News: TSG87 Announcement

Welcome to the Eighty-seventh game in the GOTM V Training Series! There are plenty of features in Civilization 5 Brave New World to explore and the Training Series games will allow new and old GOTM fans to try out these 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.

Please note: If you wish to make a video of your game, please do not post any links to it until after the game submission date has passed. This is because of the potential spoilers that are created by posting before the end date. Thank you for your cooperation.

Intentional use of the Science Overflow Bug is banned. Its use will result in your game being disqualified for results.

In this game, the designated VC is Domination. All VCs are enabled but results will be published by fastest Domination victory turn.

In this game you will play as Germany and lead the German Empire to victory. It's a standard-sized continents map played at Immortal difficulty and at standard pace. Domination is the designated VC for this game, all victory conditions are enabled. You will have until July 1st to complete the game and submit.

Important: This is an advanced start game. The game starts you in the Modern Era!

Civ V BNW - TSG87 Game Settings:
Playable Civ: Bismarck - Germany
Number of AI Opponents: 7
Number of City-States: 16
Map type: Continents
Map Size: Standard
Difficulty Level: Immortal
Game pace: Standard
Game start era: Modern
Game options: Quick Combat is disabled. (You may turn it on using the game options menu at any time during gameplay.)
Game Version: This game was created in Civ5 Brave New World version 1.0.3.144. NO DLC are required for this game but the Gods and Kings and Brave New World expansions are required.

In this game, you will be playing as Germany, you possess Furor Teutonicus. Upon defeating a Barbarian unit inside an encampment, you earn 25 gold and there is a 67% chance they may join your side. You pay 25% less for land unit maintenance.

You can train the Panzer, it replaces the Tank. The is both stronger and faster than the Tank it replaces. It can also move after combat, allowing it to blow huge holes in enemy lines and then barrel through before the enemy can repair the gap. The Panzer requires that you discover the technology of Combined Arms and you need the oil resource to build them.

You can also build the Hanse, a Unique Building that replaces the Bank. The Hanse provides the regular ability of a Bank while also providing additional production for each trade route within your civilization that connects to a City-State. The Trade Routes can come from any combination of cities, even cities without a Hanse. The Hanse requires that you discover the technology of Banking and that your city has a Market build in it. No resource is needed to build the Hanse.

This is where you will start:




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.

Opening Actions 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. During the time the game is active, please do not post any information concerning the game outside of the spoiler threads including screen shots, videos, or recorded/live-cast Let's Plays on other websites.

After Actions 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 one month submission 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 one month, 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) Please note, you must submit your game on the turn following Victory. If you continue to play, the game overwrites the data and your submission could be rejected by the submission system.

This game runs for a month and ends Tuesday, 1 July 2014.

The save will be available for download on 1 June 2014, midnight Central Daylight time (UTC -6:00) in the US.
The Save can be found here.

Modern era domination game

However despite the fact that I lobbied for the this kind of game I do not have any experience in it, any tips?

Probably a good idea is to just play some test games

ooooo, a late era start!

If I were you and had the time, I would definitely run a few random test games. The start is very different and you need to think pretty hard about tech choices.

edit - you also have three settlers and two workers to deploy.

Best of luck.

I have a hard time deciding between Rationalism, Commerce and Exploration right now in my tests.

If you can plant all 3 cities on the cost, the exploration tree seems to be a clear winner for me. It has all you need for this start: some happiness, more gold and a flat bonus to production which is killer since every cost is lower.
Otherwise the cheaper costs from commerce, -25% and big ben have been really good so far.
Rationalism I'm not sure about, Free thought and faster scientists seems useless to me, you can already get all the techs you need by turn 50. The question is whether or not secularism is necessary.
There's also the ideology.

You start the game with 5 free policies and without additional culture takes 30turns to get another one out of 3 cities.

Acken said:

I have a hard time deciding between Rationalism, Commerce and Exploration right now in my tests.

If you can plant all 3 cities on the cost, the exploration tree seems to be a clear winner for me. It has all you need for this start: some happiness, more gold and a flat bonus to production which is killer since every cost is lower.
Otherwise the cheaper costs from commerce, -25% and big ben have been really good so far.
Rationalism I'm not sure about, Free thought and faster scientists seems useless to me, you can already get all the techs you need by turn 50. The question is whether or not secularism is necessary.
There's also the ideology.

You start the game with 5 free policies and without additional culture takes 30turns to get another one out of 3 cities.

Click to expand...

I don't know that I've done more than one or two games with a start other than Ancient, and never Modern ... this is going to be weird.

One obvious question: Is it worth it to go Order after you plant City #1 just so you can throw all your SP into your ideology ... so that City #2 and City #3 start at size 7 instead of size 4 ... Note that you also get your bonus happiness (+6 for 3 monuments, for instance) and obviously production with size 7 is going to be at least +3 vs size 4 for city #1 and #2. Plus you're one tech away from a free GS and GE -- though I'm not sure how useful those are with small cities and what seems to be a low science output.

