Currently I'm on Prince, random map/medium size (6 civs I believe?), and I've used a variety of civs including Russia, Japan, Siam, Rome, Greece, and Songhai.
I should mention otherwise I do pretty great. I have a shit ton of gold coming in every turn, my people are happy, I'm usually technologically ahead of the AI so I kick their asses if they decide to war with me, etc.
So anything but score and domination victories are evading me.
For science I do everything I possibly can to increase the science output of my cities - use great scientists for academies, build every building I can to increase science, etc etc. And yet by the time 2050 rolls around I'm usually just starting on a spaceship part, if I'm lucky.
Same with cultural. I build as much cultural stuff as I can and usually I'm only 3 trees in by 2050. What do I doooooo
Hmm, that is pretty late. I frequently get my science victories by 1950 at the latest, sometimes even well before 1900.
Based on your description, I suspect you're having one of three problems:
1) Your cities don't have enough food. Science is proportional to population, so you want gigantic cities.
2) You're not using Scientist specialists in your cities.
3) You're not taking Rationalism.
If you want really fast victories, make sure to never, ever, ever chop a Jungle. Even to build a plantation on bananas! You can end up getting 2 Food, 3 Science, 2 Gold from a regular jungle hex and 4 Food, 2 Science from bananas.
If you see a clump of Jungles, settle a city there before the AI can. If you can get it next to a mountain for an Observatory, even better!
Hmm. Usually a good economy kinda goes hand-in-hand with either a science or culture victory. Also I'm surprised that you're staying ahead of the AI tech-wise but not hitting spaceship parts until the end of the game; unless you've really hamstrung all the AI civs there's usually one or two that manage to get to those techs before 2050.
How many cities do you tend to have when going for a science victory, and what pop levels are they at? What's your science/turn generally look like later in the game? Make sure to build cities adjacent to mountains where feasible so you can build observatories, choose social policies that promote pop growth and science (Freedom and Rationalism are a great combo), and assign scientist specialists liberally. And if you do choose to go Freedom, I'd recommend settling Great Scientists up until around turn 200 rather than bulbing techs with them.
For culture, I think the biggest mistake people make is limiting themselves to too few cities; I like to have 5 or 6 personally. If you can get them all settled in really good locations, you should be able to turn them into such powerhouses that they more than compensate for the policy cost increase. And snagging at least a couple of the most important culture wonders really helps.
Maybe you could post a couple of screenshots of your core cities in the late game and people can see if there are any obvious tweaks you could be making.
Oh! And are you playing G&K or vanilla? I still don't have G&K so maybe I shouldn't be trying to give advice - but I know most of this is pretty fundamental stuff that should still apply.
Make sure to build cities adjacent to mountains where feasible so you can build observatories, choose social policies that promote pop growth and science (Freedom and Rationalism are a great combo), and assign scientist specialists liberally. And if you do choose to go Freedom, I'd recommend settling Great Scientists up until around turn 200 rather than bulbing techs with them.
Freedom is great, but I actually tend to go Order. I find that I generally win before I can finish off Freedom, so being able to get the +science from Factories near the top of the tree gives me enough to get by and also helps if I'm still in a random AI war. Which I frequently am, since I play on Immortal.
@minirhyder You may also want to try saving all of your Great Scientists to rush end game techs. Really the only time an academy will out perform a free mid to late game tech is if you can get it out before the the end of the classical era. Otherwise its not uncommon to have 8-14 great scientist milling about your heartland waiting for the tech rush to either stealth bombers or spaceship parts.
I usually pop a few earlier to grab some of the key techs like riflemen or oil, but never more then 3 techs in advance.
So here's one of my latest games with Darius. I had three boosters and another spaceship part done by the time 2050 rolled around.
Late game research usually is around 8 turns for a thing.
And I have Vanilla Civ.
I did not know the bit about the jungles, so I'll certainly do that from now on, thanks!
I unlock the Rationalism tree as soon as I possibly can and explore its entirety as soon as possible, so that can't be it. I use all my great scientists to build an academy to boost my science.
