Strategy with Huayna Capac - Noble level

EDIT: Aaah, 15 is INCLUDING the 8 artists, so, only 7 tiles are worked and the 8 artists do nothing (except maybe painting pictures), right?
Bingo! :thumbsup:

This is why you want lots of food resources in your GP farm, over half of the population can be turned into specialists. If you can't get to size 15, you can work 6 artists already at size 9 with fish+double clam. Forgot to mention in last post that you should also count the 2 food generated by city tile when calculating food surplus.

On top of that, when you are in a golden age with yet another +100% GPP bonus, you can starve the city. At size 15 the foodbin holds 50 food, so you can have 49/50 without growing (or even 50/50 if you use the avoid growth button). With 49 food in bin, you can work fish+double clam and 12 artists at -12:food:/turn for 4 turns without shrinking. In a golden age those 4 extra artists for 4 turns add up to over 200GPP with NE.
 
If you can build a farm on the tile the city is on, irrigation will go through the city. Otherwise (hill or desert), the irrigation chain can't go through.
 
The farm (with red cross) is irrigated now (see screenshot), from west through the city. Still no open borders with Toku, so the irrigation doesn't come from the northern tile. Hence I would guess that irrigation also flows diagonally through a city.

If you can build a farm on the tile the city is on, irrigation will go through the city. Otherwise (hill or desert), the irrigation chain can't go through.

Hm, but this city IS on a desert tile. Nevertheless, the irrigation seems to flow through the city.
 

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My whip heuristics:

In war mode:
* at least 1 hammer invested
* not the capital
* (preferably more than 1-pop whip)
* (has granary, if not -> whip granary)

Not in war mode:
* if it is a worker, or a useful building (granary, [lighthouse], forge, [monument])
* has granary (if not -> whip granary)
* no remaining whip unhappiness
* not the capital
* at least 1 hammer invested

Other:
* 3-pop whip capital for first settlers

What does "at least 1 hammer invested" mean here exactly? For example if you want to whip a Forge: It needs 120 hammers to be produced. "at least 1 hammer invested" means then you would NOT whip if you just had put the Forge into an empty production queue with no overflow? But you would consider to whip after at least one turn of normal production or with overflow? Or in other words: The Forge in the production queue must show x/120 hammers with x >= 1? What is background for this rule? This single hammer seems so unimportant to me... I'm sure I misunderstand this rule completely... :confused:
 
It simply means that you don't want to "cold whip". That means whipping when no hammers are invested. Such whips are more expensive, so we try to avoid it. If you have even 1 :hammers: invested in a build, you will get 30 :hammers: per citizen that is whipped away, and those 30 :hammers: are boosted by Forges, Organised Religion, and other potential multipliers, such as Police State and Bureaucracy (but you usually don't want to whip your capital, at least post the very early game). For example, if you have a Forge and are running OR with the state religion spread to the city, each citizen whipped away will yield 45 :hammers: That's pretty great stuff. For example, you can have a few hammers infested in a Catapult, 2-pop whip it, and probably get 2 cats in two turns. That's a great deal faster than slow producing them, and these things snowball fast when you're planning or involved in a war.

(Do note, however, that OR only benefits buildings, and not units).
 
The farm (with red cross) is irrigated now (see screenshot), from west through the city. Still no open borders with Toku, so the irrigation doesn't come from the northern tile. Hence I would guess that irrigation also flows diagonally through a city.



Hm, but this city IS on a desert tile. Nevertheless, the irrigation seems to flow through the city.

I guess I'm wrong about desert. But you definitely can't irrigate through hill-cities.
 
I guess I'm wrong about desert. But you definitely can't irrigate through hill-cities.

Ah, that explains then why the irrigation didn't work through Huamanga. The city is indeed on a hill.


