My first VP game as The Shoshone - looking for advice (Prince/Standard Vers. 3.10.14)

[Xylon73]

Long time Civ V fan here, been a while since I played the game as well. I discovered this mod while browsing some 4x stuff, seemed really cool so I gave it a try! I picked the Shoshone, Prince, Communitas map script. and jumped in going for a science victory (progress, fealty, rationalism, order). I ended up losing due to China getting a culture victory, that I maybe could have stopped but it would have required a lot more playtime that i wasnt too invested in at that point (I had an atomic bomb loaded on a carrier that could have done damage to their capital, but it would have started a huge war I probably would have lost). Here's how it went down:

Spoiler View of the world on the last turn :

Spoiler View of my capital yields :

Spoiler Standings :

I picked the shoshone cause they were my favorite civ in V, plus I really like the great expanse as an ability. I felt I had a pretty strong start to the game, used my ruins choices to get a third pathfinder, get an early pantheon, and get my capital off to a strong start. On the main continent was myself, Morocco, Greece, Polynesia, and China. Songhai was to the west, as they conquered the Ottomans pretty early into the game. I'm pretty sure the Iroquois started on their own continent, which was lucky for them. Everyone on the main continent ganged up on Greece due to their early aggression, so I had pretty reliable friendships in the early game. I ended up taking Athens and vassalizing Greece while China and Polynesia got a city each.

Later eras are where things got more dicy, the other members on the continent all went freedom and essentially formed a block around me, never really declaring war, but isolating me diplomatically. My ally then became Songhai, but they sanctioned him, so I couldn't really do much there, and the Iroquois just kept attacking me. Science-wise I was always in the lead, but culture wise I could never quite catch up to China. Honestly I was more worried about Morocco winning a diplomatic victory first.

Some things I noted where I went wrong:
-I didn't understand the diplomacy mechanics until pretty far into the game. I really only did city state quests, and did not invest much into diplomats, etc. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize paper was "renewable" and you could keep producing those units, so Morocco boxed me in as you can see on those screenshots (they were pumping out great diplomats like crazy)
-I probably wasn't aggressive enough when I had the military edge. After vassalizing Greece I probably should have pushed to do more damage to Morocco/China. By the time they formed a defensive pact it was probably too late (you can see the massive military standoff I had with Morocco on our border).
-Not expanding aggressive enough (Morocco sniping that city location for Tangier because we had open borders made me so mad lmao).
-I wasn't overall impressed with my cities, I didn't nearly have the same levels of population, and I'm not exactly sure why not. I don't think my improvements placement was that well done. At some point I was just having workers improve whatever they could.
-Overall yields aren't that impressive tbh. I pretty much built every building instead of focusing on the necessary ones, which i think added a lot of building maintenance cost. I mostly relied on the city governor ai to assign slots, etc.
-I only made it to satellites in the tech tree, so I wonder if there was some issues there too.

I definitely want to give it another try, probably on King difficulty, with some additional mods:
3rd & 4th UC
Milae's map script
Civics and Reforms
And probably all of these:

I'm also looking at the new 4.0 releases, any I should try out? My game was crashing a LOT towards the end, which also killed my motivation to play.

So, my question, where do you all think I could improve? Or what additional info would you need to make that judgement? Thanks!

 

[Jejune]

the crashes in 3.10 were awful. I'm in a modern era game on 4.2 right now and haven't crashed once yet.

26 pop in the capital does seem really low for atomic era, especially since it looks like you put all three guilds in there. +19 food per turn? It's only working three specialist slots and probably has tons of others. Shoulda sent food trade routes! Think about it, does New York grow all of its own food?

City state/great diplomat minigame can be pretty important yeah. A lot of people will lock the civic specialist slots as soon as they become available in one or two cities (printing press I usually build outside the capital), treating them like a guild pretty much. Steady supply of great diplomats grabbing alliances and building embassies cushions you against getting fudged over by the world congress later and gives decent yields all game.

And as I can see you learned in the bottom left of the capital yields picture, building cities that are exposed to lots of water tiles, without investing into a large navy, is a really bad idea. Melee boats past corvettes love slamming cities and you really need to prevent then from doing that. Field artillery and planes on the coast can usually help a bit, but try to settle bays with 1 water tile or straight coasts with 2.

 

[Xylon73]

the crashes in 3.10 were awful. I'm in a modern era game on 4.2 right now and haven't crashed once yet.

26 pop in the capital does seem really low for atomic era, especially since it looks like you put all three guilds in there. +19 food per turn? It's only working three specialist slots and probably has tons of others. Shoulda sent food trade routes! Think about it, does New York grow all of its own food?

City state/great diplomat minigame can be pretty important yeah. A lot of people will lock the civic specialist slots as soon as they become available in one or two cities (printing press I usually build outside the capital), treating them like a guild pretty much. Steady supply of great diplomats grabbing alliances and building embassies cushions you against getting fudged over by the world congress later and gives decent yields all game.

And as I can see you learned in the bottom left of the capital yields picture, building cities that are exposed to lots of water tiles, without investing into a large navy, is a really bad idea. Melee boats past corvettes love slamming cities and you really need to prevent then from doing that. Field artillery and planes on the coast can usually help a bit, but try to settle bays with 1 water tile or straight coasts with 2.

That's awesome to hear, the 4.0 update looks cool with the extended naval combat folded in, so i think i will try that version next.

Food trade routes is probably a good idea, I guess I thought with progress i wouldnt need as strong of a capital, but clearly it did hinder me. In the screenshot im not working the farm tiles because i hit a culture focus, so i should probably have locked those in.

Yeah i basically did that, just too late! I think Morocco was faith buying them too, but i was just not producing those gpp. they can really add up over time.

Yeah i did have a large navy at some point, but the iroquois got the treasure fleet project and had a strategic monopoly and built a gazillion of them. I was honestly running into the unit cap issue trying to both keep a strong front in the west and a navy in the east, so i wonder if theres more i can do to work around that. I thought i had built all the buildings for it. But land units supporting them would have absolutely been helpful. My build just didnt get much from killing units, so maybe i might take some authority policies regardless.