7OTM07 - Completion of Age of Exploration Spoiler Thread

[Eyswein]

At the top of your post please post: Difficulty Level & Number of Age of Exploration turns

A few questions to consider:
- What Legacy bonuses did you chose and why? What other start up things did you do at the beginning of the Age of Exploration?
- What was your plan for moving toward the victory condition? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
- Was the designated Civ a good choice or would you think a different one could have performed better?
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
- How many cities/towns did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few towns in this Age? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
- What were key production/purchase focuses?
- Religious bonuses chosen and why?
- What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
- Any cool info we forgot to ask about?
- How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
- Did you enjoy this Age?

 

[MACKA0ili]

Immortal - 88 Turns

Since it was allowed, at the start of the age I changed my mementos to Corona Civica (+1 settlement limit per age and +50% city conversion cost) and Lotus Blossom (Gain science and culture per turn equal to 4% of your Gold Income). For legacies, I went with a Golden Militaristic Age, +2 settlement limit, and 2 Science and Economic Attribute points each. Government was Plutocracy for Gold and I founded a Religion with Brahmanism for relics and Holy Ecumene for culture. The plan was to go full military focus in tech in order to eliminate Confucius as quickly as possible and then move on to Isabella to end the age faster while boosting my gold per turn as much as possible.
I transferred all my troops over to Confucius's cities and declared war as soon as they arrived. He fell pretty quickly, but not as fast as I wanted. I managed to get a lot of relics by converting his capital each time I took it over though. Once he was gone, I moved my army towards Isabella who had gotten a lot of settlements out. Warring her took even more time, during which I also went over to the distant lands and founded a settlement around three treasure resources. I met the other leaders there for one of Jose's quests but Ibn Battuta decided to declare war on me after forward settling. He didn't really do much though, and I got a city out of the peace deal to get some military legacy points. By the time I took out Isabella's main cities, I had gotten both Science and Cultural Golden Ages completed, but was still pretty far away from ending the age.
The rest of the age was spent trying to track down all of Isabella's cities while rushing future tech and civics. I got two future civics but no future techs. Meanwhile, I took out all of Isabella's settlements except for one which I could not find in the fog of war. I ended the age with 20 settlements, 3 of which I converted to cities. 60% of the world is also following my religion so I think I'll go with the Cultural Golden Age for Modern so I can keep that extra culture since I don't really need science for the victory type. Most of the other leaders are allied with me as well so I expect the modern age to go very smoothly. Exploration is my favorite age to play, so its kinda a shame to rush through it so quickly. Hopefully, I have set myself up for a good final score. Probably won't be sub-200, but we'll see. The new Urban Center focus should help a bit

 

[ABigCivFan]

Immortal 73 turns. (10 legacy pts, 3 science, 3 culture, 3 military, 1 econ), ended with 26 settlements.

Went aggressive expansion. Leveraged civ traits to get hight culture and gold per turn, and military conquest. Eliminated Isabela, then China, then Rome. Rome settled 2 distant land cities, so I kept them and converted them to my religion to get full Military legacy pts. Bought many culture Unique improvements to boost culture. Will try Siam or Russia in Modern.

Spoiler Turn 73 Yields :

 

[Manpanzee]

50 turns Exploration
101 turns Antiquity
151 turns so far

I swapped in Scientific and Expansionist attribute mementos, which is pretty standard for Exploration. For legacies, I took Fealty and then all other points went to attributes. No Golden Age this time -- I didn't get down any Academies in Antiquity, and I decided that I valued one more Economic attribute over a 500g savings from that Golden Age.

I only managed one tick of the Economic legacy path, but one civ wipe, two Future Civics, and one Future Tech were enough to end the age at exactly 50 turns. I could have shaved a turn and gotten another Future Tech if not for a scouting failure: I spotted a hostile IP Crossbowman on a far-off island, then lost two units to AI ships and the hostile Crossbowman while trying to find the IP itself. I didn't have time to get any other units over there, and really came up short in general on scouting. Will have a bit more of that to do in Modern.

