1070 culture win

[bostich]

Capital (also GP farm since you build wonders faster in this city with bureaucracy):

Im thinking quite the opposite way on this. In ur capital with burocracy u dont want artists early,u want to get the most out of ur bonus for hammer and gold. So in my last games capital build wonders, other city is main GP farm.

Another thing is, in my last tries i have only build cathedrals in 2 cities to get the most out of the multiplier, the 3rd get culturebombed completely. (Its better to get another 50% of 100 baseculter then of 30).

 

[Xin Yu]

OK. Here's the whole picture:

City 1: GP farm. You want to build National Epic for +100% GP rate, Global Theatre for 3 extra artists without caste system (my previous post had an error here, you can only build two small wonders so you can't build hermitage in the same city). Also granary, library and theatre and as many temples and cathedrals as you can. Pathenon and Sistine Chapel can be built in other cities, but it is recommended to build them in this city to add the GP points. Optionally you can also build monasteries. Therefore, this city will need to build a lot more buildings than others -- my reason to use the capital to take advantage of the bureaucracy civic.

City 2: Cottage town. Build the Hermitage here. Also granary, theatre and as many temples and cathedrals as you can. Library and monasteries are optional. Build either Oracle or Stonehedge but not both, so that you don't generate wrong type of GP.

City 3: Cottage town. Build either Stone hedge or Oracle. Granary, theatre and optionally as many temples and cathedrals as you can. In this city you have the choice of not building many catherals and rely on GAs to culture bomb it to legendary status. Library and monasteries are optional.

Cities 4 and 5: provides theatres, temples, workers and missionaries. You'll heavily rely on whipping, so a granary is a must.

In one of the top 3 cities you should build library, monasteries and use a GS for academy for better science outputs. It is recommended you do this in capital since under bureaucracy the capital gets 50% more commerce. However if your 2nd city has more science output from cottages, then you can do it in the 2nd city.

If you use another city for GP farm, but build wonders in the capital, the wonders don't help your GP points. That's certainly an option based on the land types around your capital.

 

[Perugia]

RE the domination issue. I'm wondering if you found a small city inside the cuture radius of one of the main cities whether it actually expands the borders at all. Also what happens when you culture expands over the map edge is it lost over the edge or does it or "bounce" back elsewhere. If lost then it would pay to found near the edge and you could have 6 cities.

RE city specialisation: I'm all for putting the cathedrals in just 2 cities (unless you risk 6 cities). I prefer to build the GP farm in whichever city has the maximum food + health and only put the GA wonders in there if possible. The city with the best production should focus on GA wonders and buildings. If you are using a philosophical leader then you can have 2 good GP farms one emphasising food and the other GA wonders.

For efficiency the cathedrals should be built first in the cities with the maximum base culture per turn. Likewise the high culture wonders should go in the cities with the most cathedrals (not withstanding GPP specialisation).

Inevitably there is a trade off to ensure all cities mature on the same turn as there's no point the capital reaching legendary status in 0AD while city 2 takes until 1200AD.

If this means building one or more of the cathedrals/wonders in a lower base culture city then that's what I'll do.

I agree the city with max commerce should build library & monasteries for science rather than just culture.

On some maps this may indeed mean a mega capital as per Xin Yu's City 1. I find this works as it is alone in the right hand side of the map where you can chop every forest outside the fat cross. Cities 2 & 3 get founded further west so they don't get the chop hammers.

Early on I pop rush so I can leave the forests until mathematics & bureacracy so you can get real mega hammers from chopping especially with building resources. There are usually 20+ forests in the eastern city's borders for this.

If you chop furthest away first then this will make room to found cities 4 & 5 without diverting the chop hammers. You can often pick up extra health resources with these eg pigs or fish.

As we are spiritual I'm pre-chopping everything under no state religion then switching to organised religion for 5 turns and chop 5 x No or workers forests. Then switch back to no state religion.

 

[Perugia]

A quick update.

I'm on track for a sub 1000AD win as Ghandi with 2 good cities and culture bombing the third. I managed to get 800-900 culture per turn in my 2 big cities while starving away their food reserves. I'm now just 1-2 turns short and managing the domination avoidance. More to follow......

