CFC: Fastest STANDARD SETTINGS Deity Science Victory

[Minou]

TURNS 26-50

Spoiler :

Domestically, I settled two prime spots in this window. Second Governor tile went to hire Liang (T28) as the plan is to get City Parks going as quickly as possible. Monumentality Golden Age (T46). Immediately dialed up two Builders for improvements (had only built one so far) and a third Settler once I hit it. During this phase I met Japan and Poland, the other two Civs on the home continent, as well as Yerevan. The one dumb error I made was that I had a Trader ready to secure a quest envoy from Mitla, but realized two turns too late that I had not fully defogged a route there and so missed the chance to complete that quest before the Classical Era.

My second city, Minou Rock (T35) took a gorgeous spot right next to Danxia with a 3f/2h/2c/2s/2f BT tile in the first ring and an instant 2GM and 2GG points per turn. Being located on a narrow strip of forested coast allowed alost every citizen to work a BT tile and provided good placement for Mausoleum of Halicarnasus down the road. I harvested the Sheep on T48 with a Monumnetality Builder to boost the city from 2 to 4 pop and work more BT tiles, and placed a nice +3 adjacency Campus. This screenshot is about a dozen turns after founding, foot to snap one the turn the city went up.

Minou Crater (37) followed shortly after (the second Settler had a much shorter walk), another nice city with a +1h base and a 2f/2h/2c/2s/2f BT tile in the first ring. The city starts the Government Plaza with strong production (finished (T48)

On the military front, my plan was to invade the juicy Indonesian territory ASAP. Four Warriors levied from Kabul started marching south on T27 and five more from Babylon marching north on T37, and I trained one Archer (T34) and one Horseman (T45, thanks to popping 20 horses from a hut) for support. I hit PP on T36 and swapped into Oligarchy, using the extra wildcard slot from Foudning Fathers to run both Inpiration and Revelataion at the same time.

As my troops started to arrive on the scene, they noticed a raging barbaian assault that took down at least two Indonesian Warriors, helpfully softening up the target.

The war opened on T41. To the north, the levied Kabul Warriors made short work of Tuban, killing a Slinger and capturing a Builder in the opening strike and capturing the city on T43. The barbs continued to help by completing ZOC over the city for the siege. The city was at -12.1 Loyalty when I captured it but Liang hurried over to tamp down the risk of revolt. I made a risky move and simultaneously hit Palembang in the south with just a Warrior, Scout and Archer. The two melee uits held a sige while the Archer pinged the city three times. That got it down to about 140HP, at which point I took a swing with Warrior+Scout. After holding my breath that a unit wouldn’t appear out of the fog and kill my Scout, I was able to capture the city on T44.

Fortunately for me, Indonesia ended up in a normal age - if they went Golden one of the cities would have probably revolted since I could not use Amani for Loyalty duty without losing my Kabul levy. By T50 my Horseman and the levied Warriors from Bologne had arrived at the front and easily took the coastal capital. I signed peace and let the final city, Surabaya, flip to me by Loyalty while my troops healed and then rushed north into Poland.


At T50, the game is going really well with seven cities plus another set to flip in ~20 turns, and a Settler on the map as well. I have 8 envoys assigned and a decent (mostly levied) army having gained several pormotion and suffered no losses in the Indonesia war (though a Warrior would get picked off by barbs right after peace). Districts are lagging, with just two Holy Sites and the Government Plaza so far, but this will pick up now that the early Settler and military pushes are wrapping up and cities shift to infrastructure.

Minou City, the capital, is working on a Campus and then will take a stab at Oracle. With 8 natural BT tiles the city will want to grow, which will be helped by getting the Bees up a little later. Eventually the city can have 11 Housing from Granary+improvements. Five more breathtaking tiles will be possible with 2 city parks. Ultimately the capital will make a good home for Pingula with lots of distrcts and (hopefully) Oracle.

Minou Rock and Minou Crater are also great long-term sites. Minou Rock is massively productuve with 4 BT tiles being worked plus Danxia providing GM and GG pionts. With the Granary complete to relieve Housing pressure, it can get a Campus up pretty quickly and then build a Harbor for the 4th Trade Route needed for Medieval Faires boost. Minou Crater meanwhile is working on the Warlord’s Throne, slowed a bit since I just faith-purchased a Settler. It could use a Trade Route to the capital for a little more food and will eventually be able to power out some key high-adjacency districts plus later GP buildings and the Casa with eventual mega-production from mines and mills. The Settler is heading just east of the Salt to found a city to activate 3 more breath-taking tiles and focus on Pyramids.

Finally, the conquered Indonesian lands are ripe for development. Each city has a major task Tab Farms should be a good place to go for 10/15 pop with flood-enriched farm triangles, plus two wheat, banana and some rainforest to harvest as needed. It is building a Water Mill for the Construction boost and more food. Tab Habor will be in charge of Kilwa and is also important because it provides 2 sources of Iron for Swords (one is under the Holy Site). Tab Armory is focused solely on the boost for Encampment. Minou Gate, founded with a faith Settler will also work on a crucial Commercial Hub. Founded on top of Coffee, the city has an awesome 2f/3h/3c/2s/2f base tile and can work a 1f/3h/2c/2s/2f tile in the first ring. Minou Gate lacks fresh water, but that’s nothing to complain about with 5.5 culture from the start. Later in the game a bunch of parks can also provide more culture and faith from many tiles. Finally, Surabaya (with that stress-inducing Great Prophet trapped insie) will eventually flip too due to Loyalty. It may not look like much, but this city has NINE BT tiles in the first three rings. It also has a ton of chops and will whip out the Colosseum - the spot indicated actually reaches the capital and will ultimately hit 8 cities (once I plant a few more).

 

[Casualty of war]

Goddess of the Hunt would have been nice, but Earth Goddess was worth tens of thousands of faith over the course of the game. I would have liked to get ToA but it went pretty early to an AI out in the fog.

Yeah, that's why I call it a weakness. Most people chop their deer and I just want to slap ToA next to them.

When playing Bull Moose Teddy, you pick Earth Goddess over even Religious Settlements for your Pantheon.

Awesome write-up. Do you have some sort of a designed tracker or spreadsheet?

 

[Minou]

I made an Excel spreadsheet to track how much science I was getting from the Antiquities and Parks ability versus other sources like boosts, pillaging, and Great Scientists. The chart below shows cumulative science from these sources for the first 50 turns. Shows how powerful Antiquities and Parks is in the early game, where it provided almost half of all science.