Another new question: I have a great scientist, a great prophet and a great artist right now. All are in the capital. If I want to start a golden age - and I need 2 great persons to start it - can I decide somehow which of the 3 available GPs are consumed? I would like to spend the scientist and the prophet and keep the artist for culture bombing. Or should I bomb the artist first to be sure that scientist and prophet are used for the GA? If I start to build Taj Mahal within the next turns I guess I should run the 2-GP-Golden Age first so that this GA is over before Taj Mahal is finished, right? Otherwise if I start with the Taj Mahal GA I would need 3 GPs for the next golden age, or am I wrong? (Although in that case I could consider to get the free Great Merchant from Economics to have 3 different GPs.)
 
Move the GA out of the capital. Then select either of the other GPeeps and hit the "begin GA" button.

The algorithm selects the closest GPeeps to the one selected to burn on the GA.

Taj does not count as a GPeep-started GA, so you the number needed to start a GA won't be affected by the completion of Taj.
 
Try to finish Taj Mahal while you are in the Golden Age you start with your scientist and prophet. The new golden age will be added to the end of the one you are already in. But there is a bug with Taj Mahal that actually gives you one extra free turn of golden age if you finish it while you are in a golden age. With Mausoleum of Mausollos this means that finishing Taj Mahal while already in a GA gives you 13 more turns of GA instead of 12.

And as Lennier said, if you start GA now with 2 GP, then the next with Taj, the one after that will only cost 3 GP.
 
Move the GA out of the capital. Then select either of the other GPeeps and hit the "begin GA" button.

The algorithm selects the closest GPeeps to the one selected to burn on the GA.

OK, that worked!


Try to finish Taj Mahal while you are in the Golden Age...

OK, I managed the timing. The first 12 turns in Golden Age have passed now and I still have 13 turns.


...Great Artists are the key to good Cultural Victory dates. Generate as many as possible and save them until you have enough to culture bomb every city to legendary status...

One question remained here for me: Does it have particular reason to save the great artists until I can bomb all cities to legendary culture at once? Why not fire a 4000-culture bomb as soon as a great artist is born and moved to one of the candidate cities?


I have attached a screenshot with my current city overview. I'm in the phase of great artist farming. (I have 5 GAs right now. Civics are pacifism, free speech, caste system. Research slider on 0%, culture slider at 70%. I stopped research after Rifling and then a few turns for Economics so that I can get that tech and the great merchant in one turn. I have a great scientist and will probably get an engineer in one of the cities soon. Together with the merchant I could start the next golden age.)

I'm wondering if I can improve something. For example, does it make sense to bulldoze villages and towns on grassland tiles everywhere (except capital maybe), build farms instead to run a few more artists? I think it doesn't make sense to have a city with only 2 or 3 artists because there are other cities that have a lot more artists (Amsterdam and Carthage are running 8 artists for instance, and some cities have 5 artists) and then it's unlikely that they ever create a great artist before the game is over.

At the moment I'm just trying to pass the turns, hope that peace holds as long as possible and keep defense up with one city producing Cavalry non-stop. I'm not sure if I can do something better in this phase.
 

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The only reason to save them until the end is to make sure you don't bomb some city more than necessary. You can do bombing earlier, as long as you are absolutely certain that it is needed for that particular city. In this case, it's quite obvious that your 2nd and 3rd city will need quite a few bombs, so you could just as well do the bombs immediately. It neither speeds up nor slows down your victory date.

Villages and towns in your cultural cities are not worth bulldozing. You get so much culture from the commerce. Helper cities should have as many farms as possible to max artists.

Running 2-3 artists somewhere probably isn't worth it, except in your cultural cities. If a city is that food poor, better to work hammers and build wealth to press culture slider higher.

You're still building missionaries, are you still planning to build more cathedrals? How many cathedrals have you got in your 3 cities now?

The best thing you can do to speed it up is to get culture slider raised even higher. You can do this by building more wealth, selling resources for gpt to AI, selling old techs to AI for gold and so on. Not sure what you need those grocers for, building them for the gold bonus is not worth it and looks like you don't have unhealthiness problems. Courthouse is most likely also suboptimal compared to building wealth.

