Civ V PBEM1 Postgame Thread

[SevenSpirits]

Thanks for the game all.

It seems a lot of the game came down to the early conflicts. Mist fought with (and settled far towards) oledavy, even though I was equidistant. Fire&ice skirmished with Yuri and neither of them settled significantly towards me. Meanwhile my own units got busy clearing barb encampments and rescuing workers for city states that should never have been mine - Vienna which was closest to Yuri, Almaty which was closest to Fire&Ice, and Helsinki which was closest to Mist. Not to mention Monaco on the far side of Fire&ice, and also close to Mist.

Being Aztec helped me a lot. Jaguars were great, saving me quite a few turns of healing and probably preserving a couple units that would have otherwise died, too. (And the double move through forests helped a lot.) The free culture was amazing. Everyone knows how powerful culture is - I got to delay my initial monument in favor of more explorers, and STILL got ahead in policies. And the floating gardens are really really good.

I spent less energy on upping my science and gold than the rest of you and instead focused almost solely on population growth (floating gardens, riverside farms, happiness, and a maritime bribe) and mines. This eventually led to better tech and gold anyway. It was made easier by my UB and the fact that I opened scout-jaguar to get lots of huts/barb camps/city state contacts which allowed the CS bribe.

I think my tech path was good. I pretty much went happy -> iron -> education -> chemistry -> markets, and tried very hard to land hagia sophia and notre dame. Chemistry's mine bonus was very strong.

Liberty is obviously a must. Not taking it really hurt Fire&ice even before he lost his settler. I'm not sure Patronage was a good play. Oledavy talked up Scholasticism a lot but it gives a really tiny amount of science, like 2-5 beakers per CS; 20b for me at the end of the game out of 220. However the happiness policy following it was very nice. Question is whether I could have gotten similar benefits more effectively in some other tree. Probably so, but it was fun to try this out.

I did not know that me going to war with people caused their influence with my CS allies to drop to -60. That's pretty crazy.

[Mist]

Congrats Seven, you played by far the best game here and given a little luck there was no way to stop you. Lessons for me from this game

1) Early wonders are crucial, even if they don't do much on their own, the culture they offer is big when you sit on two cities and are clearing Liberty tree.

2) Iriquois UA and UB is a trap. Culture spreading algorithm treats forest as a *least* desirable tile to get next. It will get all grass, all hills and river plains before even thinking of expanding to forests. If you want to use forests as roads and leverage longhouses ( workshops ) you need to buy those tiles, which leaves you no gold to contest city states or upgrade units.

3) Beelining Civil Service is One Right Play ™. More food = more pop = more science&gold. Early teching anything that does not bring you Civil Service is just crippling yourself

4) Horses suck They are definitely not worth to focus on early on with being worthless at taking cities and horribly outclassed by early Pikemen that will happen all over the place due to not requiring Iron and being a side-effect of Civil Service.

5) City-States are a good idea, but most of the mechanics concerning them were implemented horribly.

[fire&ice]

My view on my mistakes

1) horrible civ choice. I had no idea what any good ones where so I choose to be american.

2) policies. I was too much in single player mode here and ignored some ovious choices if I ever thought about it.

3) losing that settler with a scout that could have covered.
full hp scout > 2 hp warrior
*not done while I was in control but still.*

4) blatantly bad tech path. No military and no science.

[fire&ice]

Fire&ice skirmished with Yuri and neither of them settled significantly towards me.

Yeah I settled as far towards you as I felt safe doing. I had a choice settle on my side of the dessert behind some hills protecting me from horses and catapults.

You showed me the horses and the I saw swords so I knew you were going there.

Or I could cross the dessert and agressively settle near your armored city with little to no miltiary presense on your warfront.



I would like to know why yuri never went further north then his capital. I don't think he mentioned it in thread. I am just curious was the land bad or did you just see target must kill.

[yuris125]

I would like to know why yuri never went further north then his capital. I don't think he mentioned it in thread. I am just curious was the land bad or did you just see target must kill.

