Strategy with Huayna Capac - Noble level

[Todelotti]

I have started this game to go for maybe a cultural win with a lot of wonder building. However, I'm struggling right now a bit because I'm kind of squeezed between 2 civs and food resources for founding my fourth city are quite far away.

I'm considering X1 on the attached screenshot because that corn 1 NE of X1 (or the cow NW of X1) seems to be the only available food resource (there is just a deer in the south (tundra)). I could get the cow in the second ring then. However above that tile is Tokugawa who might claim the cow before me. But the X1 spot is quite far away from my next city. Do you see a better place for a new city?

Or should I better prepare to attack Hannibal (on the left) or Willem (on the right) to get more space in my closer vicinity? I think sooner or later I will have trouble with them anyway.

How would you proceed in this situation?

 

[dutchfire]

I would have built helper cities close to the capital earlier. E.g. 1E of Utica and between the pig and iron to the east. I would maybe build a city 3N2W to grow cottages for your capital. X1 is also good.

 

[Pangaea]

X1 looks allright, but uncover the blackness west of the cow as there can be decent stuff there affecting city placement. The main problem here, however, is that you have expanded too slowly. Typically the aim is to get 3 cities by ~2000BC. It's now already 775BC and you're still at 3 cities, and as a result the AIs have grabbed some spots you could have taken yourself. If you want to rush, staying at 2-3 cities (or even 1 sometimes) makes sense, but with decent land around you, you should try to grab it quickly. For example, it would have made sense with a city to grab corn and iron.

 

[schadenfreude]

I have started this game to go for maybe a cultural win with a lot of wonder building. However, I'm struggling right now a bit because I'm kind of squeezed between 2 civs and food resources for founding my fourth city are quite far away.

I'm considering X1 on the attached screenshot because that corn 1 NE of X1 (or the cow NW of X1) seems to be the only available food resource (there is just a deer in the south (tundra)). I could get the cow in the second ring then. However above that tile is Tokugawa who might claim the cow before me. But the X1 spot is quite far away from my next city. Do you see a better place for a new city?

Or should I better prepare to attack Hannibal (on the left) or Willem (on the right) to get more space in my closer vicinity? I think sooner or later I will have trouble with them anyway.

How would you proceed in this situation?

I would attack one and then the other. I suppose you will eventually flip Utrecht, but it isn't in a great spot. I agree with Pangea: you expanded way too slowly. I would destroy Utrecht. IMO it should be one square west to grab pigs and corn. You need to get a settler and claim that super X1 spot. I would also settle X1 one west, to grab cows in first ring and coconuts eventually. You need a lot of food to run as many artists as possible.

The tricky part is going to limited war and going for a culture win. I stink at culture wins, but I usually try for them when I share the same religion as my neighbors and I have a lot of land to myself. Remember to build lots of troops in your none culture cities to support.

 

[elitetroops]

If you're going for a culture win with lots of wonders, try to stick to the wonders that give Great Artist points. Sistine Chapel is a given, the best culture wonder around. Parthenon is really good for cultural games, Mausoleum of Mausollos is also great, especially since you should also build Taj Mahal. Cultural games are also the only games where I even consider building Statue of Zeus (for the Great Artist points). Apart from Great Artist points, these wonders also produce the most base culture of all wonders. The national wonders you want are National Epic and Hermitage, also throw in Heroic Epic if you unlock it.

Great Artists are the key to good Cultural Victory dates. Generate as many as possible and save them until you have enough to culture bomb every city to legendary status. Usually your cultural cities will be going at an uneven pace, Great Artists can even out this at the end by bombing for 4000 each as necessary.

First priority is to expand and spread religions. Here you can take out both Willem and Hannibal, they have Judaism and Buddhism, you'll soon have CoL, which is enough. Then build temples and build cathedrals (Buddh Stupa, Jew Synagogue, Confu Academy) in your three legendary cities. Also build the Great Artist wonders. Once the temples and Cathedrals are up, switch to Caste System and Pacifism and run a ton of artists wherever possible.

