Civ V Beta 1

It's awesome to see 50+ submissions on this

I played and went the path of Patronage with 2 cities. I scouted early, focused on gold, and fairly quickly had a bunch of cultural & maritime city states on my side (and military later once they were able to gift great people). Unfortunately the game bogged down a lot for me because of my slow computer -- way too much hitting enter while building two wonders for my liking. My continent ended up being covered by the Ottomans but they never attacked and had plenty of places to still expand.

I would have submitted, but I got very sloppy for the last 20~30 turns I played when I thought I was about to win in the early 1500's...only to discover that you need 5 policy branches filled instead of 3. Oops!

Knowing how it works now I would have played the same game but after finishing the Patronage tree held onto most/all of my policy upgrades and made a relative beeline for the Cristo Redentor.

I was rather surprised that the AI never thought to attack me as I kept only a couple of Archer garrisons for thousands of years. It was also very disappointing to see that if an AI attacked my ally I could wait a 1/2 turn, tell them "it's okay that you attacked" likely for a +diplomacy, and then ask them to declare peace and they would. All of the AI's loved me despite my huge number of Allied states, no military, no land, no population, etc.

 

pagh80: You said you only built one building (Monument) and bought the rest, and that you spent all hammers on wonders (likely a good strategy). I my opinion it would be really good to have +33 Wonder construction bonus then. Also, I looked at your save, and I was surprised to see two riverside wheat in the nearest puppet city not improved? Surely it is good to have large puppet cities?

 

Awesome to come across the HOF and the Gauntlet, encouraging me to create an account and post! In my game I only made one settings change, turning off the starting bias. I didn't like my first starting position, so I set the game up again. That process was annoying so I decided that no matter what I would accept the second starting position, but it looked pretty good anyway: nice long river, and marble nearby.

I decided I was going to try going the single city route, and avoid confrontations wherever possible. I screwed up my start a bit, after popping a goodie hut and getting pottery immediately I decided to build a worker straight away (I normally build another warrior)... and promptly lost the worker to a barbarian who wandered in! Totally lame by me.

After that I wandered around and discovered a couple of Cultural City-States, as well as a couple of Maritime City-States. I was sharing my continent with the Japanese, the Song-Hai, and the Egyptians, causing me to be concerned about getting the Wonders I was after. I needn't have worried, as I was able to hit every Wonder I actually wanted.

I managed to avoid conflict the entire game, not once going to war. The three other AIs mostly fought amongst themselves, before Egypt overpowered them. I really neglected my gold production in this game, and had to wave goodbye to my Cultural City-State allies when Egypt swallowed them up.

I finally won in 1958, and definitely think I could have done it way faster. I think a single-city strategy with puppet cities is the way to go, warmongering early. I think if you can clear out your starting continent and keep the enemy cities as puppets, while making contact with the other continent for trading purposes, you're on your way to a winner... though 1620 looks pretty fierce right now!

 

1730 AD. A little messy at the end ~15 turn build time from Utopia and never finished Taj with ~3 turns. Couldn't tell whether to use the last scientist for GA to finish Christo or to bulb refrigeration. Chose GA and Christo finished with 1 turn for last policy and a happy GA on heels. Did rush a hydro somewhere while building Utopia. Production poor capitol that got culture faster than it could Utopia. Meh.

Can't get files to upload.

Edit: Never mind. It uploaded. SPs: 2 in tradition, 3 in freedom, 5 in patronage and save up. Build 3 horsemen, take over continent, connect and trading post everything esp farms, do develop lux. Build wonders, sell stuff to AI on other conitnent, buy buildings, hit enter for a long time, win. I had no marble, it might help to have some.

 

New to the forum, but long-term lurker. I learned a TON from the board on Civ 4, but with Civ 5, I feel I can start learning along with some of the better players here. In fact, it's the first version of Civ I actually won a Deity game on (although twas a bit lucky---).

Here goes nothing...

