The Escapist Plays: Civilization V (MOAR PLAYERS PLS)

[Bohemian Waltz]

My recommendation: Build a settler. By the time your scouts have the west better mapped out, the timing would be great for finding the ideal spot for a new city.

Keep in mind that a settler stops all city growth and we're 8 turns away from a population increase. Filling those 8 turns with either [(1 mohawk warrior/2 warriors/1 barracks)= 6 turns + (1scout)= 2 turns] = 8 turns. That would allow us to reap the benefits of a size 6 city while we queue up a settler for expansion and halt growth; plus the military units would be valuable in keeping it alive till we can place it somewhere.

That military could then be used to pop that ruin/barb camp and after we capitalize off the culture benefit from Geneva could be used as a force for an invasion that shouldn't be even moderately difficult.

8 turns and we can have a sizable military and what comes with that are the rewards of:
-Experience and gold from killing barbarians.
-Bonus from the ancient ruins.
-City-state bonus for finishing Geneva's mission for a ton extra culture over a few turns.
-Prospect for invading Geneva to not only gain another city with a source of incense, but fulfilling Genoa's mission and gaining their food bonus and making a trade route to the north east easier.
-Adequate protection from barbarian pillaging improvements.
-Sending a note to the AI that we have a sizable military so their programing makes them less likely to want to attack us.
-Protection of settler for expansion farther (west-north/south) plus supplemental scouting.

That far outweighs the benefits from having an extra settler 8 turns faster which would need protection anyways and might easily be murdered in the jungle by barbarians without protection. IMO.

 

[Mr Thin]

Barracks have maintenance too!? Bloody hell, I'll have to start looking up everything in this game.

In that case... if upgrading a Warrior to a Mohawk Warrior will cost 50g or less, do that. Otherwise build Mohawk Warriors.

 

[Bohemian Waltz]

In that case... if upgrading a Warrior to a Mohawk Warrior will cost 50g or less, do that. Otherwise build Mohawk Warriors.

Try more around 145 I think. Though, it might change depending on the difficulty setting. I only made the suggestion because I have a use it or lose it mentality towards gold. It does us no particular use simply sitting there. So we can spend it to rush(buildings/units), upgrade units, or spend it making city-states happy. Otherwise it's sort of just a fancy little number and a vague promise that it may be useful to us in the future.

I like to think of it as Queen Elizabeth taking our useless horses off our hands for a few turns and giving us the opportunity to build a MW at double speed (she gave us 150 gold).

 

[Mr Thin]

In that case... if upgrading a Warrior to a Mohawk Warrior will cost 50g or less, do that. Otherwise build Mohawk Warriors.

Try more around 145 I think. Though, it might change depending on the difficulty setting. I only made the suggestion because I have a use it or lose it mentality towards gold.

You certainly do, that's almost all of it.

Then again, I do have a tendency to hoard in games; I remember finishing Diablo 2 with my storage chest 3/4 full of various sorted gems that I never sold or used.

I shall stand by my original limit though. I remember kicking myself in Civ IV when emergencies came along and I couldn't pay my way out of them; I don't want that to happen here.

 

[Bohemian Waltz]

In that case... if upgrading a Warrior to a Mohawk Warrior will cost 50g or less, do that. Otherwise build Mohawk Warriors.

Try more around 145 I think. Though, it might change depending on the difficulty setting. I only made the suggestion because I have a use it or lose it mentality towards gold.

You certainly do, that's almost all of it.

It doesn't help that I'm a warmongering whore who's foaming at bit on the prospect of invading Geneva after we've reaped their rewards.

 

[lacktheknack]

In that case... if upgrading a Warrior to a Mohawk Warrior will cost 50g or less, do that. Otherwise build Mohawk Warriors.

Try more around 145 I think. Though, it might change depending on the difficulty setting. I only made the suggestion because I have a use it or lose it mentality towards gold.

You certainly do, that's almost all of it.

Then again, I do have a tendency to hoard in games; I remember finishing Diablo 2 with my storage chest 3/4 full of various sorted gems that I never sold or used.

I shall stand by my original limit though. I remember kicking myself in Civ IV when emergencies came along and I couldn't pay my way out of them; I don't want that to happen here.

145 isn't really "almost all" of 460. And trust me, you get gold WAAAAAAY faster in Civ V than you ever do in Civ IV. As in, a successful civilization can be pulling in 50+ gold per turn.

 

[Mr Thin]

You certainly do, that's almost all of it.

