Civilization V Solo Reports

[T-hawk]

I've got another writeup for Civ 5 to share. It doesn't belong in Tournament Reports, but I also don't want to be like Sullla whose reports don't get seen unless you obsessively check his website all the time. So since I'll have more in the future too, a thread here seems appropriate. Feel free to share any other solo reports as well, just in case we might ever get any.

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/civ5culture1/

[Dicorion]

Nice report T-hawk as usual. Thanks for sharing.
I am curious what civ would you think will fit this cultural aproach the best. There are a few of them to think about. I did my first (and to be honest also the last ) cultural victory with Napoleon. But I think e.g. Egypt or Aztecs have interesting "traits" too. I mean I am looking forward to your next try

[T-hawk]

Siam is the consensus, right? +3 culture from universities (Wats), which lets you manipulate the Legalism civic into awarding them for free. 50% more yield from culture city-states. And the abilities synergize: use the free Wats to bulb into the industrial age quickly when the bonus from culture CS ratchets way up.

Egypt is probably next best, culture wants a lot of wonders and you can get the UB happy early from Legalism. Aztecs for culture really skews the game: you want to farm the AIs for unit kills, so you want a big but backwards hostile neighbor.

Not Napoleon, that's the same problem as Creative for a culture win in Civ 4. 2 extra culture means nothing compared to 500+ per turn in the end game.

[oledavy]

India and Persia are pretty good choices for a CV too.

[T-hawk]

Bump, I have another adventure for some light Friday reading.

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/civ5efficiency/

[MJW (ya that one)]

Bump, I have another adventure for some light Friday reading.

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/civ5efficiency/

This was fun.

I only have 2 thoughts.

1. It is natural for the SS parts to be land units. They move just like any other land unit. They are a non-combat land unit like the worker. The 15% extra production is not enough to justify a special rule being made for them like the Internet not being a wonder in Civ4...

2. They added a replay thinge after the end of the game to Civ5. You can only view it after the game is over though. I really don't know why you can only view it after the game. I would not put it past them just being lazy because it was added in a patch and them cutting conners.

[T-hawk]

Lazy day before a holiday? Have some more reading material, two reports this time.

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/civ5occ/
http://www.dos486.com/civ4/civ5ics/

[Dicorion]

But I've certainly gotten my $9.98 worth out of the game and I think my readers have gotten their money's worth from my reports.

Eh, quite right, indeed! So thanks for that share of yours T-hawk.

[Krill]

T-hawk, what's your opinion on the method and rate of expansion in C5? It seems from your report that it's actually a step back from CIV, to the extent that the city builds seem identical to that of civ 3, is that a reasonable view?

[T-hawk]

It's not identical to Civ 3. Both 3 and 5 push towards ICS, but in very different ways. In Civ 3, ICS was mostly a matter of working around the tight hard caps on city size, 6 pre aqueduct and 12 pre hospital. The only way to add more tiles was to add more cities. If not for the caps, one Civ 3 city at size 15 would be better than three at size 5, because the former needs only one copy of each building and its maintenance.

Civ 5 pushes towards ICS because of all the per-city benefits. Maritime food is the major offender of course. But also there's so many buildings that produce without caring about city size, like the granary and water mill and stone works, and most of all the happiness buildings. Adding an extra city in order to add new copies of the colosseum and theater is always more efficient than building a stadium. And social policies mostly add benefit per city as well, like the Liberty culture and hammer policies.

City builds are not identical between Civ 3 and 5. Civ 3 cities always labored to get their production multipliers up: granary (food multiplier), a culture expansion (available tile multiplier), then the library and market series. Civ 5 cities first want to leverage the direct production of the granary and monument and happy buildings, and care about multipliers only later.

About the only thing Civs 3 and 5 have in common towards ICS is the escalating food cost. In both games, growing to size ~7 is very efficient but then the pace of growth slows down. It's cheaper to add another city for another 7 size than to grow the first city from 7 to 14. Civ 4 avoided this by scaling the cost of food growth more slowly and smoothly. But in both games, this concern is only a sideline and not primary.