Emperor Cultural Series - Ghandi

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Lalabunny

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Dec 4, 2010
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After I learned how to properly post pictures. I decided to start this series. My aim is to help players to improve their Cultural Game in Emperor level, at the same time better players can criticise and help me improve my game.



The Aim
Spoiler :
The main is to go for cultural victory regardless of map/leader. We will be as peaceful as possible. War shall be avoided at all cost. Diplomacy is utmost important!



The Strategy
Spoiler :


1. We will aim to get at least 6 cities by 1 AD. We must at least have 1 city for GPP/NE and another city that have at least 10 cottagable tiles. We will aim for one good production city too for missionaries.

2. We will aim for Music first and attempt to build Sistine Chapel.

3. We will try to bulb Philo to found Taoism and pacifism.

4. We must at least have 2 religions.

5. Nationalism will be taken as a free tech for Liberalism.

6. We will research up to Democracy for rush-buying via Universal Suffrage. In games where we get The Pyramid build. We will stop research after Liberalism.

7. We will aim for Cultural Victory around 1800AD.



Things to take note
Spoiler :

1. We will be going for cultural victory regardless of our situation. This choice, sometime if not most of the time, will be sub-par decision given most situation.

2. We are not aiming war to gain huge land mass and then going for cultural victory late game. If we could achieve that, we might as well go domni/space victory.

3. I understand this will not work on Diety, where you will need to take every window of opportunity you could get. I do however have success on Immortal on a frequent basis.

4. I do play the game in a "normal" way, but there are alot of people who does better then me and they have excellent games posted on the forum. I'm just trying to do something different :lol:




Game 1, Ghandi!
Spoiler :


Our leader and setting



Starting Position



Will SIP. Its a good Buera Capital. 10 riverside tiles for cottaging. 2 grassland hills and 1 plains hill ensure we have decent production. Depending on the surrounding land, this could be a GPP/NE city if we do not find another suitable site.

Techs Order

1. Agriculture => BW => Wheel => Pottery => Writing
Pros - We can start improving our capital right away. Reveal Bronze early. Forest can be chopped for settlers/workers.
Cons- Delay Hunting/AH, it will be a while before we can work those Ivory/Cows. Note that cows can't be worked unless I get a 2nd city somewhere around there.

We will research Agriculture first. Lets explore the surrounding first before we decide on futher techs.



Starting
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10665440&postcount=14

Early Expansion
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10667471&postcount=20

Religion and Diplomacy
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10668435&postcount=26

To Liberalism and Free Speech
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10670015&postcount=34

To Victory
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10672648&postcount=35
 

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  • ECS Ghandi BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave
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Spoiler :
With some assumptions about what we're going to see in the first few turns, I have a preference for Agriculture > Hunting > BW. The ivory will provide some of the commerce that you would get from very early cottages, it will give a discount on animal husbandry, which opens up at least one passable city site to the east (with monument), and it allows for archery if needed.

I cannot open the game just at this moment, and I'm not used to tech times on emperor. There might be a slight hiccup in this plan before bronze working, a few turns where the worker can only farm a floodplains. If so, you might either just endure it, or save worker turns by settling 1S.

Looks to be a fun game!
 
1. We will aim to get at least 6 cities by 1 AD.
Click to expand...

This is a bad way to start planning out your vic... Especially since you will be flipping cities anyway...

Your other rules seem to be very inflexible and are not going to make sense a lot of the time.
 
obsolete said:
This is a bad way to start planning out your vic... Especially since you will be flipping cities anyway...

Your other rules seem to be very inflexible and are not going to make sense a lot of the time.
Click to expand...

That's because a cultural game is much less flexible than other types of games. At least if you intend to finish it as early as possible, which for me is the only way to make it interesting enough - just winning by culture at some point is easy enough.

The cities that you flip towards the end of the game have very little effect on your actual victory - at best, if you flip a large food-rich city early enough, you might be able to get a Great Artist out of it.
 
Lalabunny, I mostly agree with your aims. So far I've played my cultural games at immortal (also with Gandhi most of the time) and manage wins in the 1535-1545 AD range. I've found that 6 cities works out best, most of the time. I have sometimes settled a seventh or an eighth to pick up resources but in retrospect it's not been worthwhile. Everything counts, and the food and hammers for more settlers can usually be spent on temples, missionaries, wealth, or research, instead. Or anything else you need to get set up (granaries, workboats, etc).

I don't bulb any techs at all in my games, because I've moved away from making any Great Scientist at all. As wonderful as bulbing can be (and I do a lot of it in my other kinds of games), I've found that Great Artists are so important for the cultural game that I prefer not making any other type of GP at all. If I do make a Great Scientist (sometimes happens accidentally), I keep it for a golden age.