Then again, I do have a tendency to hoard in games; I remember finishing Diablo 2 with my storage chest 3/4 full of various sorted gems that I never sold or used.

I shall stand by my original limit though. I remember kicking myself in Civ IV when emergencies came along and I couldn't pay my way out of them; I don't want that to happen here.

145 isn't really "almost all" of 460. And trust me, you get gold WAAAAAAY faster in Civ V than you ever do in Civ IV. As in, a successful civilization can be pulling in 50+ gold per turn.

Well, yeah, but Waltz suggested we do it with two warriors, not just one, which would be.

But if what you say is true, then I guess I should stop being so tight-fisted with our funding.

I move to support the Warrior Upgrade Program.

 

[Eumersian]

Definitely writing for the research.

Try more around 145 I think. Though, it might change depending on the difficulty setting. I only made the suggestion because I have a use it or lose it mentality towards gold. It does us no particular use simply sitting there. So we can spend it to rush(buildings/units), upgrade units, or spend it making city-states happy.

That's what I would vote we should save our money for. Which means that we shouldn't go and spend it all on our military. I reckon that we'll be able to protect ourselves and take care of that barbarian camp with relatively few units. Probably an archer and a warrior would do the trick for the camp near Geneva.

This means that my votes for what to build at Onondaga are an archer and then a warrior. For now a barracks would just be deadweight in terms of maintenance, we don't need any more scouts or workers, and a settler would be unnecessary because

• 1. They would halt growth in Onondaga
  2. We don't know if there's any good place to settle nearby anyway

 

[Bohemian Waltz]

Try more around 145 I think. Though, it might change depending on the difficulty setting. I only made the suggestion because I have a use it or lose it mentality towards gold. It does us no particular use simply sitting there. So we can spend it to rush(buildings/units), upgrade units, or spend it making city-states happy.

That's what I would vote we should save our money for. Which means that we shouldn't go and spend it all on our military. I reckon that we'll be able to protect ourselves and take care of that barbarian camp with relatively few units. Probably an archer and a warrior would do the trick for the camp near Geneva.

All things considered; I'd normally agree with you and push for spending gold on city-state bribes. However, the circumstances sway my opinion in that regard.

Spoiler: Why I do not agree

Alexander's civ trait 'Hellenic League' is arguably the best trait in the entire game. His city state influence degrades at 50% of the normal rate, so just out of the gate if his AI decides to outbid us to become allies with any city-states we have an interest in it's already an uphill battle.

The issue compounded by the fact that they tweaked his AI to take a stupid amount of advantage of that during the last patch/update of the game. I've almost never seen Greece without at least 2-4 city states as allies or really good friends and they usually happen to be the ones closest to them.

He's also a moderately aggressive civ who's started close to us, which doesn't fair well in terms of probability on how he'll behave. The AI also calculates a 'basic' level of military strength and applies a war-bias towards other civ's calculated to be weaker. The issue with Greece is their special unit the Hoplite has a high strength which skews those numbers early game creating a gulf between us. Combined with the fact that we settled near him and his military bias explains why he acted like a bit of a prat earlier. The AI is roughly predictable in Civ and a lot of times a civilization will inexplicably become friendly with you for a short period of time right before declaring war on you (it's the game simulating a two-faced back stab). This worries me.

My greatest fear is that he'll have access to Iron right around the time we need it to keep up a modern military with a decent score, thus viewing us weak and close he'll likely buy up city states near us and then go to war. Opening up a painful 2 front war. We'll probably survive, but it will be a huge costly distraction.

In any case I don't think we'll have enough gold keep bribes up for two city states to begin with (and if we did it would be at a point when we've discovered more than just these two anyways) so; I find it better to focus on one. The AI also has a tendency to ignore city states that are firmly another players allies if there are any neutral ones near by so we can probably keep Genoa our friend and worst case scenario Alexanders trait is marginalized in terms of a bidding war.

I rank Genoa higher priority in terms of long term friendship as the extra food from their city state is much more useful to a large expanded empire for growth purposes, whereas Geneva's bonus adds to culture (which we're not short on). We don't have a lot of arable farmland so Genoa's bonus seems to be the better one in my opinion short term as well as long term.

The breakdown for influence for missions is 50 influence for barbarian removal over 80 influence for capturing another city-state. This also skews things in their favor as their influence is cheaper. I'm inclined to only tolerate Geneva until we've gotten all the bonus culture we get out of clearing the barbarian camp for them.

