Civilization V Solo Reports

[antisocialmunky]

We should have some sort of Civ5 adventure about trying to abuse the Civ5 mechanics as hard as possible.

[T-hawk]

I did not know that. But isn't overflow still capped at either the cost of the built item or the city's base production? So it wouldn't overflow more than one turn's worth of production. (You could still sell a free shrine every turn for gold.) Anyway, if it is a major problem, I'd expect CFC's HOF rules to ban the exploit and I'd follow along with that.

[Olodune]

It's been a few years since I posted here. (Life, and all that). Anyways, after being pulled away for far too long, I was playing some SMAC variants. Which led to playing the Civ 5 demo. Just bought the Gods and Kings Gold Edition and played 2 games. Had fun. Decided to shadow T-Hawk's "Intro to G&K - Religious Celts". I haven't read his report yet, so looking to comparing, pondering Civ 5, etc.

Report to follow.

P.S. If anyone has the power to assign my old user name "Olodune" to the email attached to this account, and reset the password, that would be great. No big deal if that is not possible.

[T-hawk]

I merged the two user accounts and set Olodune's email to your new one. You should be able to do a password reset on Olodune now.

Also, this would be more suited for this thread in Civ General, since it's not a tournament game. I'll merge this thread into that once I know you've seen this pointer.

[Olodune]

I merged the two user accounts and set Olodune's email to your new one (initials c.c at gmail, right?). You should be able to do a password reset on Olodune now.

Also, this would be more suited for this thread in Civ General, since it's not a tournament game. I'll merge this thread into that once I know you've seen this pointer.

Yes, please do. I was wondering where to put this. Thanks!

And thanks for the quick admin work, impressive as always

And so: A Casual Shadow to T-Hawk's "Religious Celts" game.

To Turn 100

To turn 100

Since it has been a few years since I played a Civ game, I think Civ 5 might not initially annoy me as much as it otherwise would. I remember being dubious about Civ 2 -> SMAC, disliking SMAC -> Civ 3, and hating Civ 3 -> Civ 4. So it was a pleasant suprise that I enjoyed Civ 5 right off the bat

For clarity, this is the game that I am shadowing: http://www.dos486.com/civ4/civ5celts/

While I am very thankful that T-Hawk posted the initial save (and somewhat surprised that I could load it without some sort of DLC crapout), it looks like my initial city has already been established in this inglorious location:



This is my third game of Civ 5, so while I am certain that there are still major features/quirks that I know nothing about, I don't think that this is a great start. No river, no Granary boosted food (Wheat, Deer, and Bananas, strangely enough). We do have two luxuries. And cows. Cows are good in Civ, right?

In Civ 5 starts all get smoothed a little by the power of the +3 gold, +3 beaker, +3 prod palace which feels a little weird at first. I think I actually like the outcome though: more starts are playable, and, regardless, by turn 40 player actions matter as much as they ever have.

The basic plan for this game is to "play the map" while trying to leverage the Civ 5 religious system somewhat. Probably not entirely peacefully ...

Initial build is Scout -> Scout -> Monument. The early game income is actually from map exploration, so I am not surprised at my Gold, +1 Pop, Mining, + Weapons (a Pictish Warrior!) haul. 3 -> 5 goody huts of decent impact seem to be the norm. Combined with the "discovery bonus" of early City States the initial scouting is critical to a solid game.

I meet more AIs than expected on a standard sized map. Wait, what's an "Oval" map? Some sort of Pangaea is seems. Interesting. I am on the Eastern edge. There is good land to my north between me and Ethiopia/China and to me East encroaching on Austria.

First settler is going to build on the dyes to grab all these juicy bananas:



I will buy the silk tile to ensure this is a happy sufficient city (more on that later). Plenty of food. Too bad we are missing a river. Rivers are great in this incarnation of the game: early gold, mid-game food, and late-game prod!

Since this is a religious game, I get one:



I chose +1 culture from pastures before realising just how much marble and stone is in the vicinity. I think +faith from quarries is likely better. Still, culture is useful for some powerful slingshots, I think. I will be going Liberty -> Piety. The free GP (engineer) from the Liberty finisher should be useful. I have my doubts about the Piety path, but since this is supposed to be a religious game, well, lets give it a try.

Civ 5 is full of opportunities for barb farming to get +Influence on city states. I actually really enjoy the Archer/Barb dancing party:



I ended up at T100 with 4 cities. I used the Oracle to open up Piety, and the Engineer from Liberty to finish the National College. I think that's the obious choice.



Demographics look good:



Ok, I will take a break here to check out T-Hawks opening .... time to learn something!

To turn 150

To turn 150

This phase of my game is focused on warmongering (China and Austria), trying to understand religiosity, and some happiness quandaries.

