Civ V Beta 1

There's a difference between exploits and valid strategies. For instance, you can "juke" the AI by clever positioning and wipe out an entire army with nothing but a single pair of melee and ranged units. It's rather map and luck dependent, so while cheesy it shouldn't be considered an exploit. Selling off all your extra cities so that you can spend all your accumulated culture at once in order to grab an otherwise impossible early finish is not just cheesy, but cheating.

 

I agree there's a difference, but if anything it's the reverse of what you say. Taking advantage of fundamental bugs/flaws in the AI is very different from just razing your own cities when they are hurting rather than helping you.

 

So whats gonna be the winning Date? 1800+, 1900+, 2000+?

 

Though I didn't check the OCC option, I did it with just one city. I did pick some civs that were not overly aggressive, and the non-biased start option, though in a failed game I did start in the desert, but next to a river, so I had food aplenty anyway then.

Built all science and cultural improvements. Luckily I had a Cultural city state nearby and two silver deposits to feed my coffers. I saved a little culture for the Renaissance era for Free Speech, but I didn't save up for Cristo Redentor because I wasn't sure I was going to get it before I had all policies. As it turned out I did, but only by a few turns, thanks to two other Cultured cities I discovered. As soon as Utopia was available I switched all population to production and chained two golden ages to have it finished in about 30 turns.

Tech path: Calendar (Stonehenge), Philosophy (Temple, The Oracle), Chivalry (Himeji Castle), Acoustics (Opera House, Sistine Chapel), Archaeology (The Louvre, Museum, Hermitage), Telegraph (Cristo Redentor), Radio (Broadcast Tower, but didn't finish it before Utopia). No surprise here I think.

Policies path: Aristocracy, Mandate of Heaven, save up, Free Speech, Free Religion, finish Piety, finish Freedom, full Patronage, full Commerce, finish Tradition.
Oh, and the unlock policy of Autocracy

I hope I didn't forget any

Screenie of my city after winning:

 

Nobody is saying you can't raze or sell cities. What we're talking about is using lots of cities to gain culture then selling them off to spend all your accumulated culture at once with paying only the single city cost. Quite different from fortifying a unit on top of hill that can only be attacked from one side, while you've got artillery behind him.

 

Here are my saves for the start and the end.

The last 20 turns took me more then one and a half hour, eventhought i only pressed next turn, next turn...

Anyways its a good date. I lost 2 turns just becouse i started the utopia project in the wrong city... 3:43 AM.

Turn 315

 

I'm currently playing this game. I started on a continent with two other civs: Greece and Siam. I decided to conquer them as soon as possible, razing every city except their capitals, which provide me with important luxury and strategic resources. Mecca, Athens and Sukothai are my only cities, and they're all pretty strong. All is well on my little continent, but a dark shadow approaches! Once I get Caravels and can start exploring the rest of the map, I discover that Babylon has eliminated everyone else! This leaves my bazaars pretty weak since I can only trade a limited amount of resources to him and there's nobody else left to trade with. He has a significant tech lead as well. (He had Riflemen while I was using Camel Archers and Longswordsmen, and I could tell before I met him since the city states were using Riflemen as well.)

I'm going Tradition, Freedom, Piety, Patronage and Commerce and might be able to pull off Utopia Project sometime before 2050, but I am terrified that he might just come and wipe me out before then.

EDIT: He has Infantry now.

Spoiler :

Still, as long as I stay on his good side, I should be fine, right?

 

No neighbors means nobody to trade with, which seems to really gimp Harun.

 

Completed my first attempt last night. I was way ahead in points. I stuck at three cities. Each had a wonder. I had freedom/constitution/free speech. India declared war on me after I acquiesced to two of his earlier demands. He had already taken out the Iriquois. I only had three units. He fairly easily took out one of my cities. Time to try again.

 

So I tried as Arabia (because I thought we had to)...did the OCC and managed to have a HUGE empire. For one city I got probably 3 cities worth of space. I was 1 turn out from my last policy and I got crushed by 5 mech infantry I did a B line to get hermitage and I think it may have hurt my game a bit since I had to double back through horseback and ect to get to modern era. I had just got mech infantry when i got attacked. I kinda don't like how the cities die so easily. I had a mech infantry in there but it only did 1 damage to enemy with all the cool guy bonuses. Gonna try again as aztecs. I think if I go to war with everyone and just stand around I can pull in some culture but I"ve never used aztecs yet.

