Civ V Beta 1

[Xicivilian]

Just started one game an played it the way it was. Used a bit of strategy of Neuro although I just misted the Archer from his build up :

Found Rome REALLY close by, but I had a warrior and an archer on turn 12, so I decided to grab my first puppet city.
...
Build Order: Scout, Monument, Worker, Stonehenge, Great Library, Oracle, Horseman Horseman Horseman!
Tech Order: Pottery, Calender, Writing (popped from a ruins while researching Calender), Philosophy, Animal Husbandry, Trapping, (Civil Service), Wheel, Horseback Riding.

I also used militaristic civs for units. I think focus in the beginning should be on hammers to build up an army an make puppets on you continent. Unfortunatelly I took me a while with Alexander and Napoleon as opponents. Ghandi was the most difficult (?) He was hidden behind the mountains with only one way in: via hills and forest. His capitol was then the first you could take, but only if you crossed a river first. By that time his spearmen, elephants and capitol (strength 22 already, because of early attacks by Napoleon) killed my horsemen and pikemen. I took me a while, but in the end I killed him. Should have gone for Rome, but he was strong too (lots op upgrades on his swordmen, even killed my infantery). While killing Rome a finished the Utopia Project (1940 AD).

I did always take policy when I could, so I had half when I finally got to freedom. Used a lot of Piety for happiness. I think I can do lot quicker (on this map), but then I should not rely on horseman at the beginning (found out they have no defencive bonus :s).

I wanted to make a screenshot, but don't know how, because print screen is not working...

Also, I tried to load the winfile of Neuro (game 3), but I always get an error. More of you the same problem? I use DirectX 9 for better graphics (although I have Win 7 x64). Can that be the problem.

Maybe give this another go. We'll see...

 

[stormerne]

OK, I admit it... I got sidetracked from the original goal (of the quickest cultural victory) and had fun experimenting and also repeatedly pounding the $#!& out of the belligerent and dishonorable Suleiman. I found that, in my opinion, warring is so much more fun in Civ5 than... well... any of the others in the Civ series. (Must be the hexes and 1upt.)

So I got a late finish (turn 363 in 1943), which there's little point in entering in the official list. (However I'm attaching a screen shot of what I eventually did to the once huge Otterman empire.) Reading the strategies published I'll probably have another proper (i.e. undistracted) attempt using something like those.

Thinking about strategies and number of cities, I looked at my records of the number of culture points it takes to reach a new social policy. People talk about the +30% change in threshold per city (mercifully an addition not a multiplication), but this I view not as making it harder to reach a threshold but as the equivalent of setting me back by one or more policies.

What's really interesting is the percentage difference between each new threshold. It starts high then tapers right off, though it still decreases steadily. This means that at different points in the game, growing an extra city will set you back by different amounts. And the amount depends on how many cities you have. Of course having an extra city is a potential new culture-trove, but not at first - it has to grow. So at first it really is a setback.

The main rule-of-thumb seems to be:
The earlier in the game you settle a new city, the less of a setback it will be.

And also, though perhaps not as important:
The more cities you already have, the less of a setback will be a new one.

For example: Growing from 1 to 2 to 3 cities is the equivalent of setting back just 1 social policy, and then another one, early in the game. But later in the game it will set you back perhaps 4 social policies and then maybe another 3.

The attached chart (PDF) shows this. The chart shows the culture points needed to reach each new social policy threshold, depending on the number of cities you have. (Please correct me if any of these figures are wrong!) The colors are in groups of 6 in the left-hand column - representing each tree (though not implying you have to do one at a time.) These colors answer this question: "How many social policies would I get for these base (single city) points if instead I had 2, 3 or more cities?" The amount the color "jumps" upward as you move from left to right is the amount you're "set back" by adding an extra city. When you have only a few social policies (top of chart) the jump is small and the overall effect is low. When you have lots of policies (lower down the chart) the jump is larger and the effect is more.

So I guess the message is: if you're going to expand at all, do it early and not as an afterthought.

 

[elijahtary]

I'll admit, this is not the best game I've played, but I got a victory in 2038.

I can improve upon the date very much, since I was on island by myself with 2 city states (luckily one was Cultural whom I kept "allied" for most of the game), and I didn't meet another civ until the 1600s...

