RBC-14C Cultural French

Welcome to RBC-14C, the story of the Cultural French. This thread is for the French team of the Realms Beyond Civilization Conquests SG Series , playing the Age of Discovery Conquest. Our goal is to win a Cultural Victory (Civ-wide or One-City) as the French on Emperor difficulty level. The special rules in place should make it a real challenge

Roster
Justus II
Romeothemonk
Cuivienen
Grahamiam

Special Rules
This conquest is about exploration, colonization, and for us, culture, not warfare. The scenario can become too easily unbalanced if the player takes over the other European powers, so we will play passive in Europe. This means no attacking other cities on the continent (including England/Ireland, but not the Atlantic islands). Wars between the powers may happen, and pillaging resources is OK, but no attacking cities except to recapture cities we lose. Accepting culture flips is fine (and I would hope we get a few!), and war may be waged to recapture a city that flips away from us. Off the continent, it’s fair game. Think Cold War, with our ‘client’ colonies fighting the brush wars while we maintain deterrence in the homeland.

Also, the Native techs will be off limits, they should be non-tradeable, and we won’t try any min-research to get them. Unfortunately, all the best cultural wonders are in the Native tree, and some high-culture improvements, but a Sacrificial Altar in Paris just doesn’t quite fit the theme. (Although, there was that whole Joan of Arc thing… )
Edit: We are going to allow for the possiblity of stealing/trading our way to get Ball Courts, which reflects the influence of Native traditions back on the continent. However, no wonders or "religious" improvements.
Our goal will be any cultural victory before we hit the time limit (or before anyone else hits the VP limit). For this scenario, that’s 20,000 total, or 4,000 in one city (Paris, of course).

Analysis
We start with some advantages. Our initial six cities already have temples, 5 have libraries, and a couple universities, so we start with 250cp and gaining 32cpt. We have Iron, and two luxuries, connected. Temples for this scenario are only 40 shields, so we get a break there. Also, once we start colonizing the New World, we can bring home treasure for 200g to help pay for rushing. Our UU, the Musketeer, is actually decent, getting 3-5-1 for 60 shields vs. the 3-4-1 Musketman. We do start with one Settler.

Disadvantages? Well, there’s a few. First, if you see the map below, France is TINY. Most of our initial cities already have first-ring overlap with one another, and there’s not much room to squeeze any more in. That means any new cities will have to be in the New World, and even with the reduced corruption for this scenario, they will probably struggle to build up culture. Second, although our two traits (Commercial and Industrious) are usually considered two of the stronger ones, neither gets us a discount on cultural buildings. Third, Libraries and Universities have reduced culture for this scenario, 2cpt and 3 cpt, respectively. (For a full list of cultural buildings, see my next post). Also, as I mentioned, the big cpt Wonders are in the Native tech tree, so we can’t have them. (Sacrificial Altar is 10cpt!).

The final disadvantage is turn limit (150). We would need 4 times our current cpt (133) to hit 20,000 in 150 turns. Since there isn’t room for more than one or two more cities in France (if that), and with our passive rules, we will have to colonize a lot of cultural outposts in the new world to have a shot at this. One-city isn’t much brighter. Paris is currently at 11cpt, and would need to AVERAGE 27cpt to hit the 4,000 mark in 150 turns. I don’t think we can build enough wonders fast enough to do it, but I could be wrong. To make it more interesting, we also have to race the 35,000 VP victory condition, which could reduce our 150 turns to around 100 if we can’t prevent the AI from returning their treasures. (It also means we can’t bring much of it back ourselves …).

Well, I don’t mean to sound bleak. I think we have a shot, and I certainly want to see how close we can come without conquering our way to culture, but it’s going to take a LOT of New-World cities with rushed culture to make a good run at it. Here’s our map, with my 2-3 proposed city sites. Note that we could squeeze one in 3 NW of Paris, but it would share a first-ring tile with London, probably not a good idea:

I’d like to get some discussion going, we could use some really good suggestions to tackling this problem. My first thought was that we need to follow French history a little and try to get some North African colonies. They may not have any treasures, but they are much closer to home, and should be productive enough to build some of their own culture. However, except for a Portugese city, the north and northwest coast is all desert or mountains, and desert is impassible in this scenario, so we would have to sail south to the Congo. Still an option, but not much better than the new world at that point.

Obviously we also need to get our existing cities to complete whatever cultural buildings they lack. None of our cities have a Coliseum yet, and only Paris has a Cathedral. I’d love to go for Sistine’s, but all the AI are also starting it, and with Portugal in a GA, I think we’d get beaten. Still, it might be worthwhile to build toward it and plan/hope to swap to another wonder before then, Copernicus and Leo’s are also available.