I have not tried it that way but I did not feel Order was a good choice personally. The science bonus from factory feels unnecessary and I can field units fast enough that I don't feel the need to rush factories. On the other hand units bonus and 33% reduced cost from autocracy felt like a better choice to me. The benefit of +3 pop in only 2 non cap cities doesn't feel that interesting to invest 3 policies into it imo.

You should try it and give us your thoughts after 40-50 turns. That's approximately the time I hit Radar and ready to bomb people after upgrading everything (so I also have a decent army at that same time).

Now maybe by neglecting science a little I'd fall behind at a later stage, it's a possibility, I've not yet played beyond taking 1 cap and seeing AI with SAMs and Rocket Artillery hasn't happened since forever in my games so I will have to learn this warfare again.

Acken said:

I have not tried it that way but I did not feel Order was a good choice personally. The science bonus from factory feels unnecessary and I can field units fast enough that I don't feel the need to rush factories. On the other hand units bonus and 33% reduced cost from autocracy felt like a better choice to me. The benefit of +3 pop in only 2 non cap cities doesn't feel that interesting to invest 3 policies into it imo.

Click to expand...

That's true but it also raises the question of why not throw all 5 policies into Autocracy -- why put anything in Commerce, Rationalism, or Exploration? Though if you can get Big Ben, Commerce is a bit appealing. Though +3 pop seems pretty good since you're starting at a lousy 4. I dunno ... I never do test runs but this is a case where I may have to.

Autocracy is mostly unit bonuses there's no point in taking these policies Turn 1. I take them later when I'm about to go to war. Order would be a better investment, like you suggest, if I were to invest turn 1 in the ideology. And then it means I cannot take autocracy for the later part of the game :/ So my current idea is to help my start with the other trees and then invest in autocracy later. Order on the other hand you'll take skyscrapers and a happiness bonus turn 1. But you will have no bonus later for your units. Choices.

But it's just my a priori opinion, I'm just saying this out of 1.5 hours of testing, hardly any experience at all.

I really suggest doing tests. The amound of possibilities you're not used to is quite overwhelming you'll see

Edit: I'll give order a couple of tries anyway.
Edit2: Picking the +3pop means you have to be careful about your locations, you will run into food issues otherwise and I wouldn't do it outside of grassland or coast. Maintaining 7 means 14 food, so you have already 4 in city, you need 10 in your first ring to not starve. 9 if you take party leadership in order.

Lots of options on turn 1. Gold/kill from honor, for example. Too bad religion is off the table. That could be fun too.

How much gold does it give to kill a great war infantry unit ?

Ahhhh I just finished TSG77 with bismark and (literally!) 30 minutes ago I was thinking it's an civ that is oriented towards late game and should be a nice civ for a late start like this.

Can't wait to jump into this when i get the time. However i won't be able to practice, so the comments you guys post here are the only protection against massive blunders.

@leif erikson
Hi, I'm new here, and I think that would be useful posting the starting shot with "Yield icon" option turned ON, in order to look at a glance what the visible hexes produce
Thanks

gold = strength of unit.

Soooo

I've tried to actually play for a longer time my test game and this is the result:

I had not LOST a game in a long long time haha. Seijong won by science victory in 66 turns lol. I hope he isn't in this game

Damn I'm not sure how to proceed right now, bomber wars aren't that easy, at turn 50 I already started to see a ton of SAM making it really slow. I only had time to kill 2 cap before losing.

Maybe go science and rush XCom + Stealth bombers but I don't know if it's doable in a good timeframe to give you enough time to make them and kill ennemies.
Before XCOM the biggest issue I faced was the ressources, there's not so much you can do when your war take you long and you don't have additional oil or alluminium later on.

Maybe it's just Sejong but I had both Gandhi and Babylon already having a couple of SS pieces out.

I haven't played more than about 10 turns yet.

This seems more about your ability to kill Immortal troop levels quickly than anything else. Straight Autocracy will allow cheaper purchases, more effective units and also some science and spying.

Those starting riflemen died too easily in my games. I went Replaceable Parts first. Of course Rail Roads will give a production boost and a movement boost early.

Acken said:

Seijong won by science victory in 66 turns

Click to expand...

It can be hard

Wow, 66 turns?! That'd be about when I'd think about STARTING to war. (Well, actually, however long it takes to get to Rocket Artillery but I would have thought that would take at least 30 turns.) Yeesh!

I would think you'd want to pile up on Autocracy so that with your first SP you can get take the 6th slot and get +25% to warring, no?

Suggestion : Send a couple of cavalry-equivalent units around the map so when someone starts making space parts you keep pillaging his aluminum. Can't win space without aluminum.

A big headache might be intercontinental invasion. A Battleship and a Panzer both need oil. Suggestion: Buy two privateers at first and send one settler to new world. Airlift elite Panzers to new world. Old world can maybe be taken with just arty.

Another thing is a Hanse will get you a GM pretty quick and with a Commerce build, you can get double gold and probably a CS alliance. That's a ton of troops, more if you take Mobilization. Commerce is so tempting because you can work up to that 30% bonus right away.

I'm torn between extra money and straight up military buffs on this.