Civ 5: GMR part 4 - Needs salt!

[The_Snark]

The tourism screen should update itself after the concert tour, so I can look at how much strong the musician was, yeah. I don't know if the game will officially register the change from Popular to Influential before the end of turn, but I can see whether I've hit 100%, at least.

I am keeping spare saves, and plan on more retrospectives when I find time.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I disagree that Carthage deserves to win more just because I didn't start this game.

I'm not saying you don't deserve to win, just that you wouldn't be in the position you are now if I had dropped out rather than Sartain and you'd picked up Persia with no science optimisation.

As a cover player I have to deal with the AI ****ing up for X amount of turns, having to cancel movement orders forcibly,

I've lost two armies to the AI taking my turn which basically lost me the game, so this is hardly a cover player specific complaint.

[Illven]

Well in any case I won.

India didn't even nuke me once? Any reason for that?

Pictures up in a moment.









I will be surrendering from this game, to represent all the Great Mayan leaders fleeing into space.

Feel free to see who wins on this world.

[OrcusMcP]

Congrats on the win! Glad we actually got to a victory condition this time.

[Dhavaer]

So its over then?

[Illven]

Congrats on the win! Glad we actually got to a victory condition this time.

Thanks.

Now I get to read all the spectator posts

So its over then?

A couple of people suggested playing on to see who wins on this world.

[OrcusMcP]

I've dropped out, as it was never gonna be me who wins, and I have other things I need to focus on anyway.

[OrcusMcP]

Eh, I figure I should give a little retrospective. I owe you all that much. :small wink:

Spoiler: Read!

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So, I think what doomed my chances from the start was that all the players were too spread out. The only other player near me was Rome, and even then it took us building towards each other and having conflict before we got trading going. India and Byzantium likewise were too far to take advantage of my bonuses, and there weren't enough citystate clusters in my vicinity to exploit either.

So, as a trading civ I was more or less alone for the entire game. Not a good place to be. Compounded on that was my general dearth of resources. I had a monopoly on silk, but that was it. Little iron, not many sea resources, almost no food, lots of desert. The fact that I somehow managed to end up with a score in the top 3 is achievement enough for me.

I might have still been competitive for victory if I had managed to get a religion early enough off the back of Desert Folklore, but Maya scooped that pantheon. And honestly, screw you Maya for taking that. You lived in mostly jungle and you took the only pantheon that might have made me somewhat decent? Oh well, maybe I can still scoop up Petra and OH WAIT ROME IS INVADING ME AND THEN MAYA SCOOPED PETRA!!!!

The rest of the game was me slowly spreading back out and fighting happiness problems. India asked if I'd be interested in a blaze of glory ending and I said SURE! I wanted a chance to beat down on Maya for kneecapping me into obscurity.

The war with Byzantium went too slow on my end, and that was mostly because my science was always behind. Then Carthage ruined my chances to have an air base in range of Maya by taking Byzantium's western cities. Oh well.

My industrial resources (coal and oil) were LEGION and if I'd had a chance to be further ahead in tech, I could've been a major worry. As it was, I spent most of my time treading water. I made crap tons of money, but it all went towards buying happiness buildings, city states and upgrading units.

I think, if I want to be in a GMR game in the future, it needs to have one or two more players than recommended for the map size. Contested borders are the seeds of conflict, after all. We all had too much room and so could become our own little islands, unable to affect each other.

[banthesun]

I opened my borders to Carthage, so they can see if they had enough tourism. With you two already having nuked each other, and Persia and China having had it all out, I sincerely doubt there'd be enough forces to stop my military even if the entire western hemisphere united against me, so there's not much point in continuing there.

Don't know why you were expecting nukes, Illven, my entire airforce is stuck at Marble Wharf for at least another 5 turns or so. You're a long way away from my territory! I only got nukes to try and get you and Carthage to ban them, anyway!

I took some screenshots of the last turn, so I'll have a final update done when I get a chance!

[Illven]

@Orcus. Actually we were too small for this game, we had 8 players, large is usually ten.

I opened my borders to Carthage, so they can see if they had enough tourism. With you two already having nuked each other, and Persia and China having had it all out, I sincerely doubt there'd be enough forces to stop my military even if the entire western hemisphere united against me, so there's not much point in continuing there.

Don't know why you were expecting nukes, Illven, my entire airforce is stuck at Marble Wharf for at least another 5 turns or so. You're a long way away from my territory! I only got nukes to try and get you and Carthage to ban them, anyway!

I took some screenshots of the last turn, so I'll have a final update done when I get a chance!

Because.... I forgot you can check airforces in units and cities you don't own, and assumed that was what the nuclear sub was for.

[Closet_Skeleton]

With you two already having nuked each other, and Persia and China having had it all out,

My army has never been stronger, actually. I basically didn't lose a single unit in my last offensive.

