Dave Leads the Thousand Nations of the Persian Empire

[kalin]

Thanks for your answers above. I agree with you on Tradition not being worth unless you plan to also take legalism and maybe the policy with the wonder bonus. I think your plan to get legalism then organized religion is very good. The only thing is how much can you afford to delay liberty that since you plan to use an engineer from the liberty finisher to rush something (Hagia?). Also, any plans on National College?

One thing I was wondering about are workers and improvements... How much are they worth? Clearly in the beginning it's more worth to build scouts because ruins give you so much. But later, improving something usually gives you +1 food/hammer which is little but it's 1 on top of 2, e.g., mine goes from 2H to 3H, which is like a 50% improvement. So in principle, improvements should be more valuable than in civ4.

Good luck,
Kalin

[oledavy]

Thanks for your answers above. I agree with you on Tradition not being worth unless you plan to also take legalism and maybe the policy with the wonder bonus. I think your plan to get legalism then organized religion is very good. The only thing is how much can you afford to delay liberty that since you plan to use an engineer from the liberty finisher to rush something (Hagia?). Also, any plans on National College?

Tradition on the whole is probably the weakest of the three early policy trees. Legalism and the finisher can be extremely powerful, but the others are all rather meh. I have decided to build Stonehenge, so we will be taking aristocracy next before diving into Liberty. We’ll come back to tradition later for legalism, as planned. The other really good social policy in Tradition is Monarchy, which grants -1 unhappiness and +1 gold for every two citizens in the capital. When we’re talking about huge capitals, the happiness benefits are enormous and can allow you to pretty much grow your capital indefinitely even as other cities hit their happiness cap. Auropolis is an amazing capital site, and I’ll probably be able to push it to size 30 before this game is over.

Ultimately, there are eleven social policies I want to get before really pushing expansion (though the last couple may overlap with expanding past 4 cities). The rough order is:

1. Tradition Opener
2. Aristocracy
3. Liberty Opener
4. Collective Rule
5. Citizenship
6. Legalism
7. Representation
8. Meritocracy
9. Republic
10. Piety Opener
11. Organized Religion

Basically, I want to push out to four cities with monuments before Legalism, then push to Organized Religion and really supercharge expansion.

I briefly considered doing a National College Start, but discarded. However, I want to work it in before pushing past 4 cities and it starts getting really expensive.

Now this policy plan is definitely pushing the envelope. They key thing is to grow to four cities as quickly as possible without going deep into unhappiness. I currently have 18 happiness to play with in visibility, which allows for 4 cities and 6 total pop. I really need another luxury or two in visibility to make sure I don’t hit the unhappiness wall. I would like to have as many citizens as possible before hitting the Representation Golden Age to leverage it best, but the problem is that I’m not hitting the happiness boosting social policies until after Legalism and Representation. However, I feel confident I can push past it.

Legalism is the big gateway social policy here. The four temples and corresponding four culture specialist slots will allow me to boost my CPT by 24 cpt (not to mention +4 happiness with OR). This should push me through the later policies in short order. The danger here is that I don’t get the Liberty Great Engineer until my 9th policy, versus. a straight push which is just 6 policies. However, that’s a risk I take. If I miss out of the Hagia Sophia, it won’t be the end of the world. Also, Stonehenge should allow as to push through this many policies in the time it takes other civs the time to get through a lot fewer. If I discover a friendly cultural city–state nearby, I’ll probably buy them out to help us along.

After Organized Religion, we’re getting monarchy at some point and polishing off the piety tree. After that, nothing is written in stone yet. Considering Freedom, Patronage, Commerce and Autocracy.

The beauty of this social policy plan is it allows us to start expanding at a sustainable rate. Unhappiness in Civ5 is divided into per city and citizen unhappiness. Each new city costs 3 unhappiness, and each new citizen costs 1 unhappiness. Adopting these policies gives me the following happiness benefits:

+1 for Monument
+1 for Temple
+1 for trade connection
+1 for Monastery (situational building)
-1 unhappiness for every 10 citizens in a city.

The first three (bolded) are the important ones. Each new city starts out building a monument, then a temple (production boosted by piety opener), and is hooked into the trade network. Within a dozen turns, it is happiness neutral. Unhappiness from citizens is made up with luxuries and happiness buildings. So, as long as I don’t expand too quickly and make sure I continue building colosseums and netting new luxuries, I can keep expansion going. Piety is basically a requisite tree for playing a wide empire game, but it comes with a trade off. Piety is mutually exclusive with Rationalism, one of the best policy trees in the game. Playing with Piety will deny me the opportunity to adopt the really strong science-boosting policies up the Rationalism Tree.

