LotR7 -- Passive Culturalists

Arathorn

Catan player
Joined
Jan 10, 2002
Messages
3,778
Location
Illinois
This game will start once LotR6 completes and not before. I hope to start this game 8/4.

Difficult: Deity
Civ: India/Babylon/Spain (TBD)
World size: Standard
Terrain: Minimal water continents, dry, hot
Win conditions: All enabled, but anything other than 100K culture victory is considered a loss
Opponents: Rome, Zulu, Scandinavia, America, Mongols, Chinese, English (barring better suggestions)
Variant Rule: We are passive and can never attack an enemy city directly -- no bombarding, no attacking, nothing. We can attack units in the open, pillage, declare war to our heart's content, but no attacking cities. Ever.

Rationale: I've never beaten deity with 100K before. I know I can...simply get near domination and wipe out everything but one city and wait...but where's the fun/challenge in that? Adding passive ruleset, though, makes things much more...interesting.

Expectation/Hope: Diplomacy will be key to this game, as we'll want everybody embroiled in wars as much as possible, pillaging/razing. Wars are good for slowing culture, but we can't build too many units. Plus, we can't let any individual civ get too big, or their culture will get too high. Pillaging/parking/propoganda? Flipping cities TO us on deity? I expect the game to play very differently than most. Plus, I've heard from a few people that they really liked the feel of the passive aggressive epic and I didn't play that one out....

World map and terrain and such are an attempt to make the path a bit easier without going overboard.

Roster (fixed):
Arathorn
JMB
Skyfish
Gothmog
Bam-Bam

Question for those joining/lurking/hoping to join if there's an opening. What civ do we want? I'm certain we want religious. Commercial for the cash to weasel wars and such seems pretty important, but being the only scientific civ and having cheaper libraries could be nice. Also, is the conquistador worth it, just to steal workers? Explorers are cheaper and pillage just as well. Any discussions?

Arathorn
 
This is going to be hard, i suggest you take a larger map since you won't be able to have many cities ((since you cannot take cities).
 
I'm in Arathorn, nothing like a good challenge. Be a nice change from all the waring I've been doing lately. I've lost by 100K on diety but never won that way, I'm just not patient enough I guess.

Seems to me we will need some early wars for worker grabs and great leaders to get ancient wonders. Will also help keep our neighbors from expanding too quickly or building culture. Might be fun to be the Babs and do some bowman action.

What is your position on dense builds? Seems to me we will need to have a pretty dense build, about a three square grid. ICS would really be the way to make it doable. Probably also a good idea to use the ring placement strategy to some degree.

Another question is if we will be allowed to do cultural encroachment.

Maybe propaganda will find a use in this game too! Overall it sounds like fun.
 
The problem with the 100k culture victory is basically that it depends on sheer number of cities, far more than anything else. Doubling a rival civ's culture pretty much means doubling or more their number of cities. To win this, we'd have to go ICSing like crazy as Gothmog says.

Not sure yet if I want in, let's see some more discussion first. I've done 100k several times already, and especially on Deity it really is impossible to win by 100k culture purely peacefully. It MIGHT be possible against that set of uncultured opponents, but if any of them makes a takeover of another civ's territory in the medieval era, it'll be an insurmountable lead that we can't do much of anything about.
 
This should be a real interesting read, as there is no question you'll be able to get to 100K culture fairly quickly. The hard part will be having double the culture of any of your opponents. When I've tried this on lower difficulty levels, the game has somewhat of a "counter-intuitive" feel, as the key to victory seems to be to build a whole heap of Size 1 or 2 crap cities in the tundra (or desert (more work), or jungle (a whole lot more work)). You might even end up with a buch of cities at Size 1 with the only citizen a tax-collector, to ensure economic self-sufficiency (each crap city with a temple and library).

With city quantity mattering much more than city quality, Commercial may be more important than Scientific. I think on a Standard size map that would allow an additional six "good" cities before any further are catastrophically corrupt. I'd also say that a Standard size map provides plenty of land to build enough cities, particularly if you play with less than the max # of opponents. Larger maps would encourage the AI to build more cities as well.

