Civ 5 Draft - Round 2

[XeKr]

Well it’s probably balanced better for small, but standard size could also help the AI later since they get more room (but they're less scary earlier). Up to you.

And if you really want to play Venice I’ll change. I don’t really care.

I just don’t particularly like how much they unbalance the land allocation (someone can get nearly twice the normal amount of land uncontested). They’re also kinda trolly with the the stealing of city states, even if they’re your allies (no counterplay without endless war).

[BBM]

nah lol it's okay I have like a list of 5

I left Speed up to the player so I'll leave Size up to the player too.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Okay, so my ban...Hm...yeah, I'm still going with Spain.

I've actually played as Venice before, they're fun, I like them, but they probably aren't fantastic for this.

[BBM]

banning the Mayans

now the Oracle is MINE

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

is it my turn next or the ghost?

either way i vote to ban babylon, having played them recently i'm surprised by how broken all those great scientists add up.

Edited October 4, 2014 by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai

[BBM]

oh whoops I totally forgot to pick for the Ghost. Ghost bans Poland, Kai bans Babylon; it's Sharpy's turn now for a ban and a pick.

[MacLovin]

ban korea, pick uhhhh. I'll go with Persia since I haven't tried it.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Groot

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

I'll pick China, they are a force i'm pretty comfy with overall, not to mention being good with science and combat is nice.

[BBM]

;/// Sharpy changes to another civ on my list

Ghost Drafter picks Inca.

I take Arabian Knight Camel Archers

[AnonymousSpeed]

Hm...well, I guess I'll go for...the Celts.

[XeKr]

So many good choices left...

Shoshone I haven't done in a while, and I want to see how he does in your games.

glhf all

I’ll probably make a new topic sometime to gauge interest for a GMR game.

Edited October 5, 2014 by XeKr

[XeKr]

Kinda rusty at standard play but eh it’s okay. Haven’t played an unmodded game and gone Tradition in a while. Playing fairly safe overall.

Using the Enhanced UI because there’s no reason not to imo.

[spoiler=settings]

Deity, Small map, Standard speed. Standard map size + pathfinders + only 6 civs seems broken so…

[spoiler=start]

Start is okay, we at least have fresh water. I move over to riverside Plains touching the mountain. Sadly it’s not coastal and there’s a few fish that I’m missing the lighthouse bonus for that I didn’t see until settling.

Capital BO: Pathfinder, Pathfinder, Worker, Settler, Granary, Caravan, Library, National College, Settler, Oracle, stuff

Go double Pathfinders first because we’re Shoshone. Also to try and figure out what kind of map this is (continents it seems). They also help defend from barbs and escort settlers.

Skipped the monument because of Tradition. Shoshone allows for a consistent culture ruin which is nice. Also small map size makes Liberty weaker. Skipped the shrine because of a faith ruin, but didn’t get a religion sadly (no faith pantheon=didn’t really try for it).

Worker to start on luxs/strategic for trade. Stole one from a city state, didn’t find an (safe) opportunity to steal from an AI.

Settled Te-moak to the right, lots of resources. Granary+food Caravan to get it started. 2 city NC timed well with forest chops (library initial build in first satellite). Also multiple forest chops for turn ~65 NC. Could have done 3 cities NC with a bought Library in the last but had some happiness issues (so no growth, plus cost 400 gold). Was conservative and bribed Persia against Inca with luxes since I wasn’t sending either any trade routes and Inca was looking enviously at my land.

Settled to the south afterwards and built the Oracle for Zurich. Probably going to sit on 3 cities for a while.

Ruins: Population, Culture, Faith, Population. Only 4, but still Shoshone ftw.

Population first to boost out the Pathfinders. Culture to open tradition. I didn’t find the last 2 ruins until later and I waited until turn 20 to get Faith (God-king).

Tech order: Animal Husbandry, Pottery, Archery, Calendar, Mining -> Philosophy, Bronze Working, Trapping, Sailing -> Engineering, Optics -> Civil Service -> heading toward Education now.

Normally I go Pottery first, but with Shoshone I like Animal Husbandry first because Pathfinders are higher priority than Shrines. Didn’t have horses in range to work so it was moot.

Felt fairly safe, as Inca/Persia were at war so I went Philosophy before Construction. After Philosophy I debated going to Theology and Hagia Sophia, but there was only 1 religion slot left so I didn’t take the risk. Turns out Inca got the last religion relatively soon after anyway. Cleaned up a few cheap techs in the meantime.

