So whatcha all doing for BG1

The easy choice is no barbarians.
After that i think next easiest is to load up on passive builder tech AIs. My list currently is
gandhi
cyrus
mao
saladin
mansa

5 civs. My theory is i want tech traders. The object isnt to beat the computer by a bunch. The problem is they suck ive already started running away from them at 800ad.

Map choice is a bit harder.i went with "balanced" just cause i didnt know what that was. I think im going continents next attempt. What i want is a nice continent right next to another continent all by myself.

Im not sure if "balanced" caused it but i wasnt happy with my resource starts. On the plus side though i started with insane woods to chop and incredible river squares. So im playing it.

My resources suck but my pop at 820AD is 6x the computers average so we shall see. I need to start writing down bench marks so i can see when im blasting off relative to my all time highs or just relative to the AI in this game. As it is though im certainly on pace to beat my best. Though that was automatic with no barbarians to slow down early growth.

Then of course the hardest choice is what civ to take yourself. Gandhi is the obvious choice. I went with bismark because it was what i knew.

Anyone feeding all the AIs techs in order to keep them up to you for trading. I been pondering that but dont want to risk the military advantages i might give up and risk invasions.

highlands as map is a good choice for hills, and production

I think a fast spaceship is less about production and more about tech rate. Certainly their is room for production but most of the time is spent waiting to produce and that waiting to produce time is tech rate.

First attempt for me ended up 1732 with a 32kish score. Not bad i think but if that was a first attempt one supposes someone that puts real effort into it will be dealing with atleast a 100 years less?

Someone declared war on me right when i was going into spaceship production mode. That cost me about 8 turns or so i think. But the real gain will be in tech rates.

but u do need a few producting city when you have the techs, or they are taking too long to build.
towns + universal sufferage is not enough production.
more production also means more research, its easier to build library, university etc.
also more population, with granary, lighthouse etc.

my first game ended in late 1800s.
a pleased neightbour backstab me while i was building space ship.
it was on custom continent map.

I went with barbs off and friendly AI's as well. Barbs wouldn't be needed as I was going to be peaceful, at least see how that worked first. Went with Elisabeth because she really is one for the tech race.

Map was Great Plains, where there are a lot of cows and rivers and flood plains, but little wood and hills. So basically I have awesome tech, or should have, and rather low production. Atm its 1680 and I am 2 turns from getting rocketry, thus apollo program, but I don't even have an engineer saved up for it. Used my last one on taj mahal and didn't get new ones even though 90% probability on one occasion

Atm Gandhi is catching up on my tech level, and he is ahead of me in score. I have arguably been too passive and should have both expanded faster and maybe killed off one neighboor. I intend to do both, but as I have never before gone after a space victory I was not entirely sure what would be the best strategy for achieving it. I am not satisfied with my tech rate even though most of my 10 cities all have at least 4 towns cranking out beakers, and science techs / buildings have been a priority. I even got the great library and had 5-6 great scientists all making academies. Obviously I simply need more cities.

Also the great plains might not be such a good idea as it first seemed, as the resources are very concentrated in areas of the map, meaning I lose out on a lot of happy and health resources, severely limiting my growth that is also suffering from no early state religion + flood plains. I am probably going to try great plains again with the exp/fin american, for the added health, and once with romans maybe, or some other good early uu civ.

Atm its 1680 and I am 2 turns from getting rocketry, thus apollo program, but I don't even have an engineer saved up for it. Used my last one on taj mahal and didn't get new ones even though 90% probability on one occasion

Click to expand...

You can't rush the apollo program.

Think next run will be:
gandhi
cyrus
saladin
mansa

Mao was the only person to attack in the 1734 game so ill take him out. Ill definatly get around to trying a highland game.