.... I just fell short an achieved a domination in 1010AD at 75.7%/74% when my cities went legendary.

One thing that was against me was that I only met one other Civ as the second was isolated on 5 tiles the other side of the Rockies in 'Washington State' - Oops! A second AI capital pushing back my culture would have helped - I also don't think Monte was an ideal AI to hold back the culture tide on his own, someone crative would have been better. I'll probably try to found my 2nd & 3rd cities further away from the AI next game as well to allow their culture more space.

 

[Xin Yu]

That's too bad. I'm planning to do double culture bomb using 18 GAs. I need to build 8 cities for that purpose. It looks like the possibility to trigger a domination is very high.

 

[Perugia]

@Xin Yu. I'd be interested to see how that works out. Since the 2 cities for the double culture bomb can make do with less than 21 workable tiles. I wonder if it will help avoid domination to place them as far away from the AI as you can by locating them against the edge or in corners of the map.

I'm going with Cathy and Hatty as opponents in my next attempt and am letting them found the first 2 religions so with the creative trait Moscow and Thebes get +9cpt which should help. I'll need 6 cities for this in case I can't get Buddhism and Hinduism to spread to me.

 

[Xin Yu]

My idea is still developing. Now I only want 16 GAs, therefore only 6 cities are needed. The two culture bomed cities will have 3560 culture generated by themselves thus only need 8 GAs each to reach legendary status.

Even without any special resource, a size 9 city (working on farmed grassland) can support 4 artists without much problem. If you have some food specials then you can support 5-6 artists. I'll have 3 good cities each support 5+ artists (and build at least one culture wonder), plus 5 other size 9 cities each support 4 artists.

First using 3 good cities to get 9 GAs. This will be relatively quick. Time it so the 3 'bad' cities will generate GA #10-12 right after the 9th GA. Then the first 3 cities will generate GA # 13-15. The 16th GA comes from the music tech.

The last several turns for each city you can hire more artists with food deficit.

With multiple artists hired, each turn a 'bad' city will generate 24 culture (counts the Sistine Chapel effect -- not confirmed), and a 'good' city will generate more with more artists, wonders and culture buildings.

Suppose you have a philosophy leader, build the pathenon and switch to the civic with 100% GP rate. One good city will also build the national epic for an extra 100% GP rate in that city. Then a bad city can generate 42 GP points each turn. Good cities will have more.

A bad city will only build granary. It'll run specialists for between 16-23 turns (maybe less if run food deficit during the last few turns, but that doesn't make much difference).

The 3 good cities will hire specialists for more turns since each city needs to generate 4 GAs. It is estimated that they will need to run around 40 turns of 5+ specialists and also need to build wonders which have lasting effects. Plus they'll need to build temples. Therefore we can assume that each of them will have close to 50 base culture per turn. After liberalism, even without any other culture multipliers, they can get 3560 culture quickly thus only need 8 GAs to culture bomb to legendary status.

Two of the three good cities only build a granary, one wonder (Sistine chapel or pathenon) and three temples each. They will be culture bombed by the 16 GAs.

One last city will build a granary and as many buildings (library, national epic, Hermitage, temples, cathedrals and any other culture buildings) as possible.

Overall, before the last turn, 5 of 6 cities can stay at sizes 8-9 and one will grow to maximum. 2 cities will have less than 500 culture points, one a bit more than 500, two other a bit more than 3560, and one close to 25000.

 

[Xin Yu]

Looks like only 3 cities is possible! I just started a game with Peter to get extra health and fast granary (once reach size 2, can immediately whip a granary).

Terrian has a lot of flood plains, some forests, and also some specials: wheat, sheep, corn, cow. I got 2 settlers from huts, and was able to put down 3 cities quickly at around turn 7. The only problem is that I don't have marble, therefore it will take a while for me to get pathenon finished.

Once I finish the wonder and get the cities to size 11, I'll hire 6 specialists in each one (one city with corn may be able to hire 7 at size 13). In less than 60 turns I'll have 15 GAs from them!

