Cultural Deity before 1000AD is possible

[FiveAces]

Latest - only 1475 as Liz, but I'm happy with the win because I was immediately boxed into a 3-city corner and my GP "farm" could only sustain 4 artists.

Also came to the realization you don't need Oracle. Even without early beaurocracy, there is still enough time to build 3 1/2 price cathedrals in the capital if you go CS-lit-music. And you only need 2 to get the cap legendary by 1190, so 3 by FS and a later 4th should be plenty for 1100.

 

[jesusin]

Latest - only 1475 as Liz, but I'm happy with the win because I was immediately boxed into a 3-city corner and my GP "farm" could only sustain 4 artists.

Also came to the realization you don't need Oracle. Even without early beaurocracy, there is still enough time to build 3 1/2 price cathedrals in the capital if you go CS-lit-music. And you only need 2 to get the cap legendary by 1190, so 3 by FS and a later 4th should be plenty for 1100.

Have you tried skipping Music completely (trading it from AI later)? You lose one artist and you start your cathedrals later, but you go 100% culture sooner and you can be more liberal in tech trading since you know you will win the liberalism race.

 

[FiveAces]

Have you tried skipping Music completely (trading it from AI later)? You lose one artist and you start your cathedrals later, but you go 100% culture sooner and you can be more liberal in tech trading since you know you will win the liberalism race.

Yes, I have done this when research is hurting, although for 1100 or even HOF 1st finish I think the GA will be required if non-financial. Financial with 2 cottage cities might be able to offset it.

I seem to be having problems getting everything to work together - for example, if I build the parthenon, research is usually crippled. If I tech quickly, I don't have enough of the religious buildings early enough. I can't seem to effectively balance teching, building, and GP farm setup. CoL before pott/alpha doesn't help, but I can't seem to found confu otherwise. Maybe this is the key - giving up guaranteed confu. So many variables.

I think I will try the current best game's map to make sure there is not something fundamentally wrong with my play.

 

[jesusin]

I seem to be having problems getting everything to work together - for example, if I build the parthenon, research is usually crippled. If I tech quickly, I don't have enough of the religious buildings early enough. I can't seem to effectively balance teching, building, and GP farm setup.

Same here. Fine-tuning isn't easy, and it is influenced by the particularities of the map.

My best results have come from games were the GPFarm is prioritized (no settlers from this city, early Lite...). The balance between hammers and research is more difficult. So is the balance between Slavery and Caste System.

 

[FiveAces]

I looked at WastinTime's std and small #1HOF submissions to figure how he does it so well.

Neither one has parth (I'm starting to think this is a red herring without CS because it takes so long to build otherwise). In both, he starts med-mining. Then in one he beelines CoL (founds confu) and in the other he beelines alpha - no ag/mas/pott etc. sidetracks in either (although he popped ag in one). The one he went to CoL, he did the CS slingshot (no marble/mas) and then to alpha (he does pop a GP for a shrine - and still has enough GA's). The one he went to alpha, he still got CoL in time to found confu in 1360BC. Both games he went drama-music, and didn't found Tao. One time it looks like he traded for Philo, the other (I'm pretty sure) he got it on his own.

He's also popping GA's (no GS's) left and right out of all cities except the cap, so he's running artists everywhere - in fact he only uses slavery for a brief period in only one of the games.

Now here's the interesting part - the game with the free CS and Philo trade he got to Lib in 170AD. The one he researched everything, he got it in 110AD - prob because he had 3 dyes that insta-gave 5C after calendar. In either case, he's generating a ton of bpt. But he's also still building a confucian academy in the capital in 1025AD, so he wasn't prioritizing early religious buildings everywhere.

Now what are the key things I can learn from these games?
1) I need to run artists earlier in all farm cities. This is why I don't pop enough GA's.
2) I need to betrer prioritize early science in the capital.
3) I should go straight from mining to either alpha or CoL slingshot. I believe this is the main difference between 110/170 and the 230ish I usually get. for ex, ag+masonry is about 7 turns.

 

[WastinTime]

Very interesting. Don't forget beakers/tech is less on a small map than on std. So tech goes faster on small, but you have fewer AI to trade with, so that slows you down. It's hard to compare std/small. Have you examined any of the other top 5 standard cultural? Or, I guess we're focusing on small, so the top 5 small games.

 

[FiveAces]

Have you examined any of the other top 5 standard cultural? Or, I guess we're focusing on small, so the top 5 small games.

I didn't - Lexad has 1 warlords std and 1 inca marathon small and the rest were jesusin's, which I assumed used the general strategy in his writeup that began the thread, although I will check that now that you mention - even if the general appraoch is the same, there might be some insight as to why some of his games were better than others.

