[BTS] Rhino - Peaceful Domination

[OneLeggedRhino]

^ I think they have to wait another 1000 years. When I inspected Gilgamesh's cities early, he had a lot of 4-culture libraries and monasteries. After burning them, he had a lot of 2-culture ones. So there is some point, even if the AI just rebuilds it.

[bobbyboy29]

Any reason that you have been using the EP slider instead of the culture slider? I understand that sabotage is fun but if you have more points than you know what to do with them wouldn't you just be better off sticking with the culture slider?

[OneLeggedRhino]

^ Most of my cities are backline at this point. Sure, the AI city hasn't flipped yet, but my culture is already dominant. So a lot of that commerce-culture won't do anything. Really, it's the 4 cities on Gilgamesh's border that need the culture, not so much the rest of them. Plus sabotage is fun

[OneLeggedRhino]

Riots in Carthage (635-663, Years 1480-1536 AD)

1494: Macau riots.

Spoiler:

Doesn't matter too much, but it's nice to see more cities that might flip.

On techs, I'm heading toward Biology, with a quick detour for Communism for the free GSpy. I'll skip Astronomy since I like the extra priest slots from my unique monuments, and there's no real need for better ships or Physics.

1512: Thebes completes the Statue of Liberty. Along with Mercantilism, that's two free specialists in all my mainland cities.

Spoiler:

1522: Macau joins my empire. It went so quickly. Probably because Bismark hardly has any troops.

Spoiler:

I think about burning it, but it can work a fair amount of water tiles, plus the whale. So I keep it. Wouldn't affect the land total either way.

1530: Carthage joins my empire, bringing the Great Lighthouse and Moai Statues. (I hadn't built them yet. Which actually kind of sucks, since if I'd wanted them somewhere, accepting this city just messed that up).

Spoiler:

If I were looking to flip another city further East, I'd burn it. But I'm so close to victory, I don't need another city, just a few more tiles.

Spoiler:

And I have a plan: Pop a Great Artist, then send Hannibal's other city into revolt, causing its borders to drop.

Spoiler:

But no dice. Hannibal's Eastern city keeps its borders. Seems that a spy-induced revolt is of an inferior sort, and doesn't affect a city's culture radius. So I pop the other 3 Great Artists, putting me about one tile away from victory.

Spoiler:

1536: Ur goes into revolt. A real one, which makes it drop its culture boundaries. The domination victory is mine.

Spoiler:

Ur had commanded several tiles to its East.

A quick look through the replay:

Start positions:

Spoiler:

My first few cities:

Spoiler:

All the mainland is claimed:

Spoiler:

If I'd just put one more early city by Wang Kon, or South of Gilgamesh, I would have won much sooner.

Claiming some islands, culture crushing the competition:

Spoiler:

And the final victory:

Spoiler:

Took about 9 hours, plus some time AFK. (That's relatively fast for me. I don't like to rush).

Of course, I own all the best cities in the world:

Spoiler:

Usually I ignore most wonders. It's nice to be in the top 5.

Final domination screen. I blew right past the target.

Spoiler:

And my backup plan: A settler heading for this iceball city to claim another tile, plus a second after the border pop. I'm almost disappointed I didn't have to use it.

Spoiler:

I'll post some closing thoughts next. Thanks for reading.

[OneLeggedRhino]

Closing Thoughts

That was a short, fun game. I know, less detailed than normal, but there was a lot less going on. As always, thanks for reading.

Early Culture Doesn't Matter

At the start of this game, I'd imagined gradually culture crushing my opponents, and trying to balance culture with expansion with economy.

That's not how it works at all, though. Most of my culture came toward the end of the game, first with Sistine (and enough population to run artists), then with Freedom of Speech. If it had gone longer, Biology would have been the next milestone.

Early game, the priority should be to plop cities right on someone's borders, so you have a good leverage point when you finally do get culture rolling in. Because if you do it right, the game isn't really about flipping cities, it's about flipping tiles, which is much easier. If you settle aggressively, you could win without flipping a single city.

Religion / Spiritual

I'd thought it would be important to have tons of cathedrals, and therefore tons of temples to enable them, and therefore Spiritual would save a ton of hammers.

It's not. Sure, some front-line cities need one or two cathedrals, but that's all. Along with Free Speech, that gets you to 2.5 or 3x the culture rate, at which point it's better to work artists instead of the hills you'd need for another cathedral. I think I made a Confucian temple in every city (what with the beakers and gold bumps), plus a handful of Buddhist ones, and never even used up all my cathedrals. Cheap temples are nice, to enable weak cities to make a 6 CPT building, but not otherwise important.

And as for founding early religions? It would be important if you weren't Creative. But with +2 CPT automatic, you'll pop borders well enough to claim at least your inner ring, which is plenty for the early game.

Traits

Creative was convenient, but not necessary, especially if you get Stonehenge. You'll pretty easily keep the inner ring with just a monument, and that's all you really need to get a city off the ground most of the time. And if you get early religions, Creative is simply overkill. I'd consider it next time, but it's not critical for this type of game.

Spiritual is my favorite trait, but with no wartime civics and no need for good relations, I didn't do a lot of swapping this game.

So, if not Creative and Spiritual, which traits then?

Imperialistic would make an interesting choice, letting you grab prime spots right next to the AI capitals early on. I'm thinking about W Cow, which was late enough that Gilgamesh already had a second border pop. Getting it twice as fast could make a big difference there.

Or, you could pick Financial or Organized, and aim to grab an extra 1-2 cities, sealing off more land. Another two cities could have sealed Mao and Gilgamesh off before they ever expanded East. So Organized or Financial would help a lot, too.

