Civ V Beta 1

Been sick all weekend so I stayed home and virtually did nothing but stay home and play Civ5. I managed to get a Turn 233 victory (1615 AD), but I reloaded a few times so I won't be submitting it as an entry (hey, it's a learning experience -- and I learned something each time -- like you don't want to attack a second city state because every city state increases hostility doubling the rate at which you lose influence, and the first city state I generally steal a worker from). Strategy is virtually the same as outlined by pagh80 above, and since he did such a detailed description, I'm only going to touch on a few things.

My opening took a slightly different variation, which is something I really like and might start trying even in normal games. Pottery->Calender->Writing->Mining->Masonry (hook up Marble) -> Animal Husbandry -> Trapping -> Philosophy -> (Great Library) Civil Service. (I do like the Theology idea too, getting to Renaissance ASAP is a good strategy).

Build Order -> Scout -> Worker -> Warrior -> Stonehenge -> (Purchase Library as soon as 420 gold is available) -> National College -> Great Library -> Oracle. May have been an extra Warrior in there, because I usually have 3.

By buying the Library and building the National College immediately after, it's a very strong boost to research. Scientists are now +4.5 beakers each, and because beakers don't overflow like in Civ4, I think micromanaging your scientists is really important. Also minimizing your turns wasted on filler techs is very important too. An example would be let's say you're generating 55-59 beakers a turn, and you have Archery (60 beakers), and Construction (110 beakers) available to research. I might have the wrong tech in mind, but bear with me. If you do Archery -> Construction, it'll take two turns each (and you'll lose the 55 beakers from Archery). However, if you do Construction -> Archery, during the 2 turns you get Construction, you might get a few population points, and push yourself to 60+ beakers per turn, and then you get Archery in one turn, saving you one turn.

In terms of research, everyone talks about beelining to the Cristo Redentor. However, for the purposes of getting the fastest Victory, Cristo Redentor will give you mostly happiness, and with mandate of Heaven, maybe about 25 culture per turn? I think the beeline should be for Radio, so you can purchase the Broadcast Tower for maximum culture output. Although someone mentioned above that you can deactivate a tree? I didn't know about that, and if that's true, maybe it's worth going to Rationalism for the 2 free techs, and then turning it off for Piety. This could be a very valid strategy if you have a coastal start and want to pop Globalization for the Sydney Opera House (and hopefully have an extra great Engineer on hand).

Purchasing vs. Building -- one thing to note is that the hammer -> gold ratio is much better the more hammers it cost. Monuments are 380gold for 60 hammers, (~6:1), where as Broadcast Towers and similar are ~1500 gold for 600 hammers (~2.5:1). Just something to keep in mind.

Lastly -- War, war, war. Unlike Civ4, there's NO penalty for going into war. Everyone likes using Horseman which is something I might change with my gameplay. I like getting Steel, and upgrading my 3 warriors into Longswordsman, but I can see the merits of using Horseman as they are much much faster -- and you can upgrade them to Camel Archers and Cavalry towards the end of the game. In fact, I sort of like staying in war unnecessarily long just to keep my guys getting XP. You also create more Great Generals. The first one I use for my wars, but everything else is Golden Ages.

I don't think I'll try this any more, but I'll definitely be back for the next HOF. There are some bugs that need to be addressed in a patch. One thing I found was, somehow I didn't have Aluminum in my borders, and I noticed that across the seas, Monaco had it, except it was being occupied by Siam. So I liberated them, and expected to get the Aluminum in return, since it was already mined, except when I liberated them, they gave me their luxuries, but not their Aluminum! So I had to Annex a city that had Aluminum nearby, buy the tiles, hook it up, buy my Hydro Plant, and then raze/sell the city. Ugh! I'm definitely hoping by the next time a HOF Cultural Victory is around, that we'll be several patches in.