This is definitely a pain to do, but I have learned a lot about the relative value of things like boosts, Alacazars, Fez, etc. from tracking this whenever I have an interesting game going. Also useful to track the relative usefulness of sources of gold. For example, in this game I ended ups producing about 6,715g from domestic sources, got 8,327 from trade deals, 12,100 from Public Transport, 5,300 from Big Ben and 21,514 from pillaging. That really shows how things like Markets and Trade Routes are pretty weak compared to just pillaging (easily could have had 10,000 additional but didn't really need any more by the time the Exoplanet was flying).

 

[ATEX]

Thanks for the write-up @Minou. This is just brilliant. You got to love a forum where people make spreadsheets of their own analyzis of playing the game. To me the reason I spend time on Civ is that understanding the game is even more fun than playing it. =) Looking forward to reading the rest of the writeup. I would love to look at a turn 100 savegame btw. That is a good benchmark for comparing games I find.

Some questions comes to mind after the first parts:
Why did you choose this map template for fast SV? Was the plan all along to take the world with war? Is it better with continents than pangea for war games?
Did you buy science buildings with faith? I found that I want to spend my faith on settlers, but war might change that so that you can spend your faith elsewhere?
Was sacred places worth it? I guess this game is not buildt around religion, so maybe it didnt really matter much? I have tried making work ethics work with Teddy, but so far it has not really been that amazing.

 

[Minou]

Thanks ATEX. I totally agree. I almost stopped playing Civ 6years ago but then I discovered write ups by people like Whacker and Civ6Trader and realized I could improve my game so much that I got sucked back in. I enjoy your Russian game write-ups too!

I looked at my save files and I did not have T100, but I did save on T99 which should be pretty much the same thing. I'll hopefully add the next 25 turn write up tonight after work.

As for your questions
1. I almost always play Continents since I consider Deity/StandardSize/Continents to be the default map for comparing games, so this was just my default. Pangea would almost certainly be better, since conquering doesn't get slowed down by Cartography and you can meet all the City States faster. I might make another attempt with Teddy on Pangea now that I see it also qualifies for HOF. Although to be honest I enjoy continents because the phase of the game where you have units racing for the new continent is very exciting, wondering whether you will find that precious second Science CS for Kilwa and whether the AIs will be walled up or sitting ducks.

2. I did buy a ton of buildings with Faith. Thanks to Earth Goddess (with City Parks and Eiffel boosting tons of tiles) I ramped up t0 180fpt by T100 (and 5000fpt by end of game) and also pulled in a ton from pillaging. I think I only bought ~5 faith Settlers since most of the good land on my continent was settled and I just conquered it. I didn't track them exactly but think I ended up with ~15 or so Jesuit building purchases, mostly Universities and Research Labs. It was handy to rush the Art and Archeology Museums for the boosts too and very useful especially to buy Library/University/Research Lab stack in the Amundsen Scott Station city. When I founded my religion I actually only had two Holy Sites and could only see one more in AI territory so I don't think Work Ethic would have been good this game.

3. Not 100% about Scared Places. It seemed good since I had a few early wonders like Oracle/Pyramids and then spread it to all the cities that were planning to chop wonders. Te alternatives would have been Cross-Cultural Dialogue or World Church, which I believe now effect your own cities and so are much better than they once were. That being said I ended up with 24spt from Sacred places and would have needed to convert 96 pop to get that from Cross-Cultural, which does not even take into account matching the c/f/g from Sacred Places. Since I planned on using my faith for Jesuit Buildings I'd have less for Missionaries so I'd say Sacred Places was the right choice (but really only made a small impact on the game as a whole).

 

[ATEX]

Thanks ATEX. I totally agree. I almost stopped playing Civ 6years ago but then I discovered write ups by people like Whacker and Civ6Trader and realized I could improve my game so much that I got sucked back in. I enjoy your Russian game write-ups too!

I looked at my save files and I did not have T100, but I did save on T99 which should be pretty much the same thing. I'll hopefully add the next 25 turn write up tonight after work.

As for your questions
1. I almost always play Continents since I consider Deity/StandardSize/Continents to be the default map for comparing games, so this was just my default. Pangea would almost certainly be better, since conquering doesn't get slowed down by Cartography and you can meet all the City States faster. I might make another attempt with Teddy on Pangea now that I see it also qualifies for HOF. Although to be honest I enjoy continents because the phase of the game where you have units racing for the new continent is very exciting, wondering whether you will find that precious second Science CS for Kilwa and whether the AIs will be walled up or sitting ducks.

2. I did buy a ton of buildings with Faith. Thanks to Earth Goddess (with City Parks and Eiffel boosting tons of tiles) I ramped up t0 180fpt by T100 (and 5000fpt by end of game) and also pulled in a ton from pillaging. I think I only bought ~5 faith Settlers since most of the good land on my continent was settled and I just conquered it. I didn't track them exactly but think I ended up with ~15 or so Jesuit building purchases, mostly Universities and Research Labs. It was handy to rush the Art and Archeology Museums for the boosts too and very useful especially to buy Library/University/Research Lab stack in the Amundsen Scott Station city. When I founded my religion I actually only had two Holy Sites and could only see one more in AI territory so I don't think Work Ethic would have been good this game.

3. Not 100% about Scared Places. It seemed good since I had a few early wonders like Oracle/Pyramids and then spread it to all the cities that were planning to chop wonders. Te alternatives would have been Cross-Cultural Dialogue or World Church, which I believe now effect your own cities and so are much better than they once were. That being said I ended up with 24spt from Sacred places and would have needed to convert 96 pop to get that from Cross-Cultural, which does not even take into account matching the c/f/g from Sacred Places. Since I planned on using my faith for Jesuit Buildings I'd have less for Missionaries so I'd say Sacred Places was the right choice (but really only made a small impact on the game as a whole).

Thanks, I will check it out compared to the russian ones and my Teddy games. I have sworn to the lakes template because you have so much room to expand, but with war in the equation, all that space might turn out to be a disadvantage... I have not concluded there yet. I think the new hills template is very fun to explore. It has several civs that could potetially be very fast.
So far I figured all these should be tested:

Australia with work ethics, because it is so easy to get high yield Holy sites with all those mountains.
Norway will get many mines to pillage, and even a cheese game with flipping cities to pillage should be very fast.
Gauls should be able to have fast finishes there since you get amazing chopping.
Ethiopia faith game should be strong on that template as well, although I have not tested them yet.
And of course Russia and Teddy will both be very strong...

So much to test out, but not enough time!

