Extract 5 Artifacts from the territory of another major civilization
 
 
For Civ V achievements advice, I have relied on Xalehander’s excellent and comprehensive Civilization V Achievement guide.
 
 
Xalehander gives good advice about this achievement, but I found that I was repeatedly unable to find an opponent civilization with five archaeology sites. When I decided to focus on getting this achievement, I came up with a method that gave me the achievement, and I’m sure will work for you as well.
 
 
My results were with all of the DLCs loaded.
 
 

Setting up for the Losing My Marbles Achievement

Attempting this on a huge map with several other civilizations in casual play had not spawned what was needed. But only one other civilization with sufficient archaeology sites would be enough. So I selected the two continents setting on a small map. If we each filled our continent, odds are that my opponent would have enough sites.
 
 
I deleted all of the other opponents and set the city-states low, so they would not own the needed sites. You could use zero.
 
 
I expanded and filled my continent, then went exploring. My random opponent turned out to be Germany. Surprise, he was not growing very fast. I expanded into his continent, claiming more than half of it. He had only two archaeology sites.
 
 
 

Doing Archaeology On Donated Ground

I made enough archaeologists to harvest all of the sites on his continent, then made settlers to settle near them and found cities. I then gave him the cities that had the sites in exchange for Open Borders.
 
 
I had the archaeologists in place and initiated five digs. When these completed, I should have my achievement. If only things were that simple.
 
 
Germany razed the towns they were given. One dig completed before this happened, one dig completed on original German territory, but when I noticed that the towns were being razed, one town had disappeared, and the dig completed on the same turn. I halted the other two digs before the razing clock ran out, but I was now one short. Lesson learned, track the razing each turn and halt your archaeologist if razing is imminent.
 
 
I had also not used the archaeology sites on my home continent, figuring I might need spares, so a possible solution was to give those towns. I kept that as my hold card.
 
 
There are many quirks in the trade portion of the diplomacy interface, and often the AI will turn down a very reasonable offer, or more annoyingly, when you are beating in war, it will offer peace if you pay them all of your resources. But the AI has a weakness for cities, even when it doesn’t want them.
 
 
I cranked out replacement settlers and resettled the two towns. I had to do that twice for one of the sites. But I got those two while he still owned them. Four digs done, one to go.
 
 
 

Continuing Archaeology Via the Exploration Track

If you complete the Exploration track, you get additional archaeology sites. I was getting new policies quickly enough that it seemed better to try this than to give away any of my home turf; although that was always a contingency plan. Sure enough, I completed the Exploration track, and two additional sites appeared in appropriate areas. I gave Germany another town to convince him to open borders, moved my archaeologists in and completed my fifth and sixth digs on German territory, getting the Losing My Marbles achievement on the fifth.
 
 
 

Winning and Loosing

Winning was not really the goal, however, avoiding loosing was, for two reasons. It was important to retain control of the situation in order to build and donate towns. Also, I’m not sure loosing has a continue option.
 
 
Destroying Germany was not an option, I needed them viable to trade with so I could dig on their land. Even taking their cities would have been counterproductive.
 
 
As it turned out, I won three times in the course of getting this achievement, once culturally, and twice diplomatically.
 
 

 
 
Here we come to an end for Sid Meier’s Civilization V Losing My Marbles Achievement Guide hope you enjoy it. If you think we forget something to include or we should make an update to the post let us know via comment, and we will fix it asap! Thanks and have a great day!