Writeup: 100k-150AD-America-C-L

Victory Condition: 100K Cultural
Civilization: America (Industrious and Expansionist)
Difficulty: Chieftain with 11 opponents
Civ-Version: Vanilla
Map Settings: Large; Pangaea, lowest percentage of water; sedentary barbs; wet, temperate, flat (i.e. old)
Finish Date: 150 AD (no that is not a typo )

At the moment the game is submitted, accepted, but has yet to be published.


At first I think I should describe the general strategy that makes it possible to pull off such ultra early dates. Later I am going to show how some of that looks in particular.

The first stage of the general strategy consists of (not in chronological order)
• building a good, strong and food rich core,
• building a first trade route to one of your neighbors,
• locating and hooking up resources and luxuries,
• building some military to eventually pounce on some poor and unsuspecting AI,
• building scouts
• popping techs like mad from goody huts,
• making contacts with all (or nearly all) AIs
• stowing up some cash.

The trade route, the trading goods, the cash, the contacts, and the military will later be used to scam a lot of money from the AIs. How exactly that works I am going to describe later.

You will have to go and kill one of the AIs, but as the game is Chieftain the AI is likely to have only two cities with about two spears and a warrior at max. So, I think it is advisable to cut out building barracks and simply build one regular horseman more. A handful of those should do.

Your trade route should not go to the AI which you are going to kill with your handful. Ideally you chose a Civ with only little in the way of luxuries and resources. The more (read: different) trade goods you have that they don't, the better. If they have surplus trade goods that you don't that would be good too, but the chances are fairly slim.

Most of the time during that first stage however you'll spend navigating your scouts over the map and popping goody huts. An early settler close to your capital is sweet of course. But the main intent is popping techs with the ultimate goal of switching to the Republic somewhere between 2000BC and 1500BC or even earlier. Remember, you can only pop techs as long as you are still in the ancient age, you can only pop techs which you have the prerequisites for, and you will pop first those techs which you are not researching.

So, set your research goal to either Bronze Working or Ceremonial Burial, turn your Sci-slider to 0% and have at it. BW as research goal means that you will not pop BW, IronWorking, Currency and Construction for now. CB means that you will not pop CB, Mysticism, Polytheism for now and Monarchy at all. The upside of BW is that it is possible to pop all techs of the ancient age, the downside that you'll see Iron only fairly late. The upside of CB is that you'll see iron sooner, the downside you do not have a chance for Monarchy.

As soon as CB/BW (or whatever you set your research on) is the last option, it is possible that you pop it too.

------------------------

The second stage of the strategy consists of (not in chronological order)
• performing trade route scams to conjure up tons of gold,
• performing "Another One bites the Dust" scams to conjure up tons of gold,
• ICSpamming the world with towns as fast as you can,
• using your tons of cash to rush cultural improvements.

To pull the trade route scam you need to make a first deal in this fashion:
This simply assures that the AI has a nominal gpt income which you will buy back in the next deal:
Now the AI has a certain amount of cash, which you are going to buy back in a third deal:
Now you can simply rinse and repeat this procedure for each and every resource and luxury good that you have. Lastly the AI should end up with gpt available but no more cash. What you can do now is buy that gpt with techs:
What is important is that everytime you pay in gpt this deal is tied up with a trade good either switching hands from you to the AI or the other way round. And that everytime the AI pays in gpt the deal is plain.

When you now go and cut the trade route all those deals where you pay gpt end, while those deals where the AI pays gpt remain. Of course this will deliver you a severe rep-hit, but as long as no other AI has or ever will have contact with your victim ...


The other type of scam works similar, but that which is going to bring half of the deals to and end is not a broken trade route, but the end of Military Alliances by means of death of the Civ the alliances are against. So what you need to do first is make war against a Civ and when you just are about to destroy them, call up the other Civs and make deals as follows:
This again simply assures that the AI has plenty of gpt which you are going to buy back with techs:
When your victim bites the dust all that remains of this type of scam are several horrendously high gpt payments from several AIs to you. The more civs you can ally against your victim the better. The more techs you can sell, the better. And all that comes without a rep-hit.

