The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #5 - Brazil

Finished with a T220 culture victory. Didn't need Internet. 3GM, hotels and golden age were enough. Techs was a bit slower than expected.

Acken said:

Finished with a T220 culture victory. Didn't need Internet. 3GM, hotels and golden age were enough. Techs was a bit slower than expected.

Spoiler :

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Do you have a replay or a short summary? I played this twice, and both times Morocco and India were running away with 40k culture. I think I'm doing something wrong.

Well 40K culture is at what 300turn + ? I don't have a replay but I can give you a quick summary.

I met Poland, stole a worker then proceeded to harass him with an additional archer, grabbed a settler and 2 more workers out of the salt next to his capital. I then made peace but kept blocking his settler for my 4th city spot.

I opened with 4 city NC tradition. 4th city was made during NC and I bought a library in it. I was able to get ToA but that was lucky for immortal (around T60). NC was finished around T82 and then I was able to get Petra, was risky though to make it after NC. Didn't get Desert Folklore so grabbed faith from gems.

I then grabbed construction and proceeded to Education (turn 111 I believe). Attacked Poland again and grabbed Warsaw. I also made a 5th city in the south because Jungle and Brazil.

I sadly get an additional pre renaissance policy 2 turns before education (terrible timing) and open aesthetics. I should have pushed culture stronger or weaker. This bad timing made it so I was still 8 turns away from a new policy when reaching renaissance through astronomy at turn 126 urgh. I've had this happen a couple of time lately when I only get a culture CS at friend state. I really should avoid it. Late education so I do not risk the Oracle at Renaissance gambit and use the free policy for one more in aesthetics.

Happiness on 6 city continent is hard and most of my cash goes into allying Zanzibar. I get some pagodas up. I also made the HS and enhanced with divine inspiration making building Pagoda a breeze. My expansion were able to grab HG and MoH wasn't really thinking I'd get those because I made them late but I didn't have much else to build while waiting for Education.

I spawned a GE amusingly due to ToA + Petra. Rushed Notre Dame with it. Then the rest is only about getting more wonders and trying to build Operas everywhere for the Hermitage. I reach schools arount T165 and Oxford Radio for a T170 ideology. Get freedom then I go for Hotels.

I win the world fair, get more into freedom and aesthetics beginning a golden age that I will boost with a GA at some point (missed Taj Mahal...) to make it last until the end game. I get a few themes wonder, build hotels make archeologists and reach arount 220 tourism. I see India needs only 6K more tourism (for a total of 10K) so I faith buy 2 GM, get a natural one and bomb the 3 on him. Other civs get also influenced with the 20% effect from GM. At that point I'm also close to Internet anyway. I guess having only India as a major culture civ was a bit lucky. If there were 2 civs, I'd need internet which was not far away (I'd get porcelain, a possible faith GS and finish rationalism in 2 turns).

Culture victories have this very special problem where if you're slow it becomes harder and harder to close the gap.
-The AI will increase its stockpile of culture
-The AI will reach techs allowing it to get more culture: radio, archeologists, more work of arts.
-The AI will start to get antiquity sites, reducing yours increasing their culture
-Some WC resolutions might start to be passed that help the AI if you are not close to winning: culture for wonders for example
-You must also make sure no AI wins World Fair.
-Also try to not let them AI cultural city states.

In my experience 10K culture is fairly common on Immortal in the early 200.

When acken went sci oriented, I went culture oriented.
I finish ( in order) liberty, aesthetic, piety + opening of honor and patronage + 8 policies into Order.

At the end my base tourism was 700. with all multiplier I was putting 2500 tourism to some civs.
Overcoming 30K culture was not a problem at all. and that with out int games. Did not finish building before game ended.

Brazil can make so much tourism in the late game. I had hardly no themes, no diplomats, no aesthetics tree until last and no world religion (basically bad play) and still overcame 75K from All I had going for me was a few camps, a few wonders, great works and some artifacts in museums and Freedom Broadcast Towers.

At one point I had a Carnival going with INT Games with NVC and Internet! Had so many hammers I was able to build NVC while the Games were being built.

Acken - I disagree slightly that the AI cannot win World's Fair. Only the culture leader must be kept from winning it.

t264 CV - Wonder spam complete! I ended up with 14 wonders (1 turn from CR too), in 6/7 cities, including themed Sistine, Uffizi, and Broadway. Wow, is Brazil powerful during Carnival. Like I thought, I won a few turns after Airports - it was a shorter path than Internet. Oh, and I never did build a Caravel, but did end with 2 BB.

I mean... I have had games where I was pumping 1700+ tourism during Carnival as Brazil, but that was near t300, and I won in like 4 turns without any musicians.

Now that I think about it, my mistake was capturing Warsaw first, and then expanding. It set the rest of the game on a much slower pace. But China did not want to trade, so I had no happiness to expand.

