Civ V - Beta 2

I'm on turn 244 of my latest try, now that I correctly set it to Epic speed. Sadly, none of my starts since have been better than that screenshot I posted earlier, where I was alone on a large landmass w/3 Maritime CS.

How do you make the screenshot? Just with Print Screen? Because if I paste that in paint or so, I got a black picture...

I have Win 7, x64
 
Well done on your game. :goodjob:

Part of the reason we're doing these beta gauntlets is to test out the different speeds/maps/conditions to get a feel for how they all work. Wait until we do marathon :mischief:

Thanks. You're right, it's best to test all these modes out being that the game is so young.

Marathon seems like I will need the full month to beat the map though:lol:
 
1947 - hooray :crazyeye:

I have wasted a lot turns because wrong decisions and bad luck (arghh! Research Agreements). But: Ive learned a lot. Fun! :goodjob:
 

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How do you make the screenshot? Just with Print Screen? Because if I paste that in paint or so, I got a black picture...

I have Win 7, x64

Print Screen saves a picture on your hard drive in the /Users/<username/My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/ScreenShots directory in .tga format. You'll need a program to convert it to .jpg if you want to post or edit it. I use IrfanView, it's free and easy to use.
 
Print Screen saves a picture on your hard drive in the /Users/<username/My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/ScreenShots directory in .tga format. You'll need a program to convert it to .jpg if you want to post or edit it. I use IrfanView, it's free and easy to use.

Thanks, here the result (from Gauntlet 1)! If you look you see two archer units in the city. And they both fired upon my units...
 

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Hi all,

First Spacerace Victory and first victory on King. I have made quite a lot of mistakes in this game that can be easily avoided.
I started out as an extreme warmongering leader, took 2 City states with 2 Warriors, 2 Archers and continued to bully England into annihilation, continued on with my now pretty strong force in medieval times and kept puppetting the cities. I went to Rome and Aztecs who decided I was puny and wiped them out aswell.

Now here was the kicked, I was so on top of the world in the war game with technological units and a strong force that I decided I could concentrate on research from now on. I disbanded all my units (BAD IDEA) and went for massive beaker production.
The Beakers went fine and the cities were doing nicely, but the other 3 opponents left in the game decided it was their time to strike.
Massive forces gathered near my gates and took one Island with 3 Puppets and a city close to my main island.
I responded with a few defensive measures (some cannons and later Airplanes with submarines) and never heard of them again.
Unfortunately i lost a lot of gold in the process and I couldn't keep my CS alliances up which made sure I had a terrible end-game process. Finally finished in 1986 AD (My birthdayyear).

Finish 1986AD
(Map decided on first reload) (All other effects Random)

Guess I am going for the last place again!

Greetings Boukev
 

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Here's my entry for the second Gauntlet. I made a lot of mistakes throughout, could have finished a bit earlier had I focused on the upper tree exclusively. I didn't realize you could just ignore everything past Metallurgy, just like on Cultural.

America blasted off to Alpha Centauri in the year 1766, which is funny considering they won't even exist for another ten years, but I digress. Changing from normal to low sea level was a big help, it put me on a decent size landmass with Japan, Siam, and three City States, 2 military and 1 cultural. I built Scout-Warrior-Worker-GL, and my scout got upgraded on my first ruins, he and the two warriors captured Kyoto and Sukhothai. Two of the CS were in between me and the Siamese Capital, so I went ahead and took them as well. When I attacked the second CS (Seoul), Monaco declared on me, which I hadn't even met. Turns out he was off the coast of Seoul, so when I got Optics I went and took Monaco as well. Five puppets altogether, I kept them puppets till I got to Industrial Age, so I could buy up the middle 3 in Order, then during my 750 GA I annexed them and built my courthouses. Wish I had kept them puppets longer so I could get the left side of Commerce done since they were all coastal cities.

