Civilization V Solo Reports

[yuris125]

yesssss!!! Thanks T-hawk

[yuris125]

Very impressive, but do you think lack of aluminium and the need to Oxford for a relatively cheap tech had an impact on the finish date? Could you do it even faster if not for that?

[T-hawk]

One turn at most, maybe none. The last scientist overshot the last tech, so the difference with Oxford (2k beakers) and the extra city penalty (also ~2k in total) probably didn't matter.

Of course I still want to go faster, but I think I have the general approach honed to perfection. There's more variability now in the map and ruins and AI behavior than there is in anything I could do differently. And the overall fastest possible probably is Spain getting a perfect start with natural wonders, but I've had enough of chasing that randomness.

[Azoth]

Enjoyable read, as always. About those difficult to connect Coal/Aluminum resources: I often end up saving my spare 500 faith Great Prophet for them, just in case. If they don't happen to fall within your borders: buy up the tile, put down a Holy Site, instant access, no need to wait for a Worker to arrive and build a Mine for 6 turns. It might not have helped in your game - there's nothing to do but wait if your Aluminum is 4th-ring - but it can shave some turns here and there.

[T-hawk]

Ooh, I like that trick. Actually the spot to make use of that is coal, since that's the resource you want Right Now to build factories. Aluminum can wait long enough for a mine - the cities are still building factories when you get Electricity, and hydro plants aren't time-sensitive (the only thing that matters after them is SS parts, and even here I did get them before that.)

[TheArchduke]

Sweet mother of micromanagment.

Quite impressive.

[chumchu]

Fantastic Shoshone game. The growth curve with 16 ruins is unbelievable.

It's progressively harder to optimise fast games like these but I have some suggestions.
1) I'm wondering if you should not have picked World's Fair instead of Science Funding to speed through Order/Rationalism as science funding seems to have done very little for you. It costs a lot of production though as the AI seems to be of little use in that game. What difficulty were you playing at?

2) As I understood it you overshot science but had problems with happy and spaceship parts. Freedom shines in just that case as it gives you 16 food/8happy per city to grow the smaller cities working secularist specialists. This is with only 3 policies meaning that you can go back to rationalism earlier. It also enables you to buy all parts with mercantilism+big ben+AI gold. You only really need one big city for Appollo and that can be delayed much more than in order (3-5 turns before finish roughly), everything else can be optimised for science/gold. The trade off is of course the 25% science from factories and the free scientist.

If you want a different challenge I suggest you play this mod which sports an AI that is decent at war and much better at economy with less bonii than the original game. This is done mostly by changing its priorities (it actually builds aqueducts now lol ) but also by changes to combat and a reduction of per city tech costs. As far as I know only one player managed to beat it at deity and that was after hundreds of hours.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=550671

[chumchu]

The best Poland science games are usually with following social policies for maximal growth. Opening tradition, liberty to collective rule, full tradition, rest of liberty, full rationalism + ideology. It requires a bit of early culture to finish tradition in time and happiness to support 6+cities.

[T-hawk]

Yeah I'm still wondering about World's Fair vs Sciences Funding. If Sciences Funding is done correctly, it does typically result in one extra Great Scientist (and speeds up the others by 2-4 turns which can matter.) World's Fair can also result in one extra GSci but only if the free policy makes the difference between finishing Order or not. World's Fair also requires the production investment which I don't always have available, and there isn't time to do just the 350h and wait for the AIs to finish it. World's Fair is better if I *know* it will work and make the difference on finishing the ideology, but that seems to be too hard to judge that far ahead of time so I go with Sciences Funding as more reliable. Finally, it's even possible to get both, for which your proposal has to be Sciences Funding and hope an AI picks World's Fair.

I'm still convinced on Order over Freedom, because Workers' Faculties and Skyscrapers. I don't care about saving food with Freedom because I don't care about growing the cities that late. The 100+ food costs aren't worth paying less than 30 turns from the end. I just set the cities on zero growth to support all the specialists. Happy crunches come earlier than that and Order has enough with the monument happy policy if I need it. I didn't have problems with spaceship parts, just misjudged the cost and how soon to get to Apollo.

As for Poland, I hadn't thought of that, use the extra policies to fill both Tradition and Liberty. I'd been trying to put them into Commerce or Patronage or Piety. I'm not sold on the idea but might try it out. But the problem is still that any dip into Liberty delays the Tradition finisher, which is where so much of Tradition's power is concentrated. Poland can finish Tradition even earlier than anyone else (~t60 with 5 normal policies plus the classical era freebie) but a three-deep diversion into Liberty will push that out around t100 (the 7th normal policy plus classic and medieval.) If the Tradition finisher accounts for 1 food for 8 cities for those 40 turns, just that time difference accounts for more than Collective Rule will ever produce (free settler plus 33 hammers times 6 more.)

Emperor difficulty, which seems about the sweet spot with some challenge from the AIs and decent money available from them but minimal risk of losing wonders and carpet-of-units invasion.

[T-hawk]

Twin games of Romulus and Remus:

http://dos486.com/civ5/bnw16/
http://dos486.com/civ5/bnw17/