A human player doesn't end up first in Soldiers without "coveting those lands". China has really nice tiles.



Lots of salt. Many pastures (which will help leverage my pantheon). And rivers. Apparently the AI can anticipate war, just fine:



Yeah. I like those. Almost makes me feel guilty for having a dark warmongering soul. Almost.

The 1UPT wars are a satisfying puzzle game (at least to me). Hills! Rivers! Pay attention to terrain. The AI does a good enough job at counter attacking somewhat intelligently to keep me engaged. In earlier games I've lost all my city takers, had city siege engines focused down, and been slaughtered by Japan's samurai in full Jungle / Great Wall bloodiness. I need a solid diversity of units to be effective. Fun.

Happy Cap Mechanics

Civ 5 has a pretty punitive nearly-hard (and then truly-hard) happy cap. All 4X games need to have some sort of progressive income tax to keep the early leaders from snowballing too easily. In the past we've seen inefficiency (yuck. huh?), corruption (double yuck. huh?), high GPT costs (huh?), softer happy caps, health caps, diplomatic penalties, etc. (In addition to the happy cap Civ 5, also has other mechanisms (higher hammer costs for national wonders based on city count, higher SP costs, diplo hits). I think I actually prefer the current implementation: it is relatively transparent and very noticeable! There are also ways to increase it effectively (if slowly). Lux trading, buildings, SP, religions, wonders. The net result is a slower expansion progression which means the game diverges a little from the REX->Develope->Win paradigm of Civ 4. I mostly like this.

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. If mindlessly blitzing in the early/mid game it is really easy to bury an empire in dysfunction. Warmongers need to pay particular attention to the happy cap when deciding whether to capture cities. The +8 below is insufficient to cover the happy hit of annexing Beijing. I already have salt. I'll need to fix this before taking this city (which I would like to keep!).



After taking down the last Chinese city (a meaningless tundra outpost that I puppeted (smaller happy hit), my veteran army is too much for Austria. 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?)



By 800AD (the T-Hawk Assessment Audit?) I have a dominating position. Large faith*, culture*, and science income on a powerful landbase. The current -1 happiness will be solved by the Notre Dame (hopefully), coliseums, and a courthouse in Vienna. I went down the bottom of the tech tree to get Chemistry (really need more infrastructure), and will pick up Fertilizer since I could use the food in the Celtic Core - and the game rewards depth first teching with era bonuses (extra spy, bigger city state bonuses (still? only once?), etc).

The Core + Chinese acquisitions



The South. Note the way of avoiding the happy hit from taking Salzberg (gamey? yeah ... ). It feels wrong to have insufficient happiness to raze a city.



Faith

I've been generating plentiful faith from city states and piety boosted (and cheap!) shrines and temples. The latter counts as a culture booster thanks to my religion enhancer perk (+2 culture each). I've spent lots of faith on missionaries and inquisitioners. About a third of my total output has gone to a religious battle with Ethiopia. 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. However, the religion is gaining a lot of power.

As of turn 150, Tengriism has spread to 21 cities! I get:

10 CPT for God of the Open Sky pantheon.
10 CPT for Temple enhancer
37 GPT (!)
About +1 food per city when not a war. Not at all worth it.

In other words, all my surplus income and 1/3 of my culture is coming from the religion. However the biggest benefit is actually through City State relations. I think I've completed 3 or 4 quests of "please spread your religion to us". The relations also deteriorate more slowly (25% less, I think). This snowballs nicely -> 28 of my 68 FPT is actually from city state allies. Eg, Geneva has 164/60 influence so I basically have a perma-ally for the remainder of the game. Five other CS are at least 90/60.

Tile Purchasing

I don't understand it. Sometimes there are discounts, sometimes not. However, often, I think the most efficient gold -> stuff conversion is through tile purchases. Since there are many options to choose from this adds a nice layer of strategic depth. Although, sometimes the decision is clear. I'll take a +2 food, +4 faith, +2 happy cap relief tile. Thanks!



Of course, I did settle that mediocre city in large part to pick up the natural wonder Sri Pada, so in reality it's a bit of a wash. At the time that was my only source of ivory making the city come out ahead overall. Aside: I like the natural wonders. They are a nice bonus without being overpowered (I am looking at you Monsoon Jungle).