Things I learned in this game:
Harbors not only connect your coastal cities for Trade Routes, but they also count as Railroads.
SS Components count as "Land Units" so the Forge building helps by 15%.
Aluminum is far more important in Space than in Culture.
Forbidden Palace + Communism = 0 Unhappiness from number of cities. I can think of all kinds of ways to abuse this with India as my civ.
Space victory is best played exactly like a culture victory, except you don't have to store points for Freedom or Cristo. Best to just capture your neighbor's cities and puppet them till you have all the social policies you want.
I was rather surprised at the upgrade path for naval units. I had assumed it went Trireme-Caraval-Frigate, and then stopped. I was a bit nonplussed to find that Triremes upgraded only to Frigates, Caravals did not, and both Caravels and Frigates upgraded to Destroyers. Under that logic, Cavalry should upgrade to Tanks.

I doubt I'll play this one again, at least not till November. Not sure if it's Epic or Archipelago, but I didn't enjoy this one too much. As I said before, Small Continents would be far better.
 

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Had a good time with this one. Wished I'd read Neuro's post first. Was wondering about harbours and railroads and the land units. Didn't make use of any of those. Was able to get a couple a frigates very early due to GS, then got an infantry unit thanks to ruins. Could have won a domination with just those 3 units as no one else had more than swordmen. Also used forbidden palace and communism. Started with washington next to 2 gems, so I had a lot of money the entire game. Used allies to get a lot of my beakers. One this that seems a little cheap is giving another civ money so I can start a research agreement, then immidiately starting war, and getting the tech instantly.
 

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Forbidden Palace + Communism = 0 Unhappiness from number of cities. I can think of all kinds of ways to abuse this with India as my civ.

Forbidden Palace + Communism = -100% of base unhappiness. Playing as India = +100% of base unhappiness. Put them together , and you simply have the base unhappiness level. So not quite as exploitable as it first appears.
 
Won on turn 522, 1932. Not a particularly good showing, due to a combination of bad luck and poor choices. I'm not a big fan of the "restart until you like your starting position" approach so I played out what I was given. Sea level was normal, too, so I had my fair share of little single-tile islands.

The bad luck started with my initial position. No marble, lots of desert on my island, and a ton of silver. That last bit may not sound bad, but it meant I didn't have much variety in luxuries. Low happiness until quite a bit later when I'd found some trading partners. I did have a river, fortunately, but it ended up being the only one on my island. I was nearly surrounded by city states, none of which were maritime. I didn't meet another great civ until turn 118, and there was no one to conquer anywhere close. I ended up going after Montezuma and conquering his two cities around turn 170.

First dumb mistake - I annexed one of the Aztec cities instead of leaving it a puppet. I had the happiness to handle it, but it slowed my social policies considerably. Later I repeated the mistake by annexing the other one, and that time the happiness was an issue also.

Next dumb mistake - I allowed the puppets to grow too large. I conquered 3 Roman cities and left those as puppets since I couldn't afford the happiness hit, but then I also built some work boats to let them get Fish and didn't remove their farms. They grew like crazy and I never did find a good time where I could afford the unhappiness to annex them. (I suppose I could have done it at the end of the game, but no point there.)

The French and Siam both attacked me at the same time at one point, but I had enough of a tech lead that my units wiped the floor with theirs. I suspect Napoleon bribed the Siam guy because he didn't seem to interested in pressing the attack, and made peace right at the 30 turn mark. I took a couple of Napoleon's cities, burned a third, and killed a bunch of his units until he settled down.

Next stroke of bad luck - no coal. I controlled three large islands and two small ones, with no coal on any of them. The other players either also had none, or were unwilling to trade. Finally I found some way down at the bottom of the world, halfway across the map from my starting point, and built a city on it. I was slow getting that done, though, and the lack of Factories probably added a good 50 turns between lost science while I was building Universities and Public Schools, and slow spaceship construction.

My social policy choices probably weren't the best either. I went in this order: Liberty, Collective Rule, Republic, Commerce, Naval Tradition, Merchant Navy, Order, Socialism, Planned Economy, Communism, Rationalism. (That last one was almost at the end of the game so nothing else would have done much.) I also used some Great Scientists on techs early in the tree, when it probably would have made more sense to stockpile those guys for a run at the end-game techs.

Not a horrible game, but it could have been a lot better. I may try another one this weekend. I've attached the usual saves, and also a log that I kept throughout the game. If anyone has suggestions, please speak up, all feedback is appreciated!
 

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Second gauntlet and: The only valid strategy for every winning condition are puppet states as it seems. I have a bad feeling, young padawan.

