Lonely Hearts Club, Chapter III : Zara Yacob

Around 30 turns to go to a culture win. My top two cities are going to get there in around 25 turns, but I'll probably farm them a bit to run more artists and try and bomb my third city.

Generally things just progressed according to the plan in my last post. Golden age to radio. Then build CR and Eiffel Tower. Was beaten to both Broadway and Rock and Roll by Shaka. War has broken out between Monte and Peter and Isabella and Peter. Brennus also declared on Isabella but has now gone peaceful. Shaka just sits there dominating the tech and power charts. He has enough on his hands too... But I think I am fairly secure. I have rifling now and he doesn't. I also have cannon and a lot of pinch/drill4 oromos I can upgrade in a heartbeat (I got a quest to build a lot of musketmen - that I fulfilled on the next turn - game me free pinch for every Oromo).

and the tech rate is slower than i'm used to, so it's odd! they're triply slow since i've had 3 golden ages ... one from the music GA, one from the sports league quest reward, and one from taj mahal. and 2 were after i built MoM so they each lasted 12 years. so i was at double speed a loooooooong time! the bad guys like me, even tho only shaka sees the Conf light. they all already kinda liked me except izzy, and then i got a build castles quest and took the +3 points with everybody reward so that gives me a cushion. three quests, my luck in this game is sick! brennus and isabella STILL haven't met. everybody's getting along and i'd like it to stay that way since i'm getting nice resources from them all, my cities can get huge. izzy's annoyed with shaka and gilga for being heathen but what can ya do. brennus all of a sudden has too much on his hands, but the worst he is with anybody is cautious, and pleased with me. i don't think he's actually planning a war, i think it might be the barb city near him. or maybe he's stressed about the privateer infestation along his coast, i have no idea what's causing that .

i'm gonna try for space because i haven't yet in BtS. i haven't had a game go late at all yet. i haven't even played to radio in a real game. but they need to speed up some. i forget what thread but someone was saying about seeing the techs folks are researching thru the espionage, that none of the AI were going for liberalism, it was like they knew he could get it any time he wanted so they might as well not bother ... it's like that in my game. two of them are researching astro now. i want to shake them and say "hello, you could try to get that free!" i'm still waiting on lib since they haven't touched it yet.

anyway, monty's dead. i decided to be bizarre and go start a war for no reason, which i never do. nobody had met him so what the heck. i was building troops and theatres/colloseums for WW and since i'm creative when i got that quest and see, that's a clear omen it was the thing to do! i took a peace break for a while, and in the meantime gilga met him and liked him a bit so i got a -1 for redeclaring but eh, okay. he offered to capitulate quick, i took 2 cities on a biggish island, then texcoco and then his hindu holy capital and he offered right there but i didn't want him as a vassal, since i hadn't seen any late game resources. i haven't had any colonies in BtS but i certainly don't like the thought of having to gift Montezuma techs up to the end of the tech tree to demand my tribute. sure enough, after discovering a certain tech right before i was gonna redeclare anyway, the city that was his new capital was built right on top of it, and that is the only unclaimed (well, by anybody except mr. psycho) source anywhere near me on the map. so, he had to go. oh in the original peace deal, he had 2 cities other than his capital. i asked for one just to see how mad he'd get. he gave it to me i was like WTH? it was junk of course so i gave it back *giggle*. i was surprised tho, he gave me one of his three cities, i must have hurt him!

i kept 5 cities on his continent there, and 2 on a sub-island, the rest were junk. i'll see if i can afford 'em or have to make a colony. i haven't played a game in BtS to a late stage at all. the expenses aren't bad yet, number of cities cost is the worst thing right now, colony expenses are just 19gpt. i thought about building versailles over there with a GE that popped when i was expecting a GM, but then decided to put FP instead. that way, if i do make it a colony, i'll get the option to re-build my own FP somewhere else . versailles, i'd lose my chance, and if i leave it out there maybe someone else will build it where it would be useful if i get bloodthirsty again. i'm making wall street now, the conf shrine is a beautiful thing. i delayed researching corp until the banks were ready. i knew the +1 trade routes per city would actually be a bad thing, because it cost me my +2 trade routes per coastal city and ALL of my cities are coastal, including the ex-aztec ones.

if i make a colony they start out knowing everything i know, right? so they could trade techs to everybody else and i can't stop 'em?

it's actually amazing that monty's dead, i really don't go to war, you have no idea. the latest GG from it popped up on that island city that discovered the whales. of course i have no galleons over there to get him anywhere useful *giggle*. i wonder how it decides where they'll appear? at the very last city i got my carefully groomed exp-monkey shock-axe-upgraded-to-mace to 26 exp, so that i didn't have to spend a GG to qualify west point yeehaw! i ALWAYS have to use a GG for that. sometimes the fascism one, i am that much of a non-warmonger .

these are my active trades, you can see i don't exactly want a world war to break out: the order is isabella, brennus, shaka, peter, gilga (him i'm just gifting clams to since i'm a sweetie).


peter demanded marble really early in the game, i checked and there weren't any wonders i wanted at the time so i gave it to him for 10 turns. maybe he made a national wonder or something. when he came back later offering stone, he'd take only my pigs and cash (well he wanted marble but i didn't want wonder competition ) so then i outsourced pigs from brennus *giggle*. part of why monty had to go was so that i could get silver, the cows were a good bonus too! i went slightly wonder crazy during the golden ages of war. i'd made all these troops, then the quest golden age got triggered right after the war started. so a couple cities made more troops and some made marble wonders. then peter offered stone, and univ of sankore would give me more science points in GLib city but it would have taken way too long to build without stone, and it kinda cascaded from there. so see? it wasn't really my fault. he's like a pusher!

bizarrely enough, taking over aztecville landed me two more religions. i got the hindu shrine, and the last city i captured had no religion. judaism spread there last turn, fun! so now i have access to 5 if i wanted to go culture *giggle*.

