Culture Farming gaming the system?

White Out

White Out

Prince
Joined
May 29, 2009
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358
Location
Calgary
So I'm on prince with the better AI mod and i have barbarians on. Not even raging just regular. Right now as venice I have 3 "culture furnaces" I call them because every so often i have 1 archer and 1 warrior for each camp to kill the new spawning barb for culture, as i adopted *but didnt complete* the honour tree.

I really dont think the AI would do this, so this is this something cheesy or at the last considered "gaming" the system?
 
Resurrection said:
So I'm on prince with the better AI mod and i have barbarians on. Not even raging just regular. Right now as venice I have 3 "culture furnaces" I call them because every so often i have 1 archer and 1 warrior for each camp to kill the new spawning barb for culture, as i adopted *but didnt complete* the honour tree.

I really dont think the AI would do this, so this is this something cheesy or at the last considered "gaming" the system?
Click to expand...

Not really. You still have to build and maintain all those units, that isn't free. And on higher levels the AI will have more units and clean up the camps.
 
ya but im leaving the camps as is, just killing the barbs with archers. its culture farming and i gaurentee you the AI isnt doing it.
 
So i guess my next question would be , am i losing out by adoping honour and then going right ino tradition? it seems to me like im getting more social policies by culture farming even by "wasting" a social policy adopting honour. is there any way to use hard data to figure that out?
 
No, it is not gaming the system imho
The AI does very few things optimally. Not everything that the human does and not the AI is gaming the system
 
Resurrection said:
ya but im leaving the camps as is, just killing the barbs with archers. its culture farming and i gaurentee you the AI isnt doing it.
Click to expand...

Yes, but it is not necessarily efficient. You spend 200 hammers on units, you could have build a Wonder for that instead.
 
I've found it to be definitely worth it on raging which I usually play. It gets so that it isn't a lot after a while and is hardly significant but in the beginning I've seen it mean the difference in up to 3 policies or so. If you plan to turtle or expand I recommend opening liberty or tradition first as barbs don't spawn every turn and usually don't make up for that +3pt in the capitol especially. However, I find it not only breaks even but nets me 2-3 extra policies if I can quickly find 2-3 camps to farm and open honor as my second policy. This delays your strategy but makes up for itself quickly as you've noted. Also, just having honor open (and no more points) allows you to farm all game. It becomes almost insignificant later but over time all that extra little bits of culture might mean an extra policy or two...I haven't tried to calculate it. Later policies are expensive so it doesn't pan out long-wise as well as you think. My barb-farming games usually show policies going quicker for the first tree and then slower, over time I may only gain 1-2 positive, but having stuff opened sooner in those early turns could have other benefits I haven't considered.
 
Resurrection said:
ya but im leaving the camps as is, just killing the barbs with archers. its culture farming and i gaurentee you the AI isnt doing it.
Click to expand...

On high levels, Deity especially, the AI is given an insane advantage. The only conceivable way to win is to do what the AI is not doing, whether it's having better war tactics, more concentrated scientific focus or gaining culture by any means necessary.
 
Resurrection said:
So I'm on prince with the better AI mod and i have barbarians on. Not even raging just regular. Right now as venice I have 3 "culture furnaces" I call them because every so often i have 1 archer and 1 warrior for each camp to kill the new spawning barb for culture, as i adopted *but didnt complete* the honour tree.

I really dont think the AI would do this, so this is this something cheesy or at the last considered "gaming" the system?
Click to expand...

arand86 said:
On high levels, Deity especially, the AI is given an insane advantage. The only conceivable way to win is to do what the AI is not doing, whether it's having better war tactics, more concentrated scientific focus or gaining culture by any means necessary.
Click to expand...


 
There is probably an unspoken rule for how fast "Deity" and "higher levels" are mentioned in any discussion. :)
 
Gaming the system? My friend and I are playing a hotseat game. I picked Liberty then Honor, while he picked Liberty then Tradition.

His culture per turn still outstrips what I'm getting even with five encampments being farmed. Tradition is still stronger than Honor even with barb camp farming, maybe you should be calling Tradition "cheesy" instead.

Or do you consider something gamey just because the AI doesn't do it?

