[GS] Benchmarks Thread: Compare your T100 stats!

[yung.carl.jung]

After reading the last few posts I thought it might be nice to have a Turn 100 Screenshot Thread.

I very much agree with Fluphen, it would be extremely helpful to have some kind of metric that players can compare themselves to. If you want to contribute, simply post in this thread:

Do not post an image from communtiy games without spoilers.

Generally we want to compare T100 stats, but if you want to, say, establish benchmarks for T50, pleaste state that in your post.

Please state in your post your settings, general strategy, designated victory type and how your game went. Please state the amount of cities you have and enclose any other information you find relevant.

I'll start. Map is large. Deity diff. Sadly even though I picked Pangea it was 2 continents, I did not meet half of the other Civs/CS until t95. Speed is standard. CS are increased by 4 I think. Didn't matter anyway, Mongolia ate 3 scientific CS in the first 60 turns.

This screenshots is from my last game which sadly I could not finish. I was going for a faith-oriented Science Victory. I got the first golden age despite trying to remain in a normal/dark age. I secured the second GA as well. Both were monumentality. I bought a total of 3 settlers with faith, 2 with cash (iirc), the rest I produced. I settled 2 cities before ancestral hall, one manually and one from my pantheon. In the screenshot (I hope I counted right) I have 14 cities. However 2 more are on their way via faith/cash. I am hoping to war my neighbors at around t120/130, take one or two cities and get a big peace deal. My goal was to start cruising to victory at about t145-t150, meaning I would finish around t180 or t190 if all goes well.

My science is pretty lacking this game, it's usually a fair bit higher than my culture. Culture per turn was very strong, but only because I just got Amphitheaters up and expended my 3 GW and 1 GA. I got Exploration a lot later than I usually do because I was minmaxing Inspirations for no reason. I did not end up getting them and should have beelined. Still this was an amazing game. Made the huge mistake of NOT settling the Natural Wonders in favor of establishing borders. I did however do an amazing job at completely cutting off the AI from settling "my" territories.

I usually play as a warmonger, but on Deity early warfare is asinine. With this game I wanted to show that rapid expansion is easily possible even without capturing enemy cities.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

7878 Nice!!

I didn't notice if you posted your settings.
Map Type, Speed... etc etc
Good to post up the settings to compare.

I used to try to figure out how you guys were getting so many cities without war.
Finally realized many players are buying them with gold and or faith.
Add in some hard built or chopped cities and it makes sense now how to get 15 to 25 cities by turn 100.

Not sure about your early war comment as it seems to be pretty strong.
The whole steal settlers/builders, pillage or take cities kinda works well.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Of course! The most important thing. I updated my settings.

Not sure about your early war comment as it seems to be pretty strong.
The whole steal settlers/builders, pillage or take cities kinda works well.

It's strong alright, it's just not very fun in my opinion. I've tried in many games to do warfare around t20-t30 and the incredible diplo penalties, the absolutely stupid loyalty mechanic and the fact that the AI has near infinite supply of warriors really killed my ambition. Nowadays I feel like super war is only worth it for pillages and worker/settler steals, which at least that portion of "war" is a lot of fun. Taking cities is virtually impossible unless you also take the cap. I've had cities I conquered literally flip in less than five turns. In general I think loyalty is a mechanic that only exists to make the game worse, but that is another topic of debate

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Of course! The most important thing. I updated my settings.



It's strong alright, it's just not very fun in my opinion. I've tried in many games to do warfare around t20-t30 and the incredible diplo penalties, the absolutely stupid loyalty mechanic and the fact that the AI has near infinite supply of warriors really killed my ambition. Nowadays I feel like super war is only worth it for pillages and worker/settler steals, which at least that portion of "war" is a lot of fun. Taking cities is virtually impossible unless you also take the cap. I've had cities I conquered literally flip in less than five turns. In general I think loyalty is a mechanic that only exists to make the game worse, but that is another topic of debate

Game and Map dependent of course.
I think you would have to agree with that.
I've blitzed some close neighbors before as they are getting Ravaged by Barbs.
Say you have WarCarts, you can do some serious damage if you can find the tiles to pillage.
If your neighbor has no military and is getting Barbed you can wipe the whole Civ out pretty quick.
Perhaps even before another Civ meets them or you.
I agree with you, I am just saying that some games I can get the perfect storm going very early with archers and warriors.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

With Sumeria every neighbor is doomed anyway they were my #1 favorite Civ in vanilla Civ VI. not so much anymore. maybe it's lack of skill on my side or simply bad execution, but I rarely get to conquer capitals before t30. ofc when you get swordsmen/horses/xbows/knight rush everything changes. Barbarians also make warfare easy, but aren't something you can count on.

one thing that is super helpful is to abuse AI. I have managed on many occasions to bribe an AI into war with my target for less than 10 gold. in the very early game it costs super little. Hungary loves softening up your neighbors for you

personally I don't even rely on archers much anymore, I think they're pretty bad now. complete opposite of Civ V. I get either one slinger or three slingers (for Eurekah) which I then upgrade. If I really want to take a capital early however I just spam warriors hardcore. one slinger and five or six warriors sometimes do the trick, but I still end up losing one or two units.

