7otM07 Announcement

[Eyswein]

Welcome to Civ VII Game of the Month - 07

These games will allow new and old GotM fans to play Civ7 in a friendly competitive environment. Participants are encouraged to post questions, stories, advice, tricks and failures in the dedicated game threads (described below). Each game will specify the Civ you will play.

How to Play

1. Please read our Must Read Rules and Game Details sections below for important information before playing.
2. Consult our Other Useful Information section below and ask spoiler free questions in this thread before starting your game if needed.
3. Click the 7otMxxx.Civ7save file attachment at the bottom of this post to download the Civ6 savefile.
4. Move the Civ7 savefile from your ...\Downloads folder to your ...\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VIi\Saves\Single folder. (This is the standard Civ67install location so please let us know if yours is different or you can't find it)
5. Load the 7otMxxx.Civ7save file in Civ7 and play the game adhering to all our Rules and Victory Conditions specified below. (In game, click Single Player, Load Game, 7otMxxx should be at the top.)
6. Once finished, report your results in the appropriate thread and attach your finished save game to your post in the final thread.

Must Read Rules!

We would like to ask you to please abide by our most sacred rule: Do NOT replay any turns! If you make a mistake, accept it and try to recover. To ensure fair play and prevent results exclusions, please set your Autosaves to 1 turn. In the event of a computer crash while playing, just reload to the previous save and play it as closely to how you played it the first time.
We also ask that you only use UI mods and not any game changing mods.

Game Details

Goal for this Civ7 GOTM: Fewest total turns.
This Civ7 GOTM Final Score Example: Across all 3 ages, keep track of your turn per age. Add all 3 of them together for total.
Civ7 Scoring: In most previous Civ games, fewest total turns has been a good measure; appears to still be a good overall measure, but please provide feedback if you believe there is a better method.

Victory Condition: Culture (in Modern Age) (all VCs are enabled)
Player (You): Jose Rizal - Aksum (Antiquity Age)
Player (You): Hawaii (Exploration Age) - please chose Hawaii for the Exploration Age; specific civs may or may not be required for Civ 7 GOTMs
Player (You): Any (Modern Age) - please chose any Civilization for Modern Age; specific civs may or may not be required for Civ 7 GOTMs
Mementos: Shakokidogu, Kwalkwali (pick any mementos you desire for future ages; specific mementos may or may not be required for Civ 7 GOTMs)
Mementos bonuses: +1 culture attribute point; +1 gold per age for each resource assigned to cities
Starting Age: Antiquity
Difficulty: Immortal Note: If you normally only play Deity, try to achieve a culture super speed run --- <175 (or <150 if that sounds too easy) total turns across all three ages with a Culture Victory. If this is a higher level than you normally play, try it and then read what others did if you don't make it.
Game speed: Standard
Map Type/Size: Archipelago / Standard Size
Age Length: Standard
Civs (including player): 8 Civs
Crisis: Yes
Disaster Intensity: Light
Game Seed: 1389724759
Map Seed: -1947645665
Note: specific leaders and civilizations selected in game setup

Game Options:
Start: Ancient Era
Enabled: Independent Powers
Game Version: This game was created in Civ7 version 1.2.2 as of 25 April 2025
Game Requirements: Civ7 vanilla patched

Starting Position


Other Useful Information
Unique Attributes:

Spoiler Unique Attributes :

Leader: Jose Rizal

Leader bonus:

• Leader Ability: Pambansang Bayani: When gaining rewards from a Narrative Event, gain an additional +20Culture, Gold and Influence per Age. Increased Celebration duration and Happiness towards Celebrations by +50%. Has additional Narrative Events.
• Leader Attributes: Cultural & Diplomatic
• Starting Biases: Tropical

Thread information:

Spoiler Thread information :

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. Once you have opened the save, DO NOT POST game-related information in the Announcement thread.

Internal staff coordination - @leif erikson @Blake00

Game Length:

This game ends 1 August 2025.

 

[Eyswein]

Hold this spot.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I wonder where to settle on that start. Lots of water around, more than i usually like for a City (let alone the capital) but that spot isn't even coastal so SIP wouldn't even benefit from Aksum 15% gold Tradition.
I started a test game as Hawaii just to check what sort of bonuses they get from water tiles and it's purely culture so settling there, especially going for the coast, would leave a production starved city for the entire game.
I don't like delaying settling more than a turn or two but in this case it might be worth wandering for a while but jungle could make it painful. Looks like a cliff to the west so possibly another coast.

