BOTM 17 Final Spoiler

[budweiser]

1760AD cultural win.

Oracled Theology, skipped the first three religions, founded next three. Built AP. Teched through conquistadors and navigation. It was fun. No wars.

 

[Obormot]

Challenger, goal fast spaceship.

I focused on maximising my research rate. First priority was improving the gem mine, but I also wanted to let my capital grow so that it can build a library quickly once I get Writing. So I built a worker in Seville and sent him south to mine the gems for Madrid, while Madrid produced two workboats to improve both fish resources. Barselona also started with a worker. Research order was most straightforward: Mining, Agriculture, AH, Writing, Alphabet.

3360BC: Gem mine built and worked
2760BC: Writing
2480BC: Library ready in Madrid
2200BC: Alphabet

I didn't go wonder-crazy: the only early wonder I built was the Oracle. My cities built monuments, workers, libraries, granaries (after I traded for pottery), and when I really didn't have anything usefull to build I switched citizens to scientists and/or built research, which helped me to shave off a couple of turns of my CS-sling date. The Oracle was built in Barselona to resist Mansa's cultural pressure.

The opinion about AI on prince level researching quickly enough to offset the higher tech costs for the human was prooven to be wrong in my game. When I got Alphabet, I couldn't even get the Wheel in trade to connect my cities and hook up ivory. I invested all my espionage points into Mansa, so I was able to see his research; after I gifted him Agriculture, Fishing, Mining and AH (yes, he didn't know any of these techs), he switched to the Wheel, but it took him 12 turns to get it: the same time it took me to research Code of Laws).

After Alphabet I went for the CS slingshot, while at the same time waiting for the lame AI to research Wheel and Pottery, with my workers doing nothing. It took me less time to get CoL, Math and CS, then for Mansa to get Wheel & Pottery.

1800BC: Academy in Madrid
1720BC: Confucianism founded in Seville
1560BC: Oracle built in Barselona and CS-slingshot completed, switch to Bureaucracy & Castes

I used the free missionary to spread confucianism to Madrid, where I built the monastery and 3 more missionaries, spreading confuciansim to Barselona, Mansa's capital and Sur's capital. Fortunately all early religions were founded overseas, so all continent was soon converted to confucianism.

As I said in the pre-game thread, managing happiness & health to maximise population was the key for this game. So my next goal after CS was monarchy to get infinite happiness from hereditary rule. I cottaged Madrid and Barselona, and irrigated Seville, had 2-3 workers per city. A switch to representation at some point is necessary, because significant part of research will come from specialists in the GP farm as well as settled super-specialists, but supporting size 20+ cities without HR requires trading for many luxuries, as well as having a lot of happiness buildings, and is not possible in the early game.

1480BC: Get Pottery from Mansa, begin the cottage spam
1400BC: Monarchy, begin warrior spam

A cottage city only needs to grow to size 20 to maximise tile usage, while a farm city needs 30+ population. So I decided to build Globe, NEpic and NPark in Seville, while Madrid got Oxford, Ironworks and the 50% capital bonus. I saved forests inside the FC of Seville to get specialists with National Park.

Next tech goals after Monarchy were Literature (for NEpic, GLib), Education (Oxford), Drama (Globe), Music (free GA, cathedrals to replace warriors for happiness), Biology (to boost the GP farm), Constitution (time to switch to representation, should get happiness stuff built by then).

425BC: Oxford
450AD: Biology
640AD: Constitution

I was mostly using Representation/Bureacracy/Castes/Enviromentalism/Pacifism in the late game. Free speech wasn't needed with only one cottage city except the capital, which allowed me to save Liberalism for Plastics which I got in 1400AD.

Nothing really interesting happened in the late game. I built MoM and Taj Mahal to take advantage of the marble, I also built Hanging Gardens just because nobody built it by 500AD. I launched 3 golden ages in the late game using great people. Got a 1740AD victory.

Got a total of 23 Great People: 3 GSs produced in Madrid, 14 GSs and 1GA produced in Seville, 1 GS produced in Barselona, plus free GA,GS,GM and GE from techs. Used 3 GSs to build academies and settled 10 more in Madrid (only 8 of them were actually usefull, 2 came too late, settled them just because there were no techs to lightbulb left), 1 early GS lightbulbed Education, 3 late ones lightbulbed Computers & Fiber Optics, remaining 2 GSs, 2GAs, GM and GE launched 3 golden ages.

