Benchmarks: How do you know you're advancing quickly enough?

[Chessack]

Here is something I have been thinking about while playing the last couple of games: When should I be happy with how my empire is developing? When should I worry that I am "falling behind" where I should be if I want to win the game against the AI?

Historically in other Civ variants, I have never moved past the lower levels, and on those levels it was generally enough to "beat history" -- that is, if I have rifling in the 1600s, that's long before it was invented in history, so I am probably teching and developing fast enough. If I am still researching rifling in the mid-1900s, I am way behind where I should be. That kind of thing.

But as you move to the upper levels the AI gets faster and just "staying ahead of history" is not enough. Since previously I have mostly just tried to "stay ahead of history," I don't really have a good "clock" in my head for what to do when.

What I am wondering is if any of you have a set of benchmarks that you use as a rule of thumb. For example, "I expect to have city #2 by turn 50, the Great Library by turn 75, city #3 by turn 120, and have conquered at least one other civ and a city state by turn 150." (I am totally making those turn numbers and benchmarks up, just as an example.)

I read a lot here about doing things like beelining this tech or that, and sometimes I have tried it, but it never seems to work out the way people describe. I wonder "am I beelining fast enough?" I find it hard to tell if I am doing things in a "timely" fashion.

So does anyone have any benchmarks, any goals you shoot for, that you would like to share?

 

[fmlizard2]

Well, it really depends on level and what civ you are using / what victory condition you are pursuing. A few general benchmarks I like to use - they can be easily beaten with a "beeline strategy", but for an all-purpose game:

First wonder (usually GL) before turn 45 (my max is around turn 35)
Renaissance Era before 0 AD on Standard Speed (my max is around 500 BC)
"Wheels on the field" - Tanks or Mech Infantry before 1500 AD on Standard Speed (my max is around 1200 AD)
Finishing before 1850 AD (my max is around 1750 AD)

 

[Chessack]

Wow... I have no idea how you would do things that quickly. Opening play is so limited, I have trouble imagining how I could do the GL that fast. I might have started it by 35, but finished...? How can you achieve enough production with what can at most be one or two workers, a handful of techs, and enough city pop to work a few tiles?

 

[Tabarnak]

You need to put everything ''all-in''. Best start is(without luck ruins) :

pottery-writting-mining

Capital build : scout-monument(can be inversed)-granary if possible-Great Lib

The free Liberty worker chop forests. If he spawn before mining, improve a farm. Washington is i think the best non-Egypt civ to build the GL(some guys may not agree). He can buy forest tiles way cheaper and you can get the max from them. On some maps, he even can build 1 or 2 turns faster than Egypt.

This set-up is needed for Deity, and you will probably need writting or pottery from a hut too. For immortal or below, it's way more than enough. If you feel a bit lazy, just improve mines/horses.

Grow your capital to allocate maximum output(probably at 4 or 5 ).

 

[Chessack]

This set-up is needed for Deity, and you will probably need writting or pottery from a hut too. For immortal or below, it's way more than enough. If you feel a bit lazy, just improve mines/horses.

Well, I don't play on Deity yet, still doing Prince.

How does one rely on getting writing or pottery from a hut? I have only ever gotten one of those maybe once each in the month or so I have played Civ 5. Is there some way you can "ask" the game to give you techs for the huts instead of all the other random things they can give you? Or do people just go through one start after another until they finally get one where they got writing/pottery from huts? And the same thing with having enough forests to chop. Do you guys just keep restarting maps until you have enough forests nearby?

 

[Barth]

I imagine most people skip the GL if they don't get a start that favors getting it rather than completely restarting. It's far from necessary to win.

 

[Tabarnak]

Pretty much what Barth said. It's almost impossible to build the GL at Deity without a luck boost or an insane production start. I don't have the korea+wonders pack, but i heard that they slow down some early wonders building timeframes. Also, with no ruins enabled(hut=ruin btw, just a bad habit from civ4 ), other AIs can't get free writting too.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Think about it this way: the AI is a semi-random time bomb that periodically tests whether or not you can be blown up. The basic structure of the problem is the same regardless of level. The only thing that changes with level is the timing on the tests you may be forced to pass. As you increase the difficulty, the tests come earlier and are harsher. Also, the ultimate test (nukes) arrives earlier. If you can't deliver a win condition before you get nuked into submission, you die.

Some examples: on standard speed Deity an adjacent neighbor can launch a Warrior rush as early as turn 20, and you can more or less count on getting attacked by turn 60 if you are not isolated. If your plan is to reach a Medieval unit (Longswords/Knights) and go on the offensive, the tech should land between turns 80 and 90 or you're going to stall. A Sword rush is usually going to start around turn 50.

