G-Minor 118

[shulec]

@shulec
Thank you so much for sharing your game!

You are quite welcome. I took the time hoping I could help somebody out.

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.

I need to try Jesusin's approach too!

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 completed
(b) bombing GAs into my cities
(c) building in the cities
(d) the buildings in my cities
​

Yours, on the other hand, seems to owe more to the buildings, and certainly much less to GAs, wouldn't you think?

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.

 

[AgedOne]

@shulec
Thanks for all the info. I won't post my comments on every point just yet. I'll try to modify my approach a little in my next games, and I'll let you know how things go.

Just a couple of things that I wanted to ask you:

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'd never heard this before! Is this true? Because it sounds like you are saying that keeping the culture slider at 100% is more valuable than building culture in the legendary cities. I haven't done the calculation, but it feels to me as though you will get most culture points in a city by building culture and having the slider as near to 100% as you can afford. Wouldn't the best way be to build wealth in the non-legendary cities so that you can set the slider high, and then build culture in the legendary cities to boost their points still further?

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.

That was really worth mentioning. It's strange. It is something that I am aware of, but haven't really paid any attention to. I kind of noticed it in passing, but have never planned to use it in my strategy. Hmm.

Anyway. On with the show!

 

[shulec]

I'd never heard this before! Is this true? Because it sounds like you are saying that keeping the culture slider at 100% is more valuable than building culture in the legendary cities. I haven't done the calculation, but it feels to me as though you will get most culture points in a city by building culture and having the slider as near to 100% as you can afford. Wouldn't the best way be to build wealth in the non-legendary cities so that you can set the slider high, and then build culture in the legendary cities to boost their points still further?

The culture points that come from commerce/slider go through multipliers, whereas the culture from hammers are not multiplied. I haven't specifically analyzed this to see how much difference it makes. I was relying largely on the follow comment from Sun Tzu Wu from another gauntlet:

The Three Culture Cities should be building Culture generating Buildings or Wonders and Culture Multiplying Buildings or Wonders. They should build Culture in the end game only if that will cause a Win a turn earlier than without the Culture. Built Culture is not multiplied by any Culture multipliers like Hermitage, Cathedrals (of any Religion), Free Speech, etc.

When there are no Culture generating or multiplying Buildings or Wonders (Great or National) to be built, Cultural Cities should build Wealth unless Building Culture will help Win a turn earlier as mentioned above.

All other Cities should build Wealth unless there's something more useful to build like Missionaries (to spread that Religion to some of your Cities) or Temples (if needed to unlock another Cathedral that a Culture City could utilize).

Building Wealth in Cities, usually in the end game, but also in the mid game, is a very effective way to maximize the Culture slider (which you want at 100% if possible -- sacrifice everything else to do this, except other things that help generate more Culture in your Three Culture Cities = if your not building Wealth in the end game, you're probably doing something wrong.)

Sun Tzu Wu

Perhaps we can get Jesusin to weigh in on this.

 

[AgedOne]

The culture points that come from commerce/slider go through multipliers, whereas the culture from hammers are not multiplied.

I am beginning to see the light!! This makes a huge difference to the relative importance of the culture slider as compared to building culture in cities. I really had got the wrong end of the stick, as could be seen from my post where I talked about

(a) setting slider to 100% after my research completed
(b) bombing GAs into my cities
(c) building in the cities
(d) the buildings in my cities
​

This is befuddled thinking! (d) should be more clearly described as the 'multipliers', which are not a separate source of CP, but are factors that affect the CPs in the cities where the multipliers exist. The more multipliers you can get in the 3 legendary cities, each one improves your finishing speed enormously. (c) as you've just pointed out, provides CP but these are not affected by the multipliers.

I had been picturing the race to the finish line in the wrong way - giving far too much emphasis to generating GAs and then culture-bombing them into cities. I also imagined that the thing to do after Liberalism was to go Free Speech and set each of the 3 legendary cities onto building culture.