Not much to add to earlier posts. Set the slider to 80% culture after Radio and clocked up the turns. Turned some of the towns in my capital into farms to get an extra artist for the last city. Noone declared on me although the AIs fought against themselves. Eventually Shaka invaded Isabella and easily defeated her. Montezuma vassalized to Peter. My only war was my missionary raid on Monte. I gave the captured cities to Churchill to manage and retired back to my home continent.

What worked:

- Building lots of wonders spread across three cities. Often I had my three culture cities all building wonders. I might lose the race for one, but I got the other two. Not having a big wonder whore on the map helped. My cities were getting around 200 culture per turn before I raised the culture slider.

- Going to radio was a big help. The extra culture from Eiffel Tower plus the safety of having CR and being able to switch civics easily. It may not have been the optimal path, but I was able to get some good techs in trade that allowed me to tech to rifles shortly afterwards and have fairly secure defenses.

- My opening getting early libraries with a creative leader worked well. My early research rate was fast - akin to what I see with a financial leader.

- Getting early Theology and the AP myself rather than letting the AI build it helped a lot. Extra hammers plus I could pump missionaries into AI cities so that I had a chance of an AP vote to stop a war against me.

What didn't:

- Missing Sistine Chapel hurt me. I didn't realize how good this wonder is now.

- I should have delayed my rush to liberalism and founded Islam instead. I only had two holy cities and could easily have had a third. I was in no danger of missing liberalism and the free tech is less important than control of a religion. In the end I spread someone elses religion for the third cathedral.

- I cottaged the capital which was probably a mistake - it was a mix of GP farm, wonder builder and cottage city. I probably would have been better to just farm and watermill it and let the other two cities run cottages.

- My third city lacked enough good cottageable terrain - I probably should have put it in a slightly different position. It maximized the floodplains early and had hills for production but required three artist culture bombs to get legendary.

I didn't manage to discover liberalism till 1070AD, but I still was the first to research it and picked nationalism as my free tech.



You can see that I gave birth to a great enginner right before discovering liberalism and rushed the Taj"majal in my thrid Legendary city. (Since it was generated the least amount of culture.)

So after my first golden age, I switch government civivs, things were looking pretty good, and then something rather unexpected happened,

Brennus Declared war on me!



Luckily I just finished researching gunpowder and had a few ormo warriors in the city he attacked me. (and the stupid ai does an amphibious attack, giving me an additional +50% defence bonus against my drill III ormos)


I really had only 1-2 defenders per city at this point and no offensive military at all, although my ormos killed most of Brennus's idiot maceman he tried attacking me with, he had 12 more galleons heading towards my other cities which weren't as well defended, I though I was done, but then a miracle happened.




I couldn't beleive it.
The apoloistic Palace ran a vote to stop to the "war amoung brothers in faith", the VERY SAME turn bennus declared war on me, and it Succeeded! I had only 1 buddist city, and was shocked at this, this was extreamly lucky.
So, for the next 20 turns or so I was paranoid and built up a bunch of ormos in all my cities, (this definately slowed my cultural progress).


So here's my cities circa 1370AD, you can see my top three cities are producing a decent amount of culture, if I can manage to farm enough GA's Ill have this game in the bag.



Not much interesting happens for a few hundred years, I keep farming artists, develop etc. I was able to run a 100% culture rate and still research techs withing 20 turns or so, This screen shows 100% culture slider, but chemistry in 8 turns, not to bad.



Here's why I was able to keep teching:


and since I was running representation, all those artists in my other cities were putting in a base of +4 each.

By 1700AD, my cities were producing almost 500 culture each. I bombed a couple artists to even out the # turns to get legendary status.


the (111), (91), (112), I'm not sure what these numbers represent, but I was at about 34 turns to legendary at this point in all threee cities.

By 1765 I was approxiamtly 9 turns from a victory (8 turns, 9 turns, and 13 turns to legendary for my cities, but a Great artist was to be born in 3 turns to even this out)

But then the inevitable happened:


yep, he declares war on me again, and this time instead of macemen/crossbows, he brings a mass amount of Infantry and tanks. I was doomed except that, I was also only ~8 turns from a cultural win.







in the bottom SS, you can I'm about to give birth to my next great artist, which means i have only 7 turns to victory!


Needles to say, Brennus rampaged my costal cities where he decided to land his mass of troops.


I did however manage to pull it off JUST in the Knick of time!



If I was even 2 turns too late, I would have been toast this is was pretty hiliarious and this game came right down to the wire.
I felt like I was singing a merry tune while on titanic about to be sank.

I strongly recommend checking out my saves, its quite something.