Civ 7 GOTM03 - Completion of Age of Antiquity Spoiler Thread

[Knowtalent]

At the top of your post please post:
Total number of turns

A few questions to consider:
- What was your plan for achieving the most Legacy Points? 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?
- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital and/or other early cities?
- 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?
- How many cities/towns did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few towns? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
- What were key production/purchase focuses?
- Pantheon chosen and why?
- 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?
- Are Turns the right measure of success for the Age of Antiquity?
- Did you enjoy this Age?
Reminder that for Civ7 GOTM03 we request you do not change the mementos!

 

[enKage]

Total turns: 96

It is hard to balance between as fast as possible vs advance with solid empire. And believe me or not, I have all legacies completed except codexes (only 2/3).

A few questions to consider:
- What was your plan for achieving the most Legacy Points? 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?
The best way to get militaristic is war and raze to avoid overcapping. Usually I limit someone to one city and kill very at the last turn. This time we wanted the fewest turns, so I killed Lafayette (hard one, spamming units) as well as Amina, who was so kind to declare on me. 2 deaths was a significant factor for era progress, because everyone was so passive with earning points.
I thought with Maya codexes will just appear in enough amount, but my teching was way too low with only 2 cities for the great majority of game (lack of gold). Wonders are easy with mayans, unfortunately Colloseum is skipped by a margin due to era progress while I lost Hanging Gardens by 1 turn.
Trade legacy was easy after killing Amina.

I ended up with 3 cities 5 towns and lost settling the 9th settlement due to era progress.

Basically I could spare some turns by assigning resources earlier , but wonder legacy is much more important for golden age next era

I think turns are better than only legacies, just as it makes it harder to balance between artificial delaying next age, however legacies are still a factor how succesful empire is, so should be considered in final score.

West - 4 own settlements + Lafayette capital

Spoiler :

East - Amina's land

Spoiler :

Now it is very hard choice to pick next Civ.
Considering 5 out of 8 are on navigable rivers:
- Shawnee is a strong pick, tradition of faster befriending can be useful modern era for free techs and +2 production on tundra plains and desert is tempting for faster projects
- Songhai is tempting for easy treasure fleets as it is the hardest legacy in the era, but there are no interesting traditions here

Considering exploration of new world for quick gold and wonders settling
- Inca is a strong pick, while usually is not, but there are some rough tiles near mountains and it allows finally settling the flowers, because only Inca can work mountains before modern

Considering we need science victory
- Abbasids to blitz the age with science?

I don't know, probably Shawnee

 

[vitorbaixinho]

124 turns. 12 Legacy Points​

• What was your plan for achieving the most Legacy Points? What were 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 was basically to invest in culture and science to get codices. Build some wonders and make some conquests to follow the military legacy path, which would allow me to gain resources and wonders for the other legacy paths.
  However, it turned out to be quite easy to produce wonders. I must have built around nine. Lafayette was marked as a target from the start. Later, Amina became a secondary target. However, both proved to be difficult opponents.
  They were constantly producing their swordmen.
• What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital and/or other early cities?
  Scout, scout, scout, granary, warrior, settler, settler.
  I wanted to explore the continent quickly and take full advantage of the tents. Grow and expand rapidly.
  However, I had no issues with expansion. North and west of the capital were all unclaimed land.
• Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
  Get the unique buildings and quarter. I wanted the 15% production bonus for every tech discovery. And the culture and science for every civic and tech discovery.
  Technology path: Agriculture → Pottery → Animal Husbandry → Irrigation → Masonry
  Civic path: Chiefdom → Mysticism → Discipline → Rain of Chaac → Lords of Xibalba → Calendar Round
• How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
  Discover a natural wonder and get a settler as soon as possible.
• How many cities/towns did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few towns? What was your mix of towns vs. cities?
  My first town was between Baak, Meroe, and Nekheb. The second was south of Baak near the Silk. This way, these two towns would be relatively close to Baak, acting as a buffer against Lafayette and serving as a launching point for the invasion. The third town was below Baak to secure the iron. In total, I founded three towns and converted one into a city. I conquered Nekheb and Behdet from Amina. As part of the peace agreement, I gained Khemenu and Kutai Martadipura, a city-state that Amina had conquere
• What were key production/purchase focuses?
  I’m not entirely sure, but I think the most-purchased items were military units.
• Pantheon chosen and why?
  Monuments of Gods. I needed to get those wonders as soon as possible.
• What government did you select? Which bonus did you choose most and why?
  Classic Republic. I think culture is the biggest challenge in this game, and I wanted the extra production for wonders.
  In the end, it was probably a mix of both—culture and more production for wonders.
• How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
  Befriended Meroe and Kutai. Declared war on Lafayette on turn 42. I only managed to capture the capital around turn 60. Then, I waited for Amina to build some wonders.
  Declared war on Amina on turn 86. We reached a peace agreement on turn 112, but without any wonders—she was building one, but someone else finished it first.
  Trung Trac declared war on me the next turn, but she was too far away, and I barely saw any of her units.
• Any surprises/frustrations/elations you ran into? How did you deal with them?
  I think the biggest challenge in this game was the lack of money. I also bought a lot of units. The amount of free space on the continent was surprising—but that was a good thing.
  I also think I should have been able to grow my cities more. I also failed to eliminate Amina and capture her capital, but that will have to wait for the Age of Exploration.
  I should have eliminated Lafayette—they were left with a city in the southwest.
• Are Total Legacy Points the right measure of success for the Age of Antiquity?
  I think so. This was the second time I managed to get all the legacies in the Antiquity Era. And on Immortal difficulty, no less! I never felt like I was slowing down at any point.
  In fact, I think I always tried to be as fast as possible.
• Did you enjoy this Age?
  Of course!
  
