TSG 61 After Actions

Now, thats better

Made a 2nd play through after my sub standard first game. Clocked in at 286 turns. That is 73 turns better than my submission . Got my act together in the middle game. Mostly peaceful, some wars in the end with Ramses and Spain, crushed both there armies and sailed to victory. No conquests at all from my side. Barb harvesting worked, but i did not overdo it like last time, got my science focus right (science leader for most of the game), maxed out at 1114 cpt. Could perhaps have shaved a few turns of with a hammer overflow. Should read up on that.

social policy wise did honour opener, opened tradition, went through liberty until 30% of, did piety until reformation, finished liberty, opened freedom + 2cpt per wonder, finished piety, finished freedom and then honour.

Went for fertility rites, then cathedral and world church, maxed out at 60 cpt, so not bad. Took religious texts and divine inspiration.

Perpetual GA since around T170

 

What did you change in the second playthru?

 

I built more troops in the beginning to take out all the civs on my continent. I saved my cash to buy all the culture buildings. I chose cheaper missionaries for my enhancer then just spammed them everywhere, that way I'd get a greater cash flow from tithe. I spent the faith on the missionaries to convert my continent before spending any on the Cathedrals.

I also bought a few great prophets instead of saving all the faith for the artists. I was able to effectively eliminate Hiawatha's religion long before I took out his cities, because I converted everything until he ran out of his own prophets and missionaries. I almost wiped out the other two religions on the 2nd continent. They only had 2-3 cities each.

Lastly, I build 4 cities and didn't annex any of the cities I captured. Unfortunately the free culture building and aqueduct for the 4th city ended up in the first city I puppeted instead of the 4th city I built.

 

Game: Civ5 GOTM 61
Date submitted: 2013-05-20
Reference number: 29016
Your name: RyAnne
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1822AD
Turns played: 281
Base score: 1245
Final score: 2223
Time played: 9:40:00
Submitted save: TSG61_1822ad_final.Civ5Save
Renamed file: RyAnne_C506101.Civ5Save


I played aggressive early with Horse Archers and made a puppet of Madrid. The remainder of the game I played peaceful save for a few defensive wars with England and Egypt. In retrospect, I should have simply taken all Capitals on the continent as it would have been quite easy... oh well!

All said and done, fun game!

 

my first finished GOTM. I must say I was always worried to lose a turn compared to others, that it was rather stressfull and I would need to force myself to not play what I considered best for world domination but cultrual victory.

Built only 2 cities. I feared a third one would increase policy cost too much. But that resulted in lesser abilities to build troops. I also didn't annex any cities.

2nd city was at the east coast next to 3 deserts so I built Petra there, I pondered a while if I should rather build a Petry city in the desert, but that didn't look too promising.

Attila going for cultural was indeed very much fun. After Honor opener, he is so overpowered against barbs that they never attacked me and just stood there waiting to be slaughtered. Farming barbs was so rewarding that I even DoWed twice because I feared somebody would take "my" barbarian camp. First time somewhere around turn 90.

Playing at low difficulty level was totally new with all those possibilities to build wonders. I built GL for a NC start and then Hanging Gardens, Oracle, Terracotty army and hardly anything else but wonders in cap. In the early rounds, I bought 2 archers with gold.

Around turn 100, I noticed that I'm always short on money and the 3 civs on my continent weren't good trade partners (they shouldn't live long anyway), so I went for Liberty finisher fast to get a Great Admiral to explore. Good thing he didn't run into barbs.

Around turn 165, the other 3 civs on my continent were defeated. I launched an attack with too few troops against Hiawatha but failed. Late in the game I took Washington from Dido but couldn't hold it. So after taking England, Spain, Egypt, I was pretty peaceful.

I was lucky to found a pantheon just from visiting 2 CS. -> Religious Idols. When founding the religion, I chose Religious Community (+1% prod per pop) over cathedrals because with 2 cities I would only be able to buy 2 cathedrals, the +prod looked better. I chose cathedrals later when I upgraded religion.
In the late game, I bought several great artists to constantly have a golden age.

The ones on my continent were poor. So I had to eliminate them. During the entire game, nobody ever DoWed me.

