How I Won 15+ games in a Row without buying Civbucks

[random user]

Some people will read this and say, “That’s not my idea of fun.” That’s fine. I understand that different people want to play differently. But after being called cheaters in our last 4 or 5 games, we got sick of it. So I’m posting this to explain to the average player why sometimes you get crushed and how it’s probably not cheating.

Many people use some of what I’m posting here. But I haven’t encountered anyone who has put together the whole package, though I know there is at least one really good player I’ve never played against, so I don’t know what he or she does, and of course I haven’t played against everyone out there.

When you add it all together, it’s more than the sum of its parts, and is quite potent.

A lot of people might ask, “Who the hell are you and why should I listen to you?” Well, truthfully, you don’t have to agree with me, or even listen to me. But I did want to provide at least a little background to hopefully persuade you that you maybe you should keep an open mind to this strategy:

- my team is somewhere between 15-0 and 25-0 using this strategy if you define winning as “not having anyone outside your premade team score higher than you”

- I’ve played about 35 or 40 games, and in those games I’ve amassed over 30,000 fame points. That means I’ve probably averaged 800-900 points per game I’ve played.

- Even though I’ve never bought civbucks, I have over 750 civbucks and 3 skins. Except the 5 civbucks given to us for being in beta a while ago, every civbuck I’ve gotten has come from winning a game or a contest. No one in our threesome has spent money on civbucks either, and we haven't had to use them (though it is comforting to have several hundred in reserve just in case.)

So here’s my guide to how I did it (well at least some of my games).

Summary (ie the TLDR version):

Find two teammates. Poach barbarians until you all have 23 harvests, then form a civ and using timing to maximize harvests. Buy Great People (GP) whenever possible until you have monarchy. Harvest production and use wall posts to close borders. Get Pyramids and Monarchy before anyone else, and wait for people to attack you. Use Voyage Transfer (see Appendix) to maximize Science wins, and Golden Era after Currency and Banking for Economic wins. Tie up the cultural win condition by having some wonders, and defend in any battle if you need to deny points to the attacker. Win the game because you’ve denied your opponents the ability to win eras.

[random user]

Preface


Despite being severely nerfed, Fertility Rites (FR), Voyage of Discovery (VoD), and later Golden Era (GE) are still super potent in the hands of a small civ which can complete them with only two Great People (GP). In addition, because the developers were lazy or just bad, the randomizing effect of gifting harvests is not random.

Small civs have the advantage that each finished maze gives usually 4-5 moves per person in the maze. The lack of restriction on quantity or timeframe of wall postings is severely broken, and barbarian killing is underestimated by almost everyone. Put these together and you have a formula for crushing most games.

This is a guide for playing in a normal hardcore speed game in a team of 3 against a decently competent group of people who aren’t on 24/7. It can still win or at least be very competitive in something like a guild game (where lots of guilds are playing), but in those games a large part of it will come down to who can spend more time online. Of course by posting this guide, some of the parts will become harder to pull off, but that’s probably a good thing given how potent it is at the moment. You’ll have to adjust the times for slower speed games, but because of how you attain the majority of your material, slower game speeds are more advantageous to you.

[random user]

Part I: Game start to T+13 hours (13 hours after game start)


Find a game which has just started. Quickly figure out one person to buy Great Prophets, one person to buy Great Builders, and one person to buy Great Scientists. Buy the appropriate GP if they are cheap (under 1800 or so at the start though the price you should be willing to pay should rise as the game goes on) and in general food/production up to 200. If you get in early enough sell culture down to 80. Keep an eye on the market and buy when things are cheap and sell when materials are high. Don’t sell GP though unless the price is really outrageous (like over 6000 or so in this time period). Buy defensive units if they are cheap and you can afford to.

Don’t make houses, or if you do so, don’t make a board which looks good so that anyone who looks at you hopefully doesn’t see you as a threat. Sell food/hammers whenever they get expensive (over 400 for sure, over 300 if you have to, and over 250 reluctantly). Buy them if they get under 200. Buy your assigned GP whenever you can. If a different GP is cheap, don’t buy it yourself -- transfer gold (see Appendix for more info) to your teammate so they can buy it instead. Immediately use enough of your stored wall postings (more on this later) to get up to size 5, and refresh your stock so you have stuff to sell.

Watch the market and wait for barbarians to attack. Killing barbarians gives between 2000 and 3910 worth of food. Figure an average price of 250 per 100 food, and you’re looking at a barbarian kill to be worth between 5000 and 10000 gold, and this is at a time when GP are probably only selling for 3-4k each. The downside is that you usually have to ramp up a pretty big defense to have the biggest army to get the reward. But by acting as team, collectively you have a pretty sizable army with only a minimal investment.

