Civilization V Solo Reports

[Azoth]

I've really enjoyed your Civ5 reports, T-hawk. I haven't played too many games of BNW, but I thought I'd chime in with my thoughts on your latest.

Civ Pick: France is a fine pick for culture, I think. The fastest culture victories actually take the Liberty-Piety route: ICS + faith-generating pantheon/civ ability + faith buildings + the Sacred Sites reformation belief (all buildings purchased with faith provide +2 tourism). Victory dates are typically in the late renaissance; you actually want to slow down your research speed to keep faith costs low. It's gimmicky, and reminds me of the AP-cheese shortcut to a diplo win in Civ4. But even if you're not going down that road, early tourism is more important than a strong research economy (at least at Emperor/Immortal). France can provide that, especially since it's bonus is multiplicative with the Aesthetics finisher, shared religion/open borders/trade route multipliers, and World Religion bonus. Even the Chateau is not bad; I'd take it over an unirrigated farm. What other civ would you pick? The Netherlands for Polders? They're very map-dependent. Babylon for the Academy? Production for Wonders and Archaeologists is more often the limiting factor, not research speed. Poland to power through Exploration for the hidden antiquities? They're of marginal value. I think only Brazil is competitive, for explosive Golden Ages timed to coincide with Great Musicians.

Wonders: The AI really prioritizes certain wonders: notably, the Great Library, the Hanging Gardens, and Chichen Itza. You really have to beeline them if you want them. Anything less than opening Pottery-Writing and Scout-(2 of Granary/Shrine/Worker)-Great Library risks losing it. But it's worth it for culture victory, I think. There are too many wonders that require great Art and too few that require great Literature. In fact, it might be right to target Printing Press over Acoustics in the renaissance; you get better defense (Crossbows), an extra vote at an earlier World Congress, and the Globe Theatre to house your accumulated Literature. The Sistine Chapel is no great loss, if you miss it; you'll have plenty of Art slots between the Uffizi, Louvre, and Hermitage and plenty of culture from specialists.

Religion: The AI has become much better at founding and spreading its religions - so much so that I'm not sure it's worth competing against. In a typical game, I found a pantheon late, taking whatever best suits the local terrain, or else the generic God-King or Sun God. (I rarely play crazy Inland Sea/Desert Folklore maps). I found my religion by building the Hagia Sophia (a bit unfortunate to waste it on the 200-faith Prophet, but the wonder itself often doubles my faith generation), and go right on to Borobudur. If my neighbours are unlikely to found their own religions (they were late to a pantheon and didn't open with Piety), then I take Ceremonial Burial and try to convert them. Otherwise, it's Initiation Rites for the instant gold, Borobodur missionaries only for domestic use and city states, and a long defense against foreign missionaries/Prophets. As for the follower beliefs, Religious Community is a must-have, but can wait for the enhancement. Which leaves me with a choice between Pagodas and Swords into Plowshares. The religious buildings provide decent value when you don't have oodles of faith from Desert Folklore. What use is a missionary converting 2 cities for +1 happiness from CB, when the AI will just convert them back in another 25 turns? Better invest in a Pagoda for the permanent +2 happiness/culture; and when you're ready to purchase GP in the Industrial Era, you'll find that the Pagoda has refunded its faith cost, too.

World Congress: It's actually pretty easy to pass World Religion, even without converting any AI civs. Just buy their votes! AIs that don't hate you will ask for a luxury or 7gold/turn in exchange, which is a bargain!

[Wyatan]

I believe Polyynesia with Moai spam used to be another civ of choice for Cultural victories (might still be, but I've stopped following the Civ V scene a long time ago).
It can lead to some crazy culture generation, but since you need to wait for Hotels/Airports/National Thingie for it to turn into tourism, it might not yield fast cultural victories.

[T-hawk]

I've really enjoyed your Civ5 reports, T-hawk. I haven't played too many games of BNW, but I thought I'd chime in with my thoughts on your latest.

Thanks for the thoughts. I've avoided going to CFC to research the optimal paths, but don't mind some gentle pointers in the right directions.

The fastest culture victories actually take the Liberty-Piety route: ICS + faith-generating pantheon/civ ability + faith buildings + the Sacred Sites reformation belief (all buildings purchased with faith provide +2 tourism). Victory dates are typically in the late renaissance.

That's an interesting path. I'm still not seeing mathematically where early tourism matters. Even 20 tourism from a bunch of faith buildings that way shouldn't be keeping up with AIs that should be at something like 100 culture/turn around the renaissance. It really seems like you need the later tourism multipliers to catch up tourism to culture. But I'll give it a shot at some point.

What other civ would you pick? The Netherlands for Polders? They're very map-dependent.

Yeah, that one. I have no problem cooking a map for them. And don't forget their keep-half-the-happy trading ability too. The Dutch abilities get up the early-mid growth curve way faster than anything anyone else has.

What use is a missionary converting 2 cities for +1 happiness from CB, when the AI will just convert them back in another 25 turns?

The use is that those two cities will exert pressure for those 25 turns to convert another couple cities, which convert more in turn, and so on. To pull this off correctly requires going insanely fast on religion, you need something like the religion founded by 1500 BC and missionaries out by 1000 BC, for time for the pressure to work before the AIs start founding their own. Desert Folklore on a cooked map is about the only way to make that work. But work it does. At least in G&K before BNW. The two BNW games I've played do indeed seem to have the AIs better at spreading their religions faster, so yeah wide fast religion might not be the optimal way to go.

World Congress: It's actually pretty easy to pass World Religion, even without converting any AI civs. Just buy their votes! AIs that don't hate you will ask for a luxury or 7gold/turn in exchange, which is a bargain!