 

[The Highwayman]

I don't have a turn 100 save, but here is a T95 save from a Kupe game I played a while back. I don't have time to play in the near future but would like to contribute to the thread. If nothing else this shows the power of Kupe.

Difficulty: Deity
Game Speed: Standard
Map: Splintered Fractal
Civs: Me plus 6 AI (dropped 1 AI)
All other map settings: Default
Pantheon: Earth Goddess

This would go on the be a T168 culture victory. I had 9 cities and was about to settle my Forbidden City/Bolshoi chop city in the third screenshot. I think I finished with 12 total. Got classical, Medieval, Renaissance golden ages. I believe I took monumentality in all three, then game over. Kapiti would go on to finish the Mausoleum and become monstrous with Liang's fisheries. I beelined harbors right away and was my first build in my first 3/4 cities. I think I stole an early settler from Germany in the early turns...but as you can see he didn't hold a grudge. Appreciate it buddy.

Only had 3 Marae's at this time, but faith and culture were starting to boom. The immense gold per turn at T95 illustrates the value of selling diplo favor. It's so powerful. I find it difficult to rank Kupe anything below S tier. Some of his starts can be utter crap, but the same can be said for all in my experience. The only thing really lacking is awesome district stacking, which can be awkward due to the nature of his expands and the inability to harvest bonus resources. But still, who cares when you're this good.

I'll follow this up with a T95 Russia game I played a while back, which all my expands were peaceful. Gotta get back to moving .

Spoiler Cap and early expands :

Spoiler Forward Settles :

Spoiler Chop City :

Spoiler Seaside resort Island :

 

[yung.carl.jung]

insane culture and GPT in that game. noice.

 

[KKirrin]

awesome idea! here's a t100 emperor shot, standard pangea but with 1 fewer ai and 2 more city states. pantheon was open sky, despite running god king asap the pickings were pretty slim

13 cities at t100 with the final 2 settlers made and heading into position, currently transitioning into builder wave/magnus chopping. culture's about to be a bit over 100 with that GW about to pop, and 3 of the cities were from sweden who i eliminated around t50 after she forward settled me

rushed 3 theaters early on then spammed campus and CH, ended up with ~18 trade routes at the end all pulling in 6-9 prod each and a good bit of science thanks to a research alliance

ended up being a T198 science win. last techs were buried in the future era, don't think i launched til like t188ish but by that point my ruhr/trade route city (athens) had ~325 effective production so it was 1 turning lasers between 6 charge builders and some 4th ring chops to help out. map was absurdly good-- kumasi/geneva/hong kong nearby with gilgabro as the nearest surviving AI. wonders were pyramids/kilwa/oxford and a captured great baths

couple big mistakes slowed things down a lot besides the tech rng. I took too long to get traders out despite having kumasi, accidentally placed a campus first in my coliseum city and that ended up delaying me enough that someone built it while I was chopping kilwa. i didn't think there was a spot with enough chops to merit a full chop city but I was wrong -- if I'd scouted a bit better there was a spot a bit SE with 10+ tundra trees. scouting in general was terrible, should have had more of them out, would have found an additional science CS much earlier and had more ai to trade with.

ps long time lurker, first post. absolutely love this forum, only been playing civ for about a month and change but this site is by far the best resource i've found, strats i found here took my science wins from mid 300s on emp to the low 200s on deity. cheers!