In high level cultural games it's quite standard to shut down teching and turn up culture slider after Nationalism (for Taj Mahal and Hermitage), Liberalism (for Free Speech and free Nationalism) and Printing Press (for cottage boost). If you get there early enough this works very well. If you are late and the AI could potentially become a military threat if you stop teching, then this might need to be reconsidered.

A strong cottage capital with lots of towns can often produce >1000/turn with a few cathedrals, Hermitage, Free Speech and slider at 100% culture. To keep up with that you'd probably need 15 Great Artists to bomb the other two cities to legendary status by the time capital gets there. Takes some practice to achieve that, so don't expect quite those numbers in your first game. But you should be able to get your capital to 500 /turn and maybe 8 Great Artists over the course of the game to help the other cities.

 

[FlyingSwan]

The mids for me is top priority in a culture game as representation while running a load of artsts in your satelite citys realy powers you through the tech tree.Dont neglect windmills,especially as your FIN,these built next to a river give you 3 commerce,and of course the extra 1 food.

 

[Todelotti]

I've pushed my expansion forward the last centuries to correct my too slow early expansion. I'm now at 8 cities in year 50 AD (including an awesome captured Amsterdam with 3 fish/clam tiles, a gold and a horse tile, a survived terrace and lighthouse and still 10 tiles with forrests that I can chop). Have to keep a faster expansion in mind for the next game. Thanks for the hint!

...Then build temples and build cathedrals (Buddh Stupa, Jew Synagogue, Confu Academy)...

Your whole post is great! I will try to play along your suggested path. One question: Is there a special reason why you left out Hinduism from the temple/cathedral plan? I'm the founder of Hinduism and it's my state religion. Shouldn't spreading the state religion be my primary focus?

One point about wonder building: I don't have stone and even can't see it yet on the map and no civ is trading stone right now. Couldn't that become a problem for a lot of wonders?

And a minor question: I have a problem to build an irrigation chain for Tiwanaku (see attached screenshot). As far as I can see the only way is along the two red lines. But in both cases I have to destroy either a hamlet (that is 2 turns away from a village) or a wine tile. I'm inclined to sacrifice the wine because I have a second one and once the hamlet becomes a village it will be better in commerce than the wine (but a hammer less). However, I would lose a resource for trading. Or do you think that Tiwanaku possibly doesn't need a farm at all? It has that wheat farm (not irrigated though) and the sheep, both with 4 food each.

 

[Todelotti]

Oh, I forgot one question: I will get a Great Prophet within the next few turns. What is the best investment for him? Building the Hinduism shrine in my capital? Or Golden Age? Or...?

 

[elitetroops]

Didn't notice you had Hinduism. By all means, build Mandirs as well. With 4 religions it becomes even easier, as you don't necessarily need to build all temples in your legendary cities. If you aim for 9 cities, then 4 temples in all the satellite cities and one temple each in the legendary cities is enough to get 3 cathedrals in all legendary cities. Of course you can build more if you have time, but the legendary cities are often busy building wonders and cathedrals.

Stone is not that important. All the Great Artist wonders use marble, except SoZ which need Ivory. The only stone wonder I consider in a culture game is the Pyramids. The problem with too many extra wonders is that you will pollute your GP pools and possibly create several unwanted Great People that aren't Artists.

For the irrigation chain I'd demolish the hamlet. Wine also gives a lot of commerce, plus you can sell the extra resource for gpt. Or trade it for another happiness resource.

The Great Prophet is good to use for a Golden Age when it is time to switch civics. Avoiding anarchy is always great.

 

[Todelotti]

It doesn't go so well with the plan as I wanted. Problem is that I got annoying war declarations. I probably was too hesitant to declare war on Hannibal myself and waited too long. Suddenly he declared war on me. Although he was clearly the weakest in power of all civs I had huge trouble to take out Carthage City (even wit Macemen and Knights against Archers, Swords and Spearmen) because he basically put every military unit he had into the city and created every third turn or so a new defender. I believe it took at least 20 or 30 turns before Carthage went down. To make things worse during that time Toku declared war as well and I had 2 fronts to fight and needed to produce military stuff in most cities.