The land was bad. The only worthwhile city spot was iron/silver, the one Seven founded closer to the end of the game. I thought about it in the early game, but decided it was too far away from me and too exposed to Seven's attack (and Seven's military was scary throughout the game). I already had silver, and having exposed iron is almost worse than having no iron at all; let the opponent pillage it, and you suddenly end up with Swords worse than Warriors and Longswords worse than Pikes

In general, I'm reasonably happy with how I played the early game, especially with the land I had. Fire&Ice - sorry, but I think our war was inevitable, you were the closest neighbour, and I had to use my Longbows Your stubborn attempts to establish a city on the river didn't help too

I think my main mistake was delaying Metal Casting and the rest of the Steel branch until after Chivalry. Yes, I had no iron and could not benefit from Steel directly - but it is also required for key techs like Metallurgy and Rifling, and not having those was what allowed Seven to kill me without resistance. Longbows still were my best units.... Yes, I had a Great Scientist ready, and a research agreement resolving in 7 turns, I could get at least to Metallurgy with this, but Seven would've left me with 2 cities by the time I got there

So, as I said earlier, I lost the game because of noobish mistakes. Seven played an excellent game, too - I thought a Civ5 game was finally my chance to beat you, but no such luck

Also, wanted to through in another gripe about Civ5, is it really difficult to have a proper turn log? I was so much in the dark about which units attacked me, which battles I won, which battles I lost... really don't understand why the turn log is so bad

Despite all Civ5 problems, this was fun! Pleasure playing with you, thanks everyone, and congrats Seven!

[waterbat]

Thanks guys and especially f&i! I enjoyed my few turns.

I hate to whine about the land setup, but we had desert on one side and tundra on another. We had to expand into that area that Yuri claimed as his ( it was closer to our capitol). This is a much different situation than the lush green land of 7.

As far as losing the settler, when the plan to settle was laid out, iirc we had 3 green units (spear + 2 warrior) in the area. By the time we were ready to go, we had lost the spear and redlined the wars on barb xp farming. I didn't adapt to this change in situation and didn't think of pulling back the scout from his mission (get past yuri if possible) to help. Plus I trusted the English scum to remain civilized.

Overall, I enjoy equal-footing pre-range 3 combat. The hex based system really makes these battles fun/interesting. I think no-CS Is also more fair.

Congrats sevenspirits! I started recording your gold and gpt during my turns and was astounded.

[oledavy]

Sorry that it took me a couple days to get around to this.

First, a few quick points if there are any future Civ5 MP games:

- Greece and Siam should be picked in every game, Mongolia too if it's available.
- Maritime and Cultural CS's are critically important to your early game and getting the snowball rolling, ally with them. As a side note, I don't think they should be left out of future games.
- If someone has 4-5 city-state allies by t60, you're doing something wrong.
- An early military for barb hunting is really important (archers are especially cool).
- Culture is extremely important. A monument should be one of the first builds in your capital, and your entire game plan should be focused around the acquisition of those early policies (This is where Cultural CS's come in). Temples are also really good buildings and should be built in every city. On the subject of SPs, I won't say Liberty is the one right choice, but it generally is. And speaking of "one right choices."
- You should always beeline Civil Service, with very few exceptions, like if you don't have a river at your cap - in which case you're pretty much screwed anyway.
- Pyramids on Quick Speed (paired with Citizenship) are ungodly amazing and may be the best wonder in the game. (All credit to Seven for discovering this, I would have never guessed it)
- Notre Dame should always be a huge priority, it really breaks open the mid-game.