Inca/Persia made peace, so I went Engineering before Civil Service so I could send Inca a trade route (Persia is a friend). But they went back to war so eh. Still a food route. Went Optics to see if I could find more ruins, but none so far.

Gold use: Archer, Worker, Lighthouse, Worker

Archer to do a barb quest, but it never really got over there. Lighthouse to help my 3rd city. Needed more workers.

[spoiler=barbs]

Here’s the barb camp I bought the archer for. Inca helped me out and I snuck in a pathfinder. Gave Mombasa the worker back for a long and fruitful alliance.

[spoiler=oracle]

Turn 87 Oracle is not too certain but I figure I’d try for it since Zurich wanted it. Wouldn’t have mattered too much if I missed it here.

[spoiler=state of the empire]

Food trade routes are all rolling; empire is starting to look okay and growth is about to explode from Civil Service + Aqueducts.

Persia went Piety and is friendly today. Inca went Tradition and is doing well. Machu is even a nice Petra city with Terrace farms. You can see there’s barely any space for all of us though. I’m too used to standard I guess. >_>

Exploring the coastline with Pathfinders and a trireme. Actually lost a trireme to barbs and built another one.

Almost certainly going to artillery push Inca and possibly Persia to use the UU and get some nice cities. Depending on how the other continent is doing I’ll decide whether to do Sci Theory first.

[BBM]

so, uh, it turns out that I don't actually have the Incans? I have no idea how, because I have Spain and they're part of the same DLC... May buy them I guess since I'll probably give them a shot somewhere down the line anyways.

EDIT

Bought the Incans, started the game (Immortal, Quick, Small). Ended up on a continent with Persia and China. I decided to steal an early worker from Persia cuz wynaut in the hopes it would mess him up, but it didn't really. China forward settled on me and then because there were two CSs really close to me, I couldn't make a third city, which really cut down on my science production.

Still, kicked out a couple early wonders (Oracle, Hagia Sophia, Pyramids) and got Islam SF4LYFE spreading pretty fast, and got my GPT up pretty high fairly easily. After a while, Persia decided to let bygones by bygones and asked to be friends, which was pretty funny. At this point though, I noticed that one of the civs on the other continent was doing amazingly well. Thanks to the religion I was leading my continent in score at around 400, and at that same time, an unknown civ had 900 points, which was pretty wtf.

Got to that continent and it was... the Shoshone! The Celts apparently decided to warmonger because they were attacking city states and two turns after I met the Celts, both the Shoshone and the Incans asked me to declare war on Boudicca with them. Said no because my military was shit. Incans asked to be friends after not too long.

At turn 160 suddenly the Shoshone are influential over the Incans (who were actually the culture leader after the Shoshone themselves) so things are looking pretty grim. My culture output is bad so he's going to be Influential over me pretty fast (in under 10 turns). I'm not even leading in literacy because of stupid China, so I think my best bet at this point is to rush Globalization and try to go for a Diplomatic victory with all my gold. Unfortunately I picked Order as my ideology already and Order's not great for Diplo. >_> Might also have to go to war with the Shoshone and take over a city or two. Should be able to bank on the Incans and the Celts to help me if I do that (the former has already asked me to go to war with them and the latter is denouncing Shoshone) and the Incans have the best military. The only thing is that it's past CAMEL ARCHER DOMINANCE time and I don't have any military atm because my continent was peaceful until very recently (Persia did something to annoy China and China declared war)

Edited October 5, 2014 by BBM

[XeKr]

I think Spain comes with G&K. So you probably got that and not the Spain+Inca DLC.

[BBM]

Things going well! After I built up a strike force of Gatling Guns and Infantry, I bribed the Incans to attack the Shoshone (didn't take much) and the Celts were already at war with them. A couple turns later I declared war myself. The Incans took Temoak and were doing most of the damage to Moson Kahni, but I timed my attack perfectly and annexed it. Negotiated peace with Shoshone afterwards since he's not really a threat without his two best cities. China declared war on me a few turns later but other than plundering a few trade routes and disrupting my gold production for 10-15 turns, didn't really make any sort of serious attempt against me, despite having quietly built up a bigger army than even the Incans. Once my army came back from the other continent, she negotiated pretty fast.