I think there is a lack of balance between collecting culture / cost of social policies and the number of cities. Culture required for social policies is to high if you build 3+ own cities and if you want a reasonable number of social policies.

I would like to see a gauntlet like this:

• no puppet states
• found - at least - 5 cities on your own
 
Second gauntlet and: The only valid strategy for every winning condition are puppet states as it seems. I have a bad feeling, young padawan.
I don't see it as a problem.

In Civ5 no matter what you are going for, you have to do a bit of everything, warfare included. This forces you to do a balancing act between all the different things you have to do / research / build / buy and prioritize depending on your goals and the map / random elements you are dealing with.

I prefer this to Civ4 where you could just expand twice, spam artists, and hit the slider then sit on your hands for a cultural victory, which made them very boring.
 
Wow. A 1933 finish and I screwed up so many times it wasn't funny. I am pretty new (as you can see by the number of postings) and just tried it out to see what the settings were like to play. Didn't seriously start trying for space till about 1850. I could have taken the last capital about 1800 :(

I didn't change the sea level or anything like that so most islands were pretty crappy. I didn't know you could skip the free research with GL so I went for Colossus first for the gold boost and bought a tireme and scouted. Bought 2 settlers and a villie and finished my 3 towns on my island. My tireme found most of the CS but no maritime till they were allied with other people.

Found lots of ruins so used my tireme to shield my island hopping warrior. He picked up a few upgrades. When he got to musket I took out Siam then Germany. Left them each with a city because someone said it doesn't make the AI as angry with you. After getting Astronomy and my island hopper circumnavigating, he eventually got upgraded to MechInf. Used him and some troops from mil CS to clean out big island. All of a sudden I realised I could finish in decent time so rather than take the last capital I went for it.

I probably could have finished 100 turns earlier if I knew how to play better. I was very scared of the AI, but its general combat ability is terrible. Survive the rush and they had everything to you on a platter. I didn't start Apollo till about 15 turns after I got the tech. I had about 6 Generals before I started manually controlling and going for GS. I didn't annex the Siam captial but did Berlin, should have been other way. Luxuries were few and far between and loads of the ones we did have. No aluminium. Had to war rest of Siam and a CS to get to it and that was just before Apollo finished.

As with CIV4, I just don't get the diplomacy in this game. Supposedly the only way to not get attacked is to either kill them all first or give them all my resources and condemn my eco to disaster. A 1 for 1 trade is almost non-existent. If my wife and daughters are 10 times easier to understand than this AI Diplomacy, then the designers have some serious issues (or really need to get out more).

Instant heal is complete BS!!! Totally and utterly ruins it. I would not have done some things if I didn't have the BS heal up my sleeve.

Comments appreciated.
 

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Puh did it... Turn 371, 1722 AD. I will add the savegames & the explanation asap, gotta go now... :) (Ok some time left)


I started off on an island with harun, he died within the first few turns, startposition was fairly ok, some desert, but some hills 2, and marble. Some turns later (dont know the exact numbers anymore, sry) i met suleiman on a little island. Took me 4 warriors and a tireme to get rid of him (he on hills and in city, i had only flat terrain to fight on...).

Meanwhile someone kept building wonders, stole me stonehenge...

Then i went straight ahead to scout the islands and teched for embarkment and ofc the standard fast education tech (which makes sense in a science game...). I then sent a warrior around to check out all the ruins, he became a infantry after some ruins, so the fun could begin. Meanwhile i met some maritime city states, i allied those ofc, and 1 or 2 cultural in early/mid game for the policies. I annexed only mecca (nice hammers), the other cities i kept as puppets until very late.


Policies i got: patronage the first 3, then science the first 3 (2 free techs later), then order 4 straight.

I went to takeover all my enemies with my infantry. Eco was pretty strong (harbors!) and happiness was always between -5 and 10... (puppet cities tend to build happiness buildings once u go 2 low). I took over everyone, left russia alive and the indian (how are the american natives called correctly?) capital to evade a domination victory. My military were 2 ships & the infantry, gotta save costs ;)


Then it was basically just teching forward, had around 1,1k beacons in my peaktime. Loads of golden ages through all those worldwonders, great scientists for research, and i saved up some gold to buy the spaceship factory as soon as i could buy them (since spaceship building was going on alrdy...)

