Win Rate Data - Please post your games' results here!

[NigelC]

Civilization - Arabia
Victory Type - Cultural
Relative Rank - Compatible
Outcome - Challenge
Additional Info - Played on a standard size Communitas map at quick speed. Was beaten to quite a few early wonders. My starting continent had 2 other civs until one foolishly declared war on me. Once I had eliminated them things got a lot easier.

 

[monterossi]

Civilization Greece
Victory Type Diplomatic
Relative Rank Easier (I recently moved from King to Emperor, played this game on Prince)
Outcome Perfect(!)

The game was perfect! It was challenging, but not more than I always knew I'd win in the end. Like I would expect when lowering my difficulty. The AI continuously took steps to stop me; every time I had too much power in the WC, they'd gang up to Decolonize me, friendly civs would break DoF and attack if I started conquering too many cities, if I spent a Great Diplomat somewhere they would pop one shortly after.

The only thing I felt was wrong/too easy was taking cities. The AI never built any defensive structures unless I had units adjacent to the city and we were at war. Most AI cities had strength 8-9 even in the Industrial Era and would fall to any melee unit I attacked with. I never needed a single siege unit even though I wiped out 2 civs and liberated several CSs and capitals.

 

[saamohod]

The only thing I felt was wrong/too easy was taking cities. The AI never built any defensive structures unless I had units adjacent to the city and we were at war. Most AI cities had strength 8-9 even in the Industrial Era and would fall to any melee unit I attacked with. I never needed a single siege unit even though I wiped out 2 civs and liberated several CSs and capitals.

I agree here. This was my experience in my latest game. Quite a few civs never bothered to build Walls in their major cities up until Modern Era when I began to capture them easily.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Civilization: Sweden
Victory Type: Conquest
Relative Rank: Competitive (Immortal)
Outcome: Walk in the park

I wanted to play a conquest game, and when my random civ turned out to be sweden...all right!
I defeated the three civs on my continent easily in the classic age with archers/longbows, and then quickly teched into the Renaissance. Then I assembled a strike force of cannon, Caroleans and my highly promoted upgraded archers and tore through the other continent. It was savage.
There were only two difficulties: My navy was, for the most part of the game, a few boyscouts on rafts. So getting troops over to the other continent and defending my coastal cities was tricky sometimes.
Also, I was in for a nasty surprise when I met the end boss. The last civ to conquer were the Zulu, which had a significant force. And as it turned out, Impis with many promotions, supported by a high resistance factor and my malus from unhappiness due to over-expanding were quite a match for my army.
I had to try three times to get him. In the end I had to build a navy myself and ally with a close CS to defeat Shaka.

Religion was poor. I tried god of war as pantheon (before the recent buff), but despite much fighting didn`t found. However, constant warfare through the ages gave me huge amounts of faith, with nothing to spend on. Once I could buy GWs, I waited until my empire was no longer unhappy, so that they are more efficient. A few turn before I won, I finally accepted that my empire was never going to be happy, and bought them anyways, to enjoy a policy or two more for a couple of turns. Meh.

Another sad thing was that I had to burn a couple of cities with great works of art in them, which I could not transfer to any other city, because I lacked the slots.

 

[Funak]

Civilization: Inca
Victory Type: Culture
Relative Rank: Competitive (Immortal)
Outcome: Walk in the park

Wanted to try out a compact tradition->Aesthetics type of game for once, but that plan got shattered pretty quickly. My initial scout ran into a ruin next to the Spanish capital, got upgraded to a slinger. The Spanish capital was located next to two mountains where I parked my slinger, declared war and started poking the city, it took me around 40 turns to capture it.
After this I ran into my first problem, Madrid and Cusco were located way too far apart, so I pretty much had to mass settlers to fill up the space before other civs could. On top of that since I was spamming settlers and falling behind in pretty much everything else I had to find strategic chokepoints to settle to try and protect my overinflated empire.
After that around 50 turns of misery, unhappiness and gold deficit, spamming tons of workers to try and connect my cities and get some improvements up. After it finally stabilized the rest of the game was just smooth sailing.

