I had a look at the save game and checked the AI chat screen to see what could be available in trade in exchange for Alpha, and what the AI's strongest unit is:
South
Mansa Musa (Buddhism founder). spearmen. polytheism, pottery
Shaka (has ivory) (Judaism). Impi. polytheism, pottery
worst enemy is East
North
Genghis (NSR). swordsman. polytheism, pottery, sailing, BW
Elizabeth (NSR). swordsman. polytheism, pottery, sailing, BW
East
Ragnar (Hinduism founder). spearmen
Asoka (NSR). swordsmen
worst enemy is South.
West
? (Christianity?). May already have Alpha, we don't know.
?
Asoka already teched Monarchy, and someone out there already has Theology. Probably West.
Diplo: South and East are rivals, and we are currently favouring South by opening borders with them. Is this North team actually in the geographical North ? If so, then North and East would be our natural neighbours and allies. I would suggest befriending East instead of South, by closing borders with South ASAP. (This avoids the risk of East asking us to cancel trades with South, which really pisses off South if we agree, and irritates East if we don't agree). I don't think we gain much by maintaining OB with South - some diplo points, but no valuable trades or trade routes at this point in the game. On the other hand, slowly building up diplo with East may prevent an invasion from them.
If possible we should aim for converting to Hinduism as our third religion, and getting North to join the Hindu bloc as well.
We really need to get some exploration out west ASAP - our diplo depends on knowing who our neighbours are, and how far they are. It would be useful to understand the central ocean/lake situation ASAP as well. I would send the archer being built in Washington west for exploration, relying on the New York archer to move north for barb defense.
Trading: We can do an awesome trade of alphabet to North for everything: polytheism, pottery, sailing BW. South has already half-teched Alphabet and will currently only give us polytheism and pottery for Alphabet, but if we wait, next turn we should be able to get either Monotheism or Ironworking from them. I suggest we open borders with East and close them with South after this trade, and try to get East happy enough that we can acquire Ironworking from them. This could be done by maintaining open borders and gifting an inexpensive tech.
micro-ey stuff
New York: I'd change a citizen from the forest tile to the marble tile (food isn't so useful since we're not running slavery), change the build to a warrior MP, and move the archer north to provide fogbusting / barbarian defense. We should finish the warrior before too much defenselessness unhapppiness.
(Assuming food city is our third city) Don't spend the missionary to convert Food City to Confucianism until just before we found Philo in Stone-Gold - we want to hope for autospread as long as possible. It needs some sort of religion (and low pop) to force Taoism in Stone-Gold. We would want to do all three in the same turn: convert Food City, found Stone-Gold, then bulb Philo.
I think our legendary cities should be Washington, New York, and Stone-Gold. I'm with Jesusin in keeping the NEpic city pure: it always runs artists and thus doesn't have time to build military, or build temples and cathedrals for culture multipliers.
I think our legendary cities should be Washington, New York, and Stone-Gold. I'm with Jesusin in keeping the NEpic city pure: it always runs artists and thus doesn't have time to build military, or build temples and cathedrals for culture multipliers.
What i said. Now, please tell me where you think to build military aside Wash.
Asoka/Ragnar do not even accept OB with anyone, so i think that Asoka should be Toku. Ragnar does not count.
BTW, the AI teams will trade according to the worst of them. So, if one is pleased and the other is cautious, they will treat you as cautios.
Bad luck that barb city in that position. You must raze it. Pity. No luck there.
On a small note if NY is growing 4, this means that a worker there is not started once at size 3. Big mistake. But this happens when someone plays without a rag of a PPP, just to piss off someone else.
I got also some suggestion for how to trade, since the picture is exactly the same as in my tests. BTW, how comes no one has Alpha? How much have i fought to research it?
But please, don't take my opinions in any account. I continue to post by habit.
BL, it's not that your opinions aren't being taken into account. They are. Just because the majority of the team may not agree with any one part of your opinions on the game doesn't mean they weren't being taken into account. The TS is over, alpha was self teched, we can move on now.