As for food, I build all the buildings that boost food, so if I'm lacking food, how do I get more?
You should probably be only settling a few scientists and saving the rest to rush the more expensive techs.
The only other thing I can think of is that you're not settling new cities fast enough. As long as you can manage the unhappiness, the earlier you get them growing/buidling, the better.
You have great person improvements outside your city radii. You can't work a tile more than 3 hexes from the city, so those aren't doing you any good.
Also, for a science victory you should probably have multiple cities over 30 population by the mid 1900s if not earlier, especially if you're sticking with a relatively small empire (as in your screenshot with 6 cities). Lots of farms, maritime city-states, and the Tradition and Freedom trees (choose the specialist-related policies) are great for population growth. I actually take those Freedom policies before Rationalism, though that might not really be the optimal strategy.
You have great person improvements outside your city radii. You can't work a tile more than 3 hexes from the city, so those aren't doing you any good.
Wow. Did not know that. That should be helpful :P
I should also point out, if you hadn't already noticed, that you have to actually have a citizen assigned to work a tile to get any yield from it even if it is within the three-hex radius. Unworked tiles don't do anything for you. You should visit your city screens and open up the Citizen Management panel in the top-right if you haven't been doing that yet. Even if you don't decide to do any micromanagement of citizen assignments yourself, you should be familiar with the details of how that works, and how the different focuses you can select will affect how they get automatically assigned.
What does city growth depend on? Just lots of food? Or is there more to it?
Well, different policies, wonders, "We Love the King Day," etc. will affect how fast a city grows, but only through bonuses to how quickly a food surplus will result in new population (or by providing a flat food bonus). The foundation of your city growth will always be raw food intake. In general I aim to have between 20 and 30 net surplus food per city in the late game, though I tend to prefer widely-spaced large cities over smaller, closely-packed ones. Even then that might be overkill, I dunno.
For reference, I don't consider myself to be a master at this game since I'm satisfied to stick with Prince difficulty, but I do pretty consistently get tech, culture, and diplomatic victories somewhere between 1900 and 2000. So my advice might not be the absolute best, but it's worked well enough for me.
I had bought copies of Civ 5 for my parents during the Steam summer sale and finally got them to make Steam accounts. So I was starting to investigate GMR (which I hadn't tried) when I realized I had never touched the basic multiplayer before.
Looked at the Hot Seat option, didn't know what it was and looked it up. Oh...this is much easier and I only would have had to buy only one copy.
So, I was watching a let's play of Civ IV earlier and it inspired me to go back to it.
Then Shaka rolled his gigantic stack of doom directly into my capital and one-shotted it--and then I remembered one of the many reasons I prefer Civ V.
Sorry about the delay in GMR. I have moved to a new country and apparently no one speaks English here so it a mess trying to get internet set up at my house. Managed to get a mobile internet for now so let's hope the AI hasn't scrapped all my grand plans for world domination.
I know I probably sound a bit whiny and impatient, but is there a reason that Vanilla PA Civ for Classy Gents has stalled? Is there a bug or problem with the turn? In general I have no problem waiting a few days for a turn, but when vacation mode exists, waiting more than a week seems a bit much.
Anyone using any cool mods on this game? I'm not hugely interested in drastic conversion mods because they usually take the game in a different direction to the one I have subscribed to,
However - some are pretty cool. I use:
- Faster aircraft animations, because fuck that shit
- City Limits and Commander Influence, which display those respective areas on the map (Commander influence is much, much bigger than I thought!)
- PerfectWorld3, which is this cool mod (link) best summed by its blurb:
"This map script uses various manipulations of Perlin noise to create landforms, and generates climate based on a simplified model of geostrophic and monsoon wind patterns. Rivers are generated along accurate drainage paths governed by the elevation map used to create the landforms."
Any other good ones out there?
Flippy_D on
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ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
I know I probably sound a bit whiny and impatient, but is there a reason that Vanilla PA Civ for Classy Gents has stalled? Is there a bug or problem with the turn? In general I have no problem waiting a few days for a turn, but when vacation mode exists, waiting more than a week seems a bit much.