Each time barbarians appear, send one person to the civ if it’s not too active or big. (Feel free to ignore that if you don’t mind burning bridges, but be warned you might get some angry people at you. Personally I don’t feel it’s worth the possible hassle but your mileage may vary.) Make sure you check out the civ’s tech before you go in and make sure you won’t lose any science. Since anyone can help defend in battles, your whole team can help defeat the barbarians as well as clog up all the spots so no one else can get into the battle even though the rest of your team is independent. If you have enough food from wall postings, buying from teammates, and market arbitrage, try to get to at least size 6 before the barbarians die. (This should not be difficult for the first two people.) This will get you to size 7 and is the equivalent of winning 2800 food.

Try to get each person up to size 7 through barbarian killing before getting anyone to size 8. If FR rites pops and you can complete it for 2 or even 3 GP, have everyone join a (probably new) civ and complete it. It’s much better to get multiple people the 3910 equivalent bonus for going from size 7 to size 8 instead of having people getting less because they are already size 8 (2500), or going from size 6 to 7 (2800).

Once you are in a civ, stay in the civ if you can, and go ahead and make a house and large sized building in the best spot you can. This will allow you to potentially receive IM harvests and/or dowries while you are in the civ as well as keep an eye on the mini-wonders. If you are being hardcore/aggressive, check out the civ’s tech status on pottery, writing, and masonry, and steal the MVP if it’s feasible. Mind your diplomacy timer, and if you know you will have one, go back to independent before it’s your turn for the next barbarian so you can to draw it down and join the new civ immediately. Make sure you will be able to join a new civ at T+13 game time.

Try to win the caravan mini-game if you can.

You might be wondering whether I forgot to talk about harvests, puzzle swaps, and maze moves. I didn’t – ignore them for now. You want to accumulate all of these and use them once you actually have formed your civ. (The exception to this is maze moves if you are stealing a tech or if you get up to about 60 maze moves, in which case try to finish mazes such that you end up at T+13 with about 45-50 maze moves.)

[random user]

T+13: Closing Borders


After 13 hours, it’s time to form a civ and close borders. Create a civ. This can be tricky at times but that’s a discussion for another thread. It’s very important not to lose science when you do this. When you are an independent it takes 3600 science to finish alphabet, but because of prior discoveries, the cost can be close to 600 once you actually join a civ. Designate one person to form the civ, have them burn their maze moves, calculate how much science they’ll need to finish alphabet, and then sell down to teammates until they are at that number. Each other person should then go to alphabet before joining to ensure they keep their science and maze moves.

Ideally you want a civ with a Forest (or less preferably Plains or possibly Coastal) battlefield, as early in the alphabet as possible.

With only 3 people, each finished maze generally gives 4-5 moves. You can usually find an early maze that takes only 15-20 moves to finish. Each person should have at least 45 maze moves (you are size 7 or higher right?). If you do it right you should each be able to finish 3-5 mazes at this point without using any wall posts or harvests. With 3 people, that’s 9 to 15 mazes at 500-1000 science each, which should be enough to finish off pottery and writing and get you to masonry. Start using some of your wall posts (more on this later) to get you enough science to finish masonry. (If the masonry maze is really bad, feel free to use another maze but don’t accidently finish the tech.) Close borders.

[random user]

On to Monarchy

At this point you each should have 23 harvests. Do the double swaps to get more Great People. If possible, get Great Builders (it’s good to save some money to buy one to get it to be the highest price if it isn’t already). Transfer culture to your designated Great Builder focus if possible. If you were in a civ, make sure to check beforehand to not get above 23 harvests (trickle is very important). At this point, each of you should be at size 7-9, with 8-13 GP each (and ideally at least 6-8 in your main GP). If you have dowries at this point, life is a lot easier. If not, you may have to transfer some production around to make good boards (by board I mean the layout of your city), and then tear them down after you do your harvests to sell to your teammate so they can make their board.

Each of you should now build your board. Your Great Builder focus should make production. Your Great Prophet focus should build a mix of food and production. Your Great Scientist person should initially focus on production. Unless you are playing against a monster science guild, you should have enough time to switch to science in your second cycle and still get to Monarchy first, which is your main goal in this section. Keep in mind that even if they win a few science eras in between, it seriously lessens the amount of science you’ll need to finish the necessary techs and you should be able to catch them before Monarchy.