As to your point regarding the Hermitage needing to be placed in the lowest raw culture LC, I quote Jesusin's fantastic culture guide from the war academy (spoiler due to length):
Spoiler:
In principle, you want as many religions as possible in your empire. If you have 9 or more cities, you will be able to build 9 temples of each religion and, accordingly, 3 cathedrals of every religion, one for each of your soon-to-be-Legendary cities. FS affects all of your cities just the same. But there is a single Hermitage. Where should you build it? Let's make it clear with 2 examples:
Example1: 9 cities, FS, 2 religions, 6 cathedrals built, your 3 cities are doing 150, 100 and 50 raw cpt, they have accumulated already 5000 each, you expect to get zero GAs in the course of the game.
Solution1: This is the worst possible situation. The Hermitage should go in the worst city. The Hermitage will contribute only 50cpt to your victory.
If we don't build the Hermitage, the cities will reach Legendary in 100, 150 and 300 turns respectively. If you built the Hermitage in the first or the second city, you will reach victory in 300 turns. If you build the Hermitage in the third city, you will reach victory in 225 turns ( (50000-5000)/(50*4) ).
Example2: 9 cities, FS, 2 religions, 6 cathedrals built, your 3 cities are doing 150, 100 and 50 raw cpt, they have accumulated already 5000 each, you expect to get 7 GAs in the course of the game.
Solution2: You must build the Hermitage in the second city. The Hermitage will contribute only 100cpt to your victory.
If you build the Hermitage in the first city, the best you can do with your GA is to bomb them 0-1-6, for your cities to reach Legendary in 75-137-140 turns. You win in 140 turns.
If you build the Hermitage in the third city, with the idea of helping the worst one as in example1, the best you can do with your GA is to bomb them 0-2-5, for your cities to reach Legendary in 100-124-125 turns. You win in 125 turns.
If you build the Hermitage in the second city, the best you can do with your GA is to bomb them 0-0-7, for your cities to reach Legendary in 100-113-114 turns. You win in 114 turns.
Are you wondering how I can calculate the best use of the GA so fast (1minute for all 3 examples and all possible GA distributions). Then don't miss the chapter on planning ahead.
Example3: 9 cities, FS, 2 religions, 6 cathedrals built, your 3 cities are doing 150, 100 and 50 raw cpt, they have accumulated already 5000 each, you expect to get 16 GAs in the course of the game.
Solution3: You must build the Hermitage in the first city. You are glad to do so, because that way the Hermitage will contribute the maximum, 150cpt to your victory.
By building the Hermitage in the first city and by bombing the GA 1-6-9, your cities to reach Legendary in 69-70-60 turns.
There is not better solution to the problem. Try it out.
What can one conclude from the study of the examples? You want to build the multipliers in the cities with the most raw culture, in order for them to be more useful. If you have enough GAs to bomb the worst cities and balance the finish dates, everything is perfect. If you are short of GA, you are forced to put the multipliers in non-optimal cities, cause you have not other way to balance the finish dates.
Another way of looking at it is this: the more GA you get, the most useful your culture multipliers will be.
To briefly state his point: you want to put yourself in the best position by 1) Optimizing GA production and 2) Putting your big multipliers in the LC with the MOST raw culture pt. It is the GAs job to catch up the less cultured LC, NOT the hermitage. Through my (albeit limited) experience I would have to agree with him. After studying this guide and applying it to my culture games there was a HUUUUUUUUUUGE improvement in finish dates.
As to your point about the GP Farm's hardly being able to be an LC, once again Jesusin:
Spoiler:
The strategy I like the best involves building 6 (or 7) cities, cottaging 2 of them (the capital and another one), getting 3 or 4 religions, building the Hermitage in the best cottage city and cathedrals in the 2 cottage cities, using the main GPFarm as the third Legendary city, not building any cathedral there, bombing 9 or 10 GA into the GPFarm in order to get it to Legendary, using some more GA in the second city to balance its finish date with that of the first city, using any remaining GA into the city that will finish the latest.
