Civ V - Beta 2

1770 for me. No tactics, I just had fun. Great Library got me civil service, then I missed Oracle by 1 turn, a handful of shields. My complete list of unit builds were 1 scout, 1 warrior, 2 frigates, 1 worker and some work boats. Scout got an archer upgrade early, archer + 2 warriors killed the only CS on my landmass. Then it upgraded to a crossbow, with the two warriors I went overseas and conquered both Arabian cities. Then it moved up to a rifle, so I went and stole a worker from a CS and had 3 more declare on me, so captured them too. One warrior was sacrificed to ensure I took a city that turn, the other warrior eventually upgraded to a pike and was killed by an Ottoman Janissary. The scout eventually made it to a mechanised infantry, I ended up with ~15 puppet cities. Had to raze one city because I overextended, hit -10 happiness and had no easy way to get it back to -9, no resources available and no happy buildings close to finishing. Still had ~5 goody huts to pop after the Ottomans died, there were 4 AIs left and I didn't feel like more wars. So popped the remaining huts, sent the mech inf on autopilot back to my home landmass to kill barbs, and it promptly stepped off the edge of a coast when it could see a barb galley next to it. :lol: That made the AI go from scared of my military to contemptuous of it, not too many turns later I had 3 of the 4 remaining all declare on me. One frigate, one destroyer, and I simply patrolled the seas and killed whatever I saw. Was about then that I started building Apollo Program, took my final policy (tradition x 2, commerce x 4 for shields, order x 4 for shields, rationalism x 4 for 2 free techs) and finally hit 750 happiness for my GA, which I used to annex & courthouse everything. Killed enough Japanese scouts and embarked spears/archers to fulfil the quest to help out Dublin and Monaco, and I received a helicopter gunship for my troubles from Dublin, who were on the Japanese home island. They're fun. :D And they can take cities, which is another known bug I discovered today.

Fun game, slow date, heaps of room for improvement. Build more cities for one. Sticking in a railroad between the city building the final SS part and the capital, which I had ample time to do, would have saved 4 turns all by itself.
 

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Ok, did my second game, and... i finished 1931. I had following settings:

* low sea level
* wet
* no puppet states
* no cheese with declaration of war and research agreements
* no gold pumping via workers
* no ancient ruins

I screwed up a few things *sigh* but im kinda proud. Its a bit harder without puppet states, but your economy is so much better. I founded 3 cities and killed Caesar who was settling his first expansion beside me to get the marble. Bad idea... and some turns later Rom was burning. He was ready to rush me :eek: I razed one city and kept the capitol - but not as a puppet.

4 cities, and after Order i founded 3 more cities to get Aluminium, one for production and one for oil.

Aye, and i have to correct myself: Puppet states are not the only valid strategy, it is working without as well ;)
 
Hey,

Im new to the forums, but I did the challenge. I started on a small island and was able to take advantage of gem and silver deposits to help my income. From there I expanded along an island chain to the south after meeting the Japanese and Aztecs in the north. From there is was pretty straightforward, just massing science and then production to get the parts out. Probably would have done better if I was a little less fearful of screwing up my economy and expanded more.
 

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This map script has a lot of problems. Even with low sea level, I rolled 7 straight isolated starts and saw less than that in CSs. Trying legendary start, low, got a flat piece of tundra. Even disabling start bias got me a flat piece of desert on an island that took all of two turns to explore. This is just pathetic.
 
I think archipelago is designed that way. U are either alone on an island or with another civ, hardly ever 3. I guess its supposed to have the player a buildup time for a while. But u can still explore all the islands as soon as u got optics. The islands are connected via coast tiles (at least in my map i played).

Regarding the start, i guess u were just unlucky. I made two archipelago starts, the first one was average and the second one was with marble (even with wheat i think, but im not sure) & floodplains, with a small river.

But of course, its different to what we are used, but imo the embarkment thing makes it a lot easier to handle.


The real issue is imo, that the AI cant handle Islands...They dont settle out of them. So basically u have 6 or 7 occupied small islands and a lot of unsettled ones until the very end. --> AI stays on 1-3 cities all the time.
 
It looks like you can get the early wonders and build your own second city. Would be nice to trade for cash.

Edit: So after a couple more isolated starts as Washington I said screw it and tried England. Found Washington! Puppetted him pronto! Army of 3 warriors and scout kept moving and took Bismarck for 3 cities and 2 workers. At turn 71, 4 puppets, a GG and the GL (compass.) SPs: 2 in tradition and 2 in patronage. Now why can't Washington get these starts?
 
