Civilization V Solo Reports

[T-hawk]

You're right, that is true, the openers don't show up so yeah they could build such a wonder. But it would happen rarely. And the Tradition opener in particular is silly to take on its own without anything else in the tree; it's been thoroughly debunked that it never pays back its own culture cost. Some openers make sense in isolation, particularly Patronage and Commerce, but not Tradition. (Although the AI won't know that.)

[Zherak_Khan]

There's an errant link in your report: self-defeating banks.

[Molach]

Spoilered to not give away if people haven't read the last two yet.

Wow, amazing close finishes in those games.

Question: How would you describe the amount of luck involved for each of the two cities? Finding that amount of ruins with shoshones and natural wonder luck with spain? Like, would one of them require more trial-and-error than the other before pulling off a similar date in a new game? Or in another way, if your goal is T189, which Civ would you choose to give you least amount of restarts to succeed?

[T-hawk]

Thanks Zherak, fixed.

Spain's luck factor is off the charts. It takes several dozen map rolls to find a particular desired natural wonder, and several times that to luck-walk the settler directly into it rather than cheaty-reloading. Even just taking any halfway decent nat wonder still means 20 or so tries.

Shoshone's luck factor is actually very low, maybe the lowest of all the civs in fact. The ruins are not luck on a huge map. There's always tons of them to find. The median total is still at least a dozen. And the Shoshone eliminate the luck factor in the results, always getting a good dozen.

The majority of the luck factor isn't civ specific. It's in the map rerolling to find a strong capital site. Every game on my site involved map rerolling to find a top 5% or so starting location. And actually the Shoshone even mitigate this more than any other civ too, since the land-grab ability means more tolerance of possible terrain configurations.

So I think the Shoshone would indeed have the best chance-per-restart at beating those times. Although I don't really know how the science civs (Babylon/Korea) hold up. But that's next on my list to try.

[Azza]

On the barbarian ships pillaging your trade routes;

To have one of your trade routes disrupted, all you need is a unit you're at war with to be standing in the way of the caravan or cargo ship when it moves. between turns. So the trireme moved from 4 tiles away onto that tile, which meant when the cargo ship moved it ran into the trireme and the trade route was broken. This caused the galley to spawn next to the trireme because a barbarian destroying a trade route spawns an extra barbarian unit.

[Azoth]

I'll add to the chorus: great reports, T-hawk.

I felt inspired/nostalgic enough to fire up Civ5 again, and try a Sacred Sites game. It was really mesmerizing, trying to pull out a super early win on a cooked Inland Sea map. And I managed it in BC years! I still think Brazil is the most reliable civ. The civ ability is very powerful and you don't need the Golden Age policy from Liberty at all. You can go for hammers and half-price Settlers, then Piety - and still count on a happiness Golden Age, plus one Great Artist if you beeline Guilds. I didn't end up needing the Artist, even.

I definitely don't have the patience to try a science victory, though. Everything is great up to the Renaissance, and then I can't be bothered to spend the 4 hours coordinating Public Schools and Research Labs and Factories and Spaceship Parts. But I'm surprised you didn't have more to say on the Pathfinder upgrade path. Getting a free military upgrade to an ignores-terrain-costs Composite Bowman seems WAY more valuable than a possible free tech in Animal Husbandry, or half-tech if you're already researching it. I'd be much more inclined to rotate Population-Gold-Military Upgrade in the early years, at least until I know I'll get a high-value tech like Trapping. Especially as you mentioned early barbarian troubles. An early Composite Bowman can end up netting more gold from cleared barbarian camps than a gold ruin, and early city-state alliances can also snowball hard.

[T-hawk]

Nitpick,+50% to settler production comes to 2/3 price, not half price. Anyway, you're probably right that Brazil is the most reliable. But I'd still think that Spain or Shoshone or maybe Maya have the higher possible ceiling. Brazil might have the best average time, but the best theoretically perfect Spain/etc game outraces a perfect Brazil game.

The problem with upgrades for camp clears is the time spent in doing so. It takes a good 4-5 turns for even a comp bow to bombard a fortified unit all the way down. Double that if the camp spawns another unit while you're doing so. More if you have to heal too after. That much time lost translates into more ruins missed. And 25 gold isn't much at all. A good enough CS snowball would be worth it, yes, but that's pretty chancy in getting set up right and in having another quest to get up over 60.

[Zherak_Khan]

Have you considered writing an article on re-rolling? It's a bit meta, I guess, but with your experience with fastest finish games, I imagine you would have something interesting to say about it. Like knowing what gambles are worth it (and when to switch to playing it safe), recognizing and abandoning dud games, how greedy to be with capital sites.

I used to spend a bit of time speedrunning Prince of Persia (DOS), and it was difficult to strike a good balance between restarting and finishing, between consistent and aggressive play, between practicing and doing real runs, between having fun and feeling like you're doing homework. And that's for a game without any RNG...

[T-hawk]

Hmm. I've never really thought of rerolling as its own topic, just a corner of whatever else I'm trying to do by way of the rerolling.

I can say that rerolling is relative to what you're trying to achieve. There's no absolute standard for what constitutes a gamble vs safety or a dud. If you're trying to win Sacred Sites in 100 turns, you need to gamble on a faith ruin for the pantheon and call it a dud if you never get one. But if you'll be satisfied at 150 turns, no need. Science in 170 turns probably needs a strong Great Library gambit, science in 190 turns can skip it.

I don't think I can quantify when to keep playing or to restart, it's all based on intuition and pattern matching. I basically have the ability to mentally age-up my civilization and see 30 turns into the future. But I really can't communicate just how I do that. (And sometimes get important aspects wrong anyway.)

[T-hawk]

Hey, if Civ 6 is right around the corner, gotta tie up loose ends on Civ 5 now.

http://dos486.com/civ5/bnw15/