I think we need to do whatever we can to keep the tech pace moving, as there are some major cultural buildings available in the next age, especially with Free Artistry, and the sooner they are available, the better.

We probably also ought to discuss governments. We are in Catholic Monarchy, basically similar to standard Monarchy. Our other option, once Protestantism is researched, is a Protestant Monarchy, which has the worker bonus and reduced corruption, but adds War Weariness. Of course, we’d also suffer through an anarchy, and remember culture stops accumulating during anarchy, so I’m not sure if the tradeoff is worth it. Protestants get another wonder, 95 Theses, but by staying Catholic we will get access to the Jesuit College improvement in the next era.

Cultural Buildings (Shields-cpt)
Temple 40-2
Library 80-2
Colosseum 120-2
Cathedral 160-3
University 200-3
Artist’s Guild 140-3 (Free Artistry)
Jesuit College 200-2 (Counter-Reformation, Catholic only)
Native Only
Sacrificial Altar 40-10!
Ball Court 150-8


Wonders
Sistine Chapel 300-3
Copernicus 400-2
Leo’s 400-1
Magellan’s 400-2 (Magnetism)
95 Theses 400-4 (Protestantism, Protestant only)
Smith’s 400-2
Newton’s 400-3
Shakespeare’s 400-4
Native Only
Temple of the Moon 300-8
Temple of the Sun 400-10
Temple of Kukulcan 400-8

Couple of Notes here. I have 1.22 and no idea of how to go back to 1.15 and no real desire to either. Can the team all upgrade to 1.22? I have noticed that some of the other SG's that people are in are 1.22.

Notes on the game itself. We can really hose the other powers early. Portugal starts in the golden age and most of Europe is under developed. If we declare war on Portugal first turn and then sign the spainards in right away neither one of them will get in the wonder hunt.
The Low country is very shield poor. If we can get something started there ASAP and pillage their 2-3 hills they will effectively be removed from the wonder hunt. We could aslo buy England in for us against both enemies. This would make for an exciting first 20 but should allow us to get the first push.
I have played this scenario roughly 10 times and have found a fairly solid strategy. The first tech should be printing press so we can get colonists. I have never failed to get a monopoly on this tech and then leverage it for the other 2-3 techs the AI researches. Banking is then another almost surefire monopoly. We can run at a massive deficit on Science for a while and sell maps to the Euro's we are not at war with to build up the cash.
Needless to say an SGL just about bags the game for us.
I haven't tried this but can we steal into the native tree to take their uber-wonders?

My recommendation is in the first turns lets get our war on and build a bunch of workers to really max out Paris and then merge into Paris to really make it the grooviest place in the world. The war early might be against the premise, but we might need some culture bearers to do some work for us.

Note: Out UU is amphibious. MDI's are amphib as well. We could really hose the Mayans badly if they start getting culture.
Looking to see how this one starts.

checking in. it's late now but i'll look at what I can do for a dual installation tomorrow night. i'll also read up on Justus's and romeo's posts first thing in the morning.

i have not looked at the save, only the pictures and the posts. however, based on romeo's experience, i agree that getting europe into an early furball seems to be our best bet to snag some early wonders and to prolong the game (it seems we'll need as many turns as possible). if we're fairly certain of getting an SGL via romeo's tech path, then maybe we should avoid early wonder builds and focus on workers, settlers for Justus' locations, and minor culture buildings (esp libraries to keep the tech moving). after we're fairly set, then we can start some wonder prebuilds. looking at the terrain, there's a lot of stuff for those workers to do

gov't: actually, this is nagging me. if we want 20k, then maybe staying in a catholic monarchy since we'll be able to build many Jesuit Colleges (200shields for 2cpt stinks but that's the scenario rules ). if we want 4k, then maybe revolting to a protestant monarchy as early as possible is best. the lowered corruption will help those offshore cities cope and we'll have access to the additional wonder (well, 4cpt also stinks). however, the lowered corruption will also help increase our gpt and help those offshore cities build stuff faster, thus helping us get to 20k as well... well, if we do revolt, we should do it early to increase our chances for a short period of anarchy.

romeo, have you revolted to protestant monarchy during your 10+ tries? if so, how much better is the gov't? is it comparable to a republic in an epic game?

for the new world vs the congo for heavy settlement, i'll defer, though I would prefer capturing the Portugese city in North Africa JustusII refered to as I think we ought to consider this area the same as the New World in terms of warfare. plus, maybe we can get a couple of fairly low corruption cities around it.

by my calcs, we need 19750cp to win. if each city has a temple, lib, col, cath, and univ., it will produce 12cpt for 600 shields. we would need 17 of these cities to make it in 100 turns, assuming no wonders. that means we need low corrupiton to build/rush all this stuff quickly... Protestant Monarchy is sounding better and better...