This second type of scam works, I believe, far better in Vanilla or PTW than it does in Conquests. One of the reasons is that you need to sell/give contacts to the civs that you are going to rip-off with the Civ that you are going to kill. In Vanilla you get the ability to trade contacts with Writing, in Conquests only far later with Printing Press (IIRC).

The second reason goes for both types of scam and has to do with the way the Republic works. In Vanilla there is no build-in unit support at all and each unit costs one gold upkeep per turn. In Conquests there is a certain unit support and each unit over this limit will cost two gold upkeep per turn. Now, if a civ runs negative gpt (which the AI is doing after these scams) all those units that cost upkeep will be disbanded by and by. Under Vanilla-Republic those are all units: Workers, Settlers, Garrisons. In short the AI will be gagged down completely and can neither expand nor make contacts (which is handy if you have a reputation to lose).


The real beauty of these scams however will come through if you build up your next scam on the previous. So, for example you start off with a trade route scam which will give a an income of several hundred gpt for twenty turns. With those hundreds of gpt you pull of that "Anotherone Bites the Dust" type of scam which will give you several thousands of gpt. With those several thousands of gpt (and a lot of stowed up cash) you pull another trade route scam which will now give you several tens of thousands of gpt. And another and another etc.

In the end you will end up with so much money that the rest of the game is an utter no-brainer: ICSpam the world and cash rush culture.

------------------------

Did any of that make sense so far? If not maybe the write-up of the game (Screenies!) I finished in 150 AD will shed more light.

As my Civ I picked America because I think that the Expansiontist and the Industrious traits are the best combination for a game if played with the strategy that I outlined. Previously, I played similar games with the Russians who are Scientific and Expansionist. It was in those games how I learned to pull the scams so effectively that ultimately I saw little use anymore for the discount on cultural buildings that comes with the scientific trait. Instead I could trade that in for more worker power and hence faster expansion. The Expansionist trait is mandatory, because the sooner I can pop The Republic, the sooner I can rush granaries, use irrigated grasslands etc. The sooner I met the other civs the sooner I can begin to let the money roll in.

The selection of opponents and mapsize is pretty much the same thing. I chose all 11 non-exansionist civs (I do not want any other scouts running around, making contacts, popping my goody huts) as my opponents: France, Japan, Egypt, Greece, Babylon, China, Persia, Rome, Germany, India and the Aztecs. Add the Americans as my civ and you have the maximum number for a large map.


Enough with the idle chatter already and on to the first screenshots. The start position in 4000BC:

A cow and a deer, yummy. That looks promising. I settle on the spot. But it gets better:

A cow and three deer in direct reach of Washington. And a second cow nearby. That is just what I need.

The worker is mining the cow because I thought it would be better to get some shields. One of the first tasks is to get out scouts to hunt goody huts ASAP.

The research is set to BronzeWorking and science to 0% so that I can pop all other techs (including Republic and Monarchy) fairly quickly and stow up some cash.



Unfortunately at the beginning I have been very, very lazing with saving the game. My earliest save apart from the two in 4000BC and 3900BC is from 1425BC. And since I have simply forgotten a lot of things that happened in the meatime I can no longer tell whether I got a settler from a goody hut early on or not. I can no longer tell when I switched to the Republic, or when I met whom.

Anyway, what I can reconstruct from the reply screen is that I founded the following cities:
3050 BC: New York (Could well have been a settler. Could.)
2270 BC: Boston
1990 BC: Philadelphia
1910 BC: Atlanta
1525 BC: Chicago
1500 BC: Seattle
1450 BC: San Francisco

I figure that I must have gotten the Republic way before 1500BC because in 1425BC I am already in that government. Not only that, in the meantime I apparantly popped the remaining ancient age techs.

I made contacts with 9 of the 11 AIs: France, Egypt, Greece, Babylon, China, Persia, Rome, India and the Aztecs.

I was able to buy two workers, one from Rome and one from France. Incidently those two civs are my closest neighbors and will play key roles very soon.


Screenshots from 1425BC (open the spoiler box):



A zoomed out view of my empire. The road to the south will eventually connect to Rome and hook up Gems in the process. Towards the northeast I am beginning to deploy forces against France.



A closer look at my core. Both Washington and New York are 4-turn-SFs. Chicago is founded on silks.



A closer look at Seattle (and India).