 

[Xin Yu]

OK, finally finished one game at 1070 AD. A lot of mistakes made. Playing Peter I had 2 settlers from huts and a tech (priesthood), pretty good. There are a lot of floodplains, therefore all 3 cities would be able to hire 7 specialists (adding one wonder, that's 91 GA points/turn). Enough health resources and my total health was at 18, so no health problem. First GA bombed a city to get marble hooked, and copper is within another city's radius. Just no stone.

Each city had the same building sequence at the beginning: one worker, then granary whipped immediately at size 2 as planned. Then library, then theatre in every city as soon as available, then another worker.

After that, the capital would build Pathenon, another city with better hammer production would build sistine chapel, and the 3rd one would build national epic. Temples and monasteries, sometimes missionaries would be built while waiting for available techs. The capital would build all cathedrals.

I first tried to get philosophy ASAP and immediately went for GA runs. By around 300AD I had 15 GAs (plus one from Music), but that's only enough for 2 cities. The third city had less than 10k culture at that time and research was so slow that I only got liberalism in 425 AD.

Came back and restarted from an earlier save, and built 6 cathedrals in the capital while the other two cities running GAs. Wasted one GA on a city which already achieved legendary (the Ctrl key, ah!) Victory at 1070, so it could be 4-5 turns earlier if I did not make that mistake.

Neither of the above two strategies are optimal. Maybe the best way is to only build 2-3 cathedrals in the capital, then all 3 cities do the GA run. With 7 artists hired, it's easy to get 15 GAs in a relatively short period of time. Suppose the GA run takes 40 turns, and while running it, the capital has around 450 culture and the other two have 200 each, then at the end of it, the capital would have 18k culture, and the other two had 8k. Put 2 GAs in the capital and 7 each in the other two, and you are almost there.

If the above strategy holds, then it is not necessary to get all religions. You probably only need to found 4.

 

[Xin Yu]

Just finished it at (950 AD).

Built a 4th city and got oracle saved for education. Thought about using it for CS but was not fast enough for that. My point of view is that CS is better than education: CS boosts research rate, therefore it saves roughly the same number of turns by using oracle to CS or education, but you gain benefit of hammer production as well with an early CS.

Wasn't coordinating good enough. The capital was about 6 turns after the first city reached legendary status, and 3 turns after the second. Only built 3 sets of religious buildings (temple, monastery, cathedral) in capital. This saves some time since you have so many things to build in the same city to get 500+ culture per turn at the final stage.

MY last post had an error: every city had 8 artists instead of 7. The GP points for the 3 cities were 91 (with sistine chapel), 94(with pathenon and hermitage) and 112(with national epic).

Major hurdles are: 1) slow research: AI civs didn't help much on research. I researched everything by myself except monotheism.Couldn't hire scientists really hurted. 2) the productivity in capital was not good enough for building a granary, a library, a theatre, 3 temples, 3 monasteries, 3 cathedrals, pathenon and hermitage. Even with these buildings all doubled their culture values I still only had 540 culture per turn.

 

[Smellycowsquid]

I thought I was clever-I beelined Parthenon and Agriculture- massively farmed(Warlords Gandhi, PHI,SPI) and then got Caste System, Pacifism, and National epic in my Capital. I got so many GA- but by this time it was a little too late. I built my third city in 1100 ad, and I had 10 GAs waiting for it! But my two other cities weren't too close at all. Back to the drawing boards.

-Lessons learned
-Farm+more workers early
-Build cities early

 

[Xin Yu]

I prefer 1 worker followed by a granary, then library and theatre. Afterwards I'll have one city dedicaed to worker/settler (will make three more workers and one settler) while other cities continue to build buildings. The reason for building libraries and theatres was to speed up research.

Besides the problem of research, my approach also put too much burden on the capital city. Maybe building one cathedral in each of the other two cities is better. That way two cities can reach 8900 culture thus only needs 6 GAs each, leaving 4 eatra GAs for the capital.

 

[Perugia]

I'm running a slightly different strategy. This focusses on generating maximum growth in the capital while building all the GA wonders there to maximise the effects of cathedrals. Happiness is maintained by running HR and upping culture rate plus gathering happy resources. All forests around the capital are chopped when we are running Bureaucracy, OR and get 100% for a temple/cathedral or wonder.