Screenshots:

Spoiler 1000BC :

Spoiler 1AD :

Spoiler 1000AD :

1000BC/1AD/1000AD stats:

	Pop.	Workers	Units	Luxes	Health	GPs	Wonders		Nat. Wonders	Food	Prod.	Comm.	Beakers	GPPpt	Time
1000BC	26	7	7	2	4	1	Oracle		none		66	31	179	111	14	5:30
1AD	47	7	13	3	6	5	+GLib		Oxford,NE,Globe	104	40	688	413	82	7:30
1000AD	64	9	7	6	8	9	+MoM,HG		+NPark		148	78	1464	996	126	9:10

Thanks to DS for a very fun game. It would be nice to see more non-standard games in the future.

 

[pnp_dredd]

1460 victory

Founded 5 religions and Mansa's Judaism spread to me also (so 6 all up). Built all the +50% religious buildings in every city, utilising a Golden Age and some gold-rushing after Liberalism. Built too many GPP-polluting wonders in Barcelona, and got 5 Artists, 3 prophets and 2 scientists. By the end I was producing +924, +1124, +1330 / turn. Was making abour 10=20 gold/turn at 100% culture.

Looks like I should have just gone with 3-4 religions and not worried about the rush building stage.

Was friendly with both my Neighbours but they beat up on each other a bit and Mansa wasn't a great trading partner for me.

 

[ruff_hi]

Played it straight through in just over 2 hrs. Pretty much mucked up the start as I chased a religion and built workers - only to find that my newly minted workers had nothing to do - couldn't even road. It was pretty straight forward:

capital building mid game wonders
Northern city building early wonders
Eastern (flood plains) city cottages and later artist bombs

Best fun was bring the game home with 36 turns of Golden Age (Taj and 3 GPs - priest, engineer, great merchant).

Edit: I am going to replay this save and go for a conquest victory.
Edit2: I ended the game with 5 holy shrines - their income enabled me to run at 100% tech and still make money.

 

[ShannonCT]

... in the end it was 1250. But I guess there are warmonger specialists who can do better (though I hope they all went for so that I get my second award... )

Sorry MM. I got my conquest victory in 880AD, and I suspect Jovan Kukic or some such will do even better. Hopefully my final score of 125K will be good for something.

 

[Meister Maggi]

Sorry MM. I got my conquest victory in 880AD, and I suspect Jovan Kukic or some such will do even better. Hopefully my final score of 125K will be good for something.

damn; well I tried...

 

[kcd_swede]

BOTM17 – Culture victory tutorial settings

Challenger Save- goal fastest culture victory

I call this a tutorial set-up since there are a number of non-culture-related activities that are necessary in a normal culture game but that you can forget about here: No need to REX to get 6 or 9 cities. No need to conquest for room to build those cities. Religion spreading is trivial task here. No need to build 3 or three temples before building cathedrals.

All you have to do is play nice, make friends, and build as many culture multipliers as you can. The first part of the game is aimed at fast research to the requisite techs, of course, so there is still a lot of planning ahead/judgement to do.

The city with most food (Barcelona) is designated GAFarm. You know that before the game even starts. However, your first GP should be a GS for the academy in Madrid, since Madrid is going to drive your research up to Nationalism or thereabouts. Wanted as many religions as possible, however, founding early religions slows you down too much for the science race, so focus on the later religions and hope for spread from the early ones. (Also, can’t actually adopt a state religion until all neighbors have the one you will choose, as a way to manage diplomacy). All that speaks for late religions founding, on the way to CS-sling and on the way to Liberalism.

That’s the pre-game plan…. How did it work out? Let’s see, shall we?

Stats at 975BC:

Spoiler :

3cities, 18pop, resources = 1horse, 1copper, 1lux, 5 health; 0GP; 1WW(Pyr); 0NatW; 51food; 29 hammers; GNP=79, sust bpt=44; cpt=398; GPP/t=110; gold=54, 0 religion; cottages 2/9; 2 civs met (Sury & Mansa). 6 workers; 1wb; 2 war; 3arch; 1spear; 2ax. 2Barracks; 2Gran; 2libr; 2walls; 3monument. Techs: Fish+Myst: mining>agri>BW>hunt>AH>wheel>mason>pott>writing>alpha>archery(trade)>med>PH.