I totally disagree with teching Democracy... what are you going to rush-buy so late? By that stage I have built everything I need to build and I'm just concentrating on getting out Great Artists and making sure I can keep the culture slider at 100% all the time. Personally I'm not a fan of building the Pyramids at all - I dislike the Engineer GPP's (I want pure Great Artist pools everywhere since all my cities produce at least one artist) and I dislike the early hammer commitment at the time I need to expand and set up my temples etc as fast as possible.

But like I say, I play my cultural games with the purpose of the earliest possible win. It's what makes the exciting for me, trying to beat my own record. An 1800 AD win is quite late, so you may not be caring too much about the end date.
 
^^__ up to the OP
Yep! :goodjob:
I'm going to following this one with interest, since I usually achieve cultural victories with an extreme SE, running bunches of artists and getting tons of great artists, not relying on cottage commerce, as instead your plan seem to do, at all. I've seen JesterFool winning about this way you describe in the Immortal University #54 IIRC, but I never followed a full walk-trough.
So, add an interested lurker to your list... :popcorn:
 
Yatta, you don't have to do only one or the other. In my last cultural game I produced 16-17 great artists but two of my cultural cities were cottaged.

With 15 GP's produced, you're up to 2000 GPP to produce more... you must take into account the diminishing returns of GPP production, essentially. Also to the challenge of empire-wide GPP production, i.e. making sure that a city producing GPP actually ends up putting out a GP - which is not guaranteed if its GPP production is too low and you are putting out GP's too fast in other cities.

A city site with a lot of riverside grassland lends itself very well to cottages, but it's not that stellar for GPP production - it takes two citizens working a grassland farm each to support a specialist, meaning you need a total of three citizens per specialist. It's of course possible to get have map which only lends itself to GPP and not cottaging at all (say, a small desert island with no rivers but lots of seafood by the coast), but it's fairly unusual.

So basically I advocate doing both - cottage your capital and one more city; produce lots of artists from your National Epic site; produce one or two artists in most of your other cities.
 
Spoiler :
No marble in sight. Why are we going culture again?
 
hr_oskar said:
So basically I advocate doing both - cottage your capital and one more city; produce lots of artists from your National Epic site; produce one or two artists in most of your other cities.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this was clear to me that this attempt here wouldn't exclude at least an artist GP farm. :)

I was just pointing out that this is for me a really interesting report to read about it! :)

The way I usually play cultural games is relaying entirely on artists, with like 3 GP farms, excluding cottages, balancing the culture output between the 3 cities with culture multipliers, and producing for example: 5/10, 3/10, 2/10, or something like that, great artists each. Culture bombing them altogether in the last turn. By the way, probably I achieved some cultural victories on emperor (never played below emperor), back in the vanilla times, also building cottages, I don't remember...

Jester Fool attempt on Immortal university was something like this one I guess, and IIRC you also posted a game recently on those lines, getting a really early cultural victory. But IIRC it was not a detailed report as this one seems to be (I might likely be wrong here, I go by memory :)).

So again, I look forward to read about this game. Back on lurking mode... :popcorn: :)
 
Gwynnja said:
Spoiler :
No marble in sight. Why are we going culture again?
Click to expand...

Check the OP's first spoiler, "The Aim":

"The main is to go for cultural victory regardless of map/leader. We will be as peaceful as possible. War shall be avoided at all cost. Diplomacy is utmost important!"
- Lalabunny

(my italics)
 
Wow, I'm really glad for so mmany responses. I am excited to hear different views and opinion!

This is a bad way to start planning out your vic... Especially since you will be flipping cities anyway...

Your other rules seem to be very inflexible and are not going to make sense a lot of the time.
Click to expand...

Hi there. Could you be a little more specific? These are not hard rules but rather guidelines which act as a yardstick for me. They can be omitted or change depending on the game. They work for me up until Immortal, although I am not confident yet to do a Immortal Series. If I am doing something not optimal or if there's a better plan, I am open to the idea :)


Lalabunny, I mostly agree with your aims. So far I've played my cultural games at immortal (also with Gandhi most of the time) and manage wins in the 1535-1545 AD range. I've found that 6 cities works out best, most of the time. I have sometimes settled a seventh or an eighth to pick up resources but in retrospect it's not been worthwhile. Everything counts, and the food and hammers for more settlers can usually be spent on temples, missionaries, wealth, or research, instead. Or anything else you need to get set up (granaries, workboats, etc).