Cycle through the Interior Ministries (IM) making sure the Great Builder Focus is last.

At one point, the developers nerfed the power of the IM by creating two dummy accounts which would sometimes take up the bonus. In a large civ, this would not come up often, but it can negate half of the bonus harvests in a small civ.

Unfortunately, instead of coding something to randomize harvests, they implemented something which goes in turn order across time. While simpler to code, anyone who can reverse engineer the timing can bypass the dummy accounts. So here’s what I came up with (there is likely something better but I was too lazy to delve into it more). It’s a little confusing but I’ll explain it as best I can. It also doesn’t work for me 100% of the time (some of it depends on which computer I’m on and how laggy it is), but we consistently get between 70-90% success rate on gifting harvests, which over the course of hundreds of runs, is virtually impossible by chance.

A viable cycle is a ~15 second cycle with: gifted harvest, gifted harvest, 13 second pause which I’ll represent as ++-?????????????++-????????????? etc where + represents a gifted harvest, - means a blank, and ? is unknown.

There is some overlap but what hasn’t worked for me is just waiting 2 seconds. I’m not sure if there is some special code to prevent that from working, or maybe just my bad timing, but for example I don’t believe the cycle is as simple as: ++--++--++--++--.

What I do is fish around harvesting until I gift two harvests consecutively. After that I wait 13 seconds and hit harvest again on the next beat. That should start the cycle over with that harvest gifting the first player. Then harvest again to gift your other teammate and wait 13 seconds. Repeat until you are out of harvests. You might get some better efficiency by trying to gift only the first player (and then waiting 14-15 seconds) but if you miss the timing you can get really screwed up so I found it was better to try and just gift both players.

By doing this you can get easily get over 40 harvests for your Great Builder focus, who should be somewhere around size 8-9 with 10-15 Great Builders. This doesn’t include the production accrued by the other two team members, and any dowries available. (If you choose to use CivBucks this would be a good time to use it, though we’ve never needed it.) Unless pressed, cycle until the IMs harvests remaining match the next person’s harvests remaining and then wait until you both are at 23 harvests before starting the next cycle. Usually the Great Scientist Focus will switch to science for their second cycle.

Buy Great People as you can. Do NOT sell them, even if they are pricey. If they become stupid expensive (like you can sell one for over 7-8k) then you should probably sell it, and transfer the gold to one of your teammates to buy a cheaper GP. Make sure you keep allocating the GP to the correct focus if possible. At this time the Great Prophet focus should stop buying Great Prophets (you won’t need more than about 10) and start focusing on Great Artists and Great Generals. If your timing is good, you should be able to pick them up while they are still cheap.

During this phase make sure you keep a close eye on the mini-wonders. They cycle every 110 minutes or so, and in particular you are looking for:

FR: Get this one always, even if the price of food is low, as it allows you to more easily move gold around (see Appendix for more info) and also prevents your opponents from getting it.

Voyage of Discovery (VoD): once you have sufficient science, get this one always and do the Voyage Transfer (see Appendix for more info)

Renaissance (Ren) and Industrial Revolution (IR): you’ll want to trigger these once (but only once) after you have researched Code of Laws. Since you aren’t researching Iron Crafting, you’ll need to use a village green next to iron to maximize your dowries and harvests. The Great Scientist Focus should put one where they will want to have a University. Each person should build all the buildings available except guard tower to small size. Build Ren first and then later IR. This should give each of you a good production boost as well when you sell those buildings back.


Assign one person to be the Finance Minister and have them win all the caravans. Keep trying to get your Great Builder focus as many Great Builders as possible by transferring culture to them when the price of Great Builders is high.

Start playing the tower defense mini-game looking for a good board, ie one with only 2 openings. If you find one, play it till you have 500% bonus. Don’t play any bad boards at this time, and don’t worry about it too much. If someone has attacked you already, you likely will not lose a lot so it might be good to play possum and not tip your hand by showing how much production you really have. What we generally did was have a map running in the background we multitasked something non-CivWorld related, and check it occasionally. It will often take a long time to find a good map, so you might as well start early.

Coordinate your maze moves and wall spam to work your way to Monarchy. Don’t take techs you don’t need like Iron Crafting or Bronze Crafting. In general try to win techs which award a Great Person first and cede other techs like Warrior Code or Iron Working if you have to. Don’t forget to open borders if someone else has already discovered a tech. If you are far behind in tech, burn your wall spam (more on this later), cycle mini-wonders and have your Great Scientist focus lead the way by cycling through IMs for harvesting to make sure you get Monarchy first. Pick up the Pyramids Great Wonder when you can (right before your second harvest cycle usually). If it gets stolen, don’t steal it back until right before you finish Monarchy, but make sure you have it before you get Monarchy.