 

[Minou]

TURNS 50 - 75

Spoiler :

As the army heals and I start upgrading some Warriors to Swords in the east, there are some nice developments to the west. A sailing Builder meets Bologna (T53) and Mexico City (T56), gaining free envoys from both. Bologna is an awesome find, any blue City State is welcome but their ability is very nice (though a little less useful late game now that the post Industrial GP are borderline impossible to get). Mexico City is less useful, but I was planning to try and hit Happy with City Parks (+1 Amenity if next to water) and some Zoos so maybe their ability will come in handy.

It turns out both Bologna and Mexico City were actually on my home continent but I had no units to spare to Scout past Preslav until now.


Back in the core, the first Campus completes in Minou City with a nice +3 adjacency (T58) followed shortly by an even nicer +4 Campus in Minou Rock (T63). I decided to take Magnus with my third Governor Title to help with Pyramids, since the timing of Warlord's Throne and Defensive Tactics completing east this would only delay Liang starting City Park spamming by 1 or 2 turns. Serfdom-boosted Monumentality Builders set out to start building Lumber Mills on T60 - these are great since you typically don’t want to chop most forests due to Antiquities and Parks.

Thanks to Danxia and Founding Fathers, Great People start arriving in droves - a GP on T57, GG Boudica and GS Hypatia on T64, and GM Zheng on T65. I am a bit sad to miss out on GM Crassus despite the early points from Danxia, but Zheng will make the Medeival Faires boost a lot easier to hit in time.

Minou Sands is founded i this desert valley, forgoing fresh water so that it can have a BT base tile and I purchase the tile to the north so the city can immediately work the 2f/2h/2s/2c/2f Stone. This city has one mission, build the Pyramids!

The first City Park, in Minou Crater, adds 6c, 4s, and 6f immediately.

It turns out the barbs are way worse than I had suspected. The camp near Tab Harbor is now spewing Swords and really slowing my troops movement as they need to beat back at least a few units to keep my new cities safe. In fact this camp would persist for almost 100 turns. I built a few walls and used ranged attacks to beat back the barbs after my first attempt to clear it failed. On the plus side, my Kabul levy expires to 57, allowing me to re-levy their army with the addition of two Chariots they built during the first levy. Barbs aside things go well in the newly conquered cities, which get up a Commercial Hub and Harbor by T69.


The main objective in the T50-T60 interval is to secure a Great Prophet. I took a stupid risk, pulling out the Revelation card for 5 turns to run Diplomatic League for a double envoy (should have swapped out Inspiration instead). I thought by pillaging Indonesia’s Holy Site + Shrine early in the war I would stop them from scooping one of the Great Prophets and leave myself plenty of breathing room. However, they bought the one with gold or faith anyway. I harvested one of the Deer in the capital to complete a Holy Site prayers project just to be on th safe side, and ended up scooping the 4th Great Prophet. For Beliefs I took Jesuit Education to funnel Earth Goddess faith into Science and tries out Sacred Places since I planned to have about a dozen wonders by the end of the game, plus maybe a few more random captured ones. Cross-Cultural Dialogue might have been good here too, but since I spent so much faith on Campus buildings (and thus had little for Missionaries), Sacred Places seemed better.

On T62, my levied army of Warriors and Chariots invades Poland, capturing the city of Lubin the next turn. It’s actually not a very useful city since it has zero infrastructure, but serves as a base to upgrade units. GG Boudica (recently recruited thanks to Danxia) arrives at the front by teleporting in after capture and IW completes the same turn, allowing 2 Sword upgrades. With Stirrups completing on T69, my army is now way too strong for Poland to slow down unless they get walls up quick. One difficulty I ran into was forgetting my Horseman needed Horses to heal. I was angrily wondering why he would not recover any HP despite sitting in a city for 4 turns, and actually only realized the problem after the game was over! At any rate, Kabul eventually hooked up Horses and saved the day.

Another difficulty, entirely self-inflicted, was a bone-headed error that spiraled outward. I moved a Chariot out of my territory to give another unit a farily meaningless flanking bonus and then could not promote it to a Knight for another 2 turns as I had originally planned. This was bad enough, but because I did not spend 10 Iron to upgrade that Chariot, another Chariot that was in a Lubin’s build quue became a Knight, consuming 20 Iron! That stole the stockpile I had been saving for the in-progress Chariot plus another to be upgraded to Knights. So, instead of 3 Knights next turn as planned I had 2 Chariots and a Knight turns and turns from completion. If I had just made the right move, the upgrade would have taken me from 18 to 8 Iron keeping the Chariot in the queue. This is probably the biggest military blunder I made all game and slowed conquest of the home continent a couple turns.


As the counter hits T75, things are snowballing with 12 cities plus 1 Settler on the map, with 86spt and 70cpt. The military is rolling as a GG boosted Knight and Crossbow have been added and will steamroll the rest of Poland soon. The core is humming. Minou City is just about to complete the Oracle in 1 turn and is working 6 BT tiles. Minou Sands completed the Pyramids on T74 and has two more BT tiles takes to Liang, who is heading for the capital next. Now that I have captured some Holy Sites and build a few Campus, I can place my first discounted districts, a Theater Square, Entertainment Zone, and Industrial Zone, all of which I wait on placing for about 10 turns for the 40% savings. Over on the Indonesian side of the mountain chain, Surabaya (now Tab Arena, I named all the cities after pets to help me keep track of groups on the map so my cat Tabitha is viceroy of these lands I guess) has flipped and is working on a Granary to get out of the 2 Housing cap and then will chop Colosseum.

The main part of my empire at T75. Note the barbarians have gone absolutely nutes. I actually had to swap in Limes and get two sets of Ancient Walls up to avoid losing any cities! These guys would be easy to clear out but I would rather spent the hammers on other stuff so I am happy to just shoot down whichever brave barbarian marchs up to a city.

Here is the front, with my mostly levied troops rolling through Poland. Gdansk had a very nice _4 adjacency Campus. A Monumentality Settler founded an interesting little city north of the fomer Indonesian lands which can be seen at the bottom of the shot. Bordering Ik-Kul to gain a BT base tile, Oscar Caldera is nicely positioned to take advantge of the wonder for a fast Campus, then Chichen Itza, and eventually a discount Spaceport.

 

[Minou]

TURNS 76-100

Spoiler :

As the game nears it’s midpoint, new infrastructure is going up everywhere and the game is entering the phase where there are lots of important boosts to be handled. I missed the Civil Service due to barbs, but just squeaked by chopping Markets, building Harbors, and using Monumentality for faith Traders to score MF, Mercantilism, and Cartography boosts. I ever squeezed in an Aquaduct for ME. The one I botched due to an error was Printing Press - I planned to use Jesuit Education to grab the second University but oops - I didn’t actually spread my religion to the city! I also misclicked and purchased a Trader instead of a Builder, which almost caused me to miss the Divine Right boost. Luckily I managed to chop the Temple in a different city just in time.