I also kept getting barbarian harassed early on, and I didn't build a lot of military, since I was alone on the continent. I also saved up Culture until I could do the Freedom Track 1st, thought that would save mega cultural spending in the long run...

I'll probably give this another shot, and hopefully I'll meet more civs... This was also literally the first game I played on Civ V, so I know I can do better

 

[iggymnrr]

I tested the settle on marble idea with the settings for this gauntlet. By turn 84 a person can GL education after teching out theology (with mining in there somewhere) and have a scientist ready for acoustics w/oracle and use it on freedom. Constitution for 25 culture. Yummy. Works even better as Babylon if you open with writing and put the scientist on a green cow for a 3F, 5-beaker tile (riverside even better.) 1 hammer for 5 beakers. By turn 82 had acoustics and civil service and still constitution for 25 culture. (The free scientist is still hard at work too.)

Edit: In both tests also had the National college up after buying a library and build order was: scout, worker, warrior (barbs,) wonder, national wonder, wonder, wonder.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Also, settling on top of marble gives the 25% edge without masonry. (Just found that out.)

Whoa, Seriously? That's awesome news. It means I can spend 1-2 Turns positioning my city and 14-20 less turns researching useless tech like Masonry (Well not so useless but it delays my other tech in the beginning. I suppose the only downside is the location of the Marble and that you don't get it as a trade resource. Or maybe you do once you get Masonry, IDK

 

[iggymnrr]

Whoa, Seriously? That's awesome news. It means I can spend 1-2 Turns positioning my city and 14-20 less turns researching useless tech like Masonry

Exactly what I did. In both tests I settled off river (sort of bent around me) but the city center is 2F, 2H, 2G like it would be on a river. Lose some commerce but gain with more river tiles.

Thought of another idea. This might be an exploit. Capture CS, give to an AI, DoW AI and liberate the CS. Seems like conquest gold and influence can be had.

Edit: I wasn't planning on masonry or BW for a while. Horseman will get puppets and masonry BW too early gives puppets some bad builds. No it doesn't count for happy until masonry. Sort of like cows. You get an extra food up front but have to wait for the hammer until AH.

 

[sanabas]

The main rule-of-thumb seems to be:
The earlier in the game you settle a new city, the less of a setback it will be.

And also, though perhaps not as important:
The more cities you already have, the less of a setback will be a new one.

For example: Growing from 1 to 2 to 3 cities is the equivalent of setting back just 1 social policy, and then another one, early in the game. But later in the game it will set you back perhaps 4 social policies and then maybe another 3.

Doesn't make sense to me, unless you can the 2nd and 3rd cities can provide 30% of your capital + puppet + CS culture late in the game. It might be a small setback to start with, but each city is still adding thousands to the total required culture for your 27 paid policies.

 

[DrakenKin]

What I like to do is get early stonehenge + CS culture from my early money / luxury trade, stay on one city while getting 33% wonder building civic and 2-3 points into patronage, then wait for freedom before expanding.

In my current game I found 5 culture CS on my continent which I have all allied by turn 80, and i feel that it helps a lot to capitalize on that advantage by staying on 1 city as long as possible. The extra research from the CS is also very strong early on.

I'll be busy for a couple of days with work, but ill finish this game and submit it after that. Should be a decent date, unless Napoleon continues to expand aggressively in my direction and decides to get into my hair.

 

[pagh80]

turn 253 - 1715

...
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.

nice date!
But yeah it definently seems better to get those puppet cities as fast as possible so your science and gold income can begin to kick in early.

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.

Now that is quite interresting.
Can you also sell the marble to AIs even if you dont invent masonry?(that would be awesome)
Ohh and nice thoughts about wine/incense. I will definently have that in mind next game.

So, I'm fishing for a strong start

Wow that is a godly start

 

[vontos]

Ok I tried going through rationalism first instead of tradition and then switching to piety. Finished in 1832. I was able to use two scientists and scientific revolution to research military science, electricity, telegraph, and radio all in one turn.

I actually had a decent amount of bad luck. I only had two other players on my continent and neither expanded much. I delayed taking their cities as much as possible (fought two different wars against each of them) but was still only able to get eight total cities on my original continent. The other continent had a lot more cities to take, but by the time I got them, there wasn't enough time for them to get to broadcast towers. I think my capital might have ended up being the only city with a broadcast tower.

