Moved warrior west and saw additional resources, so settled on coast next to Fuji. Wanted to see when "default" city setting would allocate to Fuji (ans.: pop 5). Location had pros and cons, but pros were enhanced when horse location was revealed, and much later coal. No gold for starting spot, but all river tiles could be developed. No water mill possible as not on river, but wine allowed monastery. Decided to attempt a single city game. When I completed IW and saw I had to iron, was worried but helped Bucharest clear barbs, allied with him, and never had an iron problem.
Initially focused on culture and a series of Tradition and Liberty SPs, plus aggressive city growth. Pushed through Phil. and used the GE selected from Meritocracy to build Great Library, from which I took Civil Service as tech. That boosted food along the river. Third SP pick was Citizenship (worker) and with one city that was enough (captured one later, used for a while, then deleted).
Built second warrior early and eventually three triremes, allied first with Tyre and let him give other units (one warrior, two archers then I stopped spawning). The upgraded versions of these were ending army: 3 SOLs, 3 Longswords, 2 Longbows, plus 1 GG. The two warriors using flanking bonuses were adequate to deal with barbs. Did not want to waste an SP on Honor.
Somewhere around turn 160-170 saw I needed more resources to trade to buy allies so attacked China. With the above upgraded army took the four cities without loss, though was slowed by Great Wall. China had several useful Wonders, especially Hagia Sophia.
In this game I paid more attention to manipulating my city focus and especially GP generation. By the end I had saved up three GS (a fourth was used to advance to Navigation after Astronomy so I explored with SOLs and never built a Caravel), built Oxford U. late for another tech plus the two free techs from Rationalism tree.
Here are all the initial picks for Research, London builds, and SPs:
Other than starting location this sounds similar to what others did who achieved much quicker wins. I think my main "mistake" was I did not see that I needed to complete one of the lower research branches (starting with banking) so I spent time developing higher branches when I could have used the lower branch stuff and I would not have had to delay making the key SP pick for two techs, etc.
India was the powerhouse in my game and toward the end kept trying to take away my allies. I ended up with 11 votes but had to defend them with 500G donations at least six times. So gold was essential.
Did not sign any RAs, but did trade resources for lump sum gold. Could not see how to generate enough gold otherwise.
If I have time I am going to try this again building several cities and see how that goes.
Game: Civ5 GOTM 12
Date submitted: 2011-05-25
Reference number: 24272
Your name: xerex
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1912AD
Turns played: 332
Base score: 938
Final score: 1421
Time played: 3:53:00
I went with four cities. I built some military because I was fearing a Chinese invasion. Instead I went to war myself as I figured that losing a few units would lighten the support cost, and succeeding in puppeting would bring some cash. She lost two cities plus the capital to me, a fourth city to a CS, and a fifth she offered for peace, along with goodies.
India had two huge cities and four policies filled up. I gave Gandhi one of the Chinese cities: that should raise his policy cost. Also bribed neighboring nations into going to war against India. Myself I stayed clear.
My own policies were Liberty -> Patronage -> Commerce. Spent roughly the 30 last turns in GA's. One natural, some GP burned and Rationalism.
I kept Oxford for Globalization and a GE at hand.
India was the powerhouse in my game and toward the end kept trying to take away my allies. I ended up with 11 votes but had to defend them with 500G donations at least six times. So gold was essential.
Game: Civ5 GOTM 12
Date submitted: 2011-05-25
Reference number: 24273
Your name: RedRover57
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1740AD
Turns played: 258
Base score: 1012
Final score: 1984
Time played: 14:08:00
I settled in place and then settled 3 more cites after Landed Elite (I did not take Liberty policies at all). I built the NC after 3 cities. I just beat China to the south city site (choke point) which really helped when she DOWed me soon after. I held her off with 1 archer and 2 triremes (plus my CS allies helped) and eventually conquered her civ (except for one city) after I got my SoL's. Her capitol had 6 wonders. After my war with China the rest of the game was peaceful and I was allied with every CS on the map at the end.
I didn't sign a single RA and didn't build any world wonders (I missed out on Porcelain Tower to India by 2 turns).