  I forgot to save but I have the autosave

Spoiler Final turn :

Spoiler Legacies :

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Antiquity : 125 turns

• What was your plan for achieving the most Legacy Points? 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 guess you meant "What was your plan for finishing the age in lowest turns? Well, actually i had several plans :
  • for a start i wanted to build a solid base for the next ages so that meant building my unique quarter in as much settlements as possible, possibly ones that would revert to towns in the next age but would still benefit from the full effect of the ageless quarters. Call that an experiment as i had no idea whether that was good or not, or whether the specialists i would add there would still add their yields when the settlement would revert to a town in the next age. The answer is yes they do add their yields, you can't add new specialists but the old one don't become "dormant". I actually managed to get 5 cities at the end of the Antiquity but the price for the last cities becomes outrageous.
  • then i wanted to get the science golden age to start the Exploration age with ageless academies but thankfully Great Library isn't too hard to get. I wanted to get a lot of science to push into Future Tech in order to shorten the age. I managed to score GL at turn 105 but still had to wait 20 more turns for the age to end. There's a limit how much you can push age progression with Future Tech as the cost increases quite fast. I would have had to get more legacies to max or eliminate civs in order to finish faster and i expect eradicating opponents will be THE way to go for lowest turns games as i doubt it's even possible to get enough points to drop below turn 110-ish simply with legacies and Future Tech/Civics.
  • finally i want, if possible, to unlock a strong scientific civilization for the next age so when i noticed 2 camels while exploring (one of which was in range of a second Natural Wonder, the Valley of Flowers), i tried to settle next to those (i had to get rid of an independent who didn't like me settling close to him). Eventually i met Babylon which had access to a 3rd camel, became Suzerain and later incorporated it. It was far away from my territory but i got my 3 camels
    
    Spoiler and 3 camels gave me ... :

    
• What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital and/or other early cities?
  I took some notes this time Capital built : 3 x Scout → 2 x Slinger (originally planned a 3rd one but i got an Archer from a "goody hut") → 3 x Settler→ Hanging Gardens → my Unique Quarter → Gates of all Nations
• Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
  My usual opener (Animal Husbandry → Pottery → Irrigation) then Writing → Sailing → Currency to start adding specialists earlier than i did in the previous game
• How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
  The Maya Unique Quarter is incredibly strong and almost removes the need for production so it did certainly affect my plan. As for Isabella, i tried to scout far and wide to get the gold from the Natural Wonders
• How many cities/towns did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few towns? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
  I finished the age with 9/8 settlements (but the happiness was very manageable), 2 of which were silly fishing town that dumb... Lafayette settled on my coast (i razed one but he quickly resettled it so in the end i kept it) At the end of the age 5 were cities but i only planned to keep 3-4 of those as cities for the later ages.
• What were key production/purchase focuses?
  My Unique Quarter was my first priority each time i turned a town into a city as it allowed me to build the rest much faster, and it's a great source of ageless science and culture
• Pantheon chosen and why?
  God of the sun so i didn't have to worry about it but still had something extra from those altars
• What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
  Oligarchy as usual. Food early, then buildings once i had more town in order to develop my infrastructure
• How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
  I tried to befriend a few CS, including a militarist one to get more promotions for my commander (and later commanders) as most of the AIs were constantly coming for a fight.
• Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
  I will never understand how Lafayette choose his settlements locations.
  
  Spoiler Oh come on Lafayette :

  
  
  

  

  
  
• Are Turns the right measure of success for the Age of Antiquity?
  At the risk of sounding like a broken record i don't think there is ONE right way to measure success. Turns might be the "worst" but at least it creates a very different experience. I think the right way would be to change the goals, sometimes prioritizing score (possibly even in the modern age), others prioritizing speed (either in the modern age, or every age). Just my 2 cents of course.
• Did you enjoy this Age?
  It was "interesting" The second half of the age was nearly constant war as AIs would declare war one after the other (except for Confucius who started to like me once i had specialists and went from denouncing me to BFF

Spoiler End of the age :

This wasn't the goal but ... Legacies anyway :

 

[SiCK_Boy]

123 turns

Have never played either this leader or this civ, so didn't know what to anticipate, except that I had read that the Mayas were very strong. I've also finally started playing at the deity level (won my first game, was about to start another when this GotM was announced, so I jumped on it); turned out either I'm really getting better than I thought or this combo is overpowered, because I felt none of the straining I've felt from my previous games at either the immortal or deity level. Yields were abundant, I was ahead in most metrics all age long, and didn't feel threatened at any point (still, not a bad filling to be winning convincingly).

I generally try to play peacefully and focus on independant powers; there's always at least one AI who ends up being an *******, and that allows for one good war in Antiquity. That ******* ended up being La Fayette for me; we started on friendly terms, but the guy just decided to denounce me around turn 30. Once he got to hostile (around turn 50), he declared war. He pressed me a bit, but after I wiped out his attack group, I started advancing on his lands unopposed.That first mayan-egyptian war lasted until turn 70 or so. I refused his peace offering, as he was stuck on one city (I think he had lost his second settlement to some independant power in the south west; it also looked like some of his units were glitched - he had a settler and a merchant staying on the same tile, not moving, for many turns in a row), and I thought I could eliminate him, but he settled a second town the turn before I captured his capital. I offered peace right after taking his capital, knowing he would never recover.

The surprise in this war came from Amina. She just randomly attacked me (well, it looked random from my perspective, but I think she allied with La Fayette while we were already warring). She was also on a single city (she had also been fighting with Trung Trac), so my victorious army started advancing toward Ouaset. She had built 5 walls in that city; I managed to capture three districts before my units started getting hurt faster than I could heal them, so I backed down and made peace; all I got out of this war was some commander experience, a rare occurrence in the game (I usually try to at least get another settlement out of the peace negotiations, but she had nothing to offer anyway).

From my intial city (settled on the starting spot), I led with a pair of Jaguar Warriors, but switched to regular warriors when I realized those scouts would not be upgraded later on (didn't much help, my only warrior was killed by barbarians and after that, I was mainly building archers). My exploration took me in circle, first to the south, then north-north-east, grabbing good huts here and there. For the longest time, I only had met La Fayette immediatly to the south east. I only met most of the others once I suzerained Meoré and they revealed half the map to me. Still, by the end, I never got close to Confucius and Trung Trac's territory, and the map is still only half explored. With La Fayette being slow, and gold to purchase the first settlers, I think I was able to settle a few nice spots, all well spaced, without needing to take out any independant power. I only succeeded in becoming suzerain for 2 cities, as I kept accepting and supporting offers from other leaders to keep everyone in good mood. But these two (Méoré to my east and Arna to the south) proved curcial allies, messing up a lot of my opponent's war plans with their troops and acting as buffers to protect my empire when I was attacked (and also during the crisis at the end).

Confucius was the first to offer me an alliance, but since he was warring with Trung Trac and both of them were my best buddies (lots of scientific leaders, will be interesting to see how the final age turns out since we'll be going for that victory), I declined his offer at least 3 times. Only at the very end did I ally with Trung Trac as they had finally made peace.

After the crisis started, I brought troops west to get rid of a newly formed barbarian camp. Once that job was done, my troops turned their eyes to the south, toward La Fayette's last city. Although he was still allied with Amina, I declared war (he had remained hostile ever since our first spat), hoping to eliminate one opponent before the end of the age and maybe help finish the antiquity before the barbarians caused too much havoc. Most of my other cities were okay defending themselves with some archers. Amina was also still stuck on 1 city, so nothing too threatening she could do against me, plus she was also warring with barbarians and independant factions. I managed to secure La Fayette's second capital, which should prove useful, being one of my few coastal settlements, on the west side.