I was never worried to be attacked. I also never built so many wonders as in this game. Totally new. In addition, happiness was never an issue.

Holy , the battering ram goes through walls like through butter. It's amazing. ...why did I only build 1? note to self: build 2 next time.
I never bothered to build the horse archer.

$3.49 of complete worthlessness. if that is even a word.


I almost bit my keyboard when I had 1 turn left on Utopia project and selected another policy. ANARCHY! omg I clicked to careless. So I lost a turn there.

I'm pretty happy with the game. A lot of things worked out well like taking the cities on my continent, the Great Admiral was also a good decision, there was only 2 wonders were somebody else beat me to it. I had 4 spots to kill barbarians as they spawned. But still a few things I could have done better. One thing is that I think I focused on culture too much. In the era around turn 100-150, I should have focused a bit more on growth. When I look at Glory's post, I notice that he had so incredibly much more science than me, and that must come from city size, since I built all science buildings asap.
I also think my path through policies wasn't done very well (finished tradition very, very late). Maybe patronage would have helped me get more science from CSs.

thanks for the fun

 

Hi, I played it OCC, quite a peaceful game, some dumb wars with Egypt but that's all. I expanded my religion on all continents trying the "+1 culture per 5 foreign citizens" belief and I think It wasn't worth the effort, 40 culture from my total of 1090 is very very low.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 61
Date submitted: 2013-05-20
Reference number: 29018
Your name: Sadato
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1795AD
Turns played: 269
Base score: 941
Final score: 1775
Time played: 2:04:00
Submitted save: TSG61_Sadato_End.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Sadato_C506101.Civ5Save

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

- How many cities did you build and how many did you decide to acquire?
Only my capital.

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
I stole chemistry and expanded my religion to get a meager 40 culture per turn at the end.

- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors?
They were mad at me cause I allied all the CS of the map and because I built almost all wonders but I had only 2 wars with Egypt with a quick peace in my favor once I sieged his cities.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
I wonderspammed and didn't sign any RAs due to the diff level.

- Were your UUs helpful for a Cultural Victory?
I didn't built nor rams nor horse archers.

- Did you build any of the Wonders of the Ancient World and if so, were they useful?
- Yes, Artemis and Halicarnassus, ToA is quite useful playing OCC and Halicarnassus provided me with 1500 gold more or less along the game.

 

Your name: Aaronius
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1882AD
Turns played: 311
Base score: 2154
Final score: 3474

Spoiler :

In the beginning we were a peaceful barbarian hoard. Such was the layout of the scattered communities around us, that we were geographically shielded from any powerful civilizations. We passed our days honing our skills of warfare against the lesser barbarian tribes, earning the respect and admiration of the nearby peaceful communities.

However, the peace was never meant to last. Our early mastery of horses and our powerful riders had dreams of glory, and the occasional barbarian raids were not enough to satiate our bloodlust. We tried to occupy our minds with a great library, but it was built by someone else before we could complete it. With the invention of our battering ram, nothing less than the domination of our entire continent would satisfy our dreams of greatness.

First to fall were the once mighty Egyptians. Their decadent and antiquated chariot archers were no match for our horsemen, and the battering rams beat down their gates like so many sticks before a mighty flood. The groans of their men and the lamentations of their women were music to our ears, as the streets - first of Alexandria, then of Thebes - ran red with blood. Alexandria we burned to the ground, leaving no survivors. Thebes proved abundant in resources, and so we maintained a presence there, enjoying the use of our newly acquired slaves.

In the meantime, the main forces of our great horsemen and rams moved West, to taste the exotic flavor of English blood and tears. Nottingham had already fallen to the Spanish hoards, such was the impotence of the English archers. It was a very simple matter to bring London crashing to its knees, spreading agony and dispair along each alley, and terror into every home.

We had no intentions of stopping now, for only the Spanish civilization still stood among the mighty Hunnic Empire. Many brave spaniards took up an axe in an effort to fight, but their immobility and lack of tactical nous proved to be as fatal as it had for all others who were born so unfortunate as to face the Hunnic hoards.

