Our capital was right on top of horses, and the Malinese capital is perfectly placed to dominate the NW strip of fresh water territory. So I had to try
a weenie-rush tactic.
Aim:
- Chop and whip as many chariots as I could muster and take out Mansa Musa and steal his lands before he could say, "
what? The curtains?"
- Establish 3rd and 4th city in between the 2 capitals. 1 for production & Marble. 1 on the rivers for a third Great Artist farm.
- Keep the peace with the remaining 2 neighbours.
- Focus everything on getting to +250% GP points (Parthenon, N epic and Pacifism) in my culture city.
- Making every great person an Artist. The speed provided by an early great scientist, prophet or engineer never out-weighed the 4000 culture bomb. And even though I could have got a scientist earlier it would have still put the 15th GA out of reach at 2200gpp's. (So that's why no Great Library in this build.)
- Then as a secondary aim use the 4 strong cities to speed to +450% culture, from Hermitage, Free Speech, 3 Cathedrals and the 100% culture slider. Adding Caste, Merch and The Sistine to get a fat total.
Not an easy road to travel:
Used every trick in the book for the rush. Straight to Bronze. Pre-chopped all the forests and built the roads to the horses, so the second Husbandry kicked in I could finish the chops and radical whip-abuse for 7 chariots in 7-ish turns.
The Capital fell by turn #59 I think, but Mansa had got out a second city (
boo!), fortunately the remainder of my attack force sacked it a few turns later (
yeah!).
Sped out my first settler for Marble to get the Parthenon. Thought about going for the Stone north of my captured city, but the poor position would have diluted my GA farms. So failed to get The Pyramids.
Didn't connect to the Iron to ensure that my Hereditary Rule guys stayed at a minimum cost.
Luckily got 2 religions by spread. Made a B-line to Theocracy for Christianity, as I needed The Sis' anyway. Got the 3 Cathedrals without needing monasteries. Had to hold off on the change to Pacifism for a couple of turns though.
Took Buddhism as my primary, because Saladin founded it. With a shared religion and Mansa gone it meant I could put minimum effort into keeping the peace, having only the Egyptian Lassie to keep sweet. Bribed her with a tech every once in a while.
Ignored Drama. Didn't build a single Theatre. Got to Caste System quick enough. Kept my citizens in the capital off of the 3 production tiles and working as artists to crank out the gpp's. Therefore no unnecessary buildings in the capital after I hit Caste System.
As with my previous attempts I built a late 5th city down south. For a few extra cottages and a base from which to pump out galleys to save The Culture City from having to defend its Crabs from the Barbie fleets. As a bonus this time I got an extra workboat out to the northern Fish at Timbuktu.
With the extra health resources and some complex resource trading (got wine and spices for my Iron and cash for my old Marble) I managed to get +4 health from the Grocer building. So that made it worthwhile as I'd picked up Guilds in a trade.
Starved the Culture City for the last 16 turns to crank out a grand total of 15 Great Artist (with a little help from Tokyo and Timbuktu), for a max +60,000
.
Hit Free Speech a little late because of the effort of the early rush, but with the 3 cathedrals, a couple of 1000yr old Wonders and a 23 pop city to starve with specialists I managed to scrap out 33k
from the city itself.
Given a total of 93,277
.
I'll probably try it sometimes just for fun, it's quite an interesting idea. And yeah, please leave the challenge deadline with 2 weekends, I'm not able to play a lot right now.
without theocracy...