After the initial wave of scouts, I went for production warehouse buildings in my capital, and settlers when I could, before switching to building Wonders interspaced with other buildings. I studied mayan dogmas right away, then took discipline when war started to loom ahead, and only circled back to mysticism toward the end. For my first wonder, I hesitated between Great Stele and Hanging Gardens: I picked the money machine, and boy was I glad when 3 turns later, I was informed that an unknown player had completed the Hanging Gardens. I managed to snag 8 or 9 wonders, including a couple in my second city, Tikal (south of my capital, which was settled on the initial spot). Each time, the gold bonus allowed me to buy either a new building or to convert towns to cities. For technology, I followed the scientific advisor suggestions until war started, then focused on some military improvements (Bronze Working came a bit late, I fought with level 1 units against level 2 troops for some time), and finally veered into economic research toward the end. I don't think I've ever delayed Navigation so much; by the time I researched it, it only took 1 turn. I'm usually tempted by some goody hut on the water to get it faster, but really didn't need it with this map. I was worried the age would end fast, but it turned out I was the one primarily driving the progress. I had a bunch of codexes in storage for a while, then once I got Mathematics, I built 3 academies in 2 turns, and science was completed.

Government was Classical Republic and my pantheon was god of the sun (I picked really late, but it didn't matter much). I ended with 8/7 settlements, 3 of them cities.

Looking forward to see how diplomacy will play out in the next age, as there are still plenty of city states around. There's also a lot of extra room to settle, as La Fayette and Amina didn't take up much room; I wonder if that will distract my rivals from focusing on distant lands (or maybe I should be the one focusing on the main continent and ignoring the distant lands in the next age).

I'm not sure if total # of turns is the best measure of success. I play these games mostly for the fun of it, without trying too hard to maximize my win, so ultimately, I'm just glad we have a common objective. But the game generally wants you to go for maximum legacy points, which is antithesis to fast runs (it's usually the opposite, where you try to delay progression to score more points). I presume the creators of these games don't play out the full map after they select them; if they do, maybe adding sidequests (ex: unlocking specific civs, or even just random objectives) could also be an interesting challenge for the players. But otherwise, there are sometimes RNG considerations that could make this "unfair". One aspect of the fastest overall win I'm curious to see is if some people will try to accelerate the first two ages, even if it means a longer Modern Age at the end; or if it'll be possible to get great scores by just going for more points and snowball potential in the first couple of ages and then turning to a speedrun in Modern.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Highlightes below:

1. Turn 119 finish. 12 legacy points. Captured 3 cities and settled one city on the last turn to complete Military and Economic legacies. 4 Cities, rest are towns.
2. 8 City State allies (early game focus). had to clear one to make room for a good city spot.
3. At war with everyone but has 3 high level commanders, levels 15, 10, and 7. The combat system is broken as is, a single commander with 6 archers (which attacks at strength 42 with Storm +2, Barrage +5, and Focus fire +2 from commanders and +8 from City state bonus) can steam roll the AIs at Immortal (Deity as well). See screenshot. Got Age of Hero bonus and captured Terracota Army early to boost experience gains.
4. Picked up and assigned 9 attribute points during the Ant age which helped a lot

Main strategy early is quickly settling 3 towns, using all diplo influence to befriend city states (Science first, cultural, Military, then Econ) to get free techs and civics and Age of Hero. Figth off AIs trying to take some city states. Completed Cultural and Science Legacy trees first, and then delayed Econ and Military as much as possible to build a few more buildings in cities). Game is fun and with Army commenders the AIs were really not much of a challenge.

 

[MACKA0ili]

Turn 131, 11 legacy points

Slower than my usual antiquity ages, I actually delayed the end a bit as I shifted plans to try to set up for the next Age

- What was your plan for achieving the most Legacy Points? 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 was to go for full military legacy in order to knock out my closest neighbor and end the age quickly. After setting up three cities around the redwood forest, I sent my army commander to sit outside of Lafayette's capitol. I was going to wait to declare a formal war, but I ended up declaring a surprise war after Amina almost stole the city away, something that I would regret later.
- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital and/or other early cities?
Three jaguars, 1 of them bought, and a granary before getting enough pop for a few settlers to get the maximum amount of value from the redwoods. Got almost every single discovery because of those jaguars
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
Prioritized espionage techs/civics to steal as many techs and civics from my neighbors as possible
- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
Maya made the redwoods even better but I ended up trying to delay the age ending a bit too much in order to get as more of their unique buildings built
- How many cities/towns did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few towns? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
3 cities, 5 towns. all three cities have a redwood tile each. I settled one more across the navigable river to the north and then captured the rest from Lafayette.
- What were key production/purchase focuses?
Buying those first settlers gave me a good start, but I ended up delaying the end of the age to buy more academies and unique buildings to set up for the next
- Pantheon chosen and why?
Fertility rites since it was the first time I have actually seen that pantheon available since the AI usually take it before I can
- What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
Oligarchy for the growth bonus. The building bonus ended up useful towards the end too
- How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
Befriended a culture and science independent power while waiting for espionage to come online, then all of it went into stealing techs and civics
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
The penalties for surprise wars were a lot more detrimental than I thought. -3 war support and giving the AI enough influence to drop that down to a -7 really slowed me down. Probably could have waited for a formal war too since it turns out Lafayette wasn't as close to losing his capitol as I thought. Still managed to take all of his settlements, but he managed to secure a peace deal with Amina before I could knock him out that gave him a single city on the other side of the map. After realizing the age wasn't gonna end as quickly as I thought, I switched over to completing the science and economic legacies and converting my redwood towns into cities to get them to build uniques and academies to turn into golden age academies. I probably could have finished the age 10-15 turns sooner if I didnt try to set up those cities but I'm hoping it will help me get a faster turn count later down the line.
- Are Turns the right measure of success for the Age of Antiquity?
It was a very interesting way to play, having to balance the setup and speed. Would probably try things differently if I replayed this age so I would say this has been a good way to measure things
- Did you enjoy this Age?
It was frustrating, but in a good way.

 

[patparker]

140 turns. 7 legacy points (3 science, 2 culture, 1 of each other)


- What was your plan for achieving the most Legacy Points? 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 for building cities and rushing science for codexes

- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital and/or other early cities?
Jag - Jag - war - buy grabery - war - brickyard - library

- Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
Tech : pottry - writing - animal husbandry - writing 2
Civic: discipline - mystacism - special civics

- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
not bery much

- How many cities/towns did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few towns? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
settled 4, converted 1, captured 1. I ended with 3 cities

- What were key production/purchase focuses?
Science buildings

- Pantheon chosen and why?
Wisdom for the science

- What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
Despotism for the science

- How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
Coberted one city. The rest was used to influance the war

- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Every AI on the mao hated me and eventually declared war. I won them all.

