Bindy's Road to EQM -- Round 4

[Bindamel]

Welcome back!

Details of this game series are here.

Round 4: Calling jesusin!

Guess what the victory condition is! I, for one, have always been fascinated by the back and forth that goes on in this forum regarding fast cultural victories. Although I could never be patient and precise enough to manage every decision by calculation and spreadsheet, I’m very impressed by those who do. Hopefully some of our cultural experts will come out of the woodwork and join us here, in a game that may be less than an ideal start (less than ideal, Bindy? You don’t even start with Mysticism!) So, as they say in my neck of the woods, let’s get some culcha!

"Required" Settings:
Expansion: BTS
Era: Ancient
Civilization: Sumeria
Victory Condition: Culture
Game Speed: Normal
Map: Medium and Small

Again, even though I’m suddenly falling behind, I will be playing at Monarch. It has been great to see activity at many levels. Anyone ready to try Deity this time? I will continue using a standard map, and honestly, I’m not even going to try to guess how close to the actual EQM requirements I’m going to be yet, but check out this thread for the latest from Denniz.

As always, here are the opponent requirements for various map sizes.

Mapsize    Minimum     Maximum   
  Tiny         2          4  
 Small         4          7  
Standard       6         10  
 Large         8         14    
  Huge        10         17

Gilgamesh is Creative, which is a minor bonus to a cultural victory, but surely not enough of one to replace not starting with Mysticism. He is also Protective, which I suspect is useless to a fast victory, as any battle is a bad thing. He starts with Agriculture and the Wheel, so an early worker should have stuff to do, at least. His UU is the Vulture, which is a higher strength, lower melee bonus Axeman. His UB is a courthouse that is available with Priesthood. I don’t see either the UU or the UB having a significant effect on the outcome of this game.

Target Practice (Standard Map):

  Deity           No Entry
Immortal      vitas99    1894 A.D.
Emperor      meatdaddy   1838 A.D.
Monarch      Gre_Magus   1808 A.D.
 Prince     uthertepes   1715 A.D.
  Noble      Kanidyen    1818 A.D
Warlord      Kanidyen    1680 A.D.
Chieftain    Sanabas     1480 A.D.
Settler     Sir_Spink    1730 A.D.

May all the world gape in awe at the artistry of your people!

Results:

shuyhe won in 1790 A.D. on Immortal
ozbenno won in 1806 A.D. on Monarch
bestje won in 1910 A.D. on Monarch
pholtz won in 1824 A.D. on Noble

Latecomers:
Bindamel won in 1900 A.D. on Monarch
ruff_hi won in 1917 A.D. on Monarch

Honorable Mention:
ngraner42 won in 1812 A.D. on Emperor, using a Big and Small map

 

[pholtz]

I might join you on this one as it should really help my QM score. I just need to find the time while I'm in the Great Plains launching spaceships.

Looking at my QM status (working on QM before I worry about eQM)

1. Sumeria - blank
2. Medium and Small - blank, my last blank
3. Lowest Culture Score - 15, a Normal Duel Warlords #1 spot. I should be able to improve on that.

I think I'll try Noble first, its a step down from my usual Prince, but that Noble score looks the most vulnerable.

I've read about but haven't tried a Vulture rush. It would be nice if I started out with 2 others on a larger land mass, rushed their capitals, as capital locations make the best cities, then used the three starting locations as my three cities, but taking down just one other civ early would probably give me enough room. If you do it early before you meet any other civ you can make nice the rest.

"Yea I know, I was lucky to start 'all alone' on this large land mass, now lets all be peaceful civs"

I think 9 cities is ideal, enough to build three cathedrals per religion, I think. But 6 might be enough.

 

[bestje]

I'd agree with pholtz that a vulture rush would be a good way to get the game started and 6 to 9 cities will be optimal

managed to get a win in the last update with 5 cities on a boreal map so feel pretty ready for a monarch culture attempt, yet last time i shot my mouth off and said i'd try monarch i ended up stepping back down to prince so... we'll see this time

it would be good if some of the culture experts showed us how its done and got a deity game in for this challenge

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I didn't finish my last challenge game, might still give it a go, probably step down to Monarch at quick speed UN with Monty, if I get the time (fancy playig my first Immortal games for the current major as well, and I'm doing a walkthrough also).

I'll definitely try this, at Monarch level again, because I knocked Gre_Magus off the #1 spot a couple of updates ago (only on points though!), so I want to try and get my number 1 spot back

 

[Ozbenno]

I don't really get culture either. Need Medium and Small map and Sumeria for EQM, so why not. Might have a stab at Monarch or Emporer.

 

[pholtz]

I had a most unusual start. Five civilizations on a medium/small sized continent. I think my second city was the only extra one founded that didn't overlap one of the starting cities. Perfect for a Vulture rush. It is now 50AD and I've got 5 starting cities, my original is probably the worst. I just failed in an Oracle CS slingshot but did manage to build the Pyramids even with all the fighting. I now have 8 cities total, I'll squeeze another one somewhere just to build more temples, Now i have to chose which three will be my culture cities ano make the transition to peace and a specialist economy.

Anyone else notice that stone seems to be very prevalent on these maps?

Edit:

Just submitted an 1824 win on Noble, just off the number 1 spot. I blew it, and didn't build the Sistine Chapel in time.. I could have.

 

[Thrallia]

I'll be going for Monarch, as usual, I don't have any entries for normal speed, sumeria, medium and small, or culture
lol you'd never think I'm a QM from how many slots I have missing lol

 

[shyuhe]

I finally finished my EQM round 3 so I will try this one. Immortal as usual I think. I'm skipping the current minors so I should have some time. Assuming I don't get caught up in major 22 or 23

 

[Ozbenno]

Well an indifferent 1806AD win on Monarch (a whole 2 years better than the current best).

