The "UNREAL Walkthrough" Based on My Understanding of The Game

[ABigCivFan]

Just got back from my Business trip and continued playing this past weekend.

800AD: Finally got that GS I been growing. Used him on the Academy. My research went from 219-261 beakers.



800AD: Got Civic change. Switch to OR for building universities.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

840AD: Got Liberalism. Took Astronomy as free tech. Traded with Cyrus.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1000AD: Need cash to fuel my growth. So I rushed to Economics and used the GM for 1900 Gold trade mission.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1020AD: Got a GP, build Dai Miao(Tao Shrine). I activelly spread Tao to all continental cities, later I build wall street in the shrine city and was netting over 200 gold per turn later on. So If you founded any religion, defenitely build that shrine as early as possible and spread it.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1020AD: When you have nice land around capital like this, you want to claim they as early as possible and grow them for different purpose. In this game there are a lot of trees and rivers, so I centered my research toward Lumber mills and Biology to run a powerful FE. Later when I captured AI cities with mature cottages, I kept them and ran a Hybrid economy. Here are several good cities shown at 1020AD. The HE city continues building military units, other focus on research and commerce.

I am currently beelining to Democracy to build SOL. Reseacing Nationalism to build Taj for GA.



1020AD: Astronomy allowed good trade routes and resource trade. Here is the trade summary.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1150AD: Research summary (during GA).



1150AD: Toku did me a favor by declaring on me. I had built a good number of knights for him. And I prompt got my first GG, and used him on a medic3 WC. I planned to to full out on Toku from here, so a Medic3 is the best choice for a GG as I need to heal large number of offensive forces to allow quick advance. And I could get 2nd GG fairly quickly from a large war and use him on a Mil Academy in the HE city.

Note I am 1 turn from Cavs, and the gold from that trade mission will be used to mass upgrade my knights to Cavs for Toku.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1160AD: War production. 4 cities pumping Cavs. Note my workers are building lumber mills everywhere to boost production. All these cities can produce cavs every 2-4 turns.





------------------------------------------------------------------------

1200AD: I saw for myself, combat2 cavs against highly fortified Longbows. Odds are not that good, you DO NEED SIEGE WEAPONS. If you count on cav only army, you need about 3 times the cavs against longbows to expect a sure win. and Expect heavy loses. That is why I have trebs to knock down the defenses. The 2-3 turns wait is well worth it.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1250AD: Capital building SOL, with those lumber mill, only needs 10 turns. 341 Beakers without Scientist specialists.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1260AD: War was going smoothly, Captured Osaka. 2 turns to Coporation. Running Free Market now, so 1 more trade route is nice.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1330AD: Capturing Japan's last city. No need to make peace or anything, just take Toku out completely in one war. Note I am 5 turns from Steel, will then upgrade all trebs to cannons and unleash on Cyrus. I intended to clear out the entire continent and use all those nice cities too boost my reasearch and achieve a quick space/diplo victory. Note Cathy Took Toku as Vassal, so she declare on me. I did not see a single unit(except a ship I killed) from her through out the war. She remained please with me after the "war".



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1380AD: Got steel, mass upgrades trebs to cannons, invading Cyrus. He has more power than I do with his large number of rifles, but my cannons should blow them away. Note I am 7 turns from Biology, a tremendous help to grow specialists and MASS Whip of those newly conquered cities.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1410AD: Cyrus put up a very good fight. He repeatly killed my fishing boats with a large navy and even harrassed my with a Cav landing in my rear.
I got my 3rd GG, and build Mil Academy in the Iron work city. Note in the IW city, there are many lumber mills, this city became a monsterous production city, it later produced EF tower within 5 turns.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1460AD: I opend 2nd front against Persia on the North (his horse city). His Cavs are very annoying. So I am pressing him and north and south(capital).
Note I am research Communism, trying to get Kremelin to allow faster whips.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

1500AD: City Summary. A good number of cities and after my mass whip they will soon become useful. I am switching back and forth between OR (build) and Theocracy (war production) mode every 5-10 turns. Kept Slavery for mass whipping.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[ABigCivFan]

1520AD: I lost Kremelin race to Kublai by 1 turn, damn! Big loss, the AIs just love that wonder, and I thought I was fast!

Going After Persian Capital. Tough fight ahead.



1520AD: Cyrus was quite powerful, I was shorted handed against Cyrus, sometime I dont even have time to heal all the units since I need EVERYONE of them. Look at my half-dead Grenadier doing a fine job at mopping up.