I ended up on the receiving end of a sanction along with a city-state sanction around 20 turns before I won but that was pretty much the interaction I had with the AI that game.
Kinda weird considering I had crazy aggressive neighbors, Spain, Sweden, England and the Huns.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

The Spanish capital was located next to two mountains where I parked my slinger, declared war and started poking the city, it took me around 40 turns to capture it.

Wicked!

 

[Funak]

Wicked!

Not actually that rare, having played a few games as Inca while testing their mountain-settling I've noticed that your startingbias usually makes your closest neighbor start way too close to mountains. Even if that capital thing was pretty weird (I mean I hadn't even built an attacking unit in the game), but Inca can usually force down a neighbor or at least grab any non-capital city he settles.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Civ: Spain
Victory Type: Conquest
Relative Rank: Competitive (Immortal)
Outcome: Challenge
It was a archipelago map. Just when I had researched frigates, s few AIs had the idea to backstab me. Next thing I knew - domination victory.
I noticed that I had significantly better happiness than during my last games. I don`t know if it was due to being Spain or from the recent change - probably both. Anyway, it was welcome.
I did one mistake that game, in picking two buildings for my founder believes. Even though I always had enough faith to buy all four faith-buildings (Mission, monastery and the two others) immediately in each city, I think as Spain I would have fared even better with believes that care about the number of followers.

 

[pandasnail]

2/5 Version

Human Vassalage on. RAs no tech trading. Resources revealed. City distance back to 3. Huge 16 32 Continents. Marathon speed. No time victory. I've also changed France and England a bit, but they weren't in this game.

Ethiopia
Loss-Conquered by China in the Classical; fwiw the Mayans the leader on my continent
Immortal. My first ever game at this difficulty, tho I had been having quite a bit of success on Emperor before the recent AI changes.

Welp. Guess I don't always play long games. Things were actually going well in the SimCity peaceful part of the game. Second religion from Steles and Uluru, doing quite fine in tech from the UA. Petra, and still had my tradition engineer coming. Had growth cities, not production cities tho. I find production cities more fun, tho growth is science, and science is the game. Esp outside the capital, I didn't have enough production I guess, the Uluru city particularly was otherwise trash. But things would have played out fine I think, if left alone.

China did not leave me alone. Instead, she came with the largest army I've ever come across (without a game speed mod). I beat the first offensive, half-beat the second offensive, but just had nothing left for the third. Kept my capital for a long while on account of a garrisoned spearman. But she just wouldn't do that many foolish health draining city attacks with her meat shields, and two archers eventually got both range and logistics; that was that. She did a bit of weirdness with moving her three range archers into city attack range, but I still couldn't really get to them, she could shuffle new meat shields in as needed. She just had to retreat the archers for a bit.

Anyway, looks like my temp fix for the Mongolian issue I put on github works, so on account of the new AI, I'm gonna drop back to Emperor and have some fun with the revised mounted archer line.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Civ: Morocco
Victory Type: Diplo
Relative Rank: Competitive (Immortal)
Outcome: Walk in the park
My neighbour Ghengis was so kind as to conquer two CS early on. Liberating them not only let my take two of his cities without consequences, it also gave me allies early on. I took Statecraft and got a hold of the Congress early and never let it go.
The "highlight" of the game was me proposing treasure fleet, passing it, and then forget about it. Only when the 30% notification came I set all cities on the task, but it was too late. This has never happend before. But the really funny thing is: When I proposed and passed World Fair - the same thing happend again.
The only good thing was that I payed more attention for the UN.

 

[Wodhann]

Bump, I know we were in a rocky place with all the releases but now you guys probably should have finished a game or two by now

 

[IcyAngel]

Thinking about it, the importance of early losses in calculations should be diminished somehow.

Is getting wiped turn 100 (on epic) by a carpet of doom telling of a civilization's power, or of one's skill with it? Those losses appear highly represented in the thread, and likely taint the data.

--------

Now, to contribute, I'd actually have to finish a game...
Let's try.

