7OTM09 (Sep 2025) - Completion of Modern Age (end of game) Spoiler Thread

[Eyswein]

At the top of your post please post the following:
- Map Played (Turns or Score)
- Victory Condition Achieved (Note: Militaristic was goal for 7OTM09)
Turns Map
- Final Total Turns in All Ages
- Recap of turns per age (turns in Antiquity, turns in Exploration, turns in Modern Age)
Score Map
- Score = Score (for Score Games; see Announcement thread for calculation)
- For score game, include screenshot of your End of Era Age Progress


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?

 

[RaidandTrade]

Antiquity: 96
Exploration: 83
Modern: 51
Total Turns: 230

Mementos: Ankus, Corona Civica
Legacies: Treasure Fleet GA, Econ, Sci, Diplo x 2, Culture x 2
Govt: Elective Republic

Having dumped a bunch of cash converting towns to cities and having failed to get the Science points in Exploration, the Treasure Fleet Golden Age was a no-brainer for me.
Cash bought Ironworks in a lot of cities to build science buildings.
Kept my Alliance with Catherine and created new Alliances with Himiko and Lafayette. Not sure who the other Civ was but I suspect Lafayette was the one who accounted for them in Exploration.
Spent a few turns moving my fleets around and positioning units and hit the war button on Turn 16. Didn't want to go too early as I wanted cities ready to take when I got my ideology.
Brought walls down and took out navies and units on seven cities but nobody else was near ideology yet so I was sitting around trying to culture up to ideology.
Had to take Patavium (Jose's third or fourth capital) as Catherine had taken a district so only one point for that one.
I left Zabid (island just off the east coast) and started moving my navy down the coast.
When I finally got into Fascism, I took the cities, mostly on that turn, then moved the rest of the navy for a few more coastals.
I cash bought some landships in Cahokia and Creek and moved them to Kanazama (east of Creek) and was poised to take Tokyo just to the south but Catherine took it. I thought this would leave me one point short so I ended my alliance with Catherine and denounced her only to find that Augustus settled another city close to cities I'd just taken. I backed away from Catherine's borders and took Frankfurt Am Main but the damage to my science was done with the end of my Alliance to Catherine.

All in all, a difference game to my usual. "Chopping" IPs instead of suzing them was interesting and certainly something I'm going to use more in future.

Spoiler End of Modern :

Spoiler Age Rankings :

Spoiler Legacies :

 

[Manpanzee]

24 turns Modern
51 turns Exploration
64 turns Antiquity
139 turns total

This age got off to a quick start, as I was able to fire all three wars turn 1 to begin the pillage fiesta. Felt a bit cheesy being able to do this without spending any influence, and against targets that were neutral/friendly with me as recently as the start of the previous turn. Consequences of continuity mode + softer relations reset on age transition?

Spoiler :

Mass pillaging got me to ideology on turn 9. My troops were mostly in the right places, but I miscalculated and ended up one settlement short of capturing everything I needed to on the exact turn. Not sure how much starting Manhattan Project a turn earlier would have mattered, though, as my production at this point was absolutely tanked by unhappiness.

Spoiler :

Finished my conquests on turn 10, then on turn 11 was eligible to peace out with Augustus, who was happy to accept ALL of the cities I'd just captured. This fixed my happiness and got the real production work going.

Spoiler :

I had a fairly strong production capital, with Tomb of Askia + economic attribute stacked for lots of resource slots and extra resource hammers. However, there was only one Militaristic IP on the map, and few chops made for a bit of waiting. Just clicked on through to finish victory on turn 24.

Spoiler :

Thank you to the mods for continuing to post these in spite of Civ VII's low-engagement doldrums. One game of Civ a month is about all I have the attention for right now, and this is definitely much more fun than "playing solo".

 

[RaidandTrade]

@Manpanzee - Well played. That's an insane time.

 

[Bleidraner]

38 turns Modern
50 turns Exploration
88 turns Antiquity
171 turns total

Finished the game, although I was a little demotivated, and I kinda phoned it in.

My troops were pretty far away from where they needed to be, for fast finish Modern needs to be set up in Exploration, and I didn't do it correctly. I should have not wiped the third civ, as the capital was full of buildings to pillage and my troops were already there. That would have added 1 or maybe 2 turns to Exploration as I was one turn away from a legacy that would have finished the age anyway. And in return for 1 turn I would have been able to shave at least 3 turns before Ideology and another couple of turns on conquest. I should also have prepped my troops better in the home continent. Also my capital was not amazing at production, I should have prepped it better.

Anyway, between moving the troops and choosing the right tiles to pillage it took me 17 turns to get to Ideology. And another 13 turns until t30ish to declare the peace deals, finish the military path and get rid of the extra cities. I was lucky with 4 military IPs, after chopping a couple of them and getting the +30% projects from an IP gift and +30% from communism, I managed to get Manhattan down to 3 turns and after that Project Ivy down to 5 turns, my capital production was not great. Finished t38.

@Manpanzee 's run is among the best play I have seen in this site, and a true tutorial for domination victory.

To the GoTM staff, this was really fun and underlines how much fun non deity games can be. Thank you for the right map, the right civs and the right victory condition. All the choices demonstrate a deep knowledge of the game.

