@
STW:
Buro + Scotland Yard > Nationalism
I only got the normal speed values at hand currently (probably multiply everything with 1.5) but to spy three cities up to legendary after a culture bomb, 138k
are needed. Depending on several factors, the conversion rate from
towards
is somewhere between 4.7 (my game in GM-121) and 5.6 (
Kaitzilla's game in a previous Gauntlet) , so then between 30k and 25k of
are needed. That's really not that much. In GM-121, my empire made 400
through Scotland Yard + Buro from 1 AD onwards. I have to guess, but I'd think that 800
/ turn is really no problem 'til 1000 AD so then it's only about 40T 'til you got all the necessary
. Calculate when you can stop the research the earliest (probably somewhere @ CS + Currency + CoL) and then calculate how many
you'd take 'til Liberalism or Constitution and then convert that into
. With Scotland Yard I assume, that the conversion ratio is somewhere at 1.5, maybe a little lower, but if you stop research that early you will only build 1 Library in the capital because more won't pay back. Then see how much Jails and everything would cost you and add those costs towards the cost of the research and tell us the results. I'm really very positive, that stopping the research as early as possible ist the best way, that neither Constitution nor Communism will pay back because they're so far down the tech-tree and that really the most you need is Engineering, and if you oracle CS, you can get that even completely by trading around the tech-advantage again and again. Otherwise, stealing is cheaper than teching. Really the most I'd research would be CS, Currency, Aesthetics, Literature and Music.
And regarding Great Artists: You're Lizzy, you're PHI, generating GAs is really easy. Simply run Caste and hire Artists in addition towards the Courthouse-Spy-Specialists. Run Pacifism on top, either bulb it with a self-prepared GS from the Library or trade CoL + Meditation towards all civs you can get on friendly and let them do it. You can also build the Shwedagon Paya instead (tip from
Kaitzilla) . In espionage-assisted Cultural Victories (EACVs) you 1st adopt Slavery so you can whip Settlers and Workers, you then adopt HR + OR + CS because you need HR for Happiness, CS is self-explanatory and OR is good for getting the buildings up and for spreading the religion that your neighbours run. Try to build at least 1 Confucian Missionary too and spread Confucianism towards one of that neighbours cities, to whom you also want to gift your Legendary cities later, so to the one that is your spy-target. Steal the techs from him that you want and that he researches.
Later you switch to Caste + Pacifism to create the GPs, if you get a Prophet from Oracle you can do that switch with a single Golden Age. Generate some Artists and run the Espionage-Slider the whole time. You'll wonder very much how few GPs you'll be able to generate even with playing a PHI leader because those games end so fast and because one doesn't has 1 ultimate GP-Farm but mainly only 1 phase of Caste + Pacifism in which one tries to create a GP in every city that has the chance to create one in time. You'll get enough Great Spies, because you built CHs before that phase and hired Spy-Specialists. From my experience it's almost harder to safely generate enough GAs to be able to bomb every L-city than to lose many turns because of getting too many superflous GAs.
And towards why organically creating the culture isn't possible: In GM-121 I got 5 Great Spies so that's 15k of
on its own. Subtracting those from the 30k of
which I needed, only 15k are left. I already had 8k
@ 1 AD and with making 400
via Buro + Scotland Yard only 8k of
are left, that's 20T at that rate, and I didn't even consider things like a single GA yet!
Building the Parthenon + the HE in the capital being good play btw. is really nice, finally having GA-pollution is something good
.
Good luck with your game, and don't think that the above is the best or even a perfect way, there's still so much to discover or do differently so make yourself your own thoughts, but calculate precisely! In GM-121 I won in 1130 AD, that was 300y later than
Kaitzilla won in his Gauntlet, I played on a very weak map and had bad luck with getting both, De Gaulle and Peter as neighbours and
Kaitzilla's game was the first EACV ever.
One tip in addition that will also explain something towards
Kai who asked that in the thread where he posted his guide (see list of writeups) : Having a TR towards the L-city gives 20% bonus. To get that, you need to close the borders with everybody but the target, because the cities are close and small so have low TR-values. The only other possibility with which it is possible to get no TR is when having too few cities, so i. e. having 5 cities à 2 TRs = 10 TRs but the target-civ having 20 cities, then CIV chooses the more valuable, bigger, further away lying cities and the L-cities don't get chosen.
Hth.
.
While the general Hall of Fame is an ongoing competition, we like to run time-definite competitions between updates that we call Gauntlets. Standard Hall of Fame rules (*) still apply, but any games meeting the settings will be counted towards the Gauntlet.