1520AD: Persipolis finally fell. 1 turn from Coal which boosts my IW city prod by another 50%. Going for railroad next to rail all those mines and lumber mills...



--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1550AD: There were lots of tech trades in this game, I had good relations with everyone on the other Conti, never incited any war among them, not neg modifiers except 1 refused demand by Kublai. I got Arty from Cathy, note Cyrus also has Artillary. My war losses were high against Persia. And WW is hitting my cities hard. I wanted to finish Cyrus in 1 war as well. He is much tough than Toku, but given my determination, he will fall.

Note I am at 0% science and 50% culture now to deal with WW. And I intended to vassal Cyrus after capturing all his good cities. And he has some island cities I can not capture anyway.

Look at my Cav swarms choking him and waiting for artillary support. The cavs had picked off some Persian Rifles and Artillaries wondering around. And they are waiting for the final kill.

4 turns from Railroad.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1560AD: Look at the odd mix of my attackers, Cavs+Artillary anyone???



1560AD: Cyrus surrendered.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1585AD: Look at the Manufacturing power of my empire after lumber mills and railroads. My large production cities at this point are all producing Beakers to facilitate research.



1585AD: Production translating to...



--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1635AD: City summary. high hammer counts. and good science rates. and almost instant wonders.



1635AD: Conti. arial view. Zipping through modern techs for fast Space/Diplo win.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[ABigCivFan]

1705AD: Mass producing labs to boost research. 1 turn from Mass Media(UN)



-----------------------------------------------------------------

1715AD: Tao Shrine city. Maxed out to show its GPT potential.



1715AD: City summary. Netting 2817 Beakers. 1 turn from Appollo.



-----------------------------------------------------------------

1720AD: Capital building Appollo.



1720AD: Another city building Hollywood.



1720AD: Another city building UN



1720AD: Research plan. Going for Space Elevator first to allow faster building ship parts.



-----------------------------------------------------------------

1755AD: Shipping my missionary and spy army to spy and convert the other conti.



-----------------------------------------------------------------

1760AD: Spy on Kublai, need to make sure no one on the other conti is ready for an invasion on my land. I do have a fleet of battle ships in case they do. Kublai is no where near my research capabilities. No worries.



1760AD: Spreading Tao to 3 Mongol cities.



1760AD: Core cities sharing the ship building projects. This allows for much faster completion time.



-----------------------------------------------------------------

1765AD: Asoka quite advanced but not a very happy nation..



-----------------------------------------------------------------

1770AD: Cathy has nice commerce city, but starving.



-----------------------------------------------------------------

1775AD: Cathy coastal cities, no transports, no invasion possiblity.



-----------------------------------------------------------------

1820AD: City summaries. Very high research and production capacities.



1820AD: Beaker count, switched to FR and Free market to max it out.



1820AD: Capital view, settled a last minute GE from Fission.



1820AD: Empire View.



-----------------------------------------------------------------

1820AD: Achieved space race victory. (Obsolete won in 1918AD).



1820AD: Score.




-----------------------------------------------------------------

 

[ABigCivFan]

Here is a list of main things that I did differently from Obsolete:

0. I am a firm believer of "Economy of Scale" and "Compound Effect". Spend more time micormanage early growth, tech order, settle good cities, and claim important early strategic resources are the essential strategies to stick to.

1. Aggressive early land grabing all the important strat resourcdes. Early core cities are extremely important strategically, they will serve important roles throught out the game including all War productions, research and commerce.

2. Let your city grow. A Granary should be whipped as the first thing you do in a new city 95% of the time. Each new pop in that city should work a farm/food resource to max its growth speed early on.

3. Founding at least 1 early religion (or capture at least 1 holy city). you seen my Tao shrine city of producing 200+ GPT throught out mid-late game.

A state Religion gives extra happiness which could be very important in early year.

Also Using OR and Theocracy very aggressively duing build and war mode.

Organized Religion is like giving a free FORGE to ALL you cities, I was adding cities very fast duing wars, and after war, spread religion to these cities and using OR is the FASTEST way to bring them up to speed and start contributing to your empire.

Theocracy is like giving a free Military Instructor to ALL you cities.. I rate these religious civics as high as Representation and Bueauacracy! Yes they are that good, I often run them for over 70% of my game durations. Yes later on I could switch to FR. But it was not very conseqential in this game.

4. Aggressive invasions to clear out my conti. You saw the late game how much beakers those Persian cities were contributing to my empire. So when you have the oppotunity to expand through military means, do it. I built a Forbidden Palace in one of the southern Persian cities early to reduce maint from those distant Japan and Persian cities.

