GOTM 28 Spoiler 3 - Modern Age / End Game Submitted

Yes that's pretty much it. It's also true that getting to the domination limit quicker will improve your Jason, but I had no expectation of getting a high Jason score and just wanted to see how quickly I could get to 100K.

And yes, I did not rush a uni or a colloseum outside my core until the domination limit was reached. You can get twice as much culture for the same outlay with a new town.

Maybe I should have run to domination quicker and allowed my finish date to drift by a few turns, but I didn't even consider it as a very middle ranking player. Coming 78th instead of 85th is neither here nor there.

Originally posted by Txurce


A related question: if we were playing with a scientific civ, we'd focus on rushing libraries and unis, presumably. Now, what if playing a civ with no culture-purchasing advantages?

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My building sequences are:

No-culture advantage:
1. Temple
2. Library
3. Max. number of cities
4. Cathedral
5. University
6. Colloseum

Scientific:
1) Library
2) Temple
3) max. number cities
4) University
5) Cathedral
6) Colloseum

Religious:
1) Temple
2) Library
3) max number cities
4) Cathedral
5) University
6 Colloseum

My reason to go for max. number of cities after building the basic cultural buildings temple and library is mainly the maintenance cost in relation to cultural value.

The additional maintenance cost for a corrupted city with temple + library is 1gpt and delivers 5 culture

the cost for a city with temple + library + cathedral + university is 8gpt and delivers 12 culture

By keeping maintenance low as long as possible I have more money to spend to rush cultural buildings.

Ronald I can see where you are coming from but I probably disagree - though I haven't done the sums. As I tried to (incoherently) explain earlier - culture should not be calculated on a per turn basis, but rather on the total accrued culture that the improvement will add by the end of the game. The earlier you build it, the cheaper it is regardless of maintenance, since the overhead of the original build becomes a smaller proportion of the "cost of ownership" over the life of the improvement.

If you are concerned about Jason, then you also have to balance this with the other attributes of the improvement. For instance if you have Sistines (or intend to get it) then Cathederals may be worth building in preference to other culture with a better cuture/shield ratio.

But basically I stand by my method for the moment at least. Expand quickly to the limit of your useful core (without courts) and then limit expansion to the rate at which you can backfill with towns and fill them with the high culture/shield ratiobuildings. Research to Banking ASAP and then turn off research.

For the reasons above I would value libraries in my core above temples for civs with no advantage since the libraries will give back lots of shields in the race to banking, so the face value culture/per shield looks unnatractive vs temples but the cost of ownership is better.

In the ICS dominated part of the territory then it is simply a matter of building improvements in the order of their culture/turn value until the next cultural improvement costs more than founding a new town with the same amount of culture. (If that makes sense).

It's a really good debate, and I need to have a couple of more goes at a 100K before I can be sure of my ground.

Originally posted by Megalou
gozpäl,
Perhaps it's better not to spread out the defenders.

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They tried to get to Bombay (20k city) so my defense in the mountains was "fair" just to keep them off my back...it didn't help much as it seems and after the first round of bad RNG, I killed just about everything the next turn, with slight losses. They never got closde to Mutton Valley and the city they took was NW of Delhi, Lahore, which was taken back immediately. Never leave an undefended city, when a neighbour warrior is strolling around

I can tell you about the opposite of your 4 dead spearmen. I left a War Elephant on open grassland just after taking the first lamb town. It was redlined or yellow. One immortal attacked it and it fled into the mountains. Then another 3 immortals attacked it and they were all killed. I'll think about that the next time I blame the RNG.

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I hope you renamed this unit after its incredible wins (he must be elite right?). It's always fun to keep track on "special" units and that RNG was certainly worth to be mentioned

Originally posted by Txurce


A related question: if we were playing with a scientific civ, we'd focus on rushing libraries and unis, presumably. Now, what if playing a civ with no culture-purchasing advantages?

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1 - Temple
2 - Military
3 - Military
4 - Military
5 - Military

This is only to expand the borders and then to continue the miltary "cultural" expansion.