Now I will look at it all from a different perspective. I am trying to set up the max number of multipliers in my 3 cities, and then set the slider to 100% culture, converting all of my commerce to CPs - via the multipliers! A few Gt Artists are useful, but not a major source of CP (in fact, they could be useful to settle in the 3 cities rather than bombing, as I assume their extra CP will also go through the multipliers each turn to generate a much more respectable tally than it appears on face value)

 

[jesusin]

I am beginning to see the light!! This makes a huge difference to the relative importance of the culture slider as compared to building culture in cities. I really had got the wrong end of the stick, as could be seen from my post where I talked about
This is befuddled thinking! (d) should be more clearly described as the 'multipliers', which are not a separate source of CP, but are factors that affect the CPs in the cities where the multipliers exist. The more multipliers you can get in the 3 legendary cities, each one improves your finishing speed enormously. (c) as you've just pointed out, provides CP but these are not affected by the multipliers.

I had been picturing the race to the finish line in the wrong way - giving far too much emphasis to generating GAs and then culture-bombing them into cities. I also imagined that the thing to do after Liberalism was to go Free Speech and set each of the 3 legendary cities onto building culture.

Now I will look at it all from a different perspective. I am trying to set up the max number of multipliers in my 3 cities, and then set the slider to 100% culture, converting all of my commerce to CPs - via the multipliers! A few Gt Artists are useful, but not a major source of CP (in fact, they could be useful to settle in the 3 cities rather than bombing, as I assume their extra CP will also go through the multipliers each turn to generate a much more respectable tally than it appears on face value)

Hey, hey , hey not so fast

- d) includes not only multiplier buildings but also any building giving culture. That culture will be affected by the multipliers.
- GAs are very useful.
- Only the very first GAs, if any, are better settled than bombed.



Building culture:

I like Sun Tzu Wu approach better than mine, so I won't state mine and will start to think like him.


Just one little exercise. 16 turns to go. What is better for your Legendary city, building culture or building another monastery? You are doing 10 hammers per turn, multipliers in the city are *4 and it's normal speed.
If you build culture all the time, you get 10*16 = 160c
If you build monastery for six turns then culture for the rest of the game, you get
6*0+10*(2*4+10) = 180c
This means that building culture only makes sense really near the end of the game, in the last few turns.

 

[kcd_swede]

I think my biggest weakness in culture games is my ability to recognize what sites make great culture cities. I either lack production to build the necessary stuff, and maybe end up whipping a lot of junk, or I don't have enough cottage/commerce resoure to really go fast at the end.

Any quick tips on what terrain to look for in a culture city?

Haven't tried gold rushing... I don't usually prioritize pyramids for USuff... if I have them I usually use Repr instead.

 

[AgedOne]

@kcd_swede
I hope you'll understand if I don't try to answer your questions. I'll leave that to others, as I am now firmly in the role of 'student' and not 'master'.
All I will say on the subject of sites is that this map doesn't make it easy!

@shulec @jesusin
I think I am getting a better idea of the strategies. Thanks for these comments.

Progress Report
I just played a game which I thought was going to be promising, but I abandoned it after several things went wrong. Combination of bad play and bad luck.

I am still persisting with the idea that I will settle in the north (where the marble is) and take out 2 neighbours very quickly. However, I have had bad economic problems owning 6 cities - at sites chosen by the AI - at 1000BC, without CoL yet. So I decided to keep only the capitals / holy cities and build my own empire once my economy was more controllable. This was going to need careful balancing: too quick growth stunts economy, too slow and I won't have 9/10 cities in 1AD.

The early game went well. Horses in the bfc. Took out 2 nearest civs quickly. Got one religion - Hinduism - from a conquered capital.

The first sign of trouble came as I searched around in vain for marble. None! Well, as I found out much later, not none, but just one single marble resource in the entire game, at the far end of the north coast in somebody else's control, and so far away that I couldn't even consider taking it. That I consider bad luck.