 

800 points is only 2 turns at the end game, so you are adding 2 turns to get wonders faster throughout the whole game. That is most likely more than 2 turns of savings since you are teching up to the point where you get 400 culture a turn faster and you are getting other bonuses that allow you to tech up that far, as well.

 

No marble is bad but I played it out. Main thing I learned is that Puppet cities dont increase Policy costs...thats huge.

I may try one more time.

Wak

 

I pretty much agree. Even without the 33% bonus you do have time to make the needed wonders in time.(aslong as you have marble) Also if you take Aristocracy early you have to wait even longer to get constitution and cultural diplomacy.

Thats true to an extend i guess.(taking the wonder bonus early will result in you getting the other SPs later. Cant say how that would affect the game)
Id say if you cant get the amount of money to buy most of your buildings, 33% faster wonder building will allow you to just make some of your normal buildings instead of buying them.

I didnt know this in my first game either. At that point i just couldnt understand how people could finish in under 300 turns.

 

In short

Finish date 1848 / turn 294.

6 cities total, 2 normal + 4 puppets. No marble.

Policies

I went 2 points into liberty (for the +33%), 5 points into patronage, then saved my culture until I hit freedom. After that I went with rationalism for faster research, and when I got close to broadcast tower I had 2 free techs from rationalism and 3 free techs from 3 scientists, so I popped the last 5 techs on the same turn and started my broadcast towers.

Detail

Went with 2 scouts early, so I spotted the 5 culture CS on my continent, and decided to stay on one city for a while. By turn 70 I had allied them all + the (unfortunately) single maritime state. Because there was only one maritime I postponed making artists until much later on and it might have slowed me by a lot.

Napoleon expanded very aggressively (he had twice the cities of any other AI) in my direction, and from the border contact I knew that I would be his target sooner or later. So at some point I took him down, razed one cities and took the best 4 as puppets. I left one city as buffer between me and Rome to buy some time.

My continent had Napoleon, Caesar, Ghandi, and Siam. They were all VERY aggressive toward the CS very early, and so I had to slow down some production to keep my precious cultural CS alive.

This was the first time I took puppets in a cultural game (well it is my second cultural game ever), and I was surprised how efficient it was. Not only it helped with research and gold, but the puppets made a lot of cultural buildings, which didn't hurt.

I could have saved a lot of turns if I got Bazaar much sooner (I forgot about it for a while while beelining other techs), and also if I got my artists sooner too instead of the scientists. Surprisingly I had a lot of science and was way ahead of everybody else for the whole game. Also I had not planned the strategy and was just improvising and reacting to whatever I found, so i need to give it shot with better planning.

I might try again in a few days for a better time, maybe i will be lucky and get a marble start.

 

I'm curious if any of you players who are doing well at this challenge have ever experimented the "exploit" of selling off cities to determine if it is actually an exploit. It seemed clear to me at first, but after considering:

- Most of your culture would still come from one main city anyway
- Not getting the benefit of SP's the whole game seems like it would hurt, especially with many cities
- Puppet cities throw down some cultural buildings, and use specialists, too.

...I'm not completely certain. Do you think you could win sooner than turn 240 (or whatever the best mark is so far) using it?

 

This was a fun intro to playing for Culture.

 

1995AD. 2 cities. On an island alone. Only two culture CS discovered. Better than my last but still too slow...

 

Finished. Not quite as quick as I'd hoped but a lot better than my previous two (non-HoF) tries at Cultural Victory-- 344 turns/1924

Only once city, and puppetted the Iroquois and subsequently the Siamese. I was hampered by only have two cultural CS until late in the game when I picked up a third. Maybe I should've conquered more aggressively, or used a second city... Perhaps I'll try over the weekend. Hey, this is fun!

I had tried previously as Napoleon but ran out of time while building Utopia; my second go around was as Gandhi for the Bollywood achievement, and finished that with a few turns to spare. I'll get better....

 

My second Gauntlet I victory. The first one i was shame to post. This is my first game that i realized that i could take cities turning it in puppet cities instead of razing it. Of course, i used the strategies of save CS until Cristo and Freedom.