In the end, no cities stood on the continent other than the foreign capitals, where we enjoyed the merciless exploitation of our slaves for the next 1000 years. The smaller city states were wise to bow before us, offering luxuries and wealth and bread and circus.

Thus began a period of unbroken peace. Our Hunnic architects began building great wonders, and great cultural public works.

Our governors created great Traditions for our four cities, built upon our ancient codes of Honor. We later became a very Pious people, and even become interested in Commerce.

Our captains of commerce eventually commissioned a great Admiral to explore the mysteries of the deep blue waters, and the fruits of that mission proved to be inestimable. We found a far Eastern land, as spacious as our own, which we named Chumplandia. In Chumplandia, we met savage and exotic peoples calling themselves the Iroquois, the Arabs, the Americans and the Carthaginians, as well as a number of lesser peoples eager for trade.

Our church and our commercial leaders spread our religion of Shintoism to every corner of our continent, but we soon learned that these foreign peoples across the sea were very religious as well. The entire far continent was embroiled in holy wars the likes of which the world will never see again. Any efforts to create a foothold for Shinto was lost among the Chumplandian froth of passion and devotion.

Nevertheless, we made strong friendships with all of the Chumps. We embarked on great projects of mutual research, and received many exotic goods in exchange for our mountains of silver.

As the major civilizations among the Chumps battled each other with no clear victor in the field, we gained the alliance of every free and independent people in the entire world. As our wealth increased, so to did our great works, and our culture, and our technology. As our civilization began to dominate the globe in every way, the ideals of Freedom came to prevail. By 1882 the Hunnic Empire was the true Utopian vision of the human race. All bow before the majesty of Attila the Cultured.


- How many cities did you build and how many did you decide to acquire?
I built three cities and puppetted the three capitals on my continent.

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
I tithed a lot of money, and used spies to secure City States. The game appeared broken as nobody spied on me all game or influenced a CS election.

- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors?
Diplomacy was a hoot. I was friendly with everybody on my continent until I killed them all. When I discovered the second continent as was as peaceful and friendly as could be. Everybody loved me.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Didn't really.

- Were your UUs helpful for a Cultural Victory?
The UUs destroyed the entire continent. It was so easy.

- Did you build any of the Wonders of the Ancient World and if so, were they useful?
I think I got beat to them. They weren't a priority.

 

Fun game!

First, I decided to start with OCC. Then after the AI's started to build wonders, I thought I'd hold a puppet empire consisting of only cities with wonders. Near the end of the game, I started accepting/puppeting non-wonder cities too.

As OCC (w/o Patronage), my science output was pathetic. By the end of the game, I had all the Industrial techs except Dynamite, and had inched into Modern with Radio. Was still working on Replaceable Parts.

My capital had 24 wonders and for once, I actually got all of the National Wonders (except the National Intelligence Agency which wasn't worth it). I'll try to recall the build order but there are probably some mistakes (and I'm not sure exactly when I built the National Wonders):

GL (T42) -> NC -> ToA -> HG -> Petra -> CI -> Oracle -> Terracotta -> GW -> Mausoleum (still there!) -> Great Mosque -> HS -> Alhambra -> Sistine -> Hermitage -> Angkor Wat -> LT -> PT -> Taj Mahal -> Louvre -> Forbidden Palace -> Himeji -> Prebuilding -> Kremlin -> Brandenburg -> Big Ben -> Eiffel -> Utopia.

Had a nice pre-building queue for the end:

1. Armory
2. Circus Maximus
3. Heroic Epic
4. Kremlin
5. Brandenburg
6. Big Ben
7. Eiffel Tower
8. 4 turns to Utopia!

Besides Attila's Court, the highlights of my empire included:

1. Thebes w/ Stonehenge
2. Madrid w/ the Colossus
3. London w/ the Pyramids
4. Carthage w/ the Great Lighthouse
5. Washington, D.C. w/ Notre Dame

* At this point, I accepted a city from America in exchange for peace, in order to position myself against Hiawatha. I also DoW'ed Egypt to stop a Great Prophet, and he gave me a city for peace. When attacking Hiawatha, I had to took two of his crappy cities in order to position myself against Onondaga.

