Budweiser Challenge for basic civ5. (only GK and BNW needed)

If some one want to play easy immortal game here is a start.

It is a bit different from Budwiser start. Your capital will be amazing up to certain level. Place will not have as mach food, but will have insane production(unit/turn).
You will not be isolated, but will have extremely defencive position if you want to play that way. There are place for 4 good cities + 1 relatively good in your niche, there place for few more around, but if you go there you will upset people. Roman will dow you on one time or other.

You can play any victory condition, production will let you do domination if you want to.

Tradition opening probably still best, personally I did open 1 in trad 1 in honor and back to tradition. You will play as Russia.




hmm.. you seems to can see image only if you open it in other tab/window...

hopefully i upload correct save, enjoy.

BTS? Do you mean BNW?

BlackWizard said:

BTS? Do you mean BNW?

Click to expand...

yes, I played too mach Civ4

Played it till turn 150. cap at 16 pop, others at 13, 10, 8. About 165 beakers, still stuck up in Printing Press. Didn't get Petra because I don't know how the hell you can tech to it without NC and still get it built in time. Rome builds it in a city with one tile of desert. He allied all 3 CS neighbors in my back door and declared on me too. I was held back for a bit because I haven't reached Machinery, but when I do it's all fine.

The game pretty much went like most my other games. In other words, I probably won't finish under 300 so I lost interest in the game.

Thanks for the save...

Enjoyed the game, knowing that I would have lots of horses and iron to sell.... Moved to the hill for the salt and the wheat..

popped a ruin that exposed Eldorado, 500 gold, buy a settler, and go settle on the sheep by the mountain to the north... great Petra city... beeline currency....

build granary and caravan in Moscow, and send it to st petersburg... want Petra...

take desert folklore.

build hanging gardens in moscow, no more food problems for moscow.

Have only met 4 other civs... must be another continent...

ally Ur, for the gold and the WLKD in Moscow.

Get petra, and send the caravan to rome.. trying to keep him happy... I have NOT built any military, besides my scouts...

Build two settlers, to settle to the south on the river, and east on the coast... will be able to send two cargo ships of food to St petersburg, the petra city.. which is light on food...

See rome milling around my border, so I go to bribe him to attack egypt... very easy bribe, cost me 8 gold per turn, and a salt and 8 horses... and they stayed at war the entire game... and they both left me alone.

Start working on my infrastructure, was unable to steel any workers, or get any from barbs... so i have to build them all...

Grab a religion, and choose cathedrals, as I am trying for a Culture Victory...
Buy a missionary as soon as faith allows, to get st petersbugh religious... spreads naturally to the other two cities.. then buy cathedrals in all 4 cities, before popping another profit... all the other religious buildings were already taken by others..

Research sailing and optics, get those cargo ships moving...

Size of Moscow and St petersubrgh stay neck and neck in size, about 10% of the turn count...

Keep rome and france at bay with trades, and caravans... even become friends with france... but I still won't open my borders to him...

Get education, buy 2 universities, build the other 2, and head for caravels... need to find the other civs...

Still have not built any military, but have gotten 3 units form city states...

get sailing build the caravels, and off to find the rest... concentrating on the techs to get the tourism needed to win. Managed to build the Louvre, missed globe theater by 2 turns, did get leaning tower and porcelain tower, bulbed the great scientist to keep the snowball rolling..

Head for archaeology, got to get those digs...

Social policies were tradition, until full, then aesthetics, down taking the first 3 policies, open exploration, open rationalism then into order... timed the golden age from aesthetics, with the WC world games, for just over 600 points of culture per turn.

Build just enough military to keep rome and france at bay.

most of my digs are outside of the borders, so no problems there... did pop three digs at one time, with in rome's border, which pissed him off...


when I got ideology, I was exotic with everyone, and Morocco is the culture leader... Had 32 tpt.

Push to get hotels up after world games, then hospitals.

