Cultural Victory Challenge #3: Huayna Capac

[ratrangerm]

I did poke through the strategy guides on Cultural victories. So it looks like I'll go with this:

* Tech to Constitution and then turn science down to 0 percent (gold at 100 percent in other words). Accumulate gold that way, then turn the culture slider to 100 percent after I get to 5000.
* Build National Epic after the cathedral is finished in Tiwanaku.
* Build Taj Mahal for the Golden Age in Cuzco. I'll need to look at the game later to see if it's possible to time Taj's completion to get Constitution, so then I can switch civics anarchy-free and stick with them.
* I'll remove the Priests in Thebes and go back to Artists. I'm probably going to get a Prophet out of Thebes anyway and the Artists will do more for culture.
* Get Caravels into the queue in any city where it's possible. I know one GP farm on the coast already has all three Temples, so it can start immediately.

 

[ratrangerm]

OK, I'm trying to get the next round played, but am having issues with BTS crashing on me (encounted error and needs to close, run-time error, memory dump, etc.).

So I've looked through the tech support forum and tried some suggestions to see if it helps. With any luck, I'll have this finished up before I leave to visit the family for the holidays.

Grrr... to think the biggest enemy I have in BTS is not Shaka, but the game itself.

 

[oyzar]

Why would you not want democracy? or you going to tech it on representation allone? nothing wrong with rushbuying temples everywhere so you can rushbuy cathedrals.

 

[ratrangerm]

Round Eight: 1430 AD to 1810 AD

Yes, I played this one straight through to the end. There wasn't a whole lot to discuss in terms of building and such, but I did end up altering my plans slightly because of a certain someone who wanted to cause trouble.

I think you can guess who, but that comes later.

First, I changed civics to something I really should have enacted earlier.

That did wonders for my Great Person generating. I ended up with two Great Prophets out of Thebes and one out of Cuzco (yes, Cuzco... the holy shirne contributed to Prophets even as I ran just Artists there). Other than that, I got nothing but Great Artists, who I saved until I was ready to turn the slider to 100 percent culture, and once that happened, they began culture bombs. Tiwanaku got most of them, but I did have a couple bomb Thebes and one in Cuzco, as I tried to get all my cities to reach Legendary Culture as close to each other as possible.

I teched to Printing Press, then realized I still needed Literature for the National Epic. Fortunately, it took just one turn to research.

But as far as why my tech path didn't go straight to Constitution and turn up the slider to 100 percent gold, I decided to head to Gunpowder to stay a step ahead of a certain neighbor in terms of military techs... and that was when that certain neighbor decided to cause trouble.

Yeah, I should have figured he'd be doing this eventually. But as usual, the AI doesn't know how to wage war, as he sent a stack my way that made me do a double take.

The stack was easy pickings, of course, but he did manage to send other troops from time to time that wreaked some havoc on my lands as I played a defensive war for a while. Fighting his stacks meant I got another Great General, who I sent to Babylon to be a military instructor.

But in the meantime, I grabbed a miltary tech that I was hoping would tip the scales in my favor for good.

During this war with Shaka, once I had finally gotten his stacks that invaded my lands out of there, I went down to that Iron city he had rebuilt, took it out and razed it. After that, I sued for peace and got Horseback Riding, some gold and his World Map (even if there wasn't much to it) in return.

In the meantime, I found out who else in in this world.

Ragnar, who built the Apostolic Palace, had been at war with Elizabeth, and DeGaulle had decided at some point to join in. Ragnar ended up declaring war on Liz again, then asked me and DeGaulle to join in. I agreed to the phony war to earn some points with Ragnar.

In the meantime, I did some tech trading with DeGaulle

That allowed me to research Banking. I ended up researching it myself as I couldn't get it from anybody else for a reasonable deal. Well, I probably could have gotten it from Liz, but I opted not to deal with her until much later, as I didn't want to upset Ragnar. I also got DeGaulle's world map and won the circumnavigation bonus.

My research for Constitution and Banking were well timed, as Banking was finished the instant I got this.

Which allowed me to change civics one last time and with no anarchy.

I then turned the gold slider up to 100 percent to rake in money for the treasury.

And during this Golden Age, Shaka declared war with me _again_. He was able to cause damage around Thebes (a lot of it thanks to Spies), but his stacks were never anything that were threatening. My battles would again earn me a Great General, and he settled in my other production city as a military instructor.

I mentioned that I got two Great Prophets during the round... one built the Confucian holy shrine, the other came late and I had him build the Jewish holy shrine for kicks. As for the third one, the one that emerged in Cuzco, there was a definite use for him.

Because when a Golden Age comes to an end, what better to follow it with than an encore?

The back-to-back Golden Ages allowed me to accumulate a fat treasury, and once I built the final Cathedral, I turned the culture slider up to 100 percent. Then I started the culture bombs with Great Artists I was saving.

Meanwhile, I figured Shaka needed to learn one final lesson, so I sent a stack of Macemen and Trebuchets to that barb city south of Cuzco that he captured. He quickly pulled in a couple of additional units and then sent one Catapult to attack... but of course, he never followed up with the other three Cats he had.