One thing that I think would be worth adding in the gauntlet rules is the sea level. Seems a lot of folks are switching to low to make the Archipelago map more like a "Small Continents" map. The game plays quite a bit differently if you have more connected land masses. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it would make more sense to me if everyone was doing the same sea level.
 
Game 2. I'm purposely not doing some things in this game. I'm not saying these are exploits, but I consider them either unbalanced or taking advantage of loopholes in the HOF rules. These are:

- Stick to Medium sea level (we should really specify this setting so everyone is the same)
- No restarting to get a specific resource such as marble
- Horseman may not be used to attack enemy cities (as I think they're overpowered)
- Policies must be taken as soon as they become available (saving free techs is OK)

In addition to these I also minmized the number of puppet cities that I took. This seemed to help keep my empire happy and my cashflow positive, but it certainly hurt my expansion. Ended up with 5 cities and 1 puppet.

I launched the spaceship on turn 520 (1930). My science could have been a little faster, but the main bottleneck was production. Took me 43 turns to build all the parts. I attempted to use city-states pretty heavily, and I don't think that worked out well. Even with the Patronage tree, I was spending a ton of money on them, and the resources/units/great people return just wasn't all that good. Seems to me that Patronage is really only viable for culture and diplomatic victories - it supports the other victory types, but isn't the best approach.

More details on the game:

Starting position isn't too bad. There's a river but I move a tile away so I'm near a Mountain, thinking that the Observatory is going to be more useful in the long run than a Hydro Plant. We'll see. No Marble but two gems, a sheep, and some cows in the distance. I decided not to build a Scout since islands typically have little area to explore, and went straight to a Worker in Washington. Turned out pretty well, my island was too small to get much out of the Scout anyway and I built a bunch of Warriors to kill off the Chinese. At about turn 160 I decided to start settling out my island and founded three more cities, picking up some good sources of Iron in the process. I got my first Great General at turn 235 but decided not to go on the offensive, kept him at home for defense. When I discovered Scientific Theory I found that once again my entire empire had no Coal, but Tyre (militaristic CS) did, so I cozied up to them. I also sent a Settler to colonize a far-away island that had some coal, but barbarians killed it. More resource trouble, no Aluminum. I thought I'd get some from the city-state Almaty but they built a Trading Post on their Aluminum for some reason. So I took a Roman city that had some instead. Around 1870 I got the Aluminum and Robotics, so started every city on a Spaceship Factory.

Wonders: Got the Great Library (turn 82) and the Oracle, no chance to pick up any of the other early Wonders. Built a few national wonders in Washington, and next great wonder I built was Machu Pichu on turn 221 - good for the pocketbook. Next the Porcelain Tower on turn 250, then Chichen Itza on turn 263. Got a Great Engineer on turn 274, used it to build Himeji Castle in turn 321 since one of my city states was looking for it. Built Sistine Chapel on turn 346, mainly because I didn't have anything else urgently needed in Washington at the time. Got The Louvre on turn 367, as a couple of city-states wanted it, and the Great Artists were handy for a short golden age and culture-bombing some tiles just outside my city limits to get me some Dye. Built Brandenburg Gate on turn 389, made some CSs happy and the General ran another Golden Age. Built Big Ben in turn 452. Apollo Project was complete on turn 477. By turn 485 all the cities were building spaceship parts, but I didn't finish until turn 520 (1930). Not nearly enough production.

Technology: Because of the early Worker, I took Animal Husbandry and Mining quickly, before Writing. I still managed the Great Library->Civil Service slingshot, on turn 83. I got a Great Scientist on turn 125, which I used for Currency (the most expensive option at the time). More Great Scientists born on turn 228, 250 (Porcelain Tower), 317, 367, 422, 439, and 470. I used one on Scientific Theory in turn 302, and two more on Steam Power and Railroad on turn 343. Got a free Penicillin on turn 396 from Oxford University. Then Ecology and Globalization from Scientific Revolution on turn 408. Then more Great Scientists for Rocketry on turn 435, Satellites on 439, and Nanotechnology on turn 479.

