Civ V Beta 1

[ohioastronomy]

1878, one city, marble in the starting area. OK but not great river position, only 1 maritime and 1 cultural CS, one AI opponent (Egypt) who thoughtfully built me 3 puppet cities. Took awhile to find the rest of the world without a seaport. So you can get a good finish using the wonder strategy (I did stonehenge, great library -> civil service, oracle.). It seems like dumb luck has a lot to do with a good score - getting the right city states and the right random quests early to get their boosts for free. And goody huts - extra pop and the right tech can be huge boosts. I don't remember C4 hall of fame entries depending so much on a few random things close to the start. One city is clearly optimal with the rules as they are - milk the city states and puppets for bonus culture. At higher difficulty 2 might be the right choice to get a mighty army of 4 faster.

 

[fredkilbourn]

Won in 1935, that is all

~ FredK

 

[Lexad]

My very 1st attempt was with 2 cities and zero puppets, and ended in 1848 with severe shortage of bulbs and cash. So I went for a puppet show.

Debut is the same for everyone, only I chose to research Theo, GLib Edu and GS Acou. I also didn't spend Oracle's free policy until Freedom.
Food from maritime CS, focus on hammers. Warring only after ~turn 100.
Policies: Tradition (unlock and wonder-building), Patronage, then Freedom and its left side, then filling Patronage except + happies, then right-side Freedom, then finishing Patro and waiting for Christ.
This time I decided to get loads of GS and turned out short on GA - only 4 monuments, 5th was few turns before finish. Also finished with 25 unspent GAge turns including GPeople - need to spend GPeople earlier. The final blow was realising that Sydney could be built only in coastal cities - cost me 6 turns. Then Utopia in 8 turns.

 

[CharonJr]

Finished in 1700, but my main handicap was no sea access.

From what I have seen till now in order to finish before hitting 1700 you essentially need:

marble
sea access
river tiles + plains (just nice to have due to the growth + hammer potential)
2+ AIs on the same continent
at least 1 maritime city state

Only with a setup like this will you be able to stay at one city, have some nice puppet potential early on in addition to growth from the city state and access to the civs on the other continent.

Lets see how long it takes before I can generate a starting position like this

I am still not convinced that 1 city is that much better than 2, does anybody have the numbers how much more culture you need to complete the 5 trees with 2 cities in contrast to one?

CharonJr

 

[Ozbenno]

Also, I tried to load the winfile of Neuro (game 3), but I always get an error. More of you the same problem?

Saves are not compatible between standard and deluxe editions, so if you have different editions the saves will not load (how silly is this ).

Congrats on your win

 

[Lexad]

What I also figured out (I guess many of you know already):
1. Forest chops go without multipliers
2. GEngineer gives 300 + 30*city population hammers - checked for 3 cases by me and me mates.
3. No railroad bonus for capital.

 

[Katananga]

Finished in 1932, and my main handicap was my crappy play. Anyways... ive learned a lot and it was fun.

To get a nice and smooth culture victory you need:

* 2 better 3 AIs on the same continent... preferable real city spammers
* City states for food are more important then culture states... a lot more important
* sea access to find some other city states / AIs

 

[12agnar0k]

Also I have a Question: If I make a city and tehn sell it to another country and then conquer it, will I have the option to puppet it?

Well, If I remember correctly, if you re-conquer a previously settled city, it won't annex, i.e you take control of it without the whole "courthouse" to remove it being occupied, as it notices that you were the original owner, so no I don't think you can puppet/annex/raze it, the three normal options, (as you can't raze your own cities either), you would just re-estibalish normal control.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Here's my entry into this, finishing in 1898 Its my 3rd attempt. My starting plot placed me next a river, 3 Gold (1 in my first ring, 2 in my second), a Marble patch (in my second ring), and a Wheat field (in my 3rd ring). My land was divided into thirds of water, desert and grassland.

I decided to go for a Civil Service Slingshot opening, followed by b-lining for Acoustics. By turn 90 I had conquered Montezuma up in the north and had allied myself with the two Culture CS nearby as well as a Maritime CS. Working my way clockwise I found Askia and started eating his empire. By 150 I had conquered most of him and had found France which I then proceeded to destroy half of. I then started sending workers to explore the ocean since my capital was not connected to it. Coming across the other continent I sold the others my goods six ways to Sunday and just waited for the game to end. It took me 26 turns to Complete the Utopia Project. Its too bad GE cant rush it... I tried T_T

Honestly I find Pikemen to be more reliable than Horsemen. Yes, Horsemen are faster but most AI's spam spears and if the strategy for horsemen is to hit and run, there is nothing to protect your archers so whatever.

