Hmmm, I can see a bunch of areas where I can improve my cultural game.
I never really put much thought into popping GEs, but I can see the advantage, especially for Sistines. Did yours come from just the pyramids/HG, or did you also go for MC and a forge/engineer specialist?
Libraries in satellite cities? I'm guessing for beakers from representation specialists? IIRC libraries don't help for 'building' research.
I also ignored Mansa completely in my game - he was the only buddhist and I didn't want to upset the others. Unlucky there I guess.
If I remember correctly, a riverside grassland town gets 8 gold and 1 hammer (if you have pyramids, which you need anyway for a specialist economy). That's a hard act to follow for a specialist.
Well, I was getting 6 culture, and 4 science with the additional benefit of 3 GPP. In the end Babylon was running 19 artists, and generating 785 culture per turn.
But, I guess a faster win is cottaging early, growing the cottages, and getting the supporting cathedrals in via universal suffrage.
I never really put much thought into popping GEs, but I can see the advantage, especially for Sistines. Did yours come from just the pyramids/HG, or did you also go for MC and a forge/engineer specialist?
Yes, I got the first engineer in the capital from Pyramids+forge-engineer. Then I got another one just from running 1 forge-engineer in the mix in Mutal. Then I didn't want a third, but I got another one anyway from the capital.
Popping those big marble wonders when you don't have marble is very useful. Not only that, getting the 10 culture is almost as good as a settled GA (or better if it gets augmented by age to 20). So early GE's are better than GA's. But late GE's are to be avoided.
This was THE MOST DISSAPOINTING game I've played in a while...nothing wrong with the map or challenges, just the random number generator SHAFTED me the whole game.
Volcanoes, Tornadoes etc etc, 35 battles befor I won a <60% odds fight. 35. Ill write it out: THIRTY FIVE.
7 turns befor my spaceship landed, DeGualle attacks. Im so turned off by now I just let him take cities knowing he cant get to the capital in 7 turns.
It was looking like I wasnt going to win ANY <50% fights unitll I got off a lucky (and in this case, really lucky) 48%er. I got another <50%er later. for a total of two, and I warred Pacal, Sitting Bull and Suliemain. Loosing a 76%, 80%, 80%, 86% sequence almost made me give up entiely.
Absolutely shocking, almost like because I didnt have any food in my 'ooopsies' capital the RNG wrote me off.
My goal, as usual, was a Space Colony. I like to experience a full range of game aspects (building, teching, fighting, advancing into the future...). The result? Er, something else.
The Settler settled in place. Cities #2 & #3 had less-than-ideal locations, but there was a reason. Akkad lacked freshwater because it had to reach the pigs and copper before building any culture; Dur Kurigalzu went right on top of the stone. In combination, this ensured that I could build The Pyramids.
Love the Pyramids.
Spoiler:
The timing of my axe rush versus Pacal was fortuitous. I got a holy city (Buddhism) and the Great Lighthouse. Faaaantastic! Then it was rapid expansion, made easy by Hamm's Organized trait. Double-speed Courthouses are a given, but it's also nice to run expensive civics like Vassalage and Organized Religion without paying much for them.
Akkad popped a Great Engineer (from The Pyramids). I used him to rush the Apostolic Palace, which I think was a worthwhile investment. I wasn't playing for a diplomatic victory, but the AP hammers are just too good to pass up:
Spoiler:
Other cities had more ocean tiles, maybe, but Babylon had the most coastal tiles. I hate working one-commerce ocean tiles.
Somebody beat me to circumnavigation, but that's okay. I was too busy building the foundation for a tech- and production-dominant empire. I reached Liberalism and Astronomy first, then soon settled a few islands and turned the over to a Vassal Colony (Cyrus).
So: What now? The empire must grow! Sitting Bull is nearest, but (1)He's not a threat, (2)Neither his cities nor his lands seem especially rich, and (3)He's keeping Open Borders even though he doesn't like me.
Then there's Montezuma... He's got a massive gold-producing Holy City (Tenochtitlan, Hinduism, which covers most of "that half" of the world), he'll jump my back if I attack somewhere else, and he's not trading with me anyway.
Plus he's a jerk and I like to beat up on him. Hey, I'm playing for fun.
Spoiler:
That's one big navy.
Now, I'm not normally big on Privateers. My feeling is that if the AI wants to have 20 Caravels roaming the globe, then roam away. I'm not spending my precious hammers to reduce his unit upkeep costs. But in the case of Montezuma, I sent 3 or 4 Privateers over to get a head start on the war.
Monty got some Muskets just before I arrived, but they didn't stand up well against rifles.