 

OK, did another run through to see if going war-monger and puppeting like crazy works. As most of the posts show: it does. I had a river, but no marble. I did have plenty of gold and some silver nearby, and since I was so gold-locked in my last game thought it might be fun to play.

Ended up finishing by 1862, but could be so much faster - hell, I somehow managed to not get the Oracle, for instance! I could have been more aggressive about farming great people as well, and I wasn't too discerning about which puppet cities to keep or raze, so while I was busy crushing Russia, Japan and China I got bogged down a little bit.

Once I got the 33% Wonder SP I went straight into Patronage and completed it before ducking back to Piety to get the two free SPs, then going into Freedom. Had tons and tons of gold the entire game (it helped that I sent a scout and a pikeman out to find the other continent, who I traded everything to). I had a few of each type of CS, I think.

If you look at my saves you'll see a later time-stamp for the Initial save; forgot to save and had to go back to get the auto-save and re-save it. Hope that's OK.

 

No one believes this for a second. A cursory glance over your postings demonstrates that when you are offered the choice between bad arguments and good arguments, you strongly and consistently prefer good arguments. Why would you pretend otherwise?

Immediately upon release, there is a unique opportunity for civfanatics (and everyone else on other forums) to try to discover areas where the designers might be able to improve things. It is VERY worthwhile to try to get some analysis going over all kinds of features. To this end, the salient question: is the suggestion a good one? Shutting down analysis due to tea-leaf-reading attempts to draw conclusions about how important the designers rate some feature is ... well let's just say it is not part of the solution.

 

This is really getting off topic. You call my logical observations and informed opinions "random hand-waving". I don't think so. If you don't like my postings, don't read them, but don't try to tell me that I shouldn't post because you don't agree with what I have to say, and don't complain when I continue to post my analysis. I'm not going to change what I write just because you don't like it.

This doesn't make the least bit of sense. I said, the designers clearly don't consider map regeneration one of the most important features of Civilization, or else they would have included it. This has literally nothing to do with the question of whether you or anyone else would like it. If you would like to have it, by all means, ask for it. I'm doing nothing to stop anyone from doing that. But there's no "analysis" here. Some people want map regeneration, and it's pretty obvious why. Other people don't care about such a thing at all, or even dislike it because it makes it easier for people to "cheat" and generate favorable maps. Everyone has their own opinion, and I'm not trying to change or squelch anyone's.

 

Nothing spectacular here - okay starting position with no marble but 2 wine, 1 silk, on a river with sea access. Popped culture and an archer upgrade for my scout.

The map ended up not being great but I played it out anyway for a win on turn 358 - 1939 I think. My starting continent had two major choke points separating me from Songhai to my east, where Seoul blocked the choke and Siam to my west with a stretch of 3 or 4 one-tile wide hills.

I played an entirely peaceful game, but watched an absolutely epic defensive battle in defense of Seoul. They were the only cultural Civ around until Astronomy, so I allied them early. Songhai was relatively militaristic early, and I didn't want to get involved in that, so I just blocked their approach with a warrior and a scout.

Spoiler :

Seoul proceded to hold off the very antagonistic Songhai for *252 turns*. Songhai never let up, but all they could do was fire one ranged unit at a time, which would get cut down by Seoul's city defense plus garrisoned ranged unit. Eventually Songhai started landing a unit behind my guys, but these got killed quickly too. I lost count of how many dozens of units Songhai lost, one at a time, against piddling little Seoul.

Seoul succumbed just 3 turns before the end of the game. I named the Utopia project after them in honor of their bravery.

Trying again now with a more militaristic game. Yay Civ V!

 

I got my time down to 1730 by rushing the first two people I met. Got a little lucky because England (the third person on my continent) had three cities with 8(!!) total sources of wine. Capital had a ton of hills and plains too (plus two hills sheep). Got unlucky because at the end of the game I only had 10 cities. I could only get three from the other continent because they all had more pikemen than I had camel archers, and I couldn't really afford to buy/upgrade more units. Each time I get through a game I shave about 100 years off, so I should be under 1600 by the end of the competition