I got DOW'ed mid-age by an alliance of Hatshetput and Isabella. Fighting them off was easy, and I got two nice cities out of Hatshesput. But the AI was also able to wipe out two of my IP allies, which did cost me a bit of yields. Late in the age I managed to ally with Ibn Battuta, which pulled me into a meaningless war with Ashoka for the last couple turns. I should be able to carry at least one alliance into Modern, with a possibility of picking up a second from Ibn's BFF Pachacuti.

I think that IP's are clearly problematically OP right now, and especially in the Exploration era. The Hub Town nerf wasn't enough to change that. Probably some adjustments will be called for to IP's themselves, while Spices stands out as needing a direct nerf -- I started the era with a free +40 influence per turn from four Spices resources that spawned in my lands. Who needs Hub Towns when you're getting that?

Other random note: I did not have access to Serpent Mound, and I also noticed that my menu of mementos was missing a persona pack option I was looking for. It appears they've fixed things so that a campaign stays on the expansion settings it was made with all the way through, rather than adding in any expansion packs that the local player might have on age transition. Good to see!

 

[vitorbaixinho]

Immortal 76 turns. (3 science, 3 culture, 3 military, 3 econ)

What Legacy bonuses did you choose and why? What other start-up things did you do at the beginning of the Age of Exploration?
Fealty for the 2 extra settlements, Silk Roads Golden Age, 1 Economic, 1 Science, 1 Exploration, and 1 Diplomatic.

What was your plan for moving toward the victory condition? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
My main goal was to quickly colonize the New World. The plan was to create enough colonies to complete both the Economic and Military legacy paths as fast as possible.
I failed in my religion belief choice. I didn’t know some beliefs only appear after building a temple, and by the time I built one, the belief I wanted — the one that gives relics when converting cities in distant lands — was no longer available.
I also missed a few wonders by a couple of turns, and I forgot to change the mementos.

Was the designated Civ a good choice or would you think a different one could have performed better?
I didn’t really think about it, but it turned out to be a good choice.

Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
Cartography → Astronomy → beeline Shipbuilding. I like going for masteries if they don’t take long to unlock.
Piety and Hawaiian civics.

How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
A lot of maritime rural expansion.

How many cities/towns did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few towns in this Age? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
I founded 5 cities in the distant lands and captured 3 more from Ashoka.
In the end, I had 7 cities and 8 towns.

What were key production/purchase focuses?
Infrastructure, a few settlers and naval units.

Religious bonuses chosen and why?
Treasure convoys +1 movement — that was great. Maybe not. I ended up delivering a lot of treasures even after completing the legacy path.
The others were the best options left: +4 happiness and +1 relic per city conversion.

What government did you select? Which bonus did you choose most and why?
Plutocracy, mainly for the gold.

Any cool info we forgot to ask about?
Not sure why, but just like in the previous Age, the yields mod wasn’t working — and that’s really helpful.

How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
For everything — city-state relations, trades.. .

Did you enjoy this Age?
I really enjoyed it.

Spoiler :

 

[Calcifer]

Immortal 75 turns - 3 military, 3 cultural, 3 scientific, 0 economic.

Spoiler Legacies :

I had a long ancient age so I had a lot of units already built for conquest, especially Leiomanos. I declared on Isabella early to take her good cities and wipe her out, then sent all my units exploring to reveal the whole map.
I was slow exploring because I didn't reveal enough map previous age and I didn't know where I could cross deep ocean, and I had low science so I got quite late to shipbuilding. That's why I got 0 economic legacy points.

Main goal of this age was unlock the Mughals and have enough settlements all over the map so I could get my explorers to artifacts quicker. I focused on culture so I could unlock future civic.
I got beaten to Hale o Keawe that was built by Inca on turn 14, so there would have been no way for me to get that so early. I managed to get Notre Dame though to boost my culture output.
I went Theocracy for culture boost.
I chose the wonder beliefs for religion as I always do, it works just so much better in my opinion.
Influence was spent mostly on IPs but I didn't have enough science to really take advantage of the free techs.
Ended the age on 6 cities and 12 towns, probably a couple more of what I really needed but I had some spare settlers at the end because exploration was so difficult.