The only problem is me, I've been pretty busy lately and haven't played my turns
I'll switch the game to either vacation mode or stick a turn timer on it so this won't happen again.
I swear, being back in college is really eating into my free time.
One thing the game has taught me is that I am doing early game strategy completely wrong! I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up getting steamrolled later on, but that's alright.
Does it seem like to anyone else that every once in a while, perhaps related to a patch, the turn timer on our GMR games gets reset to default aka off?
I had some trouble downloading the save today, so I restarted my client. The save I just downloaded is from yesterday; I already played through this turn. I'm just doing everything the exact same again; figured I'd give a heads up for whomever's up next that things seem to have reverted back one.
If everyone except one person is in vacation mode or gets skipped it won't progress the turn. That could have happened?
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
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ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
A long long time ago, I asked to set up a GMR game. I've been very very busy for the last couple of months, but I have just begun that game. According to GMR, the players in that game are: Myself, Richard, Wolvie, Kafka and Bevilr (may not necessarily be in the correct order). There was mention of making it a naval map, so to strike a compromise, I made it a map with a massive lake in the middle. It's a flat map so you can't cross the edge of it, but naval units should pretty much be able to meet everyone else.
I want to apologize for the delay in getting this game set up. I've been pretty busy lately, but even that's not enough of an excuse.
Regardless, the game has begun so enjoy! I hope I set everything up correctly..
Steam/Origin: Shimshai
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ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
Right, two people have already quit the game I just set up so I think we can just scrap that one completely.
I'm happy to set up another one though, or have somebody else do it.
Posts
I should mention otherwise I do pretty great. I have a shit ton of gold coming in every turn, my people are happy, I'm usually technologically ahead of the AI so I kick their asses if they decide to war with me, etc.
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Hmm, that is pretty late. I frequently get my science victories by 1950 at the latest, sometimes even well before 1900.
Based on your description, I suspect you're having one of three problems:
1) Your cities don't have enough food. Science is proportional to population, so you want gigantic cities.
2) You're not using Scientist specialists in your cities.
3) You're not taking Rationalism.
If you want really fast victories, make sure to never, ever, ever chop a Jungle. Even to build a plantation on bananas! You can end up getting 2 Food, 3 Science, 2 Gold from a regular jungle hex and 4 Food, 2 Science from bananas.
If you see a clump of Jungles, settle a city there before the AI can. If you can get it next to a mountain for an Observatory, even better!
1) Generate as many Great Artists as you can. Settle the first 5-10, then start using them for a perpetual Golden Age.
2) Use Great Engineers to rush critical wonders, like Sydney Opera House.
3) Never settle more than 5 cities.
4) Start a religion and build Cathedrals.
How many cities do you tend to have when going for a science victory, and what pop levels are they at? What's your science/turn generally look like later in the game? Make sure to build cities adjacent to mountains where feasible so you can build observatories, choose social policies that promote pop growth and science (Freedom and Rationalism are a great combo), and assign scientist specialists liberally. And if you do choose to go Freedom, I'd recommend settling Great Scientists up until around turn 200 rather than bulbing techs with them.
For culture, I think the biggest mistake people make is limiting themselves to too few cities; I like to have 5 or 6 personally. If you can get them all settled in really good locations, you should be able to turn them into such powerhouses that they more than compensate for the policy cost increase. And snagging at least a couple of the most important culture wonders really helps.
Maybe you could post a couple of screenshots of your core cities in the late game and people can see if there are any obvious tweaks you could be making.
Oh! And are you playing G&K or vanilla? I still don't have G&K so maybe I shouldn't be trying to give advice - but I know most of this is pretty fundamental stuff that should still apply.
Freedom is great, but I actually tend to go Order. I find that I generally win before I can finish off Freedom, so being able to get the +science from Factories near the top of the tree gives me enough to get by and also helps if I'm still in a random AI war. Which I frequently am, since I play on Immortal.
I usually pop a few earlier to grab some of the key techs like riflemen or oil, but never more then 3 techs in advance.