If you fail to get Education by the early 90s, you're probably in a very great deal of trouble. In a peaceful start, you should be able to pull it off in the 70s. Staying alive in a defensive posture more or less requires unit parity; this is also more or less true for sustained offensives, although Keshiks and highly promoted units can fight above their weight class, so to speak.

If the game goes much past 250 and you have a serious threat nearby, the odds start getting pretty good that you're going to turn into a mushroom cloud.

 

[Chessack]

Again, I don't play on Deity so I am not quite under some of the constraints you are all talking about.

I just did a game as China and got the GL out by turn 49... which is about the best I have done so far. I might have gotten it by 45 if I had chopped one more forest.

 

[elprofesor]

I can't give you specific benchmarks, but you can try to watch for some specific events to see if you're doing well.
For example, wonder completion announcements are a good way to see how the game's going. If you could have gotten the wonder instead, you are doing well; if you don't even have the required tech (unless you are beelining), you are falling behind.
Scouting your neighbours is a good idea too, to inspect their military, both in numbers (to see the likelihood of being succesfully invaded) and in quality (so that you more or less know their tech level).
If a lot of CS already belong to one given civ, you know that this civ is already making crazy amounts of money.

And in general, just look at the demographics. It will tell you how you are doing, compared to the AIs, will give you the best and worst positions, and your position as well. As long as you are among the best 1/3 in most categories, you are doing well.

 

[Chessack]

I never used to beeline techs, and so yes, I used the metric you suggest -- am I doing better than the AI on wonders, etc. Once I started trying to beeline it became harder for me to figure out where I was.

I can't remember the specific dates but I do remember in Civ II having some rules of thumb like this... "2nd city should be founded by 2400 BC... 3rd city by 500 BC... Pyramids by 2000 BC..." etc. I knew if I had that, I could stay ahead of the AI on whatever level I was playing at the time (probably Warlord). And no, those aren't the dates... Civ II is sufficiently long ago that I no longer remember those benchmarks.

I have tried doing this in Civ V, but it seems harder to do for some reason. Maybe because of the constraints on play style in terms of your goal (e.g., you can't have more than 2-3 cities, realistically, to do a culture win), and because I get bored always playing to the same goal so I keep switching it up... Perhaps if I just decided to specialize on one type of goal I would have a better "clock" in my head of what to do when. But for some reason it seems much harder to do in this game than in the previous versions.

It also doesn't help that I keep changing game speeds to vary things up.

 

[Buccaneer]

In all of my Civ games, I keep detailed logs (which is one of the reasons it takes me 15-25 hours to play a single game). I them compile the fundamental numbers - # of techs, science and culture rate, wonders every 20 turns - into a comparison spreadsheet that provides a benchmark for how I am doing when I am focusing on science, culture and/or wonders.

 

[elprofesor]

Wow, that must take a lot of time! Are you an engineer or an OCD sufferer?
(no offense meant, by the way)

Have you reached some kind of conclusion? I guess Chessack (and I, by the way) would gladly read them.

 

[Buccaneer]

Wow, that must take a lot of time! Are you an engineer or an OCD sufferer?
(no offense meant, by the way)

Have you reached some kind of conclusion? I guess Chessack (and I, by the way) would gladly read them.

No, programmer. BY the way, I have kept logs from all of my Civ2, Civ4 and Civ5 games going back to 1998 (as well as all other strategy games that I have played). It's really cool to go back and relive a game and to learn from them.

The Civ5 comparative analysis probably is only useful to me since it fits the way I play (I tend to like hybrid games best). I haven't really learned to be that optimized, even though I am getting better.

 

[fmlizard2]

No, programmer. BY the way, I have kept logs from all of my Civ2, Civ4 and Civ5 games going back to 1998 (as well as all other strategy games that I have played). It's really cool to go back and relive a game and to learn from them.

Now on A&E - Hoarders: Digital Edition

 

[jega001]

Now on A&E - Hoarders: Digital Edition

lol ok that was funny

 

[General Awesome]

No, programmer. BY the way, I have kept logs from all of my Civ2, Civ4 and Civ5 games going back to 1998 (as well as all other strategy games that I have played).

What no Civ3?

 

[Buccaneer]

What no Civ3?

Awful game. Kept playing Civ2 scenarios up until Civ4 came out.

 

[elprofesor]

And for those games that you haven't won, did you localize where exactly it went wrong? Or it's just more of a hobby in a hobby? And by the way, what does a "hybrid" game mean?

This is a third degree interrogation

 

[Civsassin]

I use the demographics screen quite a bit. There are some universal numbers that are a good guage. For example, where are you positioned for tech? What is your population compared to other civs (population translates to ability to produce science? How much land do you have compared to other civs? The other thing I am looking for is those pop up comparison pages. They are good in-progress checks.