[random user]

From Monarchy to Gunpowder

Ideally by this time you each should have size 9 to 12 population, 12-20 Great People, and a big stack in your focus. You’ll need about 20 Great Scientists and 20 Great Builders in your game (plus the ones you pick up from winning techs), so again I want to emphasize not selling them unless the price is really outrageous, because it might become hard to pick them back up later in sufficient quantities.

Once you have about 15-20 Great Scientists and 15-20 Great Builders in your civ, it’s time to start diversifying. You won’t need more than a handful of Great Generals (about 3 each should be fine over the course of the next day or so) but you’ll need several Great Artists for Golden Era shortly. Keep an eye on them and buy them when they are cheap, but at this point you’re also going to want to start collecting some gold to maximize Golden Eras. Each person should try and pick up one or two of each of the other GP for general purpose use (like wonder cycling).

If your competition is close, cede the Feudalism victory to them. Try to win University though, if necessary doing some wonder cycling to achieve a Voyage Transfer, and making sure you discover Mathematics after them for reduced tech cost. After University, Religion is very vulnerable, and the next era (Invention) is several techs away, so you might want to spend down some of your principal science to get Religion.

Unlock Metallurgy after you unlock Invention if you didn’t get Feudalism before, and do your maze moves in Metallurgy. The 3000 bonus science really adds up. Finish Currency and Banking if you can get there first as they provide good gold boosts, and you will often have trouble liquidating your science at a reasonable price. I should mention at this point that with the ease of how you can get science you should be selling it anytime it gets high (like above 200, maybe above 160). This will give you enough gold to start making Golden Eras effective. Cycle Golden Eras when they come up, and starting holding on to gold instead of buying extra Great People. Sell Great People if you can get a really good price.

You probably will have 1-4 civs attacking you now. You’ll need to figure out how much of a threat they are based on how many civbucks they’ve spent, how much army they have, how many Great Builders their civ has, whether they had Pyramids at any point in time, whether they have monarchy, how many members of that civ are focused on production, etc. Balance that with how much of a science threat there is to determine what your Great Scientist Focus should produce. Your Great Prophet focus should entirely focus on production now (all of your food needs should be met with FR).

Note: this assumes that your general will be online for the battles. It is extremely hard to predictably win battles without someone online during the battle. Here are some battle notes:

Mini-game
Ideally you have someone with a 500% bonus. We always held that person in reserve, just in case… it was our final Ace card. We’ve also never had to use him. Every other person should try and find a good board a couple hours before the battle. By finding a good board, you can get somewhere between 125-225% bonus, which is renewable (assuming your computer is good enough and you don’t get logged off).

Battlefields
Forest is your most preferred battlefield, as there are only 2 slots which can’t be affected by Call to Arms. If you have a forest battlefield against a medium sized or greater civ you will be very hard to defeat. At this stage in the game Coastal is probably the next best as Galleys are not cost effective and you only have 2 mobile slots.

Opponent doesn’t have Monarchy
If your opponent doesn’t have monarchy, it will be extremely difficult for them to defeat you. Counter horsemen (50 production for 1 strength) with milita (25 production for 1 strength) and fodder horsemen. Counter anything else with longbow (50 for 1 strength). Build Himeji Samurai Castle if necessary. We generally liked to build it anyway as it allowed us to commit less troops. Between your cheaper and more efficient units, your more efficient harvesting, and the lack of slots if you have the right battlefield, it is very hard for them to even come close to your attack power.

Opponent has Monarchy
If you opponent has Monarchy, then you’ll have to decide whether to get Bronze Crafting to get phalanx to counter men-at-arms or stick with Militia to counter horsemen. Ideally you’ll want to have the flexibility to either finish the tech or not based on what they field. If they field a mix, then you’ll have to decide which is better. Generally I prefer to get phalanx as it's just really hard to get enough power with just horsemen. You’ll also need to buy enough Great People to be able to trade Himeji Samurai Castle a couple times.

With the timing of this attack, your opponent should not yet have Invention (or if they do then they shouldn’t be able to field a sizeable army). If they do, then you should have Gunpowder, so look at that section instead.

Secret Weapon and Call to Arms
Be ready to cycle wonders if you need to in order to prevent your opponents from finishing Secret Weapons and/or finish Call to Arms yourself. If possible set yourself up so that a VoD wouldn’t be wasted by pre-setting your science before the battle, and a Ren and/or IR will give you bonus production. Don’t make more units than you have to. Ideally you’ll want about a 3:1 advantage in strength.


