G-Major 11

1 gold left in your treasury on the final turn. now that is what i call an efficient budget! grats :)
 
1 gold left in your treasury on the final turn. now that is what i call an efficient budget! grats :)
Efficient budget? Nah, he just went flat broke and found a coin on the sidewalk.
 
1 gold left in your treasury on the final turn. now that is what i call an efficient budget! grats :)

wow, you do have a money problem. Didnt you have a holy city, or at least trade with the ai for gold. For me, at 100% income-> culture, i still generate like 50+ gold/ turn in the last tens of turns
 
geez, yeah i had to go 80% when i stopped researching tech. I didnt have a holy city either. I never got a prophet. I got most of my gold from selling my tech. I never knew the AI gave so much for your techs. I got 3k for some tech.
 
wow, you do have a money problem. Didnt you have a holy city, or at least trade with the ai for gold. For me, at 100% income-> culture, i still generate like 50+ gold/ turn in the last tens of turns

no that was my point. money left over when the game is done is completely wasted. so 1g on the final turn is perfect! maybe he had a money problem all along, but 1g at the end isn't a problem at all, it's a good thing.

Efficient budget? Nah, he just went flat broke and found a coin on the sidewalk.

well, my father would consider it perfect :p. i'm one of four children, and dad's plan, or so he says, is to die with one dollar left over, so that we each get 25 cents to spend on whatever we want. because he wants to use and enjoy his money while he's alive. i've seen his will and he's joking. i think. *giggle*

he is addicted to civ4 so he'd definitely approve of that game.
 
Can't decide if I should take all the risks to get the best game I can, or play it safe and not ruin a good start. I never go for monotheism so early, so I have the option of Organized Religion early. Should I:

a) risk war by taking on a religion this early and have 25% production boost?
b) chicken out
c) other?

If I wait for Alphabet, I can trade tech and make people happy with me.

Go for it, a), it is only Monarch. In the worst case you will have to build a few units.

In your previous post you talked about building the Oracle:eek: . Why are you trying to mislead us?:p Learn from Methos, his pieces of advice are sincere and sound.
 
Hmm, so much of the advice in this thread runs counter what I would instinctively choose to do in order to maximise culture. I also would find it hard to turn off barbarians as I have played with barbarians through all four versions of Civilisation and would feel like a weaner if I removed their threat.

I'm also trying to work out why the threat of military invasion seems to evaporate in these culture games. In my normal games I get invaded all the time, but have much better military power. In these culture games, I have lame armies, but nobody attacks me (except barbarians). Why is this? Or am I just dreaming and it is actually not really different?
 
I'm in my second war with one of my neighbours (playing inland sea) and have already fought off my other neighbour. This isn't going well on the relationship front. Going to abandon it and try continents.
 
Hey Harbourboy and the other not-yet-pros,
you can learn VERY much by looking at the best games/guys listed in the HoF!

For example take a look at the 1365AD WastinTime Deity standard game.
You can see his settings, the playerlog, his map, take a look at the culture graph (there you can see when he started acculmulating culture and how much is from bombing at the end)... and most important download his finish save!
This is my favorite, the longer you analyse the more precisely you can read his strategy. At first you, that his economy "sucks": almost no worker, SO few military. That's because he built only stuff, that he really needed. You'll see that he has only 2-3 religions and ONLY his capitol is built the way you'd expect (>700 culture per turn).
So where does the culture in the other two cities come from?
It must be by Great Artists(GA) only! He used almost all of his cities to produce GAs or money. I could continue analysing techs, buildings and wonders, but you should be able to see it on your own now.
All this data should enable you to copy his strategy, but think twice!
His settings differ; mostly in difficulty and speed:
-monarch means slower tech, because the Ai is slower than you, so you have to research more on your own
-It is also much easier to get religions and wonders, so you want pyramids and sistine chapel perhaps
-quick means that his GAs bomb 2680 of necessary 25000 culture, on epic you get 6000 of 75000, so it's 34% less efficient.

I hope I have enough time left to build a strategy on that after I wrote some applications for internship and chose the topic for my student research project.
 
