RBP8 - Culture Conquerors

RBP8 - Culture Conquerors

Scenario: Achieve a 20k cultural victory, in a city that was captured (or ceded) from an opposing civilization.

Civilization: Zulu
Difficulty: Emperor
Map: Small, Pangaea, 30% land
Terrain: Wet, Warm (that's where the Zulu live)
Barbarians: Roaming
Victory: All enabled, but we are trying for our specific condition
Rules: All standard

Opponents: Culturally strong France, Egypt, India, Babylon; and England for Charis' edification.

Version: I'd like to keep it on 1.14, since that's what all of LKendter's and my other succession games are. Is this okay, Charis and Cartouche?

I'll play 30 turns to start, to verify that we have a workable game. (I already tried one start which put us on an island by ourselves - nice "pangaea".) Ten turns each after that, although we might go to 20 if at peace during the boring industrial age.

Roster:
T-hawk
Cartouche Bee
Skyfish
Charis
CivGeneral

VARIANT RULE: After our initial war in which we capture our 20k city, we may not make any military action in enemy territory. (We can continue the initial war as long as we want.) If a civ has a spaceship under construction, we may attack ONLY their capital, not any other cities.

If it's all right with you, I'll gladly join you as I can not play on 1.21. Also by a weird coincidence I always play after CB in the last SGs he was in, let's keep the tradition alive.
Also with such a strong roster you need a weaker player in there to add a bit of difficulty to the variant

EDIT
ps : on the rules, we might need to attack our opponents but you could limit it to never wiping them out totally, just a quick idea need to think about it a bit more....

Originally posted by T-hawk


Version: I'd like to keep it on 1.14, since that's what all of LKendter's and my other succession games are. Is this okay, Charis and Cartouche?


I'm debating on a variant rule to limit our ability to conquer everybody and sandbag for our victory type. I'm also debating whether to leave space victory enabled, which might depend on the previous rule. Any ideas/opinions?

Click to expand...

I'm fine with 1.14, I've got the change version thing down to about 10 seconds.

I think we should keep the space victory open since it is one of the victories that the AI will actually pursue, given the chance.

I'm not sure about what to do about getting into the situation where we could just coast to the end cause we had no viable competition left. The only thing I could see here is once we got to a point where we had a calculatedly victory, we just could declare it game over or someone do the "shift-enter" to the end to prove the victory.

I want to Quckly Sign up for this Game . Sirp are you going to watch this one?

Ok, those who have 'the version swap down in 10 sec', how do you do it in a way that's least annoying?

I suppose if I just move my current PtW directory, install up to vers 1.14, I can just rename folders to swap. That way I don't actually keeping touching/modifying/re-patching -- given enough HD space, is that an easy way?

Avoiding a military-culture sandbagging will be an issue. One thought - 'offensive' war declaration is only valid ONCE (to take your 20K city), after that, no more offensive wars / fighting in enemy territory, against any civ that doesn't have a spaceship started. After that, we can take offensive action to forestall a launch.

Charis

You can run the 1.21 patch executable installer again; it'll automatically remove 1.21. Then you can run the 1.14 installer, which will remove 1.14. Then you can run the 1.14 installer once again, which will give you a fresh reinstallation of 1.14. I've been doing this for a month and it works fine.

Skyfish: you're in. Apologies to CivGeneral, but I find that too many players bogs down an SG, especially in this one where the most critical phase of the game will whiz by in probably one player-turn each.

Charis' variant rule sounds good (I knew you'd come through ) I might even remove the "has a spaceship started" clause from that; down here on Emperor difficulty we're unlikely to have any problem having the military to do whatever we want to the space race. How about this: during the space race, we may not take action against enemy cities, but we can go for bombardment and resource denial.

I'll start the game tonight, under 1.14.

Let's not go to variant here.

I really don't want to remove the ability to take a capital and lose the game to a space race. With the large delay to get a capture the enemy city, a launch attempt is almost guarenteed.

Originally posted by T-hawk
Apologies to CivGeneral, but I find that too many players bogs down an SG, especially in this one where the most critical phase of the game will whiz by in probably one player-turn each

Click to expand...

That is understandible, Also would anyone Mind if I just Observe the game .

Ok, I'd like to set it as thus: After our initial war in which we capture our 20k city, we may not make any military action in enemy territory. (We can continue the initial war as long as we want - we may as well allow that since otherwise we could just take all their cities and then designate one for 20k.) If a civ has a spaceship under construction, we may attack ONLY their capital, not any other cities. That may require overwhelming military force to absorb losses before we reach the capital, and also might pose a challenge in doing that to multiple civs simultaneously.

To go in-character with it, the Zulu are so fascinated by this city and its wonderful cultural possibilities, that they forget their militaristic tendencies in awe and worship of this city. If their culture is in danger of being overshadowed by something like a spaceship launch, only then do they wake up and take action against it.

