TSG16 Game in Progress

Welcome to the TSG16 Game in Progress thread. This thread is used to discuss the game once you've started playing. 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. Please remember that we are running a family friendly site, so express anger or frustration with this in mind.

Please use this thread to discuss your goals for the game and your opening moves through about the first 80 to 100 turns. How did your planning change to make adjustments for the many changes in the recent patch?
- What Social Policies did you choose and why?
- What tech path did you follow?
- Did you try to build any wonders?
- Any neighbor that you targeted for the dustbin of history?

Once you've completed the game, head over to the TSG16 After Action Report thread.

Goal for the game: Win again for a change, keep true to the culture victory goal, have fun
Techs: Went for mining first, up to immortals in case i want an early war, and improving stone and gold didn't seem too bad. After that i just took what i felt like, prefering techs that give access to culture buildings. No clear path here.
Policies: After scouting around a bit i wanted to expand, nice places to settle. So i went for liberty, worker, golden age(forgot to wait for it with my second city. It was sadly founded one turn before i got the -33%). Later i decided piety would be best, getting happiness from the culture buildings i was building everywhere. Went on to take patronage (though not many cultural city states around sadly, but i had a lot of gold and thought patronage might work out), then honor for the additional happiness mainly, then freedom to complete the victory condition.

I tried to build many wonders, but did not succeed all too often. Not enough production.

Earyl on (3 immortals, 1 archer, 1 warrior) i took on England, but couldn't get my immortals in place properly, so i accepted a 100 gp peace offer from them and took out Whoever it was that was southeast of the starting location, don't remember just now

Got 2 Cities from him, then went to finally take england. 2 competetors gone, and a subcontinent all of my own with 3/3 cities. Was content with this for quite a while and defended against 2 invasions from rome.

As greece started to bully one of my city states (really, why always the greek, i mean they should tend to ally them, not destroy them with their racial) i decided to take germany up on the offer of war against them. sailed over to the city state with my upgraded earlier troops (infantry now) and conquered every greek city.

Russia was going for a science victory, and since i didn't have any engineers left over to build utopia, i decided they needed a distraction from building spaceship parts. Attacked them with 20 turns still to go, its a war i will not really win, but it's only 8 turns to go now, and i think i'll manage to build utopia before the spaceship is ready.

Endgame turns take so fricking long..

(Turn 380-ish right now)

Have played up to turn 93 ...

Settled in place, Started out Pottery --> Calendar --> Mining --> Writing

Initially went Tradition to get the wonder-building boost, then switched to Liberty for the free Settler and worker, and am now filling out both branches (alternating between the culture-boosting policies first)

Got both Stonehenge and GL (and Oracle), managed to score at least four ruins (!) ...

Settled my second city sw along the river, all that dye has been a good income-booster, put in barracks in both cities and bought/trained a total of four immortals, two archers and upgraded my initial warrior to a sword to take down england, since I wanted to take them out before they get to longbows and they started pretty close --> took awhile to take down london, but just managed it. The accelerated healing on the immortals is key, was able to get away with losing only one. Rotating sword and immortals between the woods north of London (for healing) and the attack position just north of the city (with archers constantly nibbling away from in front of the woods) got it done. Annexed London (great city location) and am on my way to puppet York and whatever other city Elizabeth popped down in the SE ... Arabia is currently friendly (as is China) and I signed friendship declarations with both, while Rome is hostile (though not close).

Looking forward to the rest!

I went straight for Iron Working while taking Liberty->Worker->Settler and settled towards England. Built 3 Immortals, then some warriors and upgraded them to swords.
As soon as i got two of them, i started my attak and took London, but she managed to sneak out a second settler. I then pushed on to the Arab (the guy southeast) and took a city from him and after some turns of peace and happy-gold-time I finished him off.
Now just get Astronomy ASAP and I'll be going for the Roman after that. I think hell have Legion soon and I want him to not get to use them too much.
Policy order was: Liberty->Worker->Settler->Piety->Traderoute Happy->GoldenAge->libertyfinisher(GE)->buildinghappy
I wanted to get that GE as soon as humanlz possibl, to get the porcelain Tower ith it, because its basically a 2for1 (because of the GS u get for free) deal, plus i get the better RAs as a little bit of frosting. I also like (since I am going to go for education anyway) to take Theology as a stepping stone because u can build the hagia sophia, which is not only 100 hammers cheaperbut also gives u a free GE with which u can get urself notre dame. And u can start it earlier. And both of them are GREAT wonders.=) I hope i get the both.

Update: I got them

But the people seem to agree: Conquest it is ^^

I played until turn 140. Built 3 more cities and stole 2 workers to Harun really soon. Bought one and got free one from Liberty. I built the NC around turn 100. Signed 2 RAs, one broken by Rome who conquered a cultural ally too . I allied Kuala Lumpur but he's gonna wipe him too sooner or later...