So those are the four traits I'd choose from for a culture crush game: Imperial, Creative, Organized and Financial. Zara Yaqob, with Cre / Org and a +25% culture unique monument, would be a strong choice.

Spy Vandalism

I've never used the "destroy building" mission before, except for security bureaus at the end of the game. It's really effective. If you have the EPs (and often, late game, you'll have more EPs than you know what to do with), you can dramatically slow an opponent's production. If he's making buildings, he's not making military, right? I could see using this in non-variant games.

See you next time.

-Rhino

[Troythepathetic]

I really enjoyed that. I finally had my first culture win a few days ago so a timely thread for me.

[OneLeggedRhino]

Thanks Troy. Glad the writeup was helpful.

[Keilah]

gg dude, looked easy ^^

[Fallen Angel Lord]

Is it possible to do this without the "No war" option being turned on?

[OneLeggedRhino]

Originally Posted by Fallen Angel Lord

Is it possible to do this without the "No war" option being turned on?

Sure. I'd drop the difficulty a level, though, since you'll still want to place those ridiculous forward cities.

If you want to use all the BTS goodies, like spy culture missions and corporations, then you could probably do this with all the normal settings at Emperor or even Immortal, even with war on. Claim your land like a normal "culture victory" game, tech to corps, use corps to flip and to quickly build culture in cities you flip, and use the spread culture mission to have cities come in with a few thousand culture already on them. I specifically wanted to wrestle culture earlier, rather than turtling to corps, but if your goal is to do a culture domination with the hardest difficulty settings, spies + corps is the way to go.

On your other thread you asked about speed (marathon vs normal). Slower speeds makes this easier, since each city under culture pressure has a x% chance to flip each turn, so more turns = earlier flips, but you certainly could do this in normal, you'd just be flipping the cities later in the game.

[CreeDakota]

I would like to see this done with War as an option. Managing the diplo consequences of close borders, plus the hammer challenge of having to make a decent army sound like a big differene to me.

Thanks for the read Rhino!

[Fallen Angel Lord]

Originally Posted by OneLeggedRhino

Peaceful Domination

After the month-long deity game, I want something fun, even a bit silly. So I'm thinking, always peace, domination victory via culture-flipping. I read about this variant a while ago in one of Sullla's games, and it seems like just what I'm looking for. (That game has lots of good tips for playing this variant, so I recommend reading it if you want to shadow).

I'll mirror most of Sullla's settings:

• Small pangaea
• Marathon (My normal speed. Sullla used Epic)
• Monarch difficulty (A step up from Sullla's Prince)
• No war (Obviously)
• No barbs, events, huts (Those are my defaults)
• No tech trades (Because it's awesome)
• No culture victory (So we don't trigger it before domination) or diplo victory (No AP BS)
• Edit: Not a setting, but I won't use corporations or the spread culture mission (see first reply below).

I'm trying it on Noble, same settings except:

- Epic instead of Marathion speed
- Noble difficulty
- Barbs, events, huts on
- Tech trades allowed
- No culture victory

I generally use spies for counter-espi and to prevent AI from stealing techs. I don't really use corps.

I would like to see this done with War as an option. Managing the diplo consequences of close borders, plus the hammer challenge of having to make a decent army sound like a big differene to me.

Thanks for the read Rhino!

Its harder with war, you have to dedicate one-2 cities to just make military units. The AI is less likely to attack you it seems if it sees you have more military. On the other hand, you can bombard the AI cities down to 1 unit which makes for easier flipping. I tried it once under Noble, did not work.


On all peace: I cant seen to flip the cities with like 10 units in them.

[dalamb]

Originally Posted by Fallen Angel Lord

On all peace: I cant seen to flip the cities with like 10 units in them.

That's a game feature; the more troops you have in a city, the less likely a flip -- and 10 is apparently a guarantee of no flip.

[Fallen Angel Lord]

How do you get enough land area then doing this? I tried out-settling at the start of the game then if you start on one side of the continent, its really tough to get 68% land area just by flipping.

[dalamb]

I read Sully's game long ago, as well as this one, and both had trouble with just a few of the enemy cities' garrisons; most flipped just fine. You might need to select opponents to avoid people like Monty or Shaka who sometimes get into building massive armies. As far as general strategy: I'm fairly sure both settled past the AI rather than on just one side of them, and both tried settling aggressively close to existing cities (Sully usually tried for 2 squares straight n/s/e/w instead of diagonals).

[OneLeggedRhino]

Originally Posted by Fallen Angel Lord

How do you get enough land area then doing this? I tried out-settling at the start of the game then if you start on one side of the continent, its really tough to get 68% land area just by flipping.

Yes, the key is to settle aggressively. If you settle well enough, you can get victory without any flips. If I'd settled past Gilgamesh, either to the West or the South, I could have gotten victory without any flips.

Also, remember that troops cost gold. If you can starve an opponent, through spy missions, destroying infrastructure, trade embargoes, etc, they will disband troops (I think).

[dalamb]

I think spies can destroy cottages and gold mines; you could direct all your EP against a troop-heavy opponent.

[coanda]

Corporations. Give them useless foreign corps and Environmentalism, and watch their economy collapse.

[Fallen Angel Lord]

Originally Posted by dalamb

I think spies can destroy cottages and gold mines; you could direct all your EP against a troop-heavy opponent.

I got the greeks down to one city-square and they still have 10 units somehow on a size 1 city.

[Um the Muse]

Originally Posted by Fallen Angel Lord

I got the greeks down to one city-square and they still have 10 units somehow on a size 1 city.

Then why are you still trying to take the city? You might as well ignore them as a non-factor now. If you're feeling extra vindictive, close borders so they can't build another city.