The last thing to remember is that not much is riding on this battle, unless you’ve picked up some extra wonders through other battles already. Losing Pyramids isn’t the end of the world, and because Voyage Transfer is so efficient, letting them learn your techs doesn’t lose you the game either. The most annoying this if you lose this battle is that you’ll still have to research techs like Iron Crafting yourself, instead of picking them up for free. So try to win the battle, but don’t over-commit.

Still, in all my games, we always had at least 10,000 production reserve buffer when the opponent conceded, and after the implementation of the new mini-game, the person with 500% bonus has never had to take the field (and he was the one with the buffer)… in other words, none of the battles were at all close.

[random user]

Gunpowder and Beyond

At this point, stop building FR as it’s not useful anymore.

After the first round of battles, the game is often over. But sometimes you’ll get a civ that will attack you a second time, or sometimes a big civ which has really slow voting and they don’t get around to attacking you until later.

The only scenario which poses a significant threat is if you’ve already discovered gunpowder, but your opponent hasn’t, but they also have invention, their big stacks are able and winning to get high mini-game bonuses, and they are willing to change the weather. In this case, they may (depending on the battlefield) be able to deploy a lot of men-at arms at 8 strength per 50 production (with Leonardo’s Workshop and weather bonus) which can be very hard to deal with, especially with a high bonus.

If you think this scenario might come up (you should have at least a 20 hour warning) buy up extra Great People beforehand so that you can cycle. This should be the last battle, so aside from saving some Great People to take build VoD and Golden Eras, you don’t need to hoard GP anymore after this battle. Remember, at the end of the game all of your GP are useless. A couple of Call to Arms should be enough to cut down the men-at-arms.

At this point, you should have achieved the following:
- you should be significantly ahead in tech so no one should be able to get a science era win but you
- you should be significantly ahead in gold so no one should be able to get a economic era win but you
- you should have picked up enough wonders through your battles (otherwise steal them before they become obsolete if you have the rare game where no one attacks you) and/or the cultural win condition should be high enough that no one else can win additional cultural era wins (especially if the other civs lack the techs to unlock more advanced wonders)
- you should have enough military to be able to defend any civ to prevent any attacker from winning a domination era win

[random user]

End-Game

If you have achieved these 4 things, then you’ve basically won the game. This is an important part of this strategy… it does not win through winning. It wins through not losing. I’m not sure how to better explain the distinction, but it’s an important one. A lot of people spend their time and actions to try and win. If you instead spend your time and your actions to prevent loss, then winning will come as a natural byproduct.

At this point start keeping track of your wall spams and don’t use them. Instead save them up for your next game. Create a cornfield of 30, and orchard of 50, or anything else which will generate more wall spam. (This is actually something useful to do as soon as you can afford it – remember you can always deconstruct them to get all your production back if you need it.) It will generally take 1-3 days for the game to end, so use this time to save your wall spam (and any friends who don’t max out their spam as well) for the next game.

Why This Strategy Works

This strategy works because it optimizes a lot of synergies. Parlay barbarian kills which increase your population into later harvests which are worth more. Gain Great People early to optimize harvests, and then use them later to cycle mini-wonders. Buy and create defensive units early to kill barbarians which can then be used to defend your civ. Don’t waste your time and actions on things which stray from your end goal. Don’t waste your time and actions on things which are useless at the end of the game (like high population). Don’t worry about letting the early eras go to other civs – they aren’t worth many fame points and your time and effort is better spent building up your infrastructure.

[random user]

Appendix


Interior Ministry round-robin
This is the process by which no one builds a gigantic building until they are about to become Interior Minister. Once interior minister, spend all your harvests, and then have the next person take the Interior Minister. Repeat.

Voyage Transfer
Voyage Transfer is the process by which you are able to double your science yet keep enough science to again later double your science. First you will need to acquire enough science to be your seed science. This can be done through doing mazes, buying it in the market place, or using a Voyage of Discovery. Many people finish a tech as soon as they can. In Voyage Transfer, instead of finishing a tech when you can, you hang on to the science. Complete a VoD to double each person’s science. Finish mazes as you can, taking care not to finish the tech. Designate someone to complete the next tech. Exhaust that person’s maze moves, and then the teammates transfer enough science so that person can complete the tech solo while the other teammates stay out.

Once the tech has been completed, transfer enough additional science to that teammate such that a future VoD will again double everyone’s science. This is only viable in a small civ where the cap for doubling is very high.