Capital Embassies

So I guess that a benefit of getting embassies set up is that we can see world wonders being built on the game board. Ok, so I want to build the Notre Dame. Lets see what Addis Abada has going down. Unnnh. If you are going to add this feature why make it so opaque. Clearly those who have played the game a few dozen times will be able to instantly tell what this is. I don't think it's the Notre Dame. But that is based on my memory of the Civ 4 rendering

To the End

At this point conquest seemed to make sense. Ethiopia would be a pushover, but attacking the "other" side of our oval Pangaea was a little tricky. There is a spine of mountains that nearly divides the map in two. A gap in the middle is filled with four tightly packed city states and I didn't see the need to try and dance my largish army through all their units. No thank you. I briefly considered teching to Astronomy to take the long way round, but ultimately decided to divide my army in two and take the frozen (and long) routes through the tundra.



The German (and Greeks in the South) were quickly intimidated



The final assault on Mecca leading to a turn 214 conquest victory



This was a fun game, so thanks for posting the save T-Hawk.

Some thoughts

I think Boudicca is actually a strong leader for this kind of game. Getting an early Pantheon + Religion meshes nicely with a conquest derived wide empire. Tithe (+1 gold per 4 followers) was strong, but it trailed church property (+2 gold per city) at every point in the game. I think "initiation rites" is even stronger. +100g on city conversion seems to be a better option than a 2GPT income stream. The Celtic UB, an Opera House with +3 happy helped too. Initially I wasn't too thrilled with Pictish Warriors, but after some experience and upgrades I like this:



That is a Lancer with +15 on rough, + 15 on flat. +20 outside our boarders (Pictish) and +15 inside (Himeji Castle). +30 against mounted and double upgrades against ranged attacks. Best of all it can pillage without using movement, so can easily heal 50-73% health and then attack in the same turn. Crazy. Incidentally hero units are much easier to keep alive in Civ 5 due to the non-binary combat outcomes.

I was almost finished this game before I realised I could put trading posts on top of Jungle. One of several micro mistakes.

[Olodune]

A wall of text with some thoughts on city stagnation and the value of trading posts in Civ 5 G&K.

I want to dig into at least the first level of city stagnation mechanics in Civ 5. Like previous Civ games, Civ 5 doesn't do a great job of visually separating the difference between "base resources" and "finished goods". Tile based "hammers" get turned into "production" by going through the production multipliers. Tile based gold goes through the gold multipliers to get turned into more gold? Yeah. A little awkward. However, the distinction is pretty important when trying to figure out simple concepts such as What is the production value of tile based gold?. Ok. Rant finished.

Because of the crazy growth in the cost of additional citizens, at some point it is clearly optimal to stagnate cities. At the very minimum any food put towards a pop growth 20 turns away is completely useless if I expect to win 17 turns from now. However, in many situations we can shift excess food into hammer, gold, or beakers at very efficient conversion rates by a combination of tile shifting, improvement swapping or specialist hires. All are roughly 1:1 conversions. This means that the optimal stagnation time is pretty far removed from the game end. While it is not easy to calculate exactly when this optimal stagnation point is, lets attempt a rough approximation.

For my Boudicca game I won a conquest victory on turn 214. The last ~15 turns of any conquest is pretty much a death parade to the last city, which means that anything useful that a city could make was finished around turn 200. Under perfect conditions a newly grown late game conquest citizen will be put onto a 4 hammer mine. The new citizen is also worth about 0.75-1 base beakers and 1 GPT. The beakers are useless after Dynamite (~ t 190), but hammers are useful to ~ t 200. Gold is useful a little longer because we can rush buy a unit close to the front, or use the money for upgrades, or to rush buy a + happy building to keep our empire from collapse. This means a (admittedly simplistic) view of when to stagnate is when future citizen production potential is less that the food required to grow it. This is an underestimate of the value of stagnation since Civ 5 has a very high discount rate; hammers now >> equivalent hammers later. In all my games so far I am happy cap constrained as well which means that part of the "cost" of growing a new citizen is the hammer cost of building + happy building to support it + the maintenance cost of that building. The latter nearly offsets the trade route income generated by having + 1 pop in the first place. In this size 16 city I would need roughly 150 food (with Aqueduct carryover) + 60 hammers (for the marginal cost of +1 happy from buildings). That's a lot for a new citizen to pay back. 50 turns! 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.



Rush buying, and the value of trade posts

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. If we think about grassland trading posts as 2food/0.4hammer/1beaker converting from 2food/2gold/1beaker then they are a very weak tile! in many cases we could be working a 4 food farm + 4 hammer mine instead! However it is not that simple, since we ignore the effect of multipliers (minimal usually), targeted production, and exponential compounding.

Targeted production

One of the reasons gold -> hammers is more valuable is that it allows us to instantaneously swap productive tiles between cities. Rushbuying a final Library to open the National College gives a much bigger hammer equivalent than 4:1. A NC 15 turns earlier could be worth ~230 beakers (size 10 capital, bought in a size 2 city) which is worth 100 hammers? 180 hammers? Certainly total conversion is better than 2:1 since that earlier research will get us other good stuff more quickly, which brings up the next point.

