News: TSG15 Announcement

Welcome to the fifteenth game in the GOTM V Training Series! There are plenty of new features in Civilization 5 to explore and the Training Series games will allow new and old GOTM fans to try out these new features in a friendly environment. You are all encouraged to post your questions, stories, advice, tricks and failures in the dedicated game threads described below. You can read more about the GOTM and Training Series concept in this thread. Before going into the details of this game, we would like to ask you to abide to our most sacred rule: don’t replay any turns. If you make a mistake, accept it and try to recover. It’s better to do the bad moves in the Training Series instead of in the actual GOTM competition, once it starts.

In this game, the designated VC is Science. You may win by any VC you wish, as all VC's are enabled, but the results will be posted with fastest finish by Science victory and then all other VC listed below by fastest time. Good Luck!

In this game you will play as Washington and lead the American civilization to victory. It’s a standard sized fractal map played at Emperor difficulty and at standard pace. Science victory is the designated VC for this game, all victory conditions are enabled.

With the new patch, Science victory seems to be a way to test a majority of the new features included. Please let us all know in the tales of your games what you found different and how you changed your game to adjust. Decided to leave the game at Emperor difficulty to see how we fare in comparison to past Emperor Science games. Have heard that the patch makes the game more difficult to win, please comment on the relative difficulty level and give your opinion on whether we should play at King or below?

It seems the new patch for windows puts Mac players on the sidelines again as they await their patch. Hope it is a short wait.

Please note that you are only allowed to build Oxford University one time.

Civ V - TSG15 game settings
Playable Civ: Washington - America
Number of AI Opponents: 7
Number of City-States: 16
Map type: Fractal
Map Size: Standard
Difficulty Level: Emperor
Temperature: Temperate
Game pace: Standard
Game options: Promotion saving is enabled. Quick Combat is disabled (You can enable it by following instructions in this link.) Policy saving is disabled.

In this game, you will be playing as Washington, you possess Manifest Destiny. All of your land units have +1 sight and you get a 50% discount when purchasing tiles.

You can train Minuteman, which replaces the Musketman. The unit moves through rough ground as though it were flat, unlike the Musketman it replaces. It requires the technology of Gunpowder to produce.

You can also train B17, which replaces the Bomber. The B17 is an air unit that rains death from above onto enemy units and cities. The unit has a chance of evading interception and does additional damage to cities compared to the bomber that it replaces. It requires the technology of Radar and the resource of Oil to build.



Information about threads associated with TSG
TSG Announcement thread (this one). This thread is used to announce the game and clarify the settings and rules (don’t be afraid to ask questions). It’s also used to discuss the game before you start, and post problems with opening the save. Please don’t post any information from a game you have started. Instead use the next thread.

Game In Progress thread. This thread is used to discuss the game once it's on the way. There are no reading or posting restrictions as such (apart from normal decency), although we encourage players 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.

After Action Report thread. In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state (preferably in the post title) your victory date and score, as recorded in the Hall of Fame, and the most important: your path to glory! , We will create a separate thread with the results at the end of the two week period (sorted by date and score). Players are encouraged to provide feedback on the game. Some players like to replay the game, and although we will not record the results from a replay, you can still post your new experiences. The game will not be closed as such, but after two weeks, the results will be compiled, and will not necessarily be updated with reports coming in after the finish date.

File Upload System
We now have a game file upload system you can find here. Please use it to upload your completed first attempt by saving the game on the turn after your victory or defeat. (by using the "lemme play one more turn" feature)

This game runs for two weeks and ends Monday, 18 July 2011.

The Save can be found here.

Wow, awesome Great Library start.

What's the policy on abusing new bugs?

DaveMcW said:

Wow, awesome Great Library start.

What's the policy on abusing new bugs?

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How do you find these so quickly?

Seems pretty abusive to me...

Wheeee! I'm relapsing!

DaveMcW said:

What's the policy on abusing new bugs?

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Something which is clearly a bug shouldn't be exploited.

RA blocking was very abusive, but it wasn't a "bug". Rather, it was a clever use of game mechanics with powerful results. This clearly doesn't fall into that category.

Please remember that posting in the announcement thread is for those who have not yet opened the save. The only knowledge of the game you should have is what is in the announcement.

Once you open a save, please post only in the spoiler threads: Game In Progress or, if game completed and uploaded, After Action Report.

The sheep and cows are both outside the city's radius. Settling on the incense or sugar would get both the sheep and cows. However, I think setting on the incense might be best since the sugar adds more food. So I think I'll move the warrior to the hill west of the settler to see if it'll be better to settle on the incense, on the sugar or in place. It looks like we'd have 2 deserts and be within 2 tiles of a mountain if on the incense.

