Civ 5 We Hardly Knew Ye [Spoilers]

[Rowain]

2 down 3 more to go

[Ichabod]

Can someone help me about using steam to host my screenshots? I managed to get them to my public gallery, but I don't know how to make them a useable link with the screenshot tags here...

[Ichabod]

Between summer holidays and no dropbox, reporting has declined a lot. Here's some notes about the game, without pictures.

I have 3 wonders: TGLh, Colossus and Chichen Itza. I'm finishing Hagia Sophia for the Free Prophet. Machu Pichu will be next.

My religion has cerimonial burial (+1 happy per 2 cities following) and Mosques (+1 happy building). The new prophet from HS will add the +2 faith per wonder belief. The reasoning is that I need better faith generation to get something out of my initial beliefs. With Hagia + that, I'll have enough faith to get some mosques and snowball from there. Later, faith can go into GP.

SP wise, I got 2 policies in Patronage, but the next one will go into rationalism opener (with a writer ready to bulb the following one). I'll reach Renaissance through Banking (to get the Persian UB, +2 happy bank; also, the Forbidden Palace, which I think I'm the only one that has access to), getting Machu Pichu and Artist Guild along the way (double lenght GAs).

I'll finish the National College next turn in the Capital. I already reached Education and universities are going up. The first GSci will come in time to avoid a GM from TGLh and Colossus (good side effect of the Liberty finisher). I'm almost at 100 beakers per turn and it'll definetely pass that after NC.

After banking, probably XBows, just to avoid any sort of trouble against Pindicator. Workshops are on the way too.

Anyway, I'm way ahead of everyone else, it's probably not even close. The only way that I can lose this is if Yuris conquers Nic and HAK Capitals and alpha strikes my coastal Capital (which would give him a conquest victory, I think, even though I own Pindicator's and Davy's Capitals). But that's not going to happen.

I'm just going through the motions, having fun nabbing all the shinies in the Tech Tree.

[Rowain]

AFAIK He needs to control all capitals to get domination. They changed that sometime ago.

[Ichabod]

I was going to complete Hagia Sophia and my Artist Guild last turn, but my happy deal with Nicolae ended in between turns and I was short about 0.5 hammers in each. Very annoying.

Anyway, I don't think I'll lose Hagia Sophia, so that means I'll finally start being able to use my religion in this next few turns. About 10 turns before my next GA. I'm making 150+ beakers per turn, with Rationalism comng in about 7 turns (and Oracle soon after that, if no one finishes it before me).

After Banking, I'll probably go for the naval techs, get some boats and raze all of Yuris coastal cities (he has a lot). After that, I'll raze HAK coastal cities. That's likely the fastest way to victory, through concession.

[Rowain]

After Banking, I'll probably go for the naval techs, get some boats and raze all of Yuris coastal cities (he has a lot). After that, I'll raze HAK coastal cities. That's likely the fastest way to victory, through concession.

Finds my approval

[Ichabod]

I'm up to 220+ science after opening rationalism and oracling the 2 science per specialist SP. More universities are finsihing, so in 2/3 turns, I'll probably be over 250, perhaps even more. After Navigation, I can very well keep focusing on naval until destroyers. Half of Yuris cities are coastal, and he can't recover from losing them.

2 more turns before my first GArtist, which will give a double length GA.

My main problem is that I only have 2 coastal cities, so building ships will take a while. If I was more ruthless (and a better player), I would stop with some useless builds (and fire my two writers in my second coastal city) to get more naval units produced sooner. I sohuld also stop growth and focus on gold in my land cities, to help me buy more ships. Like I've said, it'll likely be the final push, so playing for the long game is a bit meaningless. But it pains me to make my cities stop growing, they are so beautiful.

The other problem is that frigates (the best naval unit I'll have avaiable) require iron, which the map lacks due to the WB bug. I'll have to delete some useless land units to get more.

Meanwhile, my land cities have nothing better to build, so I'm spamming infrastructure and wonders. I have The Great Lighthouse, Colossus, Hagia Sophia, Chichen Itza, Machu Pichu, Oracle and I'm finishing Petra. Next one will be Forbidden Palace, which I think is a lock, because no one else has Patronage opened (I think).

Also, there's some city states only accessible through ocean sailing, including Mercantile ones. That's another plus from the water techs. Also, extra resources (I know this due to the city state quests and WLTKD requests).

[Ichabod]

I'm up to 300 science. That's how big the Education tech is in Civ 5 (that and rationalism, especially the specialist SP).

My idea is to amass 3 frigates (the amount of iron I expect to have) and some random melee ships and go pester Yuris. I think I can do it in about 15 turns. My production on the coast is low, and these ships are starting to get expensive. 

I'll have a caravel in 3 turns,to explore the ocean. Meanwhile, I'm using some idle workers to do it, since embarked units can cross ocean, while classical era boats can't.

[T-hawk]

All the science techs are big. Universities, schools, and labs each almost double your science production if you hire all the scientist slots. The entire Rationalism tree also amounts to about double as well.

What can be questionable is how useful the tech is, since all it does is give you more and more expensive units.

What upgrades to frigate, can you prebuild anything for that purpose later?

[Ichabod]

That's a very good point, T-Hawk. I get the feeling that a lot of my science is useless, considering everything is so hammer expensive right now (units, buildings and wonders). I neglected the bottom of the tree, so I don't have workshops in place. I teched Metal Casting in 1t last turn, with just overflow from Navigation, but the workshops are still expensive.

So, I guess I'll go for the passive bonuses in the tree, with the hammer, gold and food bonuses. At least that's only science spent for a boost to the yields.

Meanwhile, I may actually go for exploration opener + the 3 prod per coastal city SPs next. I don't think I need to finish rationalism, and the game will be decided on the water. Yuris has a very big lead in number of coastal cities, that will likely mean a lead in hammer production for ships. So, I'm planning to settle some more coastal cities and I'm looking to always have better naval units avaiable.

Galleasses (they are the first naval ranged unit, I think) upgrade to Frigates, and I have only 1 built. They are avaiable with Compass, but since I finished Astronomy and Navigation in quick succession, I didn't have time to pre-build them. Either way, I only have 2 avaiable iron, so I'll only have 2 frigates for now... I'm also building some privateers and Caravels.

But the turns are very slow right now. 2 days without one, we are constantly missing days. Frustrating, but what can you do.