Civ V Beta 1

[BuddhaRebellion]

1765 victory on 2nd try. 5 cultural CSs, coastal start with marble and gold. 3 civs on my continent: Ottomans, Germans, and Persians.

Things I think I did well:

• Early rush to take out the Ottomans
• Didn't wipe out the AI on my continent - I made peace with both Germany and Persia after they had 1 city left and then waited til each were back up to 3 cities and attacked them down to 1 again. This gave me 2 extra cities that I would not have otherwise had.

What I could have done better:

• Allied with cultural CSs earlier. It took me more than a dozen turns to start building Utopia after Christo was completed.
• Bought a windmill sooner. I don't know why I waited so long.
• As soon as I noticed that I did not have access to coal, I should have used the next GA to culture bomb and grab one nearby. (I later did do this, but my factory came at least 15 turns after I researched the tech)
• Could have micromanaged selling to the AI a bit better. There were times when I didn't notice a deal had ended and it cost me turns and gold.

 

[Drool]

1922 Victory on 2nd attempt. Quite happy with this as only my 4th game on Civ5.

Had a relatively good starting position with 3 Wheat but unfortunately no marble.

Had 3 Civs on my continent (Japan, India and another) which I eliminated by about turn 100 and managed to get 6 puppets.

Also had 4 cultural CSs on continent but never seemed to have enough money to Ally with all 4 (3 for most the game).

Overall pretty happy but definitely huge areas for improvement, I am still learning new things as I go.
Onto Beta 2.

 

[DonChipotle]

I improved a total of 56 turns, from 336 to 280. I had really hoped to win before 1800AD, but it was not to be. I am further amazed by those who have beat 1600AD.

I didn't have too many lucky breaks with this map. I had to restart like 8 times before I even got one this good! And it didn't even have a river next to the capitol, so I lost out on hydro dam.

For some reason, this map had two continents with civs, then two smaller continents with three city states each. I ran into a weird situation where by the time I wanted to build a naval unit, I had teched so far that I needed coal in order to do so. There was no coal anywhere near me, and I was staying on one city for the cheap SP's. I eventually got it from a CS, but it came so late I spent the whole game exploring the oceans with embarked units, ever fearful of barbarian naval units. Thus, I did not even meet four of the city states until it was too late for them to help me.

I found an ancient ruin after turn 270, which I think is the latest I've ever found one of those. It added one pop to my capitol, which (I think) sped up the Utopia project by one turn.

Things of note:
* I had to reload on Turn 243 twice because the game crashed at the end of that turn twice in a row. I set autosaves to happen every turn, so I just replayed this one turn. The third time, I skipped the turn of a crossbowman instead of moving him, and the game proceeded...
* I had the permanent peace treaty glitch with Ghandi. I don't think it would have helped my end time much, but man I wanted to end him so much after he would contact me to insult me every few turns.
* Other civs kept telling me my word was worthless, because I conquered "Harun al Rashid". After seeing it a few times, I realized, hey that's me! A very minor bug, but funny nonetheless.

Something to think about:
* If you conquer somebody early, you get a nice tech boost. But if you do this, they have fewer cities up, so you end up with fewer puppets in the long run. Does this matter? Is there a balance that should be achieved here?

 

[Yannarosh]

You have incorrectly registered my game.

The game I posted with saves attached is a 1620 victory, not a 1680.

 

[Chuvi]

This is my first submission to any HoF gauntlet. I started playing some of the earlier Civ IV gauntlets well after they had been completed as a challenge to myself. I learned a lot about the game from the information posted about those, and I hope to do the same for Civ V.

This time I plan on actively participating in some of the gauntlets, and I figured the betas would be a good place to start

I may not get a chance for another try for the first beta untlet, so I will submit this victory in 1914. I built three cities, and annexed Rome after Caesar decided to attack me... didn't work out too well for him. I had not read any of the strategies before this try, so I didn't realize the dominant strategy would be to puppet as many cities as possible. I felt like this was a pretty respectable run for this gauntlet using only cities under my own control.

I definitely look forward to the gauntlets in the future after some of the bugs get worked out.