Now at least Hannibal is Vassal and has only one little city on an island. I don't think he can recover seriously from that war. Toku lost one city, then I offered peace. The relation to Qin is pleased (same religion and a few running trades). However, the Buddhism block of Gilgamesh and Zara causes constant tensions (moving up and down between cautious and annoyed). Right now Gilgamesh is forming a growing stack of units in Bad-Tibira close to my border (see attached screenshot).

I lost a lot of time with those wars and I think I'm way behind in building temples, just a few are built until now (year 1040 AD). Regarding wonders I have finished Oracle, Great Library and Mausoleum in the capital and I'm building Parthenon (in Tiwanaku) and National Epic (in capital) right now. I could start with Sistine Chapel somewhere (maybe Amsterdam) within the next turns.

I'm not sure what's the best plan to proceed from here. I'm considering some options:

_ Improving relationships to Gilgamesh and Zara by converting to Buddhism? However, Qin won't be pleased about that.

_ Strengthening defensive forces constantly by dedicating at least one city to permanent military production (maybe only longbows all the time? Or a mix of longbows and knights?) and moving the defenders to mainly the border cities. At the moment I don't think that I can shut down research (at least not before MT/Rifling) unless the relationships become very good to everyone.

Anyway, I will continue with the plan and mainly build temples now. Going war mode and targeting domination/conquest would probably be easy (I'm even more ahead with tech than in my Ghengis game) but I want the change in this game. Somehow a culture win feels more difficult to achieve...

 

[FlyingSwan]

from the screen shot Giggles is on your border so I would convert to buddism especially if you dont share a border with Qin.If you can get giggles to pleased/friendly and maybe stop him trading with Qin so an army cant get through his borders to attack you.Zara gets to pleased/friendly pretty easily so yes I would share religion with these two and sod Qin-He is a backstabber anyway and DOW at pleased are common.

Just LBs on your borders and park a couple of spys or a scout in AI terriotory to watch for SoD approaching and you should be fine.No need to tech rifling unless the AI gets close too it before your culture victory,then it may be panic stations depending on the diplomacy situation.

 

[elitetroops]

Hard to tell what is best for overall plan based on just a screenshot, but there's a few things I notice there that could be improved.

First of all, just forget about plains tiles early in the game. Plains farms and plains hill mines are not worth working. You are better off whipping out the population than working those tiles early in the game. You've built a ton of PH mines and windmills, while the grasshills around capital still don't have mines. Grasshill mines are way better than PH mines, because they are only -1 food instead of -2.

Not sure if those plains farms around Huamanga are there for chain irrigation, if not, then they are really weak tiles to work and your workers have better things to do. Irrigation spreads through cities also, so put a farm NE of Huamanga to irrigate the corn.

Your cities are way bigger than my cities usually are when researching paper. A big capital is good, but the other can be whipped more frequently. If it took you 20-30 turns to take out Hannibal's capital with maces vs archers, then you most certainly wasn't whipping enough. When facing a war, stop everything else and pump out that army asap. Also 2 pop whip the temples to get them built faster.

Are you sure capital is the best place for National Epic? It should be working cottages and cannot run very many artists. Amsterdam for example looks much better. With 3x seafood and 4 grassland farms it would be at +16 food, allowing you to run 8 artists at size 15. With pacifism, Parthenon and National Epic this would mean 84 GPP/turn, in Golden Age this would go up to 108 GPP/turn which is extremely good. If you don't know, the first Great Person costs 100 Great People Points, the 2nd 200GPP, the third 300GPP and so on, until at some point after the 10th it starts increasing with 200GPP for each new GP. So with 84 GPP/turn those Great Artists would be coming out very fast.