Good comments! I'm still debating the government question too, it's at least two techs into the tree (and optional), so there would certainly be some cost involved there as well. I wish I had a better idea of how much it can affect corruption in the New World cities, will it even make a difference?

As for the early warfare, my biggest concern with that plan is that the AI will start racking up VPs too fast. But early warfare with cheap units and stunted growth might be better than late warfare with expensive units and lots of 'em! Second concern is that it slows down the overall tech pace, and I think we want to get to Free Artistry in particular as fast as we can.

As for stealing the native techs, I don't know whether it's possible in the scenario, I would assume that it is, as it was in the Middle Ages scenario, but Ithink that would still go against our "theme" for this game. We have to try and win with European culture.

This is not a sign-up, as I do not have C3C, but here are my thoughts and questions. Please keep in mind that I have not seen the map.

- Are the Med islands in play? Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta and Balearics? They are close to home, and could be useful. What about Egypt, Crete, the levant, Cyprus, etc.? The Congo may be better for building cities in a non-war environment - which you know the Aztecs, Mayans, etc will be pursuing for sacrificial offerings if nothing else. You may not want to be spending all of that time building military instead of culture, if you can afford to give up the time. You would need to take available lux and resources for each continent into account, and would likely have less competition.

The new world does offer up the option of conquest, of course, but again will take time away from building culture. It's also not likely give you the cities long enough to matter unless the conquest was very early. If you could time a European war to match the period in which you want to conquer the bigger native cities, then it would reduce the competition.

No, the Mediterranean is not in play -- the Spanish start with Cagliari (Sardinia), but there are no other islands in near Europe.

One possibility is trying to conquer as much of Europe as possible and using the large space to build culture. Alternatively, we could settle heavily in the New World (lowered corruption allows cultural development), but there are verty few strong sites in the New World. Since we won't be winning by treasures, we don't need to settle the New World at all.

One plus for Africa is that it is the only source of Ivory, which, if we don't settle quickly, will be monopolized by Portugal.

Cuivienen said:

One possibility is trying to conquer as much of Europe as possible and using the large space to build culture.

Click to expand...

the varient here, besides a culture win, is to not conquere Europe. however, there's nothing preventing us from getting all of them fighting each other early as romeothemonk suggested

In all my try's playing this game I have never got an SGL. I have also never reverted to Protestantism, as I tend to War monger. Last night I played a faux turn. I was able to get all the alliances and almost all the gold in the game quickly.
NOTE: Forget Africa unless you are portugal. Take our settler to the New world and either get Cuba or Virginia. These are the two places that generate Mad VP's. If England is our friend they can and will stop all other Naval movement as soon as they get their big ships.
I think we have 2 luxuries. If we can get Paris bigger and if England helps us out by taking a Dutch city or 2 we can steal their luxes.
For more info on the scenario check out LK's SG on France. There are many good nuggets to glean from that game.
Key experience: Do not build treasure generating buildings!! The treasure counts as a unit against our support.

interesting. i should do my homework tonight on this scenario after i get the dual version installation up and running.

re: mad vp's: if we get virginia and cuba, is there a chance we could accidently trigger a vp win instead of a cultural win? if so, should we then focus on one rather than the other?

edit: i'll be out of town Saturday, returning Sunday

First, welcome to Cuivienen, glad to have you on the team! That's four, I will update the first post with the roster shortly. Second, re: Version, I am still at 1.15, but I have 2 computers, so I could patch one to 1.22 without too much difficulty, but unless I'm sure everyone can upgrade, I don't want to jump into it. Grahamiam, sounds like you are doing a second install, how about Cuivienen? Are you at 1.15 still? From your sig, looks like you are in several other SGs at the moment, what version are you running?

Regarding the VPs, taking the resource areas doesn't generate the VPs unless you build the treasure buildings, IIRC, so it's probably a good idea to sieze the key areas for denial, but not build the buildings ourselves. That way we would also have the option to build them later, if we determine the cultural is out of reach after all. Of the two, my preference would be Virginia, as obviously it opens more area for packing in cities. Looking at the stats again, I think it will be cheaper to build a ton of cities, with cheap Colonists, and get all the cheap temples fast, then work on rushing the libraries. The other buildings are high shield for the cpt, and will probably only get built in our core. After all, to generate 2cpt, we could invest 120 into a colosseum, or 20 (and 1 pop) into a colonist, and then 40 for another temple. I have visions of "temple farm villages" stretching across from Virginia to California, as far as the eye can see! We will be fulfilling the Manifest Destiny and the French Missionary work at the same time!