 

So I've given this several tries now, ending my game when I've learned something HUGE that I've done wrong. Just played a one city game with a great start to around 1300 AD or so before discovering that building a bunch of roads is a huge drain on my economy. I was wondering WTF had happened. At 1g a turn, I'm not sure that it's even worthwhile to build ANY roads within my borders, but certainly no more than to connect cities. Do roads in your puppets also cost you 1g a turn?

A couple questions:

What's the best way to use my great scientists and engineers? I burned an engineer on Sistine Chapel, but I'm not confident that I shouldn't have saved it for later. I also burned a scientist on I think the tech that gives you the opera house.

A lot of people seem to be doing this as one city, which I tried this game, and while that seems ok, I'm not sure that it makes the most sense. It seems like the real question is how hard is it to maintain allies with 3-4 city states and build a puppet empire with just one city? My finances were screwed too much from my road building to really get a good feel for that part, though my city itself was awesome other than that. If you can maintain all that on just one city then one city scores should dominate simply because the amount of culture you're getting for that city is a hell of a lot more than just the buildings in that city.

 

Well, I haven't been around in ... forever (actually, my birthday last years, so about 380+ days) ... but I gifted myself Civ V for my birthday this year, so what the heck.

Only managed to complete 1 game of Civ V so far, on Chietain, so I expect to fail miserably at the challange, but then again, the last time I was useful as Civ was Civ 2 or 3 ....

 

If only for personal amusement, I plan on writing down my general strategy during my attempt at the challenge.

Enjoy.

Spoiler :

Pre Game:
I plan on using only one city, unless a very good location reveals itself. My strategy to accumulate culture is building wonders to the exclusion of almost everything else. I also hope to stay out of any political altercations with the other civilizations. I plan on allying with any nearby cultural or maritime city-states.

Turn 1- To my surprise, I am not in the middle of the desert. My people have managed to find a lush, fertile land to make their home. Both Gold and Ivory are nearby, with other resources a little farther off.



Turn 10- I meet Askia of the Songhai. Doesn't he look like a nice neighbor when I want a cultural victory?



Turn 15- I meet Washington. He looks nicer.

Turn 18- First Social Policy- I choose Tradition. General Social Policy Strategy: Tradition > Piety > Patronage > Freedom > Commerce > Any policies I skipped.

Turn 24- I meet Warsaw, a nearby cultural city-state. I hope we can be friends.

I'm smiling less after reading this:


Turn 33- Second Policy: Aristocracy. This will provide an immediate bonus since I'm building Stonehenge. Also, It may be necessary to compete with Egypt if they are on the map.

Turn 38- Warsaw wants help against barbarians. Unfortunately, my warrior was killed by barbarians the previous turn. You win some, I lose.

Turn 46- Stonehenge is completed! Let the culture roll in.


Turn 48- Third Policy: Legalism. Not much value now, but it will help much more in the future.

Turn 50- I am off to a good start. Songhai is visible on the western edge of the known world. Warsaw is the city-state to the south. America is somewhere farther to the south, I haven't seen where.

I will listen to any constructive complements you offer.

 

It costs one turn of anarchy, but you can do it. I'm going to try going for rationalism before piety, but which tree would be skipped? Tradition and miss Aristocracy? Or Order because it usually comes last?

What would you do if you do not have horses by your capital and the only city states with horses are militaristic? Ally with the militaristic first anyway? Ally with maritime/cultural and build a unit other than horsemen? Or just accept that you didn't get lucky enough for a great time and restart?

What does world age affect?

 

Finally! It was like a pain in the ass... my score is not one of the best but I did it and I'm happy with that. (I'd be happier in first position, but it looks impossible ).

 

turn 253 - 1715


Thanks to this post! That's definitely a win strategy.

Though I've made some mistakes that the author of the post warned about
1. Go to Theology instead of Civil Service like he wrote. I lost some turns on this.
2. Conquer your neighbors as soon as possible (leave 5-6 puppet states, not more not less). You need to be starting around 100th turn, if later you won't beat 1700. I started around 130, that was too late. 3 horsemen will be enough for start.