Then the bad play. I chose a research path that took me to CoL as soon as possible, then headed for Liberalism. I hoped to get an Oracle slingshot to CS, and use a Gt Sci to bulb Philosophy. The Music and Drama part of the tech tree I would leave until later, but intended to nip through those techs very quickly due to my good research rate later.
All of this fell apart!
I got beaten to the Oracle, before I even got started on it (much too late - turn 91) and I think the builder took CoL as the freebie, so I had lost out on founding Confu.
Then I mistimed the Gt Sci pop so that Philosophy was no longer available to bulb, and had to use him on Education
Finally, I found that leaving Music / Drama to later was not a good idea, as I was beaten to Music by 1 turn, and - coupled with the lack of marble - I started to get beaten to Wonders like Parthenon .

The next bit of luck (unless I could have influenced this by my play) was the lack of any religions being spread to me. Having missed out on founding Confu and Tao, I was left with only Hindu in my empire and was waiting for religion spread from my neighbours. I made sure I had trade routes and roads connecting me, but nothing. I delayed slighly spreading Hindu to all of my cities (in the hope that something would spread to a city that had no relo more easily than it would to a city that already had one) but eventually had to spread it.

Finally abandoned it when I had just been declared on by Bismarck and a stack was approaching my GP Pump. I took stock of the whole situation and declared it a fiasco!
Time to start over.

 

[Manco Capac]

@AgedOne

By looking your mishaps, methinks you're just unlucky, dude. One source of marble, that ugly, forsooth! You talked about a great start once, may I see it?

EDIT: Oh yeah, why using the Great Scientist for partially bulbing Education is a bad move, it shortens your way to Liberalism, right?

As for my progression, I've just rolled an awesome one yesterday. Of course, it is the trekking adventures I chose. I'm going in the next minutes to do a small writeup up to 75 BC, the date when Egyptians found themselves having a delicate taste for music.

EDIT: Wow, lots of discussions happened here in one day, need to read that asap.

 

[Manco Capac]

Haven't tried gold rushing...

Is it I or since I mentioned the gold-rushing, everyone is mentioning it...I thought it was only an auxiliary method to accelerate some building...if one has some free cash in treasure. I don't think losing some turns putting the slider at 100% gold worths it.

 

[AgedOne]

I have just submitted my best effort so far
On the other hand, it was nowhere near the 1500s, and a few things went badly wrong.

Lots went well. The initial land-grab in the north was exactly on target, and I had 4 cities at turn 75.
After my previous mess-up, I made sure I was first to CoL and Philo. The Oracle sling-shot to CS worked fine. I also researched the 'artistic' branch of the tech tree before advancing beyond CS towards Lib.

I was able to build many wonders in my 3 legendary cities, and I wasn't so compulsive this time about ensuring they were only Artist-generating wonders.
(I got Oracle, Parthenon, Pyramids, Nat Epic, Zeus, Sistine, Maussollos, Gt Lib, Hermitage, Taj Mahal, Forbidden Palace, Globe)

Having built the Pyramids, I was able to use Representation during the high-research phase, and Uni Suff later on. This actually came in handy, as I had several thousand in the bank, and spent some of it rush-completing cathedrals and wonders.

What went less well? I never had any religion spread to me except the two I had founded, which severely limited the cathedrals available to me, and so the vital 'multipliers' never really got high.

I managed to miss out on Shwedagon Paya, AP, Hagia Sophia, Angkor Wat, Uni Sankore - all of which I started but wasn't quick enough. Disappointing!

The culture points were badly unbalanced across my 3 legendary cities, and I didn't have enough Gt Artists to correct this imbalance. I had to watch Oporto (my GP Pump) cross the finishing line 13 and 17 turns ahead of the other two cities .

Actually, I could have done better here. I checked and I had 10 Gt Artists, including the one from Music. One of these came too late for me to use - arriving on the last turn. The early ones I was settling in cities - especially Babylon, my 3rd legendary city, which was bringing in only a small CP/turn - and I think I must have held only 5 to use for culture-bombing and that just wasn't enough.

