BTS Challenge - The Culture of England

[Echo of Celts]

This is my first challenge as well as the first game I will keep updated on the forums.

The point of this game is to try and win a Cultural Victory with Elizabeth of England while only build 3 Cities.

I am normally a Prince player, but seeing as I have never tried anything like this before, I am going to go for it on Noble.

Game Setup:

Big and Small, Standard Size
Marathon Speed
10 Civs
Everything Else Random

All Victory Types Enabled.

The Key to this Challenge is only building 3 Cities.

I will post the start later today.

Cheers

 

[madscientist]

Sounds like a good RPC game. I know we discussed this in another thread so perhaps posting those starting ideas is a good place to start.

 

[ratrangerm]

It will be interesting to see a cultural game on Marathon speed. Also interesting that you will limit yourself to three cities.

I would say your strategy should be to designate one city as the Cottage city, one city for Production and one city as a GP Farm. Maintenance shouldn't be much of an issue becuase you'll only have three cities.

Try to keep your GP Farm "pure" for Great Artists and limit your Wonders there to those that generate GA points.

Also, you may not be able to found three religions, so you'll definitely want to let at least one religion spread to you.

 

[Kanidyen]

Without Mysticism, early Buddism/Hinduism may not be doable depending on opponents; on Noble, I would try anyways. In BtS, the AI tends to lag a bit at the start, and I've seen even Izzy come away from the pre-Classical age without a religion. Of course this would never happen in Vanilla...

Even so, Code of Laws/Philosophy are sure-wins on Noble. My suggestion would be shoot for Buddism, then CoL/Philo, completing the copper cathedral trio. You'll need Meditation/Polytheism quickly anyways. Any other religion would be extra. Copper is more common than the marble/stone requirements that the other religions' cathedrals have, and they should be built quickly anyways (no waiting for Democracy for a rush-buy...)

I would say your strategy should be to designate one city as the Cottage city, one city for Production and one city as a GP Farm. Maintenance shouldn't be much of an issue becuase you'll only have three cities.

Both the capital and third cities need to be production/cottage hybrids; they both need to bring in Hermitage/cathedrals, and any wonders you're planning. For a time, the capital under Buerocracy will be strong with production anyways. I say that the third city should be cottaged because remember the cottages give culture, too. By limiting that third city to production only will require it to be bombed more than it should.

Let's put it this way: On average, I have 12-15 mature cottages by the time I finish the game. With three cities, obviously, your GP farm is busy with food sources and artists. That leaves 6-8sih cottages spread out to the other two cities. A hybrid capital and third city is the way to go.

It will be interesting to see a cultural game on Marathon speed.

I tried this on Epic last night and fell asleep early. Needless to say, I'll stick to Standard/Quick cultural wins

Also interesting that you will limit yourself to three cities.

On smaller maps, it's nothing special. On larger maps, with BtS, I think it's a problem, but we'll see.

 

[Echo of Celts]

Sorry for the lateness getting this started. Getting all my screenshots uploaded quickly proved to be a not so easy task.

Without further delay,

The Culture of England: PART 1

Well, here the English Nobles of ages past decide to found their first city. We have great growth resources, not so many production resources.

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The random selections in our game have delivered us a temperate world with high sea levels.

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Our Warrior explores to the east, and low behold, some kind villagers have given us a gift. This will greatly aid us in our early bid for growth.

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Not so many years later, we meet our first neighbor, my experiences with Ethiopia have been good to date, hopefully they stay that way.

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Not so much longer later, we have another first contact.

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And another one. I have had some ... annoying experiences with this one.

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A first for me, let us see how Darius and I get along.

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Well, it looks as though it will not be all happiness in the world of England. Mighty Shaka makes contact.

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And yet another first contact.

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I think we may have met them all now...

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Maybe not, another War monger to add to the fun.

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A survey of the region shows us the abundance of Gold. We are looking either directly west or directly east for our second city. We want this to be a production juggernaut, so as many production resources, forests and hills is what we want.

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Well 2575 BC and we pull a religion out of the hat. Let the mighty Jewish state of England lead the world to glorious.. umm Culture!

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We decide to settle our production city to the west to take advantage of the wheat directly north, the Gold and Marble to the east and the Hills to both sides.

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Ah 1990 BC and look where Mighty England is now!

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[madscientist]

A few comments so far.

Shaka is an big problem as you will have little production to match his military. Stay on very good terms, if friendly he generally will leave you alone.

Good loand but you want only three cities, so I am not sure I would have settled off fresh water. I would have settled onto of the elephants and the space just south of the corn. That would bring ALOT of gold into your empire allowing you to farm a bit. An alternateive would be further south along the rivernear the cows. You want to place some distance between cities to maximize the chances of getting some resources

York is poorly placed, too many plains.