My next civ choice will be "qin shin hung" Never heard of him before but i want to try with financial and industrious.

i tried a game with 6 spiritual trait AI, yes im crazy lol, basicly, i want AI to fight each other(spiritual AI cares religion very much, and very love to found and use their own religion, so there is alot of fights).
when they are fighting with each other i'll steal their cities. and none of the AI trusted me
asoka
saladin
isabella
montezuma
hatty
mansa musa
roosevelt

A: please join us and wipe out C
me: uh no
A: you foolish person
B: A need to die, can i count you in?
me: mmmm no.
B: u should choose your side carefully
C: B is ploting against us, we need your help
me: never!

roosvelt becomes very aggressive, building lots of troops, declared war on aztec and killed montezuma,(WTH? montezuma has aggresive trait!!)

also i plays qin shi huang, i thought industrial for building wonder and financial for getting science works great. but it didnt work that well, early conquest left me science at 40%. an organised trait might be good.
and thus washington could be good (fin/org), but american UU cames too late to be useful, i think i'll stick with qin shi huang.

also, a very good map recommending everyone for space race, and early conquest.

team battleground, lol, u dont need teams to play that map.
use left vs right setting, you will have a thin ocean seperating 2 landmasses, like a river, but cant cross without galleon.
each landmass will corrospond to how many civs present on them, if 4 civs on land A, and 4 civs on land B, then land A will be bigger than land B.

with this map setup, go for early conquest, and control the whole land yourself, while never have to worry about domination victory, because your land will not exceed 50% total land.
you can peacefully develope your paradise before galleons appear.
the AIs on other land are usually competitive when you first met them (when you are recovering from conquest)
you dont need mass troops later, only a few guarding coastal cities, and few destroyer roaming around.
attacks from other land can easily be dealt with, by sinking their landing ship.

keep in mind team battleground map is extra small.

I'm playing pangaea map as Elizabeth. I chose my 4 opponents (Mansa Musa, Gandhi, Mao Zedong and Louis XIV). I turned barbarians off and was pleased to see that the tribal villages were still there. I found being able to turn barbarians off was very unbalancing as I sent out settler after settler without any military. I had 4 cities with only 1 warrior as my entire military still. I didn't need garrison for happiness yet. I chose tropical climate because a lot of jungles = a lot of grasslands for cottages.

I got two techs from huts, the only two huts I popped. Unfortunatey I had no scout and 3 out of 4 of my opponents did so they gobbled them all up. But I got Bronze Working and I think Mysticism as my free techs.

Anyway I went rather wonder heavy in this game. I built the parthenon first. I missed the Oracle by 2 turns. I built the Pyramids in like 250AD, though. Those are two very expensive wonders is why I consider it a wonder heavy start even though I just got those two. I did a lot of chopping since I had a lot of forests in my starting area. I was south of the jungle.

I managed to found Hinduism despite researching about 6 other techs first. I really think only 4 opponents is too easy in some ways. Overall I'm not sure if my tech pace is great or not or if I expanded too fast or too slow. Only time will tell. I'm currently researching Education. For great people I've gotten 2 prophets (Hinduism and Confucian shrines) and 2 artists (one discovered literature for me and the other culture bombed a city that was in a great location but Mansa had founded a city of his own 3 tiles away that ended up being his holy city later on).

Overall the AI relations have been finicky. Despite Gandhi's peaceful ways he tends to piss people off a lot. Right now I'm in good relations with Gandhi, Mansa, and Mao, while Louis doesn't like me.

If I redid the game I would change Mao to someone else. Mao researches really quickly but he's very stingy about tech trading. He generally won't trade you any techs unless he's had it for 100 turns.

I have choosen Saladin philosophical and spiritual. all my opponent will not be spiritual so I can lock down all the religions and spread my state religion across the world unhindered and pick who I will be on good terms with and try to sucker the leading AI into wars with each other.

I am planning to generate great people to get as many golden eras as possible and to speed my climb through the tech tree

hrmm. there is a little to production. I got to apollo program in 1500AD. Problem is my best city has 16 production and needs 160 turns. I think next time i go to democracy then factories then rocketry. Going straight to rocketry is a waste of time without universal sufferage and factories.

I stumbled at the start and didnt get pyramids this time.

Going to see if i can salvage this after a test tomorrow.

AND WTH. i set everything up. Biggest difference was low sea level (i was thinking lots of land on a standard map). However twice it didnt give me the AI civs i wanted. I didnt notice this time because only one was different. Ghandi was replaced by montezuma. I think i ran into a bug since it happened twice in a row.

jeremiahrounds said:

I think a fast spaceship is less about production and more about tech rate. Certainly their is room for production but most of the time is spent waiting to produce and that waiting to produce time is tech rate.

First attempt for me ended up 1732 with a 32kish score. Not bad i think but if that was a first attempt one supposes someone that puts real effort into it will be dealing with atleast a 100 years less?

