How To: Space Race

This article is about how to most effectively build a spaceship under peaceful conditions, which will often decide the game in ffa-diplo style games. This can be applied 1:1 to singleplayer, presuming that techtrade is disabled or the AI too far behind to trade. Only possible exception is the Internet, as it´s usually banned in Multiplayer.

The two factors deciding how fast you are, are how long you need to research all the necessary techs and how long you need to build the final parts. You build all parts except the second Engine.

Echoes from the Civ World #7: Civilization V – Video Content

And here is another video showing an Interview with Pete Murray from Firaxis, sadly not embeddable into WordPress.

The CTON #1: Getting started

The C4P league has by now four key game types that people play pretty much every day: Duels, Teamers, OCC, Ironman and CTONs. I will start a series about CTON games since this type is the one most people start with and one with fairly high variables and many strategies. This first post of the CTON series will be an introduction to the game type, rules, strategies and common ideas.

CTON can be compared to what people call FFA (free for all) on the lobby, although it has some important rules that make it a lot different from what you might know. The game type, and that part might be a fairytale, was originally invented by a Canadian player called CTON. She made up the rules a long, long time ago and people still seem to like them. A new “translation” of the term CTON caught my attention: Can’t Trade Or Negotiate. It sums up what the game is all about: Always war with your opponents, no private talk, no tech trade. You’re basically on your own and have to expect armies coming in from each side. The game is usually played on inland sea, which means that each player has one opponent on each side. CTONs can involve 5-6 (usually) up to 10 players on varying map sizes and sea levels.

What are the common rules? How do I start?

The settings that are most common and also played in the Civilization World Clan Championship Cup (CCC) are the following:

Players: 5-8+
Turn Limit: 120 (usually on the lobby) up to 140 (CCC Final Round)
Map: Inland Sea, small with 6 or less, standard with 7 or more.
Sea Level: Medium.
Era: Ancient
Civ Choice: Random, unrestricted leaders on, anonymous
City Elimination: 2
Balanced Resources
Spies allowed
Always War

Quiz Time #2: Solution

This is the solution to the question from “Quiz Time #2“.

Thanks to everyone, who participated

A special Kudoz to Miro for beating the designer of the Quiz to its solution by seeing that Hanging Gardens temporarily provides another pop point!

The city at its final size. Civ cannot display a size bigger then 1000

MP Strategies #3: Ironman/ffa – The great Modern war

This edition of MP Strategies features about the only possibility to fight a war relying on brute force against an opponent that is rather close to you in tech and production in an Ironman/ffa game.

The Idea

When you are running a cottage economy from the point of having researched Democracy on, your production will quickly multiply. While before you have virtually no base production and slave everything, Universal Suffrage already gives you about 1 per tile you are working, providing you with a good base production.

Now we will combine two effects in order to again quadruple our production and then pump out a huge army. First is that with running Universal Suffrage a golden age about doubles your base production giving you a huge production boost. This is the reason, why you should safe your golden ages for after Democracy anyway, but for this strategy it’s even more vital.

The second effect is, that with Steam Power and Assembly Line the huge bulk of building for increasing production becomes available: Levee, Factory and Coal Plant also doubling your production, both things combined make the quadrupling.

Obviously golden ages don’t last forever, but for the major part of the army production phase, you will be running them. Usually you will blow two, if possible GP wise even three golden ages into this. This is 18 Turns golden age – if you were able to the Mausoleum of Mausolossos (probably strongest Ironman wonder anyway) even 27 turns. Thats the time you will you for building your army.

After having set up your production you produce a huge stack of Infantry, Machine Guns and Artillery, that is very difficult to counter, because of Machine Guns immunity to collateral damage and move in on your opponent.

Quiz Time #2: The Eternal City

What is the biggest city size you can achieve at least for one turn on a theoretical setup with the following rules?