I don't bulb any techs at all in my games, because I've moved away from making any Great Scientist at all. As wonderful as bulbing can be (and I do a lot of it in my other kinds of games), I've found that Great Artists are so important for the cultural game that I prefer not making any other type of GP at all. If I do make a Great Scientist (sometimes happens accidentally), I keep it for a golden age.

I totally disagree with teching Democracy... what are you going to rush-buy so late? By that stage I have built everything I need to build and I'm just concentrating on getting out Great Artists and making sure I can keep the culture slider at 100% all the time. Personally I'm not a fan of building the Pyramids at all - I dislike the Engineer GPP's (I want pure Great Artist pools everywhere since all my cities produce at least one artist) and I dislike the early hammer commitment at the time I need to expand and set up my temples etc as fast as possible.

But like I say, I play my cultural games with the purpose of the earliest possible win. It's what makes the exciting for me, trying to beat my own record. An 1800 AD win is quite late, so you may not be caring too much about the end date.
Click to expand...

Hi, sometime if I get only 1 religion spread to me, I tend to bulb Philo. If I feel threatened in winning the Liberalism race, I also bulb Education. However, I do not have any maths to support a bulbing Edu VS a GA's Culture Bomb discussion. I mainly play with my guts rather then number crunching >.< . But beyond the first GS for Academy, I try not to spawn GS at all.

The earliest cultural victory date I ever gotten was, 1680AD on Emperor. It was my earlier attempt, was more of a fluke rather then a thought-out plan. 1800AD is just a guideline as on Emperor, peaceful AI also tend to win culture victory around that time. Of course the main aim is to win as fast as possible :)

The idea behind Universal Suffrage was that, its 2 tech away from Nationalism. I usally able to trade Constitution or Democracy for Printing Press too. Sometime I get a 3rd or a 4th religion spread to me pretty late in the game. It will take too long to build another 6 temples/2 Cathedrels, especially in the GPP farm where hammers are low.I do not have maths to prove its efficiency, but it works for me til Immortal. Once again, I am open to any discussion that could improve my game :)


^^__ up to the OP
Yep!
I'm going to following this one with interest, since I usually achieve cultural victories with an extreme SE, running bunches of artists and getting tons of great artists, not relying on cottage commerce, as instead your plan seem to do, at all. I've seen JesterFool winning about this way you describe in the Immortal University #54 IIRC, but I never followed a full walk-trough.
So, add an interested lurker to your list...
Click to expand...

Glad to have you here! Opinion and advices are welcome!



No marble in sight. Why are we going culture again?
Click to expand...

I stated that we will be going culture regardless of map/leader. I find this "restriction" some what interesting because, it really brush up my diplomacy skills :lol: .
 
hr_oskar said:
Check the OP's first spoiler, "The Aim":

"The main is to go for cultural victory regardless of map/leader. We will be as peaceful as possible. War shall be avoided at all cost. Diplomacy is utmost important!"
- Lalabunny

(my italics)
Click to expand...

Spoiler :
That tells me what but I asked why. Nevertheless, I'm certain the OP understands the value of marble in a cultural VC, so I won't further sidetrack the thread.
 
Yep, Demo and US hold little value in a cultural game. If there is any tech you should end on it should be Biology, but often you will shut down research well before that. The culture modifiers in your L cities should already be in place by the time you reach Demo and if you run US and rush buy, then you are not focusing on the most important thing....culture.
 


After a border pop. Hut gave me a scout.





Our first neighbour. He came from north and is quite close to us.





Our second neighbour. He came from north west.



I took LastAdjoint advice and went with,

Agri => Hunting => BW
Worker => Warrior

The ivory would give me 1F3H2C, an early commerce boost. By theory, even if I skip Hunting, I will not lose any worker turns as I am able to mine the grassland hill. However the ivory will give me extra 2C and a happy face, I decide to go hunting instead.



This is our surrounding land. Its pretty good. I can see a good site for both a GPP/NE city and our 3rd Legendary City. Considering how close the Ottomans are, we need to grab those land to the north fast, especially the one near the cow.

We do not need to worry about jungles as AI tends to get IronWorking pretty fast on Emperor. We can trade for it with Alphabets.

We have copper near by. The next plan is to get our 2nd city at northwest near the corn and copper. With 2 source of copper readily available to us, we will be skipping AH and proceed with The Wheel => Pottery => Alphabet , so we can start cottaging our capital.


Things to note,

1. Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism are founded in faraway land.

2. So far we have only met Suvy and Meh II.

3. We are most likely on a continent with Suvy and Meh II. If neither one of them found Confuciusism, we will be on our own to getting religions.