This was a fun ICL. I won a CV on turn 238. I'm surprised how few people walked over to the perfect Hill/Petra/Folklore/Mountain/2xFish tile.

Trolling Poland for as long as possible is definitely the way to go, but capturing Warsaw is a bad idea imo. After seeing so many people go that route, I tested it out as well (in a different playthrough that I went ~150 turns with). While I did end up with more space and peace of mind for the rest of the game, I was about 25 turns behind on tech, and also had really crappy happiness and gpt compared to this playthrough (when I made peace after stealing 3 workers).

After trolling Poland I just expanded back to the original spawn and to the southern end of the continent. I got Folklore from a hut on like T22 so that was pretty lucky. Tithe + Pagoda on ~T75 IIRC. Sent Cargo Ships between Rio and Salvador until about T150. Used Petra to power out buttloads of wonders. Used Tithe + Machu + Cargo Ships to purchase every Maritime and Culture CS. Rio was under constant WLTKD for the last 100 turns.

Stockpile Artists, Oxford Radio --> Freedom, Bulb Writer to speed up Universal Suffrage + Flourishing of the Arts, Carnival until the end of the game. Passed WC resolutions were Arts Funding and World Religion - Islam. SPs were Tradition --> 2 in Aesthetics --> 3 in Rationalism --> Freedom to Universal Suffrage --> Finish Aesthetics --> Finish Rationalism --> Media Culture. Triple concert tour in Poland with Faith GMs for the win.

No Internet. I meant to get Airports but my bpt was pretty low due to being on just 3 cities. I had maybe 10 great works total. Luckily I only needed like 11k total tourism and Poland was right next to me for easy concerts.

If you believe faster finish the only criteria for game..
Otherwise having all continent for yourself very nice and with religion I did not really had happiness problem.
Again AI I was technologically ahead starting with beginning of renaissance, I found congress for example. On no stage of game I was in any danger of loosing and had any choise of victory condition. For example I controll all city states.... and 9 city production would let me do domination if I wanted too..

Mutineer said:

If you believe faster finish the only criteria for game..
Otherwise having all continent for yourself very nice and with religion I did not really had happiness problem.
Again AI I was technologically ahead starting with beginning of renaissance, I found congress for example. On no stage of game I was in any danger of loosing and had any choise of victory condition. For example I controll all city states.... and 9 city production would let me do domination if I wanted too..

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I don't think that win-turn is the only criteria, but I don't think it's irrelevant. I did mention that in my alternate play-through, the benefit of occupying Warsaw was the peace of mind that came with having an entire half-continent all to myself. Due to the generally peaceful and distant nature of the remaining civs, victory is assured, but somewhat boring and slow. I don't think it's so bold to think that faster wins are better wins. I'm not claiming my method in this ICL was the absolute best, as there are a few other players ITT with even faster wins.

I'm just sharing that in my own anecdotal experience, capturing Warsaw was not worth the investment. Petra, NC, Food Cargos, Guilds, etc were all delayed 20-30 turns. CS bribery was much slower due to higher overall maintenance and the need to rush-buy to catch up later cities. This led to a much smaller capital with slower wonder spam, as well as extremely lagging SP progression.

I took a much different approach than everyone else. I moved over to the coast, mountain and petra hill bonanza. I planted my second city on the gems being coastal with a mountain as well. I cargo shipped both cities up and snatched petra for epic amazing hills all over my cap. I then used that epicness to spam xbows and take out poland who had cities everywhere.

My next plan is double observatory for science extreme with cargo ship food madness.

There is a lot of spoilers going on. Please edit your posts.

Spoilers are typically allowed after a certain amount of time. What do you think?

Turn 254 win, first time Brazil and my 4th game going culture.. Can surely cut this down abit!
I got so screwed by Morroco really SPAMMING prophets so that I even lost my own religion

Spyder85 said:

I got so screwed by Morroco really SPAMMING prophets so that I even lost my own religion

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Sometimes you can't save every city but you definitely can save your capital by just surrounding it in units. In my game I picked Religious Community just to speed up Rio's wonderspam, so I didn't care about the other cities, anyways.

Haha yeah it was surrounded by units, until I went to war with Poland and got too excited and used those units No idea why they wouldnt fix such broken games sometimes, it really takes the fun away having to deal with several civs spamming prophets.

all you have to do is to buy 1 inquisitor.

budweiser said:

Spoilers are typically allowed after a certain amount of time. What do you think?

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Makes sense.

Thank you for posting this - it was an immensely fun map.

I won culture victory on turn 239, which was one of my fastest CVs - even more so than my Polynesia & France games. More details in the spoilers, but I will say my game was very similar Soffacet's.



This was a lot of fun - thanks again!