Alternately, settling on the desert west of the incense would put the capital next to the mountain for the observatory, but doesn't get the cows and puts the sugar and 1 wheat in the 3rd ring with the other wheat in the 2nd ring. However, this makes it a turn 3 start.

I have not yet opened the save, but played a short test run as Americans on a random map and noticed a few things that may be of general interest (and have nothing to do with the civ selection actually).

Either I do not correctly understand the Stone Works building or it's giving a lot more than it is supposed to. I believe it is intended to give +1 gold and +1 production in the city where it is built, and +1 production per mined and worked marble and stone tile. It also gave me +1 gold per river tile (!!), which is huge. I hope to find stone or marble in those non revealed nearby tiles and if so would put a priority on building the SW.

I like the Honor SP bracket in this patch and found myself taking several of them after an initial Tradition pick. I noticed that the amount of culture given for killing barbs varies with the unit type. In case anyone cares, it is 6 for brutes, 4 for archers, and 5 for galleys. It really adds up and of course there are other benefits to picking Honor as well. It seems the culture is also granted when you kill an attacker using the city defense. Oh, and when you kill land units the culture bonus shows below your attack unit, but when killing a galley it shows under the galley, though you do get the bonus. That confused me at first glance.

In two different tests I saw a bug that a 2 iron tile only gave 1 iron when mined (no, I did not trade one away). I did not get to check out how the 4's and 6's work.

When you build the Great Library and get a free Library in the city, it is also free in the sense that no building maintenance is charged. So you really want to get the GL and I'll chop forests to make sure it happens.

I plan on playing this one for sure, but I am trying a Prince-level game (which I started before this announcement) using the Americans for scientific victory! I was feeling patriotic on this 4th of July weekend so I chose them, and decided to try the new science victory research path and features. After I finish that game, I'll fire this one up to try it on a higher difficulty level I too am not an Emperor expert, but I did win one GOTM on Emperor (Diplo) before, so I'll opine on the difficulty post-patch.

I believe the honor bonuses for units killed (culture and later gold) are equal to the strength of the unit killed. So yes, a modern armor killed, with the tree completed, would get you 80 gold AND 80 culture.

Seems like some spoiler info slipped into this thread already...three posts back...

Onan said:

I believe the honor bonuses for units killed (culture and later gold) are equal to the strength of the unit killed. So yes, a modern armor killed, with the tree completed, would get you 80 gold AND 80 culture.

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Really interesting...
I have tried a few games after the new patch and tested the honor path for an aggressive play, but the results weren't that great. I still believe, that the Liberty path is better for a fast and aggressive strategy in higher difficulties.

I will definately try this one out. I will try to go for GL, then NC, then war for some puppets with longswordsmen (I am not sure, if this one will work), Porcellain tower, RAs, ...

Onan said:

I believe the honor bonuses for units killed (culture and later gold) are equal to the strength of the unit killed. So yes, a modern armor killed, with the tree completed, would get you 80 gold AND 80 culture.

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You are right about the gain equals unit strengh. However, culture is only awarded for babarian units while gold is awarded for all units

Greatsword said:

You are right about the gain equals unit strengh. However, culture is only awarded for babarian units while gold is awarded for all units

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Right, my mistake. The culture in honor comes from garrisons, +2 each.

guess i ll settle on hill and give this a try

No tree looks real promising, but i ll go quite surly for Liberty as the +2 food from trad finisher comes imo too late (after 6 sp u should have some maritime CS allready) and all other sp arent really good in trad tree.

any tips on how to effectively use Promotion Saving?

Anyone else having trouble seeing how RAs actually increase science. They certainly don't seem to reflect in my beaker count; and there's nothing in the mouseover that says x amount from cities, y amount from RAs. ??

Onan said:

Anyone else having trouble seeing how RAs actually increase science. They certainly don't seem to reflect in my beaker count; and there's nothing in the mouseover that says x amount from cities, y amount from RAs. ??

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You don't get them until the RA completes.

Monthar said:

You don't get them until the RA completes.

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Right, and even then, I've noticed no change to my beaker count. Maybe with the early RAs it was negligible...I'll watch it again now that I'm in rationalism and have the PT.

I think it's better to wait until Renaissance and the first Rationalism policy to get efficient beakers from RAs(combined with PT). Gold is best used for other crucial things in the beginning. Techs cost way higher in the industrial and modern era.

Yeah. I did list the early RAs as one of my errors in the in progress thread.

I need to go check the patch notes on how they actually work...it's all a bit vague in my mind.