The cherry on the Sunday is the extra city and a viable bonus to making our proposed trade route more profitable plus the incense luxury (which we can sell since becoming friends with Genoa gives us their resources and they also have incense).

 

[lacktheknack]

Time to reach a decision, I'm moving fairly soon here.

I just want to point out one thing quickly to Bohemian Waltz -

The issue compounded by the fact that they tweaked his AI to take a stupid amount of advantage of that during the last patch/update of the game. I've almost never seen Greece without at least 2-4 city states as allies or really good friends and they usually happen to be the ones closest to them.

He's also a moderately aggressive civ who's started close to us, which doesn't fair well in terms of probability on how he'll behave.

Except I don't think Alexander has met the two city-states near us.

We would have seen his warrior go south when he was scouting (we didn't), and now he can't get past Osininka.

Alexander's city-state bonus may actually be a non-issue for right now.

 

[Doc Gnosis]

Except I don't think Alexander has met the two city-states near us.

If you're curious as to whether the Greeks have met Genoa and Geneva, simply try taking one of them over; we'll get a chastising from Alexander if he did meet them. As for the city states themselves, unless you build roads through them and make them friendly, it's better to assimilate them or destroy them outright. We'd garner the other natons' contempt, but we may be locked in a situation where expansion means stepping on the other leaders' toes.

Maybe we shouldn't build a settler, but at some point we'll need to get more cities before some other civ encroaches near the Iroquis western front. We have policies meant for building more cities; we'd do well to utilize them.

 

[Bohemian Waltz]

Except I don't think Alexander has met the two city-states near us.

We would have seen his warrior go south when he was scouting (we didn't), and now he can't get past Osininka.

Alexander's city-state bonus may actually be a non-issue for right now.

Interesting, I'm thinking it would only become an issue in the Medieval era anyways and more of a long term problem.

I played a game where I was at war with someone to my east in the Modern Era and when my influence was low on a city-state I was regularly befriending to my south Alexander on my west front bought them up to become his ally then declared war on me making my game exponentially more difficult.

I'd still prefer we crush Geneva beneath our boot, but my vote stands with simply one warrior so we can combine it with our 1 archer in Osininka to take care of the local barbarian troubles. Upgrade him whenever it becomes necessary.

or destroy them outright.

You can't raze a city state. Best you can do is assimilate them or befriend them.

 

[lacktheknack]

Writing is unanimous, then!

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578707140/09CAA7AC86D70D199608F2D3F114ECBAFE70E90B/

Also, the current production order is Warrior, followed by an Archer. Can do!

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578705290/638A313E3E2514349BCEB1BFDEDE4C90E6FCE5E5/

Nothing eventful happens as the warriors train.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578701086/5D1A198A4C14F82A7FF202224CF80257C083FCA7/

Archers, then!

Also, the Warriors can upgrade for the dirt cheap price of 80 gold - just over HALF what Waltz and I expected. Shall we do it?

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578699687/3A61AAB958822998E9E1796E6BE69E5B89080CFE/

Well, looks like the Incas have overcome their suspicions now that they've seen Alexander suddenly face-heel-turn with us, and now they want to become friends. Not just friends, but PUBLICLY ANNOUNCED friends. Fantastic! This should make one-way open borders a lucrative idea indeed.

Considering the general consensus that we want to be friendly towards other Civs, excuse me while I presume to accept his offer.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578698469/B969E6E3E5209E212AB221416D37D62E6B8192E9/

Also, our scouts are out and exploring!

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578696803/E5BDB03ED76DE788D3353EA985221F56C143E26B/

Oh.

They take a lot of damage from that.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578695708/695C7886E6290455C861360A7AD34B5E84CA90F2/

We're not doing excessively well at the moment.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578694555/6278A97CD8588988055F2FA1C7CDA10916504647/

Writing researched!

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578692965/D5EE83F44EDF292C1E0156188770B9126A237CC4/

Our Scouts can get a promotion now from being shot! (?) Which one? Instant healing, +50% defense, or +1 vision range?

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578691733/39253190A480C460D22B4CB23F7B416C6B8F50A9/

New policy! Republic (+1 prod. all cities, +5% prod. while building buildings), or Representation (Golden Age, -33% added culture cost per policy per new city)? Or something else entirely? (Note that we're about six turns from a natural Golden Age.)

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578689896/A7CB23A743D72ADE3A6A0D3EA1CB4ABAF3243871/

Which new tech?

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540649800578687896/046A665BE5FEE990DAACB1B74008CE6A05F22F27/

What to build now? (Note that building the Great Library gives you a free Library.)

