Civ 7 7OTM04 - Completion of Modern Age (end of game) Spoiler Thread

[Eyswein]

At the top of your post please post:
Victory Condition Achieved (Note: Culture was goal for Civ 7 7OTM04)
Score (lowest goal) = 100 x Total turns in All Ages / Total Legacy Points in All Ages.

A few questions to consider:
- What Legacy bonuses did you chose and why? What other start up things did you do at the beginning of the Modern Age?
- What was your plan for achieving the Victory Condition? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
- Did you settle more towns/cities in the Modern Age? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
- What were key production/purchase focuses?
- What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
- How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
- Did you enjoy the game?

 

[SiCK_Boy]

Victory - Culture
Antiquity: 140 turns - 10 points
Exploration: 91 turn - 10 points
Modern: 77 turns - 6 points
Total: 308 turns - 26 points
Score: 1185 points

I went with Siam for my modern civilisation. I was able to make good use of their special power, collecting a bunch of city states.

I built many merchants to keep good relationships with everyone. I got into only one alliance, but I quit it once war started breaking out left and right. I managed to not get involved into any of them.

I quickly got the artefacts from my continent, and managed to reveal and pick one more on the northern continent. Also was able to collect a couple on distant lands. But I only got a single one from overbuilding, so that delayed me. Once I reached Hegemony, I had people on all continents, and immediately picked up what was missing.

I was planning to use my capital for building the final project, but it was out of room, so I switched to my second highest production city, added all the available whales to it, and got it done in 10 turns.

I should have collected extra points with the science project. I avoided picking an ideology, to reduce the odd someone would attack me.

All in all a fun game, with some lessons on the importance of not waging losing wars. The map was fun. Looking forward to next month's challenge!

 

[patparker]

Playing Russia in this age

107 turns - 6 legacy points

Victory
Antiquity: 135 turns - 9 legacy points
Exploration: 99 turns - 10 legacy points
Modern: 107 turns - 6 legacy points
Total: 341 turns - 25 legacy points

Victory Points: 1364 victory points



What Legacy bonuses did you chose and why? What other start up things did you do at the beginning of the Modern Age?

Treasure fleet golden age to preserve my cities, Deep Routes for culture, Lycenus for science, then extra points

- What was your plan for achieving the Victory Condition? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
My plan is to blitz the World's Fair. I will concentrate on making explorers in my major cities and buying as many as possible. Then make enough museums to display the artifacts while concentrating on production in the best city to rush the end. I will still to factories where possible, but everything else will go towards culture.

I don't know how successful this will be. I should finish relatively early, but will get no expansion points and likely at best 1 economic and science point. We will see of the fast time can make up for the low score.

- Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
tech - rush towards factory
civic - natural hist 1/2 - rush hegemony - rush future civic

- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
As many trade routes as possible for bonus culture

- Did you settle more towns/cities in the Modern Age? What was your mix of towns vs cities?

- What were key production/purchase focuses?
- What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
Elective republic for culture

- How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
Tried to keep everyone happy and managed to avoid all wars

- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Nothing really

- Did you enjoy the game?
It was ok, but I won easily. I was delayed as no cultural city states spawned at all this age, so I could not get the free civics.

Civ VII is much easer to win the CIV VI. There is really no reason to play at less than deity difficulty.

 

[Manpanzee]

Modern: 43 turns, 12 legacies
Exploration: 63 turns, 12 legacies
Antiquity: 105 turns, 11 legacies
Total: 211 turns, 35 legacies
Score: 603

Didn’t take many screenshots here. Went with Science golden age, upgraded all my Exploration towns to cities, and left everything else on town from there. I ended Exploration at war with Trung Trac, and was able to war her turn 1 of Modern without any influence hit. Buganda pillage culture kicking in immediately:

Spoiler :

Militaristic path was very fast, as is typical. I finished Economic with a few turns to spare, then launched the last science project on the same turn I completed World’s Fair. (Note for the mods: the attached save needs “disperse independent” clicked, which will complete the victory.)

