A strategy for consistent cultural wins on Monarch
- Thread starter walkerjks
- Start date
Right now im playing for a cultural victory on prince. Huge map, random settings and it spit out 4 large continents with 1-3 civs each Montezuma and myself on one island, Shaka, Mansa, and Catherine on another, Huayna Alone(hes a real pain in the ass now because he managed to get a near perfect location in terms of resources and food which allowed him to get a huge civ since he was alone on his continent and ghandi spawned with ragnar. And ragnar spawned with ghandi
Poor choice in leadership for me though i guess, i should have went for phi/org but i instead opted for agg/org which has worked out fairly well for me even though i havent popped as many great artists as ive wanted. However i started on the same continent as montezuma so i was glad i had the agg trait and quickly destroyed him before he got to warmongering actually i destroyed him when his civ was only 2 pop in ~3700BC and it led to me having 2 early cities on opposite sides of my continent which forced me to build across to meet the two and i moved my palace to the middle for a lower maintenance cost(this proved to be a wise choice as even though i have the organized trait it netted me 6g/turn which turned out to be roughly 20 beakers/turn.
As expected Shaka took out Catherine around 1500 BC and started warring with mansa on and off which has ended in a stalemate more or less, and the downfall of his civilization which i will explain later.
Although Ragnar took out Ghandi early, which didnt surprise me at all he didnt expand much and much of his island was settled in the 1300's by Huayna. Huayna's empire really boomed at ~1300 which put some major pressure on me to not switch over to culture as soon as i hit the mid/late 1500's like i wanted. In order for me to keep enough of a military lead i had to grab a few more military techs so i could hold him off via navy before he could land on my continent since war was more or less inevitable since shaka is a war monger and has the same religion and the favorite civic of Huayna thus im going to take a diplomatic hit with him for being at war with shaka.
At this point im glad that i was somewhat unlucky with GP's and popped two scientists and a merchant--I lightbulbed the scientists to get an early tech lead which has made staying ahead, militarily, of people with access to me such as shaka and GK fairly easy. Its now ~1720 and im flipping the slider between 30% research and 60% culture and 90% culture to keep a solid military lead in terms of naval strength since im more limited in number than shaka/huayna on the mainland. What im mostly worried about is the fact that ive switched 2 remaining cultural centers to producing straight out culture (one is at ~110,000/150,000 with 1600ish culture/turn the other at about 70,000/150,000 and only producing around 950 Culture/turn) and im not near enough to the great artists to close the gap between the two cities for as early a victory as id hoped(im now looking at ~1850ish instead of 1775-1800ish).
ersonally i think if i played a phi/org and spawned with ghandi/huayna i may have gotten a better game and won at 1725 or so and i could have probably used ghandi as a meat shield vs most of the civs. another interesting outcome would have been using monte/shaka as an attack dog vs huayna which could have let me get a better lead on him since monte/shaka always have massive militaries even though they tech so poorly.
I feel like im leaving out Mansa in the explanation but him and shaka have been at war for ~300 years now and neither seems to want to give up anytime soon. Even though hes furious and i keep refusing to help him @ war or give him techs i dont see him surviving for much longer as ragnar has declared war and started to push him back pretty far at this point. Ragnar is pleased with me and ill probably use him as an attack dog vs Shaka before he gets the chance to rebuild his military. Ragnar also has a much larger and more advanced civ than shaka so im pretty sure that a worn out shaka wont stand a chance.
Huayna will most likely hold out on declaring war until i start warring with shaka so instead i think i may just gift ragnar techs for a military lead and hold off of war since i dont take a diplomatic hit for trading with ragnar since huayna is only going to be cautious of him when he declares war on shaka.
On a side note usually get beat to rock n roll/hollywood if i get broadway so i let huayna get them and i took rock/hollywood and the eiffel tower before sliding my culture up to 90%.