I even wonder if I chose the correct 3rd culture city. The first two were obvious enough: my capital and a relatively nice food-heavy 'pump'. The third city was a bit of a dilemma, and a choice between Lisbon and Babylon. In retrospect, I think Lisbon may have had slightly better productivity potential, but I had already chosen Babylon and started a wonder (Zeus).

Anyway. My finish was exactly on 1800AD. I know I can improve, so the search goes on...

 

[AgedOne]

By looking your mishaps, methinks you're just unlucky, dude. One source of marble, that ugly, forsooth!

I hope so! I really hope so. But I also have some improvements in my game play that I have to make

You talked about a great start once, may I see it?

Was this the post you mean?
I wasn't talking about a great city site, I believe. More that I had good land available to me after knocking out my neighbours, and there were useful resources located in this land.
I haven't got a screenshot, but I might be able to dig up a save and take a snap of it if you were interested?

 

[Manco Capac]

Was this the post you mean?
I wasn't talking about a great city site, I believe. More that I had good land available to me after knocking out my neighbours, and there were useful resources located in this land.
I haven't got a screenshot, but I might be able to dig up a save and take a snap of it if you were interested?

Right, that one. Did you finish it or did this end up to be a failure?

 

[Manco Capac]

At last, the RNG was favorable towards my little person: it gave one of the best start I ever see on oasis mapscript.
I remember Shulec giving us this hint:

Here is another hint: Use the maximum number of AI. This will give you more AI capitols to pick from!

As a side effect, is it possible it increases the total number of resources as the number of civs inscreases? First time, I put 14 Civs and the result was impressive regarding the sheer number of resources.
My current game is an example:

Spoiler :

Anyways, here I begin at 75 BC :

Overall, I killed 4 civilizations, and two others were on the blink to be destroyed.
Frankly, this way was far more interesting than peaceful win in the south as I can unleash my psychopathic method to deal other civs.
I have 12 cities and three others may be settled because of its value as productive ones or great people farm.


City List:

Spoiler :

Capital:


Lincoln's Capital:


Awesome Food Site North to my capital:


Isabella's Capital:


Ugly Wilhem Capital:


Gandhi's Capital:



Secundary Good City:


Very Good Great People Pool:


Sea Food City:


Nice production City:


A city I let to Isabella for more Worker:

Future other cities:

Spoiler :

I just got Music and I just need to gun to liberalism with a small detour to Calender for early MoM (What Sun Tzu Wu said right: I need to build the most wonders before 1 AD).

In summary:

At turn 5 (3800 BC), I got a scout which permits me to get more gold.
At turn 11 (3560 BC), I founded Thebes on a plain hills. The moment of its foundation I discovered I missed a marble resource one tile east. I was disappointed my with my production capacity (three hills), hoping copper or horses. Now I still think about it, if I had chosen marble, I would've lost the horses. Brrrr.

At turn 22 (3120 BC), I stole a worker to my very next neighbour, Lincoln.
At turn 23 (3080 BC), Horses ended up to be in path to my stolen worker.
At turn 42 (2320 BC), I captured Lincoln awesome production site along one another worker.
At turn 51 (1960 BC), I got Hunting from a tribal hut (which was very useful to improve my fur resource) and, at the same, I captured Isabella Capitol. I had to run around to catch up its worker. Buddism controlled!
At turn 60 (1560 BC), Wilhem is doomed!!! I hate him because he didn't do his job to found Judaism and he's a damn annoying backstabber.

At turn 67 (1320 BC), SH constructed by this insect of Justinian. Out of rage I DoWed him soon later.
At turn 68 (1280 BC), I captured Gandhi's capital; he didn't found any religion, what a bummer . Moreover, I lost one chariot at ~97% victory. Damn~~~this is where my streak of bad luck begins at wars.
Knowing Justinian still has warriors, I decided to put my exactions onto him for daring defy me at wonder race. I killed warriors after warriors on hill, but no success. At one moment my chariots were too weak to continue, thus I had to retire. I'll come back just for your head, Justinian!!! Obliged Peace treaty.

At turn 75 (1000 BC), Confucianism founded in Lincoln's Capital: Lucky as I wanted to make this city legendary.