5. Light bulb key techs such as Education and Philo. When you timed well for those tech, do use the light bulb to ensure winning Liberalism race. Faster Universities in your empire are also good. You should never limit your game to anything, use your best judgement on different situiations.

6. I left conquered AI cottages, did not pillage anything. Why bulldoze those mature cottages which give 6+ commerce per turn? Run Free speech and take advantage of them.

7. Use siege weapon at war beyond Axe rush. This one should be a no brainer. You will do A LOT better in war, and suffer a lot less casualty.

8. Throughout my game, there was not a single turn I was at danger of being attacked by a more powerful AI, I was either the aggressor, or at least adequately prepared for any unexpected AI invasions land or sea. I think the new players should really keep this one in mind, leaving your cities unprotected and pray for AI's mercy is NOT the way to go.

Thanks for reading.

 

[The Bowman]

I have some questions about the screenshot with the merchant economy.

You do have an impressive gold output from that city. However I am very surprised why the science breakers are so low. Only 30, for a city that large? You have some matured cottages there, and still the beaker count is very low, even with the specialists.

This baffles me, considering even without any cottages, Obsolete gets more than a factor of 10 times as many beakers from his capital. Something just doesn't seem right, when we all know that gold is supposed to be at least correlated in some way to science output. I have the formula memorized, but just too tired to remember right now.

Something else bothers me here, and that's your farms. While we all know that Obsolete will never build a cottage unless you put a gun to his head (and he'd probably remove it the instant you turned your head), but you are following your own guide here. So why not plant even more cottages since you already made some? The merchants will only make 4 gold a turn. So I don't get it.

If you really insist on running merchants for some other reason than gold, then why do you have the hills mined? A windmill not only will give you extra food there for more specialists, but extra gold as well, which is what you are trying to do here. And they can also produce an extra shield too with the proper tech.

It just doesn't make sense to me how you set that city up. Also something I did learn from UncleJJ is that it costs 3 gold to produce one hammer whem going through systems like the US route. In that case, you are much better off focusing on production.

Your SE isn't maximizing science, and it isn't doing much for production either. It just seems to be hanging out there not knowing where it is suppose to go. The gold that it makes seems to be very misleading, even if we forget the fact that it is technicaly starving down in that shot.

 

[jihe]

Note that he is running 0% science, cottages all goes to gold. The only beakers come from representation from the 5 merchants, and that's 15 beakers +multipliers so 30 is correct. I think you should really just go and calculate where the beakers come from and you will see that everything is as should be.

The whole point is city specialization, if this city has the wall street and thus 200% gold, ideally you want it to produce all gold, no beakers and no production to maximise the multiplier.

You might think that replacing those farms by cottages would be better than merchants, however that is assuming you are running 0% science, if you look closely he is infact running 80% science, therefore getting 7x20%=1.4 gold out of each town, so in fact running merchants takes better advantage of the multiplier.

He has the hills mined, because he needs some production power to build the wall street in the first place, those can be turned into windmills at anytime. Once you get all the buiding you need then indeed a wall street city should not need any production at all. You are not going to build troops or space parts there, there are other cities to do the job. By specialising the wall street city for gold, you are in fact liberating other cities from having to produce gold and be more productive. Anyway all these are well known facts and I suggest you read a bit of the war academy.

I have some questions about the screenshot with the merchant economy.

You do have an impressive gold output from that city. However I am very surprised why the science breakers are so low. Only 30, for a city that large? You have some matured cottages there, and still the beaker count is very low, even with the specialists.

This baffles me, considering even without any cottages, Obsolete gets more than a factor of 10 times as many beakers from his capital. Something just doesn't seem right, when we all know that gold is supposed to be at least correlated in some way to science output. I have the formula memorized, but just too tired to remember right now.

Something else bothers me here, and that's your farms. While we all know that Obsolete will never build a cottage unless you put a gun to his head (and he'd probably remove it the instant you turned your head), but you are following your own guide here. So why not plant even more cottages since you already made some? The merchants will only make 4 gold a turn. So I don't get it.

If you really insist on running merchants for some other reason than gold, then why do you have the hills mined? A windmill not only will give you extra food there for more specialists, but extra gold as well, which is what you are trying to do here. And they can also produce an extra shield too with the proper tech.

It just doesn't make sense to me how you set that city up. Also something I did learn from UncleJJ is that it costs 3 gold to produce one hammer whem going through systems like the US route. In that case, you are much better off focusing on production.

