Some unexpected results from my first trascend win

[DrCron]

So I won a full game (HK difficulty) trascending with Babylon, and I got some unexpected results:

1) For the 1st time ever, my best era wasn't the contemporary one:

The usual contemporary era spike didn't happen at all, not even in science. I didn't even lead in research for most of the game (except for a brief moment when I turned on collective minds in a couple of cities):

2) But I didn't need it because I was leading comfortably by turn 100. Since I wasn't trying to get anything from another culture, I delayed classical and medieval, and got a bunch of stars from them. Later on I started moving faster because the AI was on its way to finishing the game and I wanted to get the achievement for playing all of the eras with the same culture. I managed to get a few late game projects (satellites and such) even though I didn't need them.

It's a different type of game, and I should say the 2nd half gets boring when you have no change to look for, and no way to properly speed things up. I ended up building less infrastructure than usual, and was also lower than usual in influence. By the way, the constant notifications asking you to change civics that you don't want to change are extremely annoying (I wish there was a "don't ask me again" button).

3) The strategy was simple: I vassalized my warmongering neighbor (I defended ok when they attacked, then took the initiative and conquered them in the 2nd war) and got an alliance with the peaceful one. By the time I reached the other continent one of the AIs had vassalized the other two, so we started trading peacefully too. I built the ED everywhere but fewer districts than usual in general. I mostly built makers and research quarters. I hardly built markets or farms, since the Babylonian ED gives you food and I had plenty of luxuries that provided gold.

4) Of course I had to encounter a new bug. The final screen got stuck in Medieval and I couldn't get a screen shot showing Babylon in every era

In summary, it was easier than expected, different, but clearly not the way the game was intended to be played.

 

[Taefin]

Ah yeah, that endgame montage hangup is annoying.

It also looks like the fame bonus from transcending is not as strong as I would have thought. I play two continents with no new world, so one AI usually takes off and gets 13k fame by 210 or so. Looks like I’d really have to crank up the district production to keep up there.

What I’ve always wanted to do is get a Babylon city with 15+ EQ and get researcher cranking out more food than farmers, hope you had some fun there at least

For using transcendence strategically, would you say switching to a new culture at Industrial or Contemporary would be better. At some point the extra 10% seems just not applied across enough remaining era stars to be worth it, but getting to 40% for the last two eras could be really powerful.

 

[DrCron]

Ah yeah, that endgame montage hangup is annoying.

It also looks like the fame bonus from transcending is not as strong as I would have thought. I play two continents with no new world, so one AI usually takes off and gets 13k fame by 210 or so. Looks like I’d really have to crank up the district production to keep up there.

What I’ve always wanted to do is get a Babylon city with 15+ EQ and get researcher cranking out more food than farmers, hope you had some fun there at least

For using transcendence strategically, would you say switching to a new culture at Industrial or Contemporary would be better. At some point the extra 10% seems just not applied across enough remaining era stars to be worth it, but getting to 40% for the last two eras could be really powerful.

My set up is the same, 2 continents no new world, and I pretty much never see the AI getting to 13k (I didn't download any G2G leaders, I use the default ones, only advanced or expert, as my enemies, usually just one very aggressive one).

The trascendence bonus is definitely underwhelming. That being said, I built some merchant quarters and harbors at the end, just to change things a bit, and from an optimization point of view it was a bad idea. I didn't need that extra gold, some more science and production would have been better. And you probably already know this but having a vassal is also underwhelming. Taking all of their land would have probably yielded better results.

I think changing at industrial would have been good. This game with France + Sweden would have been very strong. Maybe even Joseon in early modern. Trascending at classical seems like a good idea if you have a good enough start, but at some point I wasn't getting enough science to get those 3 stars fast enough.

 

[Taefin]

My set up is the same, 2 continents no new world, and I pretty much never see the AI getting to 13k (I didn't download any G2G leaders, I use the default ones, only advanced or expert, as my enemies, usually just one very aggressive one).

Oh interesting! I certainly don’t see it every game but it might require 8-10 players on Large or Huge, so that the dominant AI on one continent gets some real expansion opportunities. But usually the leader’s fame stays pretty linear unless I break them in a war. Perhaps the current AI stagnates too hard when they stop expanding. I suppose missing out on the free stars from conquest would do that,

 

[DrCron]

Oh interesting! I certainly don’t see it every game but it might require 8-10 players on Large or Huge, so that the dominant AI on one continent gets some real expansion opportunities. But usually the leader’s fame stays pretty linear unless I break them in a war. Perhaps the current AI stagnates too hard when they stop expanding. I suppose missing out on the free stars from conquest would do that,

Ah yes, that's the reason. I'm playing mostly with a normal size map, 6 competitors total.