G-Major 29

[unclethrill]

Tried again. Got TSC again but missed Lib by 6 turns this time (had gems). Had 5 religions so was building cath. like crazy. All was going well until Roosevelt decided that the americans (lincoln) were a threat and asked me to join him in a war. With 5 cities and 3 archers, I didn't think a war against American Rifleman was prudent so I declined. After a short war with lincoln, he decided that I needed to be invaded.

Try number 12 down, time for lucky 13

 

[Mesix]

Washington DOW me last game too. Maybe the Americans aren't as peaceful as I thought.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Well, I followed your advice and was able to build TSC but I missed Lib by 16 turns. In the end I had all 3 cities at 38k culture when Roosevelt got the culture win.

Your game ending with about 38k Culture each in your three Culture cities, sounds like you were trying to balance the Culture by building Cathedrals and Hermitage in the Culture cities with lowest Culture.

Trying to balance the Culture level of the three Cultural cities is not the optimal plan to get all three cities Legendary as early as possible:

The other part of the strategy discussed earlier in this thread has one of the three Culture cities be the main GP Farm with at most 0-2 mined hills and the other two Culture cities are mainly cottages with a few mined hills. The GP Farm will have a low base Culture and low Hammers, so all Cathedrals and Hermitage should be built in the two Cottage cities. The GP Farm may only generate 10k Culture itself, so up to 10 Great Artists need to be generated to bomb it to Legendary. One or both Cottage cities may not have enough Culture either, so an additional number of Great Artists will be needed to bomb them as well. Great Artists should be saved till the end game when it is clear which cities they should bomb.

Ideally, one of the two Cottage cities will go Legendary by itself when you have exactly enough Great Artists to bomb the other two to Legendary. If it appears that you may not have enough Great Artists when this happens, then Hermitage should be built in the Cottage city trailing in Culture (the one with lower base Culture); multiplying Culture in a city that will go Legendary by itself is a waste of a Culture multiplying building. If both Cottage cities will go Legendary before there are enough Great Artists, you are not running enough Artists. You can savage your game by building Hermitage in the GP Farm (maybe with a saved GE); never plan to build Hermitage (or Cathedrals) in the GP Farm.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Mesix]

Why does the GP farm have low base culture. If you have the Sistine Chapel and run 7 Artists, that should be 42 culture all by itself. Assuming you have the National Epic in this city as well and a few Culture buildings (Monument, Lubrary, Temples, Monistaries, etc.) many of which have doubled in culture over the years, it seems logical that the GP farm could be producing 70 to 100 base Culture. Running Free Speech and Building four Cathedrials has the potential to boost the GP farm to 400+ culture per turn. In the one game that I finished, my GP farm was producing over 700 culture per turn (although that was after accidentially adding three GA to the city instead of culture bombing like I should have).

 

[unclethrill]

13 went even worse. Lost my number 2 city to american culture. AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH!

This shouldn't be this hard! Maybe we can get a settler major gauntlet, I might be able to finish that!!

Okay so try number 14 tomorrow night at work.

 

[FiveAces]

Why does the GP farm have low base culture. If you have the Sistine Chapel and run 7 Artists, that should be 42 culture all by itself. Assuming you have the National Epic in this city as well and a few Culture buildings (Monument, Lubrary, Temples, Monistaries, etc.) many of which have doubled in culture over the years, it seems logical that the GP farm could be producing 70 to 100 base Culture. Running Free Speech and Building four Cathedrials has the potential to boost the GP farm to 400+ culture per turn. In the one game that I finished, my GP farm was producing over 700 culture per turn (although that was after accidentially adding three GA to the city instead of culture bombing like I should have).

My GP Farm usually produces around 70 base culture without any WW. That's what gets it to 10k around 15xx.