Oracle completes T76 and Pingula heads to the capital on T85 now that Liang is fully promoted. A second Monumentality Golden Age starts on T86. For my second government building I go with Grandmaster’s Chapel. Oscar Caldera is getting up to speed thanks to a Trader adding 3f/2h. Liang is spamming City Parks, carefully placing them not only to get tiles to get 4 Appeal, but also 5 or 6 Appeal to keep the tiles BT if mines or IZ are planned in the area (and get more Neighborhood Gold). I hit 100spt on T80 and 200spt on T93.

A Monumentality Settler founds Port Tab, a nice little city that can grab many BT tiles with help from a few City Parks. I will harvest the Sheep to clear a space for a +4 Campus.

The barbarians continue to go completely nuts. Honestly it is odd that barbarians are so much more of a trheat than Deity level AIs. Ultimately the barbs hurt me here, as they pillaged too many farms and kept my Builders from ever being able to Magnus harvest the Wheat to get Tab Farms to 10 pop in time for the Civil Service boost. To make matters worse, I wasted 10 turns of Magnus movement since he just ended up stuck in the city waiting in vain for a chop opportunity. The only bright side of all this is that my new Spear can knock off the redlined Crossbow for the Military Tactics boost.


Militarily, the war in Poland goes very well. On T78 the Knight captures Krakow which has a Holy Site and Shrine (plus Feed the World belief) and an Encampment with Barracks. Adding these two districts allows a second round of discount IZ/TS/EC disticts. With my levy nearing expiration, my army races west into Japan after a few Crossbow, Knight, and Sword upgrades thanks to Professional Army. They hit Japan on T82 with 5 turns left on the levy, I had hoped to pillage enough gold to re-levy, but Japan has not a single mine in sight…. can’t complain too much though, as they kindly walk an unguarded Settler into range of the one Warrior tagging along with the upgraded troops! The war in Japan ends up being a nail biter due to a Crossbow popping and shooting down one of my units, but on T86. Despite this setback, on the turn before my levy expires, my mercenary army managed to capture the Japanese capital of Kyoto, which has a sweet Holy Site with Shrine/Temple/Meeting House (plus Choral Music!) and a Theater Square with Amphitheater. That stupidly exposed Japanese Settler heads into the snowy region north of Japan and founds Ginker Snow Base, a city that will build the Amundsen Scott Station down the road. For now it will work on a Campus. I’ll send a Missionary soon so that I can buy the Library/University/Research Lab with Jesuit Education, leaving the forests to chop the wonder.

The 5 turn clock to attack Japan is no problem as my Knight can slam into the unwalled city of Sendei for a whopping 72 damage. Thank goodness they moved quickly, as the cost to re-levy will be an unaffordable 1520g.

These newly conquered cities lack many BT tiles, but the productive hilly land makes this a good spot to get a pair of Industrial Zones to help with boosts. As with Indonesia, my troops have ignored a small city (Kalisz), which will simply flip by Loyalty.

As the barbs keep raging, I actually used them to my advantage! Boudicca converted 3 Swords, a very valuable move as I had almost no gold in the treasury at this stage. These Swords would go on to become Muskets and conquer a good portion of China down the road.

Monumnetality builders make great scouts, but sadly this one was killed by barbs the turn after reaching the second continent. A real shame since one turn later he would have been able to clammer ashore and speed up meeting the rest of the city states


My sailing units manage to find the second continent right before T100. Actually, a Builder first makes it over to the east coast of the new continent on T92, but is killed by barbs the next turn. He made contact with the Ottomans first at least. Since they had almost no gold to trade, I decalred on the right away - declaring reveals any vassal City States, and at this stage it would be very useufl to see them to get an idea of the shape of the map, and be able to send envoys if it might be possible to peel one away. Sadly, they had none.

Some other sailing units lagging behind the doomed Builder ended up finding a long, narrow island halfway between the two continents. They met Cardiff on T95 (not very exciting), popped a hut for 75g, and then made a thrilling discovery - Geneva (T97)! Great news as they are the #1 city state I would like to meet at this stage in the game. Better still, none of the AIs had reached the island so I got free envoys to both Cardiff and Geneva. I had two envoys saved up for whatever CS I might meet in the fog, so I scopped up Suzerain over Geneva instantly - which made me regret my declaration on the Ottomans which would cost me the 15% science bonus for the next 5 turns.

Geneva was even more useful than as just a source of science, as I levied their 6 Sword army and sailed them west, meeting Shaka. Meanwhile my own troops met China on the other side of the new continent. Zulu only had 85g and China 35g to trade. Kind of weird that all the AIs on the new continent were so broke.

The rest of this interval is farily uneventful. The next few Governor Titles all go to Pingula. Jesuit Education starts coming into play as I buy a few Universities, putting all that Earth Goddess and pillage faith to good use. The first World Congress vote makes units 50% cheaper with production and adds +10 religious combat strength to Islam, neither of which makes any impact. Resolutions are so random. Most make no impact on the game at all (like banning Marble, doubling grievances, or cancelling Great Admiral points) while a few can make a difference (+100% production for Campus buildings, doubling Great Scientist points). Great Admiral Thermiscoles was a nice random bonus, since I was too lazy to build a Quadrieme but having one will be handy for the NT boost, except as it turns out GS Omar boosted that one, along with Square Rigging and Siege Tactics (I popped him hoping for Humanism, kind of wish I had cleared NT ahead of time by building my own Quad). I also scored GM Marco Polo.

 

[Minou]

T100 STATUS

Spoiler :

Let’s take a tour of the empire at T100 (screenshots are actually from T101 since I forgot to take them before ending the turn). Things are going great, with Enlightenment just in (T100), 20 cities, and almost 250spt and 178cpt (about 50 of each from BT tiles). Earth Goddess is keeping me close to 200fpt which basically means unlimited Builders and a free Jesuit Library/University combo every so often. Pingula has just hit Grants to combine nicely with Oracle in the capital. Grandmaster’s Chapel is also up, which will allow me to generate instant reinforcements as soon as I can capture a city on the new continent. The 15f pillage bonus is actually kind of nice too (I tallied 1430f from it over the course of the game). Thanks to Coloseum, Liberalism card, and City Parks, three of my cities are actually at Happy now, though I did not manage to maintain this much later in the game (probably a lost cause with the new happiness rules, unless Cahokia is in the game).