Late game research usually is around 8 turns for a thing.
And I have Vanilla Civ.
I did not know the bit about the jungles, so I'll certainly do that from now on, thanks!
I unlock the Rationalism tree as soon as I possibly can and explore its entirety as soon as possible, so that can't be it. I use all my great scientists to build an academy to boost my science.
As for food, I build all the buildings that boost food, so if I'm lacking food, how do I get more?
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The only other thing I can think of is that you're not settling new cities fast enough. As long as you can manage the unhappiness, the earlier you get them growing/buidling, the better.
Also, for a science victory you should probably have multiple cities over 30 population by the mid 1900s if not earlier, especially if you're sticking with a relatively small empire (as in your screenshot with 6 cities). Lots of farms, maritime city-states, and the Tradition and Freedom trees (choose the specialist-related policies) are great for population growth. I actually take those Freedom policies before Rationalism, though that might not really be the optimal strategy.
Wow. Did not know that. That should be helpful :P
What does city growth depend on? Just lots of food? Or is there more to it?
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Are you manually setting your workers or letting them be placed automatically?
I should also point out, if you hadn't already noticed, that you have to actually have a citizen assigned to work a tile to get any yield from it even if it is within the three-hex radius. Unworked tiles don't do anything for you. You should visit your city screens and open up the Citizen Management panel in the top-right if you haven't been doing that yet. Even if you don't decide to do any micromanagement of citizen assignments yourself, you should be familiar with the details of how that works, and how the different focuses you can select will affect how they get automatically assigned.
Well, different policies, wonders, "We Love the King Day," etc. will affect how fast a city grows, but only through bonuses to how quickly a food surplus will result in new population (or by providing a flat food bonus). The foundation of your city growth will always be raw food intake. In general I aim to have between 20 and 30 net surplus food per city in the late game, though I tend to prefer widely-spaced large cities over smaller, closely-packed ones. Even then that might be overkill, I dunno.
For reference, I don't consider myself to be a master at this game since I'm satisfied to stick with Prince difficulty, but I do pretty consistently get tech, culture, and diplomatic victories somewhere between 1900 and 2000. So my advice might not be the absolute best, but it's worked well enough for me.
The turns are coming in real slow these days, did we all get really busy?
Yes, sorry. I've put vacation mode on now. Not sure when my situation will change.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198006524737
Aaaaand I didn't know about vacation mode. Oops.
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Looked at the Hot Seat option, didn't know what it was and looked it up. Oh...this is much easier and I only would have had to buy only one copy.
I'm going to try to get my turns in when I can, hopefully without having any more turns skipped, though I make no promises.
On that note, taking my turn is much faster on my new PC. Since the game loads in under 30s now.
If you have G&K i think @shimshai is still looking for a 6th for one of our games.
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
Haha oh man, I completely forgot about setting that one up! Yeah I should really sort that out soon.
Then Shaka rolled his gigantic stack of doom directly into my capital and one-shotted it--and then I remembered one of the many reasons I prefer Civ V.
Sorry for the hold up, bros
BF3 Battlelog | Twitter | World of Warships | World of Tanks | Wishlist
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
However - some are pretty cool. I use:
- Faster aircraft animations, because fuck that shit
- City Limits and Commander Influence, which display those respective areas on the map (Commander influence is much, much bigger than I thought!)
- PerfectWorld3, which is this cool mod (link) best summed by its blurb:
Any other good ones out there?
The only problem is me, I've been pretty busy lately and haven't played my turns
I'll switch the game to either vacation mode or stick a turn timer on it so this won't happen again.
I swear, being back in college is really eating into my free time.
I had some trouble downloading the save today, so I restarted my client. The save I just downloaded is from yesterday; I already played through this turn. I'm just doing everything the exact same again; figured I'd give a heads up for whomever's up next that things seem to have reverted back one.
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
I want to apologize for the delay in getting this game set up. I've been pretty busy lately, but even that's not enough of an excuse.
Regardless, the game has begun so enjoy! I hope I set everything up correctly..
I'm happy to set up another one though, or have somebody else do it.