You may want to wait to convert to Judaism to keep diplomatic relations, you will still get the culture, just not the happiness or OR. Right now Charlemange the Zealot will be after you.

 

[Echo of Celts]

A Bonus! It turns out Wild horses have been roaming around York... we just couldn't see them! Also our barbarian friends decide to make us neighbors, we dispatch a couple warriors to keep em at bay.

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1270 BC - York finishes our Culture Superpowers first Wonder! And it is an important one. We decided to keep this one out of London, we do not want to diluted the Great Artist pool too much.

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Using our Free Technology, we found our second religion, making York a Holy City as well!

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Another List! This one is not so Kind to Mighty England... at least we are not last?

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980 BC - We go for our third city. The many deserts in the region combined with my friendly neighbors taking up all the good spots make it difficult to get a good BFC. We decide to duke it out with Egypt... Culture Style.

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870 BC - We win the Race to Aesthetics! (Who do you think was actually racing us? )

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Well our three city empire has reached 500,000 people! And as you can see, London is on it's way to completing it's first Wonder.

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Ah our first demand. I suppose we should give in if we don't want Praetorians making Culture soup out of us.

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Our first Great Person! A Great Prophet from York, not bad, seeing as York is not our GP Farm and we could use the money.

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Turns out the Parthenon will not be London's first wonder after all. This does dilute our Great Artist Pool... a little, but +1 GP shouldn't be too bad?

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Well 490 BC and it seem sour Tech Lead has.. vanished.

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London finishes the Parthenon! This is great for Great Artists, speeds em up and increases their chance!

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Religion Number 3! And a third Holy City! Nottingham was feeling left out.

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A a late commer! I guess he got lost on his way over. I don't think he will be much of a trouble to us.

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We decide we want some help in building the Statue of Zeus. And our friends in Ethiopia are happy to provide it... for free!

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We decide it is time to reap the benefits of Code of Laws. First trade, Alphabet!

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Now we use Alphabet to get us some Iron Working. I can feel us catching up in tech already.

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210 BC, We finish Drama. Theaters! Great for Culture I am told.

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Well, That's the end of part 1.

We have 3 Cities, 3 Religions, 3 Wonders and no wars yet! All seems good on the English front.

More to come when I wade through another large stack of screenshots. (Sooner than later)

 

[Echo of Celts]

A few comments so far.

Shaka is an big problem as you will have little production to match his military. Stay on very good terms, if friendly he generally will leave you alone.

Good loand but you want only three cities, so I am not sure I would have settled off fresh water. I would have settled onto of the elephants and the space just south of the corn. That would bring ALOT of gold into your empire allowing you to farm a bit. An alternateive would be further south along the rivernear the cows. You want to place some distance between cities to maximize the chances of getting some resources

York is poorly placed, too many plains.

You may want to wait to convert to Judaism to keep diplomatic relations, you will still get the culture, just not the happiness or OR. Right now Charlemange the Zealot will be after you.

Yes we converted to Judaism almost right way. York is not optimal I know. But the vast amount of Desert surrounding us made it difficult to get a good BFC. We are hoping York can churn out production with it's hills, marble, gold and horses.

 

[Zanttu]

We are hoping York can churn out production with it's hills, marble, gold and horses.

I know you knew it, but it still jumped to my eye so I had to post.. Gold doesn't add production, only money. And speaking of York, the food is really limited, so if you want to work the gold tile too, production won't be great early on.

 

[Echo of Celts]

The Culture of England: Part 2

Well, to start this round off, we decide to use Code of Laws to get Mathematics, allowing us to research Music faster.

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And our buddy Pericles decides he wasn't happy with the trade and requires more... I suppose we should comply.

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As we can see here, the Jewish Block is growing, and Nottingham is putting up a fight against Egyptian culture.

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London finishes her third wonder, this one should benefit us if we are required to defend our territory as well as providing GA Points.

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Now we use Theology to try and catch up in the tech race some more. Hereditary Rule should help our angry people in London.

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Another list! This time We are shocked! This is the one list we should be topping, but number 2??? Not for long.

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And a tough decision, angry thew mighty Shaka or angry our closet neighbors? The choice is clear.. we must make Shaka unhappy.

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We decide to use Theology to once again add some techs to our empire. Calendar should allow London to work the last of her resources.

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We use Theology to boost are Tech's once again.

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Now our three city empire has reached a million souls.

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A random event gives us some added health in London, which at this point is very welcome, seeing as London is growing like mad. Also.. we get a free scientist, who will unfortunately contaminate our artist pool.

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London pops her first Great person, and it is a .. Prophet. I guess that shrine effected the gene pool more than we hoped. Oh well, some more money never hurt.