I made several mistakes that resulted in extra turns, the biggest being that I forgot to shut off GS production in a peripheral city and a worthless (at that time ) GS pop caused a delay in obtaining a GE in my capitol, which forced me to hard build most of the UN. I'm sure I could have shaved off 20-30 turns with tighter play.
Fun game but I much prefer a domination game with England - it's just too much fun to wipe everyone out with a superior navy.
Also it appears that I am a very slow player (14 hours!) compared to most everyone else. I don't how how you play these games in 2 hours! I guess I micromanage too much.
Edit: Ah I forgot that I kept the game running for about 6 hours yesterday when I was AFK, so not quite so bad.
Game: Civ5 GOTM 12
Date submitted: 2011-05-25
Reference number: 24274
Your name: Harbinger
Your email: harbinger471@hotmail.com
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1912AD
Turns played: 332
Base score: 871
Final score: 1319
Time played: 3:41:00
Submitted save: Elizabeth_0332 AD-1912.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Harbinger_C501201.Civ5Save
Expanded very aggressively to pick up the additional luxury resources and figured I'd just keep going as city sites continued to present themselves. Allied with Tyre early on. Was attacked by China and caught with my pants down as my military was just a few units mostly intended to keep the barbarians at bay. Managed to hold them off long enough to build up my military (although poor Tyre was conquered in the process), make a truce, and then later counter attack with a vengeance. At that point I thought I'd be well behind because of the "wasted" resources building a large military that early in a diplo game, and happiness was an issue throughout the game, but it turned out well since over the course of my campaigns against technologically-superior China I liberated Tyre and acquired some decent puppet cities, and found out that if you capture a city you can't hold for happiness reasons that you can sell it back during peace negotiations at a steep price. The tribute from China paid for a shiny new caravel and the allegiance of some new cultural city-states I discovered with it. Their culture led to more patronage policies, and my gold and science totals late-game were quite good due to my "oversized" empire.
Fun game this one too, though I did get quite frustrated at some errors I made. Somehow still managed to beat my earlier diplo record of 287 turns, but got 1500p less in score. I liked playing without RA's, I gave up on playing without lump sums halfway through the game though.
Game: Civ5 GOTM 12
Date submitted: 2011-05-26
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1816AD
Turns played: 278
Base score: 534
Final score: 970
Time played: 6:17:00
Gameplay:
Spoiler:
Founded London on the Sugar, I'm glad I did, worked out well. York was founded to the west, on turn 72 beside the wine. Nottingham got founded around turn 100 up north by the Iron. Was planning on a fourth between Nottingham and London, but decided against it. Messed up with my SP's and build order in the beginning. so I got of to a very slow start due to wanting to try something new and not thinking it through thoroughly before starting. Reckon I lost about 40 turns there, and got Navigation unprepared. Had good Science all game, but lagged after in economy all the game, only managed to scour enough cash in the endgame by hitting gold production in two of my three cities and using GG to keep a golden age running. Declared war three times, one time in the mid game, against India hoping to steal a wonder rich capital, my ship of the lines never managed to break down and I settled for some gold for peace. A few turns later I turned on china, who quickly conquered one of my allies, and I had to fight off a huge amount of troops, Egypt was running for a diplomatic win too; so I started a war against them too to try and slow them down, though it was mostly my CS allies on the other continent doing the fighting. Both those wars were still going when I managed to grab the victory. Two more turns and I'd have liberated a CS from China too. Got my SoLs out way to late to be of real use, had to keep them running for healing, got four of them up to level three promotions, with 10-15xp left for Logistics.
I reached Scientific revolution turn 241 just as I reached Biology(lucky I did not plant a fourth city), together with four GS I bulbed my way to Ecology with Oxford finishing 5 turns later got Globalisation. Nottingham had just finished building a factory, only missing a solar plant, took 23 turns to finish UN, giving me enough time to get the last few allies I needed.
So, my inital SP, BO and Sci: SP: Liberty(26)-Citizenship(46)-Meritocracy(78)-Patrionage(90, oracle)-Philantrophy(105) BO: Worker-Granery-Archer-NC(58)-Monument. Sci: Pottery-Writing-Archery-Mining-Sailing
I rage quited in turn 15 after barbarian eat my libery+fuji settler so my score is out of race, for the second try: 1810.
