TSG 264 After Actions

[lymond]

I can't figure it out either. I played this again and put all my cities on science-focus, and used all my trade routes to send food between my cities; a cargo ship if possible. (I also had Temple of Artemis and "Feed the World") If my cities didn't have anything better to build, they built beakers instead of excess wonders unless the wonder provided something useful like great scientist points. I knocked about 30 turns off, which is just barely significant.

I'm not good at all, but the secret seems to be to grow cities as fast as possible early. All trade routes feed cap or cities that need it. Try to beeline research building techs (buy them asap) and run scientists asap. Rationalism to beakers from specialists asap. Run more than scientists - engineers, etc. Then the key is Great Scientists and the timing at the end. You want to save as many as possible, although I may make a strategic early bulb or two, mainly to get to more science buildings. GE rush Hubble for more and faith buy GSs. Depending on how many GS, and though the end of the tech tree seems daunting, if your science output has been good you can literally finish the last 10 or so techs in a couple of turns while saving boatloads of dosh to buy the parts asap.

I forget the size, but a deity youtuber I watched, PC Law i think, basically says cities only need to be a certain size. Cap will be biggest but I think size 25 to 30ish for the cap, and about 20 for the other cities. So any growth beyond that should be specialists producing beakers.

oh, and save GWs and GAs for golden ages and culture bulbs to get the key policies, like in ratio and freedom. You certainly don't need all of freedom but you want to make sure you have the part-buying policy ready to go when you need it. You should be in a perpetual golden age for the entire latter half of the game.

I'm still working a lot on this and have a way to go. I'm terrible with the timings. One thing I am terrible is getting that Commerce policy, or even opening-up before I need to start ratio. I always seem to have to waste policies after tradition on things I really don't need.

As for research agreements, I've not found them to be all that useful though I try to get some. Getting friends is not easy and then idealogies muck it all up.

 

[Megalou]

Not sure about early, I feel my cities really started to get going in Renaissance/early Industrial. Prior to civil service there were not that many growth tiles.

Relatively speaking.

 

[Skifff]

Turn 200 Science victory

This one was a real learning experience. Could be a lot faster. Really feel like doing a new play through.
-Map was not familiar to me
-Settler difficulty was a new one. I didn't realize happiness really is not an issue until about 30 turns into the game, by then I had already dabbled a bit in both liberty and tradition policies...
-Didn't know the social policies are so much cheaper on settler
-Didn't know that scientists give more science than usual. Or maybe this is because of standard speed.
-Low unit maintenance also threw me off

Did a lot of mistakes and also a lot of really big ones like
-Should have taken the tier III order social policy for GS and GE right away. Instead I took the trade routes one, which didn't really end up doing anything for me since the game closed out soon after. That scientist and engineer could have sped up the game 5-8 turns.
-Not realizing that you have to insta-raze cities if you want to avoid the science penalty. So I ended up having a couple more cities than I was aiming for originally.
-14 cities: went super wide this game, which felt like a real slog, I felt the science penalty was really kicking in. The last cities never had enough time to do anything useful really.
-Didn't realize that pretty much any wonders are *guaranteed*. Could have timed all the wonders better, was more in the competitive "asap" mode for wonders, so used to having to rush them right away if you want 'em.

Overall this was a very fun and unique experience! Thank you GOTM team for once again showing a new side of this game. Would have never tried settler difficulty on my own with all its perks. It was actually so fun that barbarians cannot enter your lands!! xD Except... At one point one barbarian did!!! But I think it was because of some combo glitch: anarchist barbarian units appeared inside enemy borders during war when I was pillaging their land and luxes, I think that somehow meddled with the AI rules since the anarchists *have* to enter into player lands?
It was so fun to fill out both tradition and liberty. And it was so fun to plan city placement without restrictions! Usually you are forced to play around happiness so much. This was a very freeing experience. Until I got carried away, had 14 cities, and then it became super tedious. 27 hours total playing this playthrough. Oh my god....

And thank you for all community members for all the interesting write-ups guys!

End of game economic overview (turn 200), maximizing for production in rocket building cities (higher production values). Other cities focusing on gold:

Economic overview on turn 185 when I was still maximizing for science:

That darned silver WLTKD! There was a single peck of silver on a tiny island way up north far away from everything. Not settling another city for that Can't complain though, was able to keep WLTKD going in the important cities most of the game.