I wasn't able to take it on the first turn, but my Trebs did so much damage to his units that he had three left which were badly injured. And although my units had taken a beating, they still had enough left to get the job done.

Shaka, there's only one way you get your city served up to you... burnt to a crisp.

And a couple turns later, I approached him to see what I'd get for peace this time.

Not much, as he didn't have much to offer, but that was the last I heard from Shaka. The only time I dealt with him after that was to sell Philosophy to him for some gold. But he never bothered me again.

After I made peace with Shaka, that was when Ragnar approached me about joining the war against Liz, which I did. The result of that was Liz becoming DeGaulle's vassal.

The rest of the game was pretty much uneventful aside from the usual random events. I won't go over the details of them and cut to the chase instead.

Tiwanaku reached Legendary Culture in 1794 AD.

Thebes followed in 1800 AD.

And as for Cuzco, in 1810 AD, as they say, the rest is history.

The wrap-up and post-game thoughts will be coming later.

 

[ratrangerm]

Wrap-up and Post-Game Thoughts

People like graphs, so I got your GNP graph here for you:

Certainly you can attirbute a lot of that to the Financial trait.

Manufactured goods:

DeGaulle was no doubt taking advantage of his cheap Forges. He also built quite a few Wonders.

Power graph:

You can pretty much see the points in which Shaka started the late-game wars and what happened each time he did so. DeGaulle was pretty strong, but it helped that I stayed on good terms with him, and as I understand it, he's usually easy to get along with.

Demographics:

Top five cities:

And the final score:

Better than the Gandhi game by far, but it was a tad below the Zara game in terms of the final score.

Now then, as far as things that worked and could have worked better.

* As evidenced by the first game, I should have been more mindful of what I was doing in the early game. My mistakes caused me to fall behind and I panicked. It definitely pays to take a deep breath and look closely at things.
* While I certainly respect those people who favor the idea of getting a lot of Great Artists, and Dave is certainly right about combining cottages with Cathedrals, I really wished I had utilized the Industrious trait a bit more. I think, in future challenges, I should work to exercise the leader's trait that works to a cultural victory more. Obviously, I can't ignore Great Artists, cottages and Cathedrals, and at least one city should remain pure for those GPs, but I don't think it would have hurt to pop Wonders into two other cities, so long as I'm not running specialists there and use my GP farms and my best of the three culture cities for generating Great Artists.
* I should have switched to Pacifism sooner. That likely would have sped things up a bit. I would attribute my not switching earlier to the fact that I tend to love Organized Religion when it comes to getting those expensive Cathedrals built.
* Finally, I think I should have taken Shaka down a few pegs during the midgame, when I had Macemen, Pikemen and Trebs available and he was still plodding along to Machinery. That might have kept him from being a problem when I wanted to reach the point of turning up the culture slider to 100 percent.

One can certainly debate things such as whether I should have teched to Democracy or whether Machu Picchu would have been a better culture city choice than Thebes, and I'm sure some eyebrows will be raised that I never built Hermitage, but I was able to make things work.

All in all, though, it was a good experience and reminded me about the changes that come when one jumps from Noble to Prince.

One last thing... I tried some of the changes suggested in the tech support forum to eliminate the crashes to desktop and they definitely worked... well, except for a run-time error that popped up, so I wonder if that will get fixed in a patch. Either way, now I can actually enjoy a CIV game in the late-game era instead of getting frustrated by so many crashes to the desktop.

And that's going to be the last Cultural Victory Challenge for a couple of weeks. I'll be visiting family for the holidays and will have no access to CIV.

 

[oyzar]

Congrats on the win. Cultural victory is pretty straight forward and once you get the hang of it you should easily be able to raise the level you are playing at rather quickly(the AI never catching up in tech even when you are running 100% culture much?). As long as you focus on culture and heed the advise of various people it should be easy to finish prince monarchy and probably higher quite fast at the same time as you speed up your victories. That said incans are probably one of the best leaders around for easily dominating the AI. You get an insane UU that basically allow you to kill anyone you want in the early game and 2 traits that help towards getting legendary faster. Hermitage should probably have gone in cuzco eh? Looking forward to the next game. If you want to try out industrious some more there is always quin to try or if you just want to maximize cottages + great artists there is liz waiting for you. These leaders might be better reserved for when you move up levels though and it might be better to pick someone who aren't as easy. Louis is another easy one with his nutty ub and decent traits.

 

[ratrangerm]

Thanks oyzar. And yes, I'll admit it... sometimes I forget tips given. I've learned a lot through this challenge.

I'm thinking Pericles might come next. He's got the traits from Frederick in Vanilla CIV (only with a UB that certainly aids in a cultural victory) and might be a good one to use to demonstrate exactly how to generate Great People efficiently.

As for this game, the interesting part was Tiwanaku started as the one with the most turns to reach Legendary Culture when I turned the slider to 100 percent culture, but the culture bombs with Great Artists allowed it to surpass Cuzco and Thebes. Then I ended up using a Great Artist in Thebes as it lagged behind Cuzco (and truth was, Thebes and Cuzco started out nearly neck in neck with each other in terms of how soon they'd reach Legendary Culture).

Although, next game, I'll be building Hermitage.