Spoiler :

I did a ton of pillaging in Modern, and choosing Buganda definitely had a real impact on my game. This was yet another game of literally fully ignoring my unique civics tree in Modern, though.

I’m still enjoying the all-victories-at-once balancing act, although I could see it getting old eventually. It does make for much more interesting decision making than “focus everything on the one tree you need to win”. I also find that things sync up pretty well, so if you plan for it from the start, the victories can come at the right time that there isn’t really any waiting around for legacies.

 

[Ballcrusher]

Final score: 767 (253 turns / 33 LPs)

Modern score: 713 (57 turns / 8 LPs)
Exploration score: 558 (67 turns / 12 LPs)
Antiquity score: 1173 (129 turns / 11 LPs)

It was my first Culture Victory in CIV7, so I had some trouble with those explorers. Several times I made a mistake and moved the explorer before they were done digging, as I didn't understand the UI Also I'm unsure how many explorers you need to build. At a point it felt like I had way too many just standing around, but after Hegemony it was nice to have them.

For transition I chose: Keep all cities, +10 prod in distant lands, +culture for relics, +3 science in quarters, 1 science point, 1 economic point, 1 militaristic point, 1 diplomatic point (as I already had all culture attributes).

I chose to play as Buganda, as I hadn't tried them and as I couldn't play peacefully as in the exploration age, when I needed the 3 LP in modern military. I started a war around T20 to get benefits from the pillaging, but it didn't give as much culture as I had expected.

I got my first artifact in T19 and my 15th in T52. The turn before victory I had conquered the last two cities to complete military LP, and a few turns before that I got my first and final LP in both Science and Economy (so 8 total LP in modern).

I don't know if I'm too thrilled about the artifact winning condition, and the game maybe felt a bit long because I was constantly in war with 1-3 other civs at a time, so that slowed down the turns pace quite a bit. I think I was at war with all civs in the moderne age apart from Pachacuti. Even my old ally Ibn backstabbed me in the end

Thanks for the game - I'm looking forward to reading more write ups, so I can learn a bit more about the modern culture strategy.

 

[RaidandTrade]

Culture Victory

Ancient: 140 turns
Exploration: 91 turns
Modern: 68 turns

Total Turns: 299
Legacy Points: 26

Score: 1,150

Modern I went Buganda thinking to pillage my way through the tree. Frederick was a pain all game so he got a turn 1 DOW from me before he could get into any alliance. Pillaged and took two cities plus another in the peace deal.

Built an explorer and cash purchased three more. The intention was to resume war and pillage some more which might have shaved some more turns off Hegemony but it felt like war would be more clicking than I was in the mood for.

Didn't end up taking any points in the other paths although I did start some factories just because.

 

[EpicWestern]

Military Victory

Ancient: 120 Turns
Exploration: 90
Modern: 100

Total turns: 310
Legacy Points: 32

Score: 969

Game was a complete disaster, at the end of the ancient age I lost two cities to the happiness crisis exactly one turn before the age finished. Then in exploration age while warring with Friedrick I accepted a peace deal assuming he was giving a city but he was taking one (and it was second best city). Then in modern age I had civ6 brain and completely forgot I need to build something after taking the last needed city for a military victory. Lots of lessons learned. Still it was a fun game with a lot of military action and my capital was an absolute beast throughout.

 

[MACKA0ili]

Culture Victory
Total Score: 906

Antiquity: 130 turns 11 legacy points
Exploration: 80 turns 10 legacy points
Modern: 89 turns 12 legacy points