At turn 76 (975 BC): Great Wall built in Lincoln's Capital.

At turn 77 (950 BC): I Dowed Hannibal at the very end of east side of the map. This was a mistake because I lost three chariots onto two archers on hill and I barely scratched them. I used the remaining ones to begin an attrition war: the result is two destroyed city and three capured workers.

Spoiler :

The settler founded the city without any reinforcement; guess what I've done...tee hee.

At turn 80 (850 BC): Oracled CS and this I self-teched Math: no useless bulbing this time.

At turn 87 (675 BC): First Great Prophet at 15 % . I used it to make a confucianist shrine.

At turn 94 (500 BC): Temple of Artemis built in Washington (Lincoln's Capital).
At turn 99 (375 BC): Mids in my capital. Representation ASAP.
At turn 101 (325 BC): Chichen Itza in Washington.
At turn 102 (300 BC): Aesthetics.
At turn 104 (250 BC): Literature.
At turn 106 (200 BC): Second Prophet, this time it was used for bulbing Theology. I feared to lose Christianism.
At turn 108 (150 BC): Joao discovered Alphabet and I rushed to know its knowledge too. Like my past game, he's one of the first tech Alphabet. Joao rocks. This time it was Justinian...he he. Stupid move to DoWed him, isn't it? I should keep my composure sometimes as Shulec lost SH too and still got a great CV date.

Hanging Gardens in Capital and Parthenon in Washington.

At turn 110 (100 BC) : I captured the last city of Isabella. I could've destroyed it way earlier, but wanted a worker furnisher. The first assault was horrible: lost one chariot at 73 % and another at around ~ 50 %. A chance... later barbs helped me in the shadow and a passing war chariot at 150 BC discovered a single injured warrior accompanied with a Settler.

Music Teched.



Now, I have to stop and chew over where will I settle that Great Artist?! The problem is I didn't pinpoint my third legendary city yet. My super food city (Memphis) is an interesting candidate, but production-wise, it is dismal...absolutely dismal. No hills at all, except the hilly sheep. The other candidate would be Gandhi's Capitol.

Guys! What do you think? I would fain welcome any suggestions.
Anyways, am I in the good path to win an early 1500 AD CV? Please RNG Gods, help me.

 

[AgedOne]

Right, that one. Did you finish it or did this end up to be a failure?

Hmm. Sorry. I've looked for it but have evidently cleared those save files away.
That was on 18th according to my post. I didn't submit any attempts around that time, so I guess it just ended up being one of the games where I got a cultural win, but later than my efforts already submitted.

Looking at your latest write-up (very impressive, btw!) it seems you may be on to something with the additonal resources you get by crowding extra civs onto the map. That looks to be a higher concentration of resources (especially sheep) than I normally see, even on a good map.

My main question, having read your post, is "How on earth can you manage your economy, having 12 cities, presumably most of them without courthouses, in 75BC?". My research usually hits rock bottom, even if I only have 6 cities in 1000 BC! What's the secret? Do you whip courthouses, or what?

 

[AgedOne]

@Tachywaxon
I've just been looking at these maps in Worldbuilder, and it's quite interesting.
The amount and type of resources, and where they are found (within the map limitations) are extremely random and variable. You can roll a map with a cluster of corn in one quarter, and then roll again and find a load of sheep and hardly any corn.
I'm not entirely sure, but it looks as though 14-civ maps have the same amount of resources overall as 8-civ maps. Maybe they have slightly more, but it's not a dramatic difference.

One good thing that occurs only on crowded maps (Good, that is, if you are intending to march north as soon as you start) is that there are two 'ranks' of starting positions in the south, and you may be lucky enough to be in the more northerly of the two ranks. If you are, then your journey north will be 2 or 3 turns shorter!

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

@Tachywaxon.
Even if it can be done (and works as you intend) the HoF rules do not allow it.
See the bottom of the rules page here . No modification of the team numbers is permitted.