Spoiler:
Somehow, I let most of his navy escape from Teno. Oops. My ship stacks in the above shot have three Frigates each, so they're safe, but it will take time to hunt down all those Caravels.
Tenochtitlan cost 15 gold in maintenance (with a Courthouse), but the Kashi Vishwanath produced thirty-six base gold. Definitely worth it.
Meanwhile, Mansa Musa, obviously in awe of my military prowess, decided he wanted to be my vassal. Sigh. I had no real need of it, but I agreed just to keep him happy. He's a good trade partner and great for back-filling techs.
I already had Mining Inc. built, and then researched Medicine while continuing the conquest of Aztecia.
Spoiler:
I took all of the Aztec north-south strip and vassalized Montezuma (his few remaining island cities weren't worth the trouble). With the combination of Mining Inc. and Sid's Sushi, the newly-captured cities became productive in a very short time.
Back on the home continent, I built the Three Gorges Dam. So I had 14 cities with electrical power and great production, all poised to slam out spaceship components as soon as the Apollo Program was built (I was far enough along in tech, too, that I really would have been building that many components at once. Or very nearly).
Then I got greedy. Or perhaps bored while waiting. Or maybe overly-impressed with my newly-built tank corps. And France looked oh, so juicy. So I started another war and took De Gaulle's key cities. I conquered another layer outward, just to break the cultural pressure, but with the intention of returning them to De Gaulle once I'd built some culture of my own.
And then... blam! DOMINATION WIN IN 1848. That's what happens when you build Sushi and don't pay close attention to the Victory Conditions.
Spoiler:
I ended the game with five great people going to waste. They were waiting to start Golden Ages as soon as multiple cities were engaged on spaceship parts (I was about one turn short of completing the Apollo Program).
But still, it was fun, and the score was pretty good with all the land and population.
Things went pretty well and I was breeding great spies everywhere..... except the endgame was sort of a problem. Techs cost way too much to steal later on. 10k each even with discounts for spending, stationary and religion? Hmmm.... I got tech parity around the renaissance but lost it again in the modern age. Seeing no chance to beat the AI for space I aimed for a diplomatic victory and I was well on my way too.
I switched briefly from espionage to tech to get the techs I needed and I built the United Nations with a lot of tension as Pacal and Suleiman both asked me for radio just when I got it... I thought I'd better give it up since that'd help me on my way.
I got on the good side of the Maya, Ottoman, French and Native Americans, but Pacal ended up voting for himself all the time dispite +15. So it was after 5 revotes still: Hamurabbi + Native American + French ~> 600 of 750 required votes. I decided to attack Montezuma and I vasallised him. 700 out of 750. Then I got ready to go for Suleiman, but he was too advanced and too strong. In addition he had mansa as a vassal. Whilst I got everybody to declar on him, I didn't have enough time to get up a large enough army and sure enough I found out that he went for cultural and done me in after 10 turns.
I think I might have won if I had switched to monarchy and turned Pacal into monarchy, his favorite.... trouble is, he had built the Cristo Redentor so he kept changing back before the vote. How lame is that... oh well. Better luck next time.
My first win on botm space in 1962, about 16K points. Not impresive at all, compared to others, but good for me.
Have populated whole continent, getting rid of mayans and sitting bull. Later on, vasalised Sitting Bull to get his aluminium island.
Most of the game i stayed with nice tech lead, but didnt pay much attention to army, so have been attacked by Monty and French (nr 1 in prod). They both captured my Mayan side cities and sooner (Monty) or later (French) got repulsed from there. On that French war made terrible mistake, hardly stopped myself from reloading , I found their attacking forces one turn before landing, i didnt upgraded defenders to mech infs while i could, have escaped with ships to that city. Next turn lost 'em. What a lame.
French war was tought, i was building space ship, but after struggle survived it.
Lesson i have learned is to not neglect army, specially when turning down demands. Comp is playing bad when attacking, but numbers do the thing.
Unfortunately I don't remember much about the early game because I played early on and then let the game sit for a long time before continuing which I normally don't do. What I do remember is assuming I would need Astronomy so I would plan for farming up at least 2 and hopefully 3 Great Scientists. I settled in place and was happy with my early game getting 2 more fine cities quickly settled and a workboat out meeting people. When I found the stone close I decided the Pyramids and a specialist economy was the way to go which would also help me get those Great Scientists I wanted. So I quickly built it (825BC) and switched to Representation.
I took Pacal out with 2 early wars. His Capital was a great city which I built Moai in. From there I started ferrying troops over to Sitting Bull's lands and annexing his lands. Having crippled him, I left him with a city or 2 on the southern end, figuring I could finish him off later, I didn't want to send my troops South and East when everyone else was West, and wanted to make a dent in the next target before Longbows started showing up.