 

[Calcifer]

I’ve been meaning to ask, are we sure that a city settled on a navigable river does not count as coastal for Aksum tradition? It probably doesn’t but I’m not 100% sure.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I didn't test this, i'm assuming the wording is correct since it specifically states "adjacent to coast" rather than "adjacent to a water tile" and coast is a specific terrain type (lakes would probably count since they are coast too)

 

[Michael Lindskou]

was gonna try this, but fewest total nummer across all ages is such a turn off... it forces you to eliminated 1-2 players in ancient and explo, to be competetive :/

Loaded the map and map tacks not working in this save.. :/ im not gonna play a full game without maptacks

 

[Eyswein]

I’ve been meaning to ask, are we sure that a city settled on a navigable river does not count as coastal for Aksum tradition? It probably doesn’t but I’m not 100% sure.

The +1 resource per city does work for coast or navigable river tiles. The in-game description has been updated to state coast or navigable river. I've verified.

The 15% gold tradition does not work on navigable rivers. It is coast only.

Updated above to clarify the different traditions.

 

[Eyswein]

was gonna try this, but fewest total nummer across all ages is such a turn off... it forces you to eliminated 1-2 players in ancient and explo, to be competetive :/

Loaded the map and map tacks not working in this save.. :/ im not gonna play a full game without maptacks

Sorry to hear. We'll post another poll on desired goal now that we've had some more games. We did modern age only fewest turns in 7otM06, but that also has impact of getting an advantage by extending the Antiquity/Exploration age as long as possible. Civ 7 is definitely different than previous versions - you could generally be peacefully competitive for non-domination goals in Civ 6 with fewest turns. All potential competitive conditions seem to force you down a path more than you were in Civ 6, etc..

Not sure how to get mods to work with a base game save. Not sure if it is a result of the new patch or something else. So far, testing has shown that even if you don't have the mementos selected unlocked you can still play it with them and if you have developer provided add-ons they still work even though the game was created and saved with no add-ons.

 

[Eyswein]

I wonder where to settle on that start. Lots of water around, more than i usually like for a City (let alone the capital) but that spot isn't even coastal so SIP wouldn't even benefit from Aksum 15% gold Tradition.
I started a test game as Hawaii just to check what sort of bonuses they get from water tiles and it's purely culture so settling there, especially going for the coast, would leave a production starved city for the entire game.
I don't like delaying settling more than a turn or two but in this case it might be worth wandering for a while but jungle could make it painful. Looks like a cliff to the west so possibly another coast.

While SIP loses the +15% gold tradition, it does maintain the +1 resource slot tradition.
With the two clay bonus resources (+1 on warehouses) and 3 additional mangroves to the south (for more clay pits), you may be able to get a decent production for the antiquity era. If set it up right, could even get some decent early culture bonuses from Hawilt.

Lots to consider.

 

[Manpanzee]

I don't think there's a single goal metric that's going to please everyone. The "only modern era turns count" really doesn't appeal to me and is a significant part of why I didn't participate in 7otM06. Probably just gotta keep rotating.

 

[Bleidraner]

Same here, I like the variation, and not very keen on fewest turns in Modern.

Also, @Michael Lindskou while wiping 2 civs in Antiquity will absolutely make you extremely competitive with potentially a t90 finish if you do everything right, doing that in Immortal in an Archipielago map is very very tough withought screwing up your legacy paths progression. I don't think you can be completely peaceful but I would target 1 civ wipe late in Antiquity if the map allows it. You can also try for peaceful and try to go sub100 through befriending, Jose potentially has the Culture chops to be able to do it (I think), I have seen it done although I have not done it myself. But that strategy is situational and really depends on position and nature of the IP spawns and I don't think you can do it in a map where you are not going to meet all the IPs, I would suspect it only works on Pangea. Myself, I am pretty certain that I will go for 1 civ wipe if I can, and push culture hard, see if I can get a couple of future culture civics.