 

[yung.carl.jung]

^ that's very impressive science for a t100, especially considering greece doesn't have any direct bonuses to it. nice one. seems a lot of us struggle w/ getting 2nd government before t100

 

[KKirrin]

thank you! yeah I definitely have a hard time with the govts, never know how much to prioritize the inspirations beyond poli phil especially with peri with the extra wild card, makes it feel like i don't need the extra policies as much but that's probably a mistake on my part

That game I went poli>drama and poetry>feudalism>exploration, but I know I missed the inspirations for both military training (encampment) and exploration (2x caravel). looking at how long it took me to hit merch despite 100 cpt makes me think I missed the mercenaries one too which is pretty common for me unless I'm doing a lot of early warring which I tend to avoid anymore, feels tedious with loyalty. didn't build a wonder in time to boost d&p, either.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

a recent korea games where my game started crashing around t100. I may have gotten it to run, still experimenting with the causes.

standard speed and size, deity, pangea. I thought I was doing really well this game and had amazing land, but quickly discovered I did not settle enough and my cities weren't all that great. my culture was way too low the entire game and I did not make good use of my golden ages. first monumentality my faith and gpt was too low, then second I went for the cultural bonus which did not help as much as I wanted it to. I think going dark into monumentality or double monumentality is probably best. I had a relatively easy time with the AI via bribes and playing them. Never was threatened, got all the borders I wanted. I was declared on a total of 6 times in the rest of this game but never lost a city, only a few traders. some friendships lasted the entire game.

13 cities, petra in an almost full desert city, pyramids in cap. lately I've been trying to secure borders before settling my best and closest cities and it has worked out well.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Moving forward with this thread, if you players have the turn 1 save file perhaps you can post it.
If possible, post the turn 1 screenshot and put the turn 100 screenshot in spoilers.
This way some of us can download the file and play up to turn 100 and compare later.
I like to play the game blind and see how bad I did compared to the OP.
Let us know if any Mods are installed though and perhaps game settings.

 

[The Highwayman]

Sounds good. I don't play with any mods so you won't have any issues there. It would be interesting to see other people's choices and progress.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Moving forward with this thread, if you players have the turn 1 save file perhaps you can post it.
If possible, post the turn 1 screenshot and put the turn 100 screenshot in spoilers.
This way some of us can download the file and play up to turn 100 and compare later.
I like to play the game blind and see how bad I did compared to the OP.
Let us know if any Mods are installed though and perhaps game settings.

that's brilliant, I will try to do that in the future. I have a really unique Russia game going right now and might post that, since I have the t1 save still.

 

[KKirrin]

here's a wildly ridiculous Kupe save, turn 1. lemme know if it doesn't work or if I'm doing something wrong, haven't uploaded/shared files before so this is kinda a shot in the dark but the map's too good to not put it out there for people to play

Emperor/Fractal/Standard/6 AI/14CS/T177 totally peaceful science win, no wars declared or DoWs received
All DLC/scen packs, only mod is is TCS free walls

Spoiler T100 Screenshot :

Spoiler Game Details :

Pantheon: Sea

Religion: None

Wonders: Pyramids, Mausoleum, Kilwa, Colossus. There's a really good Petra/Uluru site nearby but the coast there is pretty bad, decided on the mauslo city instead a bit beneath which ended up having close to 20 shallow tiles.

Ages: All golden, Free Inquiry, Free Inquiry, Monumentality.

Cities Founded: 11 including 1 pure chop city for first two projects. All cities including chop ended with 30-90 prod, capital had 250 with 0 mines/no Ruhr.

Map Pros: City states are pretty much perfect aside from the lack of Anta: Kumasi, Nan Madol, and Geneva are all close by and there are 6 scientific city states in the game total. Auckland's in there too, across the map but that's trivial as Kupe.

Map Cons: Both the last two science projects are as buried in the tech tree as they could possibly be. Real shame cause the win could have been blazingly fast with better luck.

General Build Order: Harbors (except for capital) > Settlers > Lighthouse > Traders > Shipyard > Campus > Library > Monument > University > Theater > Marai > Projects, with all settler spam finished and all cities settled around t85. 100% of builders/traders and a good number of the lighthouses/monuments/libraries were purchased, same with shipyards in the lower production cities and research stations were bought wherever there was power towards the end. Also bought one of the wonder production GP outright and used them to build kilwa in 3 turns with the pump from Mausoleum.

General Strategy: Almost exclusively leverage Nan Madol/Kumasi for culture early on (First promotion sends Amani to NM) and use high adjacency harbors/shipyards/harbor adjacency policy/reyna harbor promotion to pump early science before libraries come online and take over with all the CS pumps.

enjoy! by far the most ridiculous map i've ever played. plus i'm sure that win was far from optimal and I'd love to see how low you guys can take it.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

that's a lot of gold for t100, do you generally trade a lot with the AI? how'd you get it that high? I see you like harbors a lot

 

[The Highwayman]

I can't speak for Kirrin but I got my +350 gpt on turn 95 by selling diplo favor. 1 diplo favor = 1 gpt when you AI has no bulk gold remaining. That plus harbors and water trade routes with possibly mercantile CSs envoys mixed in.