6. Onondaga w/ the Statue of Zeus

* And then a pair of crappy cities for fun

Every other wonder was in my capital (through Industrial and plus Eiffel), with the exception of Machu Picchu. Alas, mountains were too rare so no one ever built it!

For the first time ever, I was pleasantly surprised by my puppet cities. They actually developed very well, the governors made mostly smart decisions with the buildings (several built cultural buildings, most built science buildings). I only wish they had staffed the scientist slots, but their overall output was extremely impressive!

I enjoyed the game, but thought that OCC would finish faster than I actually ended up doing. I guess my pitiful tech rate meant that I reached key culture techs a bit slow and it took awhile to open/complete Freedom. (I popped Archaeology around T170 but had to use Oxford to do it).

Religion was: God of the Open Sky + Tithe + Religious Community + Cathedrals + Itinerant Preachers. Was fast to religion due to Egypt's donation of Stonehenge!

Beeline Writing, then Philosophy, Education, Architecture, Radio.

Social Trees were Tradition, Liberty, Honor, Piety, and Freedom. Maybe Patronage would have been better than Liberty....

Was allied with Cultural CS' for most of the game.

Everyone hated me for being the warmonger who took their capitals. The one exception was Harun/Arabia, who I had a DoF with and had my only RA in the whole game. Fortunately for Harun, he was wise enough to not build any wonders which would have otherwise tempted me....


Mistakes I might have made:


1. On my home continent, I decimated Egypt, Spain, and England, taking all of their wonder-laden capitals. However, I left all their other cities alone (didn't want to deal with crappy puppets and unhappiness). In hindsight, I wonder if I should have taken them too, for their meager contributions to science/gold? Is it better to puppet nearly everything? Or just ignore it (or raze it)?


2. I generated a lot of great people, but they included Scientists and Engineers. I wonder if that might have "slowed" me down compared to a strategy that focuses *only* on Great Artists. For example:

A. My first pop was a triple Artist / Scientist / Engineer. I do that quite often in Cultural games. For Science/Diplomacy, I usually forego the Artist and do a dual Scientist / Engineer pop.

B. Then I did an Artist / Scientist double pop.

C. Then an Artist by himself.

D. And then I finished with another triple Artist / Scientist / Engineer pop.

But the point is, all those Scientists and Engineers slowed down the progression of Artists, so *maybe* a highly optimized culture game should only be generating Artists? What do you think?


3. When I attacked Carthage, taking their capital was one goal but the other objective was liberating Monaco. (Actually it turns out that America had conquered Monaco first, and then Carthage took it from America). Since the city had now been taken 3 times, it was in poor shape. When I attacked Hiawatha, he sent an army which took Monaco for about 20 turns before I could liberate it again.

I technically didn't need to attack the Iroquois (just wanted their capital for fun). Or maybe I should have sued for peace before Monaco fell. Not a major issue, though it might have cost me a turn. (20 turns x 26 culture = about 520 culture?)

 

Game: Civ5 GOTM 61
Date submitted: 2013-05-21
Reference number: 29022
Your name: Warden USA
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1924AD
Turns played: 344
Base score: 921
Final score: 1354
Time played: 3:03:00
Submitted save: WardenUSAWINS.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Warden_USA_C506101.Civ5Save

My second win on King and my first King Culture victory.
I settled 2 cities, one in place and the other to the East. Because of all the city states I was never threatened and kept a small army. I got the GL, but I think I should of saved my gold early on to buy culture buildings. I didn't farm Barbs, and didn't know that was something people did. Good to know for next time. I think Culture games are my least favorite because they can be boring for the last 100 turns, and I'm excited for the new expansion. Might be ready to move up to Immortal!

 

Its funny to see how the civilizations on the other continent fought it out. In my game Washington destroyed Dido, took most of Hiawatha's cities and a couple from Arabia.

In most of the screenshots however it looks like America got annihilated by the Iroquois.