I went for landed elite too, it was a good builder game, I only had one defensive war.
Noone is really dangerous, Egypt had bigger score but obsolate tech.
Save GS all the way but did not have any GE so i had to hard build UN in 16 turns.
Won with 18 votes noone really bidded on me.
1. Landed Elite vs. Meritocracy - Both have their pros and cons. I preferred Landed Elite on this map because of the semi-isolated start plus several food-poor (no river, few good water tiles) city sites. The most important strategy seemed to be to take Patronage as the 4th SP regardless of whether taking Tradition or Liberty policies first. This is a bit easier with Meritocracy since you can use the GS to bulb Civil Service earlier. With an LE start I mis-timed and had to take Monarchy as 4th and Patronage as 5th. I could have avoided this by settling my last city site a bit sooner in order to increase my SP cost. The delay to getting to Scholasticism cost me quite a few turns in the long run.
2. I see that quite a few people said they built land units. I have found that with England and a mostly coastal map that this is not necessary. Instead build 4 triremes early and send them out to explore and hunt barbs for the first 2 promotions (take the land bombardment promotions). The triremes can also help guard your cities early allowing you to only have enough land units (usually a couple of archers and/or warriors/swords) to guard from barbs. After navigation the 4 triremes can be upgraded to Ship of the Line and your next promotion will be +1 range. Four SoL with +3 range can conquer the world, with one longsword or horseman tagging along to cap the cities. I could have easily had a sub-200 turn domination victory had I just kept going after conquering China. It's like shooting ducks in a barrel. Other than my 4 SoL I only built a couple of early caravels (for exploration), one archer (which I never bothered to upgrade to a Longbow) and I kept one horseman gift from Tyre (I gifted back all of the other units). My original warrior was eventually upgraded to a longsword but I didn't need him as I took all of China's cities with my SoLs plus horseman. All of my GG were popped for Golden Ages as they weren't needed for combat.
3. Puppets are insane when you take the Rationalism policies and trade post everywhere. Between that and Scholasticism my beakers/turn was very good. Plus the puppets provide a ton of cash - I could easily buy up all of the CS on the map. I probably could have shaved off more turns by grabbing even more puppets (particularly Egypt and India's capitols with all of their wonders). But instead I opted to keep them friendly as trade partners.
4. I didn't realize how much happiness I would get from the bottom policy in Patronage or I would have taken that sooner. When I eventually took it I had so many CS allies that my happiness jumped from 4 to 33. It would have helped in the mid-late game (after conquering China) when I had some unhappiness issues.
Civ5 GOTM 12
Date submitted: 2011-05-26
Your name: Neuro
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1540AD
Turns played: 218
Base score: 661
Final score: 1537
Time played: 5:56:00
A few notes before the long-winded write-up: I was a bit disappointed by the no Ancient Ruins setup. Not that they were turned off, but that the players weren't told about it. That isn't an option you can randomly select when setting up your game, so that information should be given to the players before the game starts. Setup options like that change the way you play the game; I doubt I would have built a scout had I known beforehand.
On to the report!
Spoiler:
I settled on the hex 1SE to be next to the mountain. I didn't like moving away from the coast, but in a diplo game I would be happy for the Observatory later on, and I could just build my second city on the coast. I sent my warrior south (too many hills/mountains to the east, I'd send the scout that way), and he found the southern choke point fairly early with a barb camp parked on it. However, the barb camp was down -7, so I knew it must have ran into someone's scout, so I cleared it out with my warrior. Sure enough, there's China's scout at half health. I managed to keep the scout from going past me my moving back and forth a few times, and the scout finally went off west. After healing up, my warrior found Singapore and went west following the scout, and found another barb camp on the coast at half health, and China's scout was nowhere to be found. Cleared out the camp, then sent my warrior back to the choke point (I couldn't go south because China was blocking the way). I parked my warrior there and figured I could at least prevent china from expanding.
While this was going on, my scout went east and ran into barbs everywhere, so he turned around and went west instead. After exploring that peninsula, he found yet another barb camp and got knocked to almost dead. By this time, I realized there weren't any Ancient Ruins, so my scout was nearly useless. Instead I used him to relieve my warrior from Choke Point duty, and sent the warrior back north. I saw Tyre had a worker by now, so I zipped in and stole it then immediately made peace (cheesy, I know). I bought a second warrior and together with the first, they cleared the barbs nearby.