The problem with building cathedrals etc. there is that unless you are rushbuying, you are sacrificing artist turns by working mines or pop-rushing (and if you pop-rush you are not in caste so you are sacrificing a whole bunch of artist turns). That means you don't pop as many GA's as fast. So you have to decide how many GA's it "costs" to build cathedrals there and whether that additional culture multiplier is worth it (I doubt it if you are planning to finish before 1700AD).

To get a good (sub-1500) time, you need a capital with 2-3 early cathedrals (4 total) that goes legendary on it's own, a second cottage city with herm and 1-2 early cathedrals (4 total) that is 4 bombs short of legendary when the capital is done and a GP farm that generates 10k and 14GA's (inc a 2nd farm) or 6k and 15GA's by the time the capital is done. And you need to be in FS by 300AD.

 

[jesusin]

Not able to research fast enough to make Civil Service available before The Oracle completes (including an AI completing it first)?

Sun Tzu Wu

Yes, that's it.

 

[jesusin]

Just played a inland sea as elizabeth with mansa, lincon and darius. I had a double corn on a plains hill start with loads of hills around, no other resources. Got 2 floodplain cities and another 1 floodplain + cow + several grassland spot(secondary gp farm). Tech patch ag - wheel - pottery - writing - alpha(trade for alot of techs) - aestics(trade for some more techs, but did not manage to get monarchy which ment i delayed revolting to slavery and hrule until i could trade for it with about 100 beakers invested into it) - litterature - drama(popped a GS for philo, as my only selffounded religion) - music - col(traded for it after about 100 beakers invested as well) - CS - paper - edu - liberalism(for nationalism) - printing press upon where i stopped researching. Did not manage to trade for banking due to darius going wfyabta on me, and some poor management. I made academy in capital which in hindsight was a huge mistake as it never worked any cottages, built pantheon, sistine and NE there all without marble, should also have build hermitage with mines but i wanted to get artists up and running which was prolly a mistake, as it was the 3 cities were extremely close and i bombed almost entierly equal. I was a bit slow in settling the 3rd cultural city which was partially a mistake but had more to do with the way the land was laid. Also both my cottage cities topped out at size 14 which could obviously be improved upon. As it was after a heapload of mistakes and 14 GA's + 3 GS(i think) i got all 3 to legendary in 1560... This was without hofmod though(don't have inet on my comp with civ atm and don't have the hof mod there). I never had library in either of my cottage cities which is prolly a mistake and i should prolly have whipped the cathedrals a bit more.. Also i ran out of cash towards the end which was prolly due to me asking too little from the AI(i had about 1.5K in the bank when i started going 100%). No stone / marble / copper ment i couldn't actually get any double speed cathedrals which kinda sucked...

I think if i am playing this again it'll be without darius. He was largely useless in that he refused to trade me any techs until both others knew it(at which point i could just get it from mansa)... Anyone know what leaders require only one other leader to know a tech before trading it away? Also would be nice to know which leaders have caste system / hrule / slavery(although i guess it wouldn't last forever) / free speech / pacifism / decentralisation(though not going to stay there all game unless you mess up something) / mercantilism(if you get to banking) as favourite civics? I think looking into what leaders like this with low trading threshold might give you better results..

Oh and this is my first deity win btw, although i haven't actually tried before and chosing leaders feels kinda like cheating as getting declared on here means you have done something wrong...

Looks like a nice game. Specially so being your first Deity win! Lots of room for improvement too.

Do you remember the date you reached Liberalism?
How many religions did you have?
Did you play against 3 leaders? I think 4 is the minimum for a valid HOF submission.

I keep on debating if it is better to go from CS to Liberalism, and trade up to Music; or to go for Music first and then race for Liberalism.

