Civilization V Solo Reports

[chumchu]

I think left side of liberty and then direct to reformation is the way to go in that case. The 9:th policy can be finisher on piety for prophet and gold.

It is weak on happiness without meritocracy so should consider both pagodas and religious centers in the religion. This leaves you with less faith for universities but significantly more for schools and labs which might be important as you will not have the commerce discount on purchasing. It depends on heavy faith generation and thus on your lands to get pagodas up fast. [The additional culture from pagodas should add to roughly an additional policy but I'm unsure what to do with it.]

This might work together with a different tech path that focuses more on growth and less on science by beelining engineering first, and only then philosophy, and then civil service, education etc. If it is possible to build aqueducts before libraries in your later cities that would be great. To really grow I would also like to see Temple of Artemis instead of Pyramids, it gives so much base food over the entire game even if you do not get the multiplication of it with tradition and should more than compensate for feed the world. If you do that policy/tech path the 25% from pyramids is not worth much as you do not have the critical other 25%. You will need more workers and worker steals to compensate but that should be ok I think.

[Tacitus]

I think starting left side of liberty and the going straight to reformation is probably the obvious opening move. From there you have two choices it think, you could skip commerce, or you can go commerce and never finish liberty. I think it would depend on which is more powerful, the GS from the liberty finisher, or the commerce gold discount. It also would depend on how badly you need the happiness from liberty. Maybe you could prioritize Mercantile CS more?

[chumchu]

Rolled some huge, inland sea, prince maps with Aztecs but abandoned them after bad ruins. Had a very hard time getting pop, culture and pantheon but got techs and maps and barbarian activity instead. Shoshone is so much better for planning but Aztecs are so much fun and if they are lucky with ruins their bonus culture and absurd food should get you started faster.

Another thing I noticed is how easy it is to tribute on prince. As soon as you get a spear or 2 warriors you can tribute in most cases. Have you tried abusing that yet by scouting with the warrior along the inner ring and buying one more to tribute along the coats in the other direction? Almost every city state you come across should give you 70 gold which could lead to a purchased settler or workers or a maritime state.

[T-hawk]

This leaves you with less faith for universities

Then that kills most of the benefit of Jesuit Education, which is getting the universities bought right away on reaching Education to start the beakers and GPP.  Remember that the end goal is saving turns, so anything that costs turns needs to pay back enough to overcome that bar, and I don't think pagodas do.

but significantly more for schools and labs

Because this isn't true.  12 pagodas times 2 faith times the 50 turns between universities and labs equals only 1200 faith, that's only 2.5 labs, that can't make up on delaying the universities.

[The additional culture from pagodas should add to roughly an additional policy but I'm unsure what to do with it.]

It doesn't.  The cost of an 18th normal policy is somewhere around 3000.  12 pagodas times 2 culture times 60 turns (from 120 as the average pagoda to 180 at endgame) is only 1440.  Even a Golden Age isn't enough.

This might work together with a different tech path that focuses more on growth and less on science by beelining engineering first, and only then philosophy, and then civil service, education etc. If it is possible to build aqueducts before libraries in your later cities that would be great.

Yeah, Philosophy only makes sense because of Religious Center; anything without that would go Engineering first.  Aqueducts before libraries is always possible, I'm just not sure which is better, but it's probably close enough not to make a turn's worth of difference either way.

Temple of Artemis is part of some DLC that I never got.

Aztecs?  The kill-culture is fun, but really, Poland gets as much from their first freebie and definitely by their second.  Differences of a few turns in early policies really don't matter much, I've found.  Gardens for the food bonus come later than you think, turn 120 isn't frontloaded enough, and oh yeah Poland could just go finish Tradition by then and have the 15% that way on top of the pile of everything else in the tree.

Yes, I keep an eye on tributing, and yes the starting warrior/spearman goes on the inner ring of the sea to try.  But on Emperor, you seldom get high enough on overall military strength.  I have gotten tribute a few times in games that didn't come to completion and reporting, though.

Yeah I've been debating whether to slum down on Prince for some faster times.  I originally picked Emperor in G&K where they'd have significant lump sums of gold for your luxes, but that's nerfed in BNW.

[T-hawk]

And going back to my original question: yeah Collective Rule then direct to Reformation is necessary. Then any civ but Poland (who picks all three) gets to pick only one of the following three options: finish Liberty (some snowball stuff and endgame Great Scientist), finish Piety (temple gold, Mandate of Heaven discount, finisher prophet), or Mercantilism (cash discounts, plus some beakers.)  Of these, I guess Liberty is the one that would actually save turns.  Lacking Mercantilism might be OK if we buy schools and some labs by faith, and go Order for Skyscrapers and not buying SS parts.

[chumchu]

In reverse order:

For difficulty level, the optimums are probably deity and settler. On deity you can abuse the AI for gold, workers, known tech bonus and spy steals. On settler you get significant discounts on most things. Both of those are less fun than playing emperor/immortal. I thought you played on prince for some reasons. on emperor tributing requires to much of an investment unless you have an early unit like battering ram or phalanx.

Aztec floating gardens are watermill replacement that gives 2 food, 15% more food [food, not growth] and +2 food on lakes that can be built by lakes as well as rivers. 15 % food is worth nearly twice as much food as 15% growth and if you go for aqueducts early to multiply that you should be growing faster than tradition with liberty. They are the best unique building in the game IMO, but you will grow so much that you are constrained by happiness for which Aztecs have no bonus. Because of that the Aztecs are below the top tier of civs but still very good. (My best space races finishes where with Aztecs, Poland and Korea around turns 215-225.)