 

Game: Civ5 GOTM 61
Date submitted: 2013-05-21
Reference number: 29023
Your name: CatGarfield
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1852AD
Turns played: 296
Base score: 2091
Final score: 3544
Time played: 13:08:00
Submitted save: cultural cg Attila_0296 AD-1852.Civ5Save
Renamed file: CatGarfield_C506101.Civ5Save

This was a fun yet somewhat calm game. King-level cultural game was a welcome change for my usual hectic Immortal or Deity adventures. I pretty much got all the wonders I wanted, didn't go for Great Library, which proved to be the right thing to do, because Rammy finished it very early. I conquered my continent except for one city per civ, I didn't want the diplo hit. Stayed friendly with the other continent all game.

- How many cities did you build and how many did you decide to acquire?

I built 2 + cap, I settled in place and found out that luxes would have been more plenty had I moved a bit, so I ended up settling two more cities. I got 2 cities from each of continents civs, which makes it a total of six puppets, annexed none. 2nd city was a coastal city east of cap on the silver next to the mountain (macchu & SOH), 3rd in the middle of the desert just SW of the natural wonder north/nw of cap. I took a gamble with the third city, if someone else had gotten Petra before it, it would have been a terrible city. Luckily I got it +t120 and I ended up building Utopia there. (I'm not sure how to post screenshots here, I'll look into it as soon as I've finished writing this)

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?

I met the two religious CSs early/first with my scouting warrior, so I got the first pantheon very early. I took Religious Idols since silver was so plentiful. Faith growth was pretty slow, I founded my religion a turn before Rammy, took cathedrals and tithe. I was first to enhance,and took production bonus and faster spread. Perhaps not the wisest of choices, but my favourite ones. Rammy took Pagodas.

Espionage was pretty useless, the incompetent first spy let most of the enemy spies do their dirty tricks in my cap, but got some eventually and left to rig some elections once the second recruit showed up. I was the tech leader by renessaince, there were no techs to steal from anyone.

- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors?

Spain was friendly early (DoF) and attacked England and Prague during our pact, so the others didn't like me too much. I was barb hunting early with my units, but once our DoF expired I denounced and attacked her immediately. She had wasted most of her units trying to take Prague, so my six horse archers and two rams and a scouting trireme took Madrid and Barcelona quickly. I left her with her puppet York which Lizzy took back having joined my Spanish invasion by the time Barcelona was going down.

Lizzy and Ramses both decided I wasn't fun to play with, so I teched astronomy earlier than usual to meet with RA partners. I decided to leave both of them alive for some time, so they would have time to grow me some nice puppets. They fought each other twice, so once Rammy finally planted a city worth for him to keep I took his good ones with XBs, a few highly promoted LSs (Alhambra+all XP buildings in Petra city) and a couple of trebs. Thebes had several wonders I had coveted. I didn't take out Lizzy before Artillery, and by then it was pretty late for those cities (York & London) to have much of an impact.

I was friendly with everyone on the other continent, where Hiawatha was growing and taking advantage of Arabia while Carthage harassed Washington to near extinction. Dido was the only one I didn't DoF until late in the game.

-How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

I built a lot more wonders than usual, plus wars were a cakewalk. I had an army strong enough to fight Immortal warfare in the early ages.

- Were your UUs helpful for a Cultural Victory?

Somewhat. I opened Honor as my 2nd SP, and built horse archers for barb hunting/early wars. Their mobility gave me comfort going for barbs even further away. Rams were nice taking out Spain. Other than that, they didn't make much difference, since the raging barbarians weren't exactly raging.

- Did you build any of the Wonders of the Ancient World and if so, were they useful?

No, but I got ToA from Rammy, I think. Extra growth is always good. My first wonders were Pyramids, Oracle and Chitzen Itza in the cap, Petra and GW in the third city and MP in the coastal city.


Having a played a few of these GoTM's, I've noticed something strange or different compared to my usual games. The AIs seem to be harder to please, and CSs seem to expand their borders to take luxes on their 4th ring, which I've never seen on my "normal" games. And in the Sweden game, one distant CS had something like 12 barbarian workers on it's lands and didn't do anything about them (I think it was an island). They were all stolen from the CS, and the barb camp close by had one warrior in it. Two archers would have been sufficient to liberate the workers and clear the camp. I did all that with a scout.