 

[jesusin]

I am sure that especially with MOM some amount of golden ages will be worth it.. So a marble game where you get pantheon + sistine + mom + taj could potentially be very good, Those plains cottages(or grassland hills) get quite good when you are in a golden age(as does windmills, although doubtful you'll get the techs for making this good), and would let you build cathedrals faster, it doesn't give alot of direct culture/beakers(thorugh commerce, as you'll be working tops 50 commerce titles), but if you have a good main GP farm and a decent secondary you'll get quite a bit of GPP as well as hammers right when they are needed(and hence more culture). I haven't done any calcultations but in my game my main gp farm had 26 raw and the secondary 15 for 41 raw gpp per turn which translates into 328 or 492 gpp which might be enough for another GP(or at least the last one a bit earlier), i think i popped 1 scientist(while my capital were working hammer titles under burrecracy to get up wonders) and 3 artists(might have been 2 though) from my secondary gp farm. Say 10 hammers in each of your commerce cities which translates into 160 or 240 extra hammers or one or one and a half speed up cathedral(my cities were still building cathedrals at the end of the game, and in an optimal game you prolly want all the cathedral resources), which might have improved my finish quite alot.

Intuitively I feel a single GoldenAge has to be good.

Some maths:

- Some 500gpp is a 25% of one additional GP at 2000GPP, so it is the equivalent of some 1000c.
- 25 cottages plus some 5 miscelaneous commerce tiles in the three cities would mean some 250 additional commerce.
- Half a cathedral's worth of hammers might be the equivalent of 500c, since it will accelerate the following cathedral too...
- Synchronizing the GoldenAge with a couple of revolutions (maybe one of civics and a state religion declaration) would save 2 turns. At the end of the game, when finishing 1450AD, you are probably doing a total of around 1100cpt between your three cities. So 2 turns saved anytime equates 2200cpt at the end of the game.
- Any more factors?

My (rough estimates) maths seem to indicate that one shouldn't trigger a Golden Age with a GA or with a GS while still researching. Anyway, the numbers are close and there are too many estimations, so in the adecuate circumstances it would be beneficial. The most important factor seems to be free revolutions, the following in importance would be GPP generation.

 

[Mesix]

I had a game that looked to be going really well. I started with the much coveted Grasslands Gems tile along with seafood, cows, ivory, and a couple of calander resources in my BFC. I was only able to get four cities out before the AI rexed all the available land, but that was okay. My capitol and one other city had high production and commerce. A third was a GP farm, and the forth was building temples for all four religions and running one artist. I was researching education in 1 AD. I was able to get four GA, my capitol up to 20K culture and the second culture city to 10K by 1180 AD when Haty won a Religious Victory.

1180 and the AI won the game from under me! All of my other starts have lasted until at least 1600. I get a great start and the the AI finishes me off fast.

Back to the drawing board.

 

[jesusin]

Why does the GP farm have low base culture. If you have the Sistine Chapel and run 7 Artists, that should be 42 culture all by itself. Assuming you have the National Epic in this city as well and a few Culture buildings (Monument, Lubrary, Temples, Monistaries, etc.) many of which have doubled in culture over the years, it seems logical that the GP farm could be producing 70 to 100 base Culture. Running Free Speech and Building four Cathedrials has the potential to boost the GP farm to 400+ culture per turn. In the one game that I finished, my GP farm was producing over 700 culture per turn (although that was after accidentially adding three GA to the city instead of culture bombing like I should have).

You shouldn't build cathedrals in your GPFarm.

Your numbers are right. Without Sistine's my GPFarm has around 60 base culture. But any of my cottage cities has never had less than 100 base culture. So, assuming that you don't have 6 cities with 6 temples, there is one city that won't build the cathedral, which should it be, the one that has >100c or the one that has <100c? The one that must stop hiring NE-powered artists or the other one?

 

[jesusin]

To get a good (sub-1500) time, you need a capital with 2-3 early cathedrals (4 total) that goes legendary on it's own, a second cottage city with herm and 1-2 early cathedrals (4 total) that is 4 bombs short of legendary when the capital is done and a GP farm that generates 10k and 14GA's (inc a 2nd farm) or 6k and 15GA's by the time the capital is done. And you need to be in FS by 300AD.