I went with Siam because I had never played them before and they were noted as a cultural civ in the age transition.
I went with a Cultural golden age since I was getting over 100 culture from foreign cities I had converted. Those tile specific ones are pretty powerful. With this surplus of culture I quickly went for explorers while also rushing the Oxford University. I used Siam's unique ability to grab a scientific city state early on and then proceeded to use it to win over every other city state which got me a lot of free technologies. Getting artifacts ended up being pretty slow since I got unlucky with the amount and location spawned, but I realized that legacy points were going to be more important than turn count if I wanted to lower my score at this point so I shifted towards getting my factories set up and rushing towards ideologies. After adopting Democracy I instantly declared war on Frederick which ended up causing the whole world to declare on each other just like last age. I didn't realize how many units Frederick had and Machiavelli decided to join in at the worst time so I was actually stalled a bit from taking his cities, but my superior tech eventually gave me the edge and I spent pretty much the rest of the age at war. Once I had completed the Military legacy path, I made peace with everyone by giving away enough cities to put me at the settlement cap while also not trading away factory resources. I had finally gotten enough artifacts to start the world fair but, after doing some math, I realized that I would have a lower score if I delayed its completion to finish the economic and scientific legacy paths as well.
Overall, this was probably one of the more fun games of Civ 7 I have played. I was unsure of the format we were trying out, but trying to both end the game quickly while getting enough LPs to lower my score was a lot of fun. Also, Siam is amazing if you've set up a lot of diplomatic favor sources. Would love to try them out again under more peaceful circumstances.

Glad I managed to finish this before the new patch dropped.

 

[GoblinMatron]

Score: 694
Total: Turns: 229 - Legacy Points: 33
Modern: Turns : 47 - Legacy Points: 10
Exploration: Turns: 62 - Legacy Points: 11
Antiquity: Turns: 120 - Legacy Points: 12

Legacies:
Military: +10 Production for Settlements in Distant Lands, +1 expansionist attribute
Culture: +4 Culture for every foreign Settlement following my Religion (+44), +2 culture attribute
Economy: +2 economy attribute
Science: +3 Science on each Quarter, +1 science attribute

Civ:
Mexico
Mexico seemed to give a lot of culture, so I chose it.

Civics:
Natural History > Planes Politicos

Tecs:
Steam Engine > Academics > Steam Engine Mastery > Military Science > Industrialization

After researching my ideaology Fascism, I declared war on Trunc Trac and then Isabella to get the Military legacy points.

On turn 42 I had all artifacts and realized that I was behind with the Science Legacy points, but that they would take a long time and were not worth waiting for.

Spoiler Screenshot :

Spoiler Legacies :

 

[Bleidraner]

Modern: 75 turns, 12 legacies
Exploration: 60 turns, 12 legacies
Antiquity: 106 turns, 11 legacies
Total: 241 turns, 35 legacies
Score: 688

Finished a couple of days ago, as expected my modern age was a mess, trying to get all legacies. As mentioned in my exploration post, I kicked Modern off with very poor science and culture and not enough cities. And I don't know how to play Modern for most victory conditions. Made a few mistakes that are obvious looking back, rush bought 2 explorers at the very begining as I thought it was a race for artifacts, but it isnt, it is a race to Hegemony and you get most artifacts in the last 15 turns not the first 15. Also I did not really get the mechanics for the economic legacy points until halfway through the game, now I know what to do with the towns focus and how to wisely spend my money in factories, ports, railways. Also, I was paying atttention to what resources each city has in the map when the important stuff is how many resource slots it has, as long as it has a factory resource. And money in the midgame is really, really important. And so on, very basic stuff. Thank God at least military and Science did not have any nasty surprises.

But it was an incredibly good learning experience and well, it was fun in a kind of frustrating way. I also learned that it is very important to set up yourself to win in modern from antiquity, and it is necessary to have a clear strategy regarding how many towns and cities and everything else really for all the ages, not just exploration and antiquity.

GoTM staff, this was a fun game, and a good contrast with the Isabella game, thank you so much for all your efforts.

Here is a couple of screenshots. On click, the World's Fair completes and the game ends with a Culture victory.

Spoiler Screenshots :

 

[wenamon]

Antiquity
130 turns, 11 legacies

Exploration
77 turns, 12 legacies

Running total
207 turns, 23 legacies

Total Score 875


I decide to go for Great Britain. I would have chosen Mexico but it was not an option for me. I like civs with unique districts, i guess? My goal is not to draw this age out but to try and bee line for the culture victory.
I decide to try and take advantage of the number of distant land settlements I had to get extra production there. Maybe I should have gone for the units, but I tend not to do much warring.