I have built Stonehenge, Oracle, Haga Sophia, Porcelaine Tower, Sistine Chapel, Angkor Wat. Missed the Gl by 3 turns, Pyramids by 6 turns. Popped 2 gs, 3 ge and 1 ga(3 different on same turn, 2 ge from wonder and policy, 1 gs from PT). I burned 1 gs for acoustics, 1 ge for PT, 1 ge for Sistine(got acoustics before astro) and used the legalism trick to make 4 free Operas. I burned the last ge for Hermitage.

I will get astro soon and i'm running 180 cpt now. 11 policies acquired so far. I will try to get a last ge for The Louvre later and keep money to rush buy museums and ally more cultural cs.

Now at turn 210. Situation is kinda boring right now, clicking end turn again and again. I have over 450 cpt but still take 9-10 turns to get a policy each time. I will surely not finish under 300 turns. Maybe i will finish around turn 330 or more. I think going for the 33% discount for next policies from the Liberty tree before expanding is the key(which i didn't).

I have built everything. I have 7 landsmarks and i just wait for telegraph to boost culture a bit more...but i'm still far away from this tech and i allied every cultural cs but 2 of them are captured.

At my first practice for a HoF game i finished at turn 184 on quick speed(prince i think) giving me an approx. 280 turn finish for a standard speed game, far better than this one. I waited for the 33% discount. I didn't reach industrial era when i won.

In conclusion it will not be a good finish time for sure!(I will press end turn another 100 times i guess)

Culture is my favorite VC. I had experimented with two wider empires post patch with Napolean and Washington to see how things worked with five or six cities. I found that extra cities was less of a penalty than before. I also played a game with Ghandi where I only built one city and I found that culture VC takes longer. So going into this game I didn't know how many cities I wanted. I decided that whether I went with one city (tradition opener) or four or five cities (liberty opener) would come down to starting location and conditions...

just ended a 4 hour session - now its turn 200 and 7 policies to go - guess thats like 30-35 more turns.

Did 3 cities + anexed London and pupeted like 4 more cities - teched straight to museums and lib abused them - think had them in t90 or so - after sailing to other continent i did some RAs - looking backwards from now - I should have done more of them.

In a replay I d proly settle on coast and grow cities even more (got pop 24, 18-16-14 now) tech to opera house faster and abuse it - it seems ridic powerful.
Or rush buy more stuff in London and make it a "2nd cap" with settling landmarks there - thats seems proly best approach.
I now have done a "balanced appraoch" betweens teching fast and going for as much cult as possible - but proly its better to concentrate on teching and switch to cult after all the multiplikators are available.

Just dont think skipping the "happy" tree like some guy proposed is needed -
growing cities - getting 4-5 scientists and 7 RAs is enough to rush throguh all late ren and modern era in like 170 turns and after that enjoy 1000 cult /t with opera house.

4 Cities are really needed and I guess 5 or 6 at good spots d not hurt either - spots just have to be good enough to get everything in the cities so that u still can get the NW

Help! Im 1 turn away from completing the Utopia Project building and Ive gotten another policy, I dont know how to force the turn to end without taking a policy (thereby losing a whole tree of policies and having to redo 5 more policies <>).

take commerce or honor. They should not conflict with other trees

Tommynt wrote:

but proly its better to concentrate on teching and switch to cult after all the multiplikators are available.

Click to expand...

I guess you're right, teching is the way to go, esp. if I see yours and Attatürks approaches.

My more culture focused approach gave me in the end a size 20 capital and max 924 cpt, and no hydro's etc to speed up utopia.
With teching (and Sydney Opera) this can become far, far over 1000 cpt.

If I have time I'll try a replay, settling on coast for Sydney OH of course.

I'm also pretty sure that 5-6 cities could be helpful as well, I don't see any issues to have these cities delivering the cpt required to overcome the SP penalty

Playing a test game first (with same settings as this game). learning a lot in the process. I went with a strategy of four cities (to keep policy costs down), but ended up with five cities, since there was another spot that looked really good. Early in the game I defended against attacking neighbours, but never went on the offence thinking I didn't want to add any cities to my empire. But later in the game I started taking cities from a really aggressive neighbour and "Puppeting" them since I had read here that wouldn't affect the policy costs. I looks like that's true, but also there look s to be substantial gold benefits to puppeting cities and linking them into your trade network. The happiness seems to go down a bit - not sure if it's more or less than adding a city, or Annexing would do though - anyone know?
I guess I should have been moving to puppet my neighbours earlier. Is there any downside to doing that?

Finished my test game in 1960. I used a Liberty, quick expansion start in that game (five cities). I shoulda used the same start in the actual Gotm game I'm playing now. Instead I went Tradition and Honor, got the Great Library and National College going, but missed Oracle. England and Arabia have expanded into my territory. I guess I will have to go and take some cities from them.