Liberty vs. Tradition - Deity Challenge

What do you mean by 'mistime any of those' ?

What are you spending your gold on that you don't have a chunk saved by T160 for schools.

consentient said:

What do you mean by 'mistime any of those' ?

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well, one time I really bollocked up the endgame by finishing Hubble a tick before a natural GS, and I had the unfortunate miscalculation of the Order finisher which again delayed a natural GS. That would have saved me at least 15 turns. Other times, by delaying schools a bit, I couldn't fit in another GS at the endgame bulbing sequence. Instead he popped just after

Yeah I guess that's the side of the game that's unknown to me because I suck at maths. I guess everything must have been well-timed by pure luck in my Poland game because it went so much more smoothly than any other SV I've ever played.

The only thing I can control consistently now is the GSs that appear with Hubble/PT. It's a kick in the bollocks if you're timing your PT that way and boom there it goes in a far away land, built by the weakest of the civs who will get wiped out soon enough anyway.

I obviously have no idea when to start keeping track of the GS counter but I'll assume around schools is good enough. I think it's same to assume that the sooner you pop schools, the better chance for an extra one. Faith is a wee bit of a gamble as well, can you predict how many thunders will you have saved up by the end

consentient said:

What are you spending your gold on that you don't have a chunk saved by T160 for schools.

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Mostly unit upgrades and RAs. But I don’t really think that adds up to the 4 * 680 gold I would need to rush-buy schools. How people talk about being swimming in gold is one of the biggest things I cannot figure out. I sell all my spare luxes and resources, and mostly I am running external trade routes for the money over internal routes for the food (which is something else I can’t figure how people can afford to do).

680? Is that on Quick?

Well the math is quite wonky at that point but I think you should lay off the RAs and save up for schools. What we all do is take massive loans from the AI at the rate of 1gpt = 25.5 in cash

Sorry, I have the gold cost wrong I am sure. 480 maybe? Whatever it is. My next few games, I will hold off on the RAs and try taking loans to buy schools. That really should do the trick.

IIRC, without any discounts on standard Unis are 660, schools are 920 and Labs 1350

beetle said:

I sell all my spare luxes and resources, and mostly I am running external trade routes for the money over internal routes for the food (which is something else I can’t figure how people can afford to do).

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Population is your biggest mid game source of GPT (through city connections and/or Monarchy), so while it seems counter-intuitive, internal food routes will quickly generate more gold (and a bunch of other good stuff too). External trade routes are good once your population has topped out, or for diplomatic purposes.

Because of the inherent gold and beakers that are population dependent I think of each tile and specialist as having +1 gold / +1 beakers. Libraries / Schools / Machu Picchu boost that up to +2 beakers / +1.25 gold, before modifiers. That is why population is so important. Nice.

Olodune said:

so while it seems counter-intuitive, internal food routes will quickly generate more gold (and a bunch of other good stuff too)

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I absolutely can understand the logic behind this. My difficulty is that early game I feel so desperate for the science and gold -- how can I afford internal food routes then? Every time they renew, I try to see if I can manage to do things differently. It really seems to me though I cannot spare the opportunity cost until I have maybe 5+ routes, then 3 of them can be running internal food to the cap for the rest of the game. But at that point I am already behind the benchmarks people say I should be gunning for. So I really don't have a clue as to how the best players balance everything!

beetle said:

Mostly unit upgrades and RAs. But I don’t really think that adds up to the 4 * 680 gold I would need to rush-buy schools. How people talk about being swimming in gold is one of the biggest things I cannot figure out. I sell all my spare luxes and resources, and mostly I am running external trade routes for the money over internal routes for the food (which is something else I can’t figure how people can afford to do).

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Yes I agree. In between unit upgrades and some RAs, I never have the money to buy Public Schools in any of my games. I always hard build them. Sometimes I save enough cash to buy an University in my games, but usually that's hard built aswell.

It was a nice challange, too many resources for my taste but a good map regardless. Just have to ask, was raging barbarians on? Because there were plenty of them lurking around I thought it would be difficult but it made it easy for me because I got workers from them which I either kept or returned to CS for favour.

Had to pay Dido and Isabelle to attack Sweden and Venice when saw troops near my borders on turn 70. Got religion going so happiness was good for me to expand as much as possible. Policies that I used (Tradition, Liberty, Rationalism) and went Freedom later on, partly because it was still unclaimed as Genghis went Autocracy and Sweden Order and partly because of SP. Got plenty of wonders done (Pyramids, Oracle, Machu Piccu, Sistine Chapel, Neuschweistein, Cristo Redentor, Sydney Opera, CN tower and Hubble) but I feel If I avoided mosty Machu Piccu I would have won earlier. That definitely cost me bout 10 turns. In the late industrial era, Isabelle and Genghis also ruined my plans by declaring war on me and put me into unhappiness for about 5-10 turn. I know I should have expected backstabbing from Spain so that was my bad

There are still reserves in my game for up to 20 turns faster but really have no idea how some of you can do it before 230. That`s just mind blowing... so hats off

I know I should have gone either Tradition or Liberty but wanted to show it can be done as a combo having first 4 or 5 decent sized cities and the rest on about 15. Compared to others results I see this is probably not the best way to go....

I tried the Tradition approach a few days ago, and even though I didn't finish, I had around

550 bpt at turn 155ish
99 Education
155 or so ST

I had Oracle, Sistine, Petra and HG. Hit a few cultural speedbumps so I didn't continue but the UA is all kinds of insane. I haven't played Korea since G&K which was a long ago, I completely forgot how hard can they roll