Cultural Victory T122
Really proud of this effort, my personal best for a non-Kandy CV. This game felt like one from the old days before Great Works of Writing got nerfed. With the Prince AIs advancing at a glacial pace I thought it would be easy to grab all of the Classical and Medieval Great Writers so I focused almost exclusively on that.
Early Game
SIP, Started Scout, Slinger (since a barb Camp appeared nearby), Builder, Monument, Settler, Warrior (two more camps nearby), Settler, Holy Site, Government Plaza, Ancestral Hall, with a purchased Builder thrown in to help chop the districts. Then, I worked the cycle of levy city state -> pillage for faith -> buy Monumentality Settler -> use Ancestral Hall builder to chop out Theater Square to ramp up GW points.
Managed to score first contact envoys from Kabul (T4), Rapa Nui (T8), Mohenjo Daro (T18), Akkad (T22), Hong Kong (T25), and Vilinius (T26) - I was amazed that no AIs had contacted some of these city states 20+ turns into the game. Maybe this is due to them only getting one Warrior to start on Prince and maybe holding it to guard the captial? Huts yielded Scout (T11), envoy (T19), 75 gold (T20), 20 faith (T29), 20 Horses (T47), Sailing boost (T49), Irrigation boost (T60), Divine Right (T75). Those first two were great, the rest pretty unexciting.
Raven King ability was amazing - I hit Early Empire T27 (no boost) and sent Amani bouncing around. Thanks to the envoy from the hut and Mysticism I was able to levy both Kabul and Mohenjo Daro on T32. Raven King Bonus + Oligarchy was gross, making it easy to take cities down with just Warriors. Mohenjo Daro mercenary army pillaged Khmer for 144g and red-lined their capital. However, I decided not to capture it because they had not founded a second city and I did not want to lose the tourism. Much later in the game when they had three cities (T78) Lisbon mercenary army pillaged 333f, 448g and 118s and captured the Khmer capital.Kabul mercenary army pillaged 144g and 90f and took the Zulu capital (T43) plus a Settler. Then they joined up with two of my own units and hit America, capturing their capital (T52), a second Settler, and pillaging another 98f and 50g. Mexico City mercenary army pillaged 130g and 389f and captured two Cree cities (T61 and T66), one of which was very useful because it had a Campus for the Recorded history boost and the other for a Harbor site (finally remembered to slot Veterancy card, I aways forget they changed it).
I noticed several players wiped out the starting continent, but I purposely preserved all of the AIs so they could keep sending tourists. In fact my favorite move of the game was liberating the last Zulu city after it was taken by America, bringing that Civ back fromt he grave! I also ended up gifting America and Khmer one luxury each to help keep their last cities from flipping via loyalty.
Domestically I focused hard on Great Writers. Divine Spark + Oracle + Pingula + Classical Republic (after initial wars in Oligarchy) + Ltierary Tradition got me past 60GW points per turn by the end of the game. My main improvement over past CV GOTMs is that I kept building more Theater Squares and Amphitheaters. I almost always get 5 or 6 up thinking it will be enough, and then end up with one or two Great Writers milling around with no place to put another work at the end of the game. For religion (T58) I took Jesuit Education and Holy Orders Jesuit let me buy 2 Amphitheaters and 2 Museums, while Holy Orders was a wash since I only ever built two Missionaries.
MID GAME
After the early wars, the goals were to race to Printing and Cartography. Printing Press arrived T84 and Cartography on T93, allowing me to meet all the other AIs by T100 exactly. The Great Scientist Aryabahtha helped a lot by boosting Buttress. After that I set science on auto-pilot to Flight (though the game ended before I got there).
When I found the new continents (+2 movement from Raven King really sped this up), I levied a few city states to help by pillaging enough faith for the last round of Archeologists and capturing two cities to serve as Trade Route bases for the overseas Civs. These wars started T108 and I declared peace to get open borders again T118.
The AI several times interrupted my wonder building by standing a Scout on the tile with my wonder in progress. This delayed Pyramids for 3 turns and Temple of Artemis for 2 turns. I am not sure if this was intentional, if so it is kind of clever.