At this point I was very happy with my game especially considering I had experienced a number of random setbacks (events) like a barb uprising while I was at war with Pacal and had almost no troops in the area not to mention my closest and most powerful city had a monsoon and lost its barracks 3 turns later while I was still frantically whipping units. Luckily I didn't lose the city or else I probably would have quit as the random setbacks are my biggest pet peeve with BTS.
Spoiler:
And that concludes what I considered my good play. On to the bad/embarrassing stuff.
Remember that assumption that I needed Astronomy? Well my exploring workboat had managed to meet 6 AIs and circumnavigate the globe (825BC) but for some odd reason it didn't occur to me that I didn't need Astronomy so I continued to obsess over getting it. So there I am ignoring extremely useful techs like Civil Service and Feudalism in pursuit of Galleons and running scientists with Rep instead of working tiles for food and hammers in Police State. It wasn't until I bulbed Optics and immediately whipped out a few Caravels who searched in vain for another civ that I went and checked the forum post for how many civs were in the game and compared it to the number I had met. By then I had spent another GS on part of Astronomy and was chasing another when I switched research paths and hired all the specialists I could not worrying about if it was a scientist anymore figuring it would be better spent on a golden age.
Back to the war effort discussion. Shortly before declaring on Sulieman he built the Apostolic Palace and was elected the leader but in a spot that I would take on my first attack. Shortly after I declared he got Longbows. His first act as leader was naturally to vote for stopping the war against him. Figuring it would pass which would completely halt my progress as I had no way around him to get at anybody else I bravely clicked that Defy Resolution option I had never tried before. After that turn half my empire was practically worthless as I had so much unhappiness from the world considering me a villain. The obvious counter to this is raising the cultural slider, only at this point I am still in my Captain Ahab obsession for the White Whale (Astronomy) mindset and I had no cultural slider and wasn't about to switch to Drama or trade one of my military techs to a soon to be enemy.
The solution I came up with was my usual solution to everything, whip the unhappy people away keep attacking Sulie. I wasn't sure what would happen when I took the Apostolic Palace, would I become leader? would there be a new vote for a leader? The one thing that I was sure would happen is he wouldn't be putting things up for vote anymore....or would he? Well as many probably already know that is indeed what happens.
My solution to that, naturally, is to just wipe him out completely, especially since I've already taken his 2 best cities and razed 1 or 2 others. Before I can put this plan into action he vassalizes to what appears to be the most powerful civ around De Gaulle who was my next intended target but I'm not feeling ready to take on them both at the same time with half my empire mad. Making matters worse as I'm continuing to take Sulie out he puts the stop the agression up for vote again which I defy. Now my half worthless cities are completely worthless. I'm talking cities working one or no tiles at all. I can't even whip archers and the cities are quickly starving down to nothing.
Through all this my massive force of highly promoted units continues steadily through his lands and my core cities are still very productive. De Gaulle has made an appearence with a few troops but not much. As I'm about to finish off Sulie I'm excited to see what will happen, will my unhappiness go away immediately? will I then become leader or a new leader voted on? To my great surprise what happens is....absolutely nothing. At the time I thought he had remained the leader but after looking back at saves now I see it went to DeGaulle, not sure how that is decided.
It was around this time that I finally got Civil Service, Astronomy, and Feudalism so I could upgrade all my powerful axes to maces and Galleys to Galleons getting more powerful troops moved quicker. After that the other civs didn't stand a chance and my first batch of unhappiness from defying the resolution dropped off so the other cities were at least a little useful. De Gaulle put up surprisingly little resistance and vassalized. Monte had a decent number of troops and when a stack with about 8 catapults and 6 horse archers showed up out of the fog in a spot I had already gone past with most of my troops I thought he might take a city from me but I was able to whip enough units and get reinforcments there to stop him. Finally around this time a new vote for religious leader went up and I was voted in but don't think I ever had a chance to put anything up for vote.
It didn't matter by then as I had a fair number of maces with CR3 plus a couple of the 10% bonuses which were basically unstoppable after my cats had dropped culture bonuses. As Monte was getting wiped out and vassalized I sent new units towards Mansa and Sitting Bull, neither who put up much resistance before Sitting Bull was wiped out completely and Mansa vassalized giving me a conquest victory in 1290.
Even with all the mistakes I enjoyed the game but it was a good reminder for me that I still don't have many of the new BTS features figured out, why I despise random setbacks, and not to go for war games when much of that fighting will require troop movement by galley as the ship chaining becomes a tiresome and boring task. Oh yeah and it is helpful to know exactly how many civs are in a game when you are going for conquest.
