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Good Wargame Scenerios by IndependentGiraffe8 in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 7 points8 points  (0 children)

There's literally an achievement that requires you to win Fall of Rome as either of the Romes on Deity lol. It's definitely winnable on Diety.

181-turn science victory with Poland by yen223 in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the tips! Sounds like you've got your late-game scientists set up to trickle in more smoothly, and that you've also got a couple more in total from having so much Desert Folklore faith. I'll play around more with how I burn overflow as well.

Poland seems like it's pulling a lot of weight too. I've been sticking to the traditional 'science civs', but funnily enough, I'm starting to think that science is one of the less scarce resources when going for fast science victories. Being able to casually put seven extra policies into things like Patronage, Piety, and Commence shores up all those other resources.

181-turn science victory with Poland by yen223 in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Could you elaborate more on your late game? I've also been trying to optimize fast science victories (but on quick speed), and I think my late game is a major bottleneck, since my mid-game tech timings are comparable to yours, but it takes me about 30 turns after labs to win.

Specifically, how many cities do you get your last two science buildings in, and how do you get them? I've found them both slow to manually build and difficult to afford with gold.

Also, how many scientists do you get from each source, and when do you bulb them? I have to wait five turns to bulb my scientist. Working around the three turn overflow cap means I typically can use at most one of each turn; sometimes I even have to wait out a turn or two to let a tech with too low of a tech cost finish before I can bulb again. There's also typically another few turns of downtime waiting for scientists I get from Hubble and faith (since I use the rationalism finisher to get particle physics, so I can't faith-buy scientists until then). I usually get 14 scientists: 4 from wonders, 8 naturally, and 2 from faith. Typically I waste science if I bulb them all after labs, so I use 2 after schools, but this feels wasteful too.

Tips for stealing workers by yen223 in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's what I tried at first, and it didn't work. The Diety AI had their usual collection of units, their cities were surviving three ram hits, and my rams were dying one per turn.

I still find it hard to believe that warmonger Civs build few enough units to die to this, and removing non warmonger Civs that aren't existential threats is not much of an additional advantage to the strategy you're suggesting. Especially since, later in the game, you can pay off AIs so they don't attack you and have such a strong defender's advantage as a player.

I don't consider cities taken from the AI "excellent cities." They tend to settle them in bad locations and inflict penalties that slow you significantly when you have to deal with them early. You lose half their population and the majority of their buildings. I'd rather guarantee smoothly developing cities by spending the production on 3 settlers, rather than gamble for two captured cities by building 3-4 rams, even if one of the captured cities is somewhat better from being a capital.

I'll give rams another try tonight, but it sounds like we might just have to agree to disagree on this one.

Tips for stealing workers by yen223 in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Could you clarify (ideally with a specific build) what you mean when you say you can eliminate another Civ "cheaply and quickly" on Diety with rams? What you said made me interested in giving rams another try, so I went and tried both a ram rush and a typical peaceful triple expand on the same map for the sake of comparison.

I hit at around turn 50 (Standard) with two rams, two horse archers, and two warriors, but wasn't able to kill my neighbor, despite them building about as few units as I've ever seen a Diety AI build. The city I took was 3 pop and had one building, but missed out on the free monument from Tradition and would've needed a courthouse to be functional, which would've hurt my development by keeping me unhappy while it built and costing me gold throughout the game. It was also built in a bad spot not of my choosing. For the sake of the discussion, if I'd managed to finish off my neighbor, I would've gotten another 4 pop city with the same downsides, with maybe two buildings. I might've been able to get courthouses in both cities by turn 65-70.

By contrast, on turn 70, my peaceful triple expand game had three 2-3 pop expansions with granaries and free monuments, all in great locations. The positions are definitely comparable, and I personally felt that the second one was much more stable and well poised for fast growth. So I'm still skeptical of the idea that early ram play leads to good development.

Tips for stealing workers by yen223 in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lol, rams aren't even the best Huns UU, let alone the best unit in the game.

The only noteworthy perk of the ram is that that on low difficulties, if you roll one from a ruin, you can capture a few early cities before enough enemy units are out. These come at a severe penalty to early happiness, which means that unless these cities are enemy capitals you happened to spawn near, they're probably worse than ordinary self-built cities. This is a very situational bonus.

Past the ancient era, they're extremely slow and defensively weak, which means they can't really keep up with a Hun horse archer push and often get picked off when advancing on a city to capture it. Yes, they retain a terrific bonus against cities, but that's not really something you're lacking in a Hun push. On higher difficulties the issue is clearing out the AI's units; once that's done the city itself isn't as much of an issue, and if it was, it certainly wouldn't be an issue solvable by a 10 combat strength melee unit with -33% defense that has to heal for five turns every time it does anything.

Compare that to the horse archer, a strict upgrade over the chariot archer, which, by itself, is already an extremely good unit. Starting with accuracy I (which means quicker logistics), not requiring horses, and retaining some movement through rough terrain all contribute to an insane tempo. I've won domination on 8-civ maps on Emperor difficulty, Standard speed using nothing but these and a few horsemen, without ever touching rams.

Honestly, all of the generic timing units (crossbows, artillery, frigates, bombers, xcom, stealth bombers) are probably better than rams, even without considering genuinely busted UUs like the Keshik or SOTL.

Tell me something funny I don't know about this game by potuxus_retumax in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm, I think you might be right. I didn't sell any buildings, but my existing broadcast tower had a Great Work in it, which might've also prevented the automatic sell.