View attachment GB1 - Try 1 - Initial 4000BC.Civ5Save
View attachment GB1 - Try 1 - Victory 1914AD.Civ5Save

 

[mcmpan]

Puh, started the game, when gauntlet 1 was announced and just finished (wish I could find much more time for playing ).
I thought I did pretty well, did an early conquering of my continent, but misclicked twice and annexed two cities instead of puppetizing them. Tried beelining to Cristo Redentor and after finishing it, I was surprised, that I still had to collect more culture. But anyway: Victory in 1913.

I am really surprised about the great tactics and strategies, which evolved in this discussion of the first gauntlet. I will start the second gauntlet and will see, if I can do better

 

[Xicivilian]

I finished my third game at turn 307, so 1874 AD. The stort was not that fast, but got to acoustics at turn 62 or so. I have to improve the point after aquiring Acoustics and going on to Telegraph. I think I can still do better, but at least I increased by more than 1 turn this time.

There was a lot of war on the other continent with a lot of Landsknecht from Bismarck. Bismarck and Ghandi decleared war on me at some moment and as soon as I upgraded tot Chivalry they wanted pease...

I think if I try this one more time, I will take all in Patronage, because at some point Golden Ages from Great Persons are very usefull. Also, if you have the appropriate amount of culture within a number of turns, you can use Artist specialist on tiles to work for Production. That way you speed both Cristo and have enough culture when it's finished.

Maybe one more game, because I still feel I can improve. I learn a lot each time. This time main lessons:
* Need more GP's for GA
* Better tile management in middle game

 

[mpm2342]

I had a good start with rivers and marble... lots of food to support specialists. I am happy with the early game and got to Acoustics around turn 62, but slid away from there. I wasn't aggressive enough converting military CS to puppets and waited too long to go after the AIs.

Improvements for next time:
- maximize GA generation
- go after policies to get more great people... I was not in golden ages for most of the game

 

[Kamino]

3 cities, peaceful start, wars only after turn 100, emphasis on production and growth, lot of trade (bug with horses : more than 3.000 at the end...), 6 mar CS + 5 cul CS, boring to wait between turns and to crush stupid stupid AIs.

 

[vontos]

The AI isn't paying as much for luxury resources anymore. Seems to be half as much, but I've only played one game. That could slow down these times pretty significantly if it takes several more turns to buy a library/university.

 

[Xicivilian]

Also, the AI is more focused on war. While I was at war with Hiawatta, Washington declared war and had spearmen to counter me. Later he also made horsemen (never seen those before against me). And a few turns later Darius attacks me, and got a few tactial placed immortals, also strong against my horsemen.

And I also noticed I get less for luxury resources, so harder to obtain buildings. The emphasize options work better now!

At turn 196 for cultural victory. Don't gonna make it into the top 10 (maybe also because half way the patch was installed). But see if I can improve my last game.

EDIT: Made some mistakes, so gonna try again...

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Banned Tactics:

• Selling/giving away cities at any time

Why is this banned?

Does this include razing Cities when captured? Or just razing Cities sometime later?

Razing is giving away Cities to the dust whence they were founded upon, right?

Maybe some clarification would help. A link to the thread were banning this tactic was decided would be helpful.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Xicivilian]

The new patch is maybe nice, but with better focus war focus of the AI, there is also better focus of the barbarians... They are annoying... Within the first 50 turns there are 4 Brutes near the Ottomans capitol... :S

 

[DaviddesJ]

Why is this banned?

It's all discussed in this thread. It's to prevent people from using more cities to generate their resources and then giving them away to reduce their cost of social policies.

I'm not for or against the rule myself. But that's the reason for it.

 

[Methos]

Why is this banned?

Does this include razing Cities when captured? Or just razing Cities sometime later?

The exploit is when you save up your policy points over a period of time without buying any new policies. Then, you sell several cities, which causes the price of new policies to drop, whereby you've just cheated the system.

 

[Xicivilian]

Question (I don't know where to put this): How does the flanking bonus exactly work?