Policies: I got my first policy on turn 12 thanks to a culture ruin, unlocking Tradition. Second on turn 55, Aristocracy. Third on turn 100, open Patronage, and fourth on turn 101 (Oracle), Philanthropy. Fifth policy came on turn 134, Scholasticism. Sixth on turn 198, Aesthetics. Seventh on turn 244, Educated Elite. Eighth on turn 293, open Rationalism. Ninth on turn 348, Secularism. Tenth on turn 381, Free Thought. Eleventh on turn 408, Scientific Revolution. Twelfth on turn 440, open Order. Thirteenth on turn 479, Socialism.

Diplomacy: I met China on turn 15, a major improvement over my last game when nothing happened until turn 100. Ironically I decided to destroy them early (turn 59 I annexed Beijing behind 3 Warriors), but hey, at least they were there. I allied Genoa (maritime CS) on turn 101 right after getting Philanthropy. On turn 187 I met the Romans, quite a ways away across the seas, wasn't worth getting aggressive right away. They were a good trading partner though. Allied Brussels (culture CS) on turn 196 mostly to get their furs, but it upset the Romans so I didn't try to keep them around. Around turn 200, I met both England and the Iroquois, also far away and good to trade with. On 220 I allied Lhasa (cultured CS) again for Furs, planning to keep it this time, although Elizabeth isn't too happy about it. On turn 233 I met the Songhai and turn 257 the Egyptians, more trading partners. Then India a bit later. On 349 I allied Monaco, a cultured CS that had whales, for more happiness. On turn 381 the Iroquois talked me into attacking England, which I did mostly because I was bored - they weren't a big threat. I took London and Nottingham as puppets. Got a Great Merchant from Genoa on turn 382, which I used to conduct a trade mission with Vienna on turn 384 and allied them too. On turn 389 I allied Almaty in an attempt to get their Aluminum. Turn 445, I took Neapolis from the Romans for its Aluminum. The Iroquois declared war on me on turn 490, it appears because they were upset that I still held London and Nottingham. Once he took those two, peace was restored.
 

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- Policies must be taken as soon as they become available (saving free techs is OK)
Just my $0.02, but I would do it the other way. The game tells you that you can right-click to put off picking up a policy. To me that implies it's working as intended and that the developers decided that should be a strategy. On the other hand, delaying the free tech doesn't have that message and using shift-enter to pull that off is the loophole.
 
Restarting games for a good starting position is something that have been in the HoF forever. In civ IV there was even a mod that reloaded games and saved the good starting positions. I dont see a problem in doing that.
 
Finished my first game yesterday.
I won at 1718 AD but made many stupid mistakes along the way(forgot about the production bonus from railroads for example)

I also think i over expanded as i had some 7 cities after just 70 turns. It was quite a pain to convert them from puppets to annexed cities when it was time to do that.

Anyway i will play another game to see if i can get below 1700.
 

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- Stick to Medium sea level (we should really specify this setting so everyone is the same)
- No restarting to get a specific resource such as marble
- Horseman may not be used to attack enemy cities (as I think they're overpowered)


Kept to all those 3 (well, was very lucky with the start).

A short feedback on what i can understand from your text:

Slingshot civil service isnt that strong imo, just go straight for education and get the food from allying additional maritime states, they are so important... Cant understand why u feel your resources didnt pay out. And by the way, in an Archipel game u have plenty of gold anyway (thx to harbors), the more maritime, the bigger the cities, the more income, the more maritime :)


Then puppets are important, 1. for trade money, 2. they add a bit of everything (especially money), in general be more aggressive, win faster (and its not hard to bea the ai...)

Another thing i always try to do is to get up at least 2 really strong prodpotential cities. Some hills and plains do the job. makes u really flexble to switch between hardcore research and production push.

Another thing u said about the spaceship factories. I saved up and bought 3 of them in my prod cities, they finished the parts in around 6-10 turns. Better then waiting for those factories :)
 
I'm trying ICS and seeing if it competes with the ancient age infantry of doom.

Given that there is no rush going for island goody huts, since the AI never gets them, I wonder if you might actually be better off starting the hut crawl with a swordsman. It gets you a few steps down the road. Or a horse, even - tanks are faster than infantry.
 
I agree that the AI on Archipelago is horribly uninteresting.

I rolled a moderately sized island which I had to myself, with City-States separating me from the other empires by land. I built 3 cities on this island and stayed uninvolved in Pacts of Secrecy, accepted Pacts of Cooperation and I was able to spend the entire game building Wonders and ship parts while having ZERO armed forces to defend myself.