Have you tried a game with a "hammer city" yet?

 

[jesusin]

I looked at WastinTime's std and small #1HOF submissions to figure how he does it so well.

Neither one has parth (I'm starting to think this is a red herring without CS because it takes so long to build otherwise). In both, he starts med-mining. Then in one he beelines CoL (founds confu) and in the other he beelines alpha - no ag/mas/pott etc. sidetracks in either (although he popped ag in one). The one he went to CoL, he did the CS slingshot (no marble/mas) and then to alpha (he does pop a GP for a shrine - and still has enough GA's). The one he went to alpha, he still got CoL in time to found confu in 1360BC. Both games he went drama-music, and didn't found Tao. One time it looks like he traded for Philo, the other (I'm pretty sure) he got it on his own.

He's also popping GA's (no GS's) left and right out of all cities except the cap, so he's running artists everywhere - in fact he only uses slavery for a brief period in only one of the games.

Now here's the interesting part - the game with the free CS and Philo trade he got to Lib in 170AD. The one he researched everything, he got it in 110AD - prob because he had 3 dyes that insta-gave 5C after calendar. In either case, he's generating a ton of bpt. But he's also still building a confucian academy in the capital in 1025AD, so he wasn't prioritizing early religious buildings everywhere.

Now what are the key things I can learn from these games?
1) I need to run artists earlier in all farm cities. This is why I don't pop enough GA's.
2) I need to betrer prioritize early science in the capital.
3) I should go straight from mining to either alpha or CoL slingshot. I believe this is the main difference between 110/170 and the 230ish I usually get. for ex, ag+masonry is about 7 turns.

Excellent summary, thanks for your time.

No agriculture... hmmmm...
I tend to get worst research rates than WastinTime. I always research 1 food tech before beelining to Alphabet. I guess I concentrate more on settlers/workers in the beggining. Please, when did WastinTime found his 4th and 6th cities? And what about your own games? I usually get the 4th one around 1300BC and the 6th one at 1AD.

 

[FiveAces]

Excellent summary, thanks for your time.

No agriculture... hmmmm...
I tend to get worst research rates than WastinTime. I always research 1 food tech before beelining to Alphabet. I guess I concentrate more on settlers/workers in the beggining. Please, when did WastinTime found his 4th and 6th cities? And what about your own games? I usually get the 4th one around 300BC and the 6th one at 1AD.

545bc and 1480bc (the turn after his 3rd city that game) - I think the split is because in the second one he built only 1 before the oracle in his capital, so his thinking might have been he needed an earlier 4th to make up for the delayed 3rd. He also didn't need to max tech for beauro anymore.

And that was it. He only had 4 cities in both games, even on the std map where there should have been more room to expand.

My 4th city is usually around 500-300bc. I also only build 4 cities - I've never found a great site for a later 5th one, and it's got to be a great site to justify sacrificing gpp for the settler, not to mention the additional maintenance.

 

[jesusin]

I usually get the 4th one around 300BC and the 6th one at 1AD.

Sorry, I meant 4th-1300BC 6th-1AD. Editted in the original.

 

[jesusin]

My 4th city is usually around 500-300bc. I also only build 4 cities - I've never found a great site for a later 5th one, and it's got to be a great site to justify sacrificing gpp for the settler, not to mention the additional maintenance.

In small maps I stay in 4 or 5 cities too.

The settler for the fifth one is not so hard to get, since you probably have reached the happiness limit in one of the cottage cities. A city with a single corn can sustain 3 artists and then will be able to pop 1 GA. The maintenance is annoying in the beggining, but as you mentioned in another post, after currency it is quite easy to stay on the green through trade.

 

[FiveAces]

In small maps I stay in 4 or 5 cities too.

The settler for the fifth one is not so hard to get, since you probably have reached the happiness limit in one of the cottage cities. A city with a single corn can sustain 3 artists and then will be able to pop 1 GA. The maintenance is annoying in the beggining, but as you mentioned in another post, after currency it is quite easy to stay on the green through trade.

If you have cottage cities. Judging by the frequency of GA's, WastingTime is only cottaging his capital, though I could be wrong since I've not downloaded any of the saves. In that case you would need to decide if dropping artists for the settler would pay off in the long run - and a 3 artist 5th city is going to have to wait a long time to pop its GA if you've been running artists from around CoL.