Choices, choices, choices.

 

[Bohemian Waltz]

[HEADING=1][/HEADING]

My current vote:
-Upgrade to Mohawk Warrior and go teach those mean ol' barbarian archers a lesson in the art of diplomacy, pointy stick diplomacy!

 

[Mr Thin]

1. Upgrade ze warriors!
2. Increase the vision of the scouts. They're scouts! It's what they're there for!
3. Is +1 production a lot in this game? Because in Civ IV, it's bugger all. Also, is there any bonus for aquiring every policy in a tree?
4. Optics! The lighthouse will help our budding coastal city.
5. Free library? I thought the Great Library give you a free technology. Is that right?

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Mr Thin, it gives you a free library in addition to a free tech. And I thought you were an expert at the game.

Yeah, I'd go with Great Library as well, not that my opinion means much to anyone.

 

[Bohemian Waltz]

5. Free library? I thought the Great Library give you a free technology. Is that right?

....

3. Is +1 production a lot in this game? Because in Civ IV, it's bugger all. Also, is there any bonus for aquiring every policy in a tree?

Spoiler: -Spoilered for size-

The great library: +1 culture/turn, 1 free library(I believe it has no maintenance), free tech, +1 great scientist point/turn.

Easily the best wonder of the ancient era.

As for social policies here are the options I'm aware of that haven't been covered:

• -Unlock Piety tree for: (Reduces time for culture buildings by 15%)
  -Unlock Tradition tree for: (+3 culture/turn in capital city and a discount on buying tiles)
  -Unlock Honor tree for: (25% bonus when attacking barbs & a notification when barbs spawn in explored areas)

The bonus for acquiring every policy in the liberty tree is a free great person of your choice in your capital. (Which is very awesome, I'd suggest Engineer for rushing wonders or scientist for the free tech.) Note: Republic's +1 production is weak early on because of economies of scale but +1 production in every single city when you have 15+ cities becomes rather nice. It's underpowered currently, but has the prospect for being at least decent later on.

Honor is complete crap unless your constantly at war, which I don't think we will be. Piety is actually really good for expansion/happiness purposes. The only downside is that all of it's bonuses go away if you shift to rationalism later on in the game. Rationalism is easily the best policy in the game and even more so for our empire as a lot of it's polices directly benefit us.

I'd dip into tradition for any of the 3 policies it allows us to unlock next time or in the future: (in order of my preference)

• 1. Aristocracy: +15% production on building wonders.
  2. Legalism: A free cultural building to each of your first 4 cities.
  3. Oligarchy: Garrisoned units cost no maintenance & cities with a garrison a 100% bonus to their ranged attack.

The first 1st for cranking out the great library and eventually the oracle quickly(stays awesome all game). The 2nd for massive culture boon which goes hand in hand with the -33% added culture cost for social policies from representation. The last being a really good bonus for large empires late game when you don't want to pay maintenance on an army.

So I'm torn the great scientist from researching liberty quickly is nothing to sniff at, but Opening up tradition gives us a lot of fun options later on and increases our culture output by 22% of it's current rate. We have a ton of production due to the forest and hills everywhere, but are low on food so Republic doesn't do a whole hell of a lot and Representations triggering a golden age so early in the game would be wasteful.

I'm leaning towards opening up tradition just so we have more options later on (options are always fun) and providing a healthy boost to our culture so we can get more policies quicker. Of the two in the liberty tree I'd go representation, though since if you trigger a golden age in a golden age it simply adds extra time to the golden age.

 

[Mr Thin]

Mr Thin, it gives you a free library in addition to a free tech. And I thought you were an expert at the game.

Yeah, I'd go with Great Library as well, not that my opinion means much to anyone.

I've never even played it; I'm competent (at least I think I am) at Civ IV and have played the first two.

Your opinion is worth a fortune, if nothing else because opinions in this thread are so rare.

Spoiler: -Spoilered for size-

The great library: +1 culture/turn, 1 free library(I believe it has no maintenance), free tech, +1 great scientist point/turn.

Easily the best wonder of the ancient era.