Rome citidal bombs my petra border twice....

time for war.... can build artillery and bombers, and battleships.

almost influential with rome...declare war..

and on turn 264 I win a CV... my first sub 300 CV win.

Morocco had 16,348 culture when I won, with 2 GM bombs.

oh my... Skilldorado (and I didn't discover it until quite late...)

In any case I got a CV 267 or so (biggest culture runaway was Rome at 29k but I miscalculated quite a bit actually in the end I never got to bomb them)


I'm going to pass on Petra for the capitol (it's enticing, but there is nothing that would kickstart my early game, no floodplains wheat, no sheep no nothing so Petra is bad here; I'm going to move down to more fertile lands after a map ruins revealed gorgeous wheat and salt)


A gorgeous location, workable resources off the bat with granary goods and salt. This is going to be a good game.


With my first expansion placed so snugly on the coast and mountains, any attempt by Rome to capture it will be futile. (in the end we were friends all game though)


Shockingly no one on my continent got a religion so I will bypass Messiah and instead attempt to spread my religion for some good gold. Worked out perfectly. Oracle, Parthenon, Chichen Itza, Borobudur with divine inspiration for some crazy faith. I also built Petra in my first satellite after setting up another coastal city and feeding it with a cargo ship.


27 pop at ~150. Nice. Even without hanging gardens/ToA. I have to say this is going very well, even better than that Babylon game. Snatched both PP wonders and now going to get hermitage as well as the architecture wonders... in the end I got all of them, even Taj (built it with my Petra satellite)


Now for those of you in the other thread who questioned my numbers please take a good look here. 37 at ~200 with around +60 excess food despite not having a single grassland farm (all plains)/not being coastal. And this is only with two satellites and hence only 2 caravans shuttling food in.


Oops... sorry my musicians... it seems we won just by passive pressure before you got to perform your concerts... too bad we could've won maybe 20-30 turns earlier if I had remembered to faith-buy you guys.


Endgame capitol one turn away from 48 pop, and behold, I still have some mines I could work had I kept growing. So people who want to gimp out on growth and are satisfied with a size 25 cap are simply missing out.

I seriously cannot fathom how people can get such high numbers. I already did send two caravans. Do you just not work the specialist slot? What's the point of reaching education fast then?

Erneiz Hyde said:

I seriously cannot fathom how people can get such high numbers. I already did send two caravans. Do you just not work the specialist slot? What's the point of reaching education fast then?

Click to expand...

To answer your question: on non-SV non deity, there is no reason to reach education super fast

I reached it here at ~110, pretty average. I do not work the specialist slots in my satellites until they are at least 15+ or so (and still manage to grow despite working the slots) this usually means pulling some people off the mines though.

You see my cap was size 11 at 70 and that snowballed to more and more growth since I had so many river tiles, so specialists are not any problem when your capitol is that big (the bigger you are the less the impact of working specialists on growth)

Go start a game, any game on any difficulty. Put your cap on food focus, never miss we love the king days, and farm everything riverside, even tundra, as well as all grassland tiles.

Report to me when you're done and see how big you got.

The problem is usually not the specialists if one grows his capitol properly, the problem is working too many mines. This usually stems from not growing enough (if you are big enough the extra hammer from plains tiles usually prove sufficient)/ having a need of military/ not planning infrastructure well, i.e. rushing to build PT without having ironworks up and end up wasting 20 turns etc.

nice job kb,

Not counting the roman city I took near the end, my final population for my 4 cities was 101... looks like your 3 cities were in the same range.

And I had no runaways with culture, since they were busy fighting the whole game..

Finished the same time as you, but with much less tourism... interesting how the game started on the same map plays out differently.

Erneiz Hyde said:

I seriously cannot fathom how people can get such high numbers. I already did send two caravans. Do you just not work the specialist slot? What's the point of reaching education fast then?

Click to expand...

If your cities are small, reaching education fast hinders your growth. I used to have the same problem, then learned to focus on growth of the cities, it is amazing the change that makes...