To read someone explaining the happiness system in Civ5 far better than I ever could, check out The Complete Guide to Happiness

One thing I was wondering about are workers and improvements... How much are they worth? Clearly in the beginning it's more worth to build scouts because ruins give you so much. But later, improving something usually gives you +1 food/hammer which is little but it's 1 on top of 2, e.g., mine goes from 2H to 3H, which is like a 50% improvement. So in principle, improvements should be more valuable than in civ4.

As for workers. In Civ5, the land tiles aren’t as important. In the Civ4 early game, you’re generally mining and pasturing/farming, which usually give 100% yields on the tiles. A mine doubles the output of a hill, a farm doubles the output of corn, wheat, rice, etc. In Civ5, you generally are just making a 50% impovement on the tile: mining a hill makes it worth 3 hammers vs. 2 hammers. So improving the land is important, but not quite as vital. After the monument we’re going archer -> worker -> Stonehenge. I also intend to swipe a worker from a city-state at some point.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="3"]Turn 6[/SIZE]

Big news of this turn was finding gems in the north. My third city will probably go somewhere nearby to claim them. Need to find one more happiness resource in the local area and I'll be set.

[Injera]

You missed one of kalin's questions, which is one I'm also curious about. Are you going to try to slip in the National College at any point? 1/2/4 cities, or just not worry about it and focus on gaining beakers from population from expansion?

[oledavy]

You missed one of kalin's questions, which is one I'm also curious about. Are you going to try to slip in the National College at any point? 1/2/4 cities, or just not worry about it and focus on gaining beakers from population from expansion?

Well not the last one, I can tell you that. The National College is way too powerful to pass up. To tell the truth though, I'm not sure yet. I'll probably slip in in at two cities, depending on how things play out.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="3"]Turn 7[/SIZE]

Found survivors among the ancient ruins, growing Auropolis to Size 3.





Guessing I'm on the western coast of this pangaea, roughly at the equator - I've found tundra in the north.

[pindicator]

It's not because I don't have the patience for micro. I'm the idiot who spent the last week of my Christmas break planning and maintaining a 20-turn micro plan in a notebook for all my cities in Pitboss 6.

I just want to say that you're not alone

[Injera]

Guessing I'm on the western coast of this pangaea, roughly at the equator - I've found tundra in the north.

Yeah, it's sort of looks like we connect to the mainland to the northeast of the capitol. Civ5 fog is so hard to see tile-bleeding through when looking south, could we be connected to the south and then east as well? If we do only connect in the part northeast from the capitol we have a huge chunk of land to ourselves... four nice rivers.

A pop increase hut is pretty nice. I'm surprised we haven't found any city states yet- were they set at the "normal" levels for this game?

And honestly, I don't mind that. It's not because I don't have the patience for micro. I'm the idiot who spent the last week of my Christmas break planning and maintaining a 20-turn micro plan in a notebook for all my cities in Pitboss 6. But as I mentioned this upthread, to me at least, Civ4 often feels like I'm the mayor of a bunch of cities, Civ5 feels like I'm leading an empire.

Yeah, I agree completely- I wouldn't be playing Civ4 still if at the end of the day I didn't like to +/- through all my cities. But it's really a nice change of pace to be able to spend more of your time thinking strategically rather than tactically. The downside to this, though, is that there are lots of really fun marginal cities in Civ4 that you couldn't even consider in Civ5. Or maybe you can, as I've said I've never really tried a "wide" empire.

[oledavy]

A pop increase hut is pretty nice. I'm surprised we haven't found any city states yet- were they set at the "normal" levels for this game?)

I'm a bit surprised too, though I expect we'll find one soon just following the coastline. City-State's tend to spawn next to the sea. In fact, I would wager there is one just past that barb encampment in the south. We probably haven't run into one yet because we only have 10 city-states this game, vs. the usual 12 for a small map.

I'm really hoping it doesn't turn out that we made the map too big for this game. We're playing with one less civ than normal for a small map, and there's still going to be a lot of space between civilizations, especially if someone decides to play a tall empire game.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="3"]Turn 8[/SIZE]

Got our first cultural expansion from Auropolis, nabbing riverside stone. Other than that, not much to report. Found more gems in the south.



I'm really thankful for all this stone lying around. If I plant my cities right, I can build a stoneworks for +1 happy in every one of them.