I plan to use the expansionist attributes to unlock the settlement bonus. The cities I have wil lstay that way and my quarters will boost my science. I also take some points and go for extra culture from my relics to get a +36.

I decide it is probably best for me to play friendly and build up some grocers. I send offers to Ibn and pick the same government as him with Bureaucratic monarchy.

I specialize my towns along the East coast of my home continent as hub towns to get my influence up. I also start towards universities and natural history.

Turn 4 i finish academics and go for military scinece

Turn 5: I go for modernization and buy some explorers

Turn 6: my tech is really rolling I assume cuz of my abasid pick ups. I decide to go for industrialization next, figuring i will have time to lay down some rails

Turn 21: in come the alliance requests. I have to turn down Ibn as I know he is going to be warring with his neighbours. I really hope I can stay out of their nonsense and just build up my culture.

Turn 38: I got a neat quest for 1 of each modern luxury good! Cool!

Turn 73: OK i got really bored when the above quest seemed bugged so I just powered through to finish off, sorry for the very sparse journal this era!

A few questions to consider:
- What Legacy bonuses did you chose and why? What other start up things did you do at the beginning of the Modern Age?
See above. I tried to focus on the culture path asap as I was bored by this point.
- What was your plan for achieving the Victory Condition? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
I focused just on getting my antiquaries out and all over the place. I realised most of hte way thru that i was just clicking through and could easily at least get the science and econ victory points.
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
See above
- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
I had lots of gold with the Abbasids and just kept rolling with it with Britain.
- Did you settle more towns/cities in the Modern Age? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
I settled a couple, but honestly by this point in the game i had checked out!
- What were key production/purchase focuses?
Focused on getting my UQ down. Even though i messed it up in Wasat!
- What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
I again picekd what my closest friends were in.
- How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
City states as they surprisingly didnt all get destroyed!
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
None
- Did you enjoy the game?
Not by the end!

 

[Acken]

Result: T50 12 Legacies.
Overall: 50+59+103 = 212 Turns, 35 Legacies. Score = 606.

A few choices are possible here. Ideally we want some good culture civ but it should also be front loaded as we dont want to have to spend too much time researching their civics. We have access to Bughanda for pillaging which is probably good if you have all the pillage bonus (Commander + Mausoleum) but we didn't really think about that in advance so now it's rather late. Russia is a decent choice for the +1 culture in every districts, with 11 cities that would amount to around +100 culture. Finally we have Siam which can acquire city states instantly at double influence cost, it's kinda meh especially since there is no free civics bonus in this age but there may be a way to make it work by not letting cities convert to towns and acquire most CS super fast. But this would mostly help teching rather than Culture. Russia sounds a bit bland but it's a safe choice so we try Russia.

Legacies:
2 Economic GA Not a lot of choice here since Russia bonus is cities only
1 Economic
2 +10 Prod in distant land
1 Expansionist
2 Culture
1 Diplo
2 Lyceum
2 Scientific

T1: After fixing everything we start the age pretty good at 650 science, 607 culture and 162 influence. We bought a settler and started to make 2 more for factory resources and additional influence.
T2: We pick the +20% culture/+20% science government obviously. We switch some of our cities to make merchants instead
T5: Found a town, buy a few buildings and convert to Hub (and hook a factory resource)
T9: We continue our merchant spam in our distant land city and in one of our homeland city. Meanwhile we start working on explorers which cost a lot more than they used to !!
T15: Declare war on Trung. Found a town, buy a few buildings and convert to Hub (and hook a factory resource)
T17: Suzerain: Free techs
T18: Suzerain: Open air museum
T19: Suzerain: +5% gold
T21: Suzerain: +1 Cavalry strength
T29: Hegemony
T37: Complete transoceanic flight and Oxford and another CS finishing all techs
T42: Finish Military path. We also finally finish our artifacts, god was it slow. 8 Turns for WF... next next next
T46: Finish Science path.
T47: Finish Economy path
T50: Finish the WF