My 'military' looks a follows:
2 Settlers
9 Workers + 2 Slaves (France, Rome)
7 Scouts
3 Horseman
1 Galley

Resources: Horses hooked up; Iron close
Luxuries: Silks, Incense hooked up; Gems will be available soon

Did you say 150 AD for 100K?????

That's an incredible date!!!!!

The Year 1275BC

The turn 1275BC is characterized by two important things that happened. Firstly, I attacked France. And secondly, I scammed a respectable amount of gpt from Rome.

A screenshot of my Empire at the beginning of the turn:

This picture shows my gpt income as 73 gpt. After doing an optimization for gold I manage to get up this income to 81 gpt. After attacking, autorazing Orleans and losing one Horseman in the process (against a regular Warrior, across a river) my income goes up to 82 gpt.

Here is a [reenacted] screenshot showing our "once again" victorious armies (*coughcough* strictly speaking it was the first victory):



On to Rome. Here is a collage of screenshots that should by and large get across the point on how I made the deals:

For the rest trade goods it was simply a rinse and repeat. 79gpt+Incense/Silks/Gems for 1425 gold in cash. And each time, except for the last, I bought back the 79 gpt with 1425 gold in cash. At the end of this to and fro of gpt and cash Ceasar ended up with 79 gpt. I remedied that by selling him techs: Writing for 16gpt; Philosopy and Code of Laws for 26 gpt; The Republic for 27 gpt.

(As an aside, it is interesting to note that apparantly some of the 82 gpt that I originally gave Ceasar gets lost. He would never accept a deal of more than 79 gpt. I cannot tell what this is exactly. But as this happens all the time when I make deals in this fashion, I think that there might be a slight security buffer coded in to prevent the AIs from going to a negative gpt. As if!)

The next step is simple, but has already a good effect:

My income is now at 477 gpt but should go back to about 470gpt after de-optimization. 395gpt of my income come from Rome (79*4+16+36+27)

As for Ceasar, he rovolts immediately to the Republic, and will soon have each and every of his units disbanded. It is nice to know that he at least has no chance of going and telling anybody about my thoroughly trashed reputation ...

AutomatedTeller said:

Did you say 150 AD for 100K?????

That's an incredible date!!!!!

Click to expand...

I think that with my, admittedly exploitive, strategy and better play BC dates are easily possible.

Awesome. Nice write-up.

Its as big a leap forward as when people realised that pop rushing under feudalism was a good idea for 100k.

Congratulations.

Tremendous job and very impressive. However, doesnt this result in "putting 'free' money into the international economy" in violation of the HOF rules? Its a very fine line as its written there.

I think that what happens is that when you give Caesar some gold, his science slider gets adjusted up immediately and the gold he wont' give you is being used to cover expenses of some sort.

The Year 1100 BC

A zoomed-out screenshot of my empire at the beginning of the turn:

In the north-east 5 regular Horsemen are poised to deliver the fatal blow to France. Paris is founded on flat terrain (and not on a hill) and my units do not have to cross a river. The defender showing is a regular Spearman (It would turn out that there were two reg Spears defending).

My income is now at 530 gpt, 395 of which come still from Rome. After an optimization for gpt - I founded at least one town - I manage to get this up to 353 gpt. After establishing embassies with all the civs I am ready to pull the next scam. First thing that I do is to sell everybody Contact with the French (10g+WM is a popular payment). After that I go from Civ to Civ and place the deals starting with the Scientific Civs:

Greece:
Babylon:
Germany:
Persia:

I gave Greece only 300 gpt because I needed someone where I could "test the waters" and because I would need someone I could buy Monotheism from (in Vanilla a Scientific Civ almost always gets Mono for free). Hence I needed to hold back one of the optional AA techs (I believe it was the Republic). But apart from that I sold them the whole AA.
But before I attempted to exchange Republic for Mono, I first made the deals with the other SciCivs. I gave each of them 440 gpt and sold them the whole Ancient Age and my World Map. All of them got Monotheism for free too, and thus breaking the Greek monopoly on that tech.
Now I could go back to Greece and use that last tech I had held back to aquire my first MA tech.

The Aztecs:
Egypt:
China:
Japan:
India:

After the deals with the four SciCivs I could now use all of the remaining 534 gpt that I had for the remaining Civs. I placed those who I felt were behind the most first, bought them in to the alliance and then sold the whole Ancient Age, Monotheism and my WorldMap (which was actually worth quite a buck).