- Are Turns the right measure of success for the Age of Antiquity?
As good as anything, I guess

- Did you enjoy this Age?
It was a little frustrating, as I was defending against the world for the entire age. I was unable to get the number of wonders taht I wanted because of this.


I selected the Ming for the science bonus in the next age,

 

[Acken]

Antiquity 95 turns, all legacies, 3 cities, unlocked Abbasid

Nice start. We get Isabella with a rather strong starting wonder and the arguably best antiquity civ in Mayas. There's potential for a very powerful early game here.

I don't think civ7 really rewards delaying Antiquity to have a better Exploration/Modern. I'm pretty sure this is a losing strategy because your yields, growth, settlement limits etc are all better in later eras.
So in a sense it's likely better to spend more time in modern than in previous ages.

Plan for antiquity is pretty simple: Finish it asap by completing milestones and defeating neighbours while still setting up as much economy as possible. But the reality of civ7 is that having good settlements is more important than building a lot of things in them that will become obsolete on the next age. So we should make sure we have the ageless stuff, if we pick the science GA we want academies. For wonders it may be very difficult to cut down turns AND get late wonders like Angkor/Nalanda so this makes long game culture not very worth it (amphitheaters). This is also why I'm tempted to raze most of the crappy AI cities and favor self made ones (the AI favors food way too much for its cities). Both the 15 turn lock and the higher convert costs also suggest going that way. Once happiness is easier to deal with we may start keeping AI settlements in exploration.

So with that in mind we must make sure that we get as much of the UQ as possible from Mayas and settle down our cities. Ideally we will try to get economy or science GA. Science one may be tricky to get all codices if we accelerate the age a ton through conquest.

The pool is 200 age points. Assuming we can complete all legacies => -80. Defeating someone: -25. So that would be 95 turns. 70 turns with 2 defeats but very unlikely in my experience on Immortal to be done so fast. At best we would cut down a bit before turn 95.

For civ, goal should be to unlock Abbasid which is arguably the best exploration civ for SV imo. So we will try to find 3 camels before the age ends

Playthrough:
T1: We settle SW to be able to get the good yields right away rather than having to work a bad tile. The foregone fresh water happiness will easily be replaced by the happiness from the wonder.
T14: We settle Coba west near the navigable river to hook up Gypsum, Sheep and most importantly Gold
T18: We settle Uxmal in the south west with irons
T23: We settle Tikal next to the Camel up north
T24: Convert Uxmal to city
T30: Our empire at T30:

T36: Pantheon Stone circle
T38: Raze Seleucia
T49: Tikal converted to city
T54: Lafayette declares on us but we are getting a good army with 2 AC, 5 Spears, 5 Hulche 2 Balistae
T60: Petra in Uxmal and Gate in Baak. We capture Nekhen in the south which we will keep as a decent farming town with potential for a city.
T63: The world at T63:

T66: Lafayette is defeated. We raze his capital, it sucks and not worth the unhappiness imo. I also want to try a game where I raze more and found myself more. We denounce Amina.
T69: We settled Copan in between Nekhen and Men Nefer
T72: We declare war on Amina (and get declared on next turn by her ally Trung)
T73: Capture Nekheb. However I had forgotten about her defensive bonuses. This will be a tougher nut to crack than Lafayette as she's getting a passive +10 from difficulty + UA.
T75: Emile Bell in Baak
T77: Coliseum in Uxmal
T79: Crisis begins and here is a funny thing. The crisis policy which increases maintenance by 100% is totally nullified by the policy which reduces maintenance by -1.
T81: Weiyang palace in Baak. We settle Quirigua where Men Nefer used to be. Amina has now 3 walls in her capital + DurSharrukin, just in case I can't get it and we want the 3rd Camel, I prepare a settler to reach the one close to the city states. With a merchant we finish the Economic legacy path.
T83: Pyramid of the sun in Uxmal
T89: We finish both the culture and science Legacies by finishing Nalanda in Baak.
T90: Amina settles a city far up north so we won't be able to kill her. Remaining objectives are to finish the Military legacy and get a 3rd Camel.

T94: We capture Waset from Amina but that was a mess as we were starting to lose units trying to finish this. As planed we unlock Abassids. City is okay we keep. This finishes the military legacy path. Interestingly the meter is at 199 and the nottification popped but we should have a last turn.
T95: Age ends. There's room to be a bit faster and compress it by a few turns but not by much since it requires both to finish the paths and defeating two civs which is not super fast on Immortal.

CS Sovereign: Taruga (Free Civic), Babylon (Free Tech), Moche (+2 culture), Meroe (+5 range), Kerma (+Lapis)
Baak: Scout x3, Warrior x2, Settler buy, Settler x2, Hulche, Kuhnah, Brickyard, Monument, Hulche, Jalaw, Library, Altar, Hulche, AC, Barracks, Spearmen x3, Balista x2, Gate, Villa, Settler, ...
Tech: AH, Masonry, Pottery, Sailing, Writing 1+2, Irrigation, BW, Wheel, Currency, BW2, Engineering, Mathematics, Masonry 2 (free CS), Currency, Wheel, Currency 2 (free CS), BW 2, Engineering, ...
Civic: Rainof Chaac, Lords of xibalba, Mysticism 1+2, Discipline, Calendar Round, Discipline 2 (free CS), Code of Law 1+2 (free CS), Public life (free CS), Calendar Round 2, Entertainment, Tactics, ...
Huts: Pop, Culture x3, Happiness x2, Gold x5, Gypsum, Science x2, Influence x2

 

[Ceydezed]

End of the first age turn 110.

- What was your plan for achieving the most Legacy Points? 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 think I am still at the point of not being able to plan too much long terme. I have played the Maya a couple of times already and I know the power of their unique quarter, so I wanted to at least build three of these in three different cities. Apart from this and going for science I didn't really have any particular long term plan.

- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital and/or other early cities?
Three "scouts", a couple of units, a quite early library, some altars. I also went for a galley early on as I thought it would help me for war and I had an event increasing the production of galleys.
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you later prioritize for technology/civics?
First animal husbandry for the UU, then sailing for sciences ; I first went for the pantheon and the commander before following the unique cultural civic path.

- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
Always nice to have gold for wonders, it rewards exploration. I didn't benefit too much yet from the naval abilities, hope to use them more in the next ages. The mayan buildings are obviously amazing so these are a good ground to start building.

- How many cities/towns did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few towns? What was your mix of towns vs cities?
I settled 6 cities and captured the 2 cities from Lafayette. I converted my second town, in the west on the river, to a city, and the capital of Lafayette too.

