Standard pangea map with chosen opponents.
Whew! Beat a UN vote by 4 turns. With all the conquered folks, I'm not sure anyone would have had the votes, but it is still a huge relief.
The basic strategy was inspired by snarzberry's deity culutral strategy guide. The basics are still there - stay at 1 city and tech through RAs. Here are my major tweaks:
1) I played Arabia. The basic thought was that the 2x luxuries would be a game-changer. I could afford a few extras that would help.
2) As a result of extra cash, I did have up to 3 cultural allies at different points in the game. These weren't critical, but they often were a non-trivial chunk of my culture before the late game cultural explosion (and even then, the CSs were around 20% of my culture generation).
3) After an education slingshot, currency was the priority (for the bazaar). I more or less let tech take me where it wanted to. I, of course, did block and manually research cheaper techs, but I didn't specifcally have astronomy or acoustics or archeology setup for any slingshots. As a result, I didn't take rationalism for the free techs. Extra RAs made up for that loss.
4) Opening build was monument->worker->scout->library->NC. I would have skipped the worker had I found a culture ruins and simply taken the free one.
5) Opening SPs were Tradition -> Meritocracy. I would have (and maybe should have anyway - I'll have to look at the math on skipping the 3cpt from Tradition) skipped Tradition had I found a culture ruins. The second worker was captured early, and while I eventually liberated it, a 2nd worker early would have been nice. As it was, I was glad to have 2. The meritocracy is necessary for a GE to "steal" an early wonder.
6) Wonders, overall, weren't a priority. I ended up with 2 useful ones, The Oracle and Cristo (the only truly essential one) ones and built Eiffel late since nobody else seemed to want to build it. Stonehenge would have been nice, but it truly isn't essential. I figure I lost 3000 or so total culture by not building it. That delayed winning by about 8 turns. Stonehenge instead of The Oracle would have been a wash in terms of turns as the free social policy saved 8 turns on the back end as well. Of course, with Stonehenge you also get faster early SPs, which is nice, and can more easily get another GE, which would help a ton with the only truly essential wonder, Cristo. So I would have GE'ed Stonehenge had it still been an option, but The Oracle was a fine consolation prize (and provided my only wonder when I hit the Freedom tree for the first 100% bonus). Oh, and I didn't even bother trying for Globalization and the Sydeny Opera House. Too much extra blocking and RAs in order for an 8 turn time savings. I'm not convinced it is worth the effort.
7) Early culture is nice, but not a priority. Until the multipliers are all in place, a few base cpt isn't going to make a huge difference.
Random stats:
Most of the time in the mid-game, my research was 60 or less. You can see why RAs are so critical.
I built 2 GSs, 5 GAs, and 1 GE (from Meritocracy). The GSs were saved and combined with Oxford University to get Electricty, Telegraph, and Radio all in the same turn. I bought the broadcast tower (thank you, Arabian bazaar), and immediately went to work on Cristo. At that point, my reseach was done. The GAs were used for landmarks as each gave a 24 cpt boost once the multipliers were in place. That was a 3rd of my culture generation.
I signed 19 RAs. The last was an insurance agreement, so was largely wasted.
367 cpt culture at the peak. 121 hammers/turn could be cranked out for utopia build.
I had 2 silver and 1 marble in the city radius. 4 luxuries would surely have been nicer, but Arabia kept me in it with just those 3. All were sold, of course, until late game when I know longer needed the cash.
A few things I did poorly:
1) I should have put in artist specialists as soon as I could. You do need 2 GSs, which you can let your university generate, but earlier focus on GAs probably would have gotten me an extra one, which would have shaved off a few more turns.
2) A little more focus on blocking would have gotten me earlier Acoustics. I didn't feel that any other desirable tech was particularly delayed during the game.
3) For some reason, I went COmmerce rather than Patronage as the 5th tree. In 1 city culture game, I think I would have been better off with Patronage and would have filled it out long before some of the less great SPs in the core trees (Tradition, LIberty, Piety, and Freedom)
Whew! Beat a UN vote by 4 turns. With all the conquered folks, I'm not sure anyone would have had the votes, but it is still a huge relief.