Poor choice in leadership for me though i guess, i should have went for phi/org but i instead opted for agg/org which has worked out fairly well for me even though i havent popped as many great artists as ive wanted. However i started on the same continent as montezuma so i was glad i had the agg trait and quickly destroyed him before he got to warmongering actually i destroyed him when his civ was only 2 pop in ~3700BC and it led to me having 2 early cities on opposite sides of my continent which forced me to build across to meet the two and i moved my palace to the middle for a lower maintenance cost(this proved to be a wise choice as even though i have the organized trait it netted me 6g/turn which turned out to be roughly 20 beakers/turn.
As expected Shaka took out Catherine around 1500 BC and started warring with mansa on and off which has ended in a stalemate more or less, and the downfall of his civilization which i will explain later.
Although Ragnar took out Ghandi early, which didnt surprise me at all he didnt expand much and much of his island was settled in the 1300's by Huayna. Huayna's empire really boomed at ~1300 which put some major pressure on me to not switch over to culture as soon as i hit the mid/late 1500's like i wanted. In order for me to keep enough of a military lead i had to grab a few more military techs so i could hold him off via navy before he could land on my continent since war was more or less inevitable since shaka is a war monger and has the same religion and the favorite civic of Huayna thus im going to take a diplomatic hit with him for being at war with shaka.
At this point im glad that i was somewhat unlucky with GP's and popped two scientists and a merchant--I lightbulbed the scientists to get an early tech lead which has made staying ahead, militarily, of people with access to me such as shaka and GK fairly easy. Its now ~1720 and im flipping the slider between 30% research and 60% culture and 90% culture to keep a solid military lead in terms of naval strength since im more limited in number than shaka/huayna on the mainland. What im mostly worried about is the fact that ive switched 2 remaining cultural centers to producing straight out culture (one is at ~110,000/150,000 with 1600ish culture/turn the other at about 70,000/150,000 and only producing around 950 Culture/turn) and im not near enough to the great artists to close the gap between the two cities for as early a victory as id hoped(im now looking at ~1850ish instead of 1775-1800ish).
ersonally i think if i played a phi/org and spawned with ghandi/huayna i may have gotten a better game and won at 1725 or so and i could have probably used ghandi as a meat shield vs most of the civs. another interesting outcome would have been using monte/shaka as an attack dog vs huayna which could have let me get a better lead on him since monte/shaka always have massive militaries even though they tech so poorly.
I feel like im leaving out Mansa in the explanation but him and shaka have been at war for ~300 years now and neither seems to want to give up anytime soon. Even though hes furious and i keep refusing to help him @ war or give him techs i dont see him surviving for much longer as ragnar has declared war and started to push him back pretty far at this point. Ragnar is pleased with me and ill probably use him as an attack dog vs Shaka before he gets the chance to rebuild his military. Ragnar also has a much larger and more advanced civ than shaka so im pretty sure that a worn out shaka wont stand a chance.
Huayna will most likely hold out on declaring war until i start warring with shaka so instead i think i may just gift ragnar techs for a military lead and hold off of war since i dont take a diplomatic hit for trading with ragnar since huayna is only going to be cautious of him when he declares war on shaka.
On a side note usually get beat to rock n roll/hollywood if i get broadway so i let huayna get them and i took rock/hollywood and the eiffel tower before sliding my culture up to 90%.
Maxit
Chieftain
I just played GOTM 35 (Monarch, Normal speed, Std map, Elizabeth) with a strategy posted in the forums. A runthrough of the game with lessons learned is posted in the GOTM 35 final spoiler thread. (Will post links when the game closes).
Wodan
Deity
This should be safe to discuss here:
Maxit, it looks like you only got 2 religions. One suggestion is to try to get at least one of the AI religions to spread to you. It's much easier to get a CV with 3, 4, or even 5 religions than with only 2.
Maxit, it looks like you only got 2 religions. One suggestion is to try to get at least one of the AI religions to spread to you. It's much easier to get a CV with 3, 4, or even 5 religions than with only 2.
Maxit
Chieftain
Whoops, sorry about the post. Regarding religions in this strategy, it is important to follow the guidelines and open borders to the AI. Just another mistake to learn from.jeffbot
Chieftain
I'd never won a Monarch-level game until I tried a variant of this strategy. I'm just not ... dominating ... enough, I guess. I actually have never managed to win at Prince level by domination, either.