Very interesting challenge, I have to think this through, maybe spawn my own map and play a Jose Rizal/Archipielago first as I have not really played either the leader or the map before in a serious way. Thank you GoTM staff. BTW, I am totally cool with difficulties that are not Deity, the challenge here is the other players, not the difficulty level.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

was gonna try this, but fewest total nummer across all ages is such a turn off... it forces you to eliminated 1-2 players in ancient and explo, to be competetive :/

I'm definitely not a fan of the "fewest turns across all ages" for that very same reason. That's why i experimented with modern only in GotM06. It definitely encourages delaying the end of the exploration to get more bonuses and i can see that being an annoyance to some players but one can also see it as some sort of "puzzle mini-game", trying to get all the different GAs to trigger at the same time. Unfortunately, no matter which goal is set, it will result in forcing some type of gameplay and different players will prefer different gameplays so alternating is probably the way to go.
Also hopefully FXS will keep adding more options to create different games. I wonder how turning off some legacy paths will affect the game, but one thing i'd like to see is the ability to turn off the "sudden death" victories and go for a real score victory. Civ7 would probably work much better than previous games for score victory thanks to each age being it's own, shorter, game and the ability to push age progress with our achievements, so it shouldn't feel like we'd be waiting forever just for the turns to tick.

Lots to consider.

Indeed. I can definitely imagine a "diamond" of Halits to the south and gold is not the most important yield so yeah ... lots to consider. I will have to decide something thought, one way or another or i'll never start that one

 

[Berrern]

Sorry to hear. We'll post another poll on desired goal now that we've had some more games. We did modern age only fewest turns in 7otM06, but that also has impact of getting an advantage by extending the Antiquity/Exploration age as long as possible. Civ 7 is definitely different than previous versions - you could generally be peacefully competitive for non-domination goals in Civ 6 with fewest turns. All potential competitive conditions seem to force you down a path more than you were in Civ 6, etc..

How about trying a victory condition based on "total legacy path points"? I'm not referring to the points under Rankings -> Legacy Points, but rather the total of your points scored on each path throughout the game.

For example here, I would get 2 + 12 + 7 + 20 = 41 points from Antiquity:

What's interesting here is that you can overachieve many of these paths, for example in one game I had a 30/20 score on Silk Roads.

Using these points as a score indicator would lead to a very different game, where you would want the ages to last as long as possible, to focus on achieving (and overachieving) all legacy paths - rather than rushing to complete an age in as few turns as possible.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'd love a setup like that!

 

[Suicidekills]

To me, total turns in Modern Age only is not the way to go. You can do way too many things to manipulate the previous two ages to gain an advantage and, I don't think you should be rewarded for taking more turns. Defeats the whole purpose of competing for the fewest turns. Also, it makes the first two ages seem less significant. I don't mind the Legacy point idea brought up by Berrern, but I fear that could become manipulated as well. If you can pick your exploration civ, maybe you go for Songhai or Inca to gain an unfair advantage in the economic legacy department.

The game has evolved and the Game of the Month should as well. Total turns is better than just Modern Age turns, but maybe there needs to be some sort of benchmark. Like for this 7otM, you needed to build at least 5 Wonders for your game to qualify. If you didn't build 5 wonders, sorry better luck next month. This is just a basic example. I'm sure whoever creates these would have a blast figuring out their own qualifiers for the game.

 

[Ballcrusher]

Question about mods: When I start this game all my UI mods are not in the game? I haven’t tried that with other GOTM-saves. And my mods work fine when I start a new game. Anyone knows why my UI mods don’t work with this save?

 

[Lord Yanaek]

How about trying a victory condition based on "total legacy path points"? I'm not referring to the points under Rankings -> Legacy Points, but rather the total of your points scored on each path throughout the game.

This could probably work but it would have to be "equalized" in some way. It's much easier to slot a resource than build a wonder which is why you need 20 resources to complete "Silk Roads" but only 7 wonders to complete "Wonders of the Ancient World". So in this case a resource might be worth 0.05 pts (1/20) while a wonder would be worth 0.14 pts (1/7). Or if you want more readable numbers a wonder could be worth 2.9 pts (20/7).
The downside is that you'd probably need to input your results in a spreadsheet as players would quickly give up on calculating their score (or make mistakes). That or have someone create a mod that calculates and displays the "GotM Unified Score" on the victory screen. I actually had a number of ideas for more complex scoring systems involving not just the legacy points but also the number of turns relative to some hypothetical baseline for an efficient run. I gave up due to the complex maths involved as everyone should be able to post their results easily or they just won't care to post them.