Advantages: you don't need a lot of land. The culture from the GPFarm artists is not wasted.
The other great strategy involves building 9 (or 10) cities, cottaging 3 of them (the capital and another two), getting 3 or 4 religions, building the Hermitage in the best cottage city and cathedrals in the 3 cottage cities, bombing GAs in order to balance all three cities, using any remaining GA into the city that will finish the latest.
Advantages: you build as many cathedrals as you can. The raw culture of your worst city is better than the raw culture of the GPFarm.
Both strategies require a good main GPFarm and additional cities working as secondary GPFarms.
Once again, in my experience the principles in this wonderful article of Jesusin's WORK. Big time. The "other great strategy" he mentions would be viable if we had more cottageable land. But we don't.
It doesn't matter that the GP farm doesn't have a lot of production, because GA bombs are what get it to legendary, not cathedrals.
I know his every word is not scripture or anything, but let's face it, the guy is the accepted culture guru in this community. Few can match his skills with this VC.
Here's what he has to say about the GP Farm:
Spoiler:
*** The GPFarm
The GPFarm is the single most important city in your empire. Its mission is to produce GA. It will be one of your first 3 cities. It must have at least 2 great food resources (5 ot 6 fpt each), 2 3-4 fpt tiles and 2 mines. If it is your second city, it will be able to contribute one single worker or one single Settler. Then it will build a granary and a library. It might pop a GS in the early game, specially if you have built the Oracle and want to avoid the birth of a GPro.
As soon as Literature is researched, it will start building the NE, probably using some hammer overflow from the whipping of the previous building. Very few trees will be chopped in the GPFarm, and all their lumber will go into the NE. Once the NE is built, no citizen will work the mines again. It will build a monastery at 1hpt till the end of the game.
The GPFarm will grow as big as possible. Once the NE is built, preferably in the BC, it will work as much artists as possible without damaging growth. This means that the first priority of a citizen is work 4+ fpt tiles.
Some GPFarms work every available 3fpt tile, while others don't. Follow this simple rule to know how much you should grow your GPFarm:
When the GPFarm has reached its maximum size and its not growing nor starving, it will either
- be unhealthy and not work any 3fpt tiles
- work some 3fpt tiles and be on the brink of being unhealthy
If in this maximum size situation you are not doing +0fpt but +1fpt, alternate the last citizen as an artist sometimes and at the empty tile with the most food sometimes, so that the city never starves nor grows.
In the end game you will hire absolutely every single citizen as an artist, allowing the city to starve and losing 1 pop a turn, in order to get some additional GPP which will provide you another unexpected GA.
Improvements in the GPFarm will be: the appropriate on resource tiles, farms in green tiles, mines in a couple of hills. Most forest will stay all game long.
This is why I think getting the GPFarm by the sugar settled asap is high priority. Could either you or Beestar provide a compelling argument as to why stone/gold would be a better LC?
Give me a little more time to look things over, read everyone's posts and join the discussion that is sure to take place over the next few days before posting a PPP. Keep in mind I'm new to this process. Would Sunday be a reasonable deadline? I will have lots of time then.
Hermitage is most definitely for catching up the lagging city. Now it may not be necessarily city three. In this case it looked to me like city three would be the GP farm. With that being the case, and the amount of food available, and the fact that we are going for a culture victory, means we are going to need Globe and N Epic there. That makes city 2 the lagging city in need of the Hermitage.
Good TS Dredd. Sunday is a bit late for an initial PPP. I'm sure there is gonna be a huge fight oops I mean discussion about city placement so better to start early.
Meow, I understand the logic. I just disagree with it. Culture bombs have to be reckoned based on the number of turns left.The simple rule of thumb is that any time there is 100 or more turns left. it's better to have the GA join the city. Particularly with Hermitage and Sistine.
Meow, I understand the logic. I just disagree with it. Culture bombs have to be reckoned based on the number of turns left.The simple rule of thumb is that any time there is 100 or more turns left. it's better to have the GA join the city. Particularly with Hermitage and Sistine.
