SV 319 (Krampus Challenge) Score 1337
Well that was a lot of fun! Thanks for the different experience. As other posters have eluded… this scenario with no city states levelled the playing field and as a result made it a more challenging game.
Initial Observational Challenges
- Slow Growth (hot/arid)
- Low Production (old world)
- Lack of strategic resources (sparse)
- No city states , therefore hard to get Age Bonuses
- Combination of the above made it difficult to get key Eureka/Inspirations and really made it a slow game
Strategy/Plan
- Build Harbours to get Growth/Housing
- Maximise Campus adjacency (reefs/Govt Plaza/mountains)
- Spread out (ended up with 14cities), founded 10, nabbed 2 barbarian settlers and loyalty flipped 2 other free cities
- Use Great Wall of China for culture instead of building theatre squares.
- Try to activate eureka / inspiration boosts where possible
- Given there were no city states. Had a Governor slot free from my usual plug and play Amani. So went Victor for free spy promotion
- Use spies… I have had mixed success in the past. This time I had a lot of success, not sure if it was because I was so far off the pace (didn’t make ground until -t200)… or it was the choice of spy location (if captured they had clear / unimpeded path home, i.e. not travelling past encampments or other cities – not even sure if this is a factor in eluding capture?!? – but it worked this time…) only a couple of spies were captured whole game.
Government Plaza Choices
- Ancestral Hall
- Intelligence Agency
- Royal Society
Wonders Built
- TOA
- MOH
- Forbidden City (GE charge)
- Big Ben (GE charge)
- Estadio do Maracanã (GE charge)
- Taj Mahel (GE charge) - don’t normally build this one, but had a GE charge and had struggled with generating era score.
- Didn’t miss out on any I commenced building, obviously missed out on ones I hadn’t started
Pantheon Selection
Initially I was concerned about where production was going to come from, so was thinking:
- god of the sea (archipelago map)
- god of craftsmen (risky with sparse resources)
- desert folklore with work ethic (risky as I’d need a great prophet), thought there would be plenty of desert given arid game condition
Lucky Breaks
- Relic from first goody hut
- Helped to get one of the first pantheons…
- When I Cleared a barbarian camp which gave me the natural wonder boost… I was certain work ethic with desert folklore was my ticket to production…
- but unfortunately I ended up missing out on a religion all together…
- My build order was slinger, settler, holy site and then settler…
- I was struggling to manage loyalty pressure in my second city located SE of capital due to Maya, so after building a holy site in the capital I then needed to divert production to a new settler and spend all my gold purchasing growth tiles/builder. A farm created on wheat+marsh tile accelerated growth to delay loyalty flip, once Governor Laing was assigned and a new city placed nearby I managed to get positive loyalty on the 2nd city… but this focus meant I lost out on a religion altogether.
- At the same time… I cleared a couple of other barb camps which helped to avoid a classical era dark age.
- In the next era Maya started converting all my cities (Culture shrines/temples)… which was okay… but it didn’t enthuse me to build any more HS until later in the game…
- At Classical/Medieval World Congress I managed to get district Culture Bomb… which helped to take tiles from Maya…. Small retribution… for missing out on the desert folklore + work ethic religion combo… the secured tiles helped additional growth via Laing fisheries and a second horse tile.
- At Industrial World Congress managed to get 100% production for harbour buildings. That coupled with 30% build bonus (policy card) helped mitigate the pitiful production my cities had. Once ship yards were built, inserted 100% harbour bonus card to help accelerate other infrastructure.
- Managed to get space race production GE(Sergei x 2 charges b/c of MOH) / GS (Carl) plus the GA (Gracie) that complete two techs
Age Dedication
- Mostly normal ages early on, so took free inquiry to help get era score
- Golden Age achieved at Renaissance Era… but to get it… had to sell all my luxury resources, my relic and take out loans (never done that before…) to buy units, strategic resources and upgrade units and buy a crouching tiger to get necessary era score… but made it happen with one turn to spare. But it was worth it… as I had a lot of faith to use on settlers, builders and traders. So took momentarily
- Unfortunately followed that Golden Age up with a Dark Age in industrial era. As I focussed 100% on harbour infrastructure.
- Rebounded with Heroic age in Modern era and then a Golden Age in Atomic era
Cities
- ended up with 14
- Had 7 spread out around the capital and 6 west of Russia and Babylon
- Found a barbarian Settler floating in sea alone… in the industrial era… suspect it was Russia or Portugal settler captured by barbarians… this settler helped to get foothold on an island north west of Babylon (culture alliance) that then enabled next growth push.
- Found another barbarian settler… which helped get resources
- Loyalty pressure flipped poorly positioned free cities (Russia / Portugal)
Headaches
- barbarian pillages of my sea resources and harbours
- OP barbarians (due to Babylon)
Regrets
- After Laing fisheries - I then focussed on Rayna/Victor combo over Pingala
- Not really sure why I thought it was a good idea… I feel this decision slowed my science and culture early in the game
Learnings
- I knew city states were powerful, but until this game I never fully appreciated the difference they make… even if they have useless suzerain bonuses, they effectively shave up to 100 turns off your win condition… not just the science generated, but also the GPT and production.
- Just on that… I had seaports in pretty much every city, but the GPT generation was only okay… probably 4x less GPT compared to a game with city states…. I must amid, apart from this game I always build Kilwa, so that could also be an inflating factor
- Thankfully in this game, spies siphoning funds filled that void… which enabled science labs to be purchased regularly
Thanks for an enjoyable and different Civ experience! Kudos to the team that put together this scenario.