Transferring Gold
Transferring gold is the method by which you trade goods back and forth with your teammate to transfer gold with no net goods transferred. For example, let’s say food costs 300 and player A has 1000 food and 0 gold, and player B has 1000 food and 4000 gold.

To transfer gold to player A:

player B buys 1000 food to drive the price up.
Player A then sells 1000 food to bring the price back down to 300.
Player B then sells 1000 food to drive the price down further.
Player A then buys 1000 food to bring the price back to 300.

The net effect of this is no goods transfer since they both bought and sold 1000 food, but a fair amount of gold transferred from Player B to A. It’s important to have enough material to make this viable, and is one of the reasons why FR is important early in the game, as it facilitates this transfer.

Wonder Cycling
There are 8 mini-wonder events, of which 3 are up at any particular time. This means that if the one you want isn’t up, then if you complete one, you have a 20% chance of getting the wonder you want. Wonder cycling is the process of completing sub-optimal wonder events in an effort to get on you do want. This process is much better if there are multiple wonders which you do want. For example, if VoD, FR, and Golden Era are all wonders you are hoping for, and none of them are up, you have a 60% chance of getting one of those. Wonder cycling generally only works in small civs where the cost of a mini-event is only 2 Great People.

[random user]

Some things I realize now might not be clear in this document:

Timing:
Forming your civ is at T+13 hours.
Monarchy is generally within 18 hours of that
Gunpowder is generally within 20-30 hours of that (depending on how hard you are pressed and how lucky you are with VoD)

So the game is generally won sometime in day 3, though the mop up will probably take another couple of days. Almost all of the science is generated through voyage of discovery and wall spam, and it can be seriously ridiculous. I'll edit in some figures for just how much science can be generated later.

Presence
Most of us were online, at least around, most of the time. You can take turns doing the work to get a break, but most of the time we were around for maze movements etc, or in case something was cheap or expensive. We did sleep a normal schedule, though sometimes if a battle comes at a bad time, someone would take one for the team and be general for it.

[angelar]

Hey, good guide and thanks for fleshing it out. Did you ever have the civs coordinate an attack against you: I can see this as being a way to counter a runaway civ.

The last point is, I think, very important. You either use time or civbucks in my experience, and some well-placed bucks can make up for not being available for 2/3 of the day. It's not online, either, it's just being able to be online if someone contacts you.

Which is something that I would add. You either need to have the people in your team on your FB friends list or have a FB group or have another way to get in touch with them. You do need someone to be keeping an eye on the game.

It's very hard once you know how to win a game to not win a game every time, so your choice is to stop playing, form teams to help other people win games, or deliberately play in a way to not win but achieve other goals (mopping up achievements, collecting spam, etc). I mostly play only 1 slot (I'm in two games at the moment, only because my nephew joined one and I wanted to keep an eye on him) and love it if I see a group of names I recognise because I know they are going to win so can just sit back and watch. The drawback is that making games uncompetitive too early means that other players drop out and the later eras can become a real drag. I know lots of people like to farm games for civbucks or points but that's not what I want to do. I like playing cooperatively, I like a flexible way of playing to adapt, I still like testing the game (from my own standpoint - I was only ever a FB gamer, not a civ player or a coder) but I think this makes it clear that in the current form it is very broken as a game for a casual player and not demanding enough for the experts.

They need to sort out the civbuck limits, made it obvious game parameters such as fame and buck limit before you join, allow custom games with a low civbuck limit (and I know you haven't used any, but I hear more complaints about using bucks than anything else in games). They need to sort out the problems with the maze/moves/achievement spam because it gives teams far too much of an advantage. Particularly as they republish each time you reload the game based on the type of citizen you have. They need to gift bucks in a fairer way, possibly for log in. They need to let people see, or at least make it obvious, who has allied them (and also actually respond when we put in a complaint about harrassment or multi accounts).

I still enjoy civ, enough to make sure that I log in every day to at least store maze moves, but I am very much the exception.

[ShuShu62]

If anybody has any doubts to your credibility... they shouldn't.

My strategy is slightly different than yours, but the tools are exactly the same. Your implementation is much more efficient than mine and I am more market and less harvest based but yours is stronger and more predictable. Since you ARE harvest based, you should build one round of Renaisance/Industrial revolution after you have closed borders and before you start the IM round robin --- edit, reread... you didn't miss this did you, my bad.