As seen above, I focused on worker techs to start with. This meant that the ability to build anything useful in the cities was hindered somewhat (hence things like walls and barracks, just because you have to build something). Revolted to slavery asap, but besides granary and library, there wasn’t much use for slavery. Pyr built in Madrid and revolted to Repr 1 turn later due to forgetfulness.

Later, I founded Confu (CoL) and immediately finished the Oracle in 750BC for a Civil Service sling. Ended up eventually founding Taoism, Christianity, and Islam as well. Stayed in Confu/Pac pretty much whole game after getting Schwedegon Paya.
That, my friends, is the end of my notes.

From memory: Regarding the challenges of this game, Mansa’s capitol was so close to Barcelona that you basically had the choice to push culture or war with him. Up until Confu was founded in Barcelona (700’s BC), I was worried about this. However, after that (and running Caste sys artists) the culture push was all in my favor, which prevented Mansa from ever being a factor since his capitol had few tiles to work.

Madrid produced my first 2 GP before GAFarm took over, and then two more later in the game. My first was a GS like I wanted, to make Academy in capitol. Next was a GS that was used to bulb Education. Later, I got a GE to rush Oxford University (13 turn build). Got another GE which shaved 9 or 10 turns from Sistine. First two GA got settled in Seville and Barcelona. Rest saved for bulbing (2-3-3 to finish 3rd legendary 3 turns after 1st legendary – last GA by starving only saved 1 turn by putting 2nd legend ahead of 3rd legend).

Question for experts: Why always save for bombing at very end? Sure… it makes it easy to know which city will need the bombs… but all those tiles you could be taking over in the meantime are lost. Frankly, if you haven’t figured out which cities will need the culture bombs by 500AD, you are negligent (imo). So assuming I know which cities will need the bombs… what is the reason not to bomb asap??? I suppose if you have unfriendly neighbors who resent close culture borders it might add to likelihood of DOW… but in this case that wasn’t a risk. So why save them to the end? (I saved them out of habit but only till about 100 turns left).

Another question for experts: If you take over a city by culture and raze it (or in this case autoraze it) does that give you negative diplo modifiers ”You razed one of our cities”??? I was worried about autorazing Timbuktu, but avoided that as I was hoping. Should I have been concerned at all?

Challenges and concerns: I was concerned about (1) Proximity of Timbuktu; (2) Sury being unpredictable possible backstabber; (3) all 3 early religions went very quickly in far away land, leaving our continent without any religion. As I’ve mentioned, the Confu founding in Barcelona fixed the first concern (though I never got a GPro to build the shrine). Concern #3 thus turned into a blessing, since Sury and Mansa both adopted Confu within a couple turns of its founding, and I adopted it as well. A Confu love-in! Also, another consequence of #3 was a series of Great General birth announcements in far away lands… which only made me smile.

Unfortunately, my exploring WB was unable to find those missing civs, so after going a circle around our continent I had him take some unworkable crabs to improve health. I was worried about CS sling since I could not monitor opponent’s progress. Same for Liberalism race which I won in before 600AD (took nationalism for Hermitage, built in Seville which was at the time the worst culture producer). Therefore, I was more conservative rather than getting greedy for a more expensive tech in each case. My tech rates were outstanding, so I had lots of gifts/tribute to Mansa and Sury. With U of Sankore and Repr, I maintained a very high tech rate even after putting culture slider to 100% (after PP, banking, Economics… since I did want extra cottage output and extra trade route from Free Market; this ”mistake” cost me about 4 turns to get Econ, and probably saved me nothing in the culture building race). I also had positive income with slider at 100% culture! By then I had built a number of wonders… MoM, Taj, Sistine, U Sank… I had very super hard time to resist building GLib which until very late was available for a 6 turn build. Don’t want more GS at this point, though.

What I could improve: (1) streamline tech path so I can start building more than workers and walls when key improvements are ready. (2) Not waste first 4 turns building worker in Madrid and Seville! I got so excited to start I didn’t check that what I really wanted was a WB first in one or both of those cities. Placed WB ahead of worker in queue in both, finished it first in Seville and then took fish in Madrid which got me going fast. Second WB was fultile explorer, though. (3) Don’t waste hammers starting stonehenge! Its cheaper to build 3 monuments. Fortunately I realized this after putting only 3 build turns into it.