All the while I was dumping gold into city states. The first UN was a few turns ago, and I was way in lead with 20 votes. Incans are the score leader now but not too worried about them; I got Science Funding passed so I doubt they'll be a serious threat for the Culture Victory. Darius is more likely to win Science (he has the Apollo Program built) but I think I should get the votes first. And worst case scenario, he doesn't have much of an army so I could probably take his capital too.

China and the Celts are going for Domination, but the Celts are just bad and China doesn't seem to be really committing to any attack (at war with Persia again) despite having a sizable army.

@Xekr- ah that makes sense.

[MacLovin]

Pangaea -Plus, Prince, Quick.

Cultural Victory and time victory disabled.

Overran The Shoshone by turn 90.

Immortals are so bro due to flat terrain, so I ran over everything. After building the granery, i set my citizens to focus on production and got the Great Library and Colossus, and Great Lighthouse built.

I'm also having a shit gpt because I built terracotta army with 12 military units present, which jacked it up to 24. Holy shit,

Pocatello got stomped as hard as General Custer. This leads to me going after every barbarian I can find and stomping them out. Right now, the only friendly nation is China. The Celts have denounced me. But soon, it's going to be "what Celts".

Domination on lower difficulties is like having an FE8 game in overdrive once you hit lategame. Except with every unit being a flying Seth with a ton of range. I love me some GIANT ROBOTS and XCOM SQUADS.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

i'm about half way into the game as china.

had a rough start, barely getting out any happiness, no horses and barely any iron, i'm lucky no one decided to attack me.

finally got a religion up, i have one of the better ones but there's so much other religion shit that i only have it in my capital, gonna get a great prop soon to fix this.

The celts have been going to war with Shoshone and Arab's and gained no progress, i'm in control of the world counsol and just about everyone but the Shoshone hate or are guarded to me.

i have almost all the wonders i wanted, but my rough early game prevented me from snagging some that i did want, doesn't help that nearly every force here loves wonders.

but i'm in the best position to win due to the world counsel control and having a upgraded decent sided defense force, eventually i'll be able to get all my science at full force or maybe win via diplomatic, depends on how things go.

still having a slight money and happyness issue, but they are in the positives (50ish gold per turn and 24 happyness)

[BBM]

WON in what ended up being a really epic game.

I was cruising to what seemed like a pretty easy diplomatic victory. Got Globalization pretty quickly (I was researching Telecommunications at the end of my last update) and sent guys to all the civs. Just before Globalization kicked in I bribed Inca with like 50 gpt to vote me as World Leader- it would have given me exactly 35 votes. But then, Shoshone and China threw a wrench in my plans. Around 6 turns before the UN, they simultaneously declared war on me. Then within a couple turns, they also each captured one of the two CSs with whom I was most influential, depriving me of an overall 6 votes and bringing me down to 29 (although it also brought the total required # of delegates to 34).

This time, China started pressing in earnest, both against me and another one of my allied CSs, and I had to ratchet up the army spending. I also further bribed Inca to vote SF4LYFE as the World Religion. But this let Darius get in a sneak proposal to make Freedom the World Ideology (which was neither my ideology nor the most popular ideology, Autocracy). The fact that I lost all my trade routes to China, coupled with my now sizable military and all the bribes that were going out brought my gpt grinding to a halt (at one point it was 2 gpt). To make things worse, the World Religion proposal + the fact that I was stealing his city states + being friends with Inca (whom he was denouncing at the time) made Darius decline to renew our Declaration of Friendship, and then a few turns later he denounced me.

After I built up a force of like 8 bombers and a bunch of (Rocket) Artillery and drove China out of my borders and my CS's borders, she finally declared peace with me (and so did Shoshone) and decided to attack Darius instead. But by this point they'd slowed me down enough that my economy sucked and Darius was seriously threatening to win Science. I switched my production to gold and managed to get Freedom as the World Ideology revoked but I was still sitting at like 29 votes and at this point, Inca wouldn't vote me as World Leader no matter how much gold I fed him. Darius had 3/6 parts built. At this point I realized that I was sitting on like 5500 faith and there were a bunch of city states that wanted my religion- including two with whom I wasn't friends. I spammed a bunch of prophets and started sending them out everywhere. Darius put up the 4th part and after I revoked Freedom, started threatening me with nukes, so in desperation I bribed the Incans to attack him. The Incans came through like bros and started nuking his cities down to the ground. Darius created the fifth part in his second city, but China had a bunch of troops in the middle of his territory so he just had it standing off to the side. I allied two more city states and switched to Autocracy and also got it voted as the World Ideology to get me to 35. But with 4 turns left, Darius put up another part (not the one he'd bought earlier) and Inca had seemingly run out of nukes. Darius had also driven China out (or maybe her troops got caught in the nuclear crossfire; unsure). 2 turns left, I realized I still had a bunch of Bombers sitting idle. They had just barely enough range to strike his last part that was still standing to the side. I declared war (bringing me down to exactly 34) and destroyed it. 2 turns later VICTORY.