Like someone here wrote: "you should play strategy games at least because of such a community" It's awesome! I enjoy just reading and learning.

View attachment Harun al-Rashid_Initial BC-4000.Civ5Save
View attachment Harun al-Rashid_0253 AD-1715.Civ5Save
View attachment Harun al-Rashid_0253 AD-1715.Civ5Replay

 

Thanks to the post. I have a question.

Why is marble needed? Does marble have a bonus when building wonders?

 

Yes, +25% production.

 

Wow. Great bonus!

By the way, where can I find the information?
I searched the manual and civilopedia for it, but I couldn't find it.

 

I have a heartbreaking story to tell.

So, I'm fishing for a strong start, and I get this:

Spoiler :

Excellent start. Marble, three silver, 2 riverside wheat, plenty of other hills.

I play through, meeting Monty and Alexander, turning their cities into my puppets (I actually rescued one of Alexander's settlers from barbs and sent it home JUST so he'd build another city).

Once I get Astronomy, I send out the search parties, find the rest of the civs on the other island. I am doing quite well, on track to finish Cristo at 230, and plenty of production to get utopia done. Except... my culture is abyssmal. I know I need 26k culture or so to finish up, and I'm sitting at 14k. I can't understand why it's going so slow. I decide to play it out, maybe I'm wrong about how much culture I need. I finish cristo at 232, go into my policy screen...

And there's no Freedom branch taken. When I hit Renaissance I completely forgot to get Constitution and Free Speech! I'd been missing 100% culture in my capital since turn 90.

So disheartening to make such a simple error. I think I was on track to crack 1700 AD too.

 

That is exactly what I did in my 1922AD victory. I allied with a nearby militaristic CS that had 2 horse resources, which allowed me to build 2 horsemen. I used these and 2 pikes to start attacking the weakest AI who was also nearby. That city had another horse resource and before I could build another horsemen the CS built a chariot archer for me. From there I continued to conquer and roll-over my continent eliminating 3 AI's for a total of 10 puppet cities. This is where I think I messed up. I had the tech-lead and the strongest military when I met the remaining 4 AI's. I think I should have taken my military overseas and kept the conquering going. The resources and the gold were keeping me allied with 5 CS, although only 3 were cultural. BTW, at the end of the game I still had the ally with the militaristic CS and the last unit it gifted me was an anti-aircraft gun. It probably supplied more than half my army: 2 horsemen, a pike, 2 knights, a lancer, 2 cannons and the AAG.

Other than playing around in the tutorial one afternoon, this is my first completed game of Civ V. This thread has been great. I already have more ideas for how to improve my next attempt.

Question: Is there a way to set default filename when saving games? Something more than the blank box that is currently displayed.

Conversely, when you go to load a saved game the files appear alphabetic order not in most recently saved. Is there a way to sort theses?

 

Alright, gave it a try and finished in 1955. I went with a more unique strategy of honor/liberty/piety/freedom/order. I think I can make it work better if I get 4 horses in my capital and rework some of my teching and policy making. Anyway, really enjoyable and I have challenged myself to do as many of the HOF stuff you throw at us with this installment of Civ.

 

Well, I'm playing normal, but I'm never going past one non-puppet city. With Arabia's trade route bonus, you can trade route the place up and not worry about what buildings the AI builds.

 

I'm not sure there is any difference between 1 city and OCC except that OCC might require puppets to be razed? It's also easy to forget checking the OCC box if looking for a good map. Also, settling on top of marble gives the 25% edge without masonry. (Just found that out.) The ideal start will probably have incense and wine for a +7 cpt monastary that grows to 14 then 21 then 28 cpt. Much better than a CS and cheaper in the long run.

 

I haven't tried with OCC on yet. I should do a test, because I'd like to know what happens when you capture another city, particularly an opposing capital which can't be razed.