Now at 8 pop each working a BT tile, Oracle, 3 districts (HS, Campus, IZ) and Pingula fully promoted, the capital is churning out massive amounts of science, culture, faith, and GP points. I sent a Monumentality Settler to the east coast to found Port Tab, a city with lots of nice BT tiles. That Builder will harvest the Sheep to push up populations and work more of those juicy tiles.

Here are the former Indonesian lands, now an engine of productivity. Tab Arena completed a sweet Colosseum in range of 8 cities, and both Tab Arena and Minou Gate are working tons of BT tiles. Tab Farms is growing population like a weed to try for the Urbanization boost. Tab Harbor has Kilwa under way and Oscar Caldera can chop Chichen Itza as soon as Magnus arrives thanks to the Ik-kul bonus.

Here is the newly conquered Japanese territory. Japan’s land was the worst of any Civ since it had relatively few forests, making it both hard to get districts up by chopping and hard to get BT tiles. The Theater Squares were nice, but too late to give a shot at boosting Humanism. The most valuable prize is the trio of Holy Sites with multiple buildings, since Buddhism has the Choral Music belief. Nagano was captured by a Scout but I actually wish I razed it since it contributes almost nothing and I would rather have freed up the forest 1 tile NW of the city for Ginker Snow Base to chop.

And here are the Polish lands conquered earlier in the campaign. They are starting to get some BT tiles thanks to a brief stop by Liang in Oscar Ridge and slowly building up Campus and Industrial Zone infrastructure. Eventually, these hilly lands will become the home of some of my most productive cities.

The levied Geneva army reinforces my own troops as they sail towards the west coast of the new continent. I am thrilled to see an unwalled Zulu city as well as the borders of Mt. Roraima!

Simultaneously, Boudica’s coverted Swords and one of my own Knights have landed on the east coast of the new continent just as we hit T100. The first Chinese cities I found had walls and so were impenetrable for now, but I was happy to meet Hong Kong, the most useful Industrial City State, which will help with CRG projects and the space race. Singapore is pretty boring, bascially doing zero for me since all my Traders are either running domestic routes to build up new cities or City State routes for envoys.

Finally, Here is a plot of cumulative science from different sources. You can see that as T100 approaches, “normal” science from sources like Campus buildings is finally starting to outpace the Antiquities and Parks. Its also worth noting Boosts (I split out boosts I earned organically from boosts from Great Scientists) make up more than half of all science earned. This seems counterintuitive sice each tech only gets 40% when boosted, but many techs I have not started researching were boosted ahead of time. Sadly I haven’t pillaged a single Campus yet.

 

[DanQuayle]

@Minou Do you think the detour to Steel is worth it? Why?
What would be the minimal increase in yields to make it worthwhile?

 

[Minou]

@DanQualye I am not sure about the Steel plan. It was probably not the optimum move, but I got a little tempted by the thought of all those beautiful tiles. A complicating factor was that I kind of botched the planning for boosting Flight, so that chopping Eiffel ended up securing that boost. So I would say the best play would have been to have a better plan for boosting Flight earlier and going straight to Rocketry before Steel, but in the context of how the game was unfolding it was probably a wash to get Steel first. One of my flaws is that I get really focused on getting boosts and inspirations which sometimes causes my to delay a key tech when it would be better to just race ahead with no boost.

 

[Minou]

I should add that the boost to Lumber Mills from Steel was non-negligible since as Teddy I had preserved so many.

 

[Minou]

TURNS 100-140

Sorry for the long delay finishing this write up.

Spoiler :

The post T100 era opened with a pair of new overseas wars. I hit China first. They had walls in most of their cities the giant 11 pop city of Jiadong luckily was undefended and my Knights were able to grab it as a foothold for expansion. My troops grabbed 3 more cities before signing peace for 48g/48gpt on T121.

The Zulu presented a slight challenge because Impi really boost the defensive strength of cities. I decalred on T104 and manged to kill an Impi on flat ground, pillage some mines, and siege the city of Ndondakusuka on the opening turn. Shake helped me out by shooting three different units one time each with his ranged units, instead of concentrating firepower to actually kill one. This allows me to capture the city next turn. With this foothold to upgrade Muskets and buy a Siege Tower, I can conquer the rest of the walled cities with ease. My troops took two more cities, pillaged over 2000g, and signed peace on T120. I actually lost a few Muskets to concentrated ranged fire, and could have done a little better with mining logistics here since I hit a Niter bottleneck.

One of my biggest mistakes of this era was a misclick - I declared a Surprise War on Japan on T112 but I simply clicked the wrong button, meaning to declare a Holy War. I could care less about Grievance, but this would have boosted Nationalism. Luckily for me, I was able to salvage the boost by sliding 6 envoys into Hong Kong who was already at war with the Ottomans and then declare a Protectorate War on them. Phew!

Meanwhile the Ottomans wiped out Singapore. I never bothered to liberate them, as they were pretty far off my invasion path and not very valuable sine I already had Suzerain status over two Industrial City States and their ability is not that exciting. I met the final City State, Kandy, on T102 - kind of weird not to have a single Cultural City State in the game, but it Kandy is fine, as a second Religious City State will eventually allow me to get the full 15% Kilwa faith bonus. The Ottomans were also useful as they forked over Diamond, Ivory, Citrus, and Tea when I demanded them, solving a happiness crunch.

Mali I mostly ignored, other than sending some troops to pillage for Spaceport gold and take a small city every 5 turns to keep the Warlord’s Throne bonus going. I also snagged an Aluminum mine city from them, since Aluminum was rare in my lands.

On the domestic front, Minou Rock competed the Mausoleum on T102. Shortly after Chichen Itza is completed for a nice 8c/4h boost (this will grow as I just lifted the housing cap on the city). This wonder was a bit of a “luxury” but I think it ended up being a net positive play since Ik-Kil reduced the cost so much and besides boosting all those RF, the wonder also created some additional BT tiles, plus a small additional boost from Sacred Places. Most importantly Kilwa arrived on T109, boosting my empire wide science by ~80spt. I checked some boxes by buying/building things like Workshops and Factories - actually wit Mexico City, Cardiff, and Hong Kong Factories were kind of fun with a +6h CS bonus and often hitting 5 or more other cities. Casa arrived on T126, which allowed me to fully promote both Reyna and Moksha by the end of the game. Tab Farms, which fell short of getting the Civil Service boost due to barbs, redeemed itself by managing to get to 15 pop in time for Urbanization.

I founded a city near Piopiotahi to serve as a base for chopping Satellite and Moon Landing, and another chop city to chop out the Forbidden City. Established cities started the Bolshoi, Oxford, and Big Ben.