I hope I don't sound overly critical, as that is not my intent. A lack of gameplay knowledge was inevitable for the first one of these things we ran. Not trying to sound as though I know it all either, as I made my share of mistakes this game as well. These are just the things that leapt out at me after reading the other threads. Anyway, back to being critical

Seven basically won this game on turn 0. Not to knock his gameplay or anything, as I'm positive he would have done well wherever he started. However, this game featured two players who had a pretty good idea what they were doing, and three who were still learning Civilization 5. In particular, not understanding the value of city-states allowed Seven to run wild early game. Add to this the huge deviation in the quality of starts. There were only two winning starts here, Seven's and mine. Yuris' was rather meh, while Mists and fire&ice's were both really bad. Fire&ices was ungodly shitty, next to tundra without any good expansion prospects

The big differential between Seven's and mine was the quality of land to expand into and the multitude of CSs that surrounded the Aztec start. My early game was really gimped by the lack of a Cultural CSs to push me through my early policies. I had negative influence most of that time with the only CS I did know for the first 65 turns due to my worker steal. I had the gold, just no allies to buy. My isolation and spats with my neighbor meant I didn't meet any more for a very long time.

So, Seven was surrounded by players who didn't grasp the importance of contesting city-states, and had no direct competition during the early game. While he was expanding and completing city-state quests for massive influxes of influence, Yuris was fighting fire&ice over the one good city location the Americans had to expand into, and Mist and I were brawling over our border. By the time Mist realized what was going on and went on the warpath, it was too late and Seven has snowballed into the position he needed to win. Population is even more important in Civ5 that Civ4 due to how Science is produced, and if you can acquire a huge population lead early on, it's basically game over for your opponents.

Killing my scout was possibly the game winning move for Seven that erased any small chance of me winning. By giving me -60 influence with all his CS allies and preventing further exploration (that would have allowed me to meet other CSs like Florence earlier), he effectively put his only competitor for the favor of the City-States out of business. After that, it was just the usual "leverage tech lead into military advantage" play. All the propping up in the world couldn't have saved Mist from the units Seven was fielding. The only thing that could have saved the game was me getting artillery before Seven, and holding him off and then outteching him to Space. However, even with Rationalism, RAs, and bulbing, I couldn't have surmounted his ridiculous BPT which was only going to get better while he killed off my RA buddies.

For my part, I wish I had sent my scout southwest sooner, that might have completely changed the nature of the game. I think I expanded a little too quickly and was stuck in unhappiness for longer than I really would have liked. Sticking to my original Piety play may have been the better move, idk. Doing my hybrid Tradition/Liberty opening was probably the reason I lost Notre Dame, which broke the game open for Seven. So, you can probably blame me for that one.

Ultimately, this game was frustrating for me because it was basically decided on the other side of the world, and nothing I could have done would have had enough impact to change the outcome. I remember the booting up the game the day Seven declared war on me and I saw he had 5 city-state allies; I nearly had an aneurism at my computer. Actually, on a related matter, I rightfully received some criticism in the lurker thread for my attempts at "diplomacy"with Yuris in the banter thread. For my part, I'm sorry for this, it was definitely a breech of the rules of the game. I was really frustrated at the time with Yuris sabre rattling at Mist, and felt I had to do something.

All that being said, I had a lot of fun with this game, and despite some of the wonkiness (only one outstanding diplomatic offer at a time ) I would be willing to play another; though I would suggest postponing it until after G&K is released. Hopefully a WB equivalent is included so someone can make an attempt at making a balanced map. Also, Yuris briefly mentioned this in his thread, but next game, someone should pick Germany. It's probably not a winning pick, but GLibbing CS and then ruining someone's day with uber cheap Landsknechts is ungodly fun.

So, good game all. Sorry if at any point during this post-game roundup I rubbed you the wrong way. No offense intended.

After all that, I have to pose the question, does Civ5 MP have a future on RB? Yes? No? Wait and see until G&K is released? Going with the last one myself. There is a lot of broken stuff still, but I must admit, after until picking up SP again recently, I had forgotten just how much I enjoy this game, particularly solving the tactical unit puzzles.

[TheArchduke]

I guess we could start to organise a new one with Gods&Kings only 14 days away and play the new expansion.

[yuris125]

I'm not buying G&K at release. I'm all for another game, but with vanilla

[Bigger]

G&K = a new civ 5 expansion?

I hope yall start a new one soon. I haven't played civ 5, but it was really fun lurking this game =).