Arabia is pretty good. Not sure I could have put out so many bribes (the Incans were expensive...) without the slightly higher gpt. Also my economy got up and running a good 10 turns before it would have with another civ. Desert start bias didn't really do much though. I was a few tiles away from the desert, and China + some city states prevented me from settling a city there.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I unfortunately haven't started my game yet, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to today.

Before I do though, Xekr, what program are you using to take those screen shots? I'd quite like to include some in mine.

Edit: *whistle* Quite the finisher BBM, it must have been very intense. That's either the first or second most epic Civ story I've ever heard, which certainly says something.

Edited October 6, 2014 by AnonymousSpeed

[XeKr]

The endgame sure gets hectic sometimes in BNW. ^_^

I unfortunately haven't started my game yet, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to today.

Before I do though, Xekr, what program are you using to take those screen shots? I'd quite like to include some in mine.

Edit: *whistle* Quite the finisher BBM, it must have been very intense. That's either the first or second most epic Civ story I've ever heard, which certainly says something.

Just steam. Set the screenshot key to something other than F12 though, which is quickload by default in Civ. Can upload via steam, but I prefer imgur. Very fast and easy to use, drag and drop the pictures in. It even gives you the code ready to go.

Edited October 6, 2014 by XeKr

[BBM]

AI review - it'll be amusing to see which AIs do the best in each of our matches

Celts: Other than TURN 3 PANTHEON and a subsequent spreading of Catholicism, they had practically no effect on the game. Tried to go warmonger but Shoshone and Inca spread pretty fast I guess and left her with only two cities of her own. Low production combined with weak tech made her army really bad. Didn't even manage to take over a CS.

Shoshone: Got off to an amazing start but never really recovered after losing his two best cities. The biggest thing he did after that was declare war on me, but even then it was mostly China who was the threat, since she was on my continent. Amusingly, less than ten turns after the second war, he asked for a Declaration of Friendship (probably because I switched to Autocracy and got it to be the World Ideology). TBH though I think the Incans would have gone to war with him and taken his two cities sooner or later even if I hadn't bribed them. Moson Kahni was a cool city to annex though; my cultural output jumped from around 50 to 250, letting me earn SPs/Tenets at 5x the rate I otherwise would have.

China: She also asked to be friends with me at the very end. Her and Shoshone were probably planning on backstabbing me at some point, but it didn't get that far. Pretty much a constant thorn in my side, from preventing me from getting a third city and ruining my Science victory before it even started, to declaring war on me and making my Diplo victory much more difficult than it needed to be. She seemed kind of stuck as to what she was going for though. She seemed to be trying to warmonger, but focused more on capturing city states than capitals... If I had to guess I'd say the early gameplan was probably Cultural, but she got screwed out of most of the wonders, and then kind of hovered in between Domination and Cultural but never really committed fully to either.

Inca: THE BIGGEST BROS, INCA X ARABIA BFFS4LYFE. Did almost anything I asked them to do if I gave them enough gold and was the main reason neither Shoshone nor Persia won. Tried to go for an aggressive cultural victory (kind of like Rome, but way nicer, to me anyways) but after Sciences Funding got passed and my cultural output skyrocketed from capturing Moson Kahni, never really came close to winning. In fact I don't think he became Influential over anyone. Still, I'm trying him out in my next game.

Darius: Stayed under the radar well and was within a turn of winning. TBH if he'd pulled the trigger and nuked me rather than just threatening to do it, he might have won. But I think maybe he was slightly out of range? Not sure. I underestimated how fast he was teching in the midgame, and once I started focusing on just rushing Globalization he got a pretty commanding tech lead. Still, he was pretty bro in the early-midgame, before I did pretty much everything humanly possible to piss him off. And didn't get messed up by the early worker steal q_q

Edited October 6, 2014 by BBM

[MacLovin]

I love how Persia's UA seems so vanilla, but GOLDEN AGE SPAM.