Oh, and please get BUG mod already. It's pretty much the standard over here to use it. It doesn't change gameplay, it's basically just the user interface upgraded to the state it should have been in when the game was released. Put it in custom assets and you can even load up this game using it (or easily delete it if for some reason you don't like it, and still continue games you've started with BUG mod). It would also make it much easier for us to comment on the game based on screenshots, because the screenshot would reveal so much more.

 

[Pangaea]

I'm not sure what's the best plan to proceed from here. I'm considering some options:

_ Improving relationships to Gilgamesh and Zara by converting to Buddhism? However, Qin won't be pleased about that.

_ Strengthening defensive forces constantly by dedicating at least one city to permanent military production (maybe only longbows all the time? Or a mix of longbows and knights?) and moving the defenders to mainly the border cities. At the moment I don't think that I can shut down research (at least not before MT/Rifling) unless the relationships become very good to everyone.)

C) Kill everybody and try culture again in the next game

 

[Todelotti]

from the screen shot Giggles is on your border so I would convert to buddism especially if you dont share a border with Qin.If you can get giggles to pleased/friendly and maybe stop him trading with Qin so an army cant get through his borders to attack you.Zara gets to pleased/friendly pretty easily so yes I would share religion with these two and sod Qin-He is a backstabber anyway and DOW at pleased are common...

Problem is that I have direct borders with everyone. Qin is in the NW and Giggles in SE, so Qin wouldn't need to pass any other's territory to reach me. At the moment I'm trying without converting religion.

...First of all, just forget about plains tiles early in the game. Plains farms and plains hill mines are not worth working. You are better off whipping out the population than working those tiles early in the game. You've built a ton of PH mines and windmills, while the grasshills around capital still don't have mines. Grasshill mines are way better than PH mines, because they are only -1 food instead of -2.

In the meantime I have built something on the grass hills. However, windmills, not mines... I thought for the capital I should aim for the commerce bonus of windmills.

Not sure if those plains farms around Huamanga are there for chain irrigation, if not, then they are really weak tiles to work and your workers have better things to do. Irrigation spreads through cities also, so put a farm NE of Huamanga to irrigate the corn.

As the first I had built the farm 1S of Huamanga. Then I indeed thought that must irrigate through the city, went to 1NE of the city and the farming button wasn't active. My guess was, irrigation through cities doesn't work if the initial water source isn't a river but a lake and started to build that long chain around the city. Now, I assume I did something wrong, maybe the 1S farm wasn't really finished when I checked the 1NE tile with another worker or whatever...

Your cities are way bigger than my cities usually are when researching paper. A big capital is good, but the other can be whipped more frequently. If it took you 20-30 turns to take out Hannibal's capital with maces vs archers, then you most certainly wasn't whipping enough. When facing a war, stop everything else and pump out that army asap. Also 2 pop whip the temples to get them built faster.

Hm, it might be that I'm handling whipping too restrictive. Basically I only whip when ALL of the following 3 conditions are met:

_ It is exactly 1 turn to grow to the next population point.
_ The whip will cost exactly 2 population points.
_ The whip costs only 10 turns of unhappiness, or in other words the "we cannot forget your cruelty..." from the last whip has disappeared.

During that war I made only a single exception, namely an emergency whipping of a longbow for 3 pop. Especially condition 1 and 2 often don't meet at the same turn. If I understand you correctly I could be more unscrupulous with whipping? I could imagine that condition 1 might be less important...

Are you sure capital is the best place for National Epic? It should be working cottages and cannot run very many artists. Amsterdam for example looks much better. With 3x seafood and 4 grassland farms it would be at +16 food, allowing you to run 8 artists at size 15. With pacifism, Parthenon and National Epic this would mean 84 GPP/turn, in Golden Age this would go up to 108 GPP/turn which is extremely good. If you don't know, the first Great Person costs 100 Great People Points, the 2nd 200GPP, the third 300GPP and so on, until at some point after the 10th it starts increasing with 200GPP for each new GP. So with 84 GPP/turn those Great Artists would be coming out very fast.