Txurce and mad-bax: Interesting discussion! Many of the tradeoffs on the route to 100K are difficult to quantify but it seems worthwhile to try.

Regarding when research should stop, my feeling is that Steam Power is a good choice in most games. But it would depend on how quickly domination can be reached. Most of the time I think Steam Power won't require much additional research and will pay back in added production in core cities and in a boost for the last stage of growth.

Regarding the relative priority of expansion vs. rushing culture in existing towns, my thinking is that expansion comes first because:
1) Each new town contributes one gold and one shield per turn to the economy. The gold is of course nice when multiplied by 100 or more. But the shields are the bigger win - when the time comes to rush cultural improvements, the accumulated shields at one shield/turn/town will provide a substantial boost.
2) I think that usually it is easier to take land from opponents earlier vs. later.
3) Score is higher from both territory and population.

Of course each specific game situation will vary - there might be periods while waiting for a particular tech that it makes more sense to build than to fight. And of course the above applies only to the corrupt regions - in the core it makes more sense after a while to build improvements than to continue spewing out settlers

The argument that cost to build should be measured against total long-term culture gained, not culture/turn, is compelling. But I disagree. I can't see a way to quantify the arguments each way and measure them. But my gut feel is that the long term benefits of rapid expansion will outweigh the earlier culture gained by building improvements first. I.e. that sometime before the 100K total is reached, the approach of expansion before improvements will catch up with and then accelerate past the approach of improvements before expansion.

When I first tried a 100K game I thought it would be good to get at least some temples and libraries built as early as possible, to take advantage of culture doubling after 1000 years. I now think this doesn't matter - in a fast 100K game the vast majority of the culture will come from improvements built during the last 1000 years. The contribution from improvements built before that period is small enough that I don't think doubling it will make as much difference to the final date as using the early shields for other purposes (military, infrastructure, expansion.)

Regarding which improvements to build in corrupt towns and in what order:

For a non-religious non-scientific Civ I figure that a library comes first at .038 culture/turn/shield, then a temple at .033 culture/turn/shield. The other possible improvements are university at .020 culture/turn/shield, cathedral at .019, and colosseum at .017. I don't think any of them are worth building in corrupt towns until every possible nook and cranny of land already has a town with a temple and library. After that start rushing universities if 100K hasn't been reached yet. The game should not last long enough that every town has a university, so cathedrals and colosseums should not be built at all in corrupt towns.

As well as ROI on construction, maintenance cost is an important factor to consider. Temples cost .5 gold/culture/turn, libraries .33, universities .5, cathedrals .66, and colosseums 1.0! Regarding maintenance cost libraries are good, temples and universities ok, cathedrals expensive, and colosseums brutal.

If a Civ is religious then things change a bit - temples move to come before libraries and cathedrals become more tempting at .038 culture/turn/shield. But cathedrals come after temples and libraries everywhere - libraries are as good as cathedrals in terms of shield cost and are cheaper in maintenance.

If a Civ is scientific then libraries stay in first place and universities move up. Universities not only become worth building, they even move up to come before temples.

If a Civ is both (Babylon ) then I think the build order should be libraries, temples, universities.

A final note: I think it best to rush each improvement in the priority sequence in every town before rushing the next priority anywhere. E.g. if not religious, rush a library in every town before rushing a temple anywhere. The reason is to maximize the value of both the gold used and of the shields accumulating (at one per turn) in every town. After the last improvement has been rushed in a town, its 1 shield/turn is of no further use and it should switch to wealth.

A reference table of the numbers I've used above, with an asterisk beside the cases which seem good to me:

SirPleb, thanks for contributing - you and mad-bax have me ready to do much better in GOTM29 going for 100k. (I"m sticking with this condition until I plateau.) I wish you'd written this after your Persian 100k culture game - I would have had much higher scores in GOTMs 27 and 28!

