Forgot to add that at the end of the "Conquest REX" phase, managing happiness to annex the puppets asap is top priority. Consequentially I immediately TP over all puppet farms. No puppets for long in this strategy! It is crucial to micromanage city growth (I practice strict pop control, unemploying if necessary, and TP'ing over the puppet farms also controls this) and build order, over the long run. Courthouses follow and since the AI already developed the city, it's not too long.
When the above is finished is when I enter the "equilibrium happiness REX" phase.
Note that like others, I never build the promotion bonus buildings, and would question the early barracks build in Rome. I'd sooner build a granary in the early capital, another building I almost never build, relying on the Maritime CS instead. Likewise early farm-hills will be converted to mines once the CS food is fully online.
But, thanks to this strategy, this is the first game where I can see the advantage for building Forges, and that gives iron another advantage in city placement beyond the renaissance.
Last post for today. Of special note is the trade route yield, which about equals Rome's net gold. That is one of the features of this strategy that attracted me to it, as it enormously raised the Gold/road hex ratio - Arabia would be a killer!
Pulled up my last deity game where I placed cities "normally". At about the same time I was running 436 science, 292 GPT, 337 MFG goods (#'s during golden age like yours). I was playing a non-interference game but as you said your conquests have had minimal effect probably.
I don't claim to be a great economy manager, but all your numbers compare extremely favorably. Sort of botched my policies so I don't have secularism, but with far less cities it would probably only be like 50-60 science.
EDIT: Haha looked at the land/population ratio, you can definitely see the difference between sprawl and a normal settling pattern, you have more than double my land but I have 1 million more people I think that is because it counts larger cities more heavily though? Not just a citizen count.
My science rating fluctuates strongly with specialists since I don't really micro in this game but let the AI handle the specialists. When you go into unhappy, the AI will pull all the citizens off the fields and into the libraries, which makes a difference of 200 or so research.
Wow haha.
Yeah I micro my specialists to avoid wastage, but with that many cities, I definitely wouldn't bother either!
Thank you for posting this: I suppose Rome isn't as weak as some people say it is in Civilization V.
This game was very nicely done, alpaca. I came to the same conclusions as you, and I've found the same massive city-spamming strategy to be completely unstoppable. I don't think the game designers really understood what they were doing with Civ5...
My favorite stat: in the 100 turns from Turn 100-200, your science increased from 28 beakers to 519 beakers. That's an increase of almost 2000%!
...
Some things are inexcusable, though, like horsemen or the maritime CS. Everybody who tries a rush with them once or twice should realise they're too strong
In this case, the designers probably overlooked the influence of providing happiness buildings without prerequisites for each city.
By the way: Seeing that this is my first public game I would be interested to know how you like it and if I should make an effort to maybe post some more in the future.
Nice game. You seem to have good insight in the mechanics of the game and how they interact.
SO are you posting your game with Persia? I'm curious since I like to opt for Freedom myself. It's too bad that most games are allready settled by the time I have Freedom+Rationalism and SoL...Never get to actually get any resistance with my economic powerhouse.
About ICS: I wonder if not Firaxis did a mistake with minimum city distance.
I tried some form of ICS yesterday in my King game as Persia. I basically overrun my continent with horses and got stuck with +- 13 cities spread too thin until Industrial era.
Then I quickly amassed something like 36+- cities...
I went with full Piety and full Order for achievements. Allied 4 maritime CS, around 4 culture ones, pulling something like 500 culture/turn near the end. Last 100 turns of game I was whole time in GA . At the end I produced something like 1.8k science/turn and around 1300 gpt.
But it finally feeled like empire and not bunch of cities thrown around the world. Dunno what the devs was thinking when they designed this game.
edit:
btw satrap's court with it's +2 happy is awesome for this strategy ;-).
Played a ICS yesterday: Prince, Pangea, China. Very powerful strategy. My commerce, science, and happiness were highest that I have ever had them, but my production may have been the lowest. I bought a lot of stuff! As well, did not have any difficulty allying with the marintine CS. Do people tend to ally to more than one?
By the way: Seeing that this is my first public game I would be interested to know how you like it and if I should make an effort to maybe post some more in the future.