Space in 1887. I stupidly let the tin can rust on the on the launchpad for two or three turns before remembering the launch button -- just one of many discouraging "little" mistakes. Even if I were, by some miracle, to learn how to play this game well, I'm becoming more and more convinced I'll never be careful enough to risk getting close to competitive.
I don't know much about space games. One thing I know: only research matters. Don't sacrifice research for anything else. I try to follow one of 2 strategies:
a) Pottery 3960BC, Academy 3920BC, CS sling 3880BC, Oxford 3820BC. Or as close to that timeline as possible.
b) Conquer two neighbours before 3960BC, then Pottery 3960BC, Academy 3920BC, CS sling 3880BC, Oxford 3820BC. Or as close to that timeline as possible.
In both cases, the more cities you have, the better.
I don't know much about space games. One thing I know: only research matters. Don't sacrifice research for anything else. I try to follow one of 2 strategies:
a) Pottery 3960BC, Academy 3920BC, CS sling 3880BC, Oxford 3820BC. Or as close to that timeline as possible.
b) Conquer two neighbours before 3960BC, then Pottery 3960BC, Academy 3920BC, CS sling 3880BC, Oxford 3820BC. Or as close to that timeline as possible.
In both cases, the more cities you have, the better.
Is this a Joke or some crazy start with a load of Great People with the settler? Oxford in 3820 BC? Am I loosing it? Is my eye sight failing me? Well don't need to answer that last question. It is failing. But seriously, Are you just trying to say to get it done as soon as possible? or is this some sort of inside joke? Very
Is this a Joke or some crazy start with a load of Great People with the settler? Oxford in 3820 BC? Am I loosing it? Is my eye sight failing me? Well don't need to answer that last question. It is failing. But seriously, Are you just trying to say to get it done as soon as possible? or is this some sort of inside joke? Very
@Gosha190
(2450BC Mutal was captured (4 warriors with CR promotion vs 1 archer), Maya killed)
With how many warriors did you attack Mutal? Only these four? Or how much warriors would you build to be "sure" to capture a city against one archer?
I tried a warrior rush once against one archer and after suiciding three warriors the archer had still 2.7 base strenght.
And an other more general question: If you would have played for a space victory in this game, would you have cottaged a lot of tiles? Or after building the pyramids just go for a SE economy without cottages? (so did I in this game; generally I tend to do SE if I build the pyramids but I am uncertain if this is a good strategy for a space race).
Thanks in advanced for helping me to improve my game!
Is this a Joke or some crazy start with a load of Great People with the settler? Oxford in 3820 BC? Am I loosing it? Is my eye sight failing me? Well don't need to answer that last question. It is failing. But seriously, Are you just trying to say to get it done as soon as possible? or is this some sort of inside joke? Very
Oops, sorry to have confused you with my silly joke, I just meant 'concentrate on improving your research, try to get the key mentioned steps done as soon as possible'.
I tried out a piece of advice from Jesusin in this game, that went against my own intuition. Jesusin said (or I read him to mean) that you should always build the Hermitage in your best performing city.
But I think it was wrong for my game. My capital went legendary 10 turns before the other two, even while the other two were heavily bombed.
Yes I said that (EDIT: excluding the word "always") and put 3 exercises for 3 different situations in which it was better to have it in each of your 3 cultural cities (best, medium, worst) respectively. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298093
10 turns is not perfect... but it is not too bad, considering it was Epic speed.
I'd say it may have been the right decision. Are you interested in knowing for sure? Do you like maths?
If the answer to both questions is "yes", let me know and we will work it out together.
EDIT: By the way, that looks like a very good finisihng date!
This was a nice game for my first serious attempt at Monarch difficulty level. I achieved a diplomatic victory in 1895. I eliminated Pacal at the beginning of the middle ages. I was in the middle of building space parts as a backup plan when the diplomatic win option became available.
Since I was quoted in jesusin's post, I'd like to point out that I also don't know much about space races and I agree that research is what matters when going for space.
But maybe faster short term research might now always lead to the fastest finish, and the player who achieves those important milestones faster could finish later than the other who sacrifices them for some early expansion. If that wasn't possible, playing OCC would lead to the fastest space wins, and that's almost never the case.
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, I found their attacking forces one turn before landing, i didnt upgraded defenders to mech infs while i could, have escaped with ships to that city. Next turn lost 'em. What a lame. 
Even if I were, by some miracle, to learn how to play this game well, I'm becoming more and more convinced I'll never be careful enough to risk getting close to competitive. 