Starting and playing the game now. 1.14, space race enabled. (Diplomatic is also enabled, because having the UN available to build will help our cultural victory. If we don't manage to get the UN, you're all fired. )

@T-hawk - Good luck reaching to the UN Victory in Emperor .

We found Zimbabwe on the starting square, on a river, with a wheat and several bonus grasslands. There was a hut adjacent to the starting position, which gave us 25 gold.

Given that we start with Pottery, I think our best beginning research bet is Bronze and then Iron Working, both at max, to ensure we can get some swordsmen going quickly.

In 3550 BC, England is contacted to the south. We trade Warrior Code for their Ceremonial Burial + 10 gold.

In 3350 BC, England's got Bronze Working, and I pay 52 gold for it to finish off our research. We start Iron Working at max.

In 3200 BC, we pop a settler from a hut! This was the fifth hut we got (two gold, one maps, one deserted.)

Also in 3200 BC, we contact France to the north. We trade Ceremonial Burial + Warrior Code for Masonry and 5 of her 10 gold. Then we trade Masonry to England (it appears to be at monopoly, with France and England not contacting each other) for Alphabet (at 3rd-civ) + 55 gold.

3150 BC: We also meet India across a water gap in the far southwest. Neither of us has any tech the other doesn't.

Our scouts that discovered England and France took a couple turns to explore each city's terrain.

3100 BC: Our free settler founds Ulundi, on a river to the northwest of Zimbabwe, with cattle in immediate range.

3000 BC: I said I'd play 30 turns, but enough happened and I know we have a workable start so I'll pass off after 20. Lee, feel free to take either 10 or 20 (since the first 7 will be spent finishing a granary), then ten each from there. If you would, wait till tomorrow, to let others weigh in with any opinions.

After the granary, I think Zimbabwe should build two workers; both of our cities need tiles improved pronto, and there aren't any great city sites visible immediately. You might also want to build one more scout to check out the fog south of Zimbabwe that I didn't get a scout into.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rbp8-3000bc.zip

T-hawk << Just Played
LKendter << UP NOW
Charis << On Deck
Cartouche Bee
Skyfish

Map in next post.

Here's a close-up of our cities, and an overview map of the area.



Red dot is the only decent city site within view; it grabs those two bonus grasslands that are just out of Zimbabwe's reach. There's some workable land to the northeast, like those two plains wheat, and the fog area to the south may have some good areas too. And of course we need to build a city to claim some iron when we can.



We have a decision to make, as I was hoping we would. Paris or London?

Paris is much closer, and thus could be captured about fifteen turns sooner. And the city's got three game tiles for super-fast growth. This city's problem, though, is that it has no hills, and thus won't have much power for actually building wonders.

London is much farther away, and thus would take longer to capture, plus also be near useless until we managed to rush the Forbidden Palace there. But the city's got several hills and mucho bonus grassland to be a wonder powerhouse in time, and does have a cattle for food bonus.

Originally posted by T-hawk
If you would, wait till tomorrow, to let others weigh in with any opinions.

Click to expand...

Since I am going to bed in 5 minutes, not a problem



I don't like either of the cities. Having do 20K before, it need to be a COASTAL city. From a quick glance a the map, neither are coast. Colssus, Magellan, Great Light, etc are very important. I already nab a couple of those when my prime target was lost. No coast, and I would have flushed hundreds of shields.

Since the city won't be our capital, it'll always have the Palace available to carry over between wonders. Coastal access is nice, but not all that critical. BTW, there's no "etc"; the three you listed are all of the coastal wonders.

Hmm, I would go with a ICS Methoud. But Settle on that little Red dot to get the Lux. In Emperor you are bound to hit Unhappy Citizens more quickly. I would recomend settleing there mand connect it poste haste (Or soon )

I can't open the save right now but it seems London is just 1 tile from the coast which means 3 coastal tiles are wasted, I hate that... I kinda like Paris though
I have already achieved 20K culturals in non-coastal cities, it's not impossible (I feel coastal is more needed for OCCs).
Now seeing the "war" rule, it looks to me the biggest challenge will be to win without (or very limited number of) Great Leaders really...

With the current rules, shield production in the 20K city will be very important. I have not looked at the map yet but I think we have some time to decide on likely targets.

Taking a more passive role, we may still get some Great Leaders on defense for rushing wonders.

Well the *timing* of the attack on our target city could actually bethe "deal maker" in this game : should we go for it ASAP ? should we wait until our neighbours build some nice wonders that would give us cpt as soon as we capture it ?
What are your thoughts on this ?

@Skyfish - Captured wonders give you ZERO culture. You simply get the benifit of the wonder.

I think the captured city will have to be the fp city to give us a chance.

With the new military rule (ARGGGG - I hate rules changed after I sign up) we must get the city ASAP, and fight until we can get a leader for the FP. Failure to get that city the fp = loss IMHO.

Lee, your right about the FP, we may have to settle for a histographic win if things don't turn out for us, assuming we are not allowed to trigger an alternate win.