And here is a Google Docs writeup of my game: TSG 264 - Celts - Science - Settler

 

[billybgame]

See what I mean...been playing since Civ 1.....and here we have a player with their first post, with a finish of turn 200. Same # of cities I had(14) with a finish of turn 150 turns more. Can someone check my game and tell me differences? What am I missing? They even had time to war with England...while I minded my own business. Usually this type of stuff slows down victory progress.

 

[Skifff]

See what I mean...been playing since Civ 1.....and here we have a player with their first post, with a finish of turn 200. Same # of cities I had(14) with a finish of turn 150 turns more. Can someone check my game and tell me differences? What am I missing? They even had time to war with England...while I minded my own business. Usually this type of stuff slows down victory progress.

I have spent 1000 hours playing Civ 5 and spent hundreds of hours outside the game studying it, taking notes, AB testing different strategies. Right now I have a Google Doc with 15 pages of notes of learnings. There's hundreds of hours of material online to learn from. What exactly do you mean when you say "here we have a player with their first post, with a finish of turn 200".

The best way to learn Civ 5: play online multiplayer games. From those you will right away get the awareness of when you are behind = you get the awareness that you are doing something wrong, which is the first step to improving. When you notice you are consistently behind at some point in the game that is the first step of improving.

I myself thought I was good at this game before I played my first online multiplayer. But after I played my first online multiplayer games I realized that playing against the AI is just like learning to drive by playing around with a toy car... All those hours in single player meant nothing...
If you want to play peaceful you can also ask around for people to play peaceful Civ 5 games, that's what I did. It gives a nice benchmark to play with a human than to just play the AI.

For me Civ 5 is now a very different experience to what it was before, some good, some bad.

"They even had time to war with England...while I minded my own business. Usually this type of stuff slows down victory progress."
I very much disagree. Having London with mountain adjacency and access to sea trade routes and all the epic resources around that city... I'd say it's a clear mistake not to take that city. I took it with three units that were gifted from militaristic city states. York on the other hand was definitely a mistake to take that.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

@billybgame I had a look at your game, and the first obvious thing is that your cities are too small. Population equals science and production, so you need to grow as hard as you can for 90% of the game. At the end of the game, you can stagnate and focus on science or production, and earlier in the game there may be a few times when you want to focus production instead (to get a key wonder, or to get a key building like factory or public school out sooner).

This also means that your trade routes should default to internal food trade routes. Especially coastal trade routes can give a big boost in growth. A few exceptions are the occasional city state quests, and on Deity and Immortal sending an early game trade route to the AI may be beneficial to get some extra science. Also, in the end game when you don't need to grow anymore you can send trade routes for gold (but internal trade routes for production might still be better, depending on your needs).

I noticed in your cities that you did not lock your tiles. Typically, I will lock my tiles to work food, and set the citizen management to production focus, for the 'production-focus-trick'. If you are wondering what that is, it is explained by, for example, PC J Law, who has some nice tutorial-style videos (also one or two where he wiped me off the map in multi-player, but you can skip those )*. Which leads me to another point: watching some youtube videos can really improve the quality of your game. I used to watch a lot of FilthyRobot videos back in the day, although these are harder to find, but PC's stuff is mostly still there I believe.

From your save file, I can't see how you ended up in your final position, but in the early game two things are very important: 1) getting your cities out early, and 2) improving your tiles. This means building settlers and workers, which may not be the sexiest thing to do when you can also be building wonders, but if you get that right, your game will be off to a really good start.

* In case you do want to watch it, it was this one: PC J Law, Rome vs Black Vegetable, Brazil

 

[billybgame]

@billybgame I had a look at your game, and the first obvious thing is that your cities are too small. Population equals science and production, so you need to grow as hard as you can for 90% of the game. At the end of the game, you can stagnate and focus on science or production, and earlier in the game there may be a few times when you want to focus production instead (to get a key wonder, or to get a key building like factory or public school out sooner).

This also means that your trade routes should default to internal food trade routes. Especially coastal trade routes can give a big boost in growth. A few exceptions are the occasional city state quests, and on Deity and Immortal sending an early game trade route to the AI may be beneficial to get some extra science. Also, in the end game when you don't need to grow anymore you can send trade routes for gold (but internal trade routes for production might still be better, depending on your needs).