Public Transportation was even more bountiful than usual thanks to the focus on keeping forests and Eiffel Tower’s impact. I end up with about 12,000g from Neighborhoods.

I was tempted into going for Steel before Rocketry, to get more BT tiles and also because as Teddy I had a ton of Lumber Mills. I finally hit Steel on T124, delayed a bit because I stupidly forgot to buy a Caravel before completing Steam Power and thus had to chop an Ironclad for the boost instead of just upgrading one. I quickly chopped Eiffel in a captured Chinese City with plenty of forests. The wonder ended up boosting enough BT tiles to add 66spt, 66cpt, and 110fpt.

Rocketry arrived on T132. I purchased a Reyna Spaceport in Minou Spaceport and sent Magnus there. The city actually had fewer trees than needed to chop Satellites and Moon Landing in a normal game (only 10 full chops worth), but Hong Kong provided the boost to make it possible. Meanwhile some of my high-production cities such as Oscar Ridge started hard building Spaceports. The Satellite went up on T137 revealing one final hut and Lunar Landing on T138 (could have been 2 turns faster if I saved more 1 charge builders). The 10,400c boost was more than enough to finish all the remaining civic to Globalization at 1 turn each. I accidentally boosted Totalitarianism after triggering the Moon Landing culture burst, but apparently it did not cancel out the culture because I still completed Globalization (with no boost) the next turn.

Bolshoi ended up being a whiff, providing the useless Capitalism and Exploration (probably should have completed that one just to open up the possibility of a useful Civic), but since Lunar Landing completed the same turn it didn’t matter much.

Great People were pretty decent this run. GS Galileo arrived T106 (popped for 1250s on T130), followed by the wall-building GE who actually was pretty useful teleporting around to help with various barb infestations. GE Bi Sheng arrived T113, finally revealing GE Isidore whom I really wanted on T117. I used GS Chat let to boost Sanitation, Steam Power, and Economics as planned after boosting all the other techs from those eras. GG Nina appears T120 (useful at least for the envoy) along with GS Newton (T120 as well, worth 45spt). GM Fugger (T130) actually provided some use, giving me envoys needed to steal back Geneva (briefly stolen by Japan). I churned past the useful GE Sinar (T134) to get GE Filippio who helped build the Amundson Scott Research Station. GG Joan of Arc (T134) actually had a little use as I sold the relic for a ton of gold. The useless GS Mendeleev signaled the end of GP being worthwhile, after which the remaining ones either did nothing useful, cost a ridiculous amount, or both. I wish they would re-scale the cost of the late game GP so they would actually be part of the game again.

Science ended up running so far ahead of culture due to 4 science CS and 0 culture CS that I actually hit Radio fast enough to boost Mass Media. I hit 1000spt on T136 when I ended my wars to get the Geneva bonus back.

I popped a few late huts, for an envoy (T112), 75g (T128), and 20 Aluminum (T132). Oh well, one day I will get that free late game tech from an icy hut.

As for religion, Jesuit Education was handy this interval, providing 2 Libraries, 6 Universities, 2 Research Labs, 1 Amphitheater, and 1 Archeology Museum (I ended up hard-building the Art Museum in a captured city). Missionaries also set out for the new continent, to convert captured Chinese cities with either wonders (for Sacred Places) or Campus (for Jesuit Education). Normally this would be too much trouble, but China had no religion so most cities could be converted with 2-3 charges.

The World Congress passed +100% for city center buildings and +100% yield for Science City State Trade Routes. Yawn….

If Jiadong had gotten up walls the late game would have been stalled. That Sword is one of the converted barbarians from earlier! While the population will help keep the city loyal, it is pretty lame that the AI grew a city to 11 pop but built no districts except an Aqueduct (and this in a riverside city no less)

Just liked this screenshot of a Horseman sailing in the eye of the hurricane to invade China.

Xi’an was a nice capture as it has HS+Shrine, a +4 Campus, Encampment (not useful on its own, but it fulfills quests to Preslav and Cardiff), Machu Pichu, Apandana, and Great Bath. Though since I am working BT tiles near mountains instead of building districts there, MP provides a whopping 1h and 1c total!

What a beautiful site the Zulu coast is for Teddy! So many BT tiles, and an unwalled landing point too.

After conquest, the Zulu lands had some incredibly rich tiles.

Minou Spaceport looking very nice right before I chopped those forests. Spy on duty against sabotage.

Eiffel Tower boosting tiles locally and globally.

 

[The Highwayman]

@Minou Thanks for the write up. That's a pretty quick Eiffel - I'd consider that wonder if I could get there that fast. The horseman tanking the hurricane like a boss is the best part though.

 

[Minou]

TURNS 141-161

Spoiler :

The last 20 turns were just wrapping up the space race. I completed Big Ben on T140 (guess that should have been in the last post) for 5300g. This was lower than it should have been, but since I didn’t have enough forests to chop Big Ben instantly I was forced to buy the first Reyna Spaceport before it was finished. GE Filipio helped get Amundsen Scott Research Station up on T144. I did do a little more warring in the last dozen turns or so to get faith/gold for more Builders to chop Lasers.

Oxford was a mixed bag; I got Advanced Ballistics, which was needed, and Stealth, which was not (I swear I get Stealth from Oxford every single game). There were two icy huts I saved for the endgame hoping for a juicy free tech but they ended up giving 40g (ouch) and a Governors Title (would have been amazing 100 turns ago, but useless now.

I hit Globalization and Nanotechnology on T142. The Mars Mission launched on T149, I just used Royal Society Builders in Minou Spaceport since there was no time crunch.

For space infrastructure, I built two Spaceports in high-production cities, bought additional Reyna Spaceports in the capital and a chop city captured from Mali, and bought two Moksha Spaceports in a city captured from China for a total of 7. The last faith Spaceport actually came in on T158, I pillaged enough faith to get to exactly 3601.1f - just 1.1 more than needed!

Sadly the end of the tech tree was pretty terrible. I completed Advanced Power Cells on T144 but did not reveal Smart Materials. After 5 more one-turn techs, I revealed the next hidden tech but it was Seasteads, and the next tech was Smart Materials. With that revealed, I removed all my Lumber Mills in the capital so I could chop the Exoplanet Mission, With 5 Magnus+ISS boosted chips and 1 Royal Society Builder it launched the same turn (T151).