Oh… my result: I finished in 1525AD, which is about 205 years faster than my previous best culture victory. OK… this was on Prince level (Challenger save), so never a doubt of outcome. Also, since the culture game was so simplified by 3-city challenge, I’d expect a good player could beat 1000AD on this game. Be interesting to see if that prediction is correct. OTOH, by simplifying the culture game, you may simply have reduced the margin of victory between the experts and the mid-level players. This will be a fun set of spoilers to read!

Anyhow, I have broken the challenger hex with this my first win using challenger save.

 

[Simon_c]

Well, at the 500AD point I was building the AP with a view to switching into a minor religion just before it finished thereby hoping to get an early religious victory.

I was also in a war against Mansa to get the Stone by burning his capitol to the ground.

But, I forgot that was the plan, and it ended up finishing while I was hindu, the major religion on the continent, and not even mine. So, planB was a cultural victory.
To add insult to injury Sury went and stopped the war using the AP

So, at that point I switched over to a cultural victory, founded Islam to give me 4 religions, and got a very slow victory at 1820.

 

[Kariga]

This was the 2nd BOTM for me. I finished in 1615 AD cultural victory. Score was 14k. Adventurer save.

Well as I started I sent my warriors to scout and look around the island. I soon realized that there were only us 3 on the island. I teched buddhism after that I quickly moved onward to archery and horseback riding, amassed around 10 horse archers and stomped Mansa, because I knew I'd have trouble with the stone otherwise. After that I was a bit scared that Sury might kill me, but I didn't want to waste any more time trying to fight him so I thought to myself
"hmm...what shall I do now?...culture?"

I looked at the religion screen and I noticed that I had all the religions. Mansa had had hinduism, but it was extinct so I proceeded to get all the remaining religions and succeeded. I also got pretty much every wonder except TGW ( I didn't want spies) and The colossus.

Also I overestimaed the AI aggressiveness on this difficulty level. I had an unnecessary large amount of military garrison in my cities during the last phases of my game.

After that it was pretty much figuring out how to get those synagogues,academies etc. I managed to get around 1,1k culture per turn in the end but I know I could have done better if I had had more skill. This win is definently better than the 1955 culture victory in my last BOTM

Next culture game I'll make it a priority to get those 50% culture buildings up faster.

 

[Simon_c]

And, i forgot to say,
a big THANKS to the team for this fun game.

it didn't take nearly as long as a regular one, and I had fun while I played it. Often I can get a little board towards the end of a game (a xOtm or otherwise) as it's obvious I've either won easily, or lost totally.

 

[mtt9999]

all cities went legendary in 1440

Proud of:
Popping nationalism with the oracle in 800 BC

impressive. I guess i need to examine my science tree a little more - i never would have imagined you could get nationalism from the oracle once all the boxes are ticked (i have a hard enough time with the CS sling in BtS Especially in 800BC. Nice Job.

My game was also a cultural victory - however slightly later in 1505AD. I am still very happy with that date.

I grabbed Nationalism from Liberalism in 840AD, went for Military Tradition to get the UU (very powerful indeed - but for protection.) Thought I might need them from the 'unpredictable??' Surv?? Unnecessary. To me the conquistadors in this game was like nuclear weapons - they are a nice deterrent and hopefully you wont have to use them - but if you do you are sure glad you have them The slider wasn't generating that much more culture because of only 3 cities... but once I hit MT I was at 90-100% culture the rest of the way out.

In 1000AD:

Taj Mahal just built.
7 Turns from the aforementioned Military Tradition
I had settled 3-4 GA and had 3 stored away in Madrid to culture bomb at the end.
Seville: +469culture /turn
Madrid: +367 / turn
Barcelona +454 / turn

To note: Spent most of mid game sending Izzy's little worker minions to the cold south to cut down some trees... the wood was useful in my building of cathedrals and temples. While the workers were busy with the axe - my scientists were researching away at 100% all game. I love having only 3 cities and low maintenance costs

Best Moves: This may sound really ridiculous, but I have never done it before. I spred conf. early to my neighbors for the peace bonus if they converted - as they did. That move payed long dividends (especially helpful in a peaceful game when you want to avoid being attacked) throughout the game; even though MM founded Judaism he never converted to it.