A screenshot of the Domestic Advisor screen:


What now remained to do was to bring the MA against France to an end. I attacked Paris and killed the two defending Spearmen without any casualties. A [reenacted] screenshot:


After that the Domestic Advisor screen looked like this:


The slight increase of income that I get "from cities" (227 <-> 234) is due to the capture of Paris. And not to forget, this still shows my income as optimized for gpt (i.e. citizens working gold mountains, production on wealth etc).

The gpt I get from the other civs comes mainly from the scam I pulled this turn (4199 gpt) but also factors in what I got from Rome previously (395gpt).

killercane said:

Tremendous job and very impressive. However, doesnt this result in putting "putting 'free' money into the international economy" in violation of the HOF rules? Its a very fine line as its written there.

Click to expand...

The money indeed somewhat 'free' as it comes out of nowhere, but I do not think that this is in violation of the rules. There are limitations on you running a negative IIRC, but not if the AI does it. What is definitely disallowed is giving the AI more than you nominally have, for example 120 gpt when you only have an income of 100 gpt. This is only possible in Vanilla (PTW?) on Chieftain.

AutomatedTeller said:

I think that what happens is that when you give Caesar some gold, his science slider gets adjusted up immediately and the gold he wont' give you is being used to cover expenses of some sort.

Click to expand...

That is what I thought first too. But this happens all the time, just look at the post above. And not only that, it also happens when the AI is in Anarchy and there are no expenses or incomes which could cause this. So I think there really is some sort of 3gpt buffer.

well, this is clearly putting free money in the system. It's not explicitly banned, and it's probably not all that useful on higher levels (cause you can't do the MA trick as easily and the AI fills in better so it's harder to cut your trade route without destroying your rep)

Dealing with the Aztecs, India, Persia and Egypt

In 710 BC I ripped off the Aztecs in the same fashion as I did with the Romans. As trade goods I used Horses, Dyes, Silks, Incense, Ivory, and Gems.
Income before: &#8776; 4K gpt (Deals from 1100BC still active)
Income after: &#8776; 20K gpt

In 630 BC I ripped off India. Trade goods used: Horses, Iron, Furs, Dyes, Incense, Ivory, Silks, Gems and Indian Wines.
Income before: &#8776;15K gpt (Deal with the Aztects still active)
Income after: &#8776; 64 K gpt

In 450 BC I ripped off Persia. Trade goods used: Horse, Iron, Furs, Dyes, Incense, Ivory, Silks and Gems.
Income before: &#8776;64K gpt (Deal with the Aztecs and India still active)
Income after: &#8776;213K gpt

In 170 BC it is Egypts turn. I'll describe this in a little more detail, representative for all the deals mentioned in this post.

A collage of doing business with Cleopatra:

What is noticable here is that it is technically not possible to use larger lump sums than 999,999 gold to buy something. Without this limitation it would easily have been possible to make even yet more insane and perverse amounts of money.

Overall I used 9 tradegoods: Horses, Iron, Wines, Dyes, Incense, Ivory, Silks, Gems and, after selling Gunpower, Saltpeter. Nine tradegoods means that I am able eight times to buy back 55K gpt
8*55K = 440K
In addition to that there are some peanuts from selling techs.

The traderoute was broken by selling a harbour:

Income before: &#8776;150K gpt (Deal with Persia still active)
Income after: &#8776; 590K gpt

Expansion

Thanks to the money I was making for the largest part of the game I was almost always able to cash-rush settlers when I wanted. The only thing that held me back some was simply food.

For some time I used to buy granaries in quite a lot of cities, until I finally completed the Pyramids in Washington in 610 BC. In retrospect I am not so sure that building them (brick-by-brick) was actually such a good idea, because finacially I could have easily afforded to buy a granary everywhere (and everywhere it would make sense anyway) and Washington could have continued to produce settlers.

I made heavy use of ship-chaining settles to appropriate locations along the coast. In fact I spend so much time loading settles from one caravel onto the next galley and back to the next caravel that that I decided to change the "Location"-entry of my profile to "On a ship chain." The mere thought of a vessel makes me dizzy even now.