Those are very good estimations for a 4 citied, Legendary GPFarm cultural game.


Thinking along these lines:

- In my explained game, my capital would have gone Legendary without the help of any GA in 1430AD. So, unless I get much more than 18GP , which wouldn't be too efficient anyway, there is no way for me to improve my date (appart from obvious things like winning the Liberalism race) without improving the efficiency of my capital.

- One way to do so would be to use the Hermitage in the capital. But that requieres a more than wonderful second cottage city or another bunch of GA...

- Another way would be to build a couple of 10cpt WW in the capital. Maybe with marble and a bit of luck...

- The other way is not trading for Pottery after Alphabet, but beeline for Pottery since the very beggining. That way my cottages will be much more developped all through the game.

In my current game, (corn, 5FP, 2gold) I have ignored the corn and started researching Wheel-Pott, trading for Agriculture after Alphabet. I'll let you know how it ends up.

 

[jesusin]

To get a good (sub-1500) time, you need a capital with 2-3 early cathedrals (4 total) that goes legendary on it's own, a second cottage city with herm and 1-2 early cathedrals (4 total) that is 4 bombs short of legendary when the capital is done and a GP farm that generates 10k and 14GA's (inc a 2nd farm) or 6k and 15GA's by the time the capital is done. And you need to be in FS by 300AD.

Those are very good estimations for a 4 citied, Legendary GPFarm cultural game.


Thinking along these lines:

- In my explained game, my capital would have gone Legendary without the help of any GA in 1430AD. So, unless I get much more than 18GP , which wouldn't be too efficient anyway, there is no way for me to improve my date (appart from obvious things like winning the Liberalism race) without improving the efficiency of my capital.

- One way to do so would be to use the Hermitage in the capital. But that requieres a more than wonderful second cottage city or another bunch of GA...

- Another way would be to build a couple of 10cpt WW in the capital. Maybe with marble and a bit of luck...

- The other way is not trading for Pottery after Alphabet, but beeline for Pottery since the very beggining. That way my cottages will be much more developped all through the game.

In my current game, (corn, 5FP, 2gold) I have ignored the corn and started researching Wheel-Pott, trading for Agriculture after Alphabet. I'll let you know how it ends up.

 

[FiveAces]

I had a game that looked to be going really well. I started with the much coveted Grasslands Gems tile along with seafood, cows, ivory, and a couple of calander resources in my BFC. I was only able to get four cities out before the AI rexed all the available land, but that was okay. My capitol and one other city had high production and commerce. A third was a GP farm, and the forth was building temples for all four religions and running one artist. I was researching education in 1 AD. I was able to get four GA, my capitol up to 20K culture and the second culture city to 10K by 1180 AD when Haty won a Religious Victory.

1180 and the AI won the game from under me! All of my other starts have lasted until at least 1600. I get a great start and the the AI finishes me off fast.

Back to the drawing board.

Grassland gems is overrated. You need hammers in the capital to build everything and at the size 5 happy cap you ideally want to be working 2 gold and 3 cottages (at least 2 on floodplains to prevent starvation). But since you had ivory+cows you were ok hammerwise with that start, you just had slightly less commerce as compared to a 2 gold+corn start.

The best 4 resource start is 2 gold and 2 irrigated corn on a plains hill with 2 floodplains - you grow to size 5 so fast and then you build the settlers so fast and then you can switch off the food and work gold+cottages until HR (except when you are building settler/worker). Plus you can build library before granary because of the 2 food.

 

[jesusin]

There is one thing I have observed in lots of threads about cultural games:
Pleople saying that you should build lots of culture-providing buildings.

Haven't you heard the sentence "a monastery provides 2 cpt and after 1000 years it gets doubled to a whooping 4cpt" a hundred times?

I think that's a wrong way of thinking. In fact, I have never heard a sub-1500AD winner recommend building a lot of Obelisks/Monasteries/Libraries.