So here goes ... I won two out of three playing the same general strategy. In the third game, I was doing fine until Hattie/Egypt, allegedly pleased with me, attacked in 1926 with way more than I could deal with.
The other two games I won in the 1960s. I'm sure I could get it to be earlier if I specialized better, but the following conditions/circumstances worked for me:
1) I played as Gandhi. No particular reason, but I did go for early religions, costing myself growth. My goal was to establish six cities, three of them good ones, without attacking the AI. I quit early on a couple of tries where I was hemmed in too quickly. In one game I built my six; in the other win, I built four and took two barb cities.
2) I managed to build the Parthenon, Pyramids and the Great Library in both wins ... once in three separate cities, the other time Pyramid/GL in the capitol.
3) I founded two early religions in both games and a later one in both games; ended up with five in one game and six in the other. I built very little military. I changed religions whenever my more powerful neighbor(s) did and gave them anything and everything short of declaring war.
4) Was able to stay relatively even on tech through liberalism, in the 1500s, which is when I started moving the culture slider to 60/70 percent ... later to 80/90.
5) I didn't get nearly as many great artists as one clearly can by specializing, but it was enough. By the end I was at about 500/420/380 for my three main cities.
Posting just because ... that I could do it shows that you can win this way with a big margin of error, really. Because I did very little micromanaging after getting the cities up and running. Games took less than three hours.
(Update): By playing better and micromanaging better, I was able to get wins in the 1800s. It doesn't seem that any Wonders are necessary, though if you can get any of the early ones it surely helps; and I got Great Library every time, which let me keep up with tech as long as I wanted.
The hardest part for me was to get six cities and three religions going, early. The "easy" way is if you have room AND the game lets you found three early religions ... just stay friendly and play it out. It happens.
But my favorite win ... I only had four cities and two religions for a lot of the game ... but finally started overwhelming my neighbors with culture around 1400 and picked up three-four more cities and two more religions that way. There was plenty of time left for building religious buildings.
So here goes ... I won two out of three playing the same general strategy. In the third game, I was doing fine until Hattie/Egypt, allegedly pleased with me, attacked in 1926 with way more than I could deal with.
The other two games I won in the 1960s. I'm sure I could get it to be earlier if I specialized better, but the following conditions/circumstances worked for me:
1) I played as Gandhi. No particular reason, but I did go for early religions, costing myself growth. My goal was to establish six cities, three of them good ones, without attacking the AI. I quit early on a couple of tries where I was hemmed in too quickly. In one game I built my six; in the other win, I built four and took two barb cities.
2) I managed to build the Parthenon, Pyramids and the Great Library in both wins ... once in three separate cities, the other time Pyramid/GL in the capitol.
3) I founded two early religions in both games and a later one in both games; ended up with five in one game and six in the other. I built very little military. I changed religions whenever my more powerful neighbor(s) did and gave them anything and everything short of declaring war.
4) Was able to stay relatively even on tech through liberalism, in the 1500s, which is when I started moving the culture slider to 60/70 percent ... later to 80/90.
5) I didn't get nearly as many great artists as one clearly can by specializing, but it was enough. By the end I was at about 500/420/380 for my three main cities.
Posting just because ... that I could do it shows that you can win this way with a big margin of error, really. Because I did very little micromanaging after getting the cities up and running. Games took less than three hours.
(Update): By playing better and micromanaging better, I was able to get wins in the 1800s. It doesn't seem that any Wonders are necessary, though if you can get any of the early ones it surely helps; and I got Great Library every time, which let me keep up with tech as long as I wanted.
The hardest part for me was to get six cities and three religions going, early. The "easy" way is if you have room AND the game lets you found three early religions ... just stay friendly and play it out. It happens.
But my favorite win ... I only had four cities and two religions for a lot of the game ... but finally started overwhelming my neighbors with culture around 1400 and picked up three-four more cities and two more religions that way. There was plenty of time left for building religious buildings. Similar threads
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