Techs: Steam Engine, Military science, Industrialization 1+2, Combustion, Academics, Steam 2, Mass Prod, Flight, ...
Civics: Natural History 1+2, ..., Political Theory, Democracy, ..., Hegemony
Free techs: Combustion 2, Electricity 1+2, Urbanization 1+2,

Thoughts: Overall a bit frustrating end because of how slow getting the artifacts was between the large cost of explorers, no event luck and some of them being far on the islands. I think here the mistake was to actually have too many cities, modern fast victories seem to be mostly about having a few super good core cities with high prod (for projects) and then buying everything else. The culture path rewards buying explorers early, and same for Eco. The military path is about having enough military after transition and the science path seem to reward getting free techs from Oxford + CS rather than making the new science buildings. With all that in mind it therefore make sense to have just enough cities for the factories (if needing the eco legacy) and then have a big gold/influence farm of well developped towns for the rest.

 

[Manpanzee]

Thoughts: Overall a bit frustrating end because of how slow getting the artifacts was between the large cost of explorers, no event luck and some of them being far on the islands. I think here the mistake was to actually have too many cities, modern fast victories seem to be mostly about having a few super good core cities with high prod (for projects) and then buying everything else. The culture path rewards buying explorers early, and same for Eco. The military path is about having enough military after transition and the science path seem to reward getting free techs from Oxford + CS rather than making the new science buildings. With all that in mind it therefore make sense to have just enough cities for the factories (if needing the eco legacy) and then have a big gold/influence farm of well developped towns for the rest.

What was your city/town ratio? Did you use mining towns at all?

It's been a while, so I don't remember the details perfectly, but I'm 100% sure that I bought all Explorers with gold (I think two immediately at Museums, can't recall exactly when I went beyond that). I also bought almost all Factories and Rail Stations with gold, only building a couple things in high-production cities on the outer edges of the "chain", that would've been last in line for purchases anyway. It's horribly inefficient with the changes to resource buffs for building the Econ victory stuff, but it's still worth buying to get the victory points ticking.

I agree that Modern Age is much more about "what can I buy?" than "what can I build?", especially for culture/econ. The biggest benefit of cities in Modern is probably just planting specialists, with buying buildings in second, and actually building stuff with hammers a very very distant third.

I've also done a complete 180 on mining towns. I think they're great, especially in Modern. I will often have a couple dedicated mining towns in the homelands, and then a lot of distant lands treasure fleet towns will incidentally have woodcutter resources, making the mining option at least viable. If you factor in the Expansionist node giving +% yields in specialized towns, setting things as mining towns actually gets pretty resource-efficient, as the specialization can more than double a town's production. If you have enough gold/silver resources to halve purchasing costs, you can actually come out ahead from the baseline 4:1 gold:hammer ratio.

 

[Acken]

I ended Exploration at 11 cities 5 towns continuing the thought that more cities is better which holds true when you transition from Antiquity to Exploration but I think diminishes as you get closer to the end and I went overboard. And in modern I took the Eco GA so same. And the 5 that I had were not well developped so none of the focus out of Hub was giving me great yield. That is another point I could be improving also, to grow those towns more so that they bring more in Modern.
The result was that some of those cities were basically useless, they never had the hammers in time to produce anything good and they were draining the eco more than helping (maintenance etc).

I've also done a complete 180 on mining towns. I think they're great, especially in Modern. I will often have a couple dedicated mining towns in the homelands, and then a lot of distant lands treasure fleet towns will incidentally have woodcutter resources, making the mining option at least viable. If you factor in the Expansionist node giving +% yields in specialized towns, setting things as mining towns actually gets pretty resource-efficient, as the specialization can more than double a town's production. If you have enough gold/silver resources to halve purchasing costs, you can actually come out ahead from the baseline 4:1 gold:hammer ratio.