• Map is duel sized (24×16 tiles), e.g. Inland_Sea
• Resources on flood plains are not allowed.
• You can make any tile on the map be whatever you like just it have to be tiles occuring on usual civ maps.
• You can use the entire map = make it be in your cultural borders (just as if you planted it all)
• There is no turn limit: You can have your city build anything you like and you can research any technology you want.
• The number of GPs you can breed is limited to 705.

Think up a theoretical setup (=the land to plant and work) and name what is necessary to achieve maximum population in your city.

Post your solutions as comments. I´ll not approve them until I update this post with the solution two days after this post has been made.

*Update* *Update**Update*

Disregard “overflow growing”. Ideas like Shizanu´s “I do 700 merchants at pop 4 and then settle them all at the same time” don´t count.

Quiz Time #1: Solution

This is the solution to the question from “Quiz Time #1“.
Thanks to everyone, who participated

Since the goal is maximum production we are obviously looking for production modifiers. Expansive gives 25% on workers, Imperialistic 50% on settlers, Aggressive 100% on Barracks and Expansive the same for Granaries. Industrial gives 50% on wonders and certain wonders receive a 100% bonus from resources, for instance Stonehenge, Pyramids and Great Wall from stone, giving an overall bonus of 150% for an Industrious leader.

Hence we´re looking for a way to abuse an Industrious leader together with a wonder resource. Since Masonry is required for stone, we need to work something else for four turns till that is researched. Barracks fit that slot with Stalin (Agg/Ind) as leader. Zulu is the civ of choice then because its Ikhanda costs 40 instead of only 33 hammers for a normal Barracks, allowing you to work those one turn longer with a stone plant (3 hammer) and another tile with an output of 3 hammers while Masonry is being researched.

Stalin of Zulu – 140 Hammers

• work plains hill with forest turns 0-9
• Ikhanda: 40 hammers (5 overflow)
• Pyramids: 100 hammers (with overflow)

National Wonder #4: Specific. Key for some scenarios.

This is the fourth edition of a four-part series about National Wonders which is supposed to describe the scenarios in which those play a role. As usual when evaluating a building, unit etc. in civ it´s vital to not only look at effects and abilities, but as well at costs, required technologies and most importantly the overall context: In what situation in what kind of game will the building/unit/etc. help me achieve a certain goal? The more situations and different kinds of scenarios there are, the better is the examined object.

There are 14 National Wonders. The series consists of the following four parts:

I. Click here for National Wonder #1: Flop 3
II. Click here for National Wonder #2: Top 3
III. Click here for National Wonder #3: Good. Basic. Not Game Breaking.
IV. Specific. Key for some scenarios.

Hermitage

Cost: 300 (Double Production Speed with Marble)
Effects: +100% in this city; +1 Great Artist

Requires technology Nationalism

There are two scenarios where you might consider building the Hermitage.

Quiz Time #1: Max Production in 10 turns

What is the theoretical maximum  amount of production a player can accumulate in an ancient start game till turn 10 with the following settings and rules?

• available resources are limited to “normal” occurring resources on popular civ maps like Pangaea, Inland_Sea; Team_Battleground; meaning no resources on flood plains, no grassland gold etc.
• all six “starting techs” are available from the start
• duel sized Inland_Sea as map
• unrestricted leader/civ
• quick game speed

Think up a theoretical setup (=the land to plant and work) with one starting settler and name the civ/leader you pick and the actions you take in order to including bonuses get the maximum amount of production till turn 10. The hammers you accumulate turns 0 – 9 count.

Post your solutions as comments. I´ll not approve them till I update this post with the ultimate solution 2 days after this post has been made.

*Update*

Solution to “Quiz Time: Max Production in 10 turns

*Update*

Echoes from the Civ World #6: All known Civ5 Facts

1. Civ V Confirmed Features – Forum Thread on Civfanatics by bite

Quite simialar to solver´s Civ5 Wiki on WePlayCiv I posted here before but with direct links to sources and some other new information.

2. Civ5Wiki at WePlayCiv by solver

Solver established a Civ5 Wiki at WePlayCiv – it gathers all the so far known info about civ5 mechanics and graphics, including some extrapolations based on screenshots and official statements.