Unfortunately, Offworld Mission ended up being the very last tech at the right end of the tech tree, and I had to burn through 5 more prerequisite techs, literally every tech from the end of the tree except Predictive Systems. I finally hit Offworld Mission at T156. That turn I was able to chop/grind 4 Lasers, followed by 3 more Lasers on T157, and 4 more Lasers on T158. Looking back, I had slightly too few Builders (wasn’t strict enough about saving 1-charge Builders) and I could have probably went 6/5 instead of 4/3/4 on the Lasers. There were enough forests for two more Lasers on T158, but by that point it did not impact the Victory Date.

Big Ben was slow to complete, but this nighttime graphic made me happy.

Some tanks pummeling down a free city to keep the Warlords Throne bonus going. I could have done a better job planning late game city grabs for WT bonus, and probably should have pillaged more since I was short a few Builders.

Minou City still has all its forests thanks to the pressure to keep BT tiles, so can easily send the Exoplanet Mission flying the turn Smart Materials completes.

I had a lot of good luck this game, but the end of the tech tree was terrible.

Max Spaceport was purchased with faith, with only 1.1f to spare! I was able to get one final meaningful Laser here.

 

[Minou]

FINAL THOUGHTS

Spoiler :

Teddy is hands down my favorite CIV for Science now. Antiquities and Parks basically makes most games feel like you started next to a Natural Wonder and I really liked the extra Wildcard policy slot, especially early on. I still suspect Norway can win faster, but the BT tile game is really fun for planners. I played Continents since I thought that was the "standard" for HOF, but I would say Pangea might be a faster map type since it let's you find all the AIs and City States faster - probably would have let me start hitting Zulu/China about ten turns early this game all else being equal (don't have a great knowledge of other map shapes, maybe even faster options).

Overall, I had great luck with four science city states. Perhaps the most important thing was that the map ended up putting Indonesia, Poland, and Japan all on relatively flat land so my army could make a rapid counterclockwise sweep of the home continent in the first 92 turns. My only bad luck was the late game tech tree. This cost as many as 10 turns compared to the perfect scenario where Smart Materials and Offworld are the first two techs. I also probably cost myself 3-4 turns due to various mistakes. So, I would guess that with a similarly good map but better play and a luckier tech order T150 is possible.

Here is the final chart showing the cumulative relative science contributions from Breath-taking tiles (underestimated since this is raw science, not counting modifiers like Kilwa and Geneva), "normal" science, boosts, pillaging, and Great Scientists (not I just counted science from instant sources like Galileo and boost here, too hard to tease out things like Newton bonus). Up to T100, BT tiles actually contributed about half of all science, but as Rationalism, Universities/Research Labs, and +6 City State bonuses stack up BT tiles become less important.

In the end, Parks and Antiquities provided roughly 9220s and 9506c (I had a spreadsheet but didn't update every turn. That's nice but the real strength comes from +4s/4c on turn 1 more than +150s/c at the end of the game (which is where I ended up).

For pantheon, Earth Goddess was way better than even Religious Settlements, I generated 27,354f domestically, the large majority for Earth Goddess). I pillaged another 6,060 normally with 1430 more from Grandmaster's Chapel. Sacred Places ended up generating 1024s/c/f/g, which I think makes it a good belief choice. Jesuit Education ended up providing 24 total buildings, so I think it was the best choice there as well.

Finally, I tracked trades and pillaging. I ended up producing 6,715g naturally, another 12,000 from Neighborhood gold and 5,300 from Big Ben, showing how broken Neighborhood Gold is (really they should award the gold when the Neighborhood completes). I made 8,327g through trade deals but pillaged a whopping 21,500g. My science and culture haul from pillaging was truly depressing, 2,198s and only 234c.

What went right:

I think I played pretty well militarily, pre-planning what units would be needed and when (e.g. getting Chariots in place so they could upgrade to Knights at the front) and ignoring unimportant things (e.g. bypassing small cities so the main army could move forward), using levies wisely, and getting overseas just in time (only two unwalled cities left in China and Zulu land when I arrived). I was as careful as I have ever been about policy timing, moving Governors, trading, and planing every district. I managed to keep the Warlord's throne bonus for 74 of 97 possible turns, and five of the “missed” turns were at the very end of the game when it would not have made any difference.

Specifically, I was careful to boost almost every possible tech and civic. These are the ones I missed:

Techs: Archery (early science rate too fast), Masonry (no Stone near start), Shipbuilding (no hammers to spare for Galleys), Celestial Navigation (did not seem like it was worth waiting since I needed Harbors up fast), Buttress (couldn’t chop Colosseum in time, might have been able to with better planning), Electricity (didn’t really matter because I had enough overflow to complete it in one turn without the boost), Chemistry (this one is impossible in fast games), Advanced Flight (I never get this one, possible I guess with massive gold surplus), Combined Arms (forgot levied troops can’t form armies), Nuclear Fission, Lasers, Nuclear Fusion, Guidance Systems. Note these last 4 made at most 1 turn difference since all but one completed in a single turn

Civics: Early Empire (early culture rate too fast thanks), Games and Recreation (never get this one), Defensive Tactics, Drama and Poetry (Pyramids lagged behind culture by 10 turns), Civil Service (looked easy but raging barbs prevent my Builders from ever harvesting the 2 needed Wheats) Diplomatic Service (everyone hated me by the time this was up), Humanism (had a 1/3 shot to get this one with GS Omar), Cold War, Globalization (last two did not matter since Moon Landing culture completed them in 1 turn each).


What went wrong:

One strategic error was being too optimistic on happiness. With all those City Parks, Mexico City, and a very nice Colosseum, I thought I could actually get my cities to Happy. So, I invested in a few extra Entertainment Complexes and Zoos. Of course, all my cities ended up neutral at -1, 0, or 1 happiness. Those hammers would have been better spent on CRG projects, extra Builders (or units to wipe out Japan)

A second is that I neglected to completely wipe out Japan which ended up being a minor annoyance since they kept me from ever getting Suzerain of Yerevan. It would have been well worth building a few units to finish them off for that extra faith.