In the end i had like 360 building maintenance costs, and i guess 13 cities or so. Ah yes... i started to annex some cities around 100 turns before i finished in order to organize their research and production a bit... puppet states screw up a lot --> raised from 30 to 100 where i did it :)


Oh, can someone tell me how to upload savegames?
 
Finished at 1879.
A bit disapointed at last. I started the Appolo Program at the 1640s promising a good end victory.Took more than 200 years to finished the Appolo Program plus Spaceship.
I think i had a litlle grow in my cities. My biggest city had 13 citizens.
 

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go advanced on the quick reply. there is a icon when clicked popsup a window where you can upload your files.

As he stated, scroll down below the text box and smilies and you'll see the below image. Under the 'Attach Files' section you'll see the button that says 'Manage Attachments'. On that screen you can select your files and when you're ready, press upload. Note, sometimes it takes a little while for it to upload, but it'll have a message stating its current uploading.

Spoiler :
 

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Finished in 1861

I chose LOW sealevel, WET rainfall, and DISABLED start bias to allow a jungle start.

I ended up with an interesting start position that was on the coast, next to a mountain, and on the edge of a sizable jungle (which I intended to use for science with the university +rationalism's SP [free thought].

-As a side note, I don't know if this is a bug or if I'm overlooking something, but when I was working jungles after having acquired both the university and free thought SP, I was still only showing 3 beakers per jungle TP instead of 4.

My tech path was: Pottery-Writing-Mining-Masonry-Philosophy-Calendar. I used my GL to open Theology and then used my first two GS to open education and astronomy. Since I was next to a mountain and no rivers near my capital I figured the Observatory would come in handy faster than river farms from Civil Service.

For SPs I went: Tradition-Aristocracy for faster wonders,---Patronage-Philanthropy for longer CS relations,--- then Rationalism, Secularism, Free Thought for the beakered jungle TPs.

Expansion-wise, I was fortunate to have 2 AIs on my starting island, which were both conquered shortly after making 3 horsemen. I then focused on growing these 3 cities instead of further conquest (probably will change this strategy if I try it again) and it wasn't until much later that I finally decided to take out Askia and pick up two more cities since he beat me to Chichin Itza.

I think that's about it, the last half of the game was pretty boring for me.
 

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-As a side note, I don't know if this is a bug or if I'm overlooking something, but when I was working jungles after having acquired both the university and free thought SP, I was still only showing 3 beakers per jungle TP instead of 4.
You only get 1 science from trading posts, despite what the tooltip or anything else says. Guessing this is the intended effect and that they never updated the documentation.
 
Ok here the savegames.

1. Startposition, was kinda nice.
2. 1 turn before the end (1720), so u have the feeling again with the win screen *g* (just add the last part in Washington)
3. Somewhere midgame after i took Japan with my Infantry, i went for Russia then...


Note: It was my first time ever i played late game (after Telegraph). I did a lot of small mistakes, and didnt play as efficient as i could have. I had 5 maritime City States (i dont know what u got normally...).

I generally set my priorities on getting a nice research fast & second focus on hammers for the late game. In order to achieve that i went for the city states. The large Cities (Washington & Mecca) were production monsters. I pumped research and Wonder out of these, while the others were rather supplementary.


In the end Washington made around 170 hammer per turn while producing (golden age) . Mecca a bit less, but still fast, i finished my SS parts in 5-8 turn. In Washington i had some luck i started on flood plains, so i had solar & water (didnt even know there is a solar thing :D). Mecca, Washington & Athen made a SS thruster each, Washington went for the first other part, mecca for the second (shipping took some turns) and Washington the third and last again. The second part from Mecca came in 2 turns before Washington finished the final part.


Washington had around 200 Research, Mecca 140 or so (focus on research, but without producing it). My Great artists and generals were used for GAs only ( i suicided on in the ocean vs a barb galley :(). I didnt bother on culture at all, prefered to pay some city states ( so i get the research bonus 2 (correction: i said 3 patronage earlier, were 4 actually, just the last 2 not)).



Ah yes settings were:

3 billion years, rest standard (sea level medium), quick combat (animations take forever), and disable start bias (i think), enemy leaders all random.



If you have question just ask, ill try to answer them :)
 

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