World's Fair, International Games, etc.

Definitely go for the Games, even the ISS. BUT they can be a nuisance if you are at war and need to be building up reinforcements because you are on the wrong end of the spear!

Or if you've just discovered Archaeology and you want to investigate Archaeological Sites. Happens every time!

I usually only commit half my cities, depending on circumstances. If things are really bad (rarely), I may not bother at all. Winning the Games is not such a big deal when there are more important things to do.

I once committed only my high-producing Capital to the Games and still won! That was on Prince. It was as if the AI weren't even trying!

Worlds Fair is usually the first selection that I choose. Time the double culture with the spawning of a great writer and you get quite the culture bomb! You are also getting a free social policy too. It can be quite the social policy boost.

International Games goes good for controlling the city states too. At this point in the game, the boost to city states gives me a good strangle hold on them. I'll take another social policy, too.


I try to use these as mess with the AI Civs production also. Make them slow down producing troops and wonders as much as possible. When I believe I have them secured, I switch my capital to producing wonders or something else I need to get a jump on the AI.

Don't forget ISS either. A great wonder to have for those last couple techs you need to beat the AI.

I always keep every great writer I get until the Worlds Fair is finished.Also I wait until for +3 culture from world wonders ,+5 culture per natural wonder and historal landmarks is active in world congress so that you can have lots of base culture.Now when I can contribute the most production to worlds fair I make sure for a golden age with an artist and take all GW I have and get sometimes even more culture I need for a social policy.When not having the +120%culture bonus it's not worth it to spend the GW for culture.One time I could get 2 complete social policy branches in a multiplayer game

I think WF is fantastic, but only really do-able on Emporer or below. Higher difficulties, it becomes meh. Those 20 turns of double culture are just fantastic. You'll pick up a few cs culture quests as well. I've found that it's best to go full-bore with all your cities until you've socked away 1k hammers or so and then switch most cities to more useful production; just rotate so that one or two cities are always adding hammers. Perhaps someone knows better than I, but looking at the results when the worlds fair ends, it seems like the ai "gives up" and goes for second place if you jump way out ahead early. Then you can slow down and not throw away 2,500 hammers when the next civ had 750.

I found that on Emperor and below that WF can be a pain, because the AI can be really slow on assisting you. On Immortal and above, it gets finished fast, so I can get the price in much fewer turns. Whether it be a 1 policy price, or the 1st price, at least I only have to spend a few turns on it.

When the world fair also triggers a golden age:



Yummy.

Two games since I started this thread. In one, world fair came pretty late and I was easily able to gobble up the free social policy, something I hadn't done before. Great!

But in the other game it came pretty early, and I had been wonder spamming which meant I had been deferring several key buildings in my capital. So instead of getting a free social policy by building the fair, I played catchup and for my 350 hammers I got:

Ampitheatre- 100 hammers
Colosseum - 100 hammers
50/160 hammers towards an Armory

I can't see how one free social policy is worth it. Seems to me that the happiness and culture benefits of those buildings more than outweights whatever the free policy would have been worth -- including, in the long run, more social policies from that culture over enough time.

So I am still torn on the world's fair. Is it REALLY worth what 350 hammers buys you, say, in your capital?

PLUS... I can't get exactly 350 hammers. There is "leakage" since I go over the 350 in the turn I switch to something else. With regular production, your extra hammers flow through to the next build item, but not with the fair.

You can argue that what the wf social policy is buying you is time. Given that time til next policy varies dramatically throughout the game, if it triggers when you are limping along at forty turns/policy, than it is definitely worth it. You can buy amphitheater and you can buy armory. What you can't buy is the forty turn with rationalism opener vs forty turns without. Sometimes, though, you are right - when you are cranking out culture and sub-10 turns/policy, the WF can feel more like the WTF.

Yes, I wrote this whole post just dying to drop that pun. I'm so sorry.

If you're only going for second place, then sure, whatever.

But first place gets you a LOT more than 1 SP.

Chum said:

If you're only going for second place, then sure, whatever.

But first place gets you a LOT more than 1 SP.

Click to expand...

But, why would you ever go for first place? If you already have obviously more production than the highest production AI, then why not just churn out military and finish the game? On the other hand, if you aren't sure, then it's a BIG gamble. If you lose, you get nothing. You don't even get the chump change you get for losing a wonder race -- you get 2nd place, and your hammers above 350 are just gone.

On my immortal game denmark put more than double into the WF than the entire output of all my cities combined together, and I bet he didn't even use all his cities. However, a social policy for 350 was a sure bet in both games if I wanted it.

So, to me, the question is very straight forward -- when is a social policy worth 350?

If the WF comes up around the time of astronomy, as a first proposal, I think it is not worth it. If you look at what 350 hammers buys around that time, it is some pretty important stuff. A public school costs less and those hammers are hard to come by.

On the other hand, if the WF comes up late game -- well OK, 350 hammers by then is probably easy to spare, and those social policies are getting exponentially more expensive.

I think there's an argument that the WF is a good late game policy, something to propose if you aren't set on getting someone embargoed or desperately trying to get yourself off the embargo list, or unban your main lux, which is what is usually going on by then. Maybe the AI will propose it.