Here's a good one - how would you calculate how many turns a single 5th city GA would save? I don't think it's as simple as "from the last one to the next one you didn't need" because each city resets the bar for all the others when they pop, and they're producing different gpppt, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[jesusin]

Here's a good one - how would you calculate how many turns a single 5th city GA would save? I don't think it's as simple as "from the last one to the next one you didn't need" because each city resets the bar for all the others when they pop, and they're producing different gpppt, but maybe I'm wrong.

I am sorry I don't fully understand your question.

I'll try to answer the question "how good is it to have an additional city popping a single additional GA?".

The answer has to be one of two possibilities, either you get 1 more GA civ-wide or either you get the very same number of GAs civ-wide.

To answer that question I think about what would happen if I didn't have the additional city. for example, I would have 8 GA, popped from this cities:
2-3-2-2-4-2-2-3
(this means I am going to get 4 GA from city #2, etc...) The next GA would come from city #2 but it will come too late.

Then I calculate when the additional GA would be born, let's say its now:
2-3-2-2-4-2-5-3
and the next one would be 2.
Basically, the new 5 has replaced the last 2 in the first example. The next GA popped form city #2 will be more easy to pop now, because it has had more time to accumulate points since the last one popped.

How much additional points will it accumulate, thanks to the 5th city? Just as many as it costed to pop the Ga from the 5th city.

So in this example, when you think about settling the 5th city, you have to calculate how things would go without it, then estimate when would the new city pop a GA, then you add the cost of that GA to the remaining GPP in the city #2 at the estimated end of the game date and you see if it would or wouldn't pop the next GA with this additional points.

 

[WastinTime]

On small, I usually cottaged my 2nd city. The hammer city is only a theory.

On Std, I just GA bomb both the 2nd and 3rd. Very little cottaging is needed in the 2nd city.

 

[FiveAces]

1415. 1st to confu but not music (missed by 2 turns). Was hurt by Mansa and Cyrus - the only civs i had contact with for a while - delaying pottery. Very short on cottages (9 total, only 4 in capital). Had to bomb once in the capital (got marble, so not a total loss). Lib first, but only in 380ad or thereabouts. Still, with a "real" capital, earlier lib, and +2 GA's for cities 2 and 3...

EDIT: I also founded cities in the wrong order. GP farm and aux farm should have been switched as aux farm had fore fp for early growth and trees for chopping.

One thing of note - I had gold and gems in the capital, so I could grow from 2 to 3 while mining the gold and then work it while building the 2 settlers. This allowed me to found confu in 1360bc after alpha. And later, those ~4 turns I didn't research ag meant I was still 1st to lib.

@jesusin - The point I was trying to make was that if you sacrifice gpp to build a settler there is an additional penalty if that city now pops say GA#x+1 instead of GA#x because of the build. You not only lose the gpp from the citizens working on the settler, but GA#x+1 costs 67pts more than GA#x. So say I work 4 artists for 6 turns to build the settler - that's 4*6*6 = 144 pts lost (without pacifism) + 67 = 210gpp. So everything else being equal if at the end of the game the 1st city is 210 or less short you would have been better off without the additonal city. But yeah, if you're building it in a cottage city there's no loss.

 

[jesusin]

I have been doing some experiments with marble starts with Elizabeth lately.

1.- Parthenon.
Getting the Parthenon is quite easy. It is very expensive, so you have to connect marble. The benefit of the Parthenon is twofold: first you get additional GPP. My estimate is that, in a typical 15GP game, with 3 cities contributing to the pool, 80% of the last GA is free thanks to the Parthenon; second, the 10cpt itself, equivalent to 1 bombed GA if the Hermitage and the Parthenon are in different cities, 1.5 bombed GA if they are both in the same city. The disadvantages of Parthenon are two: it determines your early research and the hammers you put on it could have had other uses.

2.- CS slingshot.
Researching up to CoL before any AI builds the Oracle is very difficult. I have had 0% success out of 10 games, losing by 8-10 turns.
Marble is optional, Oracle is so cheap and CoL is so expensive that you can build it without a discount. The best way to have a high enough research capability is to beeline to Pottery and then fill your FPs with cottages while beelining to PH. But the turns lost on the wheel and Pottery are simply too many. The other way is to have gems or gold in the capital. One of them is not enough. Even beelining to PH-CoL from the very beginning is not enough.
Maybe Elizabeth is just not suited to this strategy.

3.- Oracle for CoL.
Simply getting the Oracle is easy enough. Marble is optional. The benefit is a free expensive tech and a religion. The disadvantage is it determines your early research. At least you don’t need to skip agriculture to have a chance.
I don’t know if it is worth it. Is it better than beelining Pottery and then Alphabet? Is it better than getting Alphabet form the Oracle?
Incidentally, if you end up getting a GProphet, the best use for it could be bulbing Theo, getting a religion and then Sistine Chapel with marble. I still prefer a GA, though.

