Lost my marbles finally getting this elusive (to me) achievement.
Tried normal way at first - random game after random game on big maps hoping some runaway would have enough land to get 5 artifact sites.
-couple problems and solutions here: at low difficulty settings, was easier for me to rush to archaeology but seems AI at low diff never really runs away and never has enough land even on huge maps to get enough artifact sites
-so I raised the difficulty and on emperor that solved runaways getting large chunks of continents but either it ran so fast it was digging its own sites before I got there, or never had good random luck to spawn 5 sites
-so I decided to cheese it and do the trick mentioned here on several posts: plant my own cities near artifact sites, concurrently position my archeologist at each site, gift my cities with open border treaty to some sucker civ, then dig away.
-first problem: on low diff settings, the AI apparently doesn't have enough of a happy advantage because every time I gifted my cities, it would burn them down. I did get 3 of 5 to stay so I could dig.
#4 was elusive because no matter what I did with a new city to make it attractive, AI would just accept then insta-burn city down. No,time to dog artifact. I tried creating a city and then rush buying 5-6 really nice happiness and production buildings but still same stupid AI raze fest
So I created whole new game where only objective was to get this achieve, so I built up 5 cities that was near artifact site to pop 20 (three i was lucky and sites spawned near my original 3 cities, other two I had to settle and then rush buy food buildings and tons of food caravans to get to pop 15-20.
The pop need depends on what terrain the artifact site is on because I notice the dig can range from 4-12 turns.
So I got all 5 cities ready, gifted them all to the one AI civ that was willing to trade open borders, and then sure enough the damn AI started burning down 3 of them but because of my population, it took longer to burn than my archs needed to dig.
So finally. Finally! I got this god damn annoying achievement.
Tried normal way at first - random game after random game on big maps hoping some runaway would have enough land to get 5 artifact sites.
-couple problems and solutions here: at low difficulty settings, was easier for me to rush to archaeology but seems AI at low diff never really runs away and never has enough land even on huge maps to get enough artifact sites
-so I raised the difficulty and on emperor that solved runaways getting large chunks of continents but either it ran so fast it was digging its own sites before I got there, or never had good random luck to spawn 5 sites
-so I decided to cheese it and do the trick mentioned here on several posts: plant my own cities near artifact sites, concurrently position my archeologist at each site, gift my cities with open border treaty to some sucker civ, then dig away.
-first problem: on low diff settings, the AI apparently doesn't have enough of a happy advantage because every time I gifted my cities, it would burn them down. I did get 3 of 5 to stay so I could dig.
#4 was elusive because no matter what I did with a new city to make it attractive, AI would just accept then insta-burn city down. No,time to dog artifact. I tried creating a city and then rush buying 5-6 really nice happiness and production buildings but still same stupid AI raze fest
So I created whole new game where only objective was to get this achieve, so I built up 5 cities that was near artifact site to pop 20 (three i was lucky and sites spawned near my original 3 cities, other two I had to settle and then rush buy food buildings and tons of food caravans to get to pop 15-20.
The pop need depends on what terrain the artifact site is on because I notice the dig can range from 4-12 turns.
So I got all 5 cities ready, gifted them all to the one AI civ that was willing to trade open borders, and then sure enough the damn AI started burning down 3 of them but because of my population, it took longer to burn than my archs needed to dig.
So finally. Finally! I got this god damn annoying achievement.