LATE GAME
Got a big science boost when I become suzerain of Babylon with 16 books and 6 artifacts. Actually, I messed up because I sent the Babylon units to pillage without noticing they were at war with Egypt. Egypt moved into the vacuum and conquered them, so I had to levy Preslav to go liberate them again. I ended up liberating Palenque from Indonesia too. All that was lots of fun, but technically did not matter since I never made to to Flight before the game ended. Otherwise, the late game was mostly moving Archeologists around.
Noticed at the end that because I forced myself to focus on chopping I only ever improved two luxuries (Fur and Diamonds) the entire game. Stlll had more than enough amenities thanks to all the city states!
SOURCES OF TOURISM
Great Works of Writing (54%): First Great Writer on T70 and got 9 total (T74, T79, T85, T90, T95, T110, T121). I don’t think any of the AIs ever built a Theater Square so there was no competition, but racing ahead hiked the cost of the last few up to 610GW points.
Wonders (20%): I was surprised how much wonders contributed since I did not put a ton of effort into building them. Built Pyramids (T54) and Oracle (T59) for actual use, and later grabbed Temple of Artemis (T84), Machu Picchu (T104), and Jebel Barkel just for kicks.
Holy City (11%): As usual, the outsize contribution from a mere 8 tourism is due to it getting up early. My religion was founded T58, a dozen turns before the first Great Writer showed up.
Artifacts (6%): Hit Natural History at T107, at which time I already had pre-built two Archeology Museums. Built two more by the end of the game. I only manged to get one museum themed on T119 (a fun turn in which I dug up 3 artifacts) due to my own mistakes (see below). A second got themed T123, but this was after the victory screen already played so did no matter.
Art (6%): First Art Museum T94 (had a Great Artist already waiting). I built a second T111 and purchased the second Great Artist with faith T117. Great Artists always feel so inefficient relative to other sources of tourism due to the high cost and difficulty theming. Art ended up being just as useful as Artifacts this game, which can be chalked up mostly to Pingula plus getting the first artist 13 turns ahead of the first archeologist in a short game.
Music (3%): Great Musician on T107, but I only ever had one slot for Music. Could have bought a second GM if I had managed to build Apandana.
Relics (0%): Never got one. The whole second half of the game I was staring at Canada’s relic but they would never sell it at any price….
Tourism by source. The two big jumps are Printing and themeing the first Archeology Museum. Apologies but the labels got mixed up so Flight should actually be Artifacts.
Tourism by source. The two big jumps are Printing and theming the first Archeology Museum.
Tourism by civ. Here the Printing and theming jumps are visible as well as the Cartography leap.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT:
*Not anticipating the slow pace of the Prince AIs led to my biggest mistake in the game. After recruiting the Great Scientist Aryabahtha, the next up was Hypatia. Having only two Campus (both already with a Libary) I decided to "pass" figuring an AI would take her and I could then use my accumulated GSP for better options. I greatly underestimated how long it would take them to get 60GS points and almost 50 turns passed before she was recruited! If I just burned the 60GSP I would have ended up with at least 3 additional useful GS. As it turns out, Teddy recruited Hypatia T121, one turn before the game ended! By that time I had 600GS points and recruited 4 GS in one turn just for amusement.
*Totally forgot about Pearl of the Danube! I’d have to check but I bet I stupidly built at least two or three Theater Squares that could have been directly across a river but were not.
*No walls. I set the Civic tree on auto-pilot towards Cold War after hitting Natural History and this was a mistake because that meant I passed over Conservation. Probably could have put up a dozen Ancient Walls with Limes and shave a turn off the win if I planned better.
*Lazy pathing. I set all my Archaeologists to head for the nearest artifact instead of moving them one tile at a time. This led to two instances of an archeologist being bounced back home by barbs or enemy units, slowing down theming by a bunch of turns.
*Did not start Apandana until way late, and missed it by literally one turn (could have chopped T103 and it was built elsewhere on T102). That was a bummer as it would have been nice to have two more slots for Great Works boosted by Pingula. Getting scooped hurt especially bad because I finished Machu Picchu T104 and could have had 4 envoys to sling to new continent city states.
*The last one was a total misclick - my finger slipped and I appointed Victor with my third governor title. That was a real drag as it delayed getting Pingula to Grants and Curator by about a dozen turns, but since it was a GOTM I avoided the temptation to re-load.