Another benefit of the rushing of improvements (rather than building them ) in the ancient age (facilitated by a quick run downt he tech-tree to monarchy) is the culture boost as improvements get older. I think that in some cases its even worth rushing temples as a religious civ, to save as few as two or three turns in the early game, which can be many 'years' for culture purposes in the late game.

Originally posted by gozpel
I hope you renamed this unit after its incredible wins (he must be elite right?). It's always fun to keep track on "special" units and that RNG was certainly worth to be mentioned

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"Big Red" was slain soon afterwards in a rather ill-conceived thrust at Antioch. I tried to save him for a fight with good odds but like I said the attack was ill-conceived. As it often happens when an SOD has to park once in enemy territory and attack on the following turn, I could not break through. In addition, I find that the war weariness goes up a lot when SODs are parked in enemy territory. So there's (another) reason to attack civs early on: their cultural borders may be smaller/you may not be in republic yet.

To remedy the situation I built a town just north of Antioch. Apart from making the canal through the fresh water lake possible, it allowed my elephants to reach Antioch with their 2 movement points, and it allowed an easier escape plan for the first stack of elephants. They got away reasonably well from their "Little Big Tusk", the hill north of Antioch.

1.21f

Awesome discussion regarding strategy for 100K games! I'll have to add a link in the Reference Thread to SirPleb's entry with the culture/turn/shield numbers.

I entered the IA in 1080 AD, and was primarily focused on building lots of cultural buildings on my original continent. I researched Steam Power fast, then did a 40 turn research of Industrialism. I traded Physics around to get the missing Medieval Age Techs, including MilTrad. Around 1200 I could see that I had about 110 turns left, or roughly the mid 1700's to finish the game. I traded with Rome to get horses, and started building Cavalry for an invasion of Carthage. This eventually got going, and after taking their last 3 cities on the continent (Rome had been busy earlier), I started in on Rome, eventually sweeping them off the continent, and planting dense sets of towns everywhere. I figure doing this, and rushing Temples, Libraries and Cathedrals in all the Roman/Carthage area towns gained me about +300 culture/turn, and took about 20 turns off my game.

So, after this invasion, the IA was fairly uneventful. I was at war mostly with the Celts, who'd occasionally land some units which got blown up. Finally won a 100K culture victory in 1640, and actually 2 days early! Firaxis score was only 3911, but I was not very close to the domination limit.

A fun game, and looking forward to GOTM29.

Good game, civ steve. Did you effectively quit researching after industrialization?

Originally posted by HighDesert
... the AIs were pitiful researchers. ...

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Similar to HighDesert I decided to go for a Spaceship. But tried a peaceful route. Well, it was difficult. Starting from Theology in Middle Ages, it was necessary to research everything by myself. India entered Industrial Age in 640AD and Modern Age in 1330AD keeping more or less 4-turn research rate. After Persia was eliminated, life was very peaceful and there were no major wars. The only bad thing was absence of leaders which were needed to build the second core in the former Persian territory. Hence, India researched Military tradition, built a dozen cavalry and conquered Babylon, Scandinavia, Germany, and Ottomans who were playing 2CC or 3CC essentially. The leader somehow emerged to build new Palace in New Dehli (near Persepolis) and the wars were stopped. AIs did not research a single tech. Being in Modern Age (with Indian help, or course) the world lacks the knowledge of Sanitation. This and very peaceful development results in low score. Spaceship launched in 1545AD (5 years earlier than HighDesert) with score 4543. The game started as very interesting but probably not intended for peaceful development at this difficulty. Many thanks for the gotm team, it was very intriguing.

PTW 1.27f predator

Originally posted by Txurce
Good game, civ steve. Did you effectively quit researching after industrialization?

