Civilization V Solo Reports

[T-hawk]

I think more people would see your report posted as real posts and not in edited spoiler tags. I wouldn't even have come back to the thread if not for your next post.

However, holy moly does the happy cap hit hard when conquering cities: +2 unhappiness for the new city + normal pop penalty + (a 1.25*pop?) multiplier for unrest.

Yeah. More than that. The base is 3 per city, plus some factor for an annexed non-courthouse city (I think another 4), and the 1.25*pop modifier too. Conquest is so dreadfully useless in this game, pretty much only worth it for an AI capital with multiple luxuries. In my various fastest-finish games, I tried various degrees of conquering several times and it never helped compared to simply straight building.

It's such a shame that the combat mechanics are really good and fun, arguably the best ever in a Civ game... and the civilian/economic side renders it useless to actually go use that military.

Especially since of my seven(!) city state allies three are directly bordering the Austrian empire. They nearly captured Salzberg (What happens if they do? Auto-raze? Gift for me?)

City-states can and will conquer and keep other cities. My most amusing variation came once when Hanoi conquered another city-state and then an AI civ conquered Hanoi, so now the map had Hanoi the civ living in Valletta the city.

At one point I let a Christian great prophet wander to my capital to see what would happen. Big mistake. Bye-bye holy city. I wasted an inquisitor (totally ineffective. Are they broken without a holy city?) and a missionary or two to convert it back. I think this might have messed up the faith cost progression of missionaries. They went something like this 200 (multiple) -> 140 (Piety perk, multiple) -> 210 -> 240 -> 300 -> 400 (lost religion in holy city) -> 210 (multiple). No idea what that's about.

Yeah, one thing you learn is to use idle workers to block and box in enemy prophets. Inquisitors work partway. They remove the foreign religion from your city, but don't spread your own. But the absence of the competing foreign religion allows pressure from your other cities to convert it back faster.

It wouldn't have affected the faith cost of missionaries. The normal progression increases with era. 200 to start, 300 in Renaissance, 400 in Industrial, 600 in Atomic, 800 in Modern. Then multiplied by the Piety discount. Did you happen to take the Holy Order belief for your enhancer? That's the only other thing that would reduce the costs.

Because of the crazy growth in the cost of additional citizens, at some point it is clearly optimal to stagnate cities. ... So stagnating like this, around t170 (45 turns to the end) may already be too late. I could be convinced to stagnate at t190 - 50 = t 140 or so, much earlier than I thought.

Yes, I've done that same analysis with similar conclusions, as early as 60 turns from victory can be correct to stagnate.

At first glance trade posts are pretty miserable improvements in Civ 5 even with Economics (+1 gold) and Free Thought (+1 beaker). This is because the steady state conversion from gold to hammers is only 5:1.

You're buying the wrong things if you're getting 5:1. Workers are always 4.4:1. Aqueducts start at 4:1 and become better almost immediately, paying back food too at the next city growth. But yes, that gold comes from religion and rivers and resource sales, not junky trading posts.

What does this mean? Two things: 1) factories are actually a very weak investment! I think I will only be building them in 1-2 cities where production per turn is more important than surplus hammers, such as wonder building or finishing up the final few pieces of a spaceship.

Yes, factories are weak, with 30+ turns to pay back the build cost. But the effect of timeshifting production makes them worthwhile. There's not a whole lot else to build when factories become available, so it's good to build them to shift the hammers into the spaceship building phase later.

But buying factories is very gold:hammer efficient. 3:1 right away and even better when figuring in the added production to the payback ratio too.

- Big Ben (-15% purchase cost), and (-25%) in the Commerce Tree + the Commerce Tree finisher make gold -> hammer conversions MUCH better. I'll have to play with this soon!

It looks juicy, but the problem is that efficient buying doesn't get you anywhere for an actual win condition. Space or diplomacy need to be in Rationalism instead. Culture must go Piety - Freedom. Conquest can't get enough spare policies while driving up the culture costs, and needs happy from Order instead.