As for social policies here are the options I'm aware of that haven't been covered:

• -Unlock Piety tree for: (Reduces time for culture buildings by 15%)
  -Unlock Tradition tree for: (+3 culture/turn in capital city and a discount on buying tiles)
  -Unlock Honor tree for: (25% bonus when attacking barbs & a notification when barbs spawn in explored areas)

The bonus for acquiring every policy in the liberty tree is a free great person of your choice in your capital. (Which is very awesome, I'd suggest Engineer for rushing wonders or scientist for the free tech.) Note: Republic's +1 production is weak early on because of economies of scale but +1 production in every single city when you have 15+ cities becomes rather nice. It's underpowered currently, but has the prospect for being at least decent later on.

Honor is complete crap unless your constantly at war, which I don't think we will be. Piety is actually really good for expansion/happiness purposes. The only downside is that all of it's bonuses go away if you shift to rationalism later on in the game. Rationalism is easily the best policy in the game and even more so for our empire as a lot of it's polices directly benefit us.

I'd dip into tradition for any of the 3 policies it allows us to unlock next time or in the future: (in order of my preference)

• 1. Aristocracy: +15% production on building wonders.
  2. Legalism: A free cultural building to each of your first 4 cities.
  3. Oligarchy: Garrisoned units cost no maintenance & cities with a garrison a 100% ranged bonus.

The first 1st for cranking out the great library and eventually the oracle quickly(stays awesome all game). The 2nd for massive culture boon which goes hand in hand with the -33% added culture cost for social policies from representation. The last being a really good bonus for large empires late game when you don't want to pay maintenance on an army.

So I'm torn the great scientist from researching liberty quickly is nothing to sniff at, but Opening up tradition gives us a lot of fun options later on and increases our culture output by 22% of it's current rate. We have a ton of production due to the forest and hills everywhere, but are low on food so Republic doesn't do a whole hell of a lot and Representations triggering a golden age so early in the game and while we're already close to one would be wasteful.

I'm leaning towards opening up tradition just so we have more options later on (options are always fun) and providing a healthy boost to our culture so we can get more policies quicker. Of the two in the liberty tree I'd go republic, though.

Wow. I'm usually finicky about completing things, but those Tradition policies sound so awesome I reckon we should get them instead. I say Aristocracy, as we are about to build a Great Library, if the current votes are any indication. We can always come back to Liberty later.

(My vote most certainly goes to the Great Library now, obviously).

 

[Bohemian Waltz]

Wow. I'm usually a finicky about completing things, but those Tradition policies sound so awesome I reckon we should get them instead. I say Aristocracy, as we are about to build a Great Library, if the current votes are any indication. We can always come back to Liberty later.

Actually the unlock in policy would just be to get Tradition tree opened up as well as the bonus for doing so which is, +3 culture/turn in capital and discount on buying tiles.

As for policies I've flip flopped on my decision since golden ages triggered during a golden age add their full time together. Golden Ages last 10 turns on normal speed and it's effects are +1 production for each tile that produces production & + 1 gold for every tile that produces gold. Since our civilization is in a forest everything we're using pretty much has at least 1 production and our most of our improvements yield gold or we have a forest on a river so we should get great use out of it. On normal speed this means 20 turns of bad-assery. The way civ 5 works is each time you gain a policy the culture needed for the next one goes up; it also increases per city you control. So the -33% to the increase will be invaluable culturally if we're going to expand. (which we definitely should)

I like golden ages when the empire is larger, but I'll take it. The extra production should increase the speed of the great library by 33% or so meaning a great library in 10 turns instead of 15. The extra gold can also be used to do crazy fun things as well.

My votes: (Edited)
-Adopt Representation, Golden ages kick ass. Even if it's not optimal it's the best thing on the table.
-Upgrade scouts vision, and move them south-west as I suspect that north is a peninsula. The flaccid penis of land masses.
-Upgrade Warriors to Mohawk Warriors and send them to kill the Barbarian archers and do a little looking around, there is probably a barb camp somewhere there since the archers need a place to spawn. They're also an immediate threat to our capital as if they get frisky they might come down and start pillaging stuff which would be annoying. Geneva's barb troubles can wait a few turns.
-Build The Great Library.
-Workers make another plantation when able then build trading posts along the river.
-**Research Philosophy- It will finish a few turns ahead of the great library so we can use the GL free tech to get either Civil service or Theology which are expensive in terms of research and slingshots us into the Medieval era, best bang for our buck**
-Sell one way open borders with everyone you know that's not named Alexander for some easy coin. Should be 50 if their friendly and a little less if neutral.
-Change the name of Osininka to Thinville (I'm tired of misspelling it) and change the capitol to Knackopolis/Lacknackstein.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

And while we're on the subject of changing names, unless you really don't want to change your capital's name, you could call that 'Knackopolis'.