I am constantly told that this will not work in guild games, but I am not convinced. Also, speaking from experience, it becomes much harder to do once folks know who you are unless you want to tell everyone to go pound sand. On the flip side, if you find yourself considering giving up the game because it is too much work, having friends joining you to form large civs is just the ticket.

P.S. Just as with the Nazgul, If I had to beat Random, I would not try to beat him at his game because I couldn't... but all those barbarian harvests would mean their new civ would have a nasty little parasite when it finally formed... hehehe... of course, I'm too nice a guy to do that.

[ShuShu62]

End-Game

If you have achieved these 4 things, then you’ve basically won the game. This is an important part of this strategy… it does not win through winning. It wins through not losing. I’m not sure how to better explain the distinction, but it’s an important one. A lot of people spend their time and actions to try and win. If you instead spend your time and your actions to prevent loss, then winning will come as a natural byproduct.

...

I love this quote, and couldn't agree more.

[random user]

I hope that I didn't give the impression that I felt this strategy was unbeatable -- it certainly is beatable, especially if you know it's coming beforehand.

The biggest threat to this strategy is if two separate guilds are also in the game, and one exclusively focuses on science and the other on war. The small civ can easily deal with one or the other, and no single guild can accomplish both to its fullest potential, but if you have two different teams each working on one aspect and agreeing not to interfere with the other, then that can get messy.

Coordinating attacks can be a problem, but one of the main advantages of the super small civ is the ability to cycle wonders so easily, and now a single call to arms is doubly devastating. In the early game, you just can't get the attack power you need from relying on horsemen, and in the later game the tech lead is usually too great. Again, the main threat will come if the attackers can time the attack while they have invention but not gunpowder and the small civ doesn't have access to combustion and/or flight... and that timing window is pretty small.

About coordination, I agree it's a must. Again I'll mention something which is a grey area which most people don't seem to be concerned about, which is account sharing. A team willing to account share is going to be much more powerful than one who doesn't, and is much more powerful than multi-accounting IMO. Yes, it requires either really trusting your friends or creating a gaming account which is against the Terms of Service for Facebook, but the reality is just because there are some hurdles doesn't mean it's not done. Beyond that, having people available via IM, text, or something else, is very important in an "organized" team.

I think one of the main reasons I quit is that I firmly believe that once you reach a certain level, the winner of the game is determined by the amount of time the team is willing to be online. If multiple teams are willing to spend a lot of time online, then civbucks come into play too... though I liken it to some extent to MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction... google that if you are too young to know what that means).

I didn't talk about it a lot but I feel that the wall spam does also break the game, as you now have this meta game where you collect links and then use them strategically. This could easily be solved by having links expire or by limiting the number of rewards you could redeem per day (something that I believe Zynga games do btw), so why they didn't do that I have no idea.

In regards to the market, I might not have emphasized this enough, but playing the market is a key part of the equation too. Remember, you are supposed to collect 8-13 Great People each before you have even done your first harvest... you'll only do that through a combination of playing the market, your enhanced trickle through a higher population, and using wall spam to generate goods.

In regards to parasites, there is a specific reason I included:

Create a civ. This can be tricky at times but that’s a discussion for another thread.

There are ways to get around it, and actually I did have a parasite join my team for a game, and there was some pretty stiff competition from another group who called in their friends to come try and beat us. But we still managed to win by a fairly large margin (I think our first player still had about 550-700* points) even though Sauron tried pretty hard to make a mess of it, especially by denying us 5 IM rotations. What it did cause, however, was for us to spend more time than we otherwise would have.

Which leads me to one last point, for this post at least, which is that the nice thing about this strategy is that usually you don't actually have to spend that much time. Because the strategy is very reactionary, if your opponents are slow, you can afford to be as well. If your opponents are more organized, then you'll have to spend more time. What this means is that sometimes you get easy games where it's really casual... but sometimes you get games where you'll have to devote a fair amount of time to it.

Edit:
* I originally thought it was around 700, but in thinking about it more, it might have been lower. To be safe, in case an case anyone happens to have a screenshot, I lowered the my guess to be conservative.

[ShuShu62]

I hope that I didn't give the impression that I felt this strategy was unbeatable ...

You did, but 15 to 25 and 0 can do that.

... The biggest threat to this strategy is if two separate guilds are also in the game, and one exclusively focuses on science and the other on war. The small civ can easily deal with one or the other, and no single guild can accomplish both to its fullest potential, but if you have two different teams each working on one aspect and agreeing not to interfere with the other, then that can get messy....

Nah... speaking from experience here ... The biggest threat is someonone else doing the same thing as you, only better.

