Amount of cities for each victory type?
- Thread starter Piobmhor
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shaglio
The Prince of Dorkness
Wait, you're suggesting 20+ cities for a Science victory!?!? At an increse of 5% per city, you're basically doubling the cost of each tech. Or am I missing something here? Will the additional cities ever be able to generate enough beaker output to compensate for the 5% extra tech cost?
NOTE: All my observations are based on BNW Culture VC games played on Emperor difficulty level with the goal of winning as fast as possible, not with highest possible score.
Perhaps more cities can get your more Culture earlier, but that is not the limiting factor to winning Culture VC -- the limiting factor is Tourism and Great Musician bulbing at the end of the game (assuming you are going for speed rather than score as I always do).
Because you are limited to three Guilds (Writers, Artists, and Musicians) -- all of which are National Wonders -- and only a few Wonders that give free Great Artists of Great Works, there is a limit to how many Great Works you can get. And I find that my Capitol has enough room for all of them and has the best Tourism multipliers to boot.
Archeology does allow for secondary cities to help a LITTLE towards Tourism, but it is also a hefty hammer investment: Monument, Amphi, Opera House, Museum, then the Archeologists themselves.
In all my Culture games I have only filled two Museums each game (Cap + whatever was the second best city) with any subsequent cities contributing nothing towards the actual Victory condition directly.
I also find that on Emperor (at least for non-Island maps), it is really hard to build and settle more than 2 cities before all the decent spots are gone. There's enough Barbs running around that all Settlers must be escorted. And unlike in G&K, I never ever have the gold to rush-buy a Settler anytime early. Heck, I even have to hard build a Worker unless I can manage to steal one from a Civ and another from a City-State reasonably early enough.
Settling a 3rd city will also delay your National College since it is unlikely any good spots will be available if you went GL -> NC before a second Settler. And then you run the risk of losing important Wonders like Hanging Gardens a Chichen Itza (which I think is a crucial Culture wonder).
Then there is the issue of being able to defend a larger empire. It is more difficult for two reasons: 1) more AI Civs will covet your lands which means no Friendship (and that includes less gold from trades), 2) one of the AIs will likely decide that your cities look juicy and not very well defended.
If you disagree with my views, please be sure to give the difficulty level you play on (my current approach is NOT suitable for Deity and would need some adjustment for Immortal play). Also, specific examples would be useful, especially if you include turn numbers for key techs so that I can compare it against my games. Thanks!
I've now played 15+ BNW Culture VC games and in ALL of them, my Capitol produced at least 95% of the total empire Tourism throughout the entire game.
Perhaps more cities can get your more Culture earlier, but that is not the limiting factor to winning Culture VC -- the limiting factor is Tourism and Great Musician bulbing at the end of the game (assuming you are going for speed rather than score as I always do).
Because you are limited to three Guilds (Writers, Artists, and Musicians) -- all of which are National Wonders -- and only a few Wonders that give free Great Artists of Great Works, there is a limit to how many Great Works you can get. And I find that my Capitol has enough room for all of them and has the best Tourism multipliers to boot.
Archeology does allow for secondary cities to help a LITTLE towards Tourism, but it is also a hefty hammer investment: Monument, Amphi, Opera House, Museum, then the Archeologists themselves.
In all my Culture games I have only filled two Museums each game (Cap + whatever was the second best city) with any subsequent cities contributing nothing towards the actual Victory condition directly.
I also find that on Emperor (at least for non-Island maps), it is really hard to build and settle more than 2 cities before all the decent spots are gone. There's enough Barbs running around that all Settlers must be escorted. And unlike in G&K, I never ever have the gold to rush-buy a Settler anytime early. Heck, I even have to hard build a Worker unless I can manage to steal one from a Civ and another from a City-State reasonably early enough.
Settling a 3rd city will also delay your National College since it is unlikely any good spots will be available if you went GL -> NC before a second Settler. And then you run the risk of losing important Wonders like Hanging Gardens a Chichen Itza (which I think is a crucial Culture wonder).
Then there is the issue of being able to defend a larger empire. It is more difficult for two reasons: 1) more AI Civs will covet your lands which means no Friendship (and that includes less gold from trades), 2) one of the AIs will likely decide that your cities look juicy and not very well defended.
The France Napoleon UA only affects the Capital. As for the Polynesia Moais, they only affect Tourism once you get Hotels iirc.
In my games, I find that I am more constrained (for most of the game) by hammers (i.e., how long it takes to build the key wonders) more so than science. I agree that more science never hurts, but you do take a 5% science hit for each additional city and you won't be offsetting that until you get Universities built (which can take a long time for cities 3, 4, 5+ since you won't have the gold to buy the buildings for so many cities).
If you disagree with my views, please be sure to give the difficulty level you play on (my current approach is NOT suitable for Deity and would need some adjustment for Immortal play). Also, specific examples would be useful, especially if you include turn numbers for key techs so that I can compare it against my games. Thanks!
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