- What were key production/purchase focuses?
Mostly units early game to war, but I never had a lot of money, just some regular 200 gold for discovering a wonder or building one, thanks to great stele.

- Pantheon chosen and why?
The influence altar so I could befriend more IP and have more free civis / techs.

- What government did you select? Which bonus did you chose most and why?
The middle one that give 20% more science.

- How did you focus your use of influence for diplomacy?
I used it to befriend IP, I think I was suzerain of 5 of them at tne end ; and to lower war weariness during the different conflicts I had.
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
At one point towards the end one of my towns got taken by an AI and I really have no idea how. There was no troup that I could see aroung and I don't think I had any happiness penalty. I managed to take it back but it was a bit annoying.

- Are Turns the right measure of success for the Age of Antiquity? It is not clear for me yet how exactly the legacies impact the process of an age, so I am not sure there really is any other current measure for that.

- Did you enjoy this Age? Early game still remain the best!

Gonna go for exploration with Ming, forgot to look for a 3rd Camel et I don't feel like going for the distant lands. I'll probably just build a strong capital and rush through this age.

Spoiler Last turn screen :

 

[enKage]

Antiquity 95 turns, all legacies, 3 cities, unlocked Abbasid

Oh no! I lost 1 turn!

Gonna go for exploration with Ming, forgot to look for a 3rd Camel et I don't feel like going for the distant lands. I'll probably just build a strong capital and rush through this age.

Interesting, I did not even considered Ming as I play them rarely. Are there really so good in science to speed up era progress via future techs?
This may really stack well with science from vegetations.
Nice to see you did not secure 3rd camel, so we can see another approach except for obvious Abbasids

 

[Bleidraner]

Antiquity 93 turns, 10 legacies.

Been dying to play this, but work got in the way, I was on the road all of last week at a conference. Anyway, here is the write up.

Edited the post.

Well the plan was to try for sub 100 and really the only way is to kill 1 or possibly 2 AIs to force the age to end. I was willling to sacrifice legacies for turns, but max one or two. I tend not to use the 2 points stuff, its great immediately but I think attribute points scale better. So I don't really need all legacies. I also knew I needed cities on the East and West coasts for Exploration as the limiting factor is treasure fleets. I also need a production monster for Modern, once you tech really hard, production is all you need, this is a science victory we are going for. Baak looks promising. My desert city to the south was also supposed to help but I lost Petra and never managed to get it going due to lack of food.

Isabella is nice, specially with this start next to a wonder. I moved southwest to ensure optimum tile working. My plan was to try to be always at the settlement cap or max 1 above, even when at war, to maximize celebrations. I chose the 20% science government. I spent Isabella's money buying 3 scouts and a couple of warriors. All of them went to look for goody huts, the warriors keeping relatively close, the scouts trying to map the continent asap. I got a ton of goody huts, I just looked at Acken's post, which is a thing of beauty, thank you and it was pretty much the same. I decided to collect culture instead of gypsum as I wanted that tile to plant my city but that is pretty much it.

I settled west, south and north in the more or less logical locations. I had the 4 cites planted really early, by t18 I think. I beelined Irrigation and went for Hanging Gardens and got it. I tried for Petra in the south, but missed it by a few turns, really pissed me off, Lafayette built it, I have no idea why with only like 2 desert tiles. I tried to tech really hard, and managed to do pretty well for the first 25 turns. I did a little worse on culture and I prioritized the Maya civics. Here is a screenshot of the empire at turn 38, when I got the Pantheon, God of the Sun, I thought about Stone Circles to max production, but God of the Sun is better in this case, I think. Actually let me correct that, Stone Circles is better if the effects continue in Expl and Modern, but I don't think they do. As you can see in the screenshot, am teching hard, but not great on culture. OK on money. The slowest legacy is the Science codices one, and you don't need much culture for that. Culture is necessary specially for the settlement limit in Antiquity.

Ok the site allowed me to insert the file. At t38 gold 30, science 47, cult 17, happy 28 diplo 13, 4 of 4 cities.

Spoiler Turn 38 :

I missed Valley of Flowers, was pretty close in the early game, no big deal as you cannot really work those tiles (yet), but it goes to show, ALWAYS explore all the tiles. Discovered it a little later, no problem. Found 1 scientific CS, Babylon, up north and befriended it, same with a couple of culture ones. I disbanded also a few for production or gold or experience or just to get rid of the annoyance. Two cities, rest towns. Razed 1 or 2 cities from Lafayette.

Once I had my nice little empire going, I went to war. Started with Lafayette who was already at 2 cities and spamming units. This was not too difficult, but by the time I got his capital he had an extra 2 cities on the West and I neeeded to go East to get rid of Amina, so I proposed peace, left him with one city while creating a few extra units and Forbidden Palace to kill him at the end, and went for Amina, I attacked both Amina cities at the same time.

Amina was difficult, Waset specially had difficult access and she had a ton of units and major bonuses. I lost a lot of units here and finished her off by turn 86 or 87. I would need another 10 turns to finish my codices and resources for 12 legacies, and end t97 or t98 or I could go try kill the last Lafayette city and force the era end but with less legacies, and that is what I did. I prioritized being faster in turns in Antiquity vs optimization of empire and legacies as I think turns are going to be much more at premium in Exploration and Modern, as the game will go much faster.

My empire is a little bit all over the place, not optimized, I lost focus on science and culture with all that war, but I have cities on both coasts and a good idea of where the distant lands are, so I am going to go all out, as soon as I recover from Antiquity. The one thing that bothers me is that my settlement limit is going to be low, I will get the two points settlement limit and try to go hard on the expansion policy tree, but I want to plant 3-4 cities in distant lands and conquer a couple others and I hate to have to manage happiness all game long.

Man this was fun. The first 30 turns peaceful I played really well, but with war I am just not as good as the monsters in this site, takes me forever and I try to avoid it, but this time, it was the only way.

Can we do this faster? Not me, maybe 1-2 turns, but one of the really good players like Acken or enKage can go for early war and trade off legacies for turns. Which I think is Ok as long as it is not more than 2-3 legacies. Anyway, lets see what happens in Exploration. I am going to choose Spain to go with Isabella exploring the world, looks like the romantic thing to do. I know that there are other civs that are theoretically better, but Spain is Ok for Exploration and it makes sense to pair them historically with Isabel.

By the way when I lost Petra, I read the description, says Petra is in present day Georgia, man that is so wrong, Petra is in Jordan.

In my opinion, total turns is really the way to measure the whole game, the legacies are means to an end. On the other hand if just measuring one age, not the whole game, legacies should count.

Thank you for reading. This was fun. Here is my save game.

