Wainy's (Cultural!) Deity LP - Persia

[omgsrsly]

I'm not sure what the optimal number of cities is, but it's almost certainly 2 or 3.

after the latest patch you can do 4 cities efficiently if you have the locations available, which is admittedly p rare on diety but 3 is a good sweet spot for cultural games. not settling that third city (and your choice of city location for the second city) was probably the biggest mistake you made in that first persia game imo

in the latest game i don't think you have a legitimate 'good' third city spot that won't provoke the AI and the only open land is fairly resource poor but even despite that i probably wouldve built a third city on the coast (since those whales are going to be grabbed by your cap eventually) because i think its easy to generate enough culture mid to late game to exceed the increase in policy costs.

 

[w a i n y]

I'm not sure what the optimal number of cities is, but it's almost certainly 2 or 3.

after the latest patch you can do 4 cities efficiently if you have the locations available, which is admittedly p rare on diety but 3 is a good sweet spot for cultural games. not settling that third city (and your choice of city location for the second city) was probably the biggest mistake you made in that first persia game imo

in the latest game i don't think you have a legitimate 'good' third city spot that won't provoke the AI and the only open land is fairly resource poor but even despite that i probably wouldve built a third city on the coast (since those whales are going to be grabbed by your cap eventually) because i think its easy to generate enough culture mid to late game to exceed the increase in policy costs.

First game I should have founded my second city to the east and left it at that. I disagree that 4 cities is optimal. Even after 132 turns I'm only getting 11 culture per turn in my second city out of 95 total, an increase of only 13% over just having 1 city, or 3% after accounting for the increased policy costs (1.13/1.1). Of course, I also got a great artist from that city, and after adjusting for the 8cpt that gives me (6 base + 33% for having a world wonder with the piety policy) I'm really gaining 25% more culture and 14% faster policies (1.25/1.1). And I'm about half-way through the game already! But great artist generation does not scale linearly with the number of cities, and cultural CS (currently 25% of my total culture per turn) doesn't scale at all.
I challenge you to try a 4-city example and crunch the numbers to show it's better than 3 or 2. Will you take me up on it?

 

[Gwenwyn]

Wainy: I was wondering whether or not you were planning to settle a coastal city at any point, although I guess not, given your comments above.

How important do you think Sydney Opera House, and to a lesser extent Cristo Redentor are in a game of this nature, and is it worth settling a mediocre coastal site as your 2nd or 3rd city to ensure the ability to build them? I realise SOH is more important for OCC (fewer great artists, etc.), but I'd have assumed that for a 2-3 city culture game, a coastal city was a must.

 

[omgsrsly]

i'm not at home atm so i can't double check #s so this will be pretty rough. at ~ turn 130 going for your 11th policy (with two free policies) your fourth city might generate:

- 1 from liberty opener
- 2+3+2 from cultural buildings and w/e piety policy gives a +1 per
- 1 from a wonder

i also don't know if sistine chapel and reformation are additive or multiplicative but thats around 14 culture per turn. with only 95 culture an additional 28 culture per turn is a p huge boost and should give you your 11th policy a turn or so earlier even with an additional cost of ~200 cultural points.

but the problem w/ this analysis is that its p facile, it ignores the larger benefit of the additional cities in generating gold and science and hammers and the flexibility that those offer. i mean its pointless to 'optimize' efficiently reaching the end of the game if your choices make it impossible for you to actually reach the end of the game. by the time you get to your 25th policy the marginal cultural benefit of that 4th city will rarely (if ever?) met the added cost but it should put you in a much better position to reach that point of the game

edit: to make it clear, my math above is sort of garabage but i also don't think that it matters all that much, since the calculation is much more complex than you're allowing. to speak specifically about your 1st persia game going north along the coast for your second city and then southeast on the isthmus for a third seems patently superior than any other city settling options in the larger sense. imo iirc obv &c

 

[The Pilgrim]

Very nice so far. Third time's the charm, I hope.

BTW, partial opening of Civil Service and Education with first RA's is a great idea. Never crossed my mind, so thank you for this.

 

[Buccaneer]

According to my benchmark, 11 policies at around 130 turns is good. It's around this time one should have done the Acoustics thing with Legalism->Opera Houses, GE->Sistine and building Hermitage.

 

[w a i n y]

Wainy: I was wondering whether or not you were planning to settle a coastal city at any point, although I guess not, given your comments above.

How important do you think Sydney Opera House, and to a lesser extent Cristo Redentor are in a game of this nature, and is it worth settling a mediocre coastal site as your 2nd or 3rd city to ensure the ability to build them? I realise SOH is more important for OCC (fewer great artists, etc.), but I'd have assumed that for a 2-3 city culture game, a coastal city was a must.

