French UHV 1

[Soviet Onion]

Hello, new here but I've been lurking for a long time. Thanks for making such an awesome mod that I still enjoy after years!

France is one of my favourite civs to play in DoC. I always found the first UHV rather hard but doable (usually in the 1600's), however since the new update I just can't match the legendary culture requirement which is twice as much as what it used to be. I don't know if it's by design, but maybe it should be moved back to the old requirements or make the deadline higher (1900 for example, after all the 1700 deadline is before many things that made Paris the culturally important city it's known as today, such as the enlightenment, the renovations etc).

I'd take any tip to win the new UHV too

 

[Leoreth]

Welcome to the forums, I'll wait for others to add their feedback and advice on this.

 

[1SDANi]

Did you use Workshops, Watermills, and Lumbermills on your plains and grassland tiles?

 

[Genghis Khaiser]

The tip someone once gave me goes like this:
Beeline to Commune for Notre Dame, then Humanities for the National Theatre and possibly the Sistine Chapel, then Civil Liberties for the Museum.
Try building as much culture as you can in Paris, focusing on multipliers (like +10% rather than +2 Culture, for example).
In the meantime, build as many Artists as you can. If you spawn a Great Engineer, use him for either Notre Dame or the Louvre.

I tried that and it worked.

 

[Soviet Onion]

I'll try those on top of what I already do (I always build multipliers first). However, if I rush those techs, this would gives me a disadvantage for the colonisation race against the English because then I'm not researching Cartography and Exploration, wouldn't it?

 

[Alexius08]

The deadline for colonization is at 1800, and invading others' colonies is an option.

 

[mingming99]

@Soviet Onion - with France I would normally 1. capture Italy, 2 Vassalize by force - A. Spain B. Germany C. England D. Poland and/or Russia after Mongols (all using knight + treb)
In the meantime, you make Paris your production centre and spam culture wonders, while beelining for techs that give you Louvre and that national wonder with +5 artist slots. Fill Paris with artists and once Louvre is built the culture output gets crazy. By 1700 you will only need a few of your stacked great artists to achieve legendary culture. Meanwhile, the other vassalized West European civs don't colonize, or even if they do - it counts towards your 40% land in America.
PS I usually roll a few times for a good spawn and try to settle Hanover (1 tile northeast of Frankfurt) for a better city in West France.
Cheers hope this helps

 

[Soviet Onion]

I decided to continue my game (stopped in 1615 after reaching 75000 culture and realising that I had to get the double by 1700), and I have to admit that I really underestimated the power of the Louvre. I managed to get 141000 culture by 1700, it's not enough but I could have reached legendary culture by planning this better : rushing civil liberties, while still getting exploration (I lost time getting other techs), force vassalising all of Europe can wait till I reach the first UHV, I don't think I need it to get legendary culture.

However, I had to reduce my science spending to zero and instead spend all the extra income on culture, while building culture in Paris. That made me technologically backwards, which isn't a big deal as I can catch up by intelligently researching and trading the right techs. Except that I can't because in this particular game England has gone crazy, they reached the industrial age before 1700. I've never seen them reaching technological heights that early, although I always see England having crazy tech rates in late game and being unbeatable in a tech race. I'll have to restart that game and praise that England doesn't gets OP that soon... or maybe conquer them or find a way to wreck them by being constantly at war and blockading their ports!

Also @mingming99, I have two questions : how/when do you settle Hanover? The HRE has their capital in Frankfurt, and is it possible to do all of those conquests that early in the French game without sacrificing your economy?

 

[mingming99]

@French Onion - 1. provided you've some developed food tiles at spawn, you rush a settler and run to settle Hanover, which prevents Frankfurt settlement and, once you vassalize the HRE, gives you access to their pig, iron, stone and marble without having to settle in foreign core (settle your western city one tile south of Swiss iron). 2. You do sacrifice some economy, but you cripple all your major rivals, so in the end it turns out OK. once you have a decent-sized force, you don't need much to maintain it, and it later provides support for North American colonies. If you get out of control, you might also capture Tunis while you're at it.

praise that England doesn't gets OP that soon

Conquer London +- Cornwall = vassalize in ~1150 to avoid this problem. (Historically accurate Norman conquest?)