 

[KKirrin]

bleh guess i didn't save at T100. I did a ton of trading with the AI but none of that GPT is from trades, i was only trading for lump sums though i switched to GPT around T140 where I was less worried about bankrupting them. Harbor adjacency is pretty nuts though, all of them besides chop city (+2) were between +3 and +5 before policies/etc so that accounted for about 100 gpt, plus the water routes as mentioned above to CS with Kumasi was probably another 100 gpt, plus a ton of fishing boats.

Sadly the only merc CS in-game was useless other than the first envoy as I built 0 comm hubs and it's sov bonus was meaningless. I'll probably go back and replay this at some point, it might be really fun to push pure harbors/comm hubs and use the science/huge economy to play a domination game. do wish I'd played it on higher difficulty though, by the time the game was ending the nearest AI was still rocking catapults and xbowmen so conquest would almost certainly end up being boring rather than fun. is there a way to change that with seeds somehow?

Anyway, breakdown at T177:
income = 768 GPT, 142 from trade, 616 from cities
upkeep = 32 from units, 127 from cities
net = 600 GPT

 

[yung.carl.jung]

what kind of districts do you guys build? I tend to get as many campi and theatre districts as humanly possible, because I believe culture is just as important /sometimes moreso/ than science, for any victory. often times that means almost every city of mine has a campus. all the cities that don't have a campus usually have a theatre and an Industrial zone. the IZ is important because late-game I want to either run industrial or campus projects since those GPP matter most.

I will typically get either a harbor or a commercial hub in every city, preferring the latter. TR are just that important imho. I think getting at least 3 IZs is ideal, I think more is better. I tend to get IZs in the cities that will get a spaceport and in the cities that spam builders or wonders (so I have both the governor and the IZ in my builder spamming city). I often miss the Inspiration for having 4 TR, which is a key one and gives you your next govt. faster, I will try and get that every game from now on.

Holy Sites are pretty bad sadly, unless you're going for monumentality strategies, in which case they are very strong. Not having relevant GPP just hurts em too much. Wonder why they didn't find an elegant solution for GP like they did in Civ 5. it was always a strategic decision whether to bulb or plant, I miss that so much. I typically run only a handful of Holy Sites, unless I am Japan/Russia.

Encampment is one I always forget. I think you want at least 2 encampments in your future Spaceport cities. More than 2 aren't worth it imo, unless you need them for your war effort.

Lately I have been getting the Eurekah for 4 entertainment districts and I am unsure if it is worth. Same goes for Globalization - I have never built those 3 Aerodromes, much less upgraded them so they have 3 Airports, that seems a ridiculous investment for almost no return.

Neighborhoods I only really get for the Eurekahs/Inspos. Same for Aqueduct, I only really build it for Eurekah and the Wonder.

I can't speak for Kirrin but I got my +350 gpt on turn 95 by selling diplo favor. 1 diplo favor = 1 gpt when you AI has no bulk gold remaining. That plus harbors and water trade routes with possibly mercantile CSs envoys mixed in.

I always sell my diplo favor and all strategic ressources I don't use, and all luxuries until ~t100 when amenities start getting important. still I "only" get around 100-200GPT at t100.

 

[The Highwayman]

For a science victory, a campus in every city is a given with a theater square in most cities (wherever the best adjacencies lie, gov plaza is good early for this).

I prefer harbors over comm hubs in general since the adjacencies are easier to achieve and Veterancy helps speed construction. Coastal cities have also never been better in the current version. Water based trade routes provide tons of gold over land trade routes, but this would obviously be map dependent. I think the Lighthouse is a superior tier 1 building to the market as well. +3 Housing and food is better than +2 gold. But I agree in general with the 1 trade route capacity per city rule of thumb. I don't always achieve it though.

A strong IZ preferably in my Oracle/Pingala city has paid off well in my games. I may build a total of 2-3 depending on my empire layout.

~2 encampments in future spaceport cities is just fine. A couple of eurekas tied to them as well and +3 era score for the MA is a nice addition.

My "spare" cities usually tack on 2 aerodromes (1 foreign continent) and the 4 ent complexes. The discount mechanism lowers the opportunity cost significantly and the extra amenities help bring my empire wide happiness to +3 usually. Not terrible, but can be addressed later in the game. These districts are usually being built as a 3rd or 4th district in qualifying cities.

Holy sites are situational. If playing a faith based science game, maybe 4-8 throughout the empire with the majority being frontloaded. Need to get the faith going to purchase civilians. Choral music helps immensely with culture too. It can supplement culture if you have poor TS adjacency early on.