- Joined
- May 21, 2007
- Messages
- 1,083
Similarly to FireOrb I got a lesson in humility in this one. Peaceful CV is different than CV with guns
I had two goals for this game: First to iron out my peaceful CV strategies, and second to see if I could leverage some early Piety policies into anything useful. Immortal is a good test bed since I don't need to worry about aggression but there is enough wonder competition to develop useful lessons.
So how is that Piety/Tradition opening? I think t150 is a good place to look since by the midgame the empire has enough time to let early benefits/penalties accumulate.
Comparing to full Tradition I have:
++ Faith (Piety Faith + Mosques. CS faith quests are all mine.)
+ Happy (I took shrine happiness - this offsets with the missing Aristocracy. Mosques.)
++ Culture (Mosques)
- Infrastructure (No free Aqueducts, more hammers needed for Shrines/Temples, No bonuses)
-- Population (No Landed Elite, Trad finisher or free Aqueducts. Still the t150 pop is not too bad.)
-- Tech accumulation (The need for early Engineering and lower pop leaves a 10-15 turn gap. That hurts since it costs me many of the Renaissance wonders).
<> GPT (religion gold goes to not-free and extra buildings)
Comparing to Full liberty I have:
++ Faith
++ Happy
++ Culture
-- Hammers
- Pop (Collective Rule is effectively substantial Hammers + Food)
- Tech (no Liberty finisher, both need Eng.)
+ GPT
Even though this is not strictly an inferior opening, those early hammers, pop, and tech progression outweigh the benefits here (as expected).
Thanks to Venice there is still room to expand on this map. I'm going to add two more cities: one in the north and one by Kilimanjaro. No thanks to Venice I keep losing CS allies. I'd declare war and snipe that MoV, but we have a DoF and I don't want the diplomatic demerit.
The 7th city. Worth building? I'm not so sure. This city needs (at a minimum) a University, Opera House, and Hotel to not be a drag on my game. That is a lot to establish quickly.
And now the lesson in humility. This game dragged on far too long (to t280) for a game with t234 Internet.
Mistakes:
- Proposing the world's fair in the first vote. This interferes too much with the need for Schools, Factories, Museums, and Archeologists all at the same time. A Peaceful CV is really a "hammer victory" I think
- Not focusing enough on Archeologists. I had bad luck with digs - despite founding 7 cities only 3 are within my borders and none by the cap! Still, I should have been able to dig most sites and instead only got ~11.
- Poor renaissance tech pathing. Of all the lovely cultural Renaissance wonders I only built the Sistine Chapel. I should have gone Printing Press first. For culture Pisa is probably better than early Observatories. I'll be ahead in the Industrial Era either way.
- Too aggressive International Games timing. Honestly, I expected the Immortal AIs to roll over more easily than they did. France is the problem (more below). Because I had proposed these too early I was again hammer constrained and so missed the optimal tourism peak for Musicians. (I voted down my own Proposal but was outvoted).
Internet in 1 turn:
Why is France a problem? Well Napoleon had a very good start with plenty of land for Chateaux spam. He also had a Wonder Spamming cornucopia in Paris:
All this means that in terms of culture and wonder competition this felt more like a Deity game than a typical Immortal game. A 50k culture hurdle.
I wasn't going to post more about this game after t100, but I learned plenty here for my next peaceful CV attempt.
Spoiler :
I had two goals for this game: First to iron out my peaceful CV strategies, and second to see if I could leverage some early Piety policies into anything useful. Immortal is a good test bed since I don't need to worry about aggression but there is enough wonder competition to develop useful lessons.
So how is that Piety/Tradition opening? I think t150 is a good place to look since by the midgame the empire has enough time to let early benefits/penalties accumulate.
Comparing to full Tradition I have:
++ Faith (Piety Faith + Mosques. CS faith quests are all mine.)
+ Happy (I took shrine happiness - this offsets with the missing Aristocracy. Mosques.)
++ Culture (Mosques)
- Infrastructure (No free Aqueducts, more hammers needed for Shrines/Temples, No bonuses)
-- Population (No Landed Elite, Trad finisher or free Aqueducts. Still the t150 pop is not too bad.)
-- Tech accumulation (The need for early Engineering and lower pop leaves a 10-15 turn gap. That hurts since it costs me many of the Renaissance wonders).
<> GPT (religion gold goes to not-free and extra buildings)
Comparing to Full liberty I have:
++ Faith
++ Happy
++ Culture
-- Hammers
- Pop (Collective Rule is effectively substantial Hammers + Food)
- Tech (no Liberty finisher, both need Eng.)
+ GPT
Even though this is not strictly an inferior opening, those early hammers, pop, and tech progression outweigh the benefits here (as expected).
Thanks to Venice there is still room to expand on this map. I'm going to add two more cities: one in the north and one by Kilimanjaro. No thanks to Venice I keep losing CS allies. I'd declare war and snipe that MoV, but we have a DoF and I don't want the diplomatic demerit.
The 7th city. Worth building? I'm not so sure. This city needs (at a minimum) a University, Opera House, and Hotel to not be a drag on my game. That is a lot to establish quickly.
And now the lesson in humility. This game dragged on far too long (to t280) for a game with t234 Internet.
Mistakes:
- Proposing the world's fair in the first vote. This interferes too much with the need for Schools, Factories, Museums, and Archeologists all at the same time. A Peaceful CV is really a "hammer victory" I think
- Not focusing enough on Archeologists. I had bad luck with digs - despite founding 7 cities only 3 are within my borders and none by the cap! Still, I should have been able to dig most sites and instead only got ~11.
- Poor renaissance tech pathing. Of all the lovely cultural Renaissance wonders I only built the Sistine Chapel. I should have gone Printing Press first. For culture Pisa is probably better than early Observatories. I'll be ahead in the Industrial Era either way.
- Too aggressive International Games timing. Honestly, I expected the Immortal AIs to roll over more easily than they did. France is the problem (more below). Because I had proposed these too early I was again hammer constrained and so missed the optimal tourism peak for Musicians. (I voted down my own Proposal but was outvoted).
Internet in 1 turn:
Why is France a problem? Well Napoleon had a very good start with plenty of land for Chateaux spam. He also had a Wonder Spamming cornucopia in Paris:
All this means that in terms of culture and wonder competition this felt more like a Deity game than a typical Immortal game. A 50k culture hurdle.
I wasn't going to post more about this game after t100, but I learned plenty here for my next peaceful CV attempt.