 

[Ballcrusher]

Antiquity 95 turns, all legacies, 3 cities, unlocked Abbasid

Thanks Acken for an excellent and very detailed summary. I love that you include both a turn log and descriptions of techs, civics, build order, city states etc. And even multiple pictures at different stages in the game. It was really instructive and educational for me to read, so thanks for that.

I also opened your save file to learn more, and I was curious about why you chose Classical Republic as government?

 

[Acken]

Thanks Acken for an excellent and very detailed summary. I love that you include both a turn log and descriptions of techs, civics, build order, city states etc. And even multiple pictures at different stages in the game. It was really instructive and educational for me to read, so thanks for that.

I also opened your save file to learn more, and I was curious about why you chose Classical Republic as government?

The main idea was to compensate the weaker Culture, considering science was likely fine with Mayas. Also in general because of civ civics you need quite a lot of culture for like 2/3 of an age until you got the civics and the +settlements. I don't have a much better reasoning than that. I could see people picking the +science instead and it would be fine. The only one I dont really like is the +food.

 

[GeoGeo]

Turn 126, 11 Legacy Points

Note: I started this game after the recent patch nerfed Maya. Also, forgot to grab a save before moving on, sorry!

I basically tossed aside all the best practices I'd learned about good opening settles in favor of the off-fresh-water desert tile nest to Redwood Forest; wanted those yields ASAP. Started with three Jaguars in hopes of hunting down the continent's remaining Natural Wonders. I eventually got Valley of Flowers in my empire after briefly forgetting that you can't simply claim territory through mountains like in Civ 6 (oops).

I expected to go for the Science and Culture paths, but ultimately maxed out Economic first (as I usually do in Antiquity). All my Jaguars (and Hulches) went to work on exterminating IPs--no City States for Isabella this game--while I avoided actual war for most of the game. Gold was my big bottleneck for much of the age--I landed in negative income for a little while, though I'm not entirely sure how. I only had 3 cities (out of 7) due to my financial issues. One factor was delaying Antiquity civics in favor of beelining Calendar Round.

Things really popped off around when the barbarian crisis hit. I overprepared troops and decided to pivot that into a war with Amina (the one neighbor who disliked me the whole game). By then I’d already secured the Economic and Science paths and was hoping to make some late progress on Military while waiting for Culture to wrap up. I’d actually run out of wonders to build for a good while due to the Civic tree delays and Lafayette in particular getting really wonder-happy. After many turns against Amina’s sizable army in the territory southeast of my Valley of Flowers town, I finally captured one of her settlements and extracted another through a peace deal. That secured the Military legacy path and brought the age to a close. I was one wonder short of the Cultural path due to taking too long to realize I could still build Emile Bell.

Also, I encountered this glitch while trying to settle on the remains of an IP. I assume this is a known issue by now, though it’s my first encounter with it. As of early Exploration that former IP territory remains functionally dead.

Going for Spain in Exploration, mainly for the attributes. I want to extract all or most of Amina’s remaining territory since we’re already on bad terms and because she of all people got Hoerikwaggo to the north through a very silly forward settle. I now have coastal access on both sides of the continent. Looking forward to Distant Land shenanigans and (hopefully) more fiscal stability.

(No strong opinions on if or how to count turns in Antiquity.)

 

[paxis]

Antiquity 95 turns, all legacies, 3 cities, unlocked Abbasid

Nice start. We get Isabella with a rather strong starting wonder and the arguably best antiquity civ in Mayas. There's potential for a very powerful early game here.

I don't think civ7 really rewards delaying Antiquity to have a better Exploration/Modern. I'm pretty sure this is a losing strategy because your yields, growth, settlement limits etc are all better in later eras.
So in a sense it's likely better to spend more time in modern than in previous ages.

Plan for antiquity is pretty simple: Finish it asap by completing milestones and defeating neighbours while still setting up as much economy as possible. But the reality of civ7 is that having good settlements is more important than building a lot of things in them that will become obsolete on the next age. So we should make sure we have the ageless stuff, if we pick the science GA we want academies. For wonders it may be very difficult to cut down turns AND get late wonders like Angkor/Nalanda so this makes long game culture not very worth it (amphitheaters). This is also why I'm tempted to raze most of the crappy AI cities and favor self made ones (the AI favors food way too much for its cities). Both the 15 turn lock and the higher convert costs also suggest going that way. Once happiness is easier to deal with we may start keeping AI settlements in exploration.

So with that in mind we must make sure that we get as much of the UQ as possible from Mayas and settle down our cities. Ideally we will try to get economy or science GA. Science one may be tricky to get all codices if we accelerate the age a ton through conquest.

The pool is 200 age points. Assuming we can complete all legacies => -80. Defeating someone: -25. So that would be 95 turns. 70 turns with 2 defeats but very unlikely in my experience on Immortal to be done so fast. At best we would cut down a bit before turn 95.

For civ, goal should be to unlock Abbasid which is arguably the best exploration civ for SV imo. So we will try to find 3 camels before the age ends

Playthrough:
T1: We settle SW to be able to get the good yields right away rather than having to work a bad tile. The foregone fresh water happiness will easily be replaced by the happiness from the wonder.
T14: We settle Coba west near the navigable river to hook up Gypsum, Sheep and most importantly Gold
T18: We settle Uxmal in the south west with irons
T23: We settle Tikal next to the Camel up north
T24: Convert Uxmal to city
T30: Our empire at T30:
View attachment 726241
T36: Pantheon Stone circle
T38: Raze Seleucia
T49: Tikal converted to city
T54: Lafayette declares on us but we are getting a good army with 2 AC, 5 Spears, 5 Hulche 2 Balistae
T60: Petra in Uxmal and Gate in Baak. We capture Nekhen in the south which we will keep as a decent farming town with potential for a city.
T63: The world at T63:
View attachment 726242
T66: Lafayette is defeated. We raze his capital, it sucks and not worth the unhappiness imo. I also want to try a game where I raze more and found myself more. We denounce Amina.
T69: We settled Copan in between Nekhen and Men Nefer
T72: We declare war on Amina (and get declared on next turn by her ally Trung)
T73: Capture Nekheb. However I had forgotten about her defensive bonuses. This will be a tougher nut to crack than Lafayette as she's getting a passive +10 from difficulty + UA.
T75: Emile Bell in Baak
T77: Coliseum in Uxmal
T79: Crisis begins and here is a funny thing. The crisis policy which increases maintenance by 100% is totally nullified by the policy which reduces maintenance by -1.
T81: Weiyang palace in Baak. We settle Quirigua where Men Nefer used to be. Amina has now 3 walls in her capital + DurSharrukin, just in case I can't get it and we want the 3rd Camel, I prepare a settler to reach the one close to the city states. With a merchant we finish the Economic legacy path.
T83: Pyramid of the sun in Uxmal
T89: We finish both the culture and science Legacies by finishing Nalanda in Baak.
T90: Amina settles a city far up north so we won't be able to kill her. Remaining objectives are to finish the Military legacy and get a 3rd Camel.