4. We will be aiming to bulb Philo for Taoism. Both Theology and Divine Rights will be considered if we miss Code of Law. We need at least 2 religion to get a resonable victory date.

5. There are no marble in sight yet. We might skip getting first to Music and Sistine Chapel. Our priority will be founding religion.

6. If we are on a Pangae like map, we need to maintain a healthy relationship with both Meh II and Suvy for Open Border to get religion spread to us. I don't know about Meh II but Suvy DoW at pleased and is a known back-stabber. In fact, he's my most hated AI, ruining almost every one of my games he appears in.

7. We can get 6 decent cities in that given land. Thus we will avoid war at all cost.
 
Huts and Events on? in any case if you can get 9 cities its often better than 6 as long as your 3rd Legendary (normally your main GP farm) has enough hammers to get its catherdrals fairly quickly.
 
Lalabunny said:
yup, huts and events are on. And yup, we will get as many cities as we can.
Click to expand...

The most efficient is 9 cities any more would cause a maintanance issue. Use 2 cities to support a legendary city by developing cottages within the legendary city BFC. All other tiles should be for food or hammers. So plan cities locations well. Even cottage cities should have a few hills and couple food tiles. This capital is a good site build some early wonders if possible. SH and the Oracle has the best return as far as it is not in the GP farm. Good luck.

Hope I can find time to shadow this game.

If possible take one of the AI capitals.

EDIT: Sorry I just saw the peace at all possibility plan ;) with suri? Stay strong.
 
That tells me what but I asked why. Nevertheless, I'm certain the OP understands the value of marble in a cultural VC, so I won't further sidetrack the thread
Click to expand...


I enjoyed alot of themed series that are played by some of our best players in the forum. I liked the ALC and the Lonely Heart Series and many others (Diety Cookbook, Justinia University, etc). Its very educational and theres a theme to it.

Among alot of games I watched and shadowed, I realised that Cultural Victory is usually shunned. It could be due to the inflexibility of the sheer dedication required or its boring gameplay. Thus I decided to do a culture game series.

I am a peacmonger/builder by nature. I tend to push towards cultural victory even if the situation is against it or a non-optimal choice of play. I guess it's just my preference :lol: . I like to be one of those players with a certain style :D , although I do admit on Diety your land/AI/Diplomacy does heavily influence your choices and my style of play will not work out.

EDIT: Sorry I just saw the peace at all possibility plan with suri? Stay strong.
Click to expand...

Crossing my fingers too ! :shake:
 
I played this to 1 AD for measure. Other settings as is (except choose religions!), but speed changed to Marathon. As much as I did try to avoid it, war was inevitable...

Spoiler :
Or was it? Not really, but I just saw a window of opportunity and took it. Results below.

So, India obviously starts with Mysticism/Mining and I was lucky enough to pop The Wheel from a hut so what else was needed? Easily accessible Copper, that's what. No matter what victory condition you choose, there should always be room to maneuver and seize opportunities - as such a prohibitive rule in a learning game has adverse benefits. Enough ranting, on to the game.

So, after Agriculture I obviously teched BW if only for chops but there was a copper discovery in the 3rd ring. So, I chose to build a settler and Stonehenge while waiting for the pop as my workers roaded the copper to be ready on the mark. Timing was perfect, got Bombay founded down the river to the north and Stonehenge finished with the aid of 2 chops. Culture game, after all - and it also seemed that the map didn't have a lot of mysticism civs because religions went late and Sury got his pick of Buddhism as the 2nd religion founded on the map.

So, it seemed that Mehmed was weak or without strategic resources since my power was 1.5 of his soon after building a few axes so with 6 I set out to Istanbul. There were Walls, 2 Archers, an Axe and a Chariot defending and for whatever reason my first 2 Axes won their matches at 16% each (which is some sort of bull excrement if you ask me as realistically I should've lost my gamble and my game then and there and consequently this report wouldn't be here but they won so I'm writing this.

Spoils:



Food! Definitely a culture location there. At the time I did not have Fishing, however.

Spotting stone NW of Istanbul I decided to gamble and settled an useless junker of a city there to claim it and began toiling away on the 'mids in Istanbul. It is low in production but I figured that I'd chop the few forests it had and whip the remainder and in 540 BC after having whipped 5 people (unhappies) to their graves, the prize:



Moving on, some trading:



20 BC Philo bulb:



Wish I'd thought of that when I settled the prophet I got in Delhi. Well, his money did pay for my expansion so I guess I can't complain too much.