In fact since this game was played so slowly I even wrote down every error I made (at least those I noticed, I probably made dozens more that I did not realize)

T42: Neglected to completely defog the route to Mitla, so I was not able to send a Trader there to complete a quest before the Classical Era started.
T42: Slotted Diplomatic League over Revelation, but I never needed DL because of the above Trader era. This made the race for a GP close, but I did secure one.
T46: Placed a Campus in one of the captured Indonesian cities when I should have waited to place a CH instead which would have provided more leeway for the MF/Guilds boosts (got them anyway)
T60: Forgot to move Magnus for Pyramids chop earlier, delaying Pyramids a few turns and then much more stupidly chopped the first forest the turn before he established. To make it worse, I chopped a RF before he arrived as well, though the second bad chop was a straigth up misclick, rather than a mental lapse. Still got the wonder.
T63: Lost out on GM Crassus. I would have been the first Civ to 60GM points, but in my experience AIs often buy the early Great People the turn before the Player would earn them. I should have probably just spent the gold to grab him a couple turns early.
T64: Forgot to swap back to IW after boosting so it completed a turn late, slowing Stirrups/Knights by a turn.
T70: Major error moving a Chariot out of territory so it could not be upgraded, whcih then meant I accumulated 20 Iron shifting another Chariot build to a Knight. This was a major, major delay but I still managed to conquer Japan before levy expired.
T78: Accidentally purchases a Trader instead of Builder, almost costing me the DR boost.
T90: Chopped a forest for Colosseum way too early based on the math I should have waited for Magnus for all chops here.
T90: Forgot to move a Builder in time harvest a Maize tile I needed to buy a tile to chop.
T91: Lost about 10 turns of Magnus as he was waiting to harvest food and get a city to 10 pop but barbs never allowed it. Should have just cut losses and used him elsewhere.
T91: Lost culture overflow because a 6th city passively converted to boost Reformed Church the same turn I completed a Civic (can’t blame myself too hard for this as it would have required a neurotic level observation to avoid).
T112: Declared a Surprise War instead of Holy War on Japan, almost costing me the Nationalism boost (salvaged it with a clever Protectorate war)
T116: Forgot to move a flanking unit before attacking a Crossbow, which survived with a few HP and killed one of my units
T121: Forgot to build/buy a Caravel before teching Steam Power, so had to chop an Ironclad instead of just upgrading one.
T122: Bolshoi was worthless, think I should have either built it earlier or completed Exploration first to make the free Civic options better.
T127: Forgot that levied troops cannot be made into Corps/Armies, causing a mad scramble for the those boosts
T130: Dopily purchased an Encampment in my Moon Landing city, forgeting that ISS Policy is way later in the tree!
T130: Did not move a GG before attacking a Warrior Monk, allowing it to survive.
T138: Placed a Public Transport Neighborhood on top of a Cow instead of a farm (lost 600g)
T141: Cleared a marsh assigned to the wrong city (cost working one more Chichen Itza jungle but made zero difference this late)
T141: Chopped a forest for Amundsen Scott assigned to wrong city
T142: Forgot to start Royal Society when I hit Communism (3 turns earlier). Still had plenty of tie to get it up before needed, but that was dumb.
T156: Hard to wait a turn to chop Lasers because I neglected to pre-dismantle some Lumber Mills
T157: Let a Builder get sniped by Zulu, slowing down a Laser chop one turn
T158: Forgot to get Power in one of my Laser chop cities (and was out of Aluminum by then)

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to share any feedback!

 

[Minou]

OK, so I guess I should update this too. Suspect my T161 is going to get knocked down by Norway (by ATEX or myself) soon.

• 1st place: Minou 161 - USA/ Teddy (Bull Moose)
• 2nd place: whacker 165 - Russia/Peter
• 3rd place: ATEX 167- Russia/Peter

• 4th place: Civ Chemist - 177 - Japan/Hojo Tokimune
• 5rd place: Victoria - 191 - Maori/Kupe
• 6th place: Bangau - 192 - Korea/Seondeok
• 7th place: Lotrmith - 200 Bolivar/GranColombia
  
• 8th place: The Highwayman - 201 - Dido/Phoenicia
• 9th place: The Highwayman - 210 - Trajan/Rome
• 10th place: monikernemo - 210 - Peter/Russia (How does one break ties?)
• 11th place: enKage - 210 - Cree/Poundmaker
• 12th place: The Highwayman - 218 - Greece/Pericles
• 13th place: Casualty of war - 218 - Matthias Corvinus/Hungary

 

[Casualty of war]

Good thing I've got a solid sub-200 Matthias game going, because it looks like I'm hanging onto the list through courtesy. Goofy game, could have been a 130ish Dom victory but I slow rolled crossing the ocean to circumnavigate and meet the last civ because I didn't want to squander the Era Score. The last unconquered cap, Canada, still didn't have Walls at Turn 148!

Nice write-up, Minou.

 

[ATEX]

OK, so I guess I should update this too. Suspect my T161 is going to get knocked down by Norway (by ATEX or myself) soon.

• 1st place: Minou 161 - USA/ Teddy (Bull Moose)
• 2nd place: whacker 165 - Russia/Peter
• 3rd place: ATEX 167- Russia/Peter

• 4th place: Civ Chemist - 177 - Japan/Hojo Tokimune
• 5rd place: Victoria - 191 - Maori/Kupe
• 6th place: Bangau - 192 - Korea/Seondeok
• 7th place: Lotrmith - 200 Bolivar/GranColombia
  
• 8th place: The Highwayman - 201 - Dido/Phoenicia
• 9th place: The Highwayman - 210 - Trajan/Rome
• 10th place: monikernemo - 210 - Peter/Russia (How does one break ties?)
• 11th place: enKage - 210 - Cree/Poundmaker
• 12th place: The Highwayman - 218 - Greece/Pericles
• 13th place: Casualty of war - 218 - Matthias Corvinus/Hungary

Hehe I think you are correct in this. Im unsure if my current game will take the 161 mark, but I see that a properly planned Norway game should be faster than any other Civ. The pillage economy is so strong. I thought it would be very tedious with all the pillages, but it is actually more casual than a normal game, because you have so much faith and cash to just buy whatever you need for boosts. =) I will give some ideas around the strategy after I finish my first playthrough.

 

[Casualty of war]

Yeesh, thought that one was going to slip away. I had lots of moderately good Spaceport production cities, 3-5 turns for Laser Projects, but no great one. Faith bought double Goddard the turn before I won. When Bolshoi gives you Globalization and Social Media right before you go to the Moon, you would think you would finish a bit sooner! Successfully building Machu Picchu, having Zhangye Danxia so close (but just off screen) for my starting Settler and risking my capital Campus for a +5 next to a volcano that never erupted. I moved my Settler one space, to settle on an oxbow with Cocoa and get the across-river bonus to almost all my early Districts. I had a Meteor Shower that came down IIRC in the Classical right by Hong Kong that I didn't scoop up until it gave me a Modern Armor; I was fighting my wars with my suzerainity's troops.

I've got to figure out how you guys are getting Rocketry so early. I was ready to faith-buy Spaceports with Moksha for ages but didn't get Rocketry until Turn 154.

Turn 198/199, 2600 score though, with Matthias on a Pangaea.

Spoiler :