Had plans to play peaceful and found Taosism and Confucianism, while hoping for a couple of free spreads.

Popped Mysticism on turn 3, so decided to chase Hinduism, which I got. My peaceful plans were also interrupted when I ran out of room at 3 cities (I find this with most medium and small as well as big and small maps). I had no copper so traded for Iron Working and annexed Lizzy with swords (5 cities), founded another and had my 8. Lizzy founded Buddhism, so I ended up with 4 religions. Had very little scope for cottaging or for a GP farm, so ended up taking ages to get the buildings up and the culture done.

I built Oracle (for CoL), Pyramids and Great Library as well as the culture musts, Parthenon and Sistine Chapel. Took Printing Press from Liberalism, hand researched Nationalism after that and then turned off research.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Right, I think I'll give this a pop, on Monarch, now that I have a double target to go for (1806AD from Ozbenno and try and reclaim my #1 spot).

EDIT: Think I'll give the Great Library a miss but may build Mausolleum and Statue of Zeus for the +10 culture.

 

[bestje]

have got my first game in with a date of 1910 on monarch for that elusive first monarch culture win

opponents were suleiman (sharing a continent), washington and Sitting Bull (on seperate nearby land), pericles, peter and fred (sharing another continent on the far side of the world)

A quick recap of the game;
useful capital site with stone, clams, a river, a lot of forest and a few hills.
founded hin- judaism early on
I also managed to grab marble with my 3rd city but there was no metal anywhere i could walk to, had horses at least though
then did an oracle slingshot for theology (I originally wanted CoL but SB got there 1 turn before me)
managed to seal of about 2/3 of the continent and found 8 cities though some were founded very late couldn't find room for a 9th (but I didn't need to in the end anyway as without culture bombing or cathedrals my capital was still the first to go legendary by about 10 turns)
i also managed to pick up islam and have taoism spread to me so had 4 religions, i was surprised to never get confucianism though as it was founded very nearby (probably because all my cities got religions very quickly)

i managed to build quite a few wonders; the parthenon, the sistine chapel, oracle, pyramids, ToA, hagia sophia, UoSankore, spiral minaret

no one actually invaded me though a few times it looked like suleiman or SB might and went to war briefly with peter to get some mutual struggle bonuses with my neighbours.

so a few strategy questions;
1) was i right to beeline early religions?
my techpath was mysticism, polytheism, mining, masonry, monotheism, fishing, BW
2) should/ even could I have rushed suleiman without metal? (he didn't have any either but we both had horses)
3) is there any other obvious way i could have improved this strategy?
I popped a good few GAs but got a lot of GP contamination towards the end
i managed to found 4 religions and have one more spread to me
i missed liberalism and music both by a few turns but had focussed on the culture part of the tech tree
i also failed to build SoZ and GL by only a few turns as well

but for a first attempt at this level with a less than optimum civ i'm fairly pleased with the win

 

[shyuhe]

Well I finished this game ahead of schedule 1790 AD. I did my culture run with one religion, which didn't help at all.... and I even had marble! I lost both CoL and Philo to the AI which really hurt my run. I also should have been more careful calculating when it was more efficient to settle GA rather than make great works. I may try again later since I ran MF overnight and I have lots of maps to burn through now

edit: brief update. I burned through the remaining MF games Since Gilgamesh doesn't start with mysticism, I found that I was losing out on lots of religions. I've had enough of this for now - medium and small is not a very culture conducive map type as you end up needing to trade resources with the other "continent" or your cities will be severly health capped.

 

[Thrallia]

I'm planning on ducking out of the current gauntlets...Immortal is too high for me, and chieftain is too low to help me with my EQM quest(plus Marathon is not what I would choose for a space race game...), so I'll be attempting this game for this update.

 

[Bindamel]

Heh. Part of what's preventing me from getting to this is that the BotM is low enough level for me

I also paused to do the Vanilla G-minor.

I didn't do the BtS one, though; after all, Khmer Space Colony? It's been done

 

[Ozbenno]

Here's the link to my game.

Thanks as always to Bindy , where's Round 5?

 

[Bindamel]

If you look carefully at another thread in this subforum (that you posted in, Ozbenno), I think you'll be able to figure out what the next round settings are.

I have a promising game going, but late again of course!

 

[Ozbenno]

French Conquests of the New World on Marathon speed maybe?

Got all them boxes ticked so might skip as I have only 5 leaders and 1 map left for EQM and want to get them done first.

 

[Conquistador 63]

The (possible) concept for round5 is interesting, but I just filled my France slots (going for V/W QM) with the last Gminor. I have 15 out of 24 (18 required) leaders checked, so I'd better focus on this task.

 

[Bindamel]

Round 4 Results, if I missed anyone, let me know:

shuyhe won in 1790 A.D. on Immortal
ozbenno won in 1806 A.D. on Monarch
bestje won in 1910 A.D. on Monarch
pholtz won in 1824 A.D. on Noble

Congratulations to all, I like seeing most of these games appear on the HoF Update Thread as top games as well!

I will update the first post with this, and with any (including my own, again, ) latecomers. I'm adding a couple of games to the round 3 OP as well (shuyhe and my own).

I've let the cat out of the bag on what round 5 is, and no, I don't expect as much participation in that round, being Marathon and all, but I wanted to make sure I had some Marathon games in the schedule, so they will rear their ugly head from time to time.

(I had considered posting round 5 as A French Marathon Terra Time Victory, for April 1st, but now I can't )

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I'm behind the pace on round 4, I will try it later since I need Giggles and Medium & Small. My first attempt I was on a tiny island with Mansa, only 3 cities, he grabbed the only copper just as my settler arrived there