If any of my previous ones had gone like that I'd have been a lot further ahead, but I massively over-estimated composite bowmen several thousand years ago. If I'd just ignored my unique unit completely I'd have done better, but that's Civ5's balance for you.

My main mistake this game was not using my great engineer for Chitzen Itza due to already being 25% of the way to finishing it.

I also made the mistake of trying to play wide when my territory didn't really allow it (tundra and desert in my natural expansion room, too much ivory and no resource variety) and I founded cities too slowly at the beginning so most of my country was more of a drain on resources than beneficial.

My other main mistake was going for Patronage and then not exploring enough to actually know where all the city states were. Honour would have been a much better choice. Carthage was the only other player to take patronage and I couldn't compete with their wealth.

My no 1 best alternate strategy would have been sending a settler up to Kilmanjaro before China could, but that would have been very risky so I didn't focus on it and failed.

[The_Snark]

It's giving me Orcus's turn for some reason. Reverted to the last player (now India before the victory, hah), but I'm not really interested in playing out more than this last turn. I'm pretty sure India's higher manufacturing would win in a long war of attrition, although I still have a significant nuclear arsenal and could/would have used that to destroy invading armies.

I did pretty well this run, I think. My starting location was an inland sea, which let me get use out of my unique ability but could have crippled my ability to trade. I managed to evade that by founding a canal city, but then it turned out I was hemmed into the southern quarter of the ocean by ice, so the only civs I could access by sea were Persia and Morocco. Not a huge setback, but a setback nevertheless.

My economy ended up very dependent on Morocco, as a result; for most of the game I had several routes headed for his capital, accounting for more than half my income. Not a position I like, but Morocco's coastal cities were vulnerable to naval retaliation if I needed to, and as it happened Orcus and I never fought. Crisis avoided.

My big mistake, I think, was not settling on a victory strategy earlier. I had initially been aiming for a diplomatic victory, which is why I went for Patronage and a strong economy. And this worked to a degree, I was the dominant power in the World Congress... but not dominant enough to be World Leader, and honestly I don't think there was anything I could have done to change that. I calculated at one point that I might be able to scrape together enough votes, if I rushed Globalization and sent diplomats to everybody and bribed another couple city-states... but only if the World Congress entered the Information Era (giving a significant boost to the number of votes my city-state allies offered). Which wasn't happening anytime soon; India, the Mayans and I were there, but I don't think anyone else had even gotten to the Atomic Era yet. The WC never did reach the Information Era. So... that was that. Eventually I would have accumulated enough delegates via getting the most votes in the World Leader elections, but that would have taken a long time, and it would've been easy for other people to team up on me to slow or halt my progress. Or, you know, just destroy me. Whichever.

I can't really think of anything I could have done to make diplomatic victory more plausible. Order doesn't offer a tier-3 tenet aimed at diplomacy, but I don't think the Freedom or Autocracy ones would have helped. I was allied to all the nearby city-states; it was the little corner city-states like Milan that I lacked influence with. I suppose I could have tried to convince another player to help me, but "help me win the game" seemed like a tough sell.

(Patronage still paid for itself, though. That +2 Happiness from gifted luxuries was what kept my happiness so high through the late game, and there were all sorts of other miscellaneous perks too.)

My backup strategy was science; it's usually a pretty safe option (banthesun outlined why) as long as you have the tech for it, and I was in the lead when we hit the Industrial Era. India and the Mayans both overtook me a little later; I was never worse than middle-of-the-road, but it was pretty clear a while ago that I wouldn't be able to beat either one to a science victory. Those late-game techs take a while to research.

I hardly ever go for domination victory - it's always a slog against the AI, and I wasn't about to put that much faith in my ability to beat other humans. I like cultural victory, but my experience with the AI is that it takes a looong time to overcome those last few holdouts, so I didn't plan on it. At some point, I noticed that I'd ended up with ~50 tourism while nobody else had more than 20, and figured I'd capitalize on that, keep everyone else. That... kind of snowballed; I proposed and won the International Games, I scoured the surrounding areas with archaeologists, and kept that lead. Then I got my level 3 ideological tenet, took a look at the options and went... you know, even if I go for a science victory, I'm not going to be building spaceship parts for a long time.

So I took Dictatorship of the Proletariat, researched the Internet instead of Globalization, and grabbed hotels and airports everywhere. I had a pretty strong cultural game, I think - and Manufacturing had accumulated a lot of Great Work-storing wonders, so it was the perfect place to build a National Visitor Center. Plenty of landmarks, plenty of diplomatic boosts to culture and tourism. Byzantium beat me to the Eiffel Tower, but there wasn't much I could have done about that.