Someone declared war on me right when i was going into spaceship production mode. That cost me about 8 turns or so i think. But the real gain will be in tech rates.

Click to expand...

I got a launch in 1752 on first try w/ 34K score. Yah, probably a launch date of <1650 is what to shoot for. I had my tech at like 90% almost the whole game too, couldn't get up to 100% so wasn't very efficient.

I gifted every single one of my techs to the AIs for the longest time trying to get some sort of sharing going on but it never happened. Next time I'll probably just trade them techs for gold and not gift any as it didn't help me at all.

I played the most ridiculous pangea map with peter. I was on a very long river with around 12 flood plains along the river. I had both stone and marble in 1 expansion distance. -4 health hurt only a little with expansive, but I was just 2 turns too late in second wave of expansion. I got boxed in with only 4 cities and had conquer one civ to fully expand. Still pulled off 1804 but man I was sure it was a 1700 map with insanely good number of resources.

ok second attempt was far worse then the first. Production was the suck. In my defence though i couldnt make railroads cause i didnt have coal and i was so far ahead of the AIs (rocketry in 1500AD go china!) i would have to give them all tons of techs to catch them up to coal. No coal == no railroads.

Think im just going to start over if i dont get pyramids in the future. Its so early there is no point in playing at a disadvantage. I want universal sufferage available without wasting time on democracy until when im good and ready.

Also a major strategic mistake was purposely using ocean cities when i didnt have too. Those were great early however as i wanted shields they sucked hard. In my first game almost all my cities were entirely land based on rivers and ocean cities were an afterthought. This reacted extremely well with universal sufferage.

Also i dont think rocketry is the first goal. Robotics is the first goal.

Also i figured out what my "bug" was. It was me not turning off the AI option and getting random civs left over. I guess gandhi is somewhere on my map~


Im not sure if "low sea level" is good. Im worried it introduces more deserts. It certainly seems to give more usuable space. I spread out the same as i always do and i was 4th in land. ... which is crazy cause im normally double. Ill prolly just try highlands next.

Played a team battleground game through, ended up with a launch in 1828, which is none to great. I had, awesome tech rate, or I would like to believe. with most of my cities running 10+ towns with 100% tech rate most of the game. I am fairly certain I could have chopped at least 50 turns simply by setting different research paths though, as it was I had rocketry before factories and space elevator was finished when I only lacked 2 modules. I am so definately going for factories earlier next time, saving up a great engineer for the three gorges dam, and also going for fusion early to get that engineer for the space elevator. Also going to pump a lot more workers in my next game, although I never saw any city short of more than 1-2 developed squares in the worst scenarios. Them railroads are important though.

why going robotic first than rocketry?
i always go for plastic, it allows me to build 3 gorge dam.
mistake i made is that i automated workers, i guess i will have to spend more times

I'm stunned at all the people getting launches pre-1800 on Epic level production.


I managed 1844; I thought that was great, but I guess I'll have to go back and retry.

I think my next game im going for two specialized production cities. All farms and production. With the rest having a growth/cottage focus.

Generally speaking i never think about specialization. As I never need to produce any one thing that fast. However i think its a refinement in this case to be able to handle apollo and that wonder that gives +50% to spaceship production at the same time and in a timely manner. The two will earn their keep as wonder factories prespaceage. I was really hurting for a big fast production house in this last game.

As far as tech. Ive refined a bit there too. I made a huge blunder of not going for industrialism (alum) before spaceship stuff. Thats a complete waste. Without aluminum you aint building anything fast anyway. After that its factories and power asap to get ramped up. (before that it will be railroads) (no need for democracy because im restarting on a fresh game if i dont get pyramids). I like an early biology too for the farm bonus.

After that its robotics then rocketry.

As far as time goes I think between 1734 and 1600 there is only 34 turns. So either there will be alot of slight improvements that look much faster then they are. Or there will be a submission that looks like a total blow out due to pre1700 turns being 5 years long.

I suspect because the 2 year turns start at 1700 there will be alot of wins in that neighborhood with maybe a couple standing out in the pre 2year turn phase.

Is getting space elevator worth it? I assume it's additive with the other production bonuses. With forge, factory, power plant, laboratory, 50% on top of already 125% is not much. My capital (50% bureacracy and around 20 great people) and my ironwork production city are cranking out a casing every 3-4 turns. Space elevator takes something like more than three time the hammers compare to a casing.