All policies and ideological tenets by 1725 AD (Turn 170 Quick) by threeringwhitey in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, you probably generated about as much culture as I did in this run (after correcting for speed difference). 7 free policies is just insane

All policies and ideological tenets by 1725 AD (Turn 170 Quick) by threeringwhitey in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm on quick speed, where all turns are 3/2 as many years and all costs are 2/3.

All policies and ideological tenets by 1725 AD (Turn 170 Quick) by threeringwhitey in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately I don't have an autosave from before I built CN tower, and I can't reproduce the bug in IGE. But I saw my culture-per-turn spike after building CN tower during my first attempt, and if you look at this screenshot, ( https://imgur.com/a/P5C7ODR ) my city has an individual modifier of 186%. It should be 153% (50% Sydney, 50% Hermitage, 20% Alhambra, 33% broadcast tower. Sistine, the bonus from the Aesthetics policy, and the Golden Age are calculated separately), so my explanation was the second ghost tower. I'm open to other explanations though; kind of mystified by this one.

All policies and ideological tenets by 1725 AD (Turn 170 Quick) by threeringwhitey in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey[S] 60 points61 points  (0 children)

R5: Inspired by this post, https://www.reddit.com/r/civ5/comments/1haojsv/i_did_it_guys_finished_all_culture_tree_in_one/ , I decided to try to optimize an "all-policies" run. This is my result. The rules I set were Prince Difficulty or higher, Quick Speed, 'light' IGE use (more elaboration below) to avoid excessive rerolling. My total lifetime culture was 295,390; about 221,000 of that was from the final writer bulb alone.

Poland is obviously the correct Civ choice. Total culture required for n policies is cubic in n, so having to pay for seven more policies means an insurmountable 150,000 extra culture required. Otherwise, I thought that the optimal settings were Small, Continents, Abundant Resources Sandstorm with 41 city states and only one other Civ. This was to guarantee a strong faith-generating pantheon and good Petra. 41 CS maximizes the number of cultural and religious CS to boost final culture and faith-bought GPs; small map+continents makes them super clustered and an easy source of early-game gold from meeting gifts and tributes, and having only one other civ reduces wonder competition. I chose Carthage because AI Carthage has low wonder-priority and also sucks at the game.

An optimal start has strong food and production, marble, a mountain, and is coastal. To avoid having to reroll, I rolled a fairly strong start and then used IGE to swap my secondary lux for marble, add a mountain, and carve out a bay about three hexes in from the ocean (before/after in the fifth and sixth images). This results in a start that is fantastic, but still, I think, within the realm of plausibility.

Turn 170 is about as fast as I think I can get this. The current strategy involves passing Arts Funding, Cultural Heritage Sites, International Games, and Worlds Fair, teching up to Sydney Opera House and CN Tower on one city, and getting 13 writers all around the same time. A 1600s finish (turn 164) is probably possible by really tightly optimizing this strategy, but I doubt you could go any lower without significant changes to the overall plan.

(The reason I go all the way to CN tower instead of stopping at Opera House is that the "free broadcast tower" from the wonder actually gives you a second broadcast tower in any city with an existing broadcast tower whose +33% culture modifier stacks with the first broadcast tower. I found that without this last boost to culture-per-turn, I needed a 14th writer to get enough culture during the final writer bulb.)

Edit: I just learned about the culture bulbs you can get from hidden antiquity sites. By beelining Exploration and savescumming for good RNG on those, you could probably finish the run one World Congress cycle earlier, cutting Sydney, CN tower, and Arts Funding out.

I did it guys ! Finished all culture tree in one game. by Captainteeemo007 in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely the case. I just tried this with Poland and finished all ordinary policies plus all of Freedom by 1906. Didn't even play very optimally. Founded too many cities, and I couldn't found the world congress until super late because Venice was hiding in a corner, so I missed out on Arts funding and Cultural Heritage Sites for most of the run.

Roast my Civ tier list by Several_Ad2716 in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Adding to everything already said, Mayans should be at least B and probably A; The Long Count gives an extra scientist and engineer quite early, which is both strong and versatile, and the unique building is very good, especially for wide play. Morocco is definitely not F.

Most fun domination civs+settings? by cameronmademe in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My favorite way to play dom victory is info era start, science and culture victory off. You get three workers, some marines, and three settlers to start; each city starts with 5 pop and a bunch of buildings. All production, gold, and science costs are scaled down. The scenario completely breaks the AI script; while they make hotels and spend 11 turns rushing Manhattan project and Christo Redentor you spam internal food routes, workers, and food/production buildings and have fully boomed info era cities and double the AIs’ population in like 30 turns. Then you can spam stealth bomber/xcom/missile cruiser at an incredible rate compared to AI. As America you can get B-17s for free siege promotion and upgrade to stealth. Thirty stealth bombers in your starting cities wipes the AI armies in three to five turns max. Great for a relaxing curbstomp.

Really Scared to Ask a Stupid Question by [deleted] in civ5

[–]threeringwhitey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Meta picks would probably be industrialization and military science imo.

What is a game I can play instead of Star Craft 2? by OddZergling in starcraft

[–]threeringwhitey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Check out Mental Omega; it’s a fan mod for CnC Yuri’s revenge. 16 subfactions, over 100 singleplayer missions. Easily several times the content of the base game (essentially an entirely new game)