I do like proposing the WF as the first thing I do when the world congress is founded, everybody loves me for proposing it. Then I will vote against it and hope it doesn't get adopted because I can't spare 350 hammers at that point.

You cannot count on winning it even on Immortal ... But I don't see how one social policy is not worth 350 hammers. I rarely propose it first, but I always invest 350 hammers and never regret it.

Is there a way to see how much everyone has put in so far?

I often find (especially on Emperor and below) that I overkill these projects, providing well over half the total resources.

Xiao Xiong said:

But, why would you ever go for first place? If you already have obviously more production than the highest production AI, then why not just churn out military and finish the game?

Click to expand...

Well, if you argue like that, then why would you ever start building wonders if you could build military units and start winning the game much earlier? I'd say it's personal preference, obviously, if you plan to get aggressive soon, then there's not that much point in delaying your attacks. For long-term goals however, there's pretty much nothing as useful as these projects.

And you don't need more production than the AI has, they will RARELY focus all their cities on those projects and again... if they're in a war while the project is running that completely screws with their priorities. You can use that to your advantage. With some investments in diplomacy you can almost guarantee to win those projects even on Deity if you go for a wide empire as long as they don't come TOO early. Obviously, that's a different story for tall empires.

Is there a way to see how much everyone has put in so far?

I often find (especially on Emperor and below) that I overkill these projects, providing well over half the total resources.

Click to expand...

You can hover your mouse over the symbol while the game processes the AI's turns, that will give you a general idea of how much every Civ invests (it will update for each Civ if you renew the tooltip by moving your mouse away from and then back onto the symbol) - you can't see the total numbers, that's.. well, pretty much the Idea behind the project.

The value of the free policy of the World Fair is going to be partly determined by your victory condition, and how important that policy is to you. I've been finding that the faster the victory on a science victory, the harder it is for me to get all the required policies needed for the end game. That 1 policy can mean the difference of 10 turns in the end. It most certainly is worth 2nd place for those 10 turns. If I'm going for a cultural victory, I probably won't care about that policy.

Xiao Xiong said:

But, why would you ever go for first place? If you already have obviously more production than the highest production AI, then why not just churn out military and finish the game? On the other hand, if you aren't sure, then it's a BIG gamble. If you lose, you get nothing. You don't even get the chump change you get for losing a wonder race -- you get 2nd place, and your hammers above 350 are just gone.

Click to expand...

1000 hammers of military isn't going to win you the game in any era you can see the WF come up in. 20 turns of 100% culture is ridiculous, and if you let the AI win it, you're not going cultural victory with any amount of ease at all.

If you don't want to build it, don't build it. If you don't feel it's worth it, don't build it. That's all there is to it. It's just like EVERYTHING else in this game. If you don't think one free tech from the Great Library is worth it, don't build it. If you don't think wonders are worth it and you want to build infrastructure instead, don't build them.

I routinely get 2 policy TREES for winning the WF. Is that worth 1000 hammers? Are you kidding me? Of course it is. There's not even a sane argument that it's not in my book. If you want to build a couple of musketmen instead, go for it. I'm gonna go for the world's fair.

Always, even if it's just to prevent the AI from getting the #1 prize.

I always, always win the World's Fair. Free policy + double culture for 20 turns... I make sure to trigger a golden age, and make sure I have access to at least 2-3 Great Writers during that time; by the end of the 20 turns, it basically gets me a whole extra policy tree. And then I usually build factories just after, which gets me 2-3 quick ideology tenets. Wherever my civ is weak at that point - money, science, happiness - this chain of events is usually the slingshot by which I surge toward and dominate the industrial and later eras.

BustaSlaya said:

Always, even if it's just to prevent the AI from getting the #1 prize.

Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly.

I find it super easy(virtually 100%) to get 1st on both the Fair and Games on Emperor and still reliably do it on Immortal (somehow pulled out 1st on World's Fair with Venice on Immortal yesterday).

Depriving the AI of a good boost is always welcome and unless I'm working on a Wonder, I usually switch all my established cities to the Projects... I am OK with production "waste" if it means a lot of AIs aren't getting 2nd or even 3rd place! Common enough on Emperor, too.

Ryika said:

Well, if you argue like that, then why would you ever start building wonders if you could build military units and start winning the game much earlier?

Click to expand...

Chum said:

1000 hammers of military isn't going to win you the game in any era you can see the WF come up in.

Click to expand...

The point was that if you are actually the highest production civ in the game, you've basically already won. Not many games are lost once you are out producing the AI, because the AI is so pathetic militarily that it has to unit spam to beat you. If you can spam units faster than the AI, the AI will get steamrolled.

On the ther hand, you can build targeted wonders even when the AI is way ahead of you by beelining to them, getting to the tech first, and then rushing the build.

You don't get that first mover advantage with the world fair -- everybody starts building it in the same turn. OK, I get the point that if you can somehow distract all the AI's so that nobody builds it, that you may be able to guarantee a win.

But I think you gave up a lot for that. I think if you look at how many hammers you put into it to win, and looked a that could have produced in your cities, it gets pretty iffy. The buildings are a sure thing. Maybe on lower difficulty levels you can always win but on immortal I'm not so sure.