You'd need to have those artists settled for 300+ turns to equal the same value from 6 culture bombs, and that's only in the Hermitage city. Please correct my math if it's wrong. Edit (even with three cathedrals it would take 98 turns of 6 settled GAs to = 6 culture bombs, but we aren't going to have sistine's, 3 cathedrals, and the hermitage in one city before 6 GA pop)
The first 5 or 6, maybe more, would bomb the GPfarm, no doubt about it. At that point you would reckon based on turns left till legendary in the other LCs in order to try and narrow the gaps between legendary city dates.
Edit: Also wanted to add, I think that globe is overkill. HR or Rep, lux resources, and religion will provide enough happiness, and once we max the culture slider happiness will be a non-issue.
My rule of thumb. I find it useful instead of getting into heavy math every time it comes up. A settled artist is 12. Plus 2 for Sistine. Times 2 for Hermitage. That's twenty-eight. Free speech, which we will run as soon as we get it, pushes it to a 3x multiplier. That's 42 per turn. 4200 v 4000 is why I use the easy to remember hundred turns.
Other math : six settled artists working in 2 cathedrals or the Hermitage = 25,200 instead of 24,000. That's before any other bonuses, like the plus three research for running representation, or more than two cathedrals.
My rule of thumb. I find it useful instead of getting into heavy math every time it comes up. A settled artist is 12. Plus 2 for Sistine. Times 2 for Hermitage. That's twenty-eight. Free speech, which we will run as soon as we get it, pushes it to a 3x multiplier. That's 42 per turn. 4200 v 4000 is why I use the easy to remember hundred turns.
Whoops, you are right about the base cpt of a settled GA which I miscalculated as 4 instead of 12. However, bombs are still better since you won't be making 42 cpt off of a settled GA until Sistine, Herm, and Free Speech, all of which will be preceded by GAs popping.
Now, when considering just the hermitage city, settled GAs would definitely bring it to legendary quicker due to the multipliers. But we need to consider three cities not just one.
In other words, what use is there in settling GAs (which won't be reaching full cpt potential until FS, Sistine's, Hermitage, and Cathedrals anyway, and take ~100 turns to mature after those conditions are met) in the Hermitage city at the expense of the GPfarm? You are speeding up one of the top two raw culture producing cities and slowing down the lowest culture producer. No point in cities #1 and 2 hitting legendary dozens of turns (or more) before #3.
Other math : six settled artists working in 2 cathedrals or the Hermitage = 25,200 instead of 24,000. That's before any other bonuses, like the plus three research for running representation, or more than two cathedrals.
My apologies WithTea. Further reading of the Jesusin article led me to this:
Settle the early ones in the city that will have better multipliers, till the point where you would have to bomb zero GA in that city at the end of the game (see "Planning ahead"). The cut off date varies. It depends strongly on cultural multipliers. In most games the cut off date for keeping a GA for the end instead of settling it is between 1AD adn 1000AD. Just calculate it on your game.
If you are going to get very few GP (less than 12), keep them all for bombing at the end.
If you don't plan ahead, keep them all for bombing at the end.
The city with the less base culture output should have the least culture multipliers and should have zero settled artists, while it should be the one more heavily culture-bombed.
We really need to get some exploration out west ASAP - our diplo depends on knowing who our neighbours are, and how far they are. It would be useful to understand the central ocean/lake situation ASAP as well. I would send the archer being built in Washington west for exploration, relying on the New York archer to move north for barb defense.
There's an Archer headed west down the isthmus at the moment, and another waiting near the hub - are you suggesting that we send another down that way? I think we're good for exploration to the West, and the archer from Washington should head to the NE.
With respect to the overarching cultural victory, I think we should test some various options, as late as possible. I have a lot to say on this but my 4 yo is hanging off my arm and wants breakfast.