I noticed in your cities that you did not lock your tiles. Typically, I will lock my tiles to work food, and set the citizen management to production focus, for the 'production-focus-trick'. If you are wondering what that is, it is explained by, for example, PC J Law, who has some nice tutorial-style videos (also one or two where he wiped me off the map in multi-player, but you can skip those )*. Which leads me to another point: watching some youtube videos can really improve the quality of your game. I used to watch a lot of FilthyRobot videos back in the day, although these are harder to find, but PC's stuff is mostly still there I believe.

From your save file, I can't see how you ended up in your final position, but in the early game two things are very important: 1) getting your cities out early, and 2) improving your tiles. This means building settlers and workers, which may not be the sexiest thing to do when you can also be building wonders, but if you get that right, your game will be off to a really good start.

* In case you do want to watch it, it was this one: PC J Law, Rome vs Black Vegetable, Brazil

Oh I had many cities very early. I will admit one thing...never in my 5000 hours of Civ 5 have I ever done an internal trade route. I always think gold. But could that be one of my major downfalls in earlier science wins? I will also admit I had way more gold than I ever needed so it would not have hurt at all to have internal food routes. I guess I'll have to think on that aspect more.

 

[billybgame]

I have spent 1000 hours playing Civ 5 and spent hundreds of hours outside the game studying it, taking notes, AB testing different strategies. Right now I have a Google Doc with 15 pages of notes of learnings. There's hundreds of hours of material online to learn from. What exactly do you mean when you say "here we have a player with their first post, with a finish of turn 200". I've even posted several of my games here on GOTM, it's not even my first post

The best way to learn Civ 5: play online multiplayer games. From those you will right away get the awareness of when you are behind = you get the awareness that you are doing something wrong, which is the first step to improving. When you notice you are consistently behind at some point in the game that is the first step of improving.

I myself thought I was good at this game before I played my first online multiplayer. But after I played my first online multiplayer games I realized that playing against the AI is just like learning to drive by playing around with a toy car... All those hours in single player meant nothing...
If you want to play peaceful you can also ask around for people to play peaceful Civ 5 games, that's what I did. It gives a nice benchmark to play with a human than to just play the AI.

For me Civ 5 is now a very different experience to what it was before, some good, some bad.

"They even had time to war with England...while I minded my own business. Usually this type of stuff slows down victory progress."
I very much disagree. Having London with mountain adjacency and access to sea trade routes and all the epic resources around that city... I'd say it's a clear mistake not to take that city. I took it with three units that were gifted from militaristic city states. York on the other hand was definitely a mistake to take that.

I only stated that as you had one single message posted to these forums. Yeah I only play single player...tried a MP game once and other player quit so fast I figured it was a waste of time trying to play with strangers. But I do have over 5000 hours into Civ 5.

 

[Skifff]

Oh I had many cities very early. I will admit one thing...never in my 5000 hours of Civ 5 have I ever done an internal trade route. I always think gold. But could that be one of my major downfalls in earlier science wins? I will also admit I had way more gold than I ever needed so it would not have hurt at all to have internal food routes. I guess I'll have to think on that aspect more.

Ehh? Whatt? An internal land trade route gives almost as much food as a hanging gardens, later stages of the game even more. You're basically skipping having multiple hanging gardens wonders in your empire. And when your cities grow tall you get the gold anyway through cities connected to capital with roads.

Gold on the other hand is by far the weakest resource early game.

Trading out multiple hanging gardens for a weak resource - sounds like a horrible deal.

 

[jrwh]

Took me forever to get around to finishing this. Lots going on when there's 15 cities, even if it's settler.

Won on turn 183. Could've done 180 if I didn't mismanage getting to the Freedom finisher for gold purchasing the parts, having to wait 3 turns for it at the end. I also finished teching all the parts before I even got Apollo done. 7 turn build for that in my cap.

Played mostly peaceful other than stealing some workers and settlers from Germany and Rome early on.

Got the Commerce purchasing policy fairly early which allowed me to purchase all of my public schools and labs. I purchased most of my unis and aqueducts too, I'd say around 3-4 each of those were hard built.

I pretty much stopped making buildings after workshops and markets, and just went for wealth to get all my science purchases done asap. After labs were bought, I swapped to research. I did hard build Machu for the ridiculous gold (was getting ~180gpt from city connections before I even built it), Porcelain for an extra scientist, Big Ben to reduce purchasing cost for labs and spaceship parts, and Statue for the policy and specialist boost. I may have been able to do without Porcelain honestly, my tech was done before Apollo and the spaceship purchasing policy both.