The basic strategy was inspired by snarzberry's deity culutral strategy guide. The basics are still there - stay at 1 city and tech through RAs. Here are my major tweaks:
1) I played Arabia. The basic thought was that the 2x luxuries would be a game-changer. I could afford a few extras that would help.
2) As a result of extra cash, I did have up to 3 cultural allies at different points in the game. These weren't critical, but they often were a non-trivial chunk of my culture before the late game cultural explosion (and even then, the CSs were around 20% of my culture generation).
3) After an education slingshot, currency was the priority (for the bazaar). I more or less let tech take me where it wanted to. I, of course, did block and manually research cheaper techs, but I didn't specifcally have astronomy or acoustics or archeology setup for any slingshots. As a result, I didn't take rationalism for the free techs. Extra RAs made up for that loss.
4) Opening build was monument->worker->scout->library->NC. I would have skipped the worker had I found a culture ruins and simply taken the free one.
5) Opening SPs were Tradition -> Meritocracy. I would have (and maybe should have anyway - I'll have to look at the math on skipping the 3cpt from Tradition) skipped Tradition had I found a culture ruins. The second worker was captured early, and while I eventually liberated it, a 2nd worker early would have been nice. As it was, I was glad to have 2. The meritocracy is necessary for a GE to "steal" an early wonder.
6) Wonders, overall, weren't a priority. I ended up with 2 useful ones, The Oracle and Cristo (the only truly essential one) ones and built Eiffel late since nobody else seemed to want to build it. Stonehenge would have been nice, but it truly isn't essential. I figure I lost 3000 or so total culture by not building it. That delayed winning by about 8 turns. Stonehenge instead of The Oracle would have been a wash in terms of turns as the free social policy saved 8 turns on the back end as well. Of course, with Stonehenge you also get faster early SPs, which is nice, and can more easily get another GE, which would help a ton with the only truly essential wonder, Cristo. So I would have GE'ed Stonehenge had it still been an option, but The Oracle was a fine consolation prize (and provided my only wonder when I hit the Freedom tree for the first 100% bonus). Oh, and I didn't even bother trying for Globalization and the Sydeny Opera House. Too much extra blocking and RAs in order for an 8 turn time savings. I'm not convinced it is worth the effort.
7) Early culture is nice, but not a priority. Until the multipliers are all in place, a few base cpt isn't going to make a huge difference.
Random stats:
Most of the time in the mid-game, my research was 60 or less. You can see why RAs are so critical.
I built 2 GSs, 5 GAs, and 1 GE (from Meritocracy). The GSs were saved and combined with Oxford University to get Electricty, Telegraph, and Radio all in the same turn. I bought the broadcast tower (thank you, Arabian bazaar), and immediately went to work on Cristo. At that point, my reseach was done. The GAs were used for landmarks as each gave a 24 cpt boost once the multipliers were in place. That was a 3rd of my culture generation.
I signed 19 RAs. The last was an insurance agreement, so was largely wasted.
367 cpt culture at the peak. 121 hammers/turn could be cranked out for utopia build.
I had 2 silver and 1 marble in the city radius. 4 luxuries would surely have been nicer, but Arabia kept me in it with just those 3. All were sold, of course, until late game when I know longer needed the cash.
A few things I did poorly:
1) I should have put in artist specialists as soon as I could. You do need 2 GSs, which you can let your university generate, but earlier focus on GAs probably would have gotten me an extra one, which would have shaved off a few more turns.
2) A little more focus on blocking would have gotten me earlier Acoustics. I didn't feel that any other desirable tech was particularly delayed during the game.
3) For some reason, I went COmmerce rather than Patronage as the 5th tree. In 1 city culture game, I think I would have been better off with Patronage and would have filled it out long before some of the less great SPs in the core trees (Tradition, LIberty, Piety, and Freedom)