 

Well, this is definitely my best cultural win thus far, but is a good 30-50 turns slower than those here. 1930 AD, turn 350

I tried to go for the whole, save until Cristo and Free Speech (didn't buy Free Speech until right after I had Cristo 33%>25%). Before this I bought Aristocracy and Mandate of Heaven, as well as the 100% culture for wonder cities from Freedom. I may try again and see if I can manage it better.

I ended up conquering the ottomans when he started attacking city-states I wanted around, and puppeted everyone of his cities. Eventually also took out Russia to liberate a maritime state. The camel archers are quite nice, with 3 movement they can juke a city. Move within bombard range, bombard, step back. Made taking cities very easy.

 

First I need to figure out how to check what the relationship is. Personally, I prefer it not being explicit, not knowing exactly what number your relationship is, nor exactly what they might do. Also like that they don't always just declare, that they'll go looking for a partner first, then both declare at once. If they don't get a partner, they seem to stay at peace.

Anyway, turn 380 for my non-bugged, non-crashing game, think it was 1980. I'll check when I do the writeup. Ordinary looking start, Mecca + a puppeted Istanbul my only cities, and no saving more than 1 or 2 policies at most, when Piety/Patronage/Freedom trees were nearly due. Didn't research Cristo Redentor, only barely reached the Industrial Age before getting my 30th policy. Lots of mistakes made/things learned, and having the city-state you're defending from India gift you a great person when there are 4 Indian units right outside his city made for some swearing at the screen. Lucky it was a great merchant, and I discovered they're good for 500 gold and a chunk of influence if you give them straight back.

Felt a lot like a civ3 20k game, with more things to think about. Was good fun, proper write-up coming later.

 

Ok, here's my second submission. I decided to try something different this time, and go full-bore conquering, and then puppet any civs on my continent. I was far more aggressive in this game than my first submission.

Admittedly, I had probably the best starting spot I've seen. Long river, on the coast, with marble and 3 wheat, 1 on the river right next to starting city. I ended up taking the scout gambit and not popping any ruins with my warrior, just marking them for my scout to grab a few turns behind me (on the coast, there were fewer directions to explore. If it had been deep in-land, I wouldn't have tried this.) Met Monty, Catherine, and China, with Monty being reeeeal close. My scout popped into an archer, so I made a beeline to Monty's capital, but he popped 2 warriors quickly and I couldn't take a shot at him. I had to content myself with waiting till I got horsemen. He declared war on Edinburgh right as I was about to attack him, so I watched him conquer it, then I declared, liberated it, then took him out. Catherine and China followed later on down the line. Puppeted everyone, connected trade routes (Yay UA!) and cranked out the culture.

(Camel Archers are RIDICULOUS for taking out cities. Only Longbowmen are better, and the military civs were kind enough to gift me some true knights, and the 2 knight, 3 camel archer army was unstoppable.)


I managed to get an 1856 Cultural win (Turn 298), and I think I could have shaved a few turns off that if I had been a little more careful. Near the end I was cranking out 400 culture a turn, and when I built Cristo I was still three policies short, which took another 18-19 turns.

 

Just finished my first try. 1936 win.

My starting city had three silver and a wine, so I felt good about being able to build an efficient Mint and a Monastery.

I made some big errors early on though and other civs beat me to Stonehenge AND The Oracle... that really slowed me down. Things started to get going though. With a bazaar, I had so much silver that I could supply the entire world and make lots of money from it, which I used to forge alliances with every single cultural city state.

I kept all of my forests for mills, so I had pretty good production in my second city to crank out the Utopia Project, but it may have been better for me to use only a single city anyway...

While the Project was building, Persia (who basically owned the entire continent we were on) sent a massive force of pikemen and crossbows. Luckily, they all swarmed around my useless Kyoto puppet, and couldn't even manage to take it as the pikemen could not survive the 37-strength city in order to make the final blow. Medina was left untouched while it finished the Project.

 

Its not just you, In my game because I wasn't playing for science or a big empire I was outmatched, I think with cultural victory the challenge is surviving long enough to win :d.

 

I finished my game last night and won in 1927, but I wasnt able to upload my save, and it still doesnt seem to be uploading now.

I had wine, 2 golds, marble and sugar in my starting city, 4 cultural city states, and captured and puppeted nearby Athens because they attacked one, and Athens had a gems and silver.

