7otM14 (2 Jan 2025) - Completion of Age of Exploration Spoiler Thread

[Eyswein]

At the top of your post please post the following:
- Turns in this Age = Number of Turns
- Total number of Turns so far (Antiquity + Exploration)

A few questions to consider:
- What Civilization did you choose for the Exploration Era?
- How did the new patch impact your game?
- 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?

 

[civfanatic4sure]

Turns: 52 // all legacy paths except 2/3 econ + 3 civ wipes // 22/15 settlements w/ 5 cities

Plan: I was the first to discover Mt Everest in Antiquity so I chose Iceland since they have a naval UU and get bonuses for pillaging. For mementos I took a science attribute and a military attribute so I could take fealty and get two military points for a settlement limit and promo on commanders. Had the civ wipes lined up. Settlers ready to go to distant lands to easily get econ victory. Started with econ golden age so 5 cities from the jump -- converted Baak before taking golden age for cheap. Religion to get relics from converting my own cities and then civ relic ability from masteries and unique civilian units for the rest. Thought a 40 turn age was a lock. Civic plan was temples >> first two Iceland to get increased range on pillaging >> theology (took movement to treasure fleets) >> then finish Iceland tree + masteries. Tech tree beeline to shipbuilding. Also would focus on getting both kilns and pavilions in all my cities to max culture for modern since all I think matters is rushing an ideology.

Approach: I had a lot of gold carry over from antiquity so I bought a 3rd & 4th settler to hit the distant lands that were all up and down the map to the east. Went to war w/ Lafayette immediately and had him out in a few turns after pillaging everything available. In the middle of that went to war w/ Confucius and same story, pillage everything and a wipe. I raised the small 2nd settlement from both civs since they were useless and I was trying to manage settlement limit happiness so I could keep golden age on perma (+20% culture). Moved on to Isabella, rinse and repeat, pillaged every tile, and kept 2/3 settlements, her antiquity capital and the settlement with Uluru and a bunch of its culture bonus tiles. Sent troops to hang on the border of Sayyida and went to war w/ Ibn Battuta taking his antiquity capital and then just pillaging the rest of his settlements, leaving them to capture in modern. Everything was as planned until I got hurt on Econ and Science legacy paths. (Econ) The worst TR spawn I've seen in a long time. There was one settlement I got 3 TRs barely fit into one settlement and then there was nothing but singles the entire rest of the map. Knew right there I was never going to get econ path under 40. I lost some turns swimming around with settlers, skipping over single TR settlements expecting to find something more densely packed... so I settled a bunch late after swimming back to the closer single TR settlements. No problem, with 2/3 econ and all the others complete with the 3 civ wipes I'm looking at 35+35+35+15+30=150 age progress, so a 50 turn age is still fine. (Science) I was gearing up to get my specialists in the early 40s and then every settlement started getting the plague. I finished the age with 8 migrants floating around! I had 9 total with only one I was able to re-home because most settlements were in unrest. Had to do some gymnastics with urban/rural building drops in the capital to get 3 specialists on turn 52 when my cap finished its plague.

Mildly Interesting Notes: (1) I could have had 4 or even 5 civ wipes in under 45 turns but I was afraid of not leaving enough settlements for ideology points in modern.

Future Age Setup: Was already at war with Sayyida and Ibn, and declared war on my ally Xerxes the last turn to start hostile in modern. Have all three bands of boats/troops at each of their doorsteps to run as soon as I get an ideology.

 

[Bleidraner]

Ant t105, Expl t38, all legacy paths
Total so far: 143

After a very poor Antiquity, an excellent Exploration. Everything important happened in t1.

The plan:
Get to the Kanta Civic as soon as possible to unlock Songhai's ability to produce treasure convoys in the homelands. Focus on war from t1 to wipe as many civs as possible, making sure we leave at least 10 settlements for Modern, as we will need them to complete the military legacy path. Complete all other paths, relatively easy to do in exploration in 40 turns with the right religion.

Execution:
As mementos I took the Expansionist attribute point and the Scientific one. Everything that mattered happened in t1. I am going to summarize t1 here.