Spoiler:
Research was Pottery-Writing-Mining-Masonry-Calender. While waiting for masonry to finish, my worker had time to plant farms all along the river. In the end, waiting so long for my luxuries turned out to be fine, as China didn't have any money till I finished my plantation anyway. After scout and worker were finished, I started on a library, then NC, then Great Library.
I took Tradition, then Liberty, then the Free Settler policies first, and settled my second city to the west, on the hill that had a lake, cows, and coast all next to it, along with three eventual luxuries. I meant to built a third city to the east, but never got around to it.
Honestly, the game had a hard time holding my interest. I had bought a Trireme with the proceeds from the Sugar sale to China, and had high hopes of finding another civ or two to interact with, but nothing. A diplo game with no chance at diplomacy is rather strange. I think this map would have been much better suited to a Domination game. I made an RA with China as soon as she hit Classical, which ended up giving me Education on turn 85. The Great Library had given me Civil Service, so I built a Uni asap and filled up the specialist slots, intending to bulb Astro with my first GS.
All three city-states gave me barb-kill quests, two on the same camp. Clearing those gave me friendly with all three CSs, and Tyre gave me an Archer which replaced the scout on the Choke Point, and sent the scout as far west as I could (with the Trireme as protection) to wait for Astro. GS popped out in turn 110, so I immediately bulbed Astro and sent the scout out. He landed over there a few turns later and met India, Egypt, and the rest of the crew in short order.
Spoiler:
I made a second RA with China two turns after the first finished, and it gave me Navigation on turn 118 (yes, I used tech blocking). In between the RAs, I had teched up to Metal Casting and Engineering, so I focused on Machinery and pulled my warriors and archer back from their posts to upgrade them. By this time, I wanted China to expand another city or two for me to puppet right there at the choke point. Why build when you can take?
I allied with Bucharest for his iron, upgraded my wars to swordmen and the archer to a longbow, upgraded the trireme to a Ship of the Line when Navigation popped from the second RA, then marched on China. Took the first city with 2 swordsman and a longbow (being newly built, it wasn't developed enough to stand up to longbow fire), then the Ship-of-the-Line arrived to help take out the next two cities. Lost one of my longswords taking Beijing, because I got impatient, but played it smart after that and just pounded the heck out of Beijing till it was almost dead and sent in the remaining Longsword.
After China fell, the game got a bit boring. I built up my two cities, built a harbor in York to connect with Beijing, and kept trading luxuries for cash with the civs on the other side, which was difficult because it was World War X over there. I think every civ was at war with at least one other civ for nearly the entirety of the game. As soon as someone made peace with one civ, they'd declare on another 3-4 turns later. No one ever stockpiled gold, they'd buy units with it constantly, except India, who would spend his cash on CSs every time he hit 250 gold. I ended up having to trade them gold for gpt just so they could afford to RA with me, which I was only able to do with India and Egypt.
I hard-teched everything past Navigation to Biology, popped Oxford on Steam Power and bulbed up to Plastics, bought a Research Lab, and techblocked the last few techs for my two RAs. Hit Globalization in turn 204, used my GE from Meritocracy to push the UN to a 5 turn build, then spent cash on City States till the end.
Neuro, do you think this map is better suited for Tradition first? Do you pick Tradition first and go for LE right away in some games? How this interfere with RAs?
I have a feeling that Liberty is weaker here because of semi-isolated and few riversided land. Just a thought.
I was pretty sure that you would have finished under 200 turns, thanks to RAs. Nice write-up as always.
I nearly always take Tradition as my first policy in any non-Domination game. The bonus to culture is nice, but it's the lowering of border expansion that really does it for me. Having my capital able to get those 2 and 3-ring quality tiles quickly is important for me, plus over a long game that +3 cpt adds up to another whole policy.
I took Liberty for the free settler, that's it. I had originally planned on taking Rationalism down to the +2 free techs, but after doing the math I realized I wasn't going to get my GE in time, so my last two policies were to get meritocracy about 3 turns before I got Globalization.