As suggested by others, I used the great library to get education and a great scientist to get acoustics a couple turns later. I bought a library ASAP and built the national college before the great library. I had so much science early and so many great scientists by the end (I used three or four for golden ages), taking the rationalism tree seemed unnecessary. The Cristo Redentor took a long time to build, and my capital never got as big as I would have liked, so in my opinion, rationalism is a bad idea. But I suppose we can wait and see if someone better than I am tries it before we give up on the idea completely. Or wait and see if someone tries it in a game where they get a little more luck than I did (in addition to not being able to take many cities early and not getting them to build broadcast towers, I didn't get any great engineers from my allied city states until the end and was not able to rush any of the wonders I really needed).

I won't submit this one unless it ends up being my best and it will still be top-10 at the end.

 

[notalltogether]

i tried this out, i finished somewhere really late, something like 2028. my save file is too big to actually post though, and i'm so far from anywhere close to worth posting. i did try and see if a few cities would be worth it if you got them all the wonder bonus and the answer is yes and no. when i built the cities they dragged and dragged for a while, but by end game i was getting new policies i actually got a new policy while i was building the utopia project. unfortunately the turn around is far too long. i might try again with a different tech order and see if that nets me the turn around i'm looking for.

 

[TowerWizard]

Here is my contribution to this friendly competition. Won in 1911.

I began with a few worker techs and then beelined Horseback Riding. I missed the Stonehenge and the Greal Library by following this tactic (I got the Oracle!), but with three horsemen I easily defeated all other Civs on the continent, giving me great capitols, all with new Happy resources, and containing Stonehenge, Great Lighthouse, Great Library and Great Wall. While I attacked with horsemen, I beelined Acustics and got it in around 400 BC. I then spend points on the most important SP, that is beeline to Free Speech, and the first few in Piety and Patronage. Then I saved my culture untill Chriso Redentor. I also used the tactic of building mostly TPs, with a few farms and mines thrown in. With the two gold mines and the gems I begun with, I had very little problems with Gold. With the exception of one GA, I got all my GAs after the +50 lenght wonder, so after Taj Mahal was built, I had nearly a never ending GA.

All in all, the key seems to be to destroy all competition using cheesy units the AI cannot handle, then beeline key techs and wonders, concentration on allying with Maritimes. I ended up with 6 cities, having built nearly every building (I got bored waiting for SP to roll in) and in the end I just build an army and began killing on another continent just to have something to do.

I never bothered with railroads untill the very end. You end up buying the important buildings anyway. Just get the cash rolling and this game is a piece of cake. Also, I think I underestimated the effect of using Artists. +1 culture seems like crap, but in the end of the game you have +233% culture (+33% from Sistine Chapel, +100% from having a Wonder in the city and +100 from Broadcast Tower), so then it starts to matter, especially after all techs are researched and wonders are build. The Great Artist building is also something I underestimated. I think that I could have shaved of a tew turns if I had used Artists/Great Artists better.

 

[t0b4cc0r04d]

I'm working on my 3rd attempt here (1st was 2006, 2nd was 1911) and I just had to come here to post about this annoying bug I've encountered.

I declared war with the Iroquoi a few turns ago, which then led Siam to declare war on me. As I was fighting both of them off, I finally started making some progress and captured a few of Hiawatha's cities, which resulted in both AIs offering peace. Hiawatha threw in 4 of his cities to boot, so I decided to puppet them all and then scout them out to see which of those cities I'd raze. I decided to keep 3 river cities and raze the one next to a desert.

The bug I've encountered is that I can't END the turn because the game is asking me to choose a production source for one of Hiawatha's cities that I'm puppetting. I have a feeling that the game wants me to choose a production for the other 2 cities I'm puppetting as well.

The only fix I can think of is to annex the city(ies) and raze them, but GPT potential from the river grasslands has me really trying to avoid forfeiting this prime real estate.

 

[Alraun]

I'm working on my 3rd attempt here (1st was 2006, 2nd was 1911) and I just had to come here to post about this annoying bug I've encountered.

