Answering now some old questions:
Library is for NE, as already mentioned.
I don’t like popping my BC GS in the capital. Nor in the GPfarm. I would like to pop them in auxiliary cities, thus halting their growth instead of the growth of the good cities. However, I am aiming at 3GS and I have 4 cities, so no many options here!
I stop growth in my capital by building Settlers and Workers. Sometimes (rarely) I let it grow beyond the happiness limit.
No settling artists in Quick speed games. Now that I think of it, it makes no sense. Let’s rephrase it then: no settling artists in 13xxAD finishing games. I have settled artists until 500AD in 1750AD finishing games, the threshold depending on the number of multipliers.
Being dowed:
Being dowed in the BC is normal, there is not much you can do. In my second GreatPlains attempt (first one run out of space for my 3rd city!) I had everybody Pleased after trading Alphabet, Hatty dropped to Cautious, I revolted to HR the next turn bringing her to Pleased again because of civics, but she had already decided to dow and did so a few turns later.
Being dowed in the AD means you have not played right. Trade resources since the beginning, for that +2. Gift techs, you already have all you want. Chose your religion carefully. At 1350AD I tend to have everybody Friendly, maybe 1 AI only Pleased. Peaceful leaders don’t dow when Pleased.
WastinTime, health is huge in these games. If I had more time, I would be fascinated to see how an Expansive leader could handle this. Would the time saved on Aqueducts and trading health offset the extra commerce from the Financial leader?
One of the strategies I tried in the past was this, with 0 cottages, every city was a GPFarm. 1450AD finish, if I recall correctly. It is not the best strategy.
Harbourboy, a follow-up to your BC question before I sign off for the day: in your GP Farm, build lib and work 3 river cottages first, pref on FP's for growth, unless you need food for health elsewhere. Always work these - you now will need at least 1 less bomb to make it legendary and you early tech faster too. Then work mines/food, run a sci, build gran and run 2nd sci for edu, then bang out NE. Then build farms/aqueduct and your pop should be up enough by the time you are ready to spam GA's.
I don't agree. Maybe I am too simplistic here. If it is my GPfarm, only farms go there, no cottages at all. I understand that you farm over your cottages when NE is built. Maybe your approach is better and my problem is that I don't build enough Workers.
It will also be very helpful to trade up to corp. later on (lib and/or pp/gold for nat, nat to everybody for whatever they have, lib/pp/whatever for const, trade const for whatever, lib/pp/whatever for corp)
Well said!
The 320AD pic is a good starting point. Get Economy and revolt to FM asap (you have to wait for them to be willing to trade, be patient). GunPowder is the “whatever”. Of course you should be 0% research now. What did you get for Nationalism? If it was Optics, Engineering and things like that, that everybody already had, then you shouldn’t have traded for them. You want to trade for things that most of them don’t have, to keep the trading game alive.
So are you saying that the GP farm should be one of the 3 culture cities? I thought someone said that was a bad idea because you could never build anything there and it had no commerce because it was all farms?
Of course it is! Oh my, I thought I had already explained this.
There are 2 schools of thought.
The “cathedrals in all Legendary cities” one says you should have 9 cities and you should have hammers in all three cities, which are mainly cottage cities.
The “my GPFarm will be Legendary” one says that it would be a pity to not use all the culture the artist provide, so they use 2 cottage cities and the GPfarm. They are criticized because the GPFarm should not concentrate on hammers, but on GPs.
My answer to that is not building any cathedral in the GPfarm, so no need for 9 cities. The only problem with my approach is you need 7-8 GA to be bombed in the GPFarm, to take it all the way to Legendary.
I finally got a map I liked and played the game to the end instead of abandoning it. I should have gotten 1295 AD, but I got 1335 AD. A few things went wrong besides that last GA, so I think I can beat the 1280 AD date if I have time to go again.
Of course you will. If you had gotten Liberalism first, you would have saved maybe 6 turns of research plus you would have gotten Economy in trades... We will soon be finishing 11xx.
Nat Epic city ran 10 artists!
IMHO that is the key to your good result. In my 1280AD game the key was many small GPfarms helping my 8 artist big GPFarm.
By the way, I am back! I got a laptop that I can play the game in. As soon as I finish GOTM21, I'll be playing that 3GS, 11-artists-GPfarm game that will take me under 1000AD... probably only to discover that 3GS is a bit of overdoing things and 2GS is optimum