 

[Bleidraner]

57 turns Exploration
100 turns Antiquity
157 turns so far

The Plan:
Slot in Expansion and Scientific Attributes Mementos. Start with a Manpanzee style settler spam, finish Military by planting and converting DL settlements, this also helps with Economic, Culture almost takes care of itself, befriend aggresively to get the free techs and snowball your culture, wipe one civ and get a couple future civics maybe future tech.

The Execution:
I struggled with influence all game long, still getting used to the nerfed hub towns. I was unlucky with spices, I got zero in homeland and only 2 in DLs, and one was buggy and did not register in the game either as a treasure or as a resource for the extra influence in cities. The other one worked as advertised. Basically I started with sub 50 influence and was not able to push it up significantly during the age. On the other hand, I wiped Augustus, who was down to one city, and had the opportunity to go after Hatsheput, and I wiped her too, although in Exploration the effects of wiping a civ seem to be smaller in terms of accelerating age progression than they used to be.
I am not certain that going after Hatsh was the right thing to do, as I had to build fleets, maybe I could have saved those resources to push harder culture and science to get an additional future civic or tech, but I doubt it, as I would have had to do 6 turns faster culture or 10 turns faster science. Plus Waset is a production monster, I will want to change my capital to Waset in the age transition.
Biggest challenge was my lack of influence, and of course the war with Hatsh did not help my influence generation.
As beliefs, I took Icons (2 relics for first time City State conversion), Interfaith Dialogue for the science, and Stella Maris for the faster embarked movement, very powerful in archipielago. I did not touch the Hawaii civics or Reformation as I was running very tight on culture due to the late slow befriending. Finished three paths and put 2 in Economic, wiped the 2 AIs and when I got the future civic that ended the age.

Regrets:
I did not settle or conquer any cities on the eastern border of the Antiquity archipielago mass, and I will regret that in Modern. I intended to, but forgot when I made the peace deal with Isabella, I got Aquileia to the north of Waset instead for the silvers (thinking of Modern). That was a mistake, I could always have conquered Aquileia later in the age as it was very close to Waset, and an Easter city would have been very useful for Modern, Knossos or even Ardabil.
My exploration was pretty good, but I should have bought a couple extra scouts and explored the south better.
I should have worked harder on the alliances, I am going to need them in Modern. I managed to get Ashoka allied, but I should have pushed harder with Pachacuti. 2-3 more trade routes with Pachacuti may have taken me closer to alliance level.
I think I am well set up for Modern, I have settlements in all four continents, my exploration was good, and I have 3 potential high production cities.

EDIT:
Manpanzee's done this thing in 50 turns. Absolutely amazing.

Fun Exploration age, thank you GoTM staff. On to Modern.

Spoiler Screenshots :

 

[ndymck]

105 turns Exploration
131 turns Antiquity
236 turns so far

- What Legacy bonuses did you chose and why? What other start up things did you do at the beginning of the Age of Exploration?
Started with cartography followed by astonomy for science.

- What was your plan for moving toward the victory condition? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
I worked towards upping my science and culture yields, as they weren't great in antiquity. Felt a little like I was playing catch up, the AIs were outpacing me to everything.

- Was the designated Civ a good choice or would you think a different one could have performed better?
I like hawaii, they worked well, but like I said I was playing catch up after not having a great antiquity.

- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
I tried to get as many settlements as I could to take advantage of the hawaii bonus on fishing boats.

- Religious bonuses chosen and why?
Went with the bonus that gave +2 relics for conversion of settlement with a wonder because the capital one was gone already.

- What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
The one that gives science and culture. Most celebrations ended up boosting culture.

- How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
I didn't have a lot of city states available, so I used a lot of it on the bonuses with the leaders that weren't hostile with me.

- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
It seemed like everyone hated me, and were constantly war dec'ing me. Didn't end up doing a lot of fighting, but I was always dealing with someone sending troops to clean up.

- Did you enjoy this Age?
It was pretty good, felt like I got myself back in good shape for modern age.

 

[Suicidekills]

Immortal Turn 70

My only note on the Legacy bonuses was that I chose the ampitheater golden age legacy card to get a boost of culture to start. Everything else was Attribute points.

The plan was to keep going heavy on culture and gold. Religion fit into that plan perfectly. My reliquary belief was Reliquaries (+1 relic for first time conversion of another civilization’s settlement that has a temple or an altar). At first I was concerned about my choice, as only one settlement on my homelands qualified when I first founded my religion, but as time went by, it turned out to be as effective as I was hoping for.