Biggest Mistake: 2 mistakes and both of them play with the very end culture bombing of my cities.

1) I had 5 to bomb, but my cities were at 46,000, 45,500, and 43,000... unfortunately the best I could get was to have the last one bomb a city with +49500 culture (ie. the GA was pretty much wasted on only 500points.) It was bad timing really, not sure I could have avoided it unless I noticed it much earlier.

2) My second mistake was bombing the artists in the same turn to +50,000 to make them legendary, rather than bomb them to just before 50,000 so that they would grow into legendary the next turn, thus saving me a turn. (Is this true - does the computer calculate a cultural victory on the turn when you have 3 legendary cities at the start of the turn??) If so, this would have saved me 1 turn - neglagible really but I am always trying to get better.


Anyway - thanks again DS and Leif E for a fun, albeit easy, BOTM.

 

[smitsk00]

Space 1888AD.

A bit on the slow side. My primary mistake seems to be not cottaging Madrid more (I only built 4 on the grassland tiles and ran specialists) as I was saving the forests for NP when I took Biology with Liberalism. NP would have been more useful to me in Seville, my production city, since I chose to run State property instead of Environmentalism. Furthermore, I should have gifted a lot more techs a lot earlier than I did. Also, for some reason, I only built an Academy in Madrid and settled most of my GS there until the late game. Building Academies in each city would have been better.

Seville was the Confusian and Daoist Holy city and my primary production center (I workshopped the grasslands under caste/state property). Oracle, Angkor Wat, IW, and Apollo were in Seville.
Barcelona built some Wonders early (Stone, Mids, Parth) and had Globe(in case I needed to draft) and Wall St (It ran merchants to help me keep 100%).

Madrid built the GW, GLib, Oxford, NP, NE.

I also built Rock and Roll and Broadway (can't remember where) and sold the singles/musicals (Barcelona was then able to run scientists or Prophets/Engineers instead of merchants. This really helped with spaceship parts after Mansa started his culture bulge. Mansa went culture and stole half of Barcelona in the 1700s.

One turn before victory, I think I was producing about 1500bpt with +6 gpt. This would have been higher, but Barcelona did lose 9 tiles to Mansa I think I was running a total of 27 scientists and 1 merchant. I popped 23 Great people and got free GM, GS, GS, GE from techs.

hopefully more later.

 

[Orry]

Very fun game thanks, I also decided to go cultural, although I didn't decide this fast enough to get the early religions, but founded 3 and had two spread to me from Mali, so 5 Cathedrals in each city by the end. I made plenty of other mistakes due to this being only my second attempt at culture, but fortunately it was a nice easy level, and I was never threatened by the Khmer and Mali. Finished in 1655 AD.

 

[Olmo2]

Cultural victory in 1535 (same as Adama), 24961 points. Contender save.
Founded 6 religions (all except hinduism), built 13 wonders and 3 shrines.
I took out Mansa who blocked the stone ressource around 0.
As Sury converted to Confucianism he stayed friendly during the game.
Focussed almost entirely on culture buildings, upgraded my war veterans constantly.
Research until Chemistry/Astronomy, culture slider was up to 100% during the last 100-200 years.
I generated 15 great persons: 5 gArtists (used to culture bomb in the end), 6 gScientist (too many, should have managed my GreatPerson gene pool better, 3 gProphets, 1gMerchant.
A nice game to fulfill all your World Wonder building fantasies.

 

[ainglis]

Like most other players, I saw the three city challenge and went for the straightforward-looking cultural victory, although I wasn't nearly as quick as some of the more experienced players. I managed a cultural victory in 1615 AD, for 16k points.

I started by chasing religions. Founded Buddhism, and later Confucianism and Taoism. Hinduism was founded by Mansa Musa, though it eventually spread to my cities. Built Stonehenge in Barcelona for some early culture.

Completed the Oracle in 1640 BC, and took Monarchy as the free technology. I'd decided this was more important than holding out for Civil Service because of the need to quickly increase the happiness levels in my three cities.

The only complication in this game was trying to keep Mansa Musa and the Khmer happy. I played quite conservatively, making sure I had some military units just in case. In the end Mansa Musa switched to a convenient state religion and I promptly followed suit, making us best buddies for the rest of the game. Although the Khmer became stronger later in the game, they never threatened, and I certainly didn't try to provoke them. I never bothered to research Optics or Astronomy, and didn't even find out who any of the other civs were!

