Civilization V Solo Reports

[T-hawk]

Limiting culture accumulation early doesn't really get anywhere. You always want policies 1-6 in Tradition or Liberty, since those finishers are stronger than anything that comes early in the other trees. And it's easy to reach the medieval era in time for policies 7-12. Problem is that policies 10-12 come so slowly when you're conquering, squeezed on both ends by ramping the costs and not building any culture.

The Freedom finisher isn't a target to race to for culture, it only helps once you've got all those settled artists. I found better speed going to Representation and Reformation for the culture discounts first, then up through Freedom.

And you can't really starve puppets since you don't control their citizens. Best you can do is convert all their farms to trading posts, but the puppet AI will continue to work the 2-0-1 trading posts and not starve.

[T-hawk]

Bump. Played a game of Brave New World finally.

http://dos486.com/civ4/bnw1/

I'm also experimenting with layout and responsiveness, particularly for phones, let me know on any comments there.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Bump. Played a game of Brave New World finally.

http://dos486.com/civ4/bnw1/

I'm also experimenting with layout and responsiveness, particularly for phones, let me know on any comments there.

You might find this video interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3R1NzZQ5EY

Basically, as he said at 2 minutes, 6-7 liberty cities cannot keep up with 4-6 tradition cities. You have to build more to justify liberty. However, in SP that would really make AI's angry so you would be forced to go conquest if you do it.

[Commodore]

So am I mistaken, or is the culture victory now all about REX? Looks like the more cities you have, the more tourism you make.

[Thoth]

I think I'll hang onto my "still got my money in my pocket instead of buying Civ V" achievement for awhile longer.

[naufragar]

I think markets are even worse than you imagine. If memory serves, the bonus only applies to city-produced gold and the trade route income is added onto the percentage-adjusted city amount.

[yuris125]

So am I mistaken, or is the culture victory now all about REX? Looks like the more cities you have, the more tourism you make.

Not really. Tourism comes from wonders and great works; great works are created by great people. So basically you need a wonder-building city (usually capital), a gp farm for those Great Artists and Great Musicians, and a production city to build units for early defence and archeologists to dig out cultural artefacts in the mid-game. Everything else is optional

[Zherak_Khan]

I'm still reading your reports, T-Hawk. I toyed a bit with fast tourism finishers, too, but my game runs a tad bit slowly and there are a few more sub-systems than I'm comfortable wrapping my mind around. I keep my spreadsheets and games separate, after all ...

[T-hawk]

So am I mistaken, or is the culture victory now all about REX? Looks like the more cities you have, the more tourism you make.

I don't know for sure, I only played it once. But I don't think so. The Great Work production is pretty much independent of city count, since there's only the one building and two specialist slots available for each of great writers/artists/musicians. The one notable aspect of expansion was having the production to build more Archaeologist units. Like everything else in Civ 5, expanding gives you a bit more of whatever you want, but very marginally more compared against the expansion costs.

You don't want one GP farm for all three types. You want separate ones. There isn't enough bonus for city specialization to warrant stacking them, it's nothing like the +100% National Epic of Civ 4. One city can't afford to work more than two artistic specialists or else it gives up too much food and falls behind the growth curve.

[yuris125]

Yes, sure, if you have space and good city spots, there's nothing wrong with getting more than 3 cities. But 3 is enough to get to the victory. Also, with riverside grasslands giving 4 food, I was able to work 6+ specialists in the same city