The first real mistake I made was not investing in Aesthetics earlier: I didn't finish it until the very end of the game (just in time to buy a Great Musician), which means I didn't get much benefit from doubled theming bonuses or the 40% trade route/open borders boost. In retrospect, I should have done that before buying more Order tenets (I ended up with 9). The second was not making more of an attempt to repeal Science Funding and replace it with Arts Funding - I meant to, but every time I got to make a proposal there was something more important-seeming than a 25% boost to Great Writers/Artists/Musicians. Looking at how the game ended, though, that could have made a critical difference, slowing the Mayan's science and production while boosting my tourism. Ah well; hindsight.

Byzantium declaring war on me seemed like a serious setback at the time, but I pretty quickly realized that I could turn it into an advantage - if Byzantium were wiped out, I wouldn't have to worry about their culture, and they were (at the time) the most serious obstacle. The Mayans actually gave them a city in order to keep them alive in the end, but it didn't end up mattering - what did me in was India's simultaneous declaration of war and completion of the Great Firewall. I was 2-3 turns away from Influential before that happened; afterwards, my influence was falling rather than rising. If it had just been the Great Firewall, I think I would have still made it to Influential with the bonuses from a diplomat, open borders and trade routes; it would've taken longer without the massive Internet boost, but I did manage to reverse the trend from falling to rising by sending a trade route last turn. (Also, the borders would have been open to my Great Musician.) If it had just been war, that would have gotten rid of all my miscellaneous bonuses to tourism, but I would still have The Internet and I'm pretty sure that would have been enough on its own.

I had no idea the Great Firewall was under construction, either; wherever it was, it wasn't India's capital.

So... I suppose nuking Golden Valley was also a critical mistake, although I had no way of knowing that in advance - India was a warlike civ at the time and I wasn't really expecting them to take particular exception to nuclear bombardment. On the other hand, if I hadn't been slightly cavalier with my use of nuclear weapons I would have lost Manufacturing to the Mayan's surprise attack, so. (More on that later - I have old save files of the war for screenshot purposes.)

Anyway. I had fun, and I figure it was a pretty good run for my first multiplayer game. Now, off to go back and look at all the secret missives and spectator updates!

[banthesun]

Because.... I forgot you can check airforces in units and cities you don't own, and assumed that was what the nuclear sub was for.

Nah, it was just in port for repairs when I got the tech, and the attack/movement bonus was too good to pass up.

I had no idea the Great Firewall was under construction, either; wherever it was, it wasn't India's capital.

That's 'cause it wasn't. I had a surplus of Great Engineers towards the end of the game, so I one-turned every wonder I had an interest in.

And now, the wrap up!

Spoiler: Plenty of images

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First of all, the core of my empire, tall cities as far as the eye can see. The jungles to the south were a good source of science and food for most of the game.


Rome. Despite their recent history under my rulership, their cities hadn't grown quite as large as my core cities. The river running through their territory allowed me to build powerful hydro plants, though, creating great bonuses throughout the land.


Byzantium. The last of the fires were dying out across the land, but they had yet to be properly intergrated into my empire. A fine source of cultural relics though!






All the wonders under my control, spread across the empire.


The power to construct Giant Death Robots grew near. Surely our dominance of the world was secured!



Cultural strength helped our empire prosper, especially all those bonuses for specialists. It seems I had some distaste for finishing off policy trees though.

And finally, the greatest wonder of them all.

Spoiler

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A mighty military force, ready to sweep away all resistance!

[Driderman]

Congratulations on a well-deserved victory to ME! And Ilven, I guess

[Illven]

Full write up later, but for what's it's worth, getting Arts funding out later then my hubble would not have effected the game possibly at all, or only really slightly.

I had so much faith in the end, that I just rush brought 3 great scientists.

[Illven]

So full write up time.

I came in sometime around the late Renaissance/Industrial era. Driderman gave me a wonderful liberty start with the fountain of youth, which is good, because that's the first time I've gone liberty in recent memory.

I managed to not screw up too badly, but I did screw up. One really minor one, was buying the 3 great scientist with faith, before I needed them. There was no reason to pay for Unit maintenance costs when I didn't need too. I could have used the 3 I already had, to start the great bulb then brought the scientists as I used them. (For the other players. The great bulb is what I call when I used the 6 great scientist I had accumulated, to just shoot ahead in tech.)

A much more massive screw up, was taking Skyscrapers as my ideology tenet. I didn't buy enough buildings to make it matter, and happiness issue haunted me throughout the late stage of the game, not helped by Carthage, my last policy ended up being Young Pioneers. I had managed to scrape together about 12-15 points of happiness from starving my non-spaceship building cities, and giving Uxmal to Byzantium. (It was definitely a mix of both keeping Byzantine in the game, and getting some happiness from it.) Once I took Young pioneers, my happiness shot up to about 30. I pretty much had no problem once that happened.