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Very shortly after, we finish Music and land our first Great Artist.

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Using the Great Prophet, York achieves her second Wonder and our second Shrine. Not bad for cash flow, and we dont care much about York Great Person pool.

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Using Aesthetics, we make a trade with our Byzantine friends.

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A snapshot of our current situation. Our army is not great, but it is not last either. Our land area is not large, but 4th with 3 cities is not bad at all. And our population is very surprising, #2 with only 3 cities. Also, our shrines are ranking in the gold, and we are number one in GNP.

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Holy Rome makes a "request", we decide to comply seeing as we do not want the zealot coming to collect at this point.

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York finishes her third wonder. This one was created simply for the culture. Though the added defense is a bonus. It was a long time in the making due to our lack of stone. But York is a production city...

At this point we adopt our 1 Building 1 Unit principle. In order to keep a proper army defending, each city must create a military unit after a building no matter what.

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[Echo of Celts]

We make another trade, allowing us workshops. York will hopefully gain some production from this.

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London pops her second Great Artist, the first created by the city itself. by cranking our Artist specialists, we have risen the Artist probability to just over 80%. Heres hoping the odds hold.

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What do you know! Our 4th Religion. This is nice, seeing as no religions founded by other nations have spread to us yet. Also, Pacifism should help with our great artist generation.

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Well, London's Culture makes it's first impact on neighboring Civ's. Ofcourse we must reject the poor Greeks.

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In order to give Nottingham a boost in her Culture battle with Egypt, we decide to settle one of our Great Artists here.

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Another List. #5 isn't bad for our 3 cities.

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Two Million Soul's.. we just keep growing.

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London pops her thirst Great Artist. They are coming fast and furious now.

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London finishing another wonder, and this one is a Big One. This should make our victory all the more easy.

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Another snapshot, Our army hasn't moved up at all. Our Land area is holding steady, but our population is falling in Global Rank. Our Cash flow is still tops though.

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York pulls out another wonder. This should help our Science out a bit.

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Our Great Person production gets another boost.

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And Great Artist Number 4.

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And not so long after, York pops her second Great Person, another Prophet. I guess Nottingham could use a shrine.

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Nottingham's First Wonder! And more Gold. Gold is always good.

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Darius makes a request, we comply.

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And we end Part 2 with another list. This one is more proper. Let the Culture Rain!

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So after part 2 we have 4 Great Artists, 3 Great Prophets/Shrines, York has 3 Wonders, London has 3 Wonders. And it's only 755 AD. Still No Wars!

 

[jesusin]

I am a bit late.

IMO, with only 3 cities you should go crazy about GAs.
You will be able to build only 1 cathedral for each religion. So you will have very few multipliers. So raw commerce and raw culture are less important in this game. So you should emphasize the other way of culture, the GA great works.

As a result, I would have cottaged the capital, built Hermitage and every possible cathedral in the capital and I would have used both other cities as GPFarms, farming every green tile and not working hills at all most of the time.

 

[Killroyan]

Good game and it looks like it is going great so far but a few things that I noticed:

Unimproved iron and unimproved elephants are really hurting to my eyes. Improve this as fast as possible since you will be able to build some macemen/war elephants etc.. to increase your power graph otherwise somebody might come knocking.

Also you rejected the greek city that wanted to join. You said you would only build 3 cities, but nobody said anything about culture flip right? You could have used the extra resources to make some more friends.

About the great artists, first keep the on from music on as reserve and then you settle your second on in Nottingham. I would have at least settled 2 or 3 of them over there. Nottingham is very low on culture production right now and is loosing the culture battle with hatsephshut so it cannot work several very good tiles (for example the gems which gives you hapiness and a good research boost). Especially with the sistine chapel and the hermitage those settled artist can bring in 28 culture per turn already.

 

[Kanidyen]

I'll have some time later to take a better look at all the pictures from my non-work computer, thus getting a better view of the game. Certainly folks don't know this, but I'm a big fan of 3-city cultural wins, so this whole thread is of major interest. Here's some thoughts of what I've read so far:

So after part 2 we have 4 Great Artists, 3 Great Prophets/Shrines, York has 3 Wonders, London has 3 Wonders. And it's only 755 AD. Still No Wars!

Well done! However, I question the use of the GPs on the shrines, which generate GP points, thus polluting any GA pool present in those cities.

Normally in my cultural games, I slingshot CS with an Oracle build. However, I also normally build the GP farm up quick enough as to "drown" out any great prophet spawns. I did come into one game, however, where I had the Parthenon and Oracle in the capital, and I did get a couple of prophets. While a shrine seems like a winning situation since you can collect a good amount of gold, I think I would rather preserve the great artist pool better. Cultural games are best won with a whole bunch of artist bombs, and prophets don't get us there. My suggestion is that if you do get anymore prophets, just settle them. +6 gold/+2 hammers is a great boost to any city.