 

[Wodhann]

Skill is an information given by the player (through the comparative rank info), we're relying on honesty and self-awareness here. I'm afraid there's no other way to go about it.

 

[IcyAngel]

Skill is an information given by the player (through the comparative rank info), we're relying on honesty and self-awareness here. I'm afraid there's no other way to go about it.

I'm aware of the general limitations - those can be overcome with a high quantity of data.

My point is: early losses are NEVER representative of a civ.
If Montezuma launches an early assault with a carpet of archers and jaguars while I only have a few defending units, the civilization I am playing has had no bearing on the game's outcome. I will have lost before any of its specificities come into play meaningfully.

 

[Gazebo]

I'm aware of the general limitations - those can be overcome with a high quantity of data.

My point is: early losses are NEVER representative of a civ.
If Montezuma launches an early assault with a carpet of archers and jaguars while I only have a few defending units, the civilization I am playing has had no bearing on the game's outcome. I will have lost before any of its specificities come into play meaningfully.

Perhaps, but I like seeing stories of players getting mercilessly slaughtered by the AI.

G

 

[Wodhann]

I'm aware of the general limitations - those can be overcome with a high quantity of data.

My point is: early losses are NEVER representative of a civ.
If Montezuma launches an early assault with a carpet of archers and jaguars while I only have a few defending units, the civilization I am playing has had no bearing on the game's outcome. I will have lost before any of its specificities come into play meaningfully.

Error always exists in data, and yes, I agree with you, we should have a higher quantity of it.

Indeed losing early is probably mostly a skill thing but we can't make that kind of judgement. We need to trust people are being truthful with how much they determine their own skill level and assume the data is significant. Otherwise it's just us tampering with the data out of assumptions. It's like if someone doing research on a certain antropological subject had to ask people about their opinions on something, and then went like "nah, I don't think that guy actually believes this, let me change it to what I think he believes".

Not to mention, even skilled people make mistakes.

 

[IcyAngel]

Civilization - Egypt

Map - Continents, Standard, Epic speed

Victory Type - Defeat

Relative Rank - Harder (Deity)

Outcome - Defeat

Info - Tech Trading OFF, Research Agreements enabled.

Summary -

Ah! frustrating game...

The UU is impressive for early aggression - their not requiring horses, superior CS and movement to archers made it super easy to wipe Russia out when I realized we were alone on a medium-sized continent. Moreover, I got so much production in my capital from Forced Labor that I had, for the FIRST TIME since playing CBP, needed to turn on the agriculture conversion! Crazy.

Managed to grab Stonehenge, which gave me the first religion (with the wonders pantheon) in the game. Luckily, the coast lead to another continent with three civilizations on it - Austria, Morocco and Assyria. Ahmad al-Mansur was apparently longing for space and thus declared war on Ashurbanipal around turn 100... bad idea! Assyria, over the next ~100 turns, conquered all but one of Morocco's cities, and made them into their vassal. Shortly after, they also declared war on Austria - which had been playing city-states whore in its corner.

None of the above civ had founded a religion, so I delayed my enhancing to send two or three missionaries on their continent, and I soon had 15ish cities following Islam. Yay for me!

Meanwhile, Carthage was doing OK on its own series of islands, and Brazil was turning into a monster alongside Siam somewhere else. Pedro was 12 techs ahead when I met him, with ten cities and tons of policies and gpt.

He had grabbed the Reformation belief giving tourism from religious buildings, and beat me 40 to 10 tourism at that point, on top of being well into aesthetics already, AND having 20/25 wonders in the game... yeah. From then, I said goodbye to a cultural victory. Turns out my Stupas would be useless! I was doing well with city-states though; because I was isolated, I had no competition for quests, trade routes, etc, therefore I had the highest number of city-state allies. I chose Patronage, manage to snatch the Forbidden Palace from Austria, and chose the Reformation belief that gave WC votes.

