first post here, too, just joined for the game of the month.
Turn 346, Score 5113, Cultural Victory
Strategy was quite simple - 3 own cities, focused on production, puppet the nearest AI, puppet half of the second nearest civ for some nice economy, then be nice and build culture and make some research agreements, but be prepared for the big war.
Social Policies: Tradition, Honor, Piety, Patronage & Freedom
Went quite well, i discovered El Dorado, settled direcly next to China to get the iron. Being lucky Wu just declared war 2 turns before i wanted to attack, so i didn't have to do it, and puppeted both her Cities. Went for Russia with Longswordsmen & Catapults - too easy because Japan and France were the ones who asked me to join the war. Got some nice techs with my research agreements and when i had rifles i attacked russia again and puppeted the last cities.
Soon after that, i was just upgrading my cannons to artillery the attack came - Japan, Germany, Babylon and England declared me war. I was able to use one City State at the western border to delay the japanese attack (germanys army came much later) and one at the eastern border to take care of england while i took out the babylonian army. Then France, although bribed with 3 Luxuries, joined the war - and flooded the former russian Territory with Musketeers and Foreign Legion. Good thing the eastern front was as good as solved and i could send reinforcements to Moscow before they could get it - and with Mechanized Infantry (some upgraded from warriors) i could drive them out and start the conquering while building the later culture buildings. Unfortunatelly i had a crash in 282 and i had to reload the autosave from 280. After conquering France, Germany, half of Japan and Babylon which gave me quite a few turns of culture, and after realizing you can't build sidney opera at a lake, I finally got my Utopia Project in Turn 346 (score 5131 in the ranking, 5113 at the hall of fame
)
Things i learned:
- Securing your border with a military city state is great. Not only you need to build less or even no units (which is awesome when trying a cultural victory) - they can hold off a small nation on their own, and a big nation with only a few strategically placed ranged units.
- You can't build Sydney Opera at a lake
- Puppeting is extremely effective for a cultural victory, since it gives you so much of the needed money a small empire normally doesn't have
- Exploring is quite important - when an enemy finishes for example the sistine chaple before you do, and you would know who built it, you can conquer it. If you don't know the city at that point you just can guess (and be wrong 'til the end)
so, where do i find that file i have to attach? should i have saved the game one turn before i finished?