Anyway, I created a collage of minimaps to illustrate my expansion (the dates given below correspond to the maps):

975 BC -- 775 BC -- 650 BC
470 BC -- 330 BC -- 190 BC
10 AD -- 150 AD

Conquests

As I have mentioned before, running negative gpt in combination with the Vanilla-Republic will have ultimately have the result that each and every unit gets disbanded. (Ok, this only holds true up to and including Regent, as levels from Monarch and up have a certain built-in unit support). Add a RoP agreement and you can just position your units besides AI cities and walk in whenever you want (granted, there is a slight chance of a just produced unit). Here is an example showing the two empty Persian cities with two of my horsemen at the ready:

Pasargadae autorazed unfortunately, but I could keep Persepolis.

Similar fates awaited the Romans, the Aztecs and the Indians. Apart from the war against the French, I never fought a single battle though.

France: 1 city captured, 1 autorazed
Rome: 1 city captured, 2 autorazed
Aztecs: 1 city captured, 1 autorazed
India: 2 cities captured, 0 autorazed --
Persia: 1 city captured, 1 autorazed

I was also able to extort one city from the Chinese but this happend fairly late. No luck elsewhere as there were always resources or luxuries nearby.


Culture

Wrt culture there is actually fairly little to say. I started to build cultural builings on a larger scale only around 700-800 BCish. At first I let one turn pass so at least one shield would be in the box before I rushed. A little later on I rushed workers first then switched to a cultural building and rushed the rest of the shields necessary. When I began to literally drown in cash I did not even bother with that anymore. I simply rushed the complete builidings for 8 gold per shield. 1,600 gold for a university? No problem if you are multimillionaire.

The order in which I rushed builings was Library (3) -> University (4) -> Temple (2) -> Cathedral (3) -> Colloseum (2). That makes 14 cpt per town (although many of them were better junglecamps).

And since I started fairly late to get culture big style the 1,000 year doublers played next to no role.

Here is a list of culture values for a few specific dates (cpt = culture per turn):

690 BC -- __526 -- __82 cpt
610 BC -- _1,335 -- _323 cpt
530 BC -- _3,960 -- _769 cpt
450 BC -- _7,917 -- 1141 cpt
370 BC -- 13,588 -- 1,577 cpt
290 BC -- 21,057 -- 2,035 cpt
210 BC -- 30,648 -- 2,652 cpt
130 BC -- 43,626 -- 3,602 cpt
_50 BC -- 59,667 -- 4,195 cpt
_10 AD -- 72,656 -- 4,382 cpt
130 AD -- 99,805 -- 4,586 cpt

It was a little bitter to miss the 100K in 130AD by only 195 points, but that's life.

And last but not least the victory screen :




Exploitive? Definitely not!

wow.

9M gold in 150 AD.
100K in 150 AD.

This is incredible. 300+ cities by 150AD? I assume you rushed a culture building in each city until it got to size 3, then you rushed a settler, then rushed culture buildings? Or did they all come from your core?

AutomatedTeller said:

This is incredible. 300+ cities by 150AD? I assume you rushed a culture building in each city until it got to size 3, then you rushed a settler, then rushed culture buildings? Or did they all come from your core?

Click to expand...

No, the settlers did not all come from my core, altough quite a lot did. There was one city in the second ring (distance 6 IIRC), Philadelphia, that had enough food to grow from size 5-6 and 6-7 in one turn each. Add about 120 gold and you have a 2-turn-SF.

But mostly I plopped down cities and then tried to make them 4turn-SFs. With food bonuses as grassland-cows and -wheat, that can be done at sizes 1-3. In other cases where there are no food bonuses but only grassland tiles, the city needs to be at size 3 and work 3 of these irrigted tiles. At size 4, there needs to be a tile that simply maintains the 2-turn groth rate. Etc.

Food richness was certainly an important criterion to settle locations. Especially earliers on.

Culture was either rushed during the 4 turns the city would need to regrow after having produced a settler, or before it reached a size to continually run a smooth settler production.


Even if the way I expanded wasn't bad, I think that there is plenty of room to improve.

Presumably this was inspired by the "how much cash can you get in a single game" challenge I saw in the strategy forum a while back. I suppose it was tough to have 10m burning a hole in your pocket and culture seemed a sensible thing to spend it on.