That's interesting now. I've stopped the National Epic for now to go back to the drawing board. You calculated 8 artists * 3 points * (1 + 250%) = 24 * 3.5 = 84, right? I had to try and figure out, how this GPP system works, which I actually didn't know at all... If National Epic would be in Amsterdam, isn't there actually 1 free GPP from the building more, so: (8 * 3 + 1) * 3.5 = 87.5 GPP ? And if I would build Sistine Chapel in Amsterdam (Parthenon is already in Tiwanaku) then 2 additional free GPP: (8 * 3 + 1 + 2) * 3.5 = 94.5 GPP ? Does it work that way?

Does your calculation of the food surplus +16 assume that I also farm the 5 plains tiles and don't work the gold, horses and the 2 hills? I get city size 16 then, however I will lose 1 or 2 plains tiles to Bad-Tibira, maybe you took this already into account?

Oh, and please get BUG mod already.

Installed now!

C) Kill everybody and try culture again in the next game

Just a few turns more for the cultural try. If it's hopeless then I trash this game. The next game is already reserved for Kill Everybody.

 

[Pangaea]

Hm, it might be that I'm handling whipping too restrictive. Basically I only whip when ALL of the following 3 conditions are met:

_ It is exactly 1 turn to grow to the next population point.
_ The whip will cost exactly 2 population points.
_ The whip costs only 10 turns of unhappiness, or in other words the "we cannot forget your cruelty..." from the last whip has disappeared.

During that war I made only a single exception, namely an emergency whipping of a longbow for 3 pop. Especially condition 1 and 2 often don't meet at the same turn. If I understand you correctly I could be more unscrupulous with whipping? I could imagine that condition 1 might be less important...

Whipping is too powerful to restrict yourself like that. For example, it's not uncommon to 3-pop whip settlers. That way you only need a little invested in him (1 turn really), and then you get him out next turn, settle a city, and the snowball is off.

When you have a granary, whipping is very efficient, and you should try to get used to using it. That doesn't mean you should always whip, but it often makes sense to get out buildings or units/workers/settlers faster - especially when in war. Then you need lots of units, and fast, so it makes sense to whip till your hands bleed. As long as you have happiness to spare, which you typically do after the early game, it's no problem to stack up whipping anger. When you whip often, many cities will also be small, so happiness cap usually isn't something you need to worry about. In the very early part of the game it is, so here you need to watch a bit more carefully so the anger wears off. You can still stack a little, but need to be more careful.

 

[elitetroops]

In the meantime I have built something on the grass hills. However, windmills, not mines... I thought for the capital I should aim for the commerce bonus of windmills.

Windmills come very late. Early in the game it's worth mining the green hills, because they are rather good production tiles. Later you can build windmills over them, once you have Electricity and Replacable Parts to boost them.

As the first I had built the farm 1S of Huamanga. Then I indeed thought that must irrigate through the city, went to 1NE of the city and the farming button wasn't active. My guess was, irrigation through cities doesn't work if the initial water source isn't a river but a lake and started to build that long chain around the city. Now, I assume I did something wrong, maybe the 1S farm wasn't really finished when I checked the 1NE tile with another worker or whatever...

Hmm... maybe cities don't spread irrigation diagonally? Not sure now...

Hm, it might be that I'm handling whipping too restrictive. Basically I only whip when ALL of the following 3 conditions are met:

_ It is exactly 1 turn to grow to the next population point.
_ The whip will cost exactly 2 population points.
_ The whip costs only 10 turns of unhappiness, or in other words the "we cannot forget your cruelty..." from the last whip has disappeared.

Pangaea is right, whip more. Sometimes 3 pop whips are okay. It's of course better to whip when you are about to grow, but often it's worth whipping anyway even if that's not the case. And remember that after you 2 pop whip you need 4 less food in bin to grow, so the food bar doesn't need to say 1 turn to growth. Also, the food surplus changes when you whip, depending on which tiles you whip out.

