[C3C] 20k Culture attempt. Can the game be salvaged?

In terms of game mechanics, steals can be made without spies. You just need an embassy (and gold). I've stolen ancient age techs before. The probability of success is lower without a spy.

Heck, one conceivable variant is that one only purchases or researches Writing. Then every other tech either needs stolen, or traded for another tech. Such a game would involve plenty of war I'd think, but the human player might not make all war decisions. Could even be interesting to see if it's winnable without ever declaring war on any AI. And 0% science is a fair bit, if not a lot, simpler than doing research. Probably a lower level rather than higher level variant I suppose.

 

It's all about preparation. You know pollution is going to come. You know that building railroads is a tedious task. Mass making workers ahead of time helps make the task go by faster. Then once the terrain is completely done you can have some excess workers join cities.

That's true, but if pollution happens to strike in the next turn in the same city it would definitely have an effect.

To clarify, when mass making workers you should first strive to connect all your cities and rail the 20k city. On your main landmass these workers are not going to be on "standby" for quite some time. They will be building rails and putting the finishing touches on the terrain. When a worker finishes a RR and there's pollution it can reach in the same turn, take the worker away from the area to clean up the pollution. Then once it's cleaned up move the worker back to improving the land. If you don't have any free workers, look around and see if any workers doing other projects can make it in that turn. If it can, pull it away from the project (depending on how many turns left if one turn away obviously don't do that) to finish up pollution. Then make a few more workers. Islands and a different landmass that isn't your core of course are going to be different. You don't want a one turn pollution stack of workers on an island mountain. Three or four would be sufficient to clean up the pollution in a reasonable amount of time. A non core landmass would depend on the situation.

You also want to keep worker slaves from other civilizations. Yes they do work at a slower rate (2 slaves = 1 worker) but they do not cost you anything. If you have enough slaves you can send a stack of them to clean pollution while your own workers build rails.

 

That does sound better than what I was thinking.

What about when/if you have Shakespeare's Theater significantly before rails?

You're talking about cleaning pollution in general. I meant to talk about cleaning pollution for the 20k city. A non core landmass city would be corrupt. A factory in there would be costly and not produce much. A hospital could provide more scientists I suppose, but ICSing space is quicker and still can yield scientists. Though, on a huge map, ICS can easily run into the 512 hard-coded city limit for the total of number of cities on the map existing. So, hospitals in non-core cities could be optimal on a huge map, though maybe not. ICS takes more time and management to setup though I think.

I agree for almost all circumstances. I tried to think of an exception. I started remembering though that I think I saw in one my histographic games that once the military phase was completed, I had gotten rid of many of my units (some were kept to keep AIs locked in a tundra to prevent conquest victory), and maybe also had joined in some workers, I had no unit support cost for workers. So, in that situation, joining in slaves from dead civilizations might be the better choice, since it means more workers joined to cities. But that effect is likely slight, and this seems rather special case.

Oh, in an 100k game with ICS all over the place, you might also not have to pay unit support cost on workers.

What you say though seems true for a 20k game without exception.

Also, maybe it's not relevant to talk about other victory conditions in this thread. I digressed. But, as SirPleb did twice, winning by 20k and other victory conditions on the same turn is possible.

 

It actually doesn't slow you down too much. The key is timing. You don't go for the optional techs right away. With good timing and good research you should be able to get each optional tech for Shakespeare in 5 turns or less. If you're ahead of the AI in research, you can safely research it yourself. If you are worried about getting behind, let the AI research those until you can research Democracy.

Oh, now I see what you're saying! I'm not sure yet. I haven't figured that part out.

 

If doing research, that depends on tech cost and research capacity. It costs more and more beakers the higher the difficulty level, and the bigger the map. Also, if you're self-researching everything ... VMXA has played a bunch of AW games... even if one trades by making peace on a turn, trading, and then immediately declaring war during that turn, which might not be AW, or trading on the first turn it's still more difficult research wise and you can't make gpt from selling tech, since you need military early, especially when the AIs have free units roaming about ... in a Monarchy, it's still a bunch of turns for many techs. Yea, Republic is better for commerce. But, if playing Always War, one might lose a city or two or three since one needs to defend more areas, and more threats come your way. The luxury slider might get used more sure, but if it gets steep, then either starvation or an anarchy is needed. And an anarchy means no more replacements for a while.

Sid tech cost is also very high, and I know VMXA has played some Sid. It's hard to express how steep tech cost can be if you haven't seen it. But, basically I can say that with rather powerful starts that I found using MapFinder, I could almost always have some culture build in my capital up to the midway through the industrial age. When I tried Sid using my capital I would run out of builds for two reasons: the AIs might beat me to something like Bach's Cathedral that I could usually hold off to later. Or because it took me so much longer to research for the techs. So, I stopped using the capital and started using the 2nd city, and it worked better. But, I had a good amount of palace pre-building going on.

Though, yea, if you're playing Monarch in a Republic with early tourist attractions, and some alright other cities, 5 turns sounds about right. Huge Monarch though... maybe not.

Anyways, hope I clarified both of your intended claims. I think they're both correct, just coming from different game contexts.

 

lol, I totally forgot that I'm a Monarch level player. My bad! Thanks for the information!

 

You're welcome.

 

It is a factor 2 compared to emperor, a factor 2.25 compared to monarch and a factor 2.5 compared to regent.

 

Well iirc Free Art is around 1386 beakers on Monarch, 1782 on DG and 3120 on Sid for 8 civ std map size (cost more, if any of the civs are dead at that point, cost more for larger map sizes). You add all the optional tech needed to get to Free Art, it is just not going to happen, nor would it make sense. It may make sense on Monarch, but not going to play that, even on AW 31 civs (my favorite) on 250x250 map. As Spoonwood mention my preferred game is AW or some derivative of it.

I do not play AW on Sid, DG is very hard on 31 civ map and I need to not met more 4/5 civ in the first age or will likely lose. Now that I am very old, I tend to play must dow on first two civs and never have peace with them, no trades (but that is a small shot anyway) and must always have 2 or more civs at war with me. Cannot make peace ever, so it is not all that long till all are at war with me. No pretend wars, DoW someone on another land mass and I have no way to reach them. That is due to the AI going to war mode and choking itself. The higher the level the harder it is on them. If going AW normal mode (dow at contact and no trades) I play at emp on 250x250 31 civs. Most of play time now is on ARPG games, PoE, D2R, Wolcen, Grim Dawn now playing Diablo Immortal.

I played Sid only for about 1.5 years, but only sparingly for a very long time. Once I found AW, that was for me. Anyway as I said I cannot contribute anything to a discussion about 20k.