City 4 should come from a culture flip. If it does second catherals will all go in the best culture city of the other 2.

My current game has the capital founded on 3 deer + corn + copper, horses, 10 forests + 4 grasslands. There was an 11th forest that was chopped and irrigated. The capital can get to size 25 easily to run 4+ artists each turn and work the 10 forests and hammer tiles.

Research has been targetted on getting to CS as soon as possible to make up for no cottages in capital.

Other cities are founded to gather health resources + marble & stone and maximise own culture. No non GA wonders are built. I'm being generous to the AI and freely giving away techs and they are giving me back good ones like Calendar, Monarchy

I'll build the copper cathedrals next then switch to pacifism and irrigate over the horses & copper. Once the city is able to achieve legendary status I'll run 25+ artists as only one can starve each turn to pop off the remaining GPPs.

The representation beakers will be used to learn guilds late in the game so we can get a grocer out for extra health.

The govenor messed up one turn and Moses was popped. I'll use him to learn Liberalism.

 

[WilliamOfOrange]

Interesting stuff about farming over the copper for more growth. You don't need the production bonus after that point?

I am assuming that you guys are not using Slavery a lot and use CS ASAP. Slavery gets the culture buildings there earlier, but would prevent you from reaching large pop and running more GAs sooner. I have been whipping stuff like crazy but only when it costs 2 pop because of the bug, but try not to whip 3 or 4 pop. If you have a city with say 5-6 food resources at 5 food, then whipping should be maxed out totally, wouldn't you agree?

Sounds like Perguia is growing large as can be and farming GAs, the problem that I find is that the happiness cap means you need to whip temples and whatnot early on.

Why farm the horses after building the copper cathedrals and how many are we talking here? One from each of the 3 religions or 2 each?

 

[Xin Yu]

Perugia,

Your plan is superior. Get to maximum population the city can support then hire all citizens as artists (hehe, I did that in civ2, sweet memory). However you don't want to go all the way to size 1. Plan ahead and decide how many turns you want to run this stretch, and stop in the middle (typically at the size where you reached health cap), then at the end continue.

For example, if you start at size 25, and your health cap is at size 16 (where you can support 8 specialists), and you plan to do this for 30 turns. Then you first run all artists for 9 turns, stop at 16 and hire only 8 artists for 12 turns, then hire all citizens as artists again for 9 turns.

In addition, if you have extra food at size 25 and that's enough for supporting more than 8 artists without losing a pop, then you should first hire partial deficit to take advantage of the food surplus. For example, if you have 16 remaining food in the food box, which is enough for hiring 9 artists without losing a population, then you should first run one turn with only 9 artists (will deplete the food box), then the next turn start with 25 artists.

Also I think it is a good idea to use a Great Scientist or Great Prophet to lightbulb some techs in the early stage. This also allows you to hire scientists to speed up research. Therefore you'll save a lot of research turns. The GS/GPs will be easy to get by hiring 2 scientists, 2 artists and 1-2 priests.

Candidates for lightbulbing are CS, philosophy, theology, education and liberalism, with one of them can be obtained by building the Oracle at a 4th city. I don't know the optimal number out of the remaining 4 techs to be lightbulbed, since the more GPs used for lightbulbing, the more difficult to get GAs in the later stage.

 

[jesusin]

Great thread, guys, keep up the good work. I'm having a lot of fun reading your tactics.

All forests around the capital are chopped when we are running Bureaucracy, OR and get 100% for a temple/cathedral or wonder.

Perugia, you are using a number of good micromanaging tricks. The one quoted is not perfect, though. It is wise to save your forests for Bureaucracy and OR, but it doesn't matter if you use them for 100% bonus buildings or not.

 

[Perugia]

In general there's no problem in whipping a city with large amounts of bonus food and keeping it small until you need to change to caste system but if you are whipping a lot then there will be happiness issues the same as for a larger city.

I chose Saladin (Phiosophical and Spiritual) in this game so the focus in on one single city maximising GA production. Whipping the capital seems counter to that objective.