 

[Killroyan]

The shrines also produce 5 culture per turn which double fast enough and also let you run 100% science throughout the game. But now of course settle the GP and also get 2 culture per turn (sistine chapel )

 

[Echo of Celts]

Some points here. Yes I have some unimproved resources, it pains me as well. I do have 1 iron hooked up, so i am generating some military at this point. The Ivory I believe just cam into my cultural borders recently, or I have been blind. Either way it is being hooked up

I decided to run a pure 3 city system. Any city that revolts or is liberated I must reject or get rid of on the same turn.

On the Great Artists, I was originally planning to save them all for end game bombs, but I noticed Nottingham was taking a beating from Egypt, so I used on over there. I agree it would have been better earlier.

I also did not want to dilute my GA pool in London, but as the Jewish Holy City, and the fact Judaism is the worlds largest religion, I couldn't turn down the cash flow. It is allowing me to maintain my 100% slider and therefore keeping up with the AI is tech.

The shrines in York and Nottingham give Culture and bring in some gold. The fact neither city is being used to make Great People en mass makes me not care about their GP Gene Pools. Also, York as a mix of wonders anyways messing it's GPP Pool up.

I hope to post part 3 tomorrow on Boxing Day.

 

[Echo of Celts]

A few comments so far.

Shaka is an big problem as you will have little production to match his military. Stay on very good terms, if friendly he generally will leave you alone.

Good loand but you want only three cities, so I am not sure I would have settled off fresh water. I would have settled onto of the elephants and the space just south of the corn. That would bring ALOT of gold into your empire allowing you to farm a bit. An alternateive would be further south along the rivernear the cows. You want to place some distance between cities to maximize the chances of getting some resources

York is poorly placed, too many plains.

You may want to wait to convert to Judaism to keep diplomatic relations, you will still get the culture, just not the happiness or OR. Right now Charlemange the Zealot will be after you.

You know, I was staring at a screenshot here, and setting on the elephants would have been a great move. Next time... next time.

 

[DesertRogues]

Good, entertaining posts so far, I am curious to see how this finishes out as you are building your culture without the extra cathedral multipliers since you only have 3 cities, I am wondering if it will take too long and you will be beaten by a space race. Good luck.

 

[Echo of Celts]

The Culture of England: Part 3

To start part 3, we must give in to another arrogant demand.

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We complete education and are on our way to winning the Liberalism race.

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London completes Great Artist #5

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And our friends over in Greece have founded a Colony. Bismark of the Germans

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Another demand, we decide to comply, as usual. Our military cannot handle a full invasion

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Another snapshot, Our GNP is still #1, our Land and Population is holding, but our Military is dropping.

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London finishes another wonder, the first that does not contribute Great Artist Points. I know, contaminating the Gene Pool. But the added Health and Population are helpful, and +2 GE Points can't be that bad?

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Great Artist #6

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Well, we won the Liberalism race and use it to get Nationalism, we then use Liberalism to get a much needed Military Tech.

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Another Snapshot, GNP and Military and Population are rising, Land holds steady.

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1000 BC, A Cultural Update of Our 3 Cities.

London

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York

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Nottingham

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The English Empire now holds Five Million Souls

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York pops her 3rd Great Person, our First Great Scientist, we use him to make an Academy in York.

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[Echo of Celts]

For the first time in our Empires history, all 3 Cities Cultural Borders are Linked.

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An overview of our Empire. Nottingham, though far away is holding her own. Being friends with Egypt is paying off here in the long run and they continue to be a world superpower.

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Well, they want to give a City to Us, we must vote NO!

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And Great Artist #7

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Unfortunately they give us Hurrian, we must find a way to unload it.

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Turns out the Romans want it back, good for us.

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Nottingham completes our first Cathedral, which should help her Culture catch up.

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For the first time, Nottingham has full use of her BFC. She is holding her own against Egypt in the Cultural Battle.

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London gets a small Culture Boost.

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Another Snapshot, GNP is still Rising, Population and Land have risen to #2 each! But Military continues to sit near the bottom.

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This shot shows how our Culture is crushing the Greeks. They a a little Ring Empire around us.

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London finishes another Wonder. This one again contributes Great Artist Points.

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Great Artist #8

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Another List! But where are we?

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Ah, a free relations boost with Persia, this could be helpful.

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And to finish Part 3, we research Replaceable Parts and use it in a quick trade.

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After Part 3 we have 8 Great Artist, 3 Great Prophets/Shines, 1 Great Scientist/Academy, 1 Cathedral, London has 5 Wonders and York has 3 Wonders. Still no wars!