Civ V Beta 1

[DaviddesJ]

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

The game designers may not care that much. A big part of why some "exploits" exist and persist is that they don't affect the casual players who make up 99%+ of the market. The designers aren't targeting the HOF. And there's also a cost to making the game more complicated.

 

[ori]

finally managed to finish my first Civ5 game

lost one close to finishing to the patch

anyhow: turn 302 - for an 1864 victory...

 

[Xicivilian]

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

So I started a few times over this weekend. Found a descent location now. But I don't think the monster scores from before the patch are duable. Met Alexander at turn 7 and found his city at turn 11. But he already had build a second warrior, wandering around his capitol. So you can see that with the new patch the AI tries to defend himself more. Also, the barbarians are in more numbers and more tactical with moving around. Normally, the barbs in the camps staid there, but now the kill everyting in the surrounding area.

Anyway I found acoustics at turn 71, mainly because I made friends with two Maritimes by destroying 1 barb camp and allied with one of them because of the returned worker. Also found a lot of ruins (pop, culture, money, Mining, upgrade) and with fish nex to my city it expanded rapidly. We will see what it gets from here. Hope I can finish it off before Friday!


Can someone explain this to me:

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)

And further, I suspect that the combat odd are not always displayed correctly with the new patch. Could that be true?

 

[erajah]

finally managed to finish my first Civ5 game

lost one close to finishing to the patch

anyhow: turn 302 - for an 1864 victory...

The patch makes previous saves unloadable? D'oh, I never got a chance to finish my game that should've been in 2nd place

 

[Xicivilian]

The patch makes previous saves unloadable?

I experienced no problems!

 

[Denniz]

I think the patch save bug only affects certain editions. Mine, Digital Delluxe Download, was affected.

 

[Ozbenno]

Apparently there will be a fix to the save version bug later this week, hopefully in time to finish your game.

 

[erajah]

Whew. Luckily I don't have the deluxe version and it loaded up fine. Here are my results.

My start wasn't that great, but I got extremely lucky and had all 8 cultural CS in the game. When I realized that, I started taking some notes.

By turn 135, I had all 8 CS allied, and I had Biology so I was generating 230 culture at that point (160 from the CS, 70 from my cities).

Turn 150, I built the Hermitage and was generating +280.

Turn 180, I finished the Louvre, and by turn 189, I had all the necessary techs to finish (Radio + Telegraph). At turn 193 I bought my broadcast tower and was generating 459 Culture, and I finished Cristo at turn 195 (with the help of a Great Engineer, I believe). Still, it took me until turn 206 to get all my culture complete, and because of lackluster production in my cap, it took me 13 turns to finish the Utopia Project.

When I reloaded my game tonight, I was thinking of ways to increase the Utopia Project speed. 1) I realized I could have captured and annex Novograd and buy a work boat to well one of my offshore oils. 2) It wasn't until several turns later that I realized I could've grown some more population because I never built a Granary and I wasn't allied with 1 maritime state. I also noticed that there's a bug with my save, as if I remove all my engineers, I get -1 hammers due to specialists. However, it also would have been kind of dirty if I had done better because the patch added +1 hammers from engineers. Either way, I think if I was at the top of my game, I *might* have been able to shave one turn off, but still, that would've only been turn 218.

I don't think I have time to do another game, but I was thinking -- if I were to use the exploit of selling cities to other civs, how fast could you win with Liberty+Rex-> Save up culture, sell your cities and win.

 

[Xicivilian]

Whew. Luckily I don't have the deluxe version and it loaded up fine. Here are my results.

My start wasn't that great, but I got extremely lucky and had all 8 cultural CS in the game. When I realized that, I started taking some notes.

By turn 135, I had all 8 CS allied, and I had Biology so I was generating 230 culture at that point (160 from the CS, 70 from my cities).

Turn 150, I built the Hermitage and was generating +280.

Turn 180, I finished the Louvre, and by turn 189, I had all the necessary techs to finish (Radio + Telegraph). At turn 193 I bought my broadcast tower and was generating 459 Culture, and I finished Cristo at turn 195 (with the help of a Great Engineer, I believe). Still, it took me until turn 206 to get all my culture complete, and because of lackluster production in my cap, it took me 13 turns to finish the Utopia Project.

When I reloaded my game tonight, I was thinking of ways to increase the Utopia Project speed. 1) I realized I could have captured and annex Novograd and buy a work boat to well one of my offshore oils. 2) It wasn't until several turns later that I realized I could've grown some more population because I never built a Granary and I wasn't allied with 1 maritime state. I also noticed that there's a bug with my save, as if I remove all my engineers, I get -1 hammers due to specialists. However, it also would have been kind of dirty if I had done better because the patch added +1 hammers from engineers. Either way, I think if I was at the top of my game, I *might* have been able to shave one turn off, but still, that would've only been turn 218.

I don't think I have time to do another game, but I was thinking -- if I were to use the exploit of selling cities to other civs, how fast could you win with Liberty+Rex-> Save up culture, sell your cities and win.

Had to re-install Win 7, because it was not activated (while it should). So lost my game by not properly copy the Civ saves (while I thought I had). Anyway, don't think I gonna make a new game before deadline...