Spoiler :
Well that was a lot of fun! Thanks for the different experience. As other posters have eluded… this scenario with no city states levelled the playing field and as a result made it a more challenging game.
Initial Observational Challenges
- Slow Growth (hot/arid)
- Low Production (old world)
- Lack of strategic resources (sparse)
- No city states , therefore hard to get Age Bonuses
Spoiler :
- Combination of the above made it difficult to get key Eureka/Inspirations and really made it a slow game
Strategy/Plan
- Build Harbours to get Growth/Housing
- Maximise Campus adjacency (reefs/Govt Plaza/mountains)
- Spread out (ended up with 14cities), founded 10, nabbed 2 barbarian settlers and loyalty flipped 2 other free cities
- Use Great Wall of China for culture instead of building theatre squares.
- Try to activate eureka / inspiration boosts where possible
- Given there were no city states. Had a Governor slot free from my usual plug and play Amani. So went Victor for free spy promotion
- Use spies… I have had mixed success in the past. This time I had a lot of success, not sure if it was because I was so far off the pace (didn’t make ground until -t200)… or it was the choice of spy location (if captured they had clear / unimpeded path home, i.e. not travelling past encampments or other cities – not even sure if this is a factor in eluding capture?!? – but it worked this time…) only a couple of spies were captured whole game.
Government Plaza Choices
- Ancestral Hall
- Intelligence Agency
- Royal Society
Wonders Built
- TOA
- MOH
- Forbidden City (GE charge)
- Big Ben (GE charge)
- Estadio do Maracanã (GE charge)
- Taj Mahel (GE charge) - don’t normally build this one, but had a GE charge and had struggled with generating era score.
- Didn’t miss out on any I commenced building, obviously missed out on ones I hadn’t started
Pantheon Selection
Initially I was concerned about where production was going to come from, so was thinking:
- god of the sea (archipelago map)
- god of craftsmen (risky with sparse resources)
- desert folklore with work ethic (risky as I’d need a great prophet), thought there would be plenty of desert given arid game condition
Lucky Breaks
- Relic from first goody hut
- Helped to get one of the first pantheons…
- When I Cleared a barbarian camp which gave me the natural wonder boost… I was certain work ethic with desert folklore was my ticket to production…
- but unfortunately I ended up missing out on a religion all together…
- My build order was slinger, settler, holy site and then settler…
- I was struggling to manage loyalty pressure in my second city located SE of capital due to Maya, so after building a holy site in the capital I then needed to divert production to a new settler and spend all my gold purchasing growth tiles/builder. A farm created on wheat+marsh tile accelerated growth to delay loyalty flip, once Governor Laing was assigned and a new city placed nearby I managed to get positive loyalty on the 2nd city… but this focus meant I lost out on a religion altogether.
- At the same time… I cleared a couple of other barb camps which helped to avoid a classical era dark age.
- In the next era Maya started converting all my cities (Culture shrines/temples)… which was okay… but it didn’t enthuse me to build any more HS until later in the game…
- At Classical/Medieval World Congress I managed to get district Culture Bomb… which helped to take tiles from Maya…. Small retribution… for missing out on the desert folklore + work ethic religion combo… the secured tiles helped additional growth via Laing fisheries and a second horse tile.
- At Industrial World Congress managed to get 100% production for harbour buildings. That coupled with 30% build bonus (policy card) helped mitigate the pitiful production my cities had. Once ship yards were built, inserted 100% harbour bonus card to help accelerate other infrastructure.
- Managed to get space race production GE(Sergei x 2 charges b/c of MOH) / GS (Carl) plus the GA (Gracie) that complete two techs
Age Dedication
- Mostly normal ages early on, so took free inquiry to help get era score
- Golden Age achieved at Renaissance Era… but to get it… had to sell all my luxury resources, my relic and take out loans (never done that before…) to buy units, strategic resources and upgrade units and buy a crouching tiger to get necessary era score… but made it happen with one turn to spare. But it was worth it… as I had a lot of faith to use on settlers, builders and traders. So took momentarily
- Unfortunately followed that Golden Age up with a Dark Age in industrial era. As I focussed 100% on harbour infrastructure.
- Rebounded with Heroic age in Modern era and then a Golden Age in Atomic era
Cities
- ended up with 14
- Had 7 spread out around the capital and 6 west of Russia and Babylon
- Found a barbarian Settler floating in sea alone… in the industrial era… suspect it was Russia or Portugal settler captured by barbarians… this settler helped to get foothold on an island north west of Babylon (culture alliance) that then enabled next growth push.
- Found another barbarian settler… which helped get resources
- Loyalty pressure flipped poorly positioned free cities (Russia / Portugal)
Headaches
- barbarian pillages of my sea resources and harbours
- OP barbarians (due to Babylon)
Regrets
- After Laing fisheries - I then focussed on Rayna/Victor combo over Pingala
- Not really sure why I thought it was a good idea… I feel this decision slowed my science and culture early in the game
Learnings
- I knew city states were powerful, but until this game I never fully appreciated the difference they make… even if they have useless suzerain bonuses, they effectively shave up to 100 turns off your win condition… not just the science generated, but also the GPT and production.
- Just on that… I had seaports in pretty much every city, but the GPT generation was only okay… probably 4x less GPT compared to a game with city states…. I must amid, apart from this game I always build Kilwa, so that could also be an inflating factor
- Thankfully in this game, spies siphoning funds filled that void… which enabled science labs to be purchased regularly
Thanks for an enjoyable and different Civ experience! Kudos to the team that put together this scenario.