I'm not going nearly that far in the tech tree. Once I reach archaeology, I'm basically done with the necessary techs. Ideally I'd get to artillery by the end of the game for military, via chem and fertilizer for tile yields, but that's not even a must except for defense.

i'm not at home atm so i can't double check #s so this will be pretty rough. at ~ turn 130 going for your 11th policy (with two free policies) your fourth city might generate:

- 1 from liberty opener
- 2+3+2 from cultural buildings and w/e piety policy gives a +1 per
- 1 from a wonder

i also don't know if sistine chapel and reformation are additive or multiplicative but thats around 14 culture per turn. with only 95 culture an additional 28 culture per turn is a p huge boost and should give you your 11th policy a turn or so earlier even with an additional cost of ~200 cultural points.

but the problem w/ this analysis is that its p facile, it ignores the larger benefit of the additional cities in generating gold and science and hammers and the flexibility that those offer. i mean its pointless to 'optimize' efficiently reaching the end of the game if your choices make it impossible for you to actually reach the end of the game. by the time you get to your 25th policy the marginal cultural benefit of that 4th city will rarely (if ever?) met the added cost but it should put you in a much better position to reach that point of the game

edit: to make it clear, my math above is sort of garabage but i also don't think that it matters all that much, since the calculation is much more complex than you're allowing. to speak specifically about your 1st persia game going north along the coast for your second city and then southeast on the isthmus for a third seems patently superior than any other city settling options in the larger sense. imo iirc obv &c

You're right, it is much more complex than this, especially as the game wears on. It's also worth noting that additional cities slow your early policies down rather significantly, which delays things like representation and organized religion, so you're doubly slowing down your culture. But obviously by end-game you're getting more than 10% extra culture per city. And your point about getting more gold, science etc. is also valid. I think the best way to figure it out is just to play lots of culture games and average the finish times.

 

[omgsrsly]

having played a decent # of deity cultural games i can say i only get more than 3 cities out maybe 1 in every 6 games. the AI expands so rapidly and the diplo penalties for expanding into the AI are so severe that realistically the biggest deterrent to expansion is my inability to defend myself, rather than the cost of cultural policies. that said i tried i game w/ france where i built 5 cities and that seemed to be too many, my fifth city never got to the point where it contributed enough culture and i ended up going for a science win instead. also the fifth city doesnt get the free opera house from legalism.

 

[w a i n y]

having played a decent # of deity cultural games i can say i only get more than 3 cities out maybe 1 in every 6 games. the AI expands so rapidly and the diplo penalties for expanding into the AI are so severe that realistically the biggest deterrent to expansion is my inability to defend myself, rather than the cost of cultural policies. that said i tried i game w/ france where i built 5 cities and that seemed to be too many, my fifth city never got to the point where it contributed enough culture and i ended up going for a science win instead. also the fifth city doesnt get the free opera house from legalism.

Well, 5 is def. too many, but I agree that even 3 or 4 makes it hard to defend yourself.

 

[MadDjinn]

vexing did a nice image (War Academy, Social Policy basics thread) that shows 1city vs. 4 city vs. 4 city w representation.

As long as you get wonders in each city + the right wonders, you should be able to build up to museums and have the other 3 cities help with SP acquisitions. getting Sydney OH should be a must, given the high cost of the last few policies.

 

[tommynt]

First game I should have founded my second city to the east and left it at that. I disagree that 4 cities is optimal. Even after 132 turns I'm only getting 11 culture per turn in my second city out of 95 total, an increase of only 13% over just having 1 city, or 3% after accounting for the increased policy costs (1.13/1.1). Of course, I also got a great artist from that city, and after adjusting for the 8cpt that gives me (6 base + 33% for having a world wonder with the piety policy) I'm really gaining 25% more culture and 14% faster policies (1.25/1.1). And I'm about half-way through the game already! But great artist generation does not scale linearly with the number of cities, and cultural CS (currently 25% of my total culture per turn) doesn't scale at all.
I challenge you to try a 4-city example and crunch the numbers to show it's better than 3 or 2. Will you take me up on it?

what a great calculation.
Obviously culture per city is the only thing that matters when going for a cultural victory

I mean honestly ...thats like counting only apples when some1 askes you how much fruits u have in the baskets ...
Moderator Action: Don't troll around.

Well, 5 is def. too many, but I agree that even 3 or 4 makes it hard to defend yourself.