I started to catch heat when Assyria -while on its conquest-spree- settled a city in the WORST imaginable spot - in a roughly 6 tiles spot between two of my cities... which connected two other cities. There were no strategic or luxury resources there, so I have no clue why he did it. I lost half my gpt from the city connections alone, and my happiness dropped a lot from isolation.

I decided to denounce him, my thinking being that he was occupied with Austria on another continent, had very low GPT and not doing too hot in techs (we were about equal), and therefore I wasn't afraid of him turning on me, and because he had been ruthlessly conquering, thought it would encourage Brazil/Siam/Carthage to DoW him... oh boy, what a mistake!

I was preparing myself for an assault... when out of the blue Brazil -which had settled a city near captured Moscow- declares war on me, bribed by Assyria! Mind you, Pedro was a monster. He assaulted Moscow with a dozen Musketmen, around ten crossbows and a few corvettes, while I was defending with only a few knights, composite bowmen and skirmishers... After that, he moved on to two other nearby cities, and was headed for my capital when I decided to call it quit.

Never had I considered that Pedro would turn on me... not used to bribes actually working yet! He was the textbook definition of a runaway civ, so perhaps my hopes of winning at all were unrealistic anyway, but it still hurts... I was doing pretty well for myself! I had large control of the WC, and with Austria almost gone -didn't put a very good fight against Assyria...- the city-states would mostly have been mine to play with.

Oh well... gotta get used to AIs outsmarting poor 'ol me!


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

Got to say, I'm not a fan of the UA.
The +20% to wonders is fine, but the archaeology bonuses are extremely focused for my taste. What happens if other civs grab archaeology before you and excavate most neutral dig sites? What happens if you want to go for any victory condition besides cultural?

I'd rather have, say, the same bonuses -nerfed, of course- apply to great person tile improvements. Gives you more to play with.

The problem with % to wonders, too, is that beyond early game it is mostly irrelevant. From, say, Medieval onward, occurrences of opponents snatching wonders from you are almost entirely nonexistent in my experience, and that no matter the civ. The person to build the wonder will be the person who gets to the tech first, period.

The rest of the kits is very nice, however (burial tomb a bit bland, but what can you do! Not everything can spit rainbows).

 

[Finarvi]

Got to say, I'm not a fan of the UA.
The +20% to wonders is fine, but the archaeology bonuses are extremely focused for my taste. What happens if other civs grab archaeology before you and excavate most neutral dig sites? What happens if you want to go for any victory condition besides cultural?

I'd rather have, say, the same bonuses -nerfed, of course- apply to great person tile improvements. Gives you more to play with.

The problem with % to wonders, too, is that beyond early game it is mostly irrelevant. From, say, Medieval onward, occurrences of opponents snatching wonders from you are almost entirely nonexistent in my experience, and that no matter the civ. The person to build the wonder will be the person who gets to the tech first, period.

The rest of the kits is very nice, however (burial tomb a bit bland, but what can you do! Not everything can spit rainbows).

UA exists to make each civ more specialized in certain things, I think it's OK. And actualy, you are ensured to get at least few artifacts/landmarks - if you keep your borders close until archeology.

What annoys me about this UA is that it's unreadable - there are so many bonusses. I'd change those various yields into one, for example +X from GWs and +Y from landmarks. Much more specialized and aesthethic.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Civ: Indonesia
Victory Type: Conquest
Relative Rank: Competitive (Immortal)
Outcome: Walk in the park
Another Islands map. I started on a large island with three other civs. My next neighbour was so close that there was only room for one city between us. So I decided to attack early, and took her out with archers, and while I was at, the other two civs too. At the beginning of the classic Age I was in control of the whole island and could have gone for any victory, but I had already picked honour and geared my religion for war, so it would have been a shame to let it go to waste, right? So conquest it was.
A side note: On the whole starting island, on which 4 civs started, was one patch of two iron.
On the other hand, once I got more iron from other islands I build half a dozend Kris sworsmen, and they all got positive promotions.

 

[IcyAngel]

UA exists to make each civ more specialized in certain things, I think it's OK. And actualy, you are ensured to get at least few artifacts/landmarks - if you keep your borders close until archeology.