T1
- I have already 2 river locations, I will have a third as soon as I wipe Xerxes (wiped him in t2). I can build/buy 2 settlers for locations 4 and 5, those will not be great settlements but they are there for one reason only: to build treasure convoys. I think I can reach Kanta by t16 with 5 river sttlements already down and converted to cities and get a 40 turns exploration. In real play, I got to Kanta slightly faster (t14) thanks to a couple of ruins and better culture than I calculated.
- Once that is done our economic path will happen without any intervention, I will accumulate the convoys and trigger them on t38, to avoid issues with the crisis.
- For the Science path, in Antiquity I created some nice adjacencies with the wonders, and my unique quarter from Antiquity in Waset, the Mastaba, has potential to hit 40+. I identify 3 quarters in the capital Waset that will be 40 plus and 2 potential in Baak with another one in one of the crappy treasure cities to do a Guildhall+Bazaar as a back up option. I intend to build as few non-warehouse buildings as possible, so they are affordable when the time comes, probably around t38. The science path can be finished earlier than t38, but I will try to hard build as long as possible to save money for the Stone Head and warehouse spam I am planning for t38.
- I wanted to change the capital to Baak, as it had the Maya UQ, but the game for some reason did not offer that option to me, in spite of Baak being by far the biggest settlement after Waset. It just offered two crappy towns. So I stayed with Waset. Clearly, that game mechanic does not work the way I thought it did.
- For the Culture path, I chose the 2 relics per capital converted. With the massive war I am planning I should not have any issues convertig multiple capitals as they fall to the mighty Songhai fleets. Just have to plan a little bit and be careful to convert and conquer in the right order. This path can also be finished way before t38, but I will not build the temples/wonders I need until late, again to avoid crisis issues.
- For the Military path, I will build/buy 6 settlers (well 5, I have 1 from Antiquity) and will send them to their Distant Lands locations, but will not plant them until t38, not just to avoid crisis issues, but also because the biggest problem I will have during the game will be to manage my happiness as I will be over the cap limit during the whole of exploration. It is unlikely any of the other civs will give me any trouble in DL, they are already behind in culture and science and they will have their hands full with the war in the homelands, but I send my newly spawned Army Commander East in case there are hostile IPs in DLs.
- For the military path, I took the additional belief of converting new settlements in distant lands, which means when I plant the 6 cities on t38, the whole military legacy path will be done in 1 turn.

The rest of the game was just a very long war, where I built and promoted heavily 2 fleets of cogs and also used my three Army commanders from Antiquity. I wiped Xerxes in t2, Confucius around t30 and Lafayette in t34. I could have wiped easily Isabella before t38, but it was not necessary and I needed some extra settlements for Modern. I was very careful with the cap limit, I was over all the age, but careful to maintain happiness.

I ended the age with 28 settlements for a cap limit of 16 (fealty plus suzerain a military IP), but I waited to conquer the last 6 settlements in the last 5 turns to avoid long unhappiness and of course planted the 6 DL settlements in t38, so I spent most of the age with 2 over teh cap limit which is manageable. 3 of those settlements are being razed so I will start Modern with a more manageable number (25), although I will have to manage happpiness carefully.

The rest was just making sure I was saving as much money as possible to do a Stone Head mini spam on t38 (6 Stone Heads) and a fairly big warehouse spam. I also prepped 3 IPs to suzerain, 2 cultural, one gold, in the last turns to do the Stone Head spam and get an extra cultural point for specialists that I needed for the science path. Before that, I suzerained a military IP for the +1 settlement limit.

Here is a a couple of screenshots, one at the begining of t38 and one at the end. I went from 54% to 100% in that last turn. I declared war on everybody including my ally Ibn, in the last turn.

Spoiler Screenshots :

 

[GoblinMatron]

Turns: 52

Mementos: False Beard (2 Culture on Wonders), The Rihla (Culture, Gold, Happiness, Science per turn per age for each Attribute tree in which you have points)
Civ: Majapahit

LPs:
militaristic (3): 1 exp attr, Fealty
cultural (3). 2 culture attr, 1 diplo attr
economic (3): 2 eco attr
science (3+1): Collector of Knowledge, 2 science attr

I hoped that I would have an Antiquity age that would make Songhai a good fit for Exploration, because it would fix the economic legacy path for that age. But sadly, only the Capital was on a navigable river. So I chose Majapahit instead for the culture they give.

As expected, the economic path was a problem and even more so than in other games, because there were very few treasure resources.

So after I did some calculations, I realize that turn 50 is the best I can do with 3/3/3/1 legacy paths, 3 civ wipes and 1 future civic.

The civ wipes go smoothly, but I mess up with both the future civic (I research an unnecessary mastery) and the militaristic path (I forget to convert one of my distant land settlements), so the game ends turn 52 rather than 50.

Spoiler Map :