I don't think wonders will be all that critical to your game, with the exception of Smiths (to pay for those markeplaces and banks to support all the infrastructure) and the Internet (free cultural building in each city).

I'd suspect, with this being Deity, that you will be struggling to slow the tech pace after Education, and racing an AI launch. Will you be adding a special "Raze the enemy capital to keep them on this planet" clause?

It seems you have selected most of the militaristic psychos as your opponents. Is there anything deeper than that, like picking only those without the build culture flag set in their preferences?
 
I think this concept lends itself nicely to RCP, Ring City Placement. I'm not proposing the ideal solution but a certain amount of city abandonment will be required. Production of cultural buildings is the key. RCP reduces corruption.

War is a requirement. Pillaging/parking/propoganda combined with aggressive settling is the road to flipping. A great leader is needed for a palace jump. The FP placement is a critical decision and should be delayed until the map is mostly known.

I like Babylon but only because of the availability of an early UU, permits flexibility on the timing of the golden age. Some restraint will be required. My first choice however, is commercial. So I would argue for India.

So I find myself arguing for the micro management of city placement. My doubts center on the ability to expand.

Edit; But then if culture is more dependent on the number of cities than tile area, than this idea should be dismissed.
 
All--this does sound like an interesting concept. But it will be hard. See LK45--we did not have a completely passive ruleset, but we were pushing to avoid war UNTIL we reached 100k without doubling, or to nix a spaceship.

This game would have played out differently had I not chosen to play the defiant nationalist and refuse a demand in BC times--which led to a complete AI dogpile on us.

I still think LK45 would have been very difficult even without the early dogpile. We only won after bludgeoning our nearest competition right close to domination and then coasting the last 15 turns. I am sure Lee has more to add on this.

I would like to throw my hat into the ring--but only if the game starts after this month, which I am guessing is not bloody likely. Anyway, if that does happen, please consider me. If not, good luck.
 
A few responses:

City denseness?
A very good question and one I should've addressed. I think I want to make a rule that no city may go in the "natural 21" tiles of another of OUR cities. This still allows a bit more ICS than I'm really comfortable with (can put cities 2 N, 2 S, 2 E, 2 W, for example, that I don't like), but it's a nice easy rule. It clears up cultural pushing into enemy territory, but it allows us to pack cities in/around AI cities to our heart's content, which may well be necessary.

Rule to raze enemy capital?
Never allowed. We've got to be working the entire game, but especially after Education, to SLOW the tech pace, which means lots of wars and hopefully tons of pillaging. If the AI can launch, well, we lose. We can try to clear a path as much as possible to an enemy capital so that another civ can stop a launch, but we can't do it ourselves....

Passive:
This is in reference to the "No attacking city rule." This was the name I used back in Epic ## with a similar rule but a domination victory goal. It does NOT mean that we will be peaceful or not declare war or anything of the sort. I, in fact, plan on being nearly constantly in wars/psuedo-wars, to keep the AI tech pace and culture low. Gaining territory would be great and I hope to use culture flips, pillaging, and propaganda (maybe) to good effect.

Wonders?
I don't think many wonders are really necessary. The key will be as many temples, cathedrals, and libraries as possible by about 250 AD, to get doubling bonuses and such. Then, as many cities as possible while keeping the AI with as few cities as possible. Or at least with cities unable to support buildings because of upkeep costs.....

Start date?
Well, LotR6 has to finish first. Looking at T-hawk's most recent post there, it's not gonna be done anytime soon. Aztecs and Japan have hundreds of troops and we'll be deep fighting for quite a while. An August start date is likely. I'll keep you in mind, Bam-Bam.

Opponents:
I didn't check the editor for build flags. It might make sense to do so. But, yes, I was looking for foes who build lots of military, fight a lot, and seem to typically lag culturally. I wanted to avoid scientific and religious civs, so that the AI has to pay full shield cost (well, after the deity bonus) for all cultural buildings. Those 18-shield temples are just too scary.

