notifications this turn. i've gotten biology so find oil...

to make up for my deficiency in RA planning i use my scientist from the porcelain tower i've been sitting on for the past 123 turns.



good old hypatia...

the discoverer of electricity. i guess hypatia dies flying a kite in a storm.



5115 beakers; had i planted the academy and worked it in the capital, with freedom finished on 252, and scientific theory on 268 the academy would have been
11 beakers (6 * 1.83 from nc + uni) for 90 turns,
then 22 beakers for 16 turns,
then 25.6 beakers up to now,
providing a total of 1777 beakers. waiting + bulbing is pretty clearly superior.

by finishing electricity i've opened up this:



this boosts my median from between replaceable parts and fertilizer (about 14 turns worth of beakers) to between replaceable parts and radio (about 20 turns worth), nearly doubling the RA's efficacy. note that if i had finished fertilizer, my median would be straight telegraph at this point with 5 techs open instead of 6, providing an extra few turns worth.

i've revealed aluminum and oil both



i send some of the few workers i've kept around to mine/drill. damascus is not looking pretty, i really should just be focusing it on food instead of worrying about building a public school. oh well

medina popped an artist on 285 and planting it in mecca on 286 for another +25, i break the 400 culture mark



another thing that's hard to calculate is how much difference planting artists only in capital makes; after freedom finisher, hermitage provides an extra 6 culture. whether that's worth impeding the growth and productivity of the capital vs planting the artists around other cities isn't clear.

i've started on oxford as i'll be wanting another bulb sooner or later

Wow, amazing read, then what happened?

and the next turn... i get philanthropy



at this point i'm allied with the few cultural CSes around, so this really isn't much of an impact... scholasticism will be next. since there's really no great time to get patronage policies, i've since decided to take honor as the "last" branch, generally getting the opener early.

i do take the opportunity to invest 1000 gold in quebec city.



helsinki will momentarily be allying via aluminum, and stockholm is hostile so quebec city is the "best" choice.

on turn 293 i'm one turn from the resolution of an RA with washington, and i set up for radio and part of telegraph.



i'll be finishing oxford and big ben next turn as well...

time to buy!



i only have enough gold for one immediately, so i buy it in mecca. the 15% off via big ben saves 275 gold. due to the ^0.75 in the rush buying formula, the gold to hammer cost ratio is lower for more expensive buildings. the broadcast tower is only slightly over 2 gold per hammer, whereas the walls or barracks are about 4 gold per hammer, so save up and buy expensive buildings while building cheap ones.

the +3 and +33% of base boosts my culture output by 72



those great people counts sure look like i'm heading for a triple pop... also notice mecca wants pearls. everyone wants pearls =/

there's one source of pearls on the map



and for whatever reason capetown's culture borders haven't picked it up yet

with oxford i take refrigeration



this boosts my median to between telegraph and mass media, so when my next couple RAs fire i'll get a larger boost out of them. since mecca is on a river i do want plastics, and since mecca is in a desert i also want ecology eventually, so i'm trying to make each RA count.

i sure have been neglecting... what's its name? my 3rd city? the requisite coastal city for building sydney opera house?



since i'm planning on dumping an engineer into sydney i'd prefer significantly more population than 10, as each pop results in 45 hammers. oh well, my micro foo has been poor on that account.

i am getting a policy less than every 10 turns



i pick up scholasticism and it boosts my beaker output by about 18%. not horrible.

on 296 i had enough gold to buy a broadcast tower for medina



with medina's lower base culture output the tower provides a measly +20 culture. a cultural city state in industrial era is more than that.

vexing, this is just amazing! I can't wait for the next updates, and other future walkthroughs!