Surprisingly, bribing Byzantium to attack Carthage paid off amazingly. (And I'm so happy Persia either didn't notice, or didn't rat me out, and that Carthage didn't notice, Theodora's uranium. Although, I think she would have needed to try to make a peace deal to see Theodora's strategic resources), it led to a chain of events that made India DoW Carthage, stopping Carthage from achieving cultural victory, and Carthage taking Theodora's cities that were closest to me, and giving me peace prevented India or Morocco from air blasting me.

I do think that without India deploying atomic weapons or Xcom squads, or throwing the game to Carthage, I had at least 2 more turns to complete the space ship part before India could start effectively zoning my last part.

[The_Snark]

Surprisingly, bribing Byzantium to attack Carthage paid off amazingly. (And I'm so happy Persia either didn't notice, or didn't rat me out, and that Carthage didn't notice, Theodora's uranium. Although, I think she would have needed to try to make a peace deal to see Theodora's strategic resources)

Heh. I'd figured that was you, since India was at war with them at the time... The AI is certainly capable of making a boneheaded move like opening a 3rd front when they're already losing on the other two, but when they refused to consider negotiating even as their central cities were falling, it became pretty clear there was a treaty involved somewhere.

I did actually consider giving Ironside and/or Golden Valley to India or Morocco, since I didn't have much use for them, but I don't think it would've mattered - by the time I took them it was just too late. Like you said, only X-COMs or a large nuclear arsenal would have stopped you.

Anyway, the promised screenshot:



CURSES!

So yeah, reached Influential with everybody right after the Mayans launched their ship. (Byzantium is only at 102%, but they were at 99.7% before.) The Great Musician produced 2010 tourism, for the curious.

Just for fun:



Despite being bathed in radioactive fallout, Manufacturing remains the world's most popular tourist destination by an order of magnitude. Come see our world-famous museums! Enjoy our 5-star hotels and restaurants! Marvel at our scenic glowing hillsides!

Also:



Huh. And I thought I was reliable.

[Driderman]

So full write up time.

I came in sometime around the late Renaissance/Industrial era. Driderman gave me a wonderful liberty start with the fountain of youth, which is good, because that's the first time I've gone liberty in recent memory.

I managed to not screw up too badly, but I did screw up. One really minor one, was buying the 3 great scientist with faith, before I needed them. There was no reason to pay for Unit maintenance costs when I didn't need too. I could have used the 3 I already had, to start the great bulb then brought the scientists as I used them. (For the other players. The great bulb is what I call when I used the 6 great scientist I had accumulated, to just shoot ahead in tech.)

A much more massive screw up, was taking Skyscrapers as my ideology tenet. I didn't buy enough buildings to make it matter, and happiness issue haunted me throughout the late stage of the game, not helped by Carthage, my last policy ended up being Young Pioneers. I had managed to scrape together about 12-15 points of happiness from starving my non-spaceship building cities, and giving Uxmal to Byzantium. (It was definitely a mix of both keeping Byzantine in the game, and getting some happiness from it.) Once I took Young pioneers, my happiness shot up to about 30. I pretty much had no problem once that happened.

Surprisingly, bribing Byzantium to attack Carthage paid off amazingly. (And I'm so happy Persia either didn't notice, or didn't rat me out, and that Carthage didn't notice, Theodora's uranium. Although, I think she would have needed to try to make a peace deal to see Theodora's strategic resources), it led to a chain of events that made India DoW Carthage, stopping Carthage from achieving cultural victory, and Carthage taking Theodora's cities that were closest to me, and giving me peace prevented India or Morocco from air blasting me.

I do think that without India deploying atomic weapons or Xcom squads, or throwing the game to Carthage, I had at least 2 more turns to complete the space ship part before India could start effectively zoning my last part.

I very rarely go Liberty myself since it's somewhat more tricky than Tradition to pull off properly, but with the large map and the Fountain of Youth, it was too interesting a scenario to pass up. Going for a wide civilization as the Mayans was probably an odd choice but it seemed to turn out pretty well.

[Illven]

So the glitch is in effect. Good to know.

Would explain why Closet skeleton's tourism bombs in 1 were less effective then he thought.

[Closet_Skeleton]

(And I'm so happy Persia either didn't notice, or didn't rat me out, and that Carthage didn't notice, Theodora's uranium.

I didn't even have Carthage fully explored and had literally none of Byzantium explored. Anything outside of China was basically irrelevant to me.

Would explain why Closet skeleton's tourism bombs in 1 were less effective then he thought.

That was just because player controlled France has THAT much culture to get through.

I never even looked at the numbers on my musicians because I don't know what they actually mean apart from that they were as big as I could possibly make them.

Though I was going for spaceship victory from the start in that game, I just ended up with top tourism.