Your SE isn't maximizing science, and it isn't doing much for production either. It just seems to be hanging out there not knowing where it is suppose to go. The gold that it makes seems to be very misleading, even if we forget the fact that it is technicaly starving down in that shot.

 

[andre.human@gma]

A question about the forests around Thebes: towards the end of the game, you had nine or ten forests intact around Thebes, on which you built lumbermills for the extra production. Great idea, but how did you manage to get all those wonders early on - Great Wall, Stonehenge, Pyramids, Oracle, Great Library etc - without chopping? I assume you rushed the Pyramids with a GE obtained from the Wall, but still, you had to build the Great Wall, which is a huge cost in hammers early on, as well as Stonehenge, Oracle and the Great Library, all without chopping assistance. I am surprised that the AI did not beat you to at least half of those.

Perhaps I am too cautious. I rush chop Henge when its probably not necessary (on Prince level). Also, I gave up on the Great Wall because I thought if I got that, I would not have enough forests left to get henge as well...? Seems that the AI is not that fast in getting these wonders. I will experiment a bit...

 

[The Bowman]

So he turned his science off for that shot, I got it now.

But in another thread on the forum I have been reading how merchant economies are still detrimental.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Jihe: Thanks for answering those questions for me.

@Bowman: Railed Hill mine + Forge + Factory + power + building wealth = 10 GPT regardless of the science slider.

It is possible to optimize each city to sqeeze more research/gold out, but given the size of my economy at the end (4000+ beakers/turn), I wasnt going to put any effort into that, it just wont make a difference.

There is no "merchant economy". Those merchants you saw were the only ones in my entire empire. The other cities all have scientists and Engineers.

@Andre: Did you read the first post of this thread? There is a pic showing how Pyramid was built in 10 turns. Some trees were also chopped to rush wonders.

 

[andre.human@gma]

Thanks ABCFan, I saw that. But that still means you still built the Oracle, Stonehenge, and the Great Wall in your capital and only chopped about 3 or 4forests in total.

I just didnt think it can be done. Obviously, the answer lies in settling on a hill for the extra 2 hammers early and building a forge before you start with the GW or Henge.

A

 

[ABigCivFan]

Thanks ABCFan, I saw that. But that still means you still built the Oracle, Stonehenge, and the Great Wall in your capital and only chopped about 3 or 4forests in total.

I just didnt think it can be done. Obviously, the answer lies in settling on a hill for the extra 2 hammers early and building a forge before you start with the GW or Henge.

A

This capital was unusually good for wonder spam, it has extremely high production. I settled stone early, Ramasis is Industrious. Stone Henge was like a 3-4 turn effort, Oracle was probably the only close one, but i did chop some trees for it iirc. Yes, I got Metal Casting from Oracle, built a forge before GW and Pyramid which speed things up a little. Look at the year they were built and you will see how it is doable.

 

[Scaphism]

Thanks for the playthrough and alternate strategy for this map. You did an excellent job with it.

I do want to point out that Obsolete's original goal was to show that reliance on cottage spam and lightbulbing is by no means required to win emperor+ games. And he succeeded at that. I think you've shown that it's possible to do better with a mixed strategy, and steering less experienced players towards a balanced strategy in the process.


Out of curiosity, how long did this game take you to play through?

 

[ABigCivFan]

I think you've shown that it's possible to do better with a mixed strategy, and steering less experienced players towards a balanced strategy in the process.

Yes, that is exactly my point.

Out of curiosity, how long did this game take you to play through?

I think the timer shows about 14 hours including time spent on capturing pics and saving those pics, and some "away" time as i do not pause game all the time during breaks.

I did spend a good amount of time micromanage workers early on. There are a lot to do with the workers given large amount of good land and forrests (lumber mills).

I also spent some time planning and executing those 2 wars. Those were the most time consuming parts.

The last 50 turns after war was pretty much auto-pilot. Auto all workers, bee-lined all research, queued up space ship parts and just let the game played out.

But mastering war, econ, research, trade and micromanagement will allow most new players to move up multiple difficulty levels. That is the idea of this game, and amount of time spent on thinking and planning is the biggest difference between higher levels and lower levels.

 

[The Bowman]

I know you are not running a merchant economy for each city, but you did have a merchant-SE for your gold producting city. There is a thread here on the subject regarding that, and has caused me a lot of food for thought

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=221753

I would like to see some of your input on it, as from what I have gathered, this system is a very poor one. But I'd like to see some more arguements for and against it.