Salt mines are the best, right? I got a bunch of them near my coastal capital.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

so the game progresses, the Arab's take over the Celt's capital and a city.

realizing the Shoshone are my only real allies i form an alliance and a defense pact, the Arab's declair war on the Shoshone so we fight, after i made more bombers and rekted their land and navy(and the one bomber they had that got BTFO as soon as it tried something) and under the threat of "AS SOON AS I GET NUKES, WHICH I AM RESEARCHING, I'MMA NUKING YOU UNLESS YOU GIVE ME THIS CITY" and they did.

Persia also declared war on the Shoshone after i made another defense pact, and they were losing so they gave me a city even though the only thing of mine that was hurting them was a city state.

my happiness and gold output took a hit, but i should be able to fix that within a few turns, more so after the cities stop rebelling.

this is pretty crazy and i haven't even researched the apollo project yet (almost though, a few more turns)

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

I have achieved victory on turn 419 with Diplomacy, honestly not alot happened after my above post, it was smooth sailing, here's the map.

http://i.imgur.com/nddhTLw.jpg

(Difficulty was 4)

Edited October 7, 2014 by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai

[XeKr]

Tech: Education -> Astronomy -> Printing Press (steal Chivalry and Banking) -> Scientific Theory -> Industrialization -> Dynamite -> Radio -> heading to Biology.

After Education, headed to Astronomy and an Observatory for my capital and to find the other continent. Then Printing Press (I even founded the World Congress turn 140 or so. >_>), getting Workshops along the way. Inca had Great Wall else maybe I would have tried to kill him with xbows.

Because capital wasn’t coastal, and Arabia was doing really well on the other continent, I went toward Scientific Theory before Dynamite for the economical play. It’s possible that I could have finished the game with Dynamite + Navigation but eh.

Went Industrialization for hopefully Coal + Ideology but nope. AI were super slow to get Coal too and no convenient City states had it. :((

Eventually went Radio (actually bulbed it with 1 GS) after Dynamite and went Freedom (Arabia was first to Ideology and went Order).

Social policy: After Tradition, went Aesthetics into Cultural Centers, Rationalism to Secularism, Aesthetics to Flourishing of the Arts, Rationalism to Free Thought, Freedom with Avant Guard, Civil Society, Volunteer Army. Still getting policies super-fast.

2 extra policies before Renaissance went into Aesthetics because culture victory is fun (hopefully). Burned a writer to open Rationalism and then another to get Secularism faster. Won the World Fair so got some more culture and science policies. Volunteer army to push Inca easier (probably overkill but oh well).

[spoiler=convert pls]

Persia actually had a nice religion. Temple happiness really helped because there were like no lux trades available so serious happiness issues for a while. Also like all the city-states nearby are hostile so really hard to ally.

[spoiler=deity AI]

Lol right after I coup’d Monaco (like the only cultural city state), Arabia dropped like 1000 gold into them. >_>

Still eventually coup’d again. Level 3 spies are nice.

[spoiler=byebye]

rip Persia

[spoiler=nooooooo]

Meh, Te-moak had such high production and nothing great to build that I gave Sistine a (late) try but barely missed it.

[spoiler=wat are you doing Boudicca??]

Surprisingly easy to win, considering only 3 cities and no factories (was doing like 160 hammers/turn). Inca had already taken out Persia and wasn’t at war either.

Did save an Artist for it though. That + another Artist + Flourishing of the Arts is still running. Universal Sufferage + another natural Artist coming soon + Artistic Genius (+ maybe another natural Artist) later means we’re going to be golden for a while if I so choose.

who needs to build great works for culture victory

[spoiler=built this army in like 5 turns]

Messed around too long with Hermitage + World fair so Artillery is delayed (turn 185 or something for the tech, like nothing prebuilt except roads). Didn’t have time for Armories everywhere and Heroic Epic. Hoping Foreign Legions will make up for it.

Inca has 2 techs I don’t know, as per the trade route science. A look at the tech tree reveals it’s Archeology and Biology, since I have neither and Inca has Oil. This means they don’t have Rifling, Steam Power, or Flight, so I have around 15-20 turns to steamroll them before Flight (at worst). They also don’t have Dynamite so hopefully Great Wall isn’t too annoying.

China got destroyed by Arabia and Celts on the other continent. Will deal with them somehow later. I may have screwed myself by proposing Cultural Heritage sites; while Inca has tons of wonders, so does Celts who now has China’s capital.

Probably will do quick speed for small maps in the future. >_>