Antiquity sites / Archeology achievements

While most of the Steam achievements related to game mechanics (e.g. social policies or victories) are a matter of time or just a matter of choosing a specific victory, the Antiquity sites achievements or Archeology achievements require some planning.

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A personal note:

I myself grew up in the very city Heinrich Schliemann, pioneer of field archeology, went to school! And my high school was even named after him.

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Back to the Archeology achievements: You can do the 4 achievements in only two games. The first 3 can be done in one game, playing France. For the 4th you need to play America.

The first 3 Antiquity site achievements

Here’s my game settings for the France game and how each setting influences the likelihood for actually making the Civilization 5 antiquity sites achievements. Below that, you’ll find the strategy guides.

Game settings

Civilization	France
City States	41 (The maximum number of course, so you get loads of artifacts from City States.)
Map Type	Pangaea (So you can reach everything quickly without crossing oceans.)
Map Size	Huge
Difficulty Level	Settler (It needs to be easy to research Archeology long before the other civs.)
Game Pace	Standard (In a quick game you might not be able to scout the whole map in time.)
Game Era	Ancient Era (So you can work on your technological advantage right from the start.)
Victory Types	Domination (Otherwise you possibly win culturally before the end.)

Pyramid Scheme

Unlocked: Jun 20, 2014 2:01am

Playing as France, get the Louvre to the maximum theming bonus of 16.

Now to max out the Louvre theming bonus you need to build it in Paris, because the French’s unique ability is a doubled theming bonus in the capital. This means building the Louvre in any other city can only get your theming bonus to 8!

Building and Wonder theming bonuses

These descriptions can only be found hovering over the buildings in-game. Unfortunately the Civilopedia entries of the buildings and wonders don’t mention them.

Museum

To maximize your bonus, make sure both Great Works are of the same type (both Art or both Artifact), both from the same Era, and either both from the city’s civilization, or both from civilizations other than the city owner. (2 slots)

Oxford University

To maximize your bonus, make sure the Great Work Slots are filled with Writings from different Eras from Civilizations other than the city owner. (2 slots)

Hermitage

To maximize your bonus, make sure the Great Work Slots are filled with Art from different Eras and different Civilizations. (3 slots)

Great Library

To maximize your bonus, make sure the Great Work Slots are filled with Writings from different Eras and different Civilizations. (2 slots)

Sistine Chapel

To maximize your bonus, make sure the Great Work Slots are filled with Art from the same Era and Civilization. (2 slots)

Louvre

To maximize your bonus, make sure the Great Work Slots are filled with 2 Great Works of Art and 2 Artifacts with all 4 being from different Eras and different Civilizations. (4 slots)

Uffizi

To maximize your bonus, make sure the Great Work Slots are filled with Art from the same Era and Civilization. (3 slots)

Globe Theatre

To maximize your bonus, make sure the Great Work Slots are filled with Writings from the same Era and Civilization. (2 slots)

Broadway

To maximize your bonus, make sure the Great Work Slots are filled with Music from the same Era and Civilization. (3 slots)

Sydney Opera House

To maximize your bonus, make sure the Great Work Slots are filled with Music from different Eras but the same Civilization. (2 slots)

Your Great Work Shopping List

During my France-game I wanted to maximize all theming bonuses in Paris’ culture buildings. This is not required to make any of the archeology achievements, but it’s a lot of fun! To do it and pride yourself you’ll need:

5x Music	3 from same Era and Civilization 2 from different Eras but the same Civilization You can produce all of these on your own, but make sure to get 3 Musicians in one Era. Preferably build Broadway, but don’t finish it and hold back with Musician production short before you’ll get one. Then advance to the next Era, resume Musician production and finish Broadway (makes 2 Musicians of your new Era). Now rush Musician production before advancing to the next Era or choose a social policy that grants a free Great Person.
6x Writings	2 from same Era and Civilization 2 from different Eras and different Civilizations 2 from different Eras and Civilizations other than your own Here you can (and have to) do a lot of trading Great Works with other Civilizations. Getting two Great Writers in the same Era is quite easy: Make sure to build Globe Theatre in the same Era you’ll spawn a Great Writer. Voilà!
10x Art 2x Artifacts	3x Art from different Eras and different Civilizations 3x Art from same Era and Civilization 2x Art from same Era and Civilization 2x Art and 2x Artifacts from different Eras and different Civilizations Building the Louvre spawns 1 free Great Artist. For this game you might want to save the “free Great Artist” social policy in the Aesthetics-tree and the “free Great Person” from completing the Liberty-tree for the time/era you finish the Louvre to maximize your Great Artists from that Era.