I made Madrid my GP farm, though looking at some of the other posts this may have been a mistake. Ah well In any case, I popped 9 Great Artists, on top of 2 Great Scientists and 2 Great Prophets. I was also able to grab a huge number of wonders, greatly boosting my culture. I also found the Pagoda/Mandir/etc building extra powerful because of the relaxed requirements for building them. No complaints there!

I did make one serious mistake, which was forgetting to head for Liberalism. I'd researched up to Nationalism and then switched to culture, somehow forgetting not only that Lib grants a free tech, but also the +100% culture from Free Speech. This was eventually remedied in 1390 AD, at which point I switched off research for good.

Barcelona went legendary in 1600 AD, Madrid in 1610 AD and Seville in 1615 AD. An amazingly fast time for me, but it seems from the other posts that this XOTM made cultural an extremely favourable VC. I could have been faster but for a foolish mistake, so I'm sure the fastest cultural win will be *very* quick. Still, I very much enjoyed the game!

 

[Markus5]

Late culture victory - 1630. I made some early mistakes, that would have shaved some time off. And, I didn't try too hard in the end. I had 5 or 6 religions and needed to build all the buildings. I also went wonder happy. At the end, I was getting 1200+ culture per turn.

The only interesting thing is that Sury (with the AP) asked for and got brothers-in-faith peace settlement before the war was declared. I saw, in order: The AP vote; The AP announcement of peace; The declaration of war; The declaration of peace. Huh.

 

[mtt9999]

War weariness was less of a problem than I had anticipated, especially since I reckoned I would war almost non-stop.

This is probably because of the low difficulty settings; I find at higher levels war weariness is almost as crippling as maintenance costs, but at low levels it is almost negligible (thus rapid expansion and wars are advantageous)

 

[K.K.]

Conquest win in 1812AD for a score of 42k. I normally play Prince games for domination or conquest, so I figured Noble was challenge enough for me in a TCC.

Pretty undecisive gameplay up to around 500AD with much culture and wonder building, i.a. GW, MoM, SoZ, GL++.Cottaged Seville and parts of Madrid and made Barcelona a workshop city dimensioned for 1-per-turn modern armour production... never got that far in tech though.

After meeting the Buddhist continent I decided to vassalise all rivals. I'm a nice guy and normally never raze cities except for really bad ones, so I decided to accept capitulation as soon as it was offered (I checked every turn), leaving my vassals with as many cities as possible. Since I couldn't grab land I was curious to see what happened when my vassals grew to meet the "liberation" criteria - adding a bit of unsecurity not typical for a dom/conq game - but nothing happened.

I wanted to highlight the UU and UB, so I took nationalism from lib and then went gunpowder>mil trad for conquistadors. After Steel I went for Rifling and then Artillery (also to check if I had oil), delaying Economics to take advantage of the citadels. CR3B1 artillery rocks

I vassalised Mansa and Sury in the period 1100-1400AD using only conquistadors (no siege), for a fast war... well, I learned my lesson.. lost quite a few conq's against ballista phants and double-promoted longbows on hill cities behind 100% cultural defence... Anyway, for my overseas campaign starting around 1500AD I also had lots of cannons ready and soon Qin and Alex were my vassals too. For Ramesses and Caesar I also brought rifles and artillery, and finally some infantry for Mehmed. I am conservative about wars and typically bring a lot of units, had 80+ overseas in the end... better safe than sorry.

I've tried a couple of OCC games and thought they were fun to play but difficult to win. The 3-city version was just as fun and much easier to win, so thanks to the GOTM staff for a cool idea and setup, I really enjoyed it

 

[Jet082]

Cultural Victory in 1650AD, Contender.

This was the first time I participated in a GOTM (just found this site a couple weeks ago). It was also the first time I won on Noble, and with a "three-city-challenge"; I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The 3CC turned out to help more than I would have expected, since I could concentrate on just cultural buildings and each city getting every cathedral for their religions.

I was originally happy with the end date of 1650, since my other cultural victory was in 1800 or 1900. I see now that the date is very slow. I suppose I learned quite a bit this game with how to concentrate on a cultural win.