If the AI had any brains, it would have attacked and taken my city with all the Wonders of the World in it. Or at least tried to intercept a spaceship part while it was crossing the sea to my capital.

Sheer
 
1680 AD: Revenge for bad Washington Starts

I did this in my sleep. Played as England and got my revenge for bad Washington starts. Took 4 cities early, twiddled my thumbs building wonders, took 2 more cities and built more wonders. Somewhere in there I annexed Washington and settled York on top of aluminum. SPs: 2 in tradition, 5 in patronage, 4 in order and 4 in rationalism. Just like the last gauntlet: one city, puppets and wonderspam. Boring.

GL: Compass. I lolly-gagged to education and biology, avoiding acoustics and archeaology for as long as possible. Puppets produced exclusively scientists-- 6 or 7 of them maybe 8. Only two production cities are needed.

Edit: I was rolling in cash. Hiawatha asked for 20 gold per turn. I said, "okay."

Just my $0.02, but I would do it the other way. The game tells you that you can right-click to put off picking up a policy. To me that implies it's working as intended and that the developers decided that should be a strategy. On the other hand, delaying the free tech doesn't have that message and using shift-enter to pull that off is the loophole.

Actually you are allowed to finish the tech your working on and then choose. Nothing new can be researched until you choose a tech.
 

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Finally done with this. Finish date : 1752AD / turn 386. Score 4747.

By the end I had around 1200 beakers, 200 gold per turn (without GA), and 22 cities. City states kept giving me modern units and this could have been a much earlier conquest victory. By the way, did you know a helicopter gunship has to turn into a boat to cross the sea? Funny thing to watch.

I didn't abuse anything, no trade or research agreement before declaring war, didn't go out of my way to check a hut, and didn't even restart for a better position. My capitol had no marble and very few hills and no jungle. I however used low sea level.

I played sloppy in the first 200 turns, I was not focused on the objective and started experimenting and chasing achievements left and right. Expanded a couple of time and only took one puppet (from suleiman) for a while... After I got 4 points into patronage, I got around 5 non-puppet cities early, and yet I got all the policies I wanted by the end. Barbarian triremes were annoying, and I waited for Astronomy before doing any serious conquest. (warrior upgraded to swordsman then longsword later, second warrior died to barbarian trireme, one single horseman which i think was a gift from a CS, 2 triremes, + catapult also gifted.)

Main strategy :

- 2 in tradition + 4 into patronage + 2 into freedom (half food helps cities grow bigger faster and less unhappiness from specialists is great) + spread between rationalism (I farmed scientists all game) and Order.
- Finding culture for policies was really not a problem, I did not bother saving culture or even building cristo redentor or getting free speech yet I got Order a long time before I needed it. (By the way the 25% bonus from order does not apply to wonders or space projects / components.)
- Mass ally maritime, concentrate on making money from harbors + golden age (with chichen) and growing population (I was in GA for all the late game up to 10 turns before victory). Most of my cities had bad production so I bought most of the main research buildings
- At the very end check which one of your cities has the highest production and annex them if they are puppets, buy the production buildings but it is not vital... you only need 1-2 cities with huge production. Your capital will most likely be building the heavy hammer components and have 2-3 of the secondary cities build the boosters. (You have to wait for tech to unlock anyway if you beeline things properly.)
- Golden ages are vital. Both for the money, and the production. After I built chichen itza, I poped both artists from the louvre for GA, and other great persons too after finishing taj mahal.
- I had allied a few military CS just for the ressources I was lacking, but as it turns out they are great at keeping your army up to date at very low cost. By the end they were gifting me mech infantry and helicopters that would have cost me a fortune to buy. By the way, helicopters seem to one shot most cities and their move distance is just insane, love them.

Main problems :

- Inefficiency of naval units at attacking cities. Early on I thought it would be smart to get 3 naval units and 2 land units only, thinking naval would do the main damage (then go back to exploring the world) and the land units can take the cities after. But naval units do so little damage to cities that it slowed me down too much.
- Lack of early culture meant I had to spend money buying key tiles, which was very damn expensive and slowed me on other fronts. Lesson learned : don't let the AI grab Angkor wat before you.
 