Spoiler Policies and Wonders :

Spoiler The Celtic Empire :

 

[jrwh]

Ehh? Whatt? An internal land trade route gives almost as much food as a hanging gardens, later stages of the game even more. You're basically skipping having multiple hanging gardens wonders in your empire. And when your cities grow tall you get the gold anyway through cities connected to capital with roads.

Gold on the other hand is by far the weakest resource early game.

Trading out multiple hanging gardens for a weak resource - sounds like a horrible deal.

In this particular game I found gold to be more useful than ever before. Probably because you just get so darn much of it on settler, plus unusually early access to policies that synergize with it.

That being said, internal trade routes are huge. You should always be looking to feed your capital asap, I usually research fishing early even if I'm not coastal to get that second route going to the cap. The only, very rare occasions where I don't send a trade route internally is if I desperately need a CS ally for happiness and they have a trade route quest available.

Everything is predicated off your population. Science has a ton of multipliers, but the flat rate of it that benefits from all those multipliers comes directly from your pop. Production is great, gold is okay...the more population you have, the more tiles you can work, the more of those resources you get too.

 

[Axolaan]

Took me forever to get around to finishing this. Lots going on when there's 15 cities, even if it's settler.

Won on turn 183. Could've done 180 if I didn't mismanage getting to the Freedom finisher for gold purchasing the parts, having to wait 3 turns for it at the end. I also finished teching all the parts before I even got Apollo done. 7 turn build for that in my cap.

Played mostly peaceful other than stealing some workers and settlers from Germany and Rome early on.

Got the Commerce purchasing policy fairly early which allowed me to purchase all of my public schools and labs. I purchased most of my unis and aqueducts too, I'd say around 3-4 each of those were hard built.

I pretty much stopped making buildings after workshops and markets, and just went for wealth to get all my science purchases done asap. After labs were bought, I swapped to research. I did hard build Machu for the ridiculous gold (was getting ~180gpt from city connections before I even built it), Porcelain for an extra scientist, Big Ben to reduce purchasing cost for labs and spaceship parts, and Statue for the policy and specialist boost. I may have been able to do without Porcelain honestly, my tech was done before Apollo and the spaceship purchasing policy both.

Spoiler Policies and Wonders :

View attachment 725903

Spoiler The Celtic Empire :

View attachment 725904View attachment 725905

This puts into perspective what I was missing out on staying on 4 cities, the fact that you still had 30 happiness left over with this much population is disgusting. Great game!

 

[Rhodro]

Won science at turn 198. I felt pretty good about the run, then I see black vegetable and jrwh being even much faster, amazing.
I went 8 self built cities, extracted some gold from AI with war declarations. Late in the game I became allies with 3 of them to funnel some more gold out of them.
I might have been able to win the game about 3 turns earlier, because my last turn i bulbed my last 3 scientists to get the last 3 techs and then buy 6 spaceship parts. This means i lost the science per turn for at least 3 turns. But I find it very hard to make the "starting of bulbing" a hard decision, usually i do it a bit by feeling, and seems most of the time i start bulbing too late.
My social policies was full liberty, then tradition mixed with rationalism and freedom and 3 in commerce. Somewhere midgame i finished tradition for the extra 15% growth. From the others it looks like going for commerce for cheaper purchasing was the better strat here.
I also think 10-12 cities was probably optimal compared to my 8.

Spoiler :

 

[vadalaz]

Results for GOTM #264
The Celts / Science / Settler / British Isles

...Player.....................Turn
1. fiddlesticks................166
2. The_Black_Vegetable.........195
3. Rhodro......................198
4. Skifff......................200
5. Jovan Kukic.................203
6. Megalou.....................224
7. lymond......................226
8. Yarin.......................231
9. zlither.....................238
10. Xrustyclimbs...............247
11. pietro1990.................280
12. CCCC.......................309


More details can be found here. Please note: This list is generated automatically and only shows games that have been uploaded to the GOTM website.

Congratulations to the trophy winners and to all who played the game. Thank you for sharing your game and participating in the discussions!

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Ah, so @fiddlesticks did play this game. I knew I left something on the table, but T166 looks pretty fast to me. Also, it seems @jrwh forgot to upload his game.

 

[fiddlesticks]

This one was all about maxing out food and growth. I was quite lucky with early settler ruins. I think I had three in total, which really sped the early game up. I think I ended up with 10 cities.