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Thanks, Txurce! Actually, no. I had enough universities around to do 4 turn research in the IA. By the time I'd finished my 40 turn research of Industrialism, the leading AI (Ottomans and Celts) had caught up. I did a 4 turn research of Electricity, then sold it to them for roughly 220 gpt. It cost me about 2600 Gold to do the Research (went from +500 gpt to -150 gpt during the Research) but gained the potential for 4400 gold by the sale. I'd done this earlier with Steam Power, once the AI had entered the IA, and the 20 turn deals had been honored, but with Electricity the Celts declared war about 8 turns into the deal, which negated about +60 gpt. I brought the Ottomans into an alliance with me vs Celts, and gifted them Luxuries to keep them paying me their +160 gpt, so I still made money, but not as much. In theory, with good trading partners, you could do this every 20 turns (do 16 turns focusing on Cash, then a 4 turn research to get the next Tech to sell) and suction in most of the AI's free cash to help rush your cultural buildings.

One thing extra I learned in this game is that hopelessly corrupt cities building Wealth each add 1 gold each turn to the treasury. I thought that Wealth, with Economics, brings in 1 gold for every 4 Shields, and I had thought that was across your empire, but it looks like there's at least 1 gold per city building Wealth, even if it's only producing 1 shield.

I was away for the weekend and have only just picked up the 100K discussion. It's difficult to argue against Sir Pleb, but I would like to give it a shot.

The argument for getting to the domination limit as quickly as possible and selecting your victory condition from there is the standard "best practice" technique that few would argue with. If this is true, then for every game, there is one best way to play it up to the domination limit. If everyone played like this, then no matter what their final victory condition their games up to shortly befor the domination limit is reached would be identical.

If you take this to the extreme, then you could perhaps say that the highest score that should be achieved would be a perfect domination game. If a player continues to some other victory condition, then even if he plays perfectly he would not be able to out score the domination position (because perfect play is perfect play). Just by virtue of the fact that more turns are played in pursuit of the alternative, the chance of less than perfect play increases and therefore the final score must almost certainly be lower.

As regards 100K, my point is this. To get to the domination limit at the earliest date requires a certain amount of military at every point in the game. If expansion is slower then some of that military can be built later, and in turn this means that some cultural buildings can be built earlier and contribute to an earlier finish date. Offset against that of course is that as turns go by so you need more military in order to get to the domination limit as the AI becomes more learned and wealthy.

The reason we take as much land a possible is to fill it with towns so that we can rush cheap culture, rather than expensive culture. However, the first action is to settle a new town and rush a temple, which costs 60 shields and 2 citizens. This isn't cheap culture whilst you still have towns requiring libraries and cathederals. So surely it is better to expand at the rate that enables you to build culture at the fastest rate - and that is not by rushing to domination is it? It is likely that the highest Jason score can be acheived like this, but not the earliest finish date IMVHO.

Originally posted by mad-bax
... The argument for getting to the domination limit as quickly as possible and selecting your victory condition from there is the standard "best practice" technique that few would argue with. If this is true, then for every game, there is one best way to play it up to the domination limit. If everyone played like this, then no matter what their final victory condition their games up to shortly befor the domination limit is reached would be identical. ...

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I would have to agree with this 100%. That is why the preset victory condition for a game like it was in previous GOTMs makes sense. Still you have to go to domination limit but take care of ther things like culture or research as well which makes it more challenging.

I tried peaceful Indian spaceship this time and the score probably will be low. Peaceful development below domination limit just cannot compete with aggressive expansion. As for other victory conditions, planning them during the game without pre-known Jason score date is extremely difficult if not impossible at all. For 100K, SirPleb's strategy is optimal because uses dynamic link between expansion rate and cultural growth so you get both increase in score from new towns and citizens and some increase in culture which is anyhow required to expand the borders. The earliest finish date might just depend on map size. For the large map (vs small or standard, for example), it would be easier to get 100K victory earlier.

Originally posted by mad-bax


As regards 100K, my point is this. To get to the domination limit at the earliest date requires a certain amount of military at every point in the game. If expansion is slower then some of that military can be built later, and in turn this means that some cultural buildings can be built earlier and contribute to an earlier finish date. Offset against that of course is that as turns go by so you need more military in order to get to the domination limit as the AI becomes more learned and wealthy.