NC for me came after petra, and the Parthenon.. I delayed philosophy, until after both of those techs were researched, then I went astronomy, before education.. When I bought my universities it was easy to slot the specialists, without slowing growth.

I am still learning, and seeing kb's decisions help to tweek my games.

TLHeart said:

nice job kb,

Not counting the roman city I took near the end, my final population for my 4 cities was 101... looks like your 3 cities were in the same range.

And I had no runaways with culture, since they were busy fighting the whole game..

Finished the same time as you, but with much less tourism... interesting how the game started on the same map plays out differently.

Click to expand...

Thanks, and now you see that I have ~33% more science even though you had 33% more cities.
Which means I was more effective with distributing my pop.
Not to mention happiness and SP costs.
That's how much difference the size of the capitol makes. I still can't for the life of me figure out why people would prefer a smaller capitol just to get more satellites/make their satellites a bit bigger when the terrain clearly says you can afford to delay expanding.

I did not expand until NC was done btw, and even then rush-bought settlers rather than produce them (blocked any Roman settlers with a pair of cheap scouts who took to the oceans later after navigation). Yet I took the tech lead from early medieval onwards and beat Rameses to Parthenon and Chichen Itza. It's not rocket science; each pop in the capitol gives 50% more science than other cities.

As for the DoW, my superior growth led me to discovering archaeology WAAAAAAY before others did and I built all of the AIs one landmark each (and still filled Uffizi, Sistine, Louvre, and all 3 museums, palace, Parthenon such that I had no room left even if I had spawned one more GA); then with my WC control, I let Rome be the host (and as 2nd place I still get to propose every cycle); I only proposed cultural heritage after I saw that Napoleon no longer objected to it once he got some wonders of his own, etc. I had to juggle a bit, but it's easy to stay peaceful if your empire is doing well to begin with.
Worst case I would have bribed my autocratic neighbors against Egypt (weirdly enough though Egypt was never attacked instead Napoleon went after CS instead) but that never was necessary.

Now granted, this is just my style of play. The masters of the game seem to enjoy expanding early, forward settling even, and then still growing everything tall. (but I find that playstyle very dangerous because of complications down the road such as DoWs, ideology pressure, unhappiness, delayed national wonders and whatnot); there is more than one way to play. My opening would be terrible for people who like to warmonger for example.

kb27787 said:

Thanks, and now you see that I have ~33% more science even though you had 33% more cities.
Which means I was more effective with distributing my pop.
Not to mention happiness and SP costs.
That's how much difference the size of the capitol makes. I still can't for the life of me figure out why people would prefer a smaller capitol just to get more satellites/make their satellites a bit bigger when the terrain clearly says you can afford to delay expanding.

I did not expand until NC was done btw, and even then rush-bought settlers rather than produce them (blocked any Roman settlers with a pair of cheap scouts who took to the oceans later after navigation). Yet I took the tech lead from early medieval onwards and beat Rameses to Parthenon and Chichen Itza. It's not rocket science; each pop in the capitol gives 50% more science than other cities.

As for the DoW, my superior growth led me to discovering archaeology WAAAAAAY before others did and I built all of the AIs one landmark each (and still filled Uffizi, Sistine, Louvre, and all 3 museums, palace, Parthenon such that I had no room left even if I had spawned one more GA); then with my WC control, I let Rome be the host (and as 2nd place I still get to propose every cycle); I only proposed cultural heritage after I saw that Napoleon no longer objected to it once he got some wonders of his own, etc. I had to juggle a bit, but it's easy to stay peaceful if your empire is doing well to begin with.
Worst case I would have bribed my autocratic neighbors against Egypt (weirdly enough though Egypt was never attacked instead Napoleon went after CS instead) but that never was necessary.