When going to war, whip a lot more. It's not unusual for me to have some cities with >40 turns of whip anger. When it's time for the final war, it can be way above that. When whipping that frequently they are so far below happy cap that this doesn't matter. Very early it's not worth whipping quite that aggressively if you haven't been able to raise happy cap yet.

That's interesting now. I've stopped the National Epic for now to go back to the drawing board. You calculated 8 artists * 3 points * (1 + 250%) = 24 * 3.5 = 84, right? I had to try and figure out, how this GPP system works, which I actually didn't know at all... If National Epic would be in Amsterdam, isn't there actually 1 free GPP from the building more, so: (8 * 3 + 1) * 3.5 = 87.5 GPP ? And if I would build Sistine Chapel in Amsterdam (Parthenon is already in Tiwanaku) then 2 additional free GPP: (8 * 3 + 1 + 2) * 3.5 = 94.5 GPP ? Does it work that way?

Does your calculation of the food surplus +16 assume that I also farm the 5 plains tiles and don't work the gold, horses and the 2 hills? I get city size 16 then, however I will lose 1 or 2 plains tiles to Bad-Tibira, maybe you took this already into account?

Your calculations are correct! Also correct that NE adds another artist point, forgot about that, and you would get 2 artist points from Great Wonders. This will quickly become more clear now when you get a GP bar on the main screen with BUG mod, showing you where the next GP will be born and when.

Farming plains is of no help for running artists, because they are food neutral. The citizen working them eats the 2 food they produce. To calculate food surplus, add up food from all tiles you wish to work, then subtract 2 food/tile.

I didn't count on working gold or horses, because when the game gets to the point of farming Great Artists, what do you need hammers from horse or commerce from gold for? Okay, commerce can be turned into culture with the slider, if Amsterdam is to become a legendary city, but an artist also produces 6 /turn with Sistine, so there is not much of a difference.

Installed now!

You'll enjoy it!

 

[dutchfire]

My whip heuristics:

In war mode:
* at least 1 hammer invested
* not the capital
* (preferably more than 1-pop whip)
* (has granary, if not -> whip granary)

Not in war mode:
* if it is a worker, or a useful building (granary, [lighthouse], forge, [monument])
* has granary (if not -> whip granary)
* no remaining whip unhappiness
* not the capital
* at least 1 hammer invested

Other:
* 3-pop whip capital for first settlers

 

[FlyingSwan]

Windmills come very late. Early in the game it's worth mining the green hills, because they are rather good production tiles. Later you can build windmills over them, once you have Electricity and Replacable Parts to boost them.
QUOTE]

The advice I gave on windmills was for riverside hills to take advantage of the FIN trait,no need for RP or electricity,but yes mine them 1st till machinery imo.

 

[elitetroops]

Ah, yes, with Fin it might be more worth it if you don't need hammers. Without Fin it's only +1c so not worth it.

 

[Todelotti]

Hmm... maybe cities don't spread irrigation diagonally? Not sure now...

I'll have a second test tomorrow (see screenshot): The corn with the red cross is not irrigated and I will build a chain along the red arrows from west which is supposed to cross the city in basically the same geometry like through Huamanga. That case btw also told me that irrigation through borders requires an Open Border Agreement (which Toku refuses to accept). Is that right? (I'm pretty sure I've seen irrigation through borders, but that might always have been open borders.)

I'm still not sure how you get to size 15 for Amsterdam when you don't farm the plain tiles (although I understand that it doesn't make much sense to farm them, but then even without working the gold, horses, hills how can the city size become 15?) But it's far too late now to check the calculation, will look tomorrow again. Civ4 is bad for a healthy sleep

EDIT: Aaah, 15 is INCLUDING the 8 artists, so, only 7 tiles are worked and the 8 artists do nothing (except maybe painting pictures), right?