The reason we take as much land a possible is to fill it with towns so that we can rush cheap culture, rather than expensive culture. However, the first action is to settle a new town and rush a temple, which costs 60 shields and 2 citizens. This isn't cheap culture whilst you still have towns requiring libraries and cathederals. So surely it is better to expand at the rate that enables you to build culture at the fastest rate - and that is not by rushing to domination is it? It is likely that the highest Jason score can be acheived like this, but not the earliest finish date IMVHO.

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mad-bax, your argument seems to be based on the core assumption that the gold costs of all-out early expansion could be better spent on early culture. These costs boil down to extra units. The range of the actual amount is wildly variable, based on skill and style of play. As such, it's easy to agree with your perspective if the unit costs are huge, and disagree if much smaller. However, you ignore two benefits of maximum expansion - one large, one small. The first is that every captured town is one less settler you have to build. The second is that each contributes one gpt toward rushing culture, as well as workers to increase overall shields and gpt - and the earlier you capture them, the more they contribute. But the savings of not building those extra settlers add up to quite a few ancient-era and early-medieval units. In my case, since I don't build huge armies to approach domination, the numbers come out in favor of pushing expansion early - again, because each of those captured towns means one less settler built, more gpt overall, and (as you noted) less of a need to eventually build more expensive units.

Yes it's true. Capturing cities obviously reduces settler costs, and getting to the domination limit obviously increases your score. So then are we reduced to rushing to the domination limit and then selecting the method by which we reduce our Jason score through selection of a victory type other than domination?

Although I am coming to the realization that the "early domination limit" strategy is certainly in most cases the optimal one in terms of score, I do disagree that you can just push to that point and then choose any victory condition. Specifically I am referring to Space (and to a lesser extent diplomatic, although I think it rare that players set out with that in mind).

While being close to the domination limit as soon as possible obviously helps to develop a higher score, it is not usually going to get the best space launch. Launch date is almost entirely dependent on tech rate, as building the parts is almost a given by that point. Also, most players can get to 4-turn research rates by the late industrial or modern ages, with universities etc. everywhere. The key score difference seems to be those who can get to and through the Middle Ages the fastest. This generally requires actively recruiting and guiding the AI's as research partners, and will involve keeping them as advanced as you are, at least on one of the two tech tree branches, usually both. Also, you will need to focus on high research speeds yourself. Now having more cities improves your research capacity to an extent, but the primary value comes from getting two cores established early, and any expansion beyond that point is certainly going to be of diminishing returns to your research effort.

On the other hand, a fast domination campaign would be better suited for slower overall research, a highly focused drive to a key offensive (optional) tech, Chivalry or Military Tradition, and ideally keeps the AI several techs behind so you are fighting obsolete defenders.

So while I think the 100K/Domination discussion tends to favor domination first, and domination will probably always outscore the 100K (unfortunately), I do think Space still offers a viable alternative strategy, that (with Jason's help) can yeild a competitive score. (Would be nice to see the past couple months results, with a lot of Space victories in GOTM26 in particular). Note that even with space, approaching the domination limit will improve score, and should ideally be done by taking over slow researchers, who aren't contributing to the tech pace anyway, but should not detract from the focus on research.

That assumes that everyone is playing for score. Some folks go for some kind of challenge. Like Dave McW's OCC spaceship win in GotM 21.

My goal is just to have fun, learn and improve every time.

Originally posted by Justus II
So while I think the 100K/Domination discussion tends to favor domination first, and domination will probably always outscore the 100K (unfortunately) ...

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Don't forget that the Jason system tries to take this into account with different "ealiest dates" for the different victory conditions. In this game, for example, 100K is allowed nearly 600 years more than domination. So if you can reach 100K in less than 600 years once you have reached the domination limit then presumably you will get a higher Jason score than you would by stopping at the domination victory? And the question as to whether that's possible probably depends on decisions you made on things like library builds earlier in the game.