@shulec
Thank you so much for sharing your game!
You are quite welcome. I took the time hoping I could help somebody out.
I need to try Jesusin's approach too!I had just reached the point yesterday evening where I felt I understood far less about getting a fast culture victory than I ever did. Even jesusin's posts, while full of information, left me feeling that I was playing the wrong strategy, and that the correct one required a complete re-think. (Part of my problem is that I don't feel comfortable playing a strategy unless I understand how it works, what it is accomplishing etc.)
Now, having read your post, I can see how your game went and compare it to my own (much slower) attempts.
It is quite clear that the biggest difference between our games occurs between turns 82 and 155!!
(I am not forgetting what you said in an earlier post about more cities earlier being the key)
Having enough workers is huge, as is getting trade routes established (both foreign and domestic.)
While we have both concentrated on building the essential wonders and cathedrals, you have built far more of them for more religions in a shorter time than I managed. Can I ask what your main means of fast building was? Whipping, chopping, or buying through 'gold-rush'?
Building
Early on, I whipped settlers, workers, and 1 or 2 WC. The map had little food, so whipping was not good. In the early building phase, I have have whipped some unhappiness away a time or two. Most of my production came from mines and chops. There are a lot of forest in the northern region, so I went chop crazy, but tried not to chop too much before mathematics and tried to chop within cultural boundaries only. I did buy a few cathedrals (and universities) near the end, but never at full price. I did not buy any wonders due to the expense (and I think there it cost more to buy wonders.) See below for a chop trick with building research/wealth/culture.
Religions
I was lucky to have the 3 opening religions founded next to my capitol. I was the first to CoL and Philosophy. These were my five religions. Mansa Musa discovered Theology first, and traded it to me immediatly. (Dumb for him, AP for me.)
I was very careful to keep my GPP pool as pure as possible, trying to pop as many GA as possible, but - as you mention - you have not been so careful and have generated a diverse set of GP.
Interestingly, this must mean that our culture points were accumulated from a quite difference 'balance' of sources.
Mine, I would think, came from(a) setting slider to 100% after my research completedYours, on the other hand, seems to owe more to the buildings, and certainly much less to GAs, wouldn't you think?
(b) bombing GAs into my cities
(c) building in the cities
(d) the buildings in my cities
In my game, I had limited GA bombing. Building culture in cities should ONLY be done when you have excess wealth at 100% culture. If you are at a defecit at 100% culture, you should build wealth in you legendary cities to try to maintain 100% culture. (This applies if you have cottages in your legendary cities)
I particularly noticed you setting research rate to 0%, but building research in your cities. This is a technique that I have never used (never learned!) but I will have to look at. I assume this is to build up gold for rush buying later?
Building research/wealth
Buiding research is not something I usually do, but it can be helpful. In the above screenshots, I needed to research CoL for the CS slingshot. My economy was busting, and I needed research badly. I did not have a good building to build and wanted my cities to grow. I didn't want to stagnate growth building workers or settlers, or by running specialists. Once I got CS, I started building stuff again. Late in the game, I build wealth in my non-legendary cities to keep the Culture slider at 100%. In general, for any victory type, I usually build wealth over research. This is because I usually have more science modifying buildings compared to wealth modifying buildings. This allows more commerce to go through the research slider.
Trick: A great reason for building research or wealth is that you can completely chop forests, as opposed to pre-chopping them, and then have them apply to the next building you build. I got a few wonders in 3-4 turns after all the chops went into the build. You then don't have to waste worker turns going back into the forest.
I will definitely be having some more attempts before the deadline, and will think about my strategy in a different way. However, the top 3 places in this game have nothing to fear from me
Good luck and be sure to share you successes and failures.
Two newbe questions:
- what's the conversion rate of gold-rushing?
- how many temples required to build a cathedral in a large map?
It is three temples per catherdral. I have no idea on the conversion.