Yeah I think this is the conclusion here. The +3 hammer bonus is on top of +4/+5 rural tiles so it an increase of 60% to 75% (not sure how it can double it ?) of the hammer production to then be gold converted. With a few gold resources and the Eco bonus it's probably getting close to a 1:1 ratio ? IIRC the gold buy bonuses add on the denominator for the cost so with two gold and the attribute that would be 4/1.55 = 2.58 prod:gold ratio and then you get let's say 75% more gold from mining towns so 2.58/1.75 = 1.47. So your mining towns are transfering production at a 1.5 ratio which is incredible considering the benefit of the transfer.
I would just add a note of actually growing those towns. Do you try to grow them to some level or switch them on/off in exploration ?

 

[Manpanzee]

Yeah I think this is the conclusion here. The +3 hammer bonus is on top of +4/+5 rural tiles so it an increase of 60% to 75% (not sure how it can double it ?) of the hammer production to then be gold converted. With a few gold resources and the Eco bonus it's probably getting close to a 1:1 ratio ? IIRC the gold buy bonuses add on the denominator for the cost so with two gold and the attribute that would be 4/1.55 = 2.58 prod:gold ratio and then you get let's say 75% more gold from mining towns so 2.58/1.75 = 1.47. So your mining towns are transfering production at a 1.5 ratio which is incredible considering the benefit of the transfer.
I would just add a note of actually growing those towns. Do you try to grow them to some level or switch them on/off in exploration ?

I was factoring in the potential +30% for distant lands town with right-side Expansionist node. That plus the mining bonus takes the yield for +4/5 tiles to +9.1/10.4. Although that was overselling the benefit, since other specializations still get the +% on their base yields too, and cities may have +% hammer modifiers.

Pre-patch, I was usually growing my Antiquity mining towns once in Exploration before specializing. On the current patch, I've been more inclined to specialize everything on turn 1 of Exploration. But I'm also more inclined now to keep everything on growing town for all of Antiquity, and the growth changes mean they might be starting Exploration bigger than they used to. I'm also a right-side Expansionist fanatic, so those towns will still get another +2 pop from that in the last two ages.

 

[Acken]

Oh you're right forgot about this additional bonus Expansionist which is multiplicative and would bring everything very close to a 1:1 ratio for transfering town prod to city prod (1.47/1.3 for distant lands in that scenario with 2 gold resources). Damn... ok.

 

[pmarc]

T56, 12 legacies in Modern

Total: 104 + 61 + 56 = 221 turns, 34 legacies for 650 points

I decided it was a good time to try Buganda, given that it was a culture game where we also needed to complete the miltary path, and I inherited the Mausoleum from Friedrich in Roma. I took cities only from Trung Trac for the legacy, but apart from my sole ally Ibn, everyone else declared at some point.

Here are the legacies I took from exploration, plus I had 3 wildcards from Future Techs. For culture, I got the wonder production bonus and then 3 points for +15% culture from all sources. For diplo, I took two points on the left side for happiness. For economic, got to extra town yields and +1 settlement limit. Military: +1 free commander level, Science: +1 sci. on specialists.

Spoiler :

I did not create new cities beyond the 8 from Exploration. I figured the bottleneck would be culture, then gold/production. Science would not be an issue with the Abbasid traditions and the usual free techs from CS spamming.

For civics I started with Natural History, then Social Question. I eventually got Fascism on T21 for +production, +gold on specialists, then back to the main tree for Hegemony, which was a bit late compared to others (after turn 40). However, my economic path was not much faster. I got to Mass Production on turn 25 and bought the initial factory in the capital, but took a while to build the others even if I used gold as possible to rush part of the build.

The other main issue is that there was no way to research on the two distant land continents without having a university of my own there, no AI built a museum or university there. (At least, I thought you could research artifacts in another player's building?) Didn't get any artifacts from overbuilding either this time.

I finished the science projects on turn 54 and the artifacts on turn 55. I used the insight from @Manpanzee's fast science victory thread about dispersing military IPs for production boosts, and with the various bonuses to wonder production in this game, was able to bring the world fair to 1 turn.