Getting rid of unnecessary builds is key to reaching fast dates. Combined with a good game plan and strong micro of course. Here's a picture that shows you just how little is really needed. It's from the victory turn in a 1270AD cultural game I played on noble, showing everything I built during the game.
Spoiler :

Scrolling down the buildings list reveals one lighthouse and all the Great Artist wonders + Oracle and AP. AP is also the reason why there are so many Hindu monasteries. (2 cities were culture flipped in the last few turns, otherwise all my cities had temples and monasteries for AP hammers.)

As you can see, no markets, grocers, courthouses or walls. Not even any barracks, and still Peter went down with 4 Horse Archers and a chariot. :lol: (Vicky was killed by my starting warrior on turn 4 or something like that.)

Don't mind the forts and workshops, those were built by automated workers at the end of the game after I had already improved every tile I was ever going to work. And the cottages that are still cottages were captured by expanding borders or culture flipping cities. All cottages I built myself are towns by that date.

To be fair, the screenshot is from a HoF game with quite favorable circumstances, good starting location, peaceful neighbors and a nearby capital to capture immediately, so it's not directly comparable to any random game. But still, it should give you some idea of how little you really need to build to get a fast victory date.
 
You're still building missionaries, are you still planning to build more cathedrals? How many cathedrals have you got in your 3 cities now?

With the Taoist Pagoda that is now finished in Cuzco I have 4 cathedrals in Cuzco and 3 in each of the other two cultural cities. I build the Jewish Monastery to be able to create a Jewish missionary and spread Judaism in Tiwanaku and build the 4th cathedral there. (I should have created that missionary while I still was in Organized Religion, bad planning...). Building the Hindu missionaries has the idea in mind to spread Hinduism to my neighbours. But that was bad planning as well because Gilgamesh is in Free Religion, Zara in Theocracy, so both don't allow to spread religions. And Toku doesn't let the missionaries in his territory, Qin is in Hinduism anyway and Hannibal doesn't matter so much anymore for the game.

The best thing you can do to speed it up is to get culture slider raised even higher. You can do this by building more wealth, selling resources for gpt to AI, selling old techs to AI for gold and so on. Not sure what you need those grocers for, building them for the gold bonus is not worth it and looks like you don't have unhealthiness problems. Courthouse is most likely also suboptimal compared to building wealth.

The healthiness problem I had in a few cities when I started to build the grocers disappeared after I traded some health resources, so yes, the grocers are not that useful anymore. Most cities are now on building wealth.

I'm probably a bit hesitant to trade techs for gold. For example: Zara offers 100 gold and I could give him Nationalism, Printing Press, Education or Gunpowder for this. I absolutely have no clue if that's worth it. Doesn't it strengthen him too much, especially because the relationship with him is "annoyed" and he already is the most advanced of the other civs in tech and power (but still a bit behind me)? Similar with Gilgamesh: 110 gold for Nationalism, Printig Press, Education or Guilds, is it worth it?

Oh, and another thing I just messed up: I didn't watch the possible tech paths of the AI carefully enough. For some reason Qin went quite directly towards Economics (way earlier than I would do normally) and catched that free Great Merchant. Now I have a great scientist and a great engineer and the only way to extend my golden age by another 12 turns would probably be to spend one of my great artists. I'm inclined to do that because of all the great boni (especially the 100% birth rate bonus) a golden age offers, or shouldn't I?

Getting rid of unnecessary builds is key to reaching fast dates. Combined with a good game plan and strong micro of course. Here's a picture that shows you just how little is really needed. It's from the victory turn in a 1270AD cultural game I played on noble, showing everything I built during the game.
Spoiler :

Scrolling down the buildings list reveals one lighthouse and all the Great Artist wonders + Oracle and AP. AP is also the reason why there are so many Hindu monasteries. (2 cities were culture flipped in the last few turns, otherwise all my cities had temples and monasteries for AP hammers.)