I was poking around the Dutch game and came across an interesting post. A gentleman there said that he got to ballcourts and then used them to get 4 happy people for 1 upkeep. If I have time I will look into this idea tommorrow and give the team an update but 4 extra happy people and 8cpt will really be nice. Plus it will allow for us to be warring protestants. Ill keep you posted.

ok, i was able to do the dual install thing tonight. little bit of a pain but not bad at all. i tried to do a quick fix by copying the .exe and renaming but that didn't work at all. instead, after uninstalling and then reinstalling (and i now no longer need a ptw disk ), i did the following:
1. i then installed patch 1.15b, which is where Justus should be right now.
2. next, i copied the entire "Infogrames Interactive" folder to another drive partition (drive J for me but i probably could have just copied to a new directory). This gives me 2 complete copies of the game, 1 in my D drive and another in my J drive.
3. created a shortcut on my desktop to the Civ3Conquests.exe file located in the J drive and labeled "1.15b"
4. installed patch 1.22f to my original "Infogrames Interactive" folder in drive D.

Now I can click either shortcut on my desktop and I will get the desired version. Not too hard to do, just a lot of cutting and pasting

Minor problem. My original disk/s are 600 miles away. Does/would they be needed for this type of setup?
Thanks

Justus II said:

As for stealing the native techs, I don't know whether it's possible in the scenario, I would assume that it is, as it was in the Middle Ages scenario, but Ithink that would still go against our "theme" for this game. We have to try and win with European culture.

Click to expand...

I was poking around the Dutch game and came across an interesting post. A gentleman there said that he got to ballcourts and then used them to get 4 happy people for 1 upkeep. If I have time I will look into this idea tommorrow and give the team an update but 4 extra happy people and 8cpt will really be nice. Plus it will allow for us to be warring protestants. Ill keep you posted.

Click to expand...

I am that gentleman. I was playing this scenario as Spain, and I had a huge excess of cash once I changed Gvt. to Protestant Monarchy (I was fairly far ahead in research, so I felt I could safely ease up on the ol' science budget), and was able to steal Enslavement from the Mayans for 1100 gold. Well worth it, since Ball Games has a fairly normal tech cost, and I researched that in 4 turns. Shortly thereafter, Madrid, Barcelona, Panama City, and several other cities where I had large numbers of malcontents got a ballcourt built/rushed. If I'd have thought of the whole stealing techs earlier in the game, I'd have have been able to steal ritual sacrifice in time for it to really be worthwhile (the NA civs had already built most of their wonders by the time I figured this little trick out ).

As a matter of fact, I just discovered I have a saved version of this particular game lying around. I'm posting a screenshot of one of my cities with the Ballcourt

Oh, and can I sign up, or am I too late for this one, too?

romeothemonk said:

Minor problem. My original disk/s are 600 miles away. Does/would they be needed for this type of setup?
Thanks

Click to expand...

I don't know. I'm assuming you mean your vanilla civ disk is 600 miles away? I found that uninstalling patch 1.22f seems to do some weird things since i also play CFC gotm and have PTW mods installed so i just uninstalled the whole thing. if you try, 1st copy the entire directory to a safe place so you don't mess up the entire installation.

Yes my vanilla disks are 600 miles away. Conquests haven't left one of my drives in 8 months.
Note: Whoever starts should go for SISTENE. I am sure we can get it. It always goes about turn 30 of my games, but we will have a giant furball slowing it down.

Hmmm... I could install Civ onto my second computer and upgrade all the way to 1.22, but that computer has a horrible mouse and annoys the hell out of me. I'll upgrade if we really need to, but I'd rather not.

Hikaro Takayama said:

I am that gentleman. I was playing this scenario as Spain, and I had a huge
Oh, and can I sign up, or am I too late for this one, too?

Click to expand...

Hikaro, thanks for all the input. I'll let Justus decide since he's the lead in this game but, imho, 5 players for 150turns may be too many. thats only 3turns per player if we go 10T each.

check this thread for the other RBCiv-14 SG's getting underway. it appears there are still slots available in the iroquois game and another. (14g and 14h)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=68410&page=18&pp=20