 

Game: Civ5 GOTM 61
Date submitted: 2013-05-21
Reference number: 29025
Your name: Arilian
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1750AD
Turns played: 260
Base score: 760
Final score: 1461
Time played: 2:26:00
Submitted save: Attila_0260 AD-1750.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Arilian_C506101.Civ5Save

Started with a monument, but still got some gold, and a pantheon for exploration, choosen +1faith/culture for silver.

Fast GL+NC, as I knew I will not have much science later with 2 city.

Decided to go for a peaceful game now, just for compare , as I play my games agressively these days DOWing everyone.
Going for full culture focus (basically at every choice, I have chosen short term culture gain over anything else. I had 3 tree filled before freedom...)

Faith worked ok, gotten +1cult/5people and chatedrals, bought several missionare and expanded it everywhere.

To keep up science I filled patronage, also hoping for some great people.
It really sucked, I got 3 GP with everyone allied, the first was a GS (ok i guess) the second is a GM (totally did not needed it at that time) and at last i got a GAdminral. (grrrr)
Getting 1-2 GE would have been a big help, either settle for 10 base prod or getting a free wonder for more culture. Not to mention, in theory I could have gotten GAs.

Otherwise everything went well, expect I did not have any wonder for pre-build, so it took me 10 turn to finish Utopia.
I was thinking buying 5 worker and creating a mine from each culture site, but saving 1 round with production, and looking at my ugly mines, I could not do it

Should have done better with more RA, and probably going to Louvre before hermitage is still a better choice.
Still a competative result as I see, so peaceful builder style is not fully out yet

 

End screen: (city is prod. focus, so I had more culture before)

Spoiler :

It was working yesterday, no idea what happened

It is working from my home computer. Or fixed.

 

Actually, 1 NE from the start also could have saved a few turns. Additional production from more stables and Petra...

 

The image isn't showing

 

I went with this option.

Since I was going OCC, I didn't have to save Petra for a better city location. And since I was going tall, I viewed Petra as simply making all those northern desert tiles usable (and I settled a lot of Great People there).

 

Culture Victory
Game date:1685AD
Turns played:247
Base score:2616
Final score:5338

I was quite happy with the end game, as i managed to close the gap a bit and get it under 250 turns which is my goal for CVs. I used oxford to grab archeology, and liberty finisher for GS to get plastics, then hardbuilt cristo. not sure if that was the best way, i saved three turns for sure, but i think i might have saved more with a longer prebuild. I had three turn one: constabulary, stock exchange, and brandenburg gate. Utopia took 7 turns to build in petra city which clocked in at 178 hammers.

Culture peaked at 1328 an for the first time i had a number of 4 turn SP in a row thanks to four cities and all culture buildings bought outright, same with science buildings and most happy and production ones. Perma GA from t 125 or 150 not sure now, witha two turn break as i mismanaged Taj, i sitched to something to delay it and then forgot.

I launched invasion of Hiawatha when he turned out to be a nuisance grabbind few wonders i wanted with 1 or two turns (himeji) and almost Big Ben, he was one turn away when i Dowed and he changed his build. I went after his industrial era army with 2 HA, 1 knight, three trebs, two muskets, caravel and privateer, and it was looking good until i forgot to move my HA back after shooting and it was one shotted They were still doing about 12 damage per shot on cities and lots on open ground units. once i got arty i took all his cities on that continent.

It was such a refreshing change not to have to build any archers and CB, i had none. Three HA and two rams were enough to take over my continent, i wish i got few more i could have went after other continent faster. I must say Attila CV was a very counterintuitive but fun set up, thanks HR.

I did get ToA and MoHeli and got great mileage out of both, 3000 just from GP bulbs. I think this was the most gold i ever made per turn 800+ in the end and i dont think any overseas colonies actually connected to my cap, i had tithe and Macchu though and every CS save some mercantile allied. Was there no military one on purpose< i kept wishing there were few so i did not have to interrrupt my wonderwhoring

In my game Dido took out USA and all three of them were evenly matched fighting few wars, some of them paid for by me but never going anywhere. Hiaw and Dio liked me and harun was pissed by my wonder ways and never warmed up.