If you want to try maximizing early growth then Aztecs are the way to go. However I'm not sure if that rhymes with the Jesuit plan. Maybe if you do both temple happiness and shrine happiness for your religion and finish up liberty to get meritocracy as well. Then you can grow on shrine happiness while you get aqueducts before getting libraries and temples.

If you want to push the limits on the game then Temple of Artemis food is part of that. It is cheap and 10% food in every city is more than feed the world. It is in wonders of the ancient world DLC.

About pagodas. You seemed ready to build them around turn 80 in your report and instead triggered some unnecessary prophets and missionaries. It is those that I was thinking that the pagodas replace. If you could do Pagodas instead of the last prophets and missionaries (how high did you go in the end 800?, 1200?) then you would have less ability to save faith before industrial but more faith in industrial and beyond. However, that might have been too optimistic a reading of your situation.

[T-hawk]

Ok, I didn't know the Aztecs at all then. Thought the floating garden was a garden replacement, and didn't know about 15% all food rather than just surplus. Does Artemis work the same way?

The prophets are necessary with Jesuit Education. The whole point is to build the science buildings ahead of time, by saving faith before the necessary tech itself. Those prophets raise the ceiling of faith you're allowed to store for that. And the missionaries fine-tune the storage level when the next prophet was too chunky. If you don't do that, if you buy the science buildings with faith earned after the buildings are unlocked, you don't gain turns over just building them with hammers. Jesuit Education is no more hammer-efficient as a faith-sink than pagodas; the advantage is all in the timing.

TLDR: I could afford both pagodas and science buildings by not taking those prophets, but that wouldn't get the science buildings any sooner than just building them.

[Ichabod]

Ok, I didn't know the Aztecs at all then. Thought the floating garden was a garden replacement, and didn't know about 15% all food rather than just surplus.  Does Artemis work the same way?

Yes, ToA gives +10% of total food you produce per turn, not just growth (jn all cities, that is). 

The other wonder from that DLC is the MoM, which gives +100 gold each time you spend a Great Person (+ some bonus to resource tile yelds in the city, that I can't remember). The amount of gold doesn't change based on game speed, so it's better on MP games played on quick speed.

[Manpanzee]

T-hawk, I have been reading over some of your games. Impressive results. I have some suggestions on other things to try.

Firstly, I think you may be underestimating Representation. It makes a significant impact in a wide game. (However, I think the effect does vary with map size, so my analysis may not be correct for what you're doing). On standard size, a ten-city empire will have policy costs at 235% of base cost. Representation reduces that to 190% of base cost. Therefore, a 10-city civ with Representation will have policy costs at about 80% of what a civ without Representation would have. In a normal game, you'll take about 12 policies post-Representation (not counting free policies). If my math is right, that means Representation actually means about 2 extra policies over a full game.

If you're having difficulties finding enough policies, taking Representation would definitely solve it. Of course, there may be diminishing returns on policies, so you might not actually want a full two extra policies. But this may free you up in other ways -- for example, you seem to build Kremlin/SoL a lot, while I often ignore these. And Representation will also mean faster progress through Rationalism in the Renaissance.

One cost of Representation is that it's hard to find a build that grabs it without completing Liberty early. If you prefer to save the Liberty finisher for the endgame, this is a problem. However, there's a build that I think is under-explored that addresses this problem: take all of Liberty except for Collective Rule, and use that as the endgame finisher.

I know Collective Rule is typically seen as the big draw to Liberty, but it is skippable. Liberty still pays out in other ways (Republic may be even better than Collective Rule, fast Workers are great, etc). Skipping Collective Rule can mean either early Citizenship or opening another tree extra-early. I've gotten some promising results with this approach using Egypt Liberty/Piety, so it's something to explore if you're interested in going Jesuit Education.

This does suggest some big changes to early game approach. I prefer rolling for starts that cash-buy a Settler very early -- I like to quickly develop multiple cities so I can distribute Settler building in more than one place. Higher difficulties may be better for this, since AIs have more gold and get plunderable Caravans out early. "Settle on a Mining resource, then get 240 lump-sum gold in a peace deal before t20" is generally what I dream about.

[T-hawk]

I'm playing on huge maps with less of a per-city penalty, and I did the math (can't find it right now though) that Representation only barely gets ahead of itself and in the very end-game.  Remember 80% of costs doesn't mean 120% or 125% as many policies, because each marginal policy is about 10% more expensive than the last. On a huge map it's more like 90% of costs, and then the marginal cost is another 10%, and then there's no gain.

I'm open to thoughts of skipping Collective Rule, but Representation isn't it.  But you gotta tell me where I'll gain back 10 turns of city development without it.  Collective Rule speeds up the last settler by about 10 turns, and remember that saving turns is my whole ultimate goal.  Rep doesn't come near that. Jesuit Education might have a chance, but I can already get both that and Collective Rule (at the cost of doing little else with policies besides Poland.)

Kremlin/SOL is no constraint, I've learned to pick a city whose build queue won't be needed for anything else.  It doesn't have to complete until right at the end because the policy goes towards Space Procurements or Spaceflight Pioneers.

Peace deal to get lump-sum gold?  I never thought about that one, may work.

Although of course there's the one other way to get a second city super fast: play Huns, get a ruins upgrade to a battering ram, and one-shot a neighboring capital.