Arabian Honeycomb

[alpaca]

Persia and Songhai I can see. Persia for its GA boost and Songhai can make a killing raiding his lands for Barbs reducing dependence on trades or even adding extra to them. Egypt not so much. Sure its Burial Tombs are nice but I just don't see it rising above the others in potential placing it at the bottom of the pile.

Edit: Also, It turns out you can connect 3 Cities with 4 Roads further increasing efficiency.

The Burial Tomb is a pretty big bonus because it's two maintenance-free happiness and culture per city, which is very useful. Basically, if you usually build temples in your cities, building Burial Tombs instead will save you two gold and give you two additional happiness.

Also, the +20% wonder production speed is something you can make good use of because you'll often have mediocre cities where you can produce some marginal wonders without a lot of cost to your development. The +20% really helps to get those marginal wonders with the additional culture and bonuses they bring (I'm talking about things like the Porcelain tower here). It also helps you pick up something like Stonehenge early to get to Meritocracy earlier.

As for the Songhai, I actually meant the Mud Pyramid Mosque which is an excellent UB. +5 maintenance free culture and two artist slots per city without having to build a monument beforehand is great. It also makes a lot more sense to rush buy a MPM than a monument. Their UA isn't anything special for this kind of play, although it yields a nice cash injection if you go for early conquest or barb killing.

I still think the French, Arabia or China are better, though, because their bonus is easier to get and more directly useful. Songhai only get a very long-term benefit and buying a temple instead of a colosseum for Egypt isn't something you always want to do (because if you do, you'll run into happiness trouble).


The road thing: Yep but the difference between 1.5 and 1.33 isn't so great, and connecting cities in that fashion will often not be possible due to coasts, city states and such. The average number of roads, even if you build them optimally, will be closer to 1.7 or so.

 

[Celevin]

No.
Because your rate rises +2, but the cap rises +25%

It doesn't raise 25%. Each city adds 25% of base. It's actually a constantly decreasing function, and sans any other culture benefits than +2 for city, each new city is more profitable.

For example, what's the difference between 12 and 13 cities? The first has a multiplier of 3.75, and the second has a multiplier of 4.00. That's not a leap of 25%.

 

[Lyoncet]

True, but the extra 2 culture isn't going to be enough to actually reduce the time to your next policy just by settling (I think). It just takes the edge off if you expand before you get your culture buildings in place.

[edit]Also I'm pretty sure it's 30%, but that could depend on difficulty/speed/size I suppose.

 

[Celevin]

True, but the extra 2 culture isn't going to be enough to actually reduce the time to your next policy just by settling (I think). It just takes the edge off if you expand before you get your culture buildings in place.

[edit]Also I'm pretty sure it's 30%, but that could depend on difficulty/speed/size I suppose.

It will provided you don't have any more culture gains.

Your first city's really inefficient. It gives a total of 1 to the multiplier. Your other cities only increase it by 25% (depending on settings as you said).

The reason you see 1-4 cities being used for culture victories is because of culture city states, and puppets. They completely ruin the idea that policy costs should increase on a pure city basis. If you removed them, you'd see some really neat culture wins with 1 city, 5 cities, and 30 cities.

 

[Lyoncet]

You're right, I didn't flush that out as well as I meant. The first few cities you found will reduce the turns to a new policy immediately, but the sort of "settle lots of cities right away because you'll get more SPs faster" strategy is what I was referring to. You will get them faster if you set it up right with more cities (and of course puppets help, but that will probably be nerfed soon), but after your first few, you're slowing SP growth per city, even with Ancien Regime, until you can get each city built up enough to pull its weight - which may or may not be possible with things like Hermitage and Constitution. I haven't actually seen an analysis of optimal SP strategy that involved those hard-to-get enormous multipliers, so I can't say where the optimal balance is.

 

[Celevin]

You're right, I didn't flush that out as well as I meant. The first few cities you found will reduce the turns to a new policy immediately, but the sort of "settle lots of cities right away because you'll get more SPs faster" strategy is what I was referring to. You will get them faster if you set it up right with more cities (and of course puppets help, but that will probably be nerfed soon), but after your first few, you're slowing SP growth per city, even with Ancien Regime, until you can get each city built up enough to pull its weight - which may or may not be possible with things like Hermitage and Constitution. I haven't actually seen an analysis of optimal SP strategy that involved those hard-to-get enormous multipliers, so I can't say where the optimal balance is.

Really it's impossible to compute. Let's ignore anything but culture from your own cities for simplicity.

Say that you've got an empire with 5 cities each making 5 culture. For that sixth city to be productive, it would have to add at least 4 or 5 culture, otherwise your next policy cost will go up.

Now say you've got an empire of 10 cities, each only making 2 culture. If you can get another city online and you're France, your policy cost will go up, but your culture gain will go up even more.

In one of my games at the end game for culture, my capitol made ~100, my puppets ~200, and I also had another ~100 from outside sources. I only had 1 controlled city. If I added a second, my policy cost would have went from 1->1.3 (small map size). Even if my other city added a whopping 100 other culture, it still wouldn't have been worth it.


Back on topic, the reason that I suggest France is with Arabia you will get probably 3 or 4 policies over the course of the whole game if you honeycomb. France can easily grab faster settlers, +1 culture, and +1 happiness in each city very very early. This makes them easily the best as they will have better happiness, and still be able to get a decent number of policies.

 

[S.K. Ren]

In my latest attempt I tried China and decided to wait till I was Pop 6 in my capital before spamming settlers. Unfortunately I started point blank to Songhai. However without his interference, I was doing quite well for a Diety game. I'll try again as China and then back to Arabia.

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

The Burial Tomb is a pretty big bonus because it's two maintenance-free happiness and culture per city, which is very useful.

Maybe I did something wrong, but when I tried this the tech prereq for the Tomb borked me.

 

[aimlessgun]

Question: is this something that is actually generally effective, or only worthwhile if you are incredibly cramped on the map, and being explored simply because its kinda neat?

 

[S.K. Ren]

The goal is to see how effective it is and because its interesting. I'm noticing its not so much something you go all in for but rather something you build after you get established. Trying to go for it from the start kills your beaker count thus killing you.

 

[alpaca]

Question: is this something that is actually generally effective, or only worthwhile if you are incredibly cramped on the map, and being explored simply because its kinda neat?

It's fun. I think it's also effective but I'm better at this strategy than at leaving more space so I can't tell for sure if my benchmark games are representative. Maybe I should do a playthrough, provide a turn 1 savegame, and let somebody who's more proficient at "normal" strategies play that

The goal is to see how effective it is and because its interesting. I'm noticing its not so much something you go all in for but rather something you build after you get established. Trying to go for it from the start kills your beaker count thus killing you.

Actually I go for it all in and it does anything but kill your beaker count. You have to factor in that small cities grow a lot faster than large ones, and have more happiness available, so you will have a lot more population than if you went for fewer but larger cities.