7OTM07 - Completion of Modern Age (end of game) Spoiler Thread

[Eyswein]

At the top of your post please post:
Difficulty Level & Victory Condition Achieved (Note: Culture was goal for 7OTM07)
Recap of turns per age (turns in Antiquity, turns in Exploration, turns in Modern Age)
Score = Total turns in All Ages (fewest is goal)

A few questions to consider:
- What Legacy bonuses did you choose and why? What Civ did you choose & why? What other start up things did you do at the beginning of the Modern Age?
- What was your plan for achieving 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?
- 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?
- Did you settle more towns/cities in the Modern Age? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
- What were key production/purchase focuses?
- What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
- Any other good info?
- 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 the game?

 

[MACKA0ili]

Immortal - Cultural Victory
Antiquity - 105 turns | Exploration - 88 turns | Modern - 44 turns
Score = 237 turns total

I decided to play as Russia for this final age since they start out with culture and science on districts of which I had a lot of from conquest. For mementos, I stuck with Lotus Blossom for the extra 4% science and culture from gold income and put back in Shakokidogu for another cultural attribute point which I spent on getting to 25% extra culture from the end of that tree. I chose the cultural golden age to keep Holy Eumene (+4 culture per converted foreign settlement, +1 culture per owned converted settlement), Deep Roots for +52 extra culture from the relics I gathered, 2 expansionist attribute points to get a free pop in all my towns, a science attribute point to get the gold and happiness discount on buildings and then Lyceums just because. I made sure to set all of my natural wonder settlements to resort towns and at least 4 urban centers so I could buy enough museums without having to convert towns. I also chose elective republic for the extra 20% culture celebrations which would be constantly active this age.
I was going to go full into culture to quickly get hegemony up for the extra artifacts from research. Before then, I spent my initial cash stack on explorers and museums and built trade routes in my capitol after researching steam power. I befriended a cultural and economic city state for an extra artifact and more gold to work with and spent the rest of my influence on trade routes and agreements to build up alliances for the 10% culture bonus per alliance. I was so focused on pumping up my culture that I neglected my gold and production a bit which slowed down my progress since I had to wait a few turns to purchase another explorer closer to an artifact spot or on another continent. Jose Rizal's quests for starting trade routes with everyone came in handy since a lot of them would give you 1k gold which would be just enough to buy another explorer. After hitting hegemony fairly early on, I realized I didn't need all that culture for future civic artifacts since I had enough artifacts in the pipeline to complete the legacy path. I decided to research facism for the extra +3 production from specialists and the first russian civic mastery for the +15% production. When the final artifacts rolled in, my capital was at about 160 hammers per turn which gave me 10 turns to complete the world's fair wonder.
During this time, Isabella declared war one last time. And so, I spent the last 10 turns finally finishing what I started in the exploration age and fully eliminated her; razing her new settlements and claiming the one that eluded me in the fog of war back then. Overall, it was a pretty good age. I do like modern despite how short it can be if you prep correctly. I probably would have been faster if I focused more on gold than culture. I'm getting a bit faster now, but I still can't get sub 200 total turns. My exploration and modern ages are probably about 20 turns longer than they could have been and I know there are some people who can go even lower. For the game as a whole, I like the fact that we were allowed choose our mementos past the first age. I've never really done that before since I honestly just forget that you can change them during the age transitions most of the time. I'm liking how each of these games can be so different to the last; the amount of settings that can be either fixed or free helps a lot with the variety. It's probably also a bit harder to put these together because of all the options so I really appreciate you guys trying out these different setups each month.

 

[Manpanzee]

29 turns Modern
50 turns Exploration
101 turns Antiquity
180 turns total

Civ: Russia (more culture is obviously good, I did care at least a bit about the science for Factories, and there's a relevant +hammers tradition)
Mementos: Culture attribute and Diplomatic attribute (zzz)
Legacies: Golden Age Universities, rest attribute points
Government & Ideology: Culture/science celebration, Democracy (I wanted the +wonder hammers, didn't really care about the specialist culture by the time I got there)

I set up three cities and left the rest on towns. One town was an Urban Center to allow Museums on all four continents.

Mostly just gold-buying Museums and Explorers, with Merchants, some miscellaneous military, and a single Factory thrown in. I believe I had the cash to afford nine Explorers, aided by a lot of Silver available from trade routes.

I was able to stack up a bunch of +hammer modifiers to help with World's Fair: Russia tradition, Democracy policy, both sources of Leadership, a couple Diplomatic attribute cappers, and a seven-Coffee Factory. I was also lucky enough to have four Militaristic IPs spawn this age. It turned out I had enough that four chops let me zero-turn the World's Fair, finishing it the turn I unlocked it.

I did notice that town-city connections still seem to be pretty buggy and inconsistent. I've had games where nearly every settlement sends food with ease, and others (like this one) where tons of towns are inexplicably unable to send food to cities less than ten tiles away. Some of that is probably Archipelago related, but not all. Definitely still stuff to fix there.