Now granted, this is just my style of play. The masters of the game seem to enjoy expanding early, forward settling even, and then still growing everything tall. (but I find that playstyle very dangerous because of complications down the road such as DoWs, ideology pressure, unhappiness, delayed national wonders and whatnot); there is more than one way to play. My opening would be terrible for people who like to warmonger for example.

Click to expand...

I enjoy the peaceful games, and continue to learn... comparing your game to my game, I see the advantages you gained. I see I might of moved a little farther south for Moscow since I settled on the hill for the two salt and two wheat for growth..

Bribing rome to go to war, slowed down his culture, and allowed morocco to be the culture leader...

Thanks for the tip on build a landmark for the AI. Did not know if it would offset the stealing.

Interesting to note in my game WORLD enter industrial age in 1200 AD.

I was thinking it is a bit too fast for immortal.

Mutineer said:

Interesting to note in my game WORLD enter industrial age in 1200 AD.

I was thinking it is a bit too fast for immortal.

Click to expand...

That's not really unreasonable... the world enters industrial if you yourself enter modern, regardless of how the other civs do; 1200 AD modern is pretty normal.

I played through again, trying the bigger capital approach...

Did Not get as big as kb,,, but learned some more...

Went philosophy first, built NC, and then expanded...

Missed globe theater by 1 turn, due to my research order, but learned staying on the top of the tech tree to archeology hurt. Got every other world wonder.

And again Morocco was the leader in culture with 27k...

Never reached internet, before winning, with 3 GM bombs...

......I did it somehow.

Turn 284 Diplo Win. and about 10 turns away from Space and/or Culture too.


Not working specialists really did wonders, though I still couldn't get as high as TurnNumber*20%.

Anyways, I think I might find where I mostly did wrong. In the late game, since I'm winning anyway, I tend to goof around a lot. I lost focus trying to get everything at once. Building all the late game wonders instead of parts, for example.

This particular game, I could win with my first WL vote because I proposed World Ideology and bulbed Globalization with Rat finisher instead of Internet. I somehow decided to build Sydney even though I can't theme it, when I could be building parts instead (and save the first 3rd tier Freedom for Broadcast Tourism). Had I been goofing around more like I usually do, I would probably end in 310.

Erneiz Hyde said:

......I did it somehow.

Turn 284 Diplo Win. and about 10 turns away from Space and/or Culture too.

Spoiler :

Not working specialists really did wonders, though I still couldn't get as high as TurnNumber*20%.

Anyways, I think I might find where I mostly did wrong. In the late game, since I'm winning anyway, I tend to goof around a lot. I lost focus trying to get everything at once. Building all the late game wonders instead of parts, for example.

This particular game, I could win with my first WL vote because I proposed World Ideology and bulbed Globalization with Rat finisher instead of Internet. I somehow decided to build Sydney even though I can't theme it, when I could be building parts instead (and save the first 3rd tier Freedom for Broadcast Tourism). Had I been goofing around more like I usually do, I would probably end in 310.

Click to expand...

great job ,

the light bulb goes on, and now that you see how to make huge cities, it all comes down to managing the game, and loosing focus...

which I am also doing... it is just so much fun to build, build, oopsss... lost my direction, get back on it... oh well I will just win this way...

I get my large cities a little differently than KB, I set my city to production focus, and lock the food tiles, that way when a new person is born, they work the hammer tile, for the first turn of calculations... then I move them to the food tile, most of the time. I forget at times, or choose to work the hammers..

That map was rather crazy, the Petra spot north makes a very crazy capital for those attempting culture. You can pump wonders at 8 rounds each lol. And then Eldorado.

Finished this game culturally at turn 228 going only 3 cities.

Decided to replay it while filming. Managed a T215 culture victory. I think I could have been faster, T205-210 by bombing sooner before internet. But I still wanted to reach internet for it to be more instructional.

I've uploaded part 1. Please feel free to comment. It's rather raw footage, no commentaries only game sound. Maybe one day I'll do french commentaries haha.
Hope some players will catch some tips or point out mistakes

Anyway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP93lVjcH68