1 AD overview shots:







(Bombay is the future capital and one of the culture cities I guess)






Edit: Abandoned game before 1000 AD. Despite the odds, I kept getting Scientists and it was only my 7th Great Person that was an Artist. To add to that, I lost out on Sistine. My game would be very easy to win, just not by culture :)
 
Expansion Phase

Getting our 2nd city
Spoiler :


My first settler is out, on its way to the northwest spot for the corn, banana and copper. It will be nice production city. A barb archer pop out from the Fog of War, putting my plan to a stop. Need to improvise.








I settled the second city on the hilly north of the copper nearer to my capital. Reasons being
1. I will still have copper, now without a border pop.
2. This will be GPP city, and I can start running scientists the moment I get the library built. We will spawn 2 great scientists, one for Academy, one for Philo Bulb.
3. That city site have access to copper and a plain hill tile. We will have enough hammer to build National Epic and culture building relatively fast.
4. That city can support 13 population with 6 Artist specialist once it is fully grown. With Pacifism/NE/Philo trait, it will be producing a GA every 15 turns or so.

EDIT: sorry for the previous calculation. I failed Maths. Thanks to Quaren for point it out >.<

5. Don't worry about the fish, I have plan for a 6th coastal city for workboats to work it. At the mean time, Bombay will made do with the flood plains.

We will still go for the north west copper site, but this time with an Axeman escort. Also notice I am fog busting the entire north area.









I switched to Slavery the moment Bombay reach 2 population to whip out the Monument. Even though I am Spiritual, I delay the switch to prevent the Slavery Random Event from screwing me over. It is something to take note when playing with events on.



Alphabet researched.

Spoiler :





Time for some trading. We need to at least get IronWorking and Animal Husbandry from our trade. AI teching is pretty slow on Emperor. Don't expect too much from trading Alphabet. Its mainly to backfill those early techs like fishing, sailing, etcs.













Look who we have here! And he brought good news!
Spoiler :



Our dear Genghis Khan is the founder of Hinduism! It has already spread to Suvy! We met Genghis via his workboat, and he has no Open border with Suvy. We have to count on Suvy to spread Hinduism to us.








More tech trading. Given the Banana, Dye and Silk in our land we will want to get Calander pretty fast.







Found GK's border. He could be on another island. Or he could be on our landmass but Suvy probably block him out.




Wrapping up
Spoiler :

I have 2 potential site for my 5th City. Both site will be a production city. I need to decide where to settle first




Things to consider

- Earlier access to Iron. This point is moot in our game. We will only need Iron for denial purpose and defense. I have access to it in Vijayanagara's 3rd ring.
- Deny Suvy of that potential city spot. He's in that direction. However theres a barb city which could be blocking Suvy to even get a Settler to that site.
- Huge amount of Jungles. Will grow very slowly until I get Calander to work those Banana.









Things to consider

- Corn can be farmed. Fast growth for teh city
- Alot of forests for chopping. Most of the hills can be mined asap as soon as I get a border pop.
- Silk


I am inclined to take site B. I need my city to be up and running ASAP



A little bit of Binary/Deficit research.





I have set my slider to 100% wealth to store up gold for 7 turns. I am gaining 23:gold:/turn now. My capital will time the Library finish date together with the GS spawn date. After which I will run research slider 100% until my :gold: are used up.

Gold/Beakers/Deficit research can be read in details here. A good guide. Very well written.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=242530








:mad::mad::badcomp:





The Further Plan

Now that we have Hinduism in our landmass, there is no rush to founding 2 religions. However we will try to get a 2nd religion by ourselves, either Code of Law or bulbing Philosophy or both.

Next Possible Techs

1. Mathematic => Currency => Code of Law

Sadly AI tech rate on Emperor is pretty slow. You will need to research these if you need them. As our city grows, the maintainence is starting to weigh down our research. I see alot of positive in this tech path. We have Mathematic so getting Music first is still an available option to us. It will open up Calander. Currency will help curb our expansion maintenance. Code of Law for Confuciusism (if it is still available) and courthouse. We can start running Caste System early. This will also open up Civil Service and a Philo bulb (if we still wants it).

The bad is we might miss first to Music and without Marble, the Sistine Chapel too.


2. Aesthetic => Literature => Drama => Music (Trade for Mathematic)

I feel this is somewhat inferior to the first choice. It does have its plus. We have a shot at Parthenon, a good wonder to have for Culture Victory. We can start building our National Epic early. Drama to get discount on Music and to open up Philo blulb since we will not be getting Code of Law anytime soon. This tech path depends very much on the AI tech rate, because you need to get Currency/CoL/Math from trade, and you need them fast. I don't like delaying Currency when I reach around 5 cities.

We could still lose first to Music as our research rate will be really low.


Thats it for this session!

 

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