Losing My Marbles

Unlocked: Jun 20, 2014 12:32am

Extract 5 Artifacts from the territory of another major civilization.

With the game settings from above you should have a pretty good chance of finding another civilization with many antiquity sites in their realm. Of course that only works if you haven’t settled all the land yet. Even if you don’t find a civ with 5 artifact sites, here’s what you can do:

The credits for this one go to Tracker4502 who suggested this in a thread on the civfanatics.com forum:

Locate antiquity sites near another civilization and open borders with that civ. Send settlers near the antiquity sites (so you need 5 settlers max.) and send 5 archaeologists after them. Settlers have less movement, so send them first. Found cities next to the sites or in convenient locations near and buy the tiles with the antiquity sites on them. Your archaeologists should already be in place. (If you want to continue that game later, save it now, so you can load after making the achievement.) Found all cities in one turn as to not be asked to stop settling.

Now gift those cities to your neighbor and have your archaeologists start digging! Make sure you still have open borders! Once you excavated all 5, you’ll have the achievement!

It Belongs in a Museum

Unlocked: Jun 21, 2014 12:11pm

Have Artifacts from 10 different City-States in the Museums and Wonders in your civilization.

I only made this achievement with the second to last antiquity site on a huge map with 41 City-States. And I dug out all artifacts across the map. Please see below for an overview of how many players you need for generating how many artifacts on what map size. Here’s the City State artifacts I luckily found:

1. Colombo 2x
2. Kiev
3. Bratislava
4. Monaco
5. Jerusalem 2x
6. Antwerp
7. Singapore
8. Zurich
9. Geneva
10. Buenos Aires

It really needs to be different City States. By the time I dug out the one from Zurich, I had 2 from Colombo and 2 from Jerusalem, so 10 overall, but the achievement didn’t trigger.

This is why you need to go for the lowest difficulty. You need to research Archeology long before the other players, have enough time to build dozens of archaeologists and send them 10 turns across the map.

The 4th Antiquity site achievement

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Have your American Archaeologist extract an Artifact from Egypt with a German Archaeologist within 2 tiles.

This one needs a little planning and again I followed a hint from this thread on civfanatics. Play a normal game as America on a Pangaea map with 2 other players (Egypt and Germany). Explore the map and research Archeology. You should be able to find an antiquity site quite centered. Playing on a lower level of difficulty and a fast game speed helps containing the AI, so they don’t settle everything. Build 2 settlers and 2 archaeologists and send them near “your” site. Now you need good timing:

1. found a city next to the site
2. found a 2nd city as close as possible near the first city and buy tiles towards the site (but the site needs to be on a tile of city #1)
3. start digging
4. place your 2nd archaeologist on a tile belonging to city #2 (close to the site)
5. now check every turn when the archaeologist will finish digging. stop him at the last turn
6. open borders with Germany and Egypt
7. gift city #1 (the one with the site) to Egypt
8. gift city #2 to Germany
9. gift the idle archaeologist (now in German territory) to Germany, making him “a German Archaeologist within 2 tiles”
10. finish the archaeological dig!

Conclusion

Unlike Scenario specific achievements, e.g. for the Scramble for Africa, the Civilization 5 Antiquity sites achievements can be done in various different settings. The game settings I described are merely an efficiency-thing to enable you to do the achievements as hassle-free as possible and without losing your marbles.

Personally I find it quite sad that the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” achievement is basically impossible, or very very very unlikely, to be done without “faking” it. I like to be the architect of my own fortune, but this is too much staging for me. Nonetheless, as a reward for the hard work, here’s some fun:

Doing the other three in comparison is more fun again: Your way towards the archeology achievements is clear, but still a lot depends on the behavior of the AIs and yourself.

Also I loved to make Paris a cultural mega-city! 🙂

What’s your take on Archeology in Civilization 5? How did you do the achievements? Discuss in the comments below or just like or share the article!

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Appendix: Antiquity sites per map size

The following function gets the number to display it in the Culture Overview popup (DLC\Expansion2\UI\InGame\Popups\CultureOverview.lua):

GetNumArchaeologySites()

It references

D:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Sid Meier’s Civilization V\Assets\DLC\Expansion2\CvGameCore_Expansion2.dll right now I want to get this post out, so I won’t install Visual Studio to investigate further. Please share your insights, should you go that way.

Until then:

Map size	Map type	Civilizations	CS	Antiquity sites	Hidden Antiquity sites	Sum
Huge	Pangaea	12	24	46	24	70
Huge	Pangaea	12	41	60	20	80
Huge	Pangaea	12	32	58	26	84

The line in bold used my France game settings. Seems you can generate more Antiquity sites, configuring less City States. I assume though, this will decrease the probability to generate City State artifacts.