@Airny: That Diety/quick strategy of GA bombs won't work on Epic speed. You need at least a 2nd city that is producing decent culture.

@jesusin: What's not to like about the Oracle? The only reason I don't get it on Diety is because I can't, they're too fast. If you did build it, it would have to be in the capitol and that corrupts your gene pool for the GA bomb strategy. Oracle is a cheap wonder that produces 16 culture most of the game. You've probably got marble for it too. It gets you CS/bureaucracy quickly. That's nice since you have to do most of the tech yourself at this level. The only thing is the gene pool, but I never produce even 1 great prophet. The Oracle city is chosen such that it spends the game growing cottages or building stuff. not running specialists. I still got 18 Great Artists and 1 scientist without that city contributing in my first game. If I did get one prophet that wouldn't be so bad. Some people are trying to get one it seems for a shrine. I don't bother with shrines. I just trade for all the gold I need to run at 100% slider. I'd rather have another artist bomb.
The shrine also pollutes your gene pool.
 
@WastinTime: That's what I said, but as you pointed out GAs are a must have.

Yea you did say that :blush: , you had a very good analysis of my game.

Regarding my option to take an early religion. I realized that Judaism doesn't come with a free missionary, so it wasn't worth it to switch to a religion. I can turn on Organized Religion and build missionaries without making anyone mad at me. I just don't get the +25% hammers.
 
Well, I didn't make it. Cyrus launched in 1905 when I had only 56,00 culture.

Time for another attempt. It is 400 BC and I have 4 cities. Just completed Alphabet and done the big trading catch up with everyone. Two of my cities are miles away to cut off the peninsula. Cyrus has foolishly settled right next to my capital so that should be an easy flip.

Currently researching drama at 60%. No more cities practical until Code of Laws. Available wonders are Parthenon, Artemis, and Pyramids - but no stone apparent on whole continent.
 
I shaved almost a full century off my finish date, breaking into the 1400's. I doubt I can get 1300's though.

I'm not convinced that going all the way to Democracy (free with Lib) was the right choice. I only bought 4 cathedrals..nothing else. I built 5 more for a total of 9. Five religions founded...Zero spread to me.

I got only 15 GA's this time and the usual GS first.

I suppose for my last try I will have to find stone and marble. Do the Pyramids and forget Democracy. One good thing about teching there was you have something to trade for Economics and Corporation, etc. I also used tech trades to get cash for rush buying. I spent zero turns generating cash with the slider.

I got all my usual wonders plus Versailles.

I settled one GA as a super specialist and would have done 2, but I needed to flip the city nearby, so I bombed. I really needed that city because I only built 4 settlers...so with the capitol and that flipped one I had six. There was no other food around, so another city wouldn't do much for me.
 
1400s? Wow. And now here is someone saying that the way to do this to found the religions yourself. It is amazing that there are so many different ways to play this game - even when using the same level, speed, map size, and victory confition. Civ IV is indeed a well balanced game.
 
Well I got my first Major win. Not the best time, as I barely won before 1900AD. I know I teched too far (all the way to AssLine) I was just too nervous of getting pounded by the AI...

The highlight was, I was able to found 5 of the 7 religions. I ended up with 5 Cathedrals in each of my 3 culture cities. No small feat! :)
 
Hmm, another person who founded religions. Maybe I should go back to my original plan of going down the religious route. In 400BC, I still have no religions as I pretty much beelined for Alphabet and now Drama, backfilling the other techs via trading. No religions have spread to me, although I think 3 of them have been founded elsewhere.

I should have no problems getting space for 9 cities now that I have blocked off the peninsula (although Stonehenge would have been really helpful with that).
 
Several people keep mentioning Drama. Am I the only one that does not research it? I wait until I can trade it. (which is a very long time). Usually sometime while I'm researching Liberalism. Sometimes I have to research it myself after Lib/Nationalism.
 
Isn't Drama crucial for a culture win? Don't you want to get Theatres up early as well as have access to the culture slider?

Is this yet another example of the counter-intuitive thinking required to achieve superhumanly fast Cultural victory dates?

I'm doomed if the solution to everyting is to do the opposite of what I would naturally expect to do.......
 
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