I still think we should settle "LC2" in the optimal position, with 11 cottages. I think that the NEpic city should be LC3, otherwise we are wasting culture produced from Artists. We can caluclate whether it's worth this city taking time off from Artists to build cathedrals. A large part of this calculation will be how many GArtists we can pop from other cities during this period. I think this setup will be fastest, and it has the added advantage that it ties up only 3 cities for 100% culture, while all the other cities can build wealth or military. Having "gold/stone" and NY as LCs knocks out a lot of production capacity.
For a normal culture game, I think that the big multipliers should go in the city with the highest base culture, to maximise their impact on total culture produced. It think the real advantage of Artist bombs is that they can be used flexibly - their culture is not tied to a particular city, so they can be used to balance out the cities. We'll have heaps of GArtists, perhaps 20!
However, in this game we're teching further so we aren't going to get a 1400ad victory, and therefore settled Artists are more powerful than normal.
For LC, let's do the calculation then. My intuition is that Gold/Stone working cottages is better than having NEpic do double-duty but I haven't had time to do the analysis yet. Hey, if NEpic is going to be LC3, then we just stick Taoism in that city.
pnp, remind me where you were thinking of for LC2? I always assumed we settled New York where it is because it was going to be one of the legendary cities.
I would think we've got enough space to settle 11+ cities, especially if we place an extra city into the hub, but we'll have to scout to find out if that's safe.
For the archers, I was assuming that one would stay to fogbust, one would explore, and we could do with one more as explorer. I'd really like to get a clearer picture of what the WOZ challenge is going to be, and where the neighbours are ... ASAP
Good point from BL about one of the AIs possibly having the Toku personality. Toku can be switched to Open Borders, and from there you can acquire positive diplo, but it requires a massive effort (e.g. gifting a city). Toku tends to be isolated diplomatically, so it may not be a good idea to team up with him.
From my understanding of the various articles, Hermitage could go in different cities depending on how many GAs we generate. But in general, not the third city.
I'm happy to acknowledge that teching Alpha first seems to be a good move so far.
I would like someone to clarify where we plan to have our LC. Obviously Washington is one LC but what is the plan for the other 2. I assumed that NY was #2 and the next city settled would be #3. Obviously that is not the case. Was NY settled strictly for marble? Where is this 11 cottage city going to be?
I could really use a dotmap here to understand the plan. BLubmuz, you keep talking about you DM but I can't seem to find the post. Does anyone else have a solid DM to share with the team?
Cross post with Beestar:: At least i'm not the only one who assumed NY was LC 2. I also am having a hard time understanding why the NE city that will be running artists for most of the game would not be LC3. That seems like a lot of culture going to waste.
I like the settling of the GPF at the sugar next but ... I really would like to see some valid arguments for it over the stone city at this point. Here are my questions/comments:
1. If the NE city (sugar) is not our LC3 then why are we wasting all the culture from running artists?
2. If Sugar is our LC3 then why are we not founding Tao there and forcing it to Stone?
3. If NY is not LC2 then why did we settle it? Was it only for the Oracle? If so that seems like a waste for one free tech; just sayin'.
4. If Stone is our LC3 (or 2 from the discussions so far), why are we waiting to settle it?
I'm sure there are more but I need to go to bed. My point is that the discussions have talked about sugar being a GPF and nothing more and have talked about Stone being for mids and nothing more. We need to clarify which cities are the LC ones and they need to be settled first IMHO. I reserve my vote on settling the next city until we clarify these points.
As far as trades go, I'll look into that in a couple days and post my opinion. (sure that everyone is waiting on pins and needles to hear my opinion )
GPFarm - sugar site, NEpic, needs to be settled next
NY OR tbd cottage site. I'd like to see dredds proposed site and analyze the pros/cons of city overlap vs # of cottages. A site with 11 cottages would be much stronger for LC than NY, but only if it doesn't rob from other cities too much.
NY and Stone/Gold would be great missionary/temple/military production powerhouses and as such would be kind of a waste as LCs when there are better options that aren't (and don't need to be) as hammer heavy.
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