In my games, lots of monasteries get built in the 3 Legendary cities only around 1200AD.


First of all, when are you supposed to build those soon-to-be-providing-4cpt monasteries? Before 1000BC you should be building Settlers and granaries, not monasteries. Before 1AD you should be building Workers, missionaries and temples, not monasteries. Before 1000AD you should be building Hermitage and Cathedrals, not monasteries. Some 30 turns before winning the game, yes, you should be building monasteries if there's nothing better available, till some 10 turns before the end, when you should be building culture.

Secondly, 60 hammers is a whole lot for 4 miserable cpt. One of your pop can build a monastery on his own in 20 turns working a mined grasshill. But that same pop could have been working a cottaged grasshill for those 20 turns instead. That way, it would have produced 10*1+10*3 commerce. Ten turns later, it will be producing 4commerce per turn, while the monastery is veeeeery far away from producing 4cpt. By the time the monastery gives 4cpt, the cottage will be yielding around 6 commerce per turn.


I am not saying you should never build a monastery! An early one in the capital can give a good bunch of beakers. And you need several ones if you are not under OR in order to build missionaries to spread your religions.

I am not recommending to cottage your grasshills, either!

I am just saying that transforming hammers into buildings that give culture is a very poor method of building culture. A cottage or an artist are both much more efficient ways of building culture.

 

[jesusin]

Grassland gems is overrated. You need hammers in the capital to build everything and at the size 5 happy cap you ideally want to be working 2 gold and 3 cottages (at least 2 on floodplains to prevent starvation). But since you had ivory+cows you were ok hammerwise with that start, you just had slightly less commerce as compared to a 2 gold+corn start.

The best 4 resource start is 2 gold and 2 irrigated corn on a plains hill with 2 floodplains - you grow to size 5 so fast and then you build the settlers so fast and then you can switch off the food and work gold+cottages until HR (except when you are building settler/worker).

I don't quite agree. The happy cap is not going to last forever. You will want to grow fast when that happens. And you won't be willing to stop working the gold tiles.

So I would prefer a 2 gems and 2 irrigated corn on a plains hill with 2 floodplains start. While building settlers it doesn't make any difference. Later on you can transform your excess food into hammers by way of slavery. In the endgame you will grow bigger and will run more artists or more plains cottages.

One shouldn't discard a 1gems 1 gold start either, for more happy resources.

Plus you can build library before granary because of the 2 food.

Food for thought. I am still struggling against the old mantras:
- Build a Granary in every city, no matter how small the city will be.
- The Granary should always be your first building.
It's hard to break old habits.

 

[oyzar]

Looks like a nice game. Specially so being your first Deity win! Lots of room for improvement too.

Do you remember the date you reached Liberalism?
How many religions did you have?
Did you play against 3 leaders? I think 4 is the minimum for a valid HOF submission.

I keep on debating if it is better to go from CS to Liberalism, and trade up to Music; or to go for Music first and then race for Liberalism.

I had no trouble getting liberalism first after getting music first(through both drama and literature), yeah only 3 leaders although adding another one shouldn't be too hard. In my game CS would only boost hammers so it wasn't much of an argument... I also revolted to state religion when mansa asked me to(which might be a huge benefit of spiritual that you can agree to such demands). Liberalism about 250 AD or something. I didn't trade away edu until right before i had it(using a GS for philo ment the AI's delayed it and gave me some extra time, i didn't trade away philo until i had edu, although i traded away paper right when i got it). In hindsight i should prolly not have researched printing press myself... I think I got all religions... The AI kept spreading them to me, several to several cities sparing me alot of hammers in missionaries. Founded only philo myself. Oh and i did (slow)build cathedrals in my gp farm, i did have a ton of religions though so i never got around to build all the cathedrals anyways(no multiplier resources), I settled the GA from music in my captial(the GP farm), which was probably correct, although i should have built hermitage there with mines as well, Marble would have sped me up this game it is not funny(the marble cathedrals, NE, pantheon, sistine etc, i could maybe have gotten both MOM and TAJ if i had marble which would have been pretty damn good)...

