FilthyRobot
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2013
- Messages
- 76
So I recently had a game where I tried sacred sites in a 6FFA and found the tourism output too low. Anyone have any suggestions or experience with actually making it work?
6FFA multiplayer in a ranked NQ game.
Randomed Egypt with 3 pearls in my capital and gems nearby. With Egypt's UB and a strong faith pantheon (tears) I decided I wanted to try a liberty opening (in FFA MP 4 city-trad dominates) into Piety for sacred sites.
By great fluke, I had a ton of mediocre land to expand to and planted 16 cities. My spacing wasn't perfect since I was expanding to production rich areas rather than just every 4 tiles, but I was fairly tight on happiness anyway, so I'm not sure I could have afforded the extra cities regardless.
My policy choice was Liberty to collective rule then into Piety. I managed to snag pagodas and mosques and +2g/city. Building order was something like monument->shrine->burial tomb->prod/science buildings with periodic troops and workers sprinkled in. Caravans were sent to neighbors to leech science and gold to support the cities. I got beat to the great wall by one turn, beat to Notre Dame by ages and managed to get pyramids and Machu Picchu. I don't think I got a wonder again after that (not that I tried much either, just the good one were going quick and often just as I was getting the tech).
When I finally hit reformation beliefs I grabbed sacred sites. I nearly had all of my religious buildings bought at this point. I think I was early medieval and a little (2-3) techs behind but with xbows, knights and swordsmen. I had a nice a small landbridge to my southern neighbor (india) with a walled, hilled city of mine with mountains making it only attackable from adjacent squares and realistically only 1-2 of those (and water =/). To my eastern neighbors I had a mountain chain on the far east (between Assyria and I) and a long river with hill cities on my side with the Ottomans on the other side, with a nice road network connecting my cities. I also had defender of the faith for +20% bonus near my cities.
My tourism easily ran over the weaker player's culture (the guys who hadn't been able to wonder spam). However the two guys who had been able to wonder spam were only very slowly being gained on.
At this point all 4 remaining players (one guy died to the huns early) declared war on me and began a joint attack on me. Fighting 4v1 in real time, really, really sucks. Basically all the close battles go in their favor since they move first in pretty much every engagement and, if it benefits them, they get to move last too. Never-the-less after a long, bloody battle my road network held the eastern front vs the Huns, Assyria and the Ottomans, while India's frigates managed to grab 2 of my southern buffer cities. If all 4 hostile empires had devoted their production to killing me, it'd have been over sooner or later anyway, since their tech was outpacing mine and their combined production was still better than mine.
However, the first world congress passed +3 culture/world wonder and Assyria and the Huns culture began to widen the gap compared to my tourism. At this point they realized that they were wasting resources attacking me when I wasn't in danger of winning, so one-by-one they made peace with me and India gave me back my 2 southern coastal cities (since they were absolutely garbage for a tall player).
For happiness and culture reasons I decided to finish Liberty, then open Rationalism to secularism, then finish piety.
I managed to stay semi-competitive in science, hovering around last, with a 4-5 tech spread between leader and me. 2 turns from my finishing 3 factories the Ottomans took Order and then, later, engineer rushed the Kremlin, which really, really set me back since with 18 cities (I took 2 CS) policies come slow. This meant a greatly increased time before I could get workers facilities (+25% science from factories).
Assyria started running away with tech so the we all agreed to gang up on him. The Huns promised aid and support, but instead spent the entire war working on their infrastructure instead. Eventually we managed maim Assyria.
By then, the Huns were in the lead. I had managed to do a lot of catching up but was still behind in tech. The ottomans were declared irrelevant and India started making too much progress on the space race, so I took his capital out. The Huns eventually beat me in the space race. I was making absurd amounts of faith per turn, in the multiple hundreds. But, aside from great prophets, Pagodas and Mosques it did nothing for me late game.
I have to wonder about ICS. It's almost never possible in multiplayer, since there is rarely room and it heavily penalizes your tech and social policy progress. This game was nearly perfect conditions for it. I managed to get religion first, meaning I got pagodas, I had Egypt with the amazing 0 upkeep, 2 happiness temples, I had large swaths of land near me that weren't quickly settled on (which is nearly unheard of in 6ffa multiplayer) and I had amazing early faith generation in my capital.
Is sacred sites just not possible to win with? It wasn't enough tourism when I got it and I don't see how I could have got it quicker without giving up collective rule, which would made building 16 cities absurdly slow. Furthermore, I really wish I'd been able to take the -33% culture cost policy of Liberty earlier than I was able to already. It feels like any additional Tourism comes too late to help =/.