 

[Steb]

I can't comment on the difficulty, but I agree that 1700 is not a great date, thematically speaking. While French culture was already influential in the 1600s (e.g. Molière, Racine), it became much more important in the 1700s with the Enlightenment, and truly achieved worldwide impact during the 1800s. At the end of the 19th century, Paris was probably the most important city in the world for the arts and literature. Thus 1900 would be a fitting date.

However, people are reporting that the goal is doable by 1700, so 1900 would make it much easier — with the caveat that it would make the other goals somewhat more difficult, since you'd have to keep caring about culture as you go about colonizing/conquering/wonderbuilding, if you didn't complete the goal early on. Still, since it leads to more possible winning scenarios and is more thematic, I would support moving the goal to 1900. Surely the difficulty can be adjusted by other means, if desired.

 

[Soviet Onion]

@mingming99 wait, the HRE spawns in Frankfurt, wouldn't they flip Hanover if I settled it? Wouldn't building an army and conquering Frankfurt be a better option?

 

[mingming99]

Yes HRE will take over Hanover but then the resources in Southwest Germany will be outside of the city's fat cross. Taking Frankfurt incurs a domestic stability penalty. Also, Frankfurt will flip to Prussia in 1700.

 

[JHLee]

The French UHV1 condition was changed after my report where I had 50000 culture by 1700AD.
But this was before Louvre was nerfed, and I had built the Santa Maria del Fiore (+100% GPP).
Santa Maria is not a direct requisite for the UHV, and since the UHV already requires a lot of wonders,
it should not be considered by design a must-have.
If, in the current version (with the Louvre nerfed), the 50000 culture is too high to achieve, I do think that it should be relaxed.

 

[Soviet Onion]

I don't play the Github version, on the current release I managed to reach Legendary culture by 1700, although it was really close (reached it in 1699 with a great artist that I spawned in emergency by turning a lot of pops into specialists).

Also, vassalising England solves the problem of the colonisation race, since you can order your vassals to focus on a particular tech. I told England to research anything but Cartography and Exploration, and allowed them to do so only after I colonised what I wanted. When they finally reached the tech, they had only Australia, New York and half of South Africa left to colonise, which they did with a lot of zeal. However not having so many colonies as in a normal game reduced their tech rate so for the first time I saw an England that is not #1 in tech

 

[Nyayr]

England usually does very well, unless the vikings mess them up with Dane Law, usually taking a Northern City or even 2 cities and they stuck till Vikings collapse in the 1400's

 

[Force44]

Small addendum on micromanaging to maximize your culture.
Calculate which building generates the most culture and build that one first. +25% culture only gives more culture than +2 if the city already generates 8 culture or more. Some buildings (Wonders come to mind) give a lot of culture but the time (hammers) it takes to complete one can make it culturewise more efficient to build a less culture generating but cheaper building first.

final tip. Cathedrals are great multipliers of culture. Spread the missing religion(s) to Paris and as much cities you need (it takes 4 cities with a temple, 3 with notre dame, to build a cathedral).

 

[Nyayr]

You have a wave of Judaism appearing sometimes and this removes another Religion in Cities. I've seen Orthodox faith even Catholicism (and all their monasteries/temples) when you protestant, vanishing cause of it. Wish when a new religion removes another it takes over their monasteries/temples.

I think for France it matters a lot how you start though, if you have to go from scratch you have a hard time. If you start with a decent Paris of a size 6 and maybe 3-4 buildings you have a lot more going. 1 or 2 more cities better then size 3 granary also helps. Especially if they have Orthodox in one of them to spread.

 

[BaneFire]

Does Judaism replacing Orthodoxy (for example) just remove an Orthodox Cathedral without giving a Jewish one? Yeah, that sucks.

 

[Nyayr]

Yeah if a new religion overtakes the old you lose monastery/temple and have to build the new faith ones... I assume Cathedrals too size they are religion based. With France you generally able to hold Catholicism and Protestantism, so often if Judaism shows up they both remain, but if for example you capture Carthage as French and imported Islam to Paris it is quickly gone, when another religion sinks in.

I played with Rome founding the 4 religions (3 christian 1 Islam) and it is hard to keep more then 2-3 faiths in a city then 4th only has maybe 25% of success to go in (so lots of saving and trying to refresh the seed) and more then half of the time it clears another religion out.

If you somehow go secular earlier it is a lot easier. I feel with religious Tolerance it is a little easier to have multi faiths too, but maybe I'm wrong there. Generally though if all your cities have your state religion and you have multiple others in the empire you still get +3 or 4 rel. unity stability (half when you use Tolerance)