View attachment 726319
T94: We capture Waset from Amina but that was a mess as we were starting to lose units trying to finish this. As planed we unlock Abassids. City is okay we keep. This finishes the military legacy path. Interestingly the meter is at 199 and the nottification popped but we should have a last turn.
T95: Age ends. There's room to be a bit faster and compress it by a few turns but not by much since it requires both to finish the paths and defeating two civs which is not super fast on Immortal.
View attachment 726321
CS Sovereign: Taruga (Free Civic), Babylon (Free Tech), Moche (+2 culture), Meroe (+5 range), Kerma (+Lapis)
Baak: Scout x3, Warrior x2, Settler buy, Settler x2, Hulche, Kuhnah, Brickyard, Monument, Hulche, Jalaw, Library, Altar, Hulche, AC, Barracks, Spearmen x3, Balista x2, Gate, Villa, Settler, ...
Tech: AH, Masonry, Pottery, Sailing, Writing 1+2, Irrigation, BW, Wheel, Currency, BW2, Engineering, Mathematics, Masonry 2 (free CS), Currency, Wheel, Currency 2 (free CS), BW 2, Engineering, ...
Civic: Rainof Chaac, Lords of xibalba, Mysticism 1+2, Discipline, Calendar Round, Discipline 2 (free CS), Code of Law 1+2 (free CS), Public life (free CS), Calendar Round 2, Entertainment, Tactics, ...
Huts: Pop, Culture x3, Happiness x2, Gold x5, Gypsum, Science x2, Influence x2

Great gameplay from you. Some questions, do you play sometimes with +1 over city cap? It is worth to play with +1? When you plan to make a video on YT about your gameplay?

 

[Acken]

Great gameplay from you. Some questions, do you play sometimes with +1 over city cap? It is worth to play with +1? When you plan to make a video on YT about your gameplay?

As long as your cities happiness does not dip much below 0, it's worth it imo. It's usually easily counterbalanced by setting on water, running a policy and shuffling a few ressources.

 

[paxis]

As long as your cities happiness does not dip much below 0, it's worth it imo. It's usually easily counterbalanced by setting on water, running a policy and shuffling a few ressources.

But you reduce number of celebrations and thus the number of policy slots. It is not to strong limitation?

 

[Acken]

But you reduce number of celebrations and thus the number of policy slots. It is not to strong limitation?

I don't think so. This will depend on the civ unique civics but I usually don't feel I'm starving for extra policy slots in order to slot in something super good. Especially in this GotM which offers an extra anyway.

 

[Huginn]

Turn: 95 | 1720 BCE
All legacy points (12)
3 cities (all settled) 5 towns (2 settled, 3 conquered)

Patch 1.1.1, so post Maya Nerf (5% instead of 15% for the Uwaybil K’Uh UQ)
While it is my first ever game with Maya and my fourth total and I did make some mistakes, I won twice on Deity already, which sadly is not that much of an achievement in Civ 7 atm. Maya seems like a very strong, if not the strongest, civ; coupled with two mementos, and Isabella with a natural wonder start on Immortal shouldn’t prove too difficult.

T1: We settle Baak in place. My plan was to use the starting 300 to immediately buy a granary to hop onto the Redwood Forest tiles with its doubled yields, avoid working the low-yield tile, and jump start the growth of the capital (also reaching city pop 5 a little bit earlier since the granary counts as an extra pop for settler production) and get our first quarter asap (for +1 +1 due to palace adjacency. Arguably, the gold might have provided better value being spent on buying a settler directly instead. The Corpus Juris Civilis memento gives us an extra social policy slot, thus, settling off-water and delaying the first celebration a bit would have also been a reasonable option especially since the Redwood Forest provides very high yields anyway. Settling in place also gives us +1 right away due to the 2 adjacent vegetated tiles. Starting with the Jaguar Slayer, especially given our strong Imago Mundi memento, is a no-brainer. Given their huge search radius and the very high yields available to us that early, refraining from buying scouts right away seemed justifiable to me.

T2: Start production on another Jaguar Slayer. Buy Granary (-220 ). Move our starting Jaguar slayer one south and search with our ridiculous range.

T3: Start working the Redwood Forest tiles (4 4 4 per tile) and try to grab as many goody huts as possible, prioritizing .

We have started research on Animal Husbandry. Our initial plan is to tech to Masonry for monuments to boost our output using the adjacency bonus from Redwood Forest. The first civic is Rain of Chaac for the K’uh Nah, which gives +5 when placed on a vegetated tile and allows us to delay Writing and libraries without hampering our output too much. The Mayan UQ and Calendar Round (with techs and civic discoveries boosting one another) as well as its Mastery (+2 and on every Jalaw/Happiness building) are very, very strong. We therefore want to prioritize them, interrupted by Discipline for the free commander, using him to farm nearby city states for their yields and +25 XP each. Get him to the first commendation (Order for +5 combat strength), build ballistae and some chariots and eliminate one or more nearby civs to progress the age to minimize total turns. Get the Uwaybil K’Uh UQ up and running as fast as possible to boost . Go for as many legacy points as possible to speed up age progress even further and aim for Golden Age Academies to jump-start at the start of the Exploration Age. Unfortunately, I did not give give much thought to unlocking specific civs, improving 3 camels for Abbasid might have been a good choice. In any case, we build 3 Jaguar Slayers until Baak grows to size 5 at which point we finally set production on our first settler.

T9: We chose Despotism for our government for the +20% We will never pick the +30% towards infantry production as non-unique infantry serves no purpose and is outclassed by cavalry in every way. Classical republic to boost our weaker output would have been a reasonable choice also, but I wanted to go more all in on science.

T15: Settle Wak Kab’Nal in the East towards Lafayette, our initial target. Settling towards him provides us with a road in his direction and lowers relations. We also want to grab horses for our chariots for the +2 combat strength against infantry. We start research on Discipline to start leveling our commander and grabbing city state yields.

T21: Settle Uxmal in the West. Another mistake I think. Wool is one of the resources that disappear upon age transition (which I also forgot when placing academies) and I should have prioritized the gold a little bit further left. On the topic of resources, I unfortunately completely neglected merchants the whole age safe for the free one and another one to establish an important road). Also, begin befriending city states, starting with the Huns of Syvash. This is a little bit risky since it is hostile and quite exposed and city states for some reasons tend to leave their city unguarded. It will work out this time (we will have a Jaguar Slayer on standby to occupy the city state tile in case they abandon it). In hindsight, however, I am not so sure, befriending them was the right call anyway. At least the militaristic one are quite attractive to eliminate for the boost. We will get a bunch of them and particularly the boost for the monuments from Moche city state will be very welcome later in the age, but saving 170 each for tech/civic stealing and getting early yield boosts and XP might have been preferable.