Pre-game thoughts:

3CC? I figured I could do cultural with that. Wasn't sure how the mechanics for the cathedrals and national wonders worked in a 3CC game, so I actually only assumed the standard rate for each (I learned quickly to build cathedrals like crazy). I spotted stone in the screenshot, so I figured I'd have a chance at the pyramids to get early representation. I also thought quite a bit about either cottaging Barcelona or farming it for a GP farm (didn't decide until mid-play what to do). I figured I'd go for as many religions as possible, in order to control the playing field, and just go from there.

Game summary:

I decided to first go for Hinduism; didn't think I had a chance for Buddhism with a 60% research rate. Right after the first time, I noticed that Mansa popped his capital down right next to the stone, so that took that out of the equation. With him being so close, I knew I had to get lots of culture in Barcelona, and quickly.

Over time I was able to build all cultural buildings as I could. I was able to start 5 of the 6 religions (with Buddhism occurring a few terms after my Hinduism, on the other continent). I spread only Hinduism to Mansa and Sury, to make them friends. I decided that I did not want to have to worry about war or being taken over, as I only had 3 cities to produce troops if needed. Once I befriended them, it was rather smooth sailing (although I did worry). I didn't build a single military unit the entire game.

I was very lucky for Hinduism, and it was founded in Barcelona. I've noticed in most of the screenshots, Mansa tended to move very close to Barcelona. In my game, he didn't build any closer to me than his capital (he did sneak a city on the eastern coast, by my borders ensured he got no production out of it). Also in my game, Sury built in the great wall and not Mansa. Shortly around 0AD, Mansa decided, for kicks I suppose, to become a vassal of Sury. I was worried for a good chunk of the game that the two of them would go against me simply because I was so weak (even if they were pleased with me).

For most of the game, I was actually worried about a civ attacking me, since I lacked the power/protection. I decided to research optics, which I really didn't need, so that I could find the other civs and, hopefully, make them my friend/spread my religion. That wasted a lot of turns where I could have researched more and built cultural buildings. I ended up creating 3 caravels and a good number of missionaries for the sole reason of trying to make the other continent happy. So this was mistake 1.

I decided that Barcelona would be my GP farm, as I could produce a crazy amount of extra food there. With the Globe and Natural Preserve there, I could run an insane amount of specialists. However, near the beginning of the game, I popped down 3 cottages instead of farms, since I figured I would have to wait until Biology before I could really make use of the food (so, short-term cottages were chosen with farms later). My major mistake was in stopping growth of cities after reaching the health cap. I should have just let my cities be sick, and use the extra population. A few times in the early game I stopped growth of my cities, especially when I hit the early happiness cap. I should have just grabbed drama and used the cultural slider to raise the cap (and I had my many religions as well). This is mistake number 2.

I diluted my GP farm in Barcelona with the Spiral Minaret. I figured it wouldn't be that bad. My GP farm only ended up producing 2(!) great artists, and 2 or 3 great prophets (seriously?! 10% or less chance, and I kept getting prophets). That's mistake 3.

After getting liberalism, I used it to take Democracy so that I could build the Statue of Liberty. I didn't realize that I could have finished the game a lot sooner had I not worried myself about getting democracy, and getting to medicine. However, I also completely forgot to switch to Free Speech after finishing the Statue of Liberty! Figured it out many turns later, and kicked myself for it. That was a pretty major mistake, and mistake 4.

If I hadn't made those mistakes (of course, most of them I had no idea were mistakes until after the game and seeing everyone's finish date for cultural), I could have finished much faster. Maybe in the far future I'll give the save another try and see how fast I can do it. So, overall it was a fun and quick game. I enjoyed concentrating on mostly culture, and learned a bit more about how it worked. I loved how I was 2nd in terms of land area compared to the other civs, yet I only had 3 cities. I had a lot of worry in this game, which turned out to misleading.

 

[ShannonCT]

I vassalised Mansa and Sury in the period 1100-1400AD using only conquistadors (no siege), for a fast war... well, I learned my lesson.. lost quite a few conq's against ballista phants and double-promoted longbows on hill cities behind 100% cultural defence...

If you have a lot of espionage points, you can use spies and the "support city revolt" mission to eliminate culture defenses for one turn before attacking. You can position spies in AI cities before declaring war. You want them to sit in a city for 5 turns to get the maximum mission discount.