To farm those camps, you need several units, which you had to build first, and then pay unit maintenance for every turn. And you spent a policy on the Honor opener that you could have used for something else instead - like, say, finishing Tradition faster. Now, do you still think it "feels wrong"?
 
LoneRebel said:
Gaming the system? My friend and I are playing a hotseat game. I picked Liberty then Honor, while he picked Liberty then Tradition.

His culture per turn still outstrips what I'm getting even with five encampments being farmed. Tradition is still stronger than Honor even with barb camp farming, maybe you should be calling Tradition "cheesy" instead.

Or do you consider something gamey just because the AI doesn't do it?

To farm those camps, you need several units, which you had to build first, and then pay unit maintenance for every turn. And you spent a policy on the Honor opener that you could have used for something else instead - like, say, finishing Tradition faster. Now, do you still think it "feels wrong"?
Click to expand...

Yes. I do. Or at least in the scenario I had because I was alone on an island with no AI. The next time I tried it the ai would just pop the empty camps lol. I think there's real merit to adopting honour then going right into tradition. All the added culture you get by killing barbarians gets your right back on track and picking social policies really fast. Maybe down the game it slows you down finishing another social policy, but, the really fast start I think makes up for it. This game is all about strong starts snowballing into big empires, and I think this "trick" works nice if you avoid spending excessive units on farming and just go out killing barbs.
 
Resurrection said:
Yes. I do. Or at least in the scenario I had because I was alone on an island with no AI. The next time I tried it the ai would just pop the empty camps lol. I think there's real merit to adopting honour then going right into tradition. All the added culture you get by killing barbarians gets your right back on track and picking social policies really fast. Maybe down the game it slows you down finishing another social policy, but, the really fast start I think makes up for it. This game is all about strong starts snowballing into big empires, and I think this "trick" works nice if you avoid spending excessive units on farming and just go out killing barbs.
Click to expand...

There is definitely merit in picking the Honor opener (although I would usually pick it after the Tradition/Liberty opener, depending of course on the lay of the land). But I would typically need a little extra to pick it instead of going straight Tradition/Liberty. Either a suitable civ (Aztecs, Germany, Songhai, Celts), the need to protect trade routes or an early city state quest. And it depends on how close other civs are to you. If there is a lot of space for barbs to spawn, picking the Honor opener allows for a far more active game because you know where the barbs are going to be and you can engage them there so you don't have to worry that much about protecting your workers and settlers.
 
LoneRebel said:
Gaming the system? My friend and I are playing a hotseat game. I picked Liberty then Honor, while he picked Liberty then Tradition.

His culture per turn still outstrips what I'm getting even with five encampments being farmed. Tradition is still stronger than Honor even with barb camp farming, maybe you should be calling Tradition "cheesy" instead.

Or do you consider something gamey just because the AI doesn't do it?

To farm those camps, you need several units, which you had to build first, and then pay unit maintenance for every turn. And you spent a policy on the Honor opener that you could have used for something else instead - like, say, finishing Tradition faster. Now, do you still think it "feels wrong"?
Click to expand...
What I don't get is this idea that you need extra units for barb farming. You're building them anyway for war or even just to keep your pointy sticks number up to par. They may as well earn their keep farming.

Wait you're farming five camps at once and his extra 3cpt is doing better than you? Are you sure? I know you'd have to hard build your monuments but once you have those the honor opener should be killing tradition's 3cpt with 5 camps to farm. You need those monuments with honor anyway just to push your borders. It takes tradition 5 turns to make up for you killing 2 brutes. 2 barbs in 5 turns should be easy to count on with 5 camps. I'd even expect more than that.
 
This is a stupid thing to do because you will never make back the 12k culture your last policy will cost. This policy you could have been your second to last had you not taken honor.
 
Magma_Dragoon said:
This is a stupid thing to do because you will never make back the 12k culture your last policy will cost. This policy you could have been your second to last had you not taken honor.
Click to expand...

I've played games on Emperor/Immortal where I generated so much culture that I didn't have any useful policies left to pick. I had 5 complete trees, 6 tenets and a few spare policies in one game. You can generate tons of culture in BNW. It really doesn't come down to one policy like in Vanilla.

Anyway, your argument completely ignores the time value which culture, like everything else in the game, has.
 
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