As you can see, no markets, grocers, courthouses or walls. Not even any barracks, and still Peter went down with 4 Horse Archers and a chariot. :lol: (Vicky was killed by my starting warrior on turn 4 or something like that.)

Don't mind the forts and workshops, those were built by automated workers at the end of the game after I had already improved every tile I was ever going to work. And the cottages that are still cottages were captured by expanding borders or culture flipping cities. All cottages I built myself are towns by that date.

To be fair, the screenshot is from a HoF game with quite favorable circumstances, good starting location, peaceful neighbors and a nearby capital to capture immediately, so it's not directly comparable to any random game. But still, it should give you some idea of how little you really need to build to get a fast victory date.

1270 AD, wow, that's impressive! :goodjob: On the positive side for me: I have A LOT of room for improvement in future games. :)
 
One trick to get a religion into a Theocratic state is to gift it to them. They'll use it (although the missionary might still fail to spread the religion.) The Theocratic ban on spread of non-state religions is only for auto-spread and foreign missionaries.
 
I'm probably a bit hesitant to trade techs for gold. For example: Zara offers 100 gold and I could give him Nationalism, Printing Press, Education or Gunpowder for this. I absolutely have no clue if that's worth it. Doesn't it strengthen him too much, especially because the relationship with him is "annoyed" and he already is the most advanced of the other civs in tech and power (but still a bit behind me)? Similar with Gilgamesh: 110 gold for Nationalism, Printig Press, Education or Guilds, is it worth it?
100 gold for those techs is not very good... This is actually more of a problem on the lower levels, the AI usually has very little gold. On higher levels they'd have more.

It seems counter intuitive that it would be a good idea to sell techs for way less than their beaker value, but it actually isn't. You can often sell the same tech to several AI and end up with quite a lot of gold. And even if it is very little money, at least you get something. Worst case scenario is that if you don't sell the tech, the AI ends up trading for it by giving some other tech to another AI. In that case you get nothing, while another AI gets a free tech instead.

Also, to you one gold is worth more than one beaker of own research, because gold let's you keep your slider higher and redirect more commerce through your science boosting buildings like libraries and academy.

You should check the tech trading screen every turn. Every now and then they will suddenly have large sums of gold and you should seize that opportunity and get the gold. Especially after a wonder is built somewhere, several AI might get a lot of failgold that you can get from them.

Selling techs cheap will also very quickly get you the +4 fair trade diplo bonus with the AI. Some other diplo bonuses will kick in once you've traded/sold enough techs to them. Just selling one tech to Toku at a bargain prize could be enough for him to open borders, depending on what other diplo modifiers are in play.
 
One trick to get a religion into a Theocratic state is to gift it to them. They'll use it (although the missionary might still fail to spread the religion.) The Theocratic ban on spread of non-state religions is only for auto-spread and foreign missionaries.

That worked indeed for 2 of my 3 missionaries! The last one apparently failed to spread the religion. Thanks for the tip!


The game is finished now: 1815 AD with cultural victory. Not a very good date, I guess. But I'm happy that it worked in the end at all. Thanks to all your very useful and detailed strategy tips! The support in this forum is really awesome! :)
 
That's a good date for a first cultural victory! Congrats! :goodjob: Next game you can probably easily shave at least 100 years off the date when you have some practise.
 
That's a good date for a first cultural victory! Congrats! :goodjob: Next game you can probably easily shave at least 100 years off the date when you have some practise.

Thanks! :) I think, next game I have to balance cities better that produce Great Artists and that just produce wealth for higher culture percentage. I had a lot of useless mediocre GA farms running that never produced a GA during the time or if they produced one then certainly not a second. After the first GA I should have reconfigured those cities immediately to produce wealth, I guess.
 
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