Caguana Batey

[Bibor]

I found a recent map that I decided to play over and over again. And it features caguana.

I’d argue its the best city state to befriend for a science victory (and perhaps cultural too).

My Batey strategy is to focus on campuses
and entertainment complexes for off-production cities and use bateys for culture generation.

what batey does:
+1 base culture
+1 culture per adjacent bonus resource (I plant it adjacent to at least two). Double after Exploration civic.
+2 per adjacent entertainment complex

what this means:
I can skip monuments early game as +3 batey is super easy to get. later, that I’m getting anywhere between +5 and +9 culture per Batey tile. Insane!

Sure as hell beats spamming theatre districts.

 

[Aurelesk]

Bateys are not bad, but suffers from a lot of problems:

• They need to be on a Flat tiles and not adjacent to another Bateys. Those restrictions are far from being unrestrictive.
• They enjoys +2 Culture per adjacent Entertainment Complex, but Theater Square has +2.5 Culture from it too. There is a competition.
• They also relies on Bonus resources. Many players tend to harvest sooner or later, making the Bateys less interesting for them. Furthermore, Bonus resources are deleted under a district or when settling a city.
• They only have 1 Culture when no criteria are met. An Alcázar is at least 2 Culture and have Fort properties at least, meaning you can't use them aimlessly.
• They are considered underwhelming in comparaison of the Moais. On average, they achieve the same Culture output per tile improvement (~4), but you can put 4 times more Moais on the map than Bateys meaning 4 times more Tourism and potentially 4 times more Culture as well.
• You have to work the tile in order to enjoy the Culture, something Monument or Theater Square do not need.

Don't get me wrong: Bateys are great (as long you research the Exploration civic, something many players skip since Monarchy is quite an incredible government now, yet available earlier...). Apart from the City Park (which is a poor Culture generator anyway), the majority of the civilization has no way to increase Culture from Tile improvement. In a sense, Bateys offer the player a good alternative. Civilizations who do have cultural tile improvement, even those with potent one, they can still enjoy from Bateys to complement their Culture and Tourism at Flight. For example, Châteaux cannot achieve as much Culture as the Bateys if there is no Wonders to enjoy from, or Gauls can complement the Culture from Mines by putting Bateys on flat tile, or the Mapuches can complement their Chemamulls with Bateys on area with low Appeal.

The thing is, you need to set-up everything for your Bateys to be worth it. It means you have to not harvest Bonus resources, plan ahead where to put your Bateys in order to maximise the gains, set up a lot of Entertainment Complexes (and Theater Squares) in your empire and take advantages of those.

 

[Bibor]

Good feedback. Let me offer a broader description why I find them better than Moai, Alcazars and Teatre squares and why the adjacency with Ent. Complexes doesn't bother me that much.

So, I play with Corporations on and I'm trying to get a sub-200 science victory without religion. Perhaps that's a factor, but I miss BTS corporations and these are relatively well implemented, at least for science victories. My preferred method of getting early culture used to be +1 culture from plantations (if I miss out on Religious Settlements). I find Divine Spark just being too useless, since my research pace outstrips the benefits of eurekas from Great Scientists. My main source of science is usually one city, with all the science bonuses stacked in (14 pop, kilwa, science industry, 3 science great works etc.).

I like Bateys best because:
- low culture really cuts into on space race speed, so I need as much culture as I can squeeze into the minimum of amount hexes and production.
- They only take two flatland tiles for whopping 7 culture each. That's easily 14 culture per city, which is quite adequate for a space race.
- Tiles don't need to be adjacent like with Moai, so I can "dot" them where possible. And they don't use up a hills mine spot.
- I tend to shy away from wasting time on zones I don't absolutely need. Theatre squares really eat into my production times and zone slots. I'd rather use that time on producing campus projects. In comparison, a Batey takes one worker charge.
- I need entertainment complexes anyway, since happiness is one of my core issues late game, as I'm trying to grow at least 4 cities to pop 14. The AI is really bad at improving resources. I don't know how it goes after turns 230+, but before that, yes I usually can't really trade for lux.
- I tend to chop only with Magnus present, and I rotate him through cities, which means I'm very specific with worker positioning and charges. Removing any bonus resource apart from camps is usually a waste of time and worker charges. +7 culture per turn far outstrips any gold or food I might get from a chop. I can get gold elsewhere and population count is not that important if you're frugal with zone slots and if it's not one of the lagrange/laser station cities.

 

[Aurelesk]

They only take two flatland tiles for whopping 7 culture each. That's easily 14 culture per city, which is quite adequate for a space race.

How do you manage to get 2 Bateys at 7 Culture per city easily and consistently? Seriously.
I believe that the Bateys are underrated*, since putting an Entertainment Complex next to a Bonus resources can give you 2 Bateys at 5 Culture each easily (with the Exploration civic). You can also sneak a Batey between 2 Bonus resources for 3 Culture in the early game, then build the Entertainment Complex afterward for 4 Culture that will become 7 Culture once Exploration is unlocked. But I don't believe you can achieve an average of 7 Culture per Batey across your empire.

* : I believe many players underrate global yields (culture, faith, gold, science), miscalculate passive yields (housing, amenity tourism, power) but overvalue local yields (food especially, production is king though). A Batey at +5 Culture feels as 4 yield since you can only put it on flat tiles and have to compete to a Mine at +3 Production that feels as 4-5 yields because of the hills / resources / both.
It also come on when you discover the City-State and became the Suzerain. You cannot plan the game on having a specific City-State being on the game to fulfill your Culture plan. Since the Batey needs you to plan around it, being aware of its existence only late in the game means you miss on several opportunities. It is the same problem on late unique improvement like the Château, where you need a second Builder wave in order to remove / rebuild tiles accordingly.

I understand more your point. But it is specific to overly densely packed civilizations that happens to have few tiles and Population meaning each Population has to work meaningful tiles, yet not harvesting the Bonus resources to free space for districts, and putting Entertainment Complex in all city for the +3 Amenity. I don't believe that is a common play! Mostly the Entertainment Complex spam!
More seriously, you like the Batey more because it synergies well with your way of playing. All the cumulative pocket Culture become consequent toward climbing the Civic tree, while you do not care about the Tourism. The Moai has a different use: it is greater for its spammable purpose and Tourism at flight. You can achieve a higher sum of Culture to convert at Flight than the Batey could do. You could even settle a ghost-city in the middle of the snow that will have no other purpose than having all tiles being Moai. The Moai is just more flexible and need less planning to achieve good value.

In short: I agree with you. The Batey is strong, but need planning in order to achieve high Culture. It also depends on how you play the game: the Batey synergies better when you cannot dedicate many tiles while having a lot of Entertainment Complex. But you can plan around the Batey only if you know the City-State is in the game early on. Furthermore, your gameplan or the victory shouldn't rely on the existence of a specific City-State in order to cover a hole in your strategy, because it means that strategy is flawed from the start. In the end, even if the Batey is strong, players do not expect to count on it in order to increase their Culture output, and might go for suzerainty of another city-state instead (since they need less Culture, the Batey become less valuable).

 

[Bibor]

Yes, you're right. I'm not planning my general strategy around Batey. But, it's extremely fun if I can get it early. I don't mind re-playing maps, so it's great for me.

Batey is consistent, though, at least on small maps (that I play). Chance of having 2 adjacent flatlands (one for batey, one for Ent. Complex), of which 1 hex borders 2 bonus resources (wheat, deer, cattle, copper etc.) are pretty high if you don't chop the bonus. I'll put up some screenshots from my game when I get there. It's really fun.