Insurmountable leads:
I've almost never seen an AI that can survive a full dogpile. I hope to see us engineering a number of dogpiles to take down leaders, but hopefully stopping short of eliminating them from the game. We want the AI to fight a TON.

Looks like some good discussion. By my reading, only Gothmog has claimed a reserve spot....anybody else? Bam-Bam has a spot on hold if the game starts in August and one of the LotR6 players doesn't claim.

Arathorn
 
Yeah, I think a three square grid will be close enough. Though ICS would certainly make it easier.

Pillaging will be key, what we did to the Arabs in GM2 was a shame (for them), and we will have the advantage of dogpile orcestrating in this one too.

While wonders aren't necessary for culture, they do help alot with other aspects of the game that will be very important to us. Like upkeep on buildings and cash for rushing culture, even the GL would be great because we could then spend cash on other things than research. Basically with alot of cities many wonders have a magnified effect. We will need the bonus especially early in the game.
 
I think I'll have the time (at least up until September), but let me think about it a bit more (and the ruleset) and I'll get back to you tomorrow after I've had a bit more time to think things over...

JMB
 
Arathorn,

After rereading the thread so far, I am interested in playing. However, I will probably be travelling around (work and vacation...) from the end of August until late September. Since I think this game may take a long time, if you think my extended absence will cause a problem, I have no problem ceding my spot to someone who will be around for the entire game.

JMB
 
This game should start soon! Hopefully, Monday.

Roster:
Arathorn
JMB
Skyfish
Gothmog
T-hawk(?) -- NO!
Bam-Bam

Edit:T-hawk is out and Bam-Bam is definitely in. Looks like we have our five. Go, team!

This is an update post and a chance for the half-decided to finally decide. Any more discussion on which civ to play? One vote for Babylon, sorta, from Gothmog, but that's it....

Arathorn
 
Count me in.

I vote for Babylon. I think we will need the cheap bonus for all the cultural buildings (except the colosseum, of course).
 
I played a “psuedo-shadow” of this game on Emperor, and collected some information that may be helpful in choosing your civ.

Game Parameters: Standard size map, 30% land, 5 random opponents, sedentary barbarians.

I played as Spain (religious/commercial), and achieved a 100K cultural victory in 1852. I never fired a shot, or even attempted to build a wonder, so there was no Golden Age.

My civilization had 38 cities, only one of which was position-limited (as opposed to terrain-limited) to be smaller than size 12. In other words, I didn’t have to ICS, although I’d suspect on Deity that you would want more like 45-50 cities so placements could be tighter.

One thing I found interesting was that by the end of the game, I was neither the Land Area or Population leader (2nd in both). I would’ve thought that was essential.

Now for the real information (Commercial vs Scientific).

Total Cultural Buildings:
38 Temples, 38 Libraries, 38 Cathedrals, 36 Universities, and 24 Colosseums

Total Commerce Buildings:
27 Markets, 22 Banks, 18 Stock Exchanges, 19 Harbors

Setting taxes to 100% cash: Corruption of 549/2550 (21%). Non-commercial civs would face ~26% corruption, or 663/2550. The increased ICN for Commercial civs generates some additional commerce, so allowing $5 for each of the six additional cities yields an approximate Commercial benefit is $150/turn (if running all cash) by the end game.

Had I built Smith’s, the savings would have been $144/turn by the end game. I believe this is a general result for a civilization of cities sized 12-15, although I’m not sure how to prove it.

So in my game, Scientific + Smith’s would have been cash-equivalent to Commercial by the end game (and I think this would be true for all turns after Smith’s was built, not just the end-game). However, with Scientific each cash-rushed library is $160 less, and each cash-rushed university is $400 less. With ~1/2 of the libraries and ~4/5 of the universities being cash-rushed in my game, that benefit would have been ~ $14,000, or the equivalent of 100-150 turns of the extra corruption from not being Commercial. This would have had the additional benefit of earlier culture accumulation, as each building could be have bought sooner. The final economic benefit of being Scientific is the free technology at each age. I think rough values for the Medieval/Industrial age freebies are $600/$2000.