Because in this screenshot both brutes got flanking bonus if you want to attack them, although (certainly for the left one) there is no other unit flanking it. Or is it because I attack from a tile which is flanked by the other brute? In that case, that makes no sense since you modify combat on the tile where the attack happens, right? (You don't get a negative bonus from attacking from for example a desert).

So is this just a bug? I tried this by just attacking and I ended up getting 7 damage... (Two more than the calculated, so I suppose the flanking bonus is taken in to account)

 

[Xicivilian]

I moved my Warrior NE and found a Barb camp. Now the left Brute got Flanking bonus x 2, while the other two Brutes got flanking bonus x 1. So this looks like a bug?

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Why is this banned?

Does this include razing Cities when captured? Or just razing Cities sometime later?

The exploit is when you save up your policy points over a period of time without buying any new policies. Then, you sell several cities, which causes the price of new policies to drop, whereby you've just cheated the system.

This sounds as though there is no violation of the ban, if one always buys a Social Policy on the turn it becomes available. In other words, the ban is far more restrictive than it needs to be.

Further clarification please:

So, selecting Razing a City immediately upon Capture of a City is OK, since there is no significant benefit. Correct?

Razing a City at any point later would be banned, because it would be a loop-hole around giving a City away. Correct?

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Methos]

This sounds as though there is no violation of the ban,

Correct. According to what he said, its fine. I should have clarified myself better.

So, selecting Razing a City immediately upon Capture of a City is OK, since there is no significant benefit. Correct?

Correct. That is fine.

Razing a City at any point later would be banned, because it would be a loop-hole around giving a City away. Correct?

Not necessarily. Say you have a bunch of cities and you've been collecting points for SP for a while now. As you know policy costs are dependent on the number of cities you have at the time you are buying the policy(ies). The exploit would be selling/trading away many of your cities in order to significantly lower the cost of policies so that you can spend all those points you've been saving at a significantly cheaper price. Does that make sense?

As an example, I've had ten cities for a while and have a bunch of points for policies. In order to make it cheaper I sell and/or trade off four of them, bringing my total cities down to six. Now, I can buy social policies at what the cost of policies are for owning six cities, rather then ten.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

It's all discussed in this thread. It's to prevent people from using more cities to generate their resources and then giving them away to reduce their cost of social policies.

I'm not for or against the rule myself. But that's the reason for it.

Thank you much for your response.

I did suspect that the reasons were hidden somewhere in this very long thread. Hopefully, one of the staff will duplicate the relevant discussion into a new thread. Scanning 470+ messages for the relevant discussion would be a bit of a challenge.

More Analysis May be Needed:

Storing up culture would best occur after the best Social Policies for are already paid for. Otherwise, one pays a huge price by not buying Social Policies when they first become available. I believe that the same Game must be played in the two ways:

1) Buy Social Policies as soon enough Culture is accumulated

2) Save Culture after a predefined Set of Social Policies useful for the Cultural Victory are purchased. Save enough Culture to buy remaining Social Policies needed to unlock Utopia Project with only one's Capital (selling/giving/razing away all other Cities).

Both Games must be played the same as much as possible. Now the question is how much faster can Game #2 be Won than Game #1. That will give us a better understanding of how much of an exploit this really is.

The Game Designers need to Fix this Glaring Loop-Hole:

Hopefully the Game designers will fix this by remembering how many Cities (by weighted average) the player had at each Culture/Social Policy level when attained as opposed to when purchased; if they had done that, there would be no exploit at all, since delaying purchase of Social Policies would never decrease or increase its cost; it would be set to the cost of the average # of Cities between the Culture levels of a single Social Policy. The Culture cost per Social Policy would perfectly track the # of Cities a Player had as he earned them, as opposed to when he purchased them.

Alternative, Less Draconian Method of Dealing with the Exploit:

A simpler way to fix this exploit would be requiring than a Social Policy be purchased as soon as enough Culture is Earned to Pay for it. This may also be an alternative way to handle this exploit than the draconian measure of forbidding the Selling/Giving/Razing of Cities. A HOF module could force the user to buy a Social Policy as soon as he has the Culture to pay for it; such a turn could not be ended without buying a Social Policy.

Sun Tzu Wu