I am not sure if I will play the other map, score victories are reaaaaally long if you play them right and you have to minimax huge empires, which takes an enormous amount of time, the time commitment is more than triple of a normal game, even with abbreviated ages.

Spoiler Screenshots :

 

[Ballcrusher]

Modern: 18 turns
Exploration: 62 turns
Antiquity:74 turns
Total: 154 turns

This is by far my fastest Modern win ever. I was lucky with 4 military independents spawning in Modern.

Playthrough:
T1: Declare war on Catherine, Augustus and Himiko and begin pillaging for culture.
T9: Starting Communism ideology and begin capturing settlements. I took 9 settlements this turn but in the last one a unit had just spawned and I had too few troops to kill it that turn. Catherine was eliminated.
T10: Conquer the last 10th city to unlock Victory Condition. Begin building Manhattan Project in capital. Disperse 1 military independent.
T11: Made peace with Augustus and Himiko and gave them back 6 settlements to avoid penalties.
T12: Disperse 2nd military independent to finish Manhattan Project and begin Operation Ivy in capital.
T13: Disperse 3rd and 4th military independent.
T18: Operation Ivy finished to win the military victory (I didn't even get to the Socialism civic to get the bonus hammers for projects).

Thanks for a fun game

Spoiler End of modern :

 

[Bleidraner]

Great run Ballcrusher! Pretty amazing stuff. Could you not have peaced put to get the settlement you were missing in the peace deal and saved another 2 turns? Also in that same turn give back the cities in one of the peace deals and lick off Manhattan?

 

[Ballcrusher]

Good idea, but I don’t think I could make peace before turn 11 (10 turns after the war declaration)

 

[Bleidraner]

Good idea, but I don’t think I could make peace before turn 11 (10 turns after the war declaration)

Of course you couldn’t, sorry

 

[GoblinMatron]

Turns Map

Total: 154
Modern: 17
Exploration: 51
Antiquity: 86

Mementos:
Clipeus Virtutis (+1 production in the Capital for every town)
Lotus Blossom (science and culture per turn equal to 4% of your gold income)

Legacies:
Militaristic (3): Golden Age, expansionist attribute
Cultural (3+1): Deep Roots, 2 cultural attribute
Economic (0): -
Scientific (3): 2 scientific attributes


T 01: I am very happy to see that there are 5 militraristic IPs on the map. 3 of them are far away from any settlement of mine, so I use my gold to buy units early in the closest settlements and move them to these IPs.
I decide to not convert any settlements to cities and just have my Capital as my only city, because I don't see the benefit of more cities. Not sure if that was the right call.
T 02: I start war against Himiko and Lafayette, pillaging districts and destroying their units and district defenses.
T 11: I research Fascism and start capturing enemy settlements
T 12: I finish the militaristic legacy path. I keep all enemy settlements because I took the Memento that gives production in the Capital for them and my Capital can manage the happiness penalty.
It takes me 4 turns to chop all 5 militaristic IPs and then it takes one more turn to finish Ivy Project
T 17: the age ends

I obviously got very lucky with the militaristic IPs.
Many others finished the Ideology before I did. Not sure if it was their choice of mementos, better pillaging, better setup from exploration age or something else that made their culture so much better than mine.

Thanks for the fun game.

Spoiler End of Modern :

 

[GoblinMatron]

Score Map

unfinished

Mementos:
Diamond Throne (+1 Happiness per age on Quarters during a celebration)
Lotus Blossom (Gain Science and culture per turn equal to 4% of your gold income)

Legacies:
Militaristic (3): 2 expansionist attributes, 1 militaristic attribute
Cultural (3): Deep roots, 1 diplomatic attribute
Economic (3): Tap the source, 1 economic attribute
Scientific (3+1): Enlightenment golden age, 2 wcientific attributes

I researched an Ideology and captured all settlements but one from every civ.
I got as many factory resources as possible (going far above the settlement cap) and built enough facories to work them all.
I got many artifacts (Himiko or Augustus maybe got one), but did not build museums.
I am in the process of building the science projects for that path.
I built Manhattan project and have one turn left for Ivy Project.

Now, I have to wait for the age to prgress to get as high a score as possible.
That is not fun and I am not going to do that. I thoght Id post my progress anyway to share my experience.

Spoiler map :

Spoiler Legacy Points :

 

[MACKA0ili]

Turns map
59 turns Modern
66 turns Exploration
98 turns Antiquity
223 turns total

Went with cultural attribute +1 and kept lotus blossom for my mementos. Picked Elective Republic for the cultural bonus and hoped that Deep Roots and my happiness would make the ideology research happen quickly. I got an ideology at around turn 12 with a well timed cultural city state and declared war on Lafayette quickly taking his last remaining settlements. Unfortunately, I didn't leave enough enemy settlements around to trigger the military victory so I had to declare war on my long time ally Augustus to finish it off which cost me another 10 turns. Started the Manhattan project at around turn 30 and realized just how little production I had in my capitol, finally finishing both builds for the victory 19 turns later.
Pretty unoptimized modern age, but it feels good to be doing gotms again even if it took me until the very end of the month to finish. Like I said in the Exploration age thread, I was on the new patch already so this save was already null and I didn't want to replay the age using the method Bleidraner mentioned. Still, it was good to get a preview of some of the changes they made for this patch and I'm excited to be playing Civ 7 again.