Episode: 4690 Title: Playing Civilization V, Part 14 Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4690/hpr4690.mp3 Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:51 (official HPR transcript) --- This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4690, for 2026-07-24 Today's show is entitled, "Playing Civilization V, Part 14" The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:05:48 The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA The summary is "We conclude a sample game of Civilization V" Oh, this is a hookah welcome you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in our ongoing series on computer strategy games and we're wrapping up the sample game of civilization five in which we are playing as Austria and trying to get a diplomatic victory We've already done a couple of episodes about the earlier part of this game and just to refresh your memory, I made a mistake and the mistake was to think that puppeting city states was going to help me get to the diplomatic victory In fact, it pushes me further away from it, but let's see what happens So now I'm at turn 340. I just puppeted another city state and I have one more on the way I have sent a large number of military units both land and sea to the city states that are on Japan's border If he tries anything now he will likely regret it Now I'm starting to build things I had not bothered with before like granaries and amphitheaters I got a couple of great engineers and used them to rush build a couple of wonders I'm nearly finished puppeting all the city states and my happiness and income are both quite healthy I am in such good shape that I started to build the world's fair which I initially proposed then ignored Now at this point I only have one more city state to puppet and then I will have puppeted every city state in the game So it's time to put my large income to use in other ways by giving gifts to the other players I may want to get a few more votes on my side to help get over the top and the world leader vote when it happens On turn 357 I completed the puppeting of all the city states in the game Meanwhile I'm building up my science and building wonders as they become available I didn't build any in the early game because I had other priorities And we've talked before about how I typically tend to do that in Civ Games Because the early game I really want to get out my cities and develop them And I find wonders to be a distraction from that But you know at this point I've got a strong military, a high income and no other pressing needs My scoring leader board is now double that of my nearest competitor which is still Japan And there's denunciation of me just expired with them taking no action Now I used a great engineer to rush build the porcelain tower earning me another great scientist I then used to build another academy Now at this point it is mostly a slog to the finish Since I was so dominant and so wealthy I could afford to pursue a couple of other options just in case One was a science victory which looked like a possibility though it would be close at this point because I had not been focusing on science from the beginning I had to be very focused in my science research to do this I couldn't afford to spend time researching every possible technology The science victory is built on launching a spaceship so I had to focus on things that would get me to that goal Now the other thing I could try for was a culture victory Now I'd already dominated two other empires culturally without half try And I was generating great artists, great musicians and great writers pretty rapidly So I built museums and then archaeologists and grabbed every artifact I could find to stuff into the museums But the final victory came when I researched globalization Now globalization is a tech that allows you to get an extra vote in the world council For every spy you send to another empires capital and designate as an ambassador Now I had a bunch of spies by this point which I had mostly kept in my own cities to do counter espionage because I had a big tech lead over everyone So I didn't want them stealing all my tax But the fact that I had all of these spies handy meant I could basically put one in each of the other ships All of the other empires Doesn't make them as ambassadors A few turns after I did that a vote for world leader came up and I won So I did get my diplomatic victory after all Now this was my first time using Maria Teresa of Austria as my leader and it was fun But in the end, puppeting all of the city states actually made it harder to win a diplomatic victory And other games I've played every city state that was an ally was an extra vote in the city council And I assumed that making them puppets would mean I would get that many votes, but apparently not Of course if I'd read more carefully in the civilization wiki, I would have realized this because it says they're very clearly That Austria is one of the worst empires to pick if you're going for a diplomatic victory So the fact that I managed that anyway is nice I think I actually could have done a science victory as I had my spaceship half built when I won the diplomatic victory But I hope this analysis of how I actually played this game will be helpful to someone else So this is a hookah for hacker public radio signing off and it's always encouraging you to support free software. 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