What annoys me about this UA is that it's unreadable - there are so many bonusses. I'd change those various yields into one, for example +X from GWs and +Y from landmarks. Much more specialized and aesthethic.

Agreed - I'm fine with the current theme, I just wish it were better implemented.
I prefer, for example, JFD's version of Egypt where you can a production rush every time you capture a capital. It wouldn't be balanced in CBP I think, but it's a more consistent bonus.

Most UAs/UUs/UB in the mod ARE overcrowded, I don't think it's a particular problem to Egypt. It comes from balance issues. (Compare how simple they are in vanilla vs CBP... you have three times the lines of text.)

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

Civilization - The Celts

Map - Continents, Standard, Epic speed

Victory Type - Science

Relative Rank - Harder (Deity)

Outcome - Challenge

Info - Tech Trading OFF, Research Agreements enabled.

Summary -

Relatively uneventful game, and that is why I won.

Division of continents: Netherlands and I; Indonesia, Byzantium and Ottomans; Aztecs and Arabia; Inca.

William had unfathomably defensible positions, surrounded by jungle and mountains, which made it impossible to wipe him out early. Nevertheless, I opted to block him out from expanding with a few well-situated cities, and played very friendly-friendly from there on, so I didn't have to wage wars.

The second group were at coast-distance from us and Theodora, stuck in a corner, started DoWing all her neighbors, for expansion purposes I imagine. Needless to say, she had been wiped from the map by turn ~150 by the Ottomans! Not before spreading her religions to half the Globe, however. Eastern Orthodox missionaries from three civs and half a dozen city-states were flooding my cities like plague, and I had to resort to defensive religious play.

I managed to snag a LOT of wonders ancient/classical (ToA, Stonehenge, Pyramids, Great Library, Hanging Gardens), and picked the +5 science/culture/gold in cities with specialists pantheon. It really helped me keep up in techs and policies.

The sum up the rest of the game: constant wars all over the globe; three civs going for a culture victory and therefore blocking each others out; not one patronage/diplo civ, which means very even diplomat counts in the WC; no clear runaway civ; I decided early to go for a science victory.

William and Montezuma were first to pick an ideology - respectively Freedom and Order. I was third and picked Freedom to keep friendly relations with William who had a very menacing army. Started getting scared when he went rationalism, stole Porcelain Tower from me, and got a few tech leaders starting in industrial. I bribed him to go to war against the Aztecs, the other big sticks, hoping that it would slow him down, and it worked pretty well!

I beelined for Hubble Telescope, then bulbed for the Apollo Program (the Netherlands beat me to it by one turn, ah!), and from there it was smooth sailing. I had a massive faith reserve (~35k) because I couldn't finish Rationalism to buy scientists. I really focused on culture/writers in late modern/early information era to make sure I could both finish the tree AND get the to the last Freedom tier.

William and I swapped ideologies for Order when the pressure became to heavy (so much for attempting to get the Freedom spaceship parts policy!), and Indonesia -autocracy with the Ottomans- declared war on me, but they already were at war with the four other order civs, and thus didn't pose a threat.

The turn timers had become unbearably long, think 2+ minutes each, therefore I ended slightly before actually winning. The waiting was turning me insane. I know I couldn't possibly lose by then, but think of it as you will.

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

The Celts are fabulous!

The alternative pantheons are -on average- significantly stronger than the regular ones, although I'd consider throwing out the per pop ones, because deciding so early whether you'll be able to spread your religious easily is extremely premature. I would never pick those. I guess a very dedicated could make it work either way, though.

The UU is perhaps the best in the game, balanced out by the average UB which only shines for late game culture bombs.

The civ does fall off, but hopefully the early advantages will have compounded by then. Very well-suited to a cultural victory, with tradition-piety-aesthetics.

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

Note to the boss: I have no logs -sorry!-, but completing the Manhattan Project first did not grant me a nuke (I already had a public school). Neither did completing the Order policy granting %GP generation and a Great Engineer give me the GE.

Just throwing that out there.