I declared war with the Iroquoi a few turns ago, which then led Siam to declare war on me. As I was fighting both of them off, I finally started making some progress and captured a few of Hiawatha's cities, which resulted in both AIs offering peace. Hiawatha threw in 4 of his cities to boot, so I decided to puppet them all and then scout them out to see which of those cities I'd raze. I decided to keep 3 river cities and raze the one next to a desert.

The bug I've encountered is that I can't END the turn because the game is asking me to choose a production source for one of Hiawatha's cities that I'm puppetting. I have a feeling that the game wants me to choose a production for the other 2 cities I'm puppetting as well.

The only fix I can think of is to annex the city(ies) and raze them, but GPT potential from the river grasslands has me really trying to avoid forfeiting this prime real estate.

Are sure it's happening with a puppet? This happens to me when I'm razing a city, and then I just pick something at random and it continues razing it.

 

[erajah]

Are sure it's happening with a puppet? This happens to me when I'm razing a city, and then I just pick something at random and it continues razing it.

I too had some weird issues with when AI's surrender their cities to you. In one of my games, Germany surrendered Munich to me at around turn 130 or so, and since then it's been doing absolutely nothing. Wouldn't produce anything, and wouldn't grow. I ended the game with it still at size 3. It wasn't a gamebreaker by any means, but there are definitely some bugs involved.

 

[Luger9]

1802 win here with no marble. I played this one because I was on a river at the coast that did not give too many water tiles. I must say that it was nice to put out a caravel to find the other continent/citystates.

Much was the same on the tech/wonder path, though I did have to spend some early money on warriors to remove the city Darius put next to my capital fast. And I did have to emphasize military tech after acoustics to finish cleaning my continent quickly. I will say the extra early troops upgraded well and i never had to make anymore.

Was not how i planned, but came out good even with plenty of errors...no ironworks, doh. I should have finished 1780-1790 at least.

 

[t0b4cc0r04d]

Are sure it's happening with a puppet? This happens to me when I'm razing a city, and then I just pick something at random and it continues razing it.

Yeah, it was definitely a puppet. The thing is that I tried clicking on the production "hammer" icon above the minimap, but it never took me to the city. I ended up finding a thread in the bug forum that addressed this issue and I was able to 'shift-enter' to end the turn, but it was still bugged on my next turn. Ultimately, I just gifted it back to the Iroquoi and that solved the problem so that I didn't have to reload an earlier save and void the game.

I've since finished the game and although I'm slowly getting better (1884 this time), I have no idea how I can possibly finish 200 years earlier. I'm learning alot and having fun still so I guess that's all that matters.

 

[Thrallia]

Yeah, it was definitely a puppet. The thing is that I tried clicking on the production "hammer" icon above the minimap, but it never took me to the city. I ended up finding a thread in the bug forum that addressed this issue and I was able to 'shift-enter' to end the turn, but it was still bugged on my next turn. Ultimately, I just gifted it back to the Iroquoi and that solved the problem so that I didn't have to reload an earlier save and void the game.

I've since finished the game and although I'm slowly getting better (1884 this time), I have no idea how I can possibly finish 200 years earlier. I'm learning alot and having fun still so I guess that's all that matters.

I had that happen to me in the Civ V GOTM, I didn't know about shift-enter though, I ended up having to annex the city instead.

 

[erajah]

Much was the same on the tech/wonder path, though I did have to spend some early money on warriors to remove the city Darius put next to my capital fast.

In my opinion that's ideal! I want the AI's to settle as many cities as closely to me as they can because I'll eventually take them out. The closer they are to your cap the easier it is to get them making a lot of gold for you!

 

[DJMGator13]

Yeah, it was definitely a puppet. The thing is that I tried clicking on the production "hammer" icon above the minimap, but it never took me to the city. I ended up finding a thread in the bug forum that addressed this issue and I was able to 'shift-enter' to end the turn, but it was still bugged on my next turn. Ultimately, I just gifted it back to the Iroquoi and that solved the problem so that I didn't have to reload an earlier save and void the game.

I had the accepting puppet city in peace deal - set production-end of turn issue happen to me also. Since the only moves I made that turn were troop advancements toward the AI capital I reloaded the autosave and repeated my moves. I accepted the puppet city again in the peace deal and this time it ended the turn sequence without incident and I had my puppet city.