One final thought. This particular style of game allows one to have a “global” build order for your cities. I think the ideal build order for the core cities is Temple, Library, Marketplace (simultaneous with switch to Republic), Cathedral; and in the outlying cities Temple, Library, Cathedral, Marketplace. The only tricky one is the Marketplace/Cathedral order, as these can be consecutive technologies, and the only spot you should have a conflict between culture and economics.

With that in mind, the possible military Golden Ages by potential civs:
Babylon ---> Fairly easy to hit the sweet spot immediately following revolt to Republic in the ancient age. Core builds Marketplaces and Cathedrals, outliers build/cash-rush Libraries, Cathedrals.

Spain ---> ugh. Navigation comes too late for core to be building anything useful. (Banks?)

India ---> Jumbos hit a good spot for Universities/Colosseums in the core, and Cathedrals/Universities in the outliers. Non-scientific makes it harder to cash-rush two buildings/city in the Golden Age.
 
I would like to play another LotR game with the group that's become the series regulars... but this one, especially in how it encourages ICS-like behavior, sounds like it's going to be more choresome than fun later on.

Would you object if I didn't play turns on the roster, but followed along and offered thoughts and suggestions on the game?

T_McC: 100k culture does play out differently on Deity than Emperor. The BIG difference is that the Deity AIs get a huge jump on territory, leaving the player with no better than an equal city count, and those cities will be at least somewhat cramped. Plus the Deity AIs build culture faster, of course. You also played it with fewer than the max opponents. LotR7 will be harder than your game in many ways. :) The 100k number is equally reachable on both difficulties; the problem is in doubling the enemy culture which is quite hard on Deity.
 
T-hawk, no problem! Feel free to lurk, offer encouragement/suggestions and other thoughts. Please keep the "I told you so"s to a minimum, though! :)

I think the benefit of scientific will match/exceed that of commercial for this particular game, so let's go with Babylon. I've not played them in forever, too (since my first OCC, on regeant, however long ago).

T-hawk, maybe I'll see you in "LotR8 Schizonephric Fun", which I hope to start in a couple weeks? It's a big deviation from the rest of the LotR series... I'm hoping for a large turn-out there and maybe even parallel games.

Arathorn
 
T-Hawk: That 100K victory was the last game I played on Emperor, and on Deity I'm getting used to the phrase "Well, that's the 4 cities I'll get peacefully" :)

I labeled it a "pseudo-shadow" because of the large difference in the difficulty levels. The only real information in the post was the comparison of Commercial vs. Scientific in "field" conditions. I keep thinking there should be some argument away from Babylon, but I'm not finding it.

On a couple of other notes: I think Arathorns original post posited playing against only 5 opponents. I know some of his posts in this thread have been edited since I first read them, maybe that was one. :undecide: So that was what I tried.

As far as the pace of Deity expansion, in my game I asked for Continents and got 4 good-size islands. I had mine (the 3rd largest) to myself, and no one could reach me until Astronomy. The AI's all had at least one neighbor on their islands. They fought each other plenty in my game, but since the islands were so separated, no good poaching was available. I think the extra settler and free units would have just started the AI wars earlier.

My point is that if any map is winnable under these conditions, I had it. Which is why this should be interesting read. I think even more so than Always War, there are some un-winnable maps under these conditions. It'd be great to see this crew win without having a gimmicked map.
 
List of opponents hasn't changed from the original post.... It's always been 7. Sure, fewer opponents would probably make it easier, but this is another game that's not about easy, it's about pushing the limits and seeing what we can do on a random-ish map.

Has anybody posted a 100K win on deity that wasn't an aborted domination?

Arathorn
 
Top Bottom