Turn 35 modern
Total: 90 + 57 + 35 = 182
Going to take the opportunity for a mini guide for culture victory.
The culture victory does not have many moving parts, but requires some calculations that can be tricky. Let's discuss...
The plan:
Prep for the culture victory starts in Exploration. 6 things you can do.
- Start prepping your Modern Capital as a production monster. In my case, I captured Baak, which had a Maya Unique District.
- Build (or capture in this case) some extra settlers and send them to the continents you have less settlements in, but do not plant them.
- Spam Stone Heads, acquired through a suzerain culture gift. In my game, I did not spam Stone Heads. I was busy doing other things and, well, I forgot.
- Make sure you have at least 1 settlement in each continent.
- Make sure you have discovered all 5 Natural Wonders.
- Make sure you have discovered all of the map.
In Modern culture the only things that you need are:
- A culture rate as high as possible.
- As much money as possible.
- A high production capital.
- Military Independent powers to disperse and accelerate the Worlds Fair.
- Culture IPs to suzerain and accelerate your culture.
- Ideally, Note G and a Maya Unique Quarter. In the GoTM11, Note G was not available, but in my game I could capture a Maya UQ in Exploration.
So science and additional cities are not that essential, and you need just enough happiness to ensure you settlements produce and grow at their optimal rate.
To win you need 15 relics. The available ones before Hegemony are:
- 8, 2 per continent, from the first batch of explored relics.
- One each for each of the 5 NWs.
- 1 from a culture IP gift.
- One from a Narrative Event.
- Any number from overbuilding (I usually do not include these in my calculations as I have not found a way to make this predictable, in my games I usually get 1 or 2, in this game I got 1).
In theory there are enough relics to complete the path before Hegemony but, in practice, you really need Hegemony to finish fast. Well in the edge case that you start Modern with more than 2000 gpt, then it would be theoretically possible to finish the path before t25 without Hegemony.
t1 of Modern, specialize all the towns. In my game, all went to mining towns with the exception of the 2 Natural Wonder settlements (resort towns) and a couple that went to Hub Towns to generate influence. I had 4 cultural IPs and I wanted to suzerain all of them (important), one Gold IP and one Food IP (less important). So I sacrificed around 100gpt to get around 40 in extra influence per turn. I also made sure to have at least one settlement in the 4 continents as Urban Centre, in fact I had 4 specialized as Urban Centre as there is a Narrative Event when you reach 5 museums, if I remember right. I only had 2 cities, my capital and my old capital Nassau.
So in Modern, beeline first Natural Science, its mastery and then Hegemony, no detours, no special civics, no detour to Democracy, just get to Hegemony as fast as possible. Once you have Hegemony you can try to reach Progressivism for the 30% bump to wonder building, but there is usually not enough time before victory. Of course if there is Marble in the map, go for it with the extra settlers, in this map I could not find any Marble resources.
In Science, try to get to Mass Production so you can have a Factory in the capital and as many Coffees as possible, with the rest of the slots filled with production enhancing resources. In my game, I prepped Mass Production to be discovered on the turn I started building the Worlds Fair, to take advantage of the Maya UQ. In an ideal world, I would have prepped another tech or two, with just one turn left, but alas, I did not have enough science. I tried, with Oxford, but just did not have enough science to set it up properly. If you have Note G, you should prep masteries in the same way, one turn left.
As soon as you have researched Natural Science, either hard build an Explorer if your money is less than 1400gpt and it takes 4 turns or less, or just buy the Explorer straight away if you are swimming in gold. If you hard build, buy 4 museums, one on each of the Urban Center settlements in each continent. The first Explorer you buy should be bought on to the continent where you have less settlement coverage. Rinse and repeat with the second less coverage and so on. When you choose the Urban Centers, if you have a choice of settlements, take into account the location of the NWs to minimize travel time.
Once you have all museums and have built/bought 4 explorers (around t15) and researched in the museums, you have all the data you need for the travel calculations, You know the location of all 8 relics, 2 per continent, you know the location of the extra relic you get in the NWs, and you know where your museums are. Now it is a matter of calculating how close you can get to 15 by the time you get to Hegemony. Typically you can get 12/13 relics, so you should include in your calculations having an Explorer in each museum in at least three continents by the turn you finish researching Hegemony, that will allow you to complete the legacy path on the same turn. The extra settlers you saved from Exploration will be very very useful to minimize the travel times. If you have some 3000 gold, you can plant a setlement and take it to level 7, specialize as Urban Center and buy the museum all in one turn.
In my game it became clear very quickly that I could get there and minimize travel time by planting an extra settlement and rush buying a museum in one of the continents with less coverage. I had one of the extra unplanted settlers in that continent (well I had 5 unplanted settlers in the two continents where I did not have great settlement coverage). I also used war (declared on Amina) to maximize my gold production, pillage by my naval forces generated 180 gold each time, more if I used the fleet commanders. This allowed me to buy 6 explorers on top of the one I built, buy the museums, and also rush buy the factory in the capital.
Finally, I got to Hegemony by t28 and still took me until t35 to finish World's fair. I was not able to queue more techs for the Maya UQ, I had queued Oxford but was not able to get a tech with it, just masteries and I only had 1 military IP in the whole map. 2 more military IPs would have taken down those 6 turns to 2 and one more tech would have allowed me (I think) to one turn the Worlds Fair. That would have been nice.
Regrets:
Well I regret Antiquity and Exploration
First time I was playing Teach, Tonga and Pirates and I should have practiced before. In Modern, I should have invested a little bit more on science earlier on, to reach the Mass Production level of techs earlier and have more flexibility to set up techs using Oxford for the Maya UQ. That would have saved 2-3 turns.
My save here is t34, on click the World Fair finishes and the culture victory is achieved (on t35).