AgedOne, its even worse. Not even the game without a HOF mod will allow the Human Player to play any Team other than #1. You can select a different Team # without a Mod or with the HoF mod (Vanilla tested), but the Human Player is always reset to Team #1.

@Tachywaxon:

My apologies. It doesn't work that way I thought it should.

You might try starting from a different Custom Game setup. Maybe the Team # are hard coded on a per Custom Game setup. I just don't know and will refrain from advising further. I'd be surprised that the map script itself would hard code Team #s to a particular are of the map, but regenerations of the same Map might (single Custom Game setup).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Manco Capac]

Good timing Sun Tzu,
it's not my usual way to ask that kind of question, but I've seen you've won a couple cultural games in HOF and I need some suggestions about what could be my third cultural city:
I've post all city screens in my long post in spoiler; The two first city screen are future legendary cities but my third choice is a hard one. Sorry to press you, but I fear to screw such great start without some guiding...

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

That's quite intriguing. I never gold-rush buildings, but that's maybe just ignorance on my part.

Universal Suffrage, Towns and Wealth Rushing have Great Synergy:

The Town gets 1 Hpt for Universal Suffrage itself. Free Speech and Printing Press provided Towns with a minimum of 8 Cpt = 8 Wpt / 3 = 2.67 Hpt. So one can have 3.67 Hpt per Town, ignoring the Wealth needed to support the Economy itself.

The greatest thing about Wealth rushing is being able to funnel the entire Civ's Wealth production into a single city's building each turn. This is especially good for one's Hammer poor Great Artist Farm.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Good timing Sun Tzu,
it's not my usual way to ask that kind of question, but I've seen you've won a couple cultural games in HOF and I need some suggestions about what could be my third cultural city:
I've post all city screens in my long post in spoiler; The two first city screen are future legendary cities but my third choice is a hard one. Sorry to press you, but I fear to screw such great start without some guiding...

Although I've won a few Cultural Games, jesusin is a better person to ask.

Personally, I'd do an early War Chariot rush (very easy at Normal difficulty), steal as many Workers as possible as early as possible, but this would require crippling every Civ you steal Workers from. Don't capture more Cities than your Economy can support. Prioritize Currency early for rapid Economy improvement (extra trade route). Build early cottages. Build every World Wonder in your three Cultural cities, except the few early ones your AI Opponents beat you to. Get The Sistine Chapel early and maximize its use by building every State Religion building possible in all Cultural Cities.

I'm not saying much different than my first post on this subject in this thread..

I will try to answer your specific question a little later.

Sun

 

[Manco Capac]

Although I've won a few Cultural Games, jesusin is a better person to ask.

Personally, I'd do an early War Chariot rush (very easy at Normal difficulty), steal as many Workers as possible as early as possible, but this would require crippling every Civ you steal Workers from. Don't capture more Cities than your Economy can support. Prioritize Currency early for rapid Economy improvement (extra trade route). Build early cottages. Build every World Wonder in your three Cultural cities, except the few early ones your AI Opponents beat you to. Get The Sistine Chapel early and maximize its use by building every State Religion building possible in all Cultural Cities.

I'm not saying much different than my first post on this subject in this thread..

I will try to answer your specific question a little later.

Sun

Well, the problem isn't how fast I build up my empire, this attempt is extremely satisfying for me:
12 cities, 13 workers, lots of food resources, strong city positions, strong economy although the slider is at zero (thanks to plenty of food for representation specs.), all this before 1 AD.
The problem is my choice of my third cultural city. I have one city (Memphis) extraordinary food-wise, but dismal production-wise . I'm tempted to take it as my third cultural city, but a non-hill city hurts a lot and will need lots of gold-rushing. The only plus is if I can build before 200 AD TGL and The Colossus, perhaps it will have a decent base culture around 1200 AD. Thank God I still have some forest around. I need to settle asap my newly arrived great Artist, otherwise settling option will become obsolete.

True about one point: Should I research myself Currency or wait the AI to do so? I want to gun for Liberalism as early as possible without much detour...hmm... double trade routes plus temple of Artemis...hmm