 

[Xger]

There has to be some critical point where an uber 2nd city offsets the culture penalty. But it must be very difficult to determine. Even though a statistician myself I hate theorycrafting in games

Essentially, it would require the second city to account for ~23% of your cpt overall.

The city adds +30% to the SP cost. So to be valuable it would have to at least break even, meaning it would need to be (1-(1/1.3))=23.087% of the culture total per turn.

Some things to keep in mind: Hermitage can only be built in one city.
In going for a cultural victory, Stonehedge is likely in your capital, and has the highest base culture of anything.
A second city means accessing more resources and potentially a better production.
The longer your 2nd city isn't producing 23% of your total or more, the more you are losing out on.

 

[Ozbenno]

Ok there are just a couple of days left on this if you want to submit an entry or a second/third go.

Currently we have 95 entries, which is awesome, just 5 more for the hundred!!

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Ok there are just a couple of days left on this if you want to submit an entry or a second/third go.

Currently we have 95 entries, which is awesome, just 5 more for the hundred!!

The deadline date is 29 Oct 2010. When is the deadline time and time zone?

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Ozbenno]

The deadline date is 29 Oct 2010. When is the deadline time and time zone?

I will close this when it is no longer 29th October anywhere in the world.

 

[DonChipotle]

Essentially, it would require the second city to account for ~23% of your cpt overall.

The city adds +30% to the SP cost. So to be valuable it would have to at least break even, meaning it would need to be (1-(1/1.3))=23.087% of the culture total per turn.

Some things to keep in mind: Hermitage can only be built in one city.
In going for a cultural victory, Stonehedge is likely in your capital, and has the highest base culture of anything.
A second city means accessing more resources and potentially a better production.
The longer your 2nd city isn't producing 23% of your total or more, the more you are losing out on.

I think your math is misleading or wrong, I don't understand how you got that equation. It seems clear to me that the extra city needs to provide 30% more culture...in other words, by exactly as much as it increased the cost.

Say you are going to get your next policy in 10 turns, and you build a city. If your current cultural output is x, then the new city's cultural output must be 0.3*x. Thus, in 10 turns, your output is 10x (existing empire) + 3x (new city) = 13x. This equals the new policy cost exactly, since the original was 10x, and adding 30% it is 13x.

I'll share my actual, in game results (the first time, I actually went 3 cities). My best city was producing 279 CPT. The other two were producing 79 CPT. Why the huge disparity? Well, I built the hermitage in my main city, first of all. Second, I settled all great artists near that city, because that city had the biggest multiplier (due to the hermitage). I don't even remember if I built stonehenge that game, otherwise main city could have been closer to 300. (Hey, I didn't realize it would be so easy to get all the wonders).

In short, the two cities did not even come close to breaking even, despite each having: a wonder of the world, monument, burial tomb, garden, opera house, museum, broadcast tower, etc., they did not even come CLOSE to the 30% requirement. This is even worse when you consider I was allied with several cultural city states, the two cities were each producing less than 15% of my total culture.

I hope I did not make a mistake in the above reasoning (please point it out), but you can clearly see why I opted to go only one city for my second play through. The second city will NEVER make it up culture wise (although if it gets you to the Industrial age or Christo Redentor faster or something, you could argue for it).

 

[Neuro]

It's just a math thing. Your new city has to account for 23% of your NEW total, or 30% of your old total. If your first city contributes 100 cpt, your new city has to contribute 30 cpt, for a new total of 130cpt. 30/130=23%.

Regardless, the way the game is set up, it's never a good idea in a culture victory to expand to another city, unless you plan on eliminating that city later.

 

[DonChipotle]

Ah! Thanks for the explanation. It's more intuitive for me to think of the "before" value.

 

[Xger]

Ah! Thanks for the explanation. It's more intuitive for me to think of the "before" value.

Often math likes to be unintuitive. I think Neuro did a better job of explaining why than I would have.

As for the actual practicality of using a 2nd it would depend mostly on how many cultural CS's and artists you are using. In your example, if you had just one city of the two extra, and no CCS, it would be generating 22% of your CPT which would be borderline useful when you account for having another city.

In the long run I think the second city would need quite the arrangement to work out, but it is completely possible to be a benefit. Imagine if you could get a 2nd city with wine and incense and decent production. It easily would be worth it then if you can get it online quickly.

A 3rd city seems doubtful that it would ever be useful to be honest.

 

[pagh80]

Well you have to take CSs into account also dont you?
So your new city have to account for 30/23 % of you total culture gain, including that from CSs.

Example, if i have a game where my capital gains 100 culture and i get another 100 culture from CSs a new city have to gain almost 66 culture.
Also this adds up over time. Say late in the game you gain 200 culture from CSs and 200 from your capital+puppets. At this point if your second city isnt producing some 133 culture the city aint worth it culturewise.

At higher levels you might not be able to just stick with 1 city, but i cant see how a second city would ever be able to keep up with the rest of your empires culture gain.

 

[edpovi]

Heh, they got the hotfix in before the deadline, so I guess I'll submit. I acutally did finish earlier, but didn't do the end save after the win. Used autosave from 370 to get end save.

I only ran this setting once, so I'm ok with the middle of the road performance (Turn 373 1953 AD). I didn't want to build that second city in such a bad spot, but I felt I needed a city on the coast, otherwise I would not get to build a boat.

 

[Bullrog]

Ok, here's my submission.