I would take LE more often if I didn't have to take the +culture building policy ahead of it. By the time I have four cities, I have unlocked Patronage, and I want to push down to Scholasticism.
As for this map in particular, there weren't any other good spots for cities on our continent. Where I placed York was about as good as you could get in my opinion, and it was still substandard. I'm a big believer in rivers, so the dearth of them in this game is probably what made me only build 2 cities.
The only option I have been selecting is "Allow Promotion Saving".
I wonder if my messing around in WorldBulder with all the loading and reloading changed something? One of the goals of this game was to create an isolated start, not an easy task.
The only option I have been selecting is "Allow Promotion Saving".
I wonder if my messing around in WorldBulder with all the loading and reloading changed something? One of the goals of this game was to create an isolated start, not an easy task.
Ah, well then I apologize, but yes, something removed all the Ancient Ruins. I know for a fact that China never went north of the choke point for the first 50 turns of the game, and there wasn't a single Ancient Ruin in that entire area, nor on any of the isolated islands, thus I assumed they were turned off.
Sure, but I probably would have spent the extra few turns building a Warrior over a scout. Without Ancient Ruins to grab, exploration isn't as time-critical a step.
Post your write-up Dave, I wanna see how you did! =)
hey guys,
I did set up my plan allready before turn1, get enough scientists and free techs to go all the way from electrcity to UN in 1 turn. Also I wanted no war at all to not risk a denounce chain.
That did mean: few cities to able able to get down to scientific revolution but enough to have enough lux to support RA - with 1 city it s really allways a big struggle to have enough gold - so plan was 3 or 4 cities.
realized pretty fast that I d be kinda allone so I got all the science buildngs up as fast as possible, teched only upper tree- to get scouts into watter asap (early on there are usually few barb ships) - found china right the turn I got philosophy and did RA right away - after more scouting I realized there is no1 else .... (found belgrad later then)
So I had the RA, GL and .... to get the 3 costy techs for astronomy I figured only thing saving me from a20 turn compass reasearch is a merocracy scientist - so bulbed astro with it.
got 5 scouts into water and settled 2 more cities which did build only buildngs to have cap be able to do the national wonders with the lux from cities 2 and 3 (east and west of cap) I could do some trades - unluckily only kill each others mission from CS ... RA the middle techs while teching the lower ones, stuggled bit with happyness as this city states close to China - my only aly - didnt work its lux forever.
Well last 50 turns were very straightforward - plan RA agreements, pop scientists (planed a double scientist/engi pop in cap) - after some time I realized I d even have to plan to get scientific revolution not too early not too late - but as lot of cult comes from cs anyway that wasnt too hard.
In like turn 150 (when last round of RAs were done) I did the maths for cult and the double pop.
Might have shaved few turns by doing the last needed RA a bit earlier (could have done loans) or buy fact, but didnt want to risk both to have enough gold in end to buy enough CS - was close vote - 10 for me ...
I m trully amazed how other do good finish times without RA or bulbing the last tech tree - techs get soo expensive .....
Late here so I'll be brief. As stated elsewhere, I didn't really have much of a gameplan. I also stayed smallish (4 cities to do the national wonders). Settled on the sugar; 2nd and third cities at mountains east and west, all with observatories. 4th city up at marble/iron.
Now I know why I was so poor: I didn't do any trading, really, only lux swaps. So all my cash was coming from my own empire.
Gandhi was a total beast in my game: he had allied all the CS he hadn't killed. I'd saved GSs and used four of them and Oxford to jump to Globablization the turn I got electricity. Then rushed UN with a GE and a couple more turns build.
This was all laughable, though, as the best I could do was buy off one city state from India, and then I also managed to liberate one, though it was a very long siege at Helsinki, 12-15 turns or more, with four SoL holding down the city's healing, one cannon chipping away, and a few muskets, longswords and pikes getting nailed by artillery! India had infantry too but thankfully none of those came to this battle. I took the defense 63 city with a pike when it was down to 1 hp.
So...I built UN around t272, and managed to secure all of 4 votes. Gandhi won with 12 or 13. He'd been in the modern era since around when my siege to liberate Helsinki started, it was crazy. Delhi was strength 95.
Note to self: sell resources, sell resources, sell resources.
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