I started out with a lot of cogs. I wanted to explore the distant lands as well as possible. I invested in trade and religion often. Hatshepsut was trying to denounce and I was holding her off with my influence, but one turn I didn’t have enough to reject her denouncement. Luckily, I was able to pump enough trade routes into her lands to keep her at bay. I had an alliance with Confucius, and he tried to get me into a war with Augustus. I wasn’t falling for that though. You go and fight your own wars. Hatshesput had Confucius and Isabella as allies, but it was pretty much her versus Augustus. In antiquity, I took out Meroe while they were landing an assualt on Roman lands (saved his butt ). This is why Augustus is more powerful in my games compared to others who focused on fighting with Confucius.

While I was focusing on trade and religion, I also made an expansionist push into the distant lands. I ended up with 7 settlements in distant lands and one new one in homelands. I had one more location I wanted to settle near Torres del Paine (a NW inexplicably not claimed even though it’s like right next to Isabella), but my Settler got to the spot one turn before the game ended. My settlement limit ended at 17, and the whole time I was just trying to catch up to it and never did. It took a really long time to get all my settlers over to distant lands. Maybe I have to beeline shipbuilding from now. Having to babysit your merchants and missionaries because the game will just send them into deep ocean on a suicide missions is annoying as well.

Game Note: If Isabella is in the game, she should 100% be Spain 100% of the time. This applies to similar scenarios. Augustus being Spain in this game should not have happened. The devs should look into this.

Besides all of that, I also built another 10 wonders. I started my journey very disappointed as I thought I was going to get the House of Wisdom since it would only take me three turns to build but after two turns Pachacuti (this guy needs a nerf) built it. I had really high hopes for House of Wisdom because I chose one of Jose Rizal Legends in the leader attribute tree. The legend provided a 15% boost to and buildings and wonders with great work slots. I also went with enhancer belief that provided a relic slot to science buildings, so I liked this legend even more (even though I ended up purchasing most of my science buildings). My founder belief was the one that provided +4 culture for every foreign settlement following your religion. Oh yeah and I spent a solid five minutes in the beginning of the age looking for Rila Monastery.

With my religion and expansion, culture and military legacy paths were completed. I almost got the second point in economic, and I had just enough specialists and adjacency bonuses from culture buildings to get exaclty 5 tiles over 40 yields. I felt like Jose Rizal was even more generic in this age. Still not a fan of his +50% celebration length. Hawaii was very fitting. They’re the civ I chose in my only archipelago Aksum game before this. The culture went through the roof, but besides that Hawaii isn’t very exciting. It would probably feel even less so if it wasn’t an archipelago map. I also still have yet to be a part of any war, so staying peaceful is going well. See you all in Modern!!

 

[GoblinMatron]

Turns: 65
Antiquity: 98
Total: 163

Mementos:
Shakokidogu: cultutal attribute
False Beard: +2 culture on all Wonders

Legacies:
militaristic (3): +2 settlement limit, 1 expansionistic attribute
cultural (3+1): 2 cultural attributes, 2 diplomatic attribute
economic (3): golden Age, 1 economic attribute
scientific (2): 2 scientific attributes

Plan:
- befriend many IPs
- send trade routes and explore
- be peaceful in homelands.
- go to war in distant lands
- get relics for IPs
- get as much Silver as possible
- have settlements on all continents, preferrably with a university

Techs:
Cartography - Astronomy - Cartography2

Civics:
Economics - Piety - Inspiration - Theology - Mercantilism

Government:
Theocracy

Religion:
Icons: relics for converting city states
Holy Ecumene: culture for converted settlements
Stella Maric: movement for naval and embarked units

Game:
Being peaceful in homelands did not work. Nobody liked me and all 3 homeland leaders declared war constantly. I did not really engage with these wars, because I needed my military in distant lands. There, I tried to eliminate Pachacuti, but I started too late and he survived with 2 settlements. One of them the settlement on the green continent I will need next age...
Overall, everything took longer than anticipated. I probably should just have eliminated a homeland civ to shorten the age.