Exponential Compounding.

Consider the following, totally artificial setup. We have 1 city with 25 base hammers. It can build as many non-unique factories as possible, and our "winning goal" is to produce as many surplus hammers as possible from the city over the next 100 turns. A factory is assumed to add +4 base hammers + an additive 10% multiplier.

Case 1: slowbuilding all factories. At 25 base hammers it takes 15 turns to slow build our 360 hammer factory. The factory adds 4 base production and a 10% (additive) multiplier so the marginal effect is a 6.9 = 1.1*(25+4)-25 increase in hammers. So the next factory is built on turn 26 with a marginal hammer impact of 7.7, etc. We end up building our last factory, which will pay for itself, on turn 78. Totals: 13 factories; 4,026 surplus hammers at turn 100.

Case 2: pay 1080 gold for the 1st factory, then slow build the rest. We end up building our last factory, which will pay for itself, on turn 78. The base production of the city is now larger than 360 per turn, so I don't think it is realistic to build any additional factories after this point. Totals: 22 factories; 8,390 surplus hammers at turn 100.

So for a 1080 initial investment we are actually gaining more than 4,000 hammers by turn 100! Of course this is not very realistic; you can only build one factory per city. However you can build "other good stuff" with a similar impact, so at the very least it is an interesting thought experiment.

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. 2) While I am not suggesting that 1 gold is actually worth anywhere near 4 hammers, I do think the above suggests that the eventual payoff (as long as a city has good stuff to build) is a lot better than 4 gold -> 1 hammer. I think it's closer to 2 gold -> 1 hammer as long as spent somewhat judiciously.


Other Arguments for the Value of Gold (and trading posts)

- Militaristic city states can provide extremely efficient gold -> hammer conversions under the right circumstance. In my game I was allied with Sidon which had a knowledge of Cossacks. With "United Front" in the Order SP maintaing an alliance with Sidon yields a marginal gold -> hammer ratio of nearly 1 gold -> 3 hammers! (250 gold for 20 IP, degrading at 0.75 per turn, in exchange for a 225 hammer cavalry every 8(?) turns. Yes, please.

- The intangible benefits of maintaining city state alliances are often large and hard to calculate, but the fact that it seems to be a good place to dump cash suggests that it is more efficient than rush buying.

- Golden ages are common in Civ 5. Golden ages boost Trading Posts more than just about anything else in the game. Since I seem to be in GA about 20->30% of the time that suggests the "real" gold output of a TP is ~2.25 (with Econ).

- 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!

[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.

[Olodune]

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.

Yeah. I would like to see something early in the Autocracy tree that helps. Something like +1 happy per conquered pop that degrades 1 happy a turn -- sort of like reverse razing anger -- we can call it patriotic fervor. This could be used to offset the razing penalty or as a blitzkrieg bonus for quickly finishing off a civ or two. Otherwise I am forced to open Order (as you mentioned) simply to get the +1 happy per city.

I think the design intent was probably to limit the early militaristic land grab so that even conquest games are funneled deep into the tech tree. This does make some sense -- there are a lot of fun units to play around with in there. Great War stuff, paratroopers, subs/destroyers/carriers, etc. Having limited strategic resources really comes to life with oil based units. The problem is that I never seem to be able to get away from happy cap considerations. In my current game (Iroquois opening Honor on a skinny continents map) I am building Arsenals at 300 hammers per +1 happy, while waiting for Stadiums to open up, just so that I can finish off the backward peasants on the other continent.

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.

Yes. I do think that Protectionism (+2 happy per Lux) looks great on paper for conquest. Just not sure how to get that far into Commerce. Maybe open fairly normally but limit culture accumulation until I can dump SPs into commerce?

I think a fast G&K culture win might have a similar gambit: limit early culture to aim for a fast Freedom finisher. Thinking about trying that one out too.

[Olodune]

In my current game (Iroquois opening Honor on a skinny continents map) I am building Arsenals at 300 hammers per +1 happy, while waiting for Stadiums to open up, just so that I can finish off the backward peasants on the other continent.

Just realized what I should be doing: Annexing puppeted cities (that I want to keep for Lux, Oil, Wonder, other reasons), building a Courthouse, and then starving the cities as much as possible. Hopefully I don't have too many Maritime allies!

[Olodune]

And the magnum opus.

Just finished getting caught up on your Dutch mastery games. Seriously impressive stuff -- especially the GPP coordination in both the Culture and Science games. Civ 5 does allow for some crazily complex causal chains to be built by interweaving so many different resources.

It is obviously a broken combination (dutch + desert folklore + petra + legendary desert start) but still fun to play/read about an optimal newly arising god