5 is definatly not too many when acounting the policy costs an"how hard it is too defend" (More cities = more production = more units = better military OBVIOUSLY)

5 MIGHT be too many to keep your civ happy - but thats only reason why 3-4 MIGHT be better - also 5 makes it harder to abuse Legalism.

 

[jega001]

Hey if you want to make this a pissing contest I'll put my stream out there too.

Of course culture per city isn't the only thing that matters, but like waniy said

But great artist generation does not scale linearly with the number of cities, and cultural CS (currently 25% of my total culture per turn) doesn't scale at all.

As to number of cities well for one thing there's what I just quoted, but to the point if your trying to win a cultural victory not a domination victory thinly veiled as a cultural victory on Deity your on the clock. MadDjnns Korea video shows it quite well. If you cant pull a victory by turn 300 your pretty well screwed. Yeah sometimes you might still be able to win but never count on it. Your going to get beat to a victory condition, your going to get nuked, or both, most of the time. The addition of cities hurts your most endgame with the increase in policy costs making the game last longer then necessary to complete your win. That's why 5 isn't optimal.

 

[tommynt]

The addition of cities hurts your most endgame with the increase in policy costs making the game last longer then necessary to complete your win. That's why 5 isn't optimal.

well thats the problem - this statement is just as narrow minded as waynies "calculations"

you dont increase game length with more cities in general.

Opoosite is true:
More cities = faster teching IF HAPPY WILL STILL BE OK
Faster teching = more early culture boosts and Modifiers
Faster modifiers = faster win

in cult tgames the early cult/t doesnt matter at all - what matters is how fast u can get it "to the max"
Having 25 or 30 early on isnt important at all if u can get opera house and Christo 20 turns more early and thats the point every1 is missing!
Getting these makes the penaltie from more cities just totaly redundant.

usually more cities increase gold/t (espacially in GA) and also sciense a lot - therefore u can finance RAs more easily and get the techs.

just forget all these dumb and useless cult/t cult/city and artist calculations.
What matters is getting all the modifiers and Christo as fast as possible.
early artists? screw them. Way more useful to have GE rdy when u can build the important wonders

also if u outtech ai (or keep up) u dont have to worry about stuff like nukes ...

 

[w a i n y]

well thats the problem - this statement is just as narrow minded as waynies "calculations"

you dont increase game length with more cities in general.

Opoosite is true:
More cities = faster teching IF HAPPY WILL STILL BE OK
Faster teching = more early culture boosts and Modifiers
Faster modifiers = faster win

in cult tgames the early cult/t doesnt matter at all - what matters is how fast u can get it "to the max"
Having 25 or 30 early on isnt important at all if u can get opera house and Christo 20 turns more early and thats the point every1 is missing!
Getting these makes the penaltie from more cities just totaly redundant.

usually more cities increase gold/t (espacially in GA) and also sciense a lot - therefore u can finance RAs more easily and get the techs.

just forget all these dumb and useless cult/t cult/city and artist calculations.
What matters is getting all the modifiers and Christo as fast as possible.
early artists? screw them. Way more useful to have GE rdy when u can build the important wonders

also if u outtech ai (or keep up) u dont have to worry about stuff like nukes ...

Well, I'm not getting Christo or the Opera House, since I think great artists will be able to carry me through. Getting an extra 30 culture per turn for the last third-half of the game with the 2 free great artists +freedom ++ should balance out -10% on the last few policies (obviously it's more complicated than this). I'm also likely to get all the important wonders (though perhaps not the Louvre, even with the aggressive beelining. I think it's just a question of two different strategies: a tech-intensive one where the two late-game wonders and Broadcast towers balance out the sacrifice in early culture (which is more important than late culture, as I've said), and a game which is culture-focused from the beginning but sacrifices these wonders and the fast teching. The former benefits from more cities than the latter (since the free policy get better the more cities you have, as does science, but intrinsic CPT gets worse).
Why don't we all sit tight and see how this turns out?

 

[omgsrsly]

The addition of cities hurts your most endgame with the increase in policy costs making the game last longer then necessary to complete your win. That's why 5 isn't optimal.

the point tommynt was making and that i agree with that is that you still get through the game quicker w/ more cities. a OCC culture victory should always take longer because you reach a point where you cant keep up with even the base increase in social policy costs. turn 130 is sort of an interesting timeframe to talk about because in a 4 city culture game that's around when you really start to get a big upswing in culture and gold per turn at least how i play it since you've gotten sistine up are close to abusing legalism for opera houses, constitution and reformation mean you don't really need broadcast towers and you can tech towards sydney/cristo w/o RAs for a cheap last tree. the game should be over in another 100 turns.

whereas w a two or OCC culture game that middle period typically means a slowdown or at least stagnation because of the way social policy costs increase. its less about trading early culture policies for late ones that trading early for middle.