T36: We finally discover the valley of flowers, which was right around the corner. Since the valley of flowers provides some nice output which is further doubled with Isabella (4 4 4 ) and increases per age, we send a settler there right away, who will found Yaxchilan, to boost our output (also in the beginning of the next age) which still trails our output by quite a bit.

T38: We finish Mysticism and chose the God of Wisdom pantheon for the extra . City Patron Goddess for the bonus would have been a nice option but was already picked by some AI.

T41: Everyone hates us, which is a welcome sight. Not sure what we did to Confucius, he immediately decided to denounce us upon first contact not once but twice. We have converted Wak Kab’Nal to a city, immediately building the UQ, and are switching between techs in order to delay them finishing prior to completion. We are also starting to surpass the AI in output.

T46: Another city state, Samarkand, falls and our commander finishes the assault tree earning the important Order Commendation.

T47: Code of Laws and Bronze Working is finished. We send the free merchant to Lafayette’s settlement Men-Nefer for wool, camels, and dye.

T51: Since one question concerns frustrations: Leader agendas. I find them quite annoying, overly gamey, and nonsensical. Personally, I am not too thrilled that they did not get scrapped in Civ 7 or at least changed somewhat. Some turns have passed and Amina hates us… because we have desert tiles, Trung Trac as well… because we dared to level up our commander, while Lafayette is now back on good terms… because we have a lot of quarters in our empire? I briefly ponder about switching our first target to Amina who is on our Eastern border when Confucius, who is quite some distance away in the North, decides denouncing does not quite do the job anymore and it is time for war. Shortly followed by Trung Trac, who is allied with Confucius. So we send our army to the North. On the plus side, there’s also another hostile city state between us which we can eliminate for bonus yields (albeit only +100 ) and XP on the way. In the meantime, some units and Jaguar slayers are left back on the border with Amina, the latter on lookout duty observing her units' movement and creating slowly but surely a minefield of jaguar traps between our empires just in case Amina gets any ideas.

T57: We unlock Ming.

T61: Confucius already offers peace having lost a commander and several units, offering his most recently settled but entirely useless settlement Megara. We ignore him.

T63: We have not seen any units from Trung Trac (who is even farther away) yet, and offer her a peace deal, which she accepts.

T64: Petra is finished in Wak Kab’Nal. We have conquered Miletos from Confucius.

T67: Athenai is ours.

T70: We finish Hanging Gardens in Baak.

T71: Confucius wants to speak, again offering Megara, and is ignored again. We close in on Thebai and Chalkis.

T74: Chalkis falls and is raized to the ground.

T76: We finish the Pyramid of the Sun in Baak. Our troops conquer Thebai.

T77: We finish the Colosseum in Wak Kab’Nal.

T79: As usual, the AI has proven completely inept at war and poses no threat whatsoever. We have not lost a single unit and conquered all of Confucius’ settlements except for Megara which he settled some distance away in a completely useless location. In general, his three settlements that we have conquered so far are also not too great, razing and resettling at least one of them might have been the better choice. War weariness is starting to pile up, as I do not want to waste on supporting this war. However, the -3 penalty in combat is of no particular concern and happiness at least for the moment at tolerable levels. All the AI civs are now well behind us both in and . Lafayette is still absolutely in love with our quarters… Age progresses to 70% and the barbarian crisis starts. We pick the +100% increased maintenance crisis policy (Barbarian Mercenaries) which is negated by our reduced maintenance social policy (Conscription). Next, we will chose one giving negative yields for specialized towns, which we will negate by setting the focus of all towns to growth, effectively ignoring the crisis cards completely.

T80: We finish Emile Bell in Wak Kab’Nal and the Terracotta Army in Baak.

T87: Unlock Mongolia by improving our third horse resource.

T88: We send our commander to the last one of Confucius’ settlements to advance the age progress meter while using the spawned barbarian city states to level two other commanders. Megara falls and Confucius is eliminated.

T91: We finish the Oracle in Wak Kab’Nal and our last legacy path (Wonders of the Ancient World). Age progress is now at 98%. The remaining turns, we turn Uxmal into a city, rushing the UQ and an academy, and we build the Weiyang Palace in Wak Kab’Nal. We settle Chichen Itza in the West for our eight and final settlement (Confucius’ last settlement Megara still in the process of being razed)

T94: Age progress is at 100% and Antiquity ends the following turn (T95) with us having earned all 12 legacy points. In general, the AI civs have proven quite incapable. Also, at the start of the war with Confucius, we got a quest to defeat 3 enemy units, which we should have accomplished several times over, but for some reason it never completed.

CS: Syvash (Hillfort), Mooche (Monumental Architecture: +2 to monument per CS), Shengle (Flatbow: +1 to ranged and siege per CS), Babylon (Garden of Wonders: +20% towards Science Buildings per CS)

Techs: Animal Husbandry > Masonry > Pottery > Irrigation > The Wheel, Sailing, Writing (stopped each 1 turn before finishing and finished them all one after the other as I was waiting for the second UQ to finish in Wak Kab’Nal) > Writing (Mastery) > Bronze Working > Currency > Bronze Working (Mastery)> Engineering > Currency (Mastery) > Mathematics > Engineering (Mastery) > Masonry (Mastery) > The Wheel (Mastery) > Mathematics (Mastery) > Military Training > Iron Working

Civics: Chiefdom > Rain of Chaac > Discipline > Lords of Xibalba > Calendar Round > Mysticism > Code of Laws > Code of Laws (Mastery) > Calendar Round (Mastery) > Public Life > Entertainment > Tactics > Organized Military > Citizenship > Literacy > Skilled Trades

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In conclusion, I think there were quite a few errors (for instance, despite knowing I wanted to go to war, I did not build the Gate of All Nations) on my part and there's definitely room for more optimal play. But the overall lack of pressure from the AI, which was not competitive at all, did not force me to strategize particularly well.

Are Turns the right measure of success for the Age of Antiquity?
See my post below.

Did you enjoy this Age?
Yes I quite liked trying to play as efficient as possible as otherwise I often artificially lengthen the ages to maximize legacy points, and I read the other reports here with great interest. Again, the AI atm unfortunately does not provide much of a challenge but I still like the game so far. Also, I feel Antiquity is the strongest and most enjoyable of the three ages.