The game has evolved and the Game of the Month should as well. Total turns is better than just Modern Age turns, but maybe there needs to be some sort of benchmark. Like for this 7otM, you needed to build at least 5 Wonders for your game to qualify. If you didn't build 5 wonders, sorry better luck next month. This is just a basic example. I'm sure whoever creates these would have a blast figuring out their own qualifiers for the game.

One of my first suggestions soon after the release of Civ7 was to ditch out any "competitive" scoring in favor of a much more flexible system of "goals" which could be as simple as scoring xx total legacy points or as weird as not producing any settler as Rome (thus forcing you to conquer and use your Legatus for expansion). However most of the playerbase here seem die hard on the "least turns" approach which, in my eyes, is the most easily manipulated in Civ7 (it used to work in previous titles, but is no longer valid). Want to win a quick Science victory : go berserk and eliminate 2 civs in the antiquity, want to win a quick Culture victory go berserk and eliminate 2 civs in the antiquity ... there's simply no diverging from this one tactic. If you're going for a quick victory you eliminate 2 civs in the antiquity (or more if you can), anything else is secondary, actively pushing for your victory is secondary, legacy points are secondary ...
Civ7 was simply not meant to be played as a race, it's a points-based game and the turn limit exists to prevent players from just stalling age progression forever.
Even the "sudden death" victories don't really belong in the game anymore but the devs were probably afraid of removing those in favour of a true score victory which for the first time in Civ looks like the natural conclusion of the game.

 

[Berrern]

@Lord Yanaek you make some very good and valid points, which I didn't consider when putting forward my suggestion. You could easily slot another 50 points in your Modern age factory legacy path, but good luck doing that in the Antiquity culture path!
I suppose you could base it on each age; whoever gets the most points in 1 age 'wins' that age, and whoever wins the most ages would be the winner. But this method has its own drawbacks as well.

I really like your idea of the "Unified score", but it gets very complicated.

I just wish there was another way to score these games, rather than the lowest number of turns... Back to the drawing board!

 

[Eyswein]

How about trying a victory condition based on "total legacy path points"? I'm not referring to the points under Rankings -> Legacy Points, but rather the total of your points scored on each path throughout the game.

For example here, I would get 2 + 12 + 7 + 20 = 41 points from Antiquity:

View attachment 736964

What's interesting here is that you can overachieve many of these paths, for example in one game I had a 30/20 score on Silk Roads.

Using these points as a score indicator would lead to a very different game, where you would want the ages to last as long as possible, to focus on achieving (and overachieving) all legacy paths - rather than rushing to complete an age in as few turns as possible.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'd love a setup like that!

On 1 September I plan to release two maps, one for turn based and one for score based. Since they will be different maps (same leader, etc.) folks can play both games without spoilers.

I've been thinking about this and was thinking the same as @Lord Yanaek to normalize it as a percentage of each legacy path (especially since Economic in Modern age is X/500).

Each age would be a percentage of the possible and x100 just because I think 100% sounds better than 1.00. Above would be 100x (2/7+12/12+7/10+20/20) = 298 (truncated decimal). If one has more in an area you would score more; for example, so if you had 9 wonders and 25 resources in the above your score would be 100x (9/7+12/12+7/10+25/20) = 423 points from antiquity. So exactly hitting the max in each would yield a score of 400 for the age and 1200 for all three combined (or >1200 if above the goal).

The Modern Age would tend to run a little long since there is no age progression for the 3d legacy path milestone so may need to adjust turn limit for Modern Age. Assuming you completed the 2d age progress objective for each legacy path you only reduce the age by 60 progress points (turns on standard speed), making a standard age length game 140 turns and an abbreviated age length game 100 turns in modern (assuming nothing else is done to speed up the end). Potentially can reduce this by just stating you must complete the Modern Age NLT a specific turn and complete the win victory condition on that turn (failure to complete means loss?). Game 'ends' on that turn for GOTM purposes, but no way to auto force it in the game. Hence the 'exact match' score would be 400+400+400=1200 points total, but obviously can score more than that.

Easy to create a spreadsheet to share, but I've never done modding. I'll look at how to do that as that would be awesome just to show it on a screen like the above.

Thoughts?