 

[w a i n y]

The addition of cities hurts your most endgame with the increase in policy costs making the game last longer then necessary to complete your win. That's why 5 isn't optimal.

the point tommynt was making and that i agree with that is that you still get through the game quicker w/ more cities. a OCC culture victory should always take longer because you reach a point where you cant keep up with even the base increase in social policy costs. turn 130 is sort of an interesting timeframe to talk about because in a 4 city culture game that's around when you really start to get a big upswing in culture and gold per turn at least how i play it since you've gotten sistine up are close to abusing legalism for opera houses, constitution and reformation mean you don't really need broadcast towers and you can tech towards sydney/cristo w/o RAs for a cheap last tree. the game should be over in another 100 turns.

whereas w a two or OCC culture game that middle period typically means a slowdown or at least stagnation because of the way social policy costs increase. its less about trading early culture policies for late ones that trading early for middle.

No, tommynt was not saying the culture for 4 cities was good enough to outweigh the extra policy costs, just that it allows you to get to later cultural buildings and the Industrial-era wonders faster. And I'm arguing that this is irrelevant for the type of game I'm doing, since I'm RA spamming to get Opera houses and Museums within a reasonable timeframe, and am ignoring the late-game wonders to get more great artists early. I don't have to rely on fast teching with multiple cities.

 

[tommynt]

Well, I'm not getting Christo or the Opera House, since I think great artists will be able to carry me through. Getting an extra 30 culture per turn for the last third-half of the game with the 2 free great artists +freedom ++ should balance out -10% on the last few policies (obviously it's more complicated than this). I'm also likely to get all the important wonders (though perhaps not the Louvre, even with the aggressive beelining. I think it's just a question of two different strategies: a tech-intensive one where the two late-game wonders and Broadcast towers balance out the sacrifice in early culture (which is more important than late culture, as I've said), and a game which is culture-focused from the beginning but sacrifices these wonders and the fast teching. The former benefits from more cities than the latter (since the free policy get better the more cities you have, as does science, but intrinsic CPT gets worse).
Why don't we all sit tight and see how this turns out?

Ok good point.
So you say u dont have to play perfect because you win anyway. Fair enough - really.

The types of games I play (GOTM and multiplayer vs best opponent) force me to play perfect if I want win (and I like winning).
So I am used to not only play strats which might mean win but to play "the" perfect strat - which isnt allways possible but at least it shold be possible in theory

 

[w a i n y]

Ok good point.
So you say u dont have to play perfect because you win anyway. Fair enough - really.

The types of games I play (GOTM and multiplayer vs best opponent) force me to play perfect if I want win (and I like winning).
So I am used to not only play strats which might mean win but to play "the" perfect strat - which isnt allways possible but at least it shold be possible in theory

No, I'm playing this way because I think it is optimal - or at least, one of several optimal CV play-styles. Whether this is true, we'll have to see.

 

[JamesCivFan]

So W a i n y, if you finally win this game with Persia, could you post your grand strategy step by step, because it would be helpful to see? For example:

Going for Philosophy as soon as possible, taking Liberty in the beginning, then taking Free Settler, Free worker, and opening Piety. What to build for the first 50 turns or so.

On About turn 80 starting RA's to get to Education fast, etc etc. You get the point I believe.

I'm trying to win a similar Victory with Siam now (Deity, Pangaea), using their ability with CS's. Only problem being the constant wars with the same AI that never stop, even after 120 turns or so. Any tips on how to get a peace treaty with such AI's? (I've tried the trick of getting gold per turn to sub zero and still nothing).

 

[w a i n y]

So W a i n y, if you finally win this game with Persia, could you post your grand strategy step by step, because it would be helpful to see? For example:

Going for Philosophy as soon as possible, taking Liberty in the beginning, then taking Free Settler, Free worker, and opening Piety. What to build for the first 50 turns or so.

On About turn 80 starting RA's to get to Education fast, etc etc. You get the point I believe.

I'm trying to win a similar Victory with Siam now (Deity, Pangaea), using their ability with CS's. Only problem being the constant wars with the same AI that never stop, even after 120 turns or so. Any tips on how to get a peace treaty with such AI's? (I've tried the trick of getting gold per turn to sub zero and still nothing).

You have to sell all your gold as well, then offer open borders. That should generally work. I can't say I have a grand strategy to post, beyond what I've described in the video.