Four-city-culture into domination with hilarious results

[RealHuhn]

Four-city-culture into domination.

I guess everybody here has already tried this strategy but on high difficulties (emperor +), it gets kinda ridiculous.
My plan was to remain friendly with most AIs, build only four cities and focus on growth, culture, money and RAs (after starting with the usual science route).
As soon as I got Big Ben + Merkantilism + Militarism, I started to buy mech infantry (~ late 18th century). With all the discounts, mech infantry only costs 410 gold per unit.

I tried to "snipe" capitals and move on to the next victim. I captured three of Napoleons (2nd in score) biggest cities in a few turns and in return he wanted to make peace and gave me 25000 gold
So now, I could buy 7 mech infantries per turn (2870 gold) for 10 rounds = 70 mech infantries ... half of them right at the frontline.

To keep a long story short. Every civ dow'ed me but they were just overrun by the masses of troops ^^
If it takes longer, somehow, you can always buy atomic bombs for ~500 gold (I don't know the exact number).

I should also mention that I could bribe almost everybody into war with their neighbours for a hilariously small amount of gold (~200 gold), weakening them even further.

That's a serious imbalance right there but it was a fun game.

 

[He-Who-Hunts]

Im not sure Big Ben and Mercantilism, stack with Militarism, at least pre patch they didn't anyways.

 

[Smote]

Im not sure Big Ben and Mercantilism, stack with Militarism, at least pre patch they didn't anyways.

Indeed, I think the 410 is @ -50% gold cost, rather than 83%. Mechs don't ordinarily cost 2460.

 

[He-Who-Hunts]

They really should stack tho, Autocracy is bad enough.

 

[blac]

wanted to make peace and gave me 25000 gold

Whoa, I haven't ever seen anyone with that much money in the game. I guess it goes to show how bad the AI are, he could have simply bought a ton of RA's and units earlier in the game or at least units when you attacked him, even if they weren't as advanced as yours they still would have been able to outnumber you.

I had sometime similar happen, I took one city on an island half the world away and they gave me around 3000 gold, 80GPT and a ton of resources even though they were at least 300 points ahead of me!

 

[HideInLight]

Not sure how high a difficulty you talking about, but on Deity the game is almost always over by the time you started buying mech-infs.

 

[dubrown]

I've seen AIs with quite alot of gold, never 25000 though, but atleast 2-3000. In some cases these AIs has been aiming for diplovictory, thus saving up to buy of a bunch of CS. So it might not totally be a bad AI move but I'll grant you that 25k is too much even for that and the AI seems to be saving up far to often and early to only be because of the victorycondition.

 

[RealHuhn]

Im not sure Big Ben and Mercantilism, stack with Militarism, at least pre patch they didn't anyways.

So which one of those bonuses stack then?

Big Ben stacks with both of them but Mercantilism and Militarism don't stack with eachother?

I'm confused now ^^

Anyway, if this is true, Militarism is even better because I get the same discount with less policies (and focus more on money/science instead of culture).

And when you reach an important military tech, you can always focus all your cities on gold. You might even want to go all-in and change all your tiles to trade posts

Not sure how high a difficulty you talking about, but on Deity the game is almost always over by the time you started buying mech-infs.

That's probably true. I'll never play deity.

I'd usually buy normal infantry but I had so many RAs that electronics(?) wasn't far away.

 

[RealHuhn]

Well, I played my last save game again and adopted freedom in order to get rid of autocracy and militarism. I still had big ben and mercantilism.

Mech Inf costs increased from 410 to 610 and the "advanced" atomic bomb was 1000 gold instead of 670 which means that I lost the whole 33% bonus.

Either all bonuses stack or mercantilism and/or Big Ben doesn't decrease unit costs at all.

Does anybody know the answer?

 

[lilnev]

They stack somehow, but it's not a 25% + 25% + 33% = 83% discount. Your test suggests they may multiply? 0.75 * 0.75 * 0.67 = 0.375?

I've also speculated that the game inverts each reduction into a bonus, and then adds: A 25% discount is equivalent to a 33% bonus to "hammers/gold", and militarism would be +50%. So 33% + 33% + 50% = +116%, and 1/2.16 = 0.463. Then the game rounds (up? down? nearest?) to a multiple of ten.

I haven't done systematic tests, though. All I know is, things get damn cheap.

 

[RealHuhn]

They stack somehow, but it's not a 25% + 25% + 33% = 83% discount. Your test suggests they may multiply? 0.75 * 0.75 * 0.67 = 0.375?

I've also speculated that the game inverts each reduction into a bonus, and then adds: A 25% discount is equivalent to a 33% bonus to "hammers/gold", and militarism would be +50%. So 33% + 33% + 50% = +116%, and 1/2.16 = 0.463. Then the game rounds (up? down? nearest?) to a multiple of ten.

I haven't done systematic tests, though. All I know is, things get damn cheap.

(EDIT: Nvm, I forgot that the game conditions have to be the same when I want to compare numbers ^^ (standart speed, standard size, emperor). All the numbers in my previous posts are still correct though.)

But I got another idea. Maybe the discount is capped at 75%.
In this case, a mech inf would cost 1640 gold without any discounts. 1640 * 0.25 = 410

Can anyone confirm? If this is true, getting all three bonuses still is very useful

EDIT2: I found this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=407627&highlight=militarism+stack