 

[Denniz]

I have played about 4-5 of these and abandoned them all before. This one was looking like it might be worth finishing until Monty... (see picture).

I could probably take him, at least with what I can see. I just don't know how much damage he will do before I can get a peace treaty, though.

 

[Ozbenno]

I have played about 4-5 of these and abandoned them all before. This one was looking like it might be worth finishing until Monty... (see picture).

Started my game last night, played 100 turns. I also have Monty involved. I plan to take a more pro-active approach to him

 

[Denniz]

One of my attempts, I had puppetized the continent. My happiness and income crashed. Really slowed me down. I have been trying a more peacefuly approach since.

 

[oPlaiD]

Second game... 275 turns, 1810 AD.

This one I had a start next to water which I wasn't sure about but I love those Seaports so I gave it a try.

I probably could have done better if I was a little more aggressive early on. I didn't attack anyone until I had Camel Archers, but my two Camel Archers wiped the floor with Alexander and Bismarck in short order after they were up. Without the income from a puppet city or two early on I had trouble getting enough cash to rush buy buildings while also buying up city states so I had to waste a lot of turns that way.

My other problem was that, despite having the biggest empire in the game spanning the size of three civilizations, I had no Coal whatsoever. I had to take over a city state to get coal so I could buy my factory before Utopia Project came up and that probably cost me a turn due to not enough culture since the only viable City State to capture was a Cultural one.

 

[Juxtapoze]

Not the prettiest victory here by any means. Began with some nice resources around my capital, but no iron or horses. This made a pikeman rush the option that I chose (inefficient, yet effective). After proceeding North on my continent with pikeman, I created many puppets (perhaps too many?) and finished by 1945.

I'm completely new to the forums/civ fanatics in general, but ran across this challenge and thought I would give it a try. After reading the rules and regs, I proceeded to attempt and think it wasn't too bad for a first go-around!

 

[crbell]

This has been fun. Learning a lot.

1st attempt - Lost due to insufficient military to hold off a very aggressive Gandhi
2nd attempt - Won in 2021 with 2 cities.
3rd attempt - currently running. Doing very well as of the 1400s. Will be my final play through and my only submission.

 

[oPlaiD]

Okay got an error on the upload... trying again.

"Your submission could not be processed because a security token was missing.

If this occurred unexpectedly, please inform the administrator and describe the action you performed before you received this error."

ugh?

 

[Ozbenno]

Okay got an error on the upload... trying again.

"Your submission could not be processed because a security token was missing.

If this occurred unexpectedly, please inform the administrator and describe the action you performed before you received this error."

ugh?

Look at the size of the file, if it is too big (>10M seems to happen randomly for some Civ V files) try zip it and attach.

 

[oPlaiD]

Look at the size of the file, if it is too big (>10M seems to happen randomly for some Civ V files) try zip it and attach.

Something is definitely weird, the save file is 12.4 MB. It was loading really, really slow each turn at the end of the game, moreso than I'm used to, so maybe there is some sort of correlation there?

Only other thing I could think of would be saving/loading more often causes the file to get bigger. I played this game for an hour or so each day and was saving/loading it a lot more often than I usually do, so maybe that had some impact somehow.

I mean, the first game I posted was only 869 KB and it was a bit longer. Weird.

 

[Xicivilian]

Saves are not compatible between standard and deluxe editions, so if you have different editions the saves will not load (how silly is this ).

Congrats on your win

Indeed silly. The first patch should contain a huge number of bug fixes. I already obtained two archers in one city, a city state unit killing a AI unit, which looks to me is standing on another hex and a longswordmen with combat strength around 54!!!

1st attempt - Lost due to insufficient military to hold off a very aggressive Gandhi

Happend to me also. If you attack him with one unit he goes bagging for mercy, but if you don't pay attention, he will attack you... Luckely I had a spearmen killing his horsemen and elephants. I think culture is about to pay out at the end, so clean the continent first with military...

 

[sanabas]

Started my game last night, played 100 turns. I also have Monty involved. I plan to take a more pro-active approach to him

I had another run at this yesterday, Monty declared on me as my 4 horsemen were marching towards the yanks. So they turned around and smacked him instead. My science was much, much faster than previous games, I built Cristo Redentor in the 1500s. But the culture was lagging well behind, plus somebody stole the Oracle off me on turn 63. Was going to be a 1750 win, so I built the UN while waiting for the last policy, just to test, and discovered that the UN vote is non-optional.

Seem to slowly be getting the research and policy order down to the right order. This time I only put 3 into tradition, 5 into patronage and 2 into freedom before waiting for Cristo Redentor, cost me far too much in piety-based culture, I think. Hope beta gauntlet 2 appears soon, or else I may get obsessed with this setup.