 

Hey!

I gave this a shot... though tbh i'm not satisfied with my results.

I will write off things that I did wrong in my opinion:
1.Too little focus on earlly science slowed down getting to archeology and all the other techs.
2.I should have puppetted Faith city states at my continent.
3.Should have made a caravel as soon as possible and meet all the other CUlture CS
4.I should have just puppet other continent as soon as i hit Astronomy.
5.My policy timing was not the best either.
6.Mismanage Permanent Golden Age and missed couple of turns!
7. Absolute failure with prebuilding Project... 10 turns... grrrr...

Anyways game was very cool, Culture Win is something I'm very eager to learn, so I enjoyed it neverthelless! Thank you staff!

I recorded my playthrough, as soon as it's done uploading I will update the link.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgYopQWwsyjH-56Lu9JD1fX4ahWPgz7Ag

Best Wishes,
Y.

 

finally got around to finish.

basics:

played one city NC, settled on the coast right after. buildorder: monument - scout - worker (bought granny) - GL (t39) - NC - SH - HG - Oracle - stable/water mill - CI - HS - units - sistine, alhambra etc.

2nd city built library, then petra. bought granny and amphi there. petra for the culture and for 4 (!) city-states.

tech: pottery - writing- beeline edu (t93) - acoustics (t102) - astronomy - architecture - archaeology (oxford, t153) - radio (GS, t194). beelined so hard i got masonry (2nd city) really late.

policies: full tradition, patronage till scholar (with oracle), piety till RT, fill freedom (~t180), liberty till represenation, 2 in patro, fill liberty, fill piety, fill patro.

religion: monument of the ancient gods - ceremonial burial/cathedrals(t80)/religious community/itinerant preachers(with HS).

8 turns (with chops) for Utopia because my prebuilding was terrible.

key decisions:

Had to get SH for faster religion - I picked monument of the ancient gods, meaning I had no faith generation except for CS (which was intended - I didn't wanna waste early hammers on a shrine). Unfortunately quests for them didn't turn out that favorable (Great Merchant..). Had to decide between ToA and SH - because of only two cities, I skipped ToA (someone built it right after I finished HG).

Early scholar helped a LOT - will do this every time from now on most likely (unless better capital spot with mountain). Also doublepopped first GP - GA and GS, settled GS. It was an accident (GS was supposed to be one turn later) but proved quite helpful.

Not sure if Astro before Chivalry/Architecture was a good choice, although Alhambra is lower priority than Chapel and the production queue is cramped at this point.

AIs were solely used for gold/dow, no RAs whatsoever. Managed to sometimes get my hand on few duplicates luxes for CS-quests and WOLTK.

Key mistakes:

1) After getting HS, I decided to get a few units to start puppeting (had only 2 warris/scout). Had 2 Rams and 2 HAs, but Egypt spawned a Pikeman the turn after I attacked...underestimated him completely and had to retreat and forfeit any plans for war (there was no militaristic CS or I didn't find any). This was really frustrating, I was thinking about ragequitting - I wanted the wonders, science, GPT and also the little extra culture puppets provide. Not only this, but I had also wasted 10 turns on building units when I could have already started Sistine/Alhambra so I was 10 turns behind on those....

I really fail at warring in culture games - there are so many wonders to build I just don't find the time to build units, unless its prince where you don't need to rush GL at all.

2) Ceremonial Burial was a waste - I was swimming in happiness all game. Also Itinerant Preachers felt disappointingly bad compared to RT.

3) Only had money for one broadcast tower and failed to get gold from Hiawatha (he had 700 and dropped to a measly 150 next turn). Delayed tower in second city by 10 turns.

4) Prebuild was sloppy - accidentally queued another 200hammers building which seemed to decrease my hammer overflow significantly. So I ended up with 9 (8 after chopping forests) turns for Utopia. Needed Himeji or Kremlin better overflow, but Himeji was built while I misteched so could not get Kremlin.

5) It took me too long to get to RT - perhaps get scholar later or just focus a little bit more on culture early. Also needed to get National Epic much sooner, had it way too late.

Will post some screens when I get home from work.