4.- No cottage city.
I had a food rich map that was asking to be played with cottages in the capital and GPFarms in the rest of the cities. The result was disappointing (14xxAD). The problem was I was doing 100bpt by 1AD, instead of the usual 170/200bpt that are needed to win the liberalism race with the help of 1/0 GS. I think a cottage city different from the capital is needed.
I had an idea I am reluctant to try, because of my obsession with efficiency. Here it is: your second city is a 1 or 2 food resources with 4-5 cottages. Instead of farming it all, which doesn’t help a lot in the beginning because of the happiness cap, cottage all the FPs and work them. That will help with the early research output. Then, when the happiness limit disappears, farm over the cottages (oh, this sounds like a sacrilege to me!) to max the GPP generating capability.

5.- The theoretical limit.
In one of the games I took CoL from Oracle in the capital, then Parthenon in the capital, then used the GP for Theo and build the Sistine Chapel in the capital, where I put the Hermitage later on. The 3 WW were done in the BC. The capital had 10 cottages, 6 of them early ones. Only 2 cathedrals were built in the capital, since I got no more religions. With this setup, the capital went legendary without the help of any GA in less than 35 turns since I raised the culture bar.
Ending the research phase around 200AD and then 30-35 turns takes us to 1100AD.
Building only one of the three WW but building a third cathedral would add 4 turns to the final date. So with a faster research rate, with 4 religions and 1WW, the capital could reach legendary in 1000AD without the need to bomb a GA.

Now, I only need to do all that in the capital and at the same time get 13GA by 1000AD. The GPFarm will get 25000c easily if 8 GA are bombed there. The other city will have to get at least 3 cathedrals and at least 100 commerce+rawculture to be able to do it with the help of 5 GA. Am I dreaming?



EDIT: Is it possible to get 13GA by 1000AD?
Assuming NE is built in 195BC and no GPP is generated before that, there are 40 turns to amass 6499GPP. With Parthenon, 6 artists in the GPFarm and 4 artist in 2 other cities it can barely be done. Now, at 195 BC it will be difficult to have 6 artists instantly, and in addition there is always unused GPP in the cities at the end of the game, so aiming for 7-5-4 seems to be called for. It looks doable.

 

[LowtherCastle]

.

just do it​

 

[jesusin]

.

just do it​

I am not that kind of guy:
- I finish every game I start, so I waste the little time I have in hopeless games.
- I don’t have the patience to run MP all night and choose a perfect map.
- I hate strategies that depend on a resource or a WW.
- I am not a good enough player.

So I am trying to talk someone else into doing it. Are you the one, LC?

 

[FiveAces]

I would posit the cs slingshot would be easier as Qin that Liz. Not because of industrial - as you've noted building the Oracle is not critical path - but because you start with mining AND ag, so you go literally go straight to CoL.

I'd throw him into the mix if you're experimenting - cs slingshot+parth+sistine+fin might be able to offset the philo loss.

 

[Xin Yu]

So I am trying to talk someone else into doing it.

Hummm.... me too. I don't have much time to play lately, so I'd like to see if other people are interested in trying out my plan.

My plan is to do research till drama, then almost completely stop researching (use GS to lightbulb techs). Meanwhile grow cities to maximum size, and use 'satellite' cities to work on the cottage squares for the main cities. Anybody likes to give it a try?

1) starting point should have two golds and some food-bonus squares. First city builds a worker then a settler. The worker mines the two golds then farms the food-bonus squares. Tech path: Mining, Agriculture, then bee-line to alphabet, then drama. You should be able to get drama by turn 40 with two mined gold squares.

2) you should be able to trade for other techs, hopefully COL and math. Build granaries and theatres everywhere. You'll be able to grow rapidly with these two buildings, reduce tech rate if necessary. Get 4 more settlers and some workers for more cities (3 of the cities should be built 3 squares from big cities and work on the cottages belong to the big ones).

3) Try to get one GS and one GA fast (build a library in capital). Then when you get math you can lightbulb philo with the GS, and trade for lit (or research it) and lightbulb music using the GA (you'll get back a GA if you are the first one to music). Hopefully you can trade for CS with either philo or music.

4) Maximize your city sizes, then rush some buildings. Grow back and rush more. When those are done, hire specialists to get three GS then concentrate on GA's. The three GS's will lightbulb paper, education and liberalism ***(in order to lightbulb liberalism, you need to trade for ironwork and metal casting while NOT trade for fishing).

Don't forget to use appropriate civics within each step.