I like this thought, but how do you get enough diplomats to negotiate with them all? You only get one in the Renaissance.

[Azoth]

That's an interesting path. I'm still not seeing mathematically where early tourism matters. Even 20 tourism from a bunch of faith buildings that way shouldn't be keeping up with AIs that should be at something like 100 culture/turn around the renaissance. It really seems like you need the later tourism multipliers to catch up tourism to culture. But I'll give it a shot at some point.

To be fair, I haven't played a Sacred Sites game on this latest patch (that nerfed Tradition). It worked well enough on the last one, though; I remember in particular a GOTM over on Civfanatics that seemed tailor-made for it, with Polynesia. (Can't find the link, unfortunately, as their website is down.)

But 100 culture/turn by the Renaissance? How would the AI manage that? Prior to Acoustics, you can get only 3/city from buildings (Monument, Amphitheatre). Most Wonders produce +1. There's up to 12 culture available from specialists and maybe 4-8 more from Great Works, but I'm not sure how much the AI prioritizes them. Beyond that, you have the Tradition/Honour openers, +1/city from Liberty, a few pantheons and... city-states. A major source of culture for the human player who monopolizes them, not so much for the AI. Culture does start to ramp up in the Renaissance but it's fairly low early on, enough that 20 tourism together with the open borders/shared religion/trade route multipliers is competitive. Civs that don't open with Tradition get steamrolled; those that do make fine targets for Great Musicians.

I like this thought, but how do you get enough diplomats to negotiate with them all? You only get one in the Renaissance.

Rotate the diplomat through AI capitals as fast as you can. It takes 1 turn to move and 5 turns to settle in, after which you can conduct negotiations and move on to the next target. The first Congress doesn't meet for 30 turns after the resolutions are submitted, so you can buy the votes of 4 civs, maybe 5. On a standard-sized map with 7 opponents, your vote plus 4 others is an absolute majority.

Note that if you founded the Congress, you get 1 extra vote, and need to secure just 3 more. If you founded the Congress and converted 2 other civs, you might need to buy only 1 leader's vote. (You should still rotate the diplomat through the capitals of your co-religionists, to confirm that they will be voting the right way.) The important thing is to set this up at the FIRST Congress. Later in the game, civs get more votes based on era, city-state allies, the Forbidden Palace, etc.. But you can still only buy 1 vote per civ, and you have fewer turns to do so.

[T-hawk]

Another game. Nothing particularly epic, but here's a writeup for the folks that like it.

http://dos486.com/civ4/bnw2/

[superjm]

Trade routes really don't work well at all for gold economy games since internal trade routes are nearly always better. Poor balancing on the part of Firaxis there, especially given they were ostensibly a replacement for river/coastal gold. On the same token though, internal trade routes are really good and themselves a massive boon to quick expansion of new cities as you demonstrated, so I think the mechanic justifies itself in that case even if that wasn't what the devs intended.

The best way to do a gold focused economy still seems to be spamming trading posts everywhere. The game's gold multipliers are much better than its production modifiers (I believe you can max out on 133% in your capital, though this requires dipping into Piety) so with all the gold discount policies/Big Ben in place you can argue that a 3g trading post is strictly better than even a 3h mine, though obviously I don't really have any rigorous math to back that up . And don't even start on golden ages...

It's just a shame generating GMs hampers your ability to generate GSs, because the doubled mission gold is really damn good when taken on its own.

[T-hawk]

More: http://dos486.com/civ4/bnw3/

A question: What approach would one take in BNW to actually get into the late-game stuff? Things like the conflicting ideology pressure and actual tourism battles with the late modifiers like airports. It seems you can just reach a victory condition well before any of that really gets going. Or it's that the AIs don't really know how to manage that stuff to get in any meaningful struggles with the human player. Do you have to play on Deity to see this, and just hope you don't get declared and steamrolled in war? Does it happen even on Deity?

The best way to do a gold focused economy still seems to be spamming trading posts everywhere. The game's gold multipliers are much better than its production modifiers (I believe you can max out on 133% in your capital, though this requires dipping into Piety) so with all the gold discount policies/Big Ben in place you can argue that a 3g trading post is strictly better than even a 3h mine.

That's an interesting point - yes perhaps the higher gold multipliers do push trading posts above mines. And the midgame yield boost at Economics is on a better tech path (public schools) than Chemistry/Fertilizer. But the problem is that maxing trading posts requires the Commerce finisher... and Commerce doesn't really work towards any of the win conditions. Science needs Rationalism, culture needs Aesthetics, diplomatic needs Patronage. You can't get enough policies to fill Commerce along with both an ancient growth-curve tree (Tradition/Liberty) and a win-condition tree.

I do want to try a game plan focused on a gold economy, but can't see a clear direction to take it in. Maybe Poland and their free policies could manage it?

[Sullla]

I'm enjoying these reports, thanks for putting them together.

They definitely do not make me want to play Civ5 again.

[Khan]

I'm enjoying these reports, thanks for putting them together.

They definitely do not make me want to play Civ5 again.

I agree. I was about to post similar. Is the base game without any expansions worth a go? I bought it on release and just found it was not to my taste for a strategy game. I appreciate a lot has changed since then though.

[Thoth]

I agree. I was about to post similar. Is the base game without any expansions worth a go? I bought it on release and just found it was not to my taste for a strategy game. I appreciate a lot has changed since then though.

I picked it up on the cheap a few weeks ago. It's ok so long as you turn off as much of the "free" stuff as possible (no goodie huts, no city states, no espionage).