I don't mind going over the happiness cap from time to time as it's easy to grow the cap from hooking up luxuries as your borders expand and you getting Calendar from the AI. Building archers/warriors in 1 turn. Building cheap Temples (you did choose a spiritual civ didn't you). Setting the culture slider to 10-20% keeps the remaining citizens happy.

Sure the city will not get starved down to 1 pop its just the surplus 10 or so pop working 2f1h grassland forests that will be converted into instantaneous culture + GPP points once all multipliers are in place.

But the 10 hunters/farmers supporting the GA's when the city goes stagnant will be made artists again for the last 10 turns as that will produce about 3x more culture over the short term plus 495 GPPs.

Yes I will consume the food surplus first by running partial food deficit.

I don't find research is a problem that needs lightbulbing and would rather keep the GPPs for GAs. I would build the oracle late and have used it for Devine Right in some attempts and possibly build the pyramids and would allow a chance that a GP or GE to pop in a 4th city.

I'm not sure about the pyramids as I usually take constitution as the free tech with liberalism and before that I do not use a minimum of artists unti I can run pacifism + representation. This will allow you to learn all the techs you ignored like currency banking and guilds. I will build a grocer late on for the extra health allowing more artists to be run in the late stage.

 

[Perugia]

Great thread, guys, keep up the good work. I'm having a lot of fun reading your tactics.

Perugia, you are using a number of good micromanaging tricks. The one quoted is not perfect, though. It is wise to save your forests for Bureaucracy and OR, but it doesn't matter if you use them for 100% bonus buildings or not.

I'm glad your enjoying this thread.

I disagree with you about the 100% bonus buildings as I will now explain by example ( I probably did not explain what I meant very well).

I will not chop the aquaduct or monasteries or missionaries etc.

But I will chop the temple, Hindu Mandir (w/i copper), Christian Cathedral (w/i stone) or National Epic (w/i marble) etc. If I lack copper I won't chop the Hindu Mandir if I have stone and can build a Synagogue instead.

The only exception to this is that I will chop a granary where the city has surplus food.

BTW I'm also assuming most of the forests are saved for mathematics because we don't need the cathedrals until we have a significant cultre base to multiply up.

 

[jesusin]

I kindly insist that it doesn’t matter. Let me use an example.

You are planning to build a monastery (40h) and then a Hindu Mandir (200h). You have copper, Maths, no OR and no Bureaucracy. Your city produces 5 hpt (bear with me, it is only an example) so it would take 8 turns to build the monastery and 20 turns to build the Mandir with its 100% bonus. Luckily you have a forest available (20h), so you won’t have to wait all 28 turns.

With your idea of chopping with bonus, you would wait until the monastery is done (8turns) to chop. Then you would chop for 40 hammers. You would have to complete another 160 hammers and that would take you 16 turns. In all, 24 turns.

With my idea of chopping anytime, I might chop for the monastery. The chop would give me 20 hammers (I can hear you saying “hey, 20 is less than 40, I was right” but hold on just a little more). I would have to complete another 20 hammers and that would take me 4 turns. Then I would have to build the whole Mandir, 200 hammers, in 20 turns. In all, 24 turns.

You see? It’s the same to chop with or without bonus. Now you can decide when to chop basing your decision on other factors like enjoying the benefits of the monastery right now or the worker having better things to do than chopping right now.

 

[Perugia]

I see where you are coming from and have to agree you are correct.

However, if I have nothing better to build than the monastery for 2 turns and want to switch to a Hindu Mandir as soon as copper is hooked up then plainly I'd be better off chopping with bonus to get the Hindu Mandir completed in 18 turns with the monastery completing after a further 6 turns.

So you are correct as long as the non-bonus buildings you are planning to complete are essential to the game plan.

It would appear that your argument applies to units or buildings when running OR. For example if you plan to build a missionary and a monastery it's absolutely fine to chop the missionary? Do you agree?

Overall it's all about getting the essential builds out as early as possible whether settlers/workers/units/buildings/wonders - the old exponential factor that has been mentioned in may places in the forums.