In retrospect I wonder if Jesuit Education might have been the key here instead. It would have given the Ottomans faith purchasable science buildings, but it would have saved me so much time on mine, and I had so many more to build.
6FFA multiplayer in a ranked NQ game.
Randomed Egypt with 3 pearls in my capital and gems nearby. With Egypt's UB and a strong faith pantheon (tears) I decided I wanted to try a liberty opening (in FFA MP 4 city-trad dominates) into Piety for sacred sites.
By great fluke, I had a ton of mediocre land to expand to and planted 16 cities. My spacing wasn't perfect since I was expanding to production rich areas rather than just every 4 tiles, but I was fairly tight on happiness anyway, so I'm not sure I could have afforded the extra cities regardless.
My policy choice was Liberty to collective rule then into Piety. I managed to snag pagodas and mosques and +2g/city. Building order was something like monument->shrine->burial tomb->prod/science buildings with periodic troops and workers sprinkled in. Caravans were sent to neighbors to leech science and gold to support the cities. I got beat to the great wall by one turn, beat to Notre Dame by ages and managed to get pyramids and Machu Picchu. I don't think I got a wonder again after that (not that I tried much either, just the good one were going quick and often just as I was getting the tech).
When I finally hit reformation beliefs I grabbed sacred sites. I nearly had all of my religious buildings bought at this point. I think I was early medieval and a little (2-3) techs behind but with xbows, knights and swordsmen. I had a nice a small landbridge to my southern neighbor (india) with a walled, hilled city of mine with mountains making it only attackable from adjacent squares and realistically only 1-2 of those (and water =/). To my eastern neighbors I had a mountain chain on the far east (between Assyria and I) and a long river with hill cities on my side with the Ottomans on the other side, with a nice road network connecting my cities. I also had defender of the faith for +20% bonus near my cities.
My tourism easily ran over the weaker player's culture (the guys who hadn't been able to wonder spam). However the two guys who had been able to wonder spam were only very slowly being gained on.
At this point all 4 remaining players (one guy died to the huns early) declared war on me and began a joint attack on me. Fighting 4v1 in real time, really, really sucks. Basically all the close battles go in their favor since they move first in pretty much every engagement and, if it benefits them, they get to move last too. Never-the-less after a long, bloody battle my road network held the eastern front vs the Huns, Assyria and the Ottomans, while India's frigates managed to grab 2 of my southern buffer cities. If all 4 hostile empires had devoted their production to killing me, it'd have been over sooner or later anyway, since their tech was outpacing mine and their combined production was still better than mine.
However, the first world congress passed +3 culture/world wonder and Assyria and the Huns culture began to widen the gap compared to my tourism. At this point they realized that they were wasting resources attacking me when I wasn't in danger of winning, so one-by-one they made peace with me and India gave me back my 2 southern coastal cities (since they were absolutely garbage for a tall player).
For happiness and culture reasons I decided to finish Liberty, then open Rationalism to secularism, then finish piety.
I managed to stay semi-competitive in science, hovering around last, with a 4-5 tech spread between leader and me. 2 turns from my finishing 3 factories the Ottomans took Order and then, later, engineer rushed the Kremlin, which really, really set me back since with 18 cities (I took 2 CS) policies come slow. This meant a greatly increased time before I could get workers facilities (+25% science from factories).
Assyria started running away with tech so the we all agreed to gang up on him. The Huns promised aid and support, but instead spent the entire war working on their infrastructure instead. Eventually we managed maim Assyria.
By then, the Huns were in the lead. I had managed to do a lot of catching up but was still behind in tech. The ottomans were declared irrelevant and India started making too much progress on the space race, so I took his capital out. The Huns eventually beat me in the space race. I was making absurd amounts of faith per turn, in the multiple hundreds. But, aside from great prophets, Pagodas and Mosques it did nothing for me late game.
I have to wonder about ICS. It's almost never possible in multiplayer, since there is rarely room and it heavily penalizes your tech and social policy progress. This game was nearly perfect conditions for it. I managed to get religion first, meaning I got pagodas, I had Egypt with the amazing 0 upkeep, 2 happiness temples, I had large swaths of land near me that weren't quickly settled on (which is nearly unheard of in 6ffa multiplayer) and I had amazing early faith generation in my capital.
Is sacred sites just not possible to win with? It wasn't enough tourism when I got it and I don't see how I could have got it quicker without giving up collective rule, which would made building 16 cities absurdly slow. Furthermore, I really wish I'd been able to take the -33% culture cost policy of Liberty earlier than I was able to already. It feels like any additional Tourism comes too late to help =/.
In retrospect I wonder if Jesuit Education might have been the key here instead. It would have given the Ottomans faith purchasable science buildings, but it would have saved me so much time on mine, and I had so many more to build.