One interesting thing is that my capital basically spammed settlers/workers letting the other cities concentrate on working nothing but cottages(my second cities had no resources, but 4 floodplains, which got improved from the get go), build something like worker -> warrior - warrior - warrior which timed with size 5(i was on a plains hill and had double irrigated corn, rest of titles were mostly grassland), the first worker improved corn(right next to capital) - corn(one turn wasted on moving there) - plains hill(one turn wasted to move there due to hill) - grassland hill (two turns wasted to move there) - grassland hill(thats 5, right next to the other one so one turn wasted moving there). My capital started off with worker then a settler then another settler i think. When i got elephants hooked up in my 3rd city(this one wasn't destined to be legendary but actually my secondary gpo farm), thile doing this the capital built another worker then another settler for the last legendary city(which was quite far away, it happened to have iron and wine(riverside on a plains hill so not actually a very good title), but no other resources, both my legendary cottage sites worked pretty much nothing but cottages, and whipped when needed. This combined with all the flooplain / riverside grassland ment i was outteching the AI(with some tech trading ofc) despite not having gems or gold in my starting city. This leads me to believe that while riverside gems is all well and good, you really want at least two food resources who are imeaditly improvable(two deers is fine, as is two AG resources(but not one deer and one AG, although that might be fine for other reasons, as forested deer is an amazing title no matter what you do), but AH is not as they diverge your tech path too much). So the ideal start might very well be something like 2 corn + 2 gems.

This lead me into another train of thought. Would arboria potentially be a good map for this kind of game. The map doesn't have much gems or gold and no stone however there are a ton of deer and silver, with mapfiner finding something like settling on deer with deer in the imeadiate small cross and 2-3 more silvers/deers in the imeadiate fat cross should not be impossible, this might require teching BW before alpha(and before pottery), but i think it might be worth looking into... Is this map even legal btw(it is in standard map scripts for bts at least...).

 

[jesusin]

Thanks for all the details, oyzar.

I settled the GA from music in my captial(the GP farm), which was probably correct, although i should have built hermitage there with mines as well...

I don't think so. You said you bombed all cities equally. So IMO it would have been best to choose the city with the best base culture and settle the GA there and build the Hermitage there. Then divert some of the GA bombed there to other cities. That way the Hermitage would have provided the best possible yield.

...OTOH, maybe the other cities were too hammer poor to build the Hermitage...

 

[FiveAces]

Those are very good estimations for a 4 citied, Legendary GPFarm cultural game.

In my current game, (corn, 5FP, 2gold) I have ignored the corn and started researching Wheel-Pott, trading for Agriculture after Alphabet. I'll let you know how it ends up.

I wouldn't have ignored the corn - it's significant in cutting the time to build the 2 settlers and in allowing you to work the second gold, which means you finish the library earlier. The extra turns researching ag will almost be offset by the 20% bonus for pottery and earlier working of the second gold.

On vanilla I would go alpha, trade for BW and Poly, then research Lit. Whip granary and library in GP farm, start NE. After Lit, go to Music, hope Mansa founds confu (or muptiple AI have it), trade for CoL, switch to caste (once you can whip out NE), then research CS.

 

[oyzar]

Thanks for all the details, oyzar.



I don't think so. You said you bombed all cities equally. So IMO it would have been best to choose the city with the best base culture and settle the GA there and build the Hermitage there. Then divert some of the GA bombed there to other cities. That way the Hermitage would have provided the best possible yield.

...OTOH, maybe the other cities were too hammer poor to build the Hermitage...

Not only because of the 100% multiplier(my capital had alot of culture from all the wonders as well as from the artists it ran) but also for the GA points which would have contributed quite alot over the course of the game..