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Slingshot civil service isnt that strong imo, just go straight for education and get the food from allying additional maritime states, they are so important... Cant understand why u feel your resources didnt pay out. And by the way, in an Archipel game u have plenty of gold anyway (thx to harbors), the more maritime, the bigger the cities, the more income, the more maritime :)
I think it was the way that I avoided puppets that made the city-states seem less impressive. Getting friendly with the maritime CSs made my neighbors unhappy, and I wasn't attacking them to puppet their cities. And I kept running out of gold buying up CS loyalty, probably because I was trying to keep more than just the maritime ones loyal, since I also used them for key resources like Coal. Again, if I was going on a rampage and taking puppet cities with Coal, wouldn't have been an issue.

Then puppets are important, 1. for trade money, 2. they add a bit of everything (especially money), in general be more aggressive, win faster (and its not hard to bea the ai...)
Yeah, I'm starting to agree with Katananga that the only viable strategy when going for speed is to puppet everything. Sure, you can win without doing that, but it's not going to be anywhere near as fast.
 
It was surprising to me that even early education wasn't that important. If everything early is getting puppeted, then how many cities are going to get uni's anyways? Compass will get a person to patronage and GL tends to go ~turn 75 with random opps. Puppets like to run specialists. Give them libraries and harbors to build early and avoid artist buildings. I got stonehenge ~turn 89 which was a shock.

Edit: I think I was lucky not to have horse as it was one less build option for puppets.

Other notes: a 1HP barb galley will destroy a healthy embarked unit. DoW'ing an AI preciptate will a first move by CS ally, possibly blocking your units. Marble tends to stay on one landmass; it's nice to start on that landmass.

@Sarassin
Yeh, buying tiles was expensive. But in my English game I was able to buy tiles for Washington/London from nearby York (settled late) more cheaply.
 
Ok, did my second game, and... i finished 1931. I had following settings:

* low sea level
* wet
* no puppet states
* no cheese with declaration of war and research agreements
* no gold pumping via workers
* no ancient ruins

I screwed up a few things *sigh* but im kinda proud. Its a bit harder without puppet states, but your economy is so much better. I founded 3 cities and killed Caesar who was settling his first expansion beside me to get the marble. Bad idea... and some turns later Rom was burning. He was ready to rush me :eek: I razed one city and kept the capitol - but not as a puppet.

4 cities, and after Order i founded 3 more cities to get Aluminium, one for production and one for oil.

Aye, and i have to correct myself: Puppet states are not the only valid strategy, it is working without as well ;)

Do you always turn off ruins, and if not how do you feel it affects competitive balance? Even without a ridiculous cho-ko-no slingshot. Did the game feel more even or less so than others you've played? (I saw English pike by like turn 13 or something in a game the other night.)
 
Here are my files and outline.
Warring:
Spoiler :

Overall, I had a good strong start. Captured and puppetted Thebes around turn 40. DoW on Russia, and stalemated for ~30 turns mostly, though she settled two new cities behind my forces, which is something that is really dumb. I take a peace treaty where she gives me a lux and a bunch of gold so i can regroup. I get some military tech, and then procede to conquer her after the treaty experiences with 2 longswordsmen, 2 knights and 1 crossbowmen that was once a scout. I used this same force to quickly wipe out Rome. I had to stop several times to get back to positive happiness so that I could keep the +15% science. After I finished Rome off, I waited a little bit, got up to Cavalry tech, upgraded, and over the next 50 ish turns of back and forth took out China. That was the last of my military adventure.

Techs:
Spoiler :

Tech wise, I started with mining as I had two gold within 2 tiles of Washington. While researching that I popped Pottery from a ruin. I then got Writing, hand built a library (I had used cash to buy another warrior to take Thebes early). After Writing, went Pihlosophy, Calendar, Theology. I finished the GL a few turns earlier then Theo finished (was turn ~85 I think) and used the shift+enter to finish it, then took Education. A little bit later I got GS and popped acoustics, and filled out 3/5 the Rationalism tree. I then finished out the tree until I was left with Metelagury and Fetilazer on the bottom, and didn't get those until I had finished Nano-tech.

Overall, I could have warred faster and dealt with happiness later. I was also really lucky with puppets, as most built libs/unis/temples/collos before barracks or walls. 4-5 maritime allies with every city trade routed makes lots of gold. I was at ~250 gpt from trade routes, and about 400 on building maintenance.

Epic speed is a bit slow for my liking:(

EDIT: Forgot to mention: I had an audio error around turn 200 and reloaded from an autosave. I then later had a graphical error around turn 275 and had to reload from an autosave again. Both times it was an autosave 1-2 turns earlier, and I did my best to play them the save. Hoping with this knowledge, you can use mine to help detect reloading and such.
 

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