Later on in the game Askia conquered my whole continent, and wiped out the Greeks, Indians and Iroquis with a huge empire. Later he declared on one of my city states, and two turns later while I were moving in my Camel Archers for defense, he declared on me too, but I had plenty of gold and had already upgraded my War Chariots into Camel Archers as soon as he finished conquering everyone else (OMG are these things absolutely fantastic, shoot at things then run away!), and rush bought a few Longswordsmen and a Treb that I garissoned in Athens. I also had a military city state near his borders too, so paid it 1000 gold and laughed while 5 or 6 city states were pwning him with Musketmen, and I placed a load of camels behind longswords and a trebuchet and simply moved them around Athens and the nearby city states, and Askias entire military fell in just a few turns

I didnt think I would have liked playing Arabia before this, but those Camel Archers are AAA+++ absolutely amazing.

It wont upload because it says something about a security token

Spoiler :

 

Well as far as camel archers go, (all mounted ranged units for that matter), If your main rival is Siam, don't bother building camel archers, just when I was getting my unique unit out, Siam who must have teched to chivalry earlier declared war on me and he had his UU, the Elephant with 22 str and +50% against mounted units, my camel archers only did 1 damage to his units, so I had to give up on those and go for cannons to defend asap. Also those Beomoths can take down a city at that time in 3 hits, so I lost half my empire in that war, and only saved myself because a city state gave me a great general and I spawned one too, so I placed two Citadels around one city and held them off.

Also having a militaristic ally is cool, twice mine came through for me. I was preparing to fight japan when he had early domination of the continent, I had an okay army, 4 archers 2 horses and a swordsman or two and a couple catapults, but Japan still had way more troops, but he was busy attacking my ally the city state with the majoirty of his forces so I declared war on him, partially for attacking my ally, and partially because I wanted some puppets, and while the majoirty of his army was stuck trying to take on the city state, which are always harder to conquer than a normal civ's city. I took out all the rest of his forces, eventually helped protect the city state somewhat, and enough cities for him to surrender.
Then again when Siam declared war on me, when he got far enough into my territory one city I had held a choke point off from the majoirty of his territory keeping over half his forces at bay with 1 treb then cannon, mean while I lost a few cities behind it, and would have no doubt lost the choke point city but my city state was right next to it and legions of forces attacked him instead, but again I helped defend him where possible until he finally fell, which kept my choke point alive long enough (it eventually fell under superior forces from not only his side of the city but my own as well (which had been taken over). But this was long enough for me to set up a dual citadel protection with pikemen and eventually infantry, I was really close to fighters at this point and I held him at this last line of defence till I built them, and then I went on the offensive with fighters backing me up, took a few cities back before his re-inforcements pushed me back to my defensive line. Where I held it, using fighters to decimate anything foolish enough to come forward, and then he sent some anti-air units in, and I decided to expirement with the air fighting some more, (note : don't attack an anti-air unit, unless you have air sweeped all of the anti-air units in range, the anti-air units will kill you without even a fight.)
But he never sent ground troops in with them, so I just killed them with my own ground troops and citadels taking 3 hp, and then it was just about waiting till utopia was built.

Anyway, thats my little story of why using Camel Archers against Siam is a bad idea, but I do agree, they are pretty cool, if I wasn't facing Siam they might of been useful to me. And Militaristic City States can be worthy allies.

/Edit://

Oh and when I say "I helped protect the city state" thats not quite true, the only two times it really came through for me, by being the target of enemy assault pretty much, was when the enemy had conquered my cities surrounding him, so the enemies cities were between what forces I did have and my ally. Fortunately the city state gifts units, and these are what I used to help fight off the units that attacked him. Suffice to say, he did most of the work protecting himself, and he was pretty good at it, for example when I declared on japan, my forces were barely more than my city states army, though his was a more defensive army of spears, which as I said really held up most of japans forces, they really are worthy allies if position in a place to help, they won't ever send their armies out to attack, or rarely do. So more useful for defending a position.

 

Ok, they worked great against Songhai though, they had some lame horse UUs that died fast, I cut through their horse units and trebs before they could touch me, and kept longswords in front to prevent them from flanking my camels.

If I had to take the full force of their attack, I dont think I would have survived, but all those city states put out loads of Musketmen and poured them into the inner songhai cities.

I think Askia was like 'Oh lol, hehe, two lame Arabian cities and a wonder whore ... KILL, CONQUER TAKE' ...... and then ....

'OMG WTH are all these musketmen doing attacking my troops, where did they come from?????'

Go go city states