... There are ways to get around it, and actually I did have a parasite join my team for a game, and there was some pretty stiff competition from another group who called in their friends to come try and beat us. But we still managed to win by a fairly large margin (I think our first player still had about 550-700* points) even though Sauron tried pretty hard to make a mess of it, especially by denying us 5 IM rotations. What it did cause, however, was for us to spend more time than we otherwise would have.
....

Yes. If you parasite the Nazgul, you can really destructively impact their efficiency. If you parasite a miracle worker, you must ride them to the top. If I joined your civ when it formed, I would have already gained 50 fame on you that I acquired while you were busy farming barbarians. You would then find that margin very difficult to overcome.

...I firmly believe that once you reach a certain level, the winner of the game is determined by the amount of time the team is willing to be online.....

Anybody other than the Weather Goddess catch this referrence?... Turn off the battle computer...

... I quit .....

The 'I quit' is the most important statement. I mean this with all due respect. You need to learn how to lose. Just because you can win doesn't mean you have to. This is one of the advantages team Nazgul and team Chaos have. They are used to winning, but they have ceased playing to win. They are playing to have fun, and just happen to end up winning as a result. That was a very difficult transition for me to make, we'll be waiting for you when you get there.

[random user]

In my life, as in most peoples' lives, I have lots of ways I can have fun, but I only have a finite amount of time.

Since you are a parent too you should know that "just because you can win doesn't mean you have to" applies to the extreme when you are dealing with your own children, especially young children, and is something I understand well since I have two young boys of my own.

It was a lot of fun learning the ins and outs of CivWorld. It was fun seeing what worked. But I've played a bunch of games of CivWorld and I don't really feel the need to go back when there are so many other things to do, see, and play.

Since you've mentioned Ticket to Ride, one example I'll use is Settlers of Catan, which in my mind is a very similar game (at least in terms of ease to learn and luck factor). When it came out we played it tons. I've probably played several hundreds of games of Settlers. But I have no interest in playing Settlers anymore, because I feel I've experienced everything I need to out of it. I still think Settlers is a great game (though I admit I'm biased because when Settlers came out you didn't have hundreds of awesome games to choose from like you do now). But I'd rather play something newer that I haven't played as much of.

And it's the same with CivWorld. I could play CivWorld, but I'm exploring other things now.

Edit: if somehow development for this game isn't dead and this game is substantially overhauled, I almost certainly would come back to see what has changed and how the changes play out, however.

[wwjdfakb]

A quick point on the parasite issue and Nazgul---

We are very xenophobic in guild games and thus always have closed borders. But one time (in a guild game) we did have a Gary clone waiting for us to open to let another Nazgul in. Yes, he snuck in, and yes, he stripped a few interior ministries. But since we don't communicate on game chat, he wasn't able to go beyond that, because he had no idea what our next move would be. I think he made it up to duke once or twice.

We can recognize parasites immediately. So Gary got shoved into the closet, and we went on to the win.

[ShuShu62]

Hehehe... you Nazgul have nice closets, complete with ginormous get out of jail free cards.

For those out there looking for new challenges, try this... wait till the last 4 or 5 eras and take over the top civ with open borders and close out all five eras as king. It is not as easy as it sounds... but once you do it you will have an appreciation of what is required to take over and hold a civ hostage. Even one with closets as fancy as the Nazgul's .

[troyd]

The barbarian hunting does become problematic in guild games, and larger games with other players that enjoy the practice. Also there are players within civs that enjoy picking off barbarians before anyone can get their benefit. Let's just say, I love to watch barbarians die

[ShuShu62]

how barbairic...

I knew a three man guild (I assume the Rulers, or perhaps Random_user from a parallel universe) was going to plague my little griefer civ the moment my barbarians stopped showing up...

[bvsdireito]

I'm doing exactly what you said, is happening exactly what you said. Its amazin!!! You r Sid!

[mosquitobite]

In my life, as in most peoples' lives, I have lots of ways I can have fun, but I only have a finite amount of time.

Since you are a parent too you should know that "just because you can win doesn't mean you have to" applies to the extreme when you are dealing with your own children, especially young children, and is something I understand well since I have two young boys of my own.

It was a lot of fun learning the ins and outs of CivWorld. It was fun seeing what worked. But I've played a bunch of games of CivWorld and I don't really feel the need to go back when there are so many other things to do, see, and play.

I could play CivWorld, but I'm exploring other things now.

Edit: if somehow development for this game isn't dead and this game is substantially overhauled, I almost certainly would come back to see what has changed and how the changes play out, however.

Same here!