G-Major 70

[adrianj]

Edited: not relevant.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I thought my 1977 submission (if it gets accepted) would be fairly competitive but after checking the submissions from last update using ad-hoc query I see that this will not be the case

Anyway, that should be India for my QM, 3 left now (Hammurabi, Ottomans and Shaka).

National park city had 15 forest preserves, cows, one grain, and 2 flood plains. My other 2 cities I cottaged (as Gandhi!), they each produced one Great Artist each though.

1 scientist for bulbing sci meth, 1 merchant for Sushi, and 13 or 14 great artists.

I was getting 600 odd cpt for my best 2 cities at the end and the 3rd city which I bombed 8 or 9 times was doing around 250 odd a turn, its cottages were still growing.

EDIT: No wars declared on me this time. Opponents on my continent were Lincoln, Kublai and Sitting Bull. Opponents elsewhere were Joao, Mao and Darius. The only war was Darius against Mao I think.

3 religions and 6 cities, 6 cathedrals and hermitage (in the best cottage city). Capital got the National Park and Globe right at the end to speed up the win a bit. I didn't flip any cities.

 

[adrianj]

I have a new 1954 (T124) submission

The game was with Elizabeth, and not only did I use both her Financial and Philosophical traits, I made good use of her UU and UB.

The UU helped in the early game, since we get 3 redcoats for free. With an initial civic switch to Universal Suffrage, Bureau, Caste and Mercantilism (NB, I ignored religious civic at the start to save a turn of anarchy and get building sooner) I was able to start cranking out grenadiers through cash rushing. My nearest neighbour happened to be Frederick who kindly built 4 cities for me, including an excellent cottageable capital and a religion of course. By 1834 (T37) Frederick is dead and by 1846 (T43) I have 9 cities having built (mostly cash rushed) an extra 2 settlers. I was also fortunate enough to have a 3rd religion spread to me.

At this point I had a revolution to Pacifism and Emancipation to start growing the cottages, having ensured that all cities had a theatre to not produce unwanted Great People from the free Mercantilism specialist. The religion I switched to was shared by a neighbour, so as not to annoy any people than I need to - since some already have a -1 "You declared war on our friend".

Medicine is discovered in 1904 (T74) followed by a final civic switch to Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, Caste System, Environmentalism and Pacifism. Sid's Sushi is incorporated a couple of turns later, as is the building of the National Park (11 jungle/forests) and I'm progressing at ~80% culture, since I still want some cash to rush the remaining temples/cathedrals.

Meanwhile, the other AI are teching fairly well and I manage to pick up Steam Power, Communism, Physics, Railroad and Electricity. An unlikely GS from the National Park city launches a golden age. I also had two unlikely GEs thrown in there. The first rushed most of the Statue of Liberty, the second I had planned to hold on to for maybe another golden age. What actually resulted was that in 1934 (T104) I managed to trade for Combustion and I founded Creative Constructions, with enough turns to make a difference thanks to the additional 21 raw per turn. There was one more unwanted GM produced, who was paired with a GArtist for a second golden age. I reasoned that the +100% production during the golden age was worth one more GArtist, so it was a good decision I think. In total I produced 18 great people, 13 of which were GArtists, 12 of them bombed something like 1-4-7.

I didn't use Representation at all in this game. With all the towns I had I think the bonus production from UniSuffrage was more valuable than extra research at the end, and in the early/middle of the game the cash rushing was especially helpful. Maybe if I'd used a leader like Ghandi or Mansa Musa I would have switched more often between the two - I'm guessing that would be the best way for Ghandi/Mansa to compete vs Elizabeth in this Gauntlet.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I have a new 1954 (T124) submission

Congratulations! Excellent write-up! An inspiring Game!

However, a few of your decisions seemed less than optimal for a Cultural Game. Not knowing the details of your Game, my petty criticisms below are likely unjustified:

1) Running the Culture slider at 80% to accumulate Wealth to Wealth rush Temples and Cathedrals is sub-optimal either way one looks at it. If one wants to build Temples and Cathedrals via Wealth rushing, one should set the Culture slider to 0% to gain the necessary Wealth ASAP. Also, if one needs to run the Culture Slider at < 100%, it best to do this before all Cathedrals are build rather than after (another reason for 0% Culture rather than 100%). Also, if one's three Culture Cities are someone close to Legendary Culture, it may be far better to run Culture 100% rather than divert some/all Commerce to Wealth to Wealth rush Temples and Cathedrals.

2) Pairing a Great Engineer with a Great Artist to create a Golden Age seems to be a waste of two Great People. Surely, one can find something useful for the Great Engineer to build; if not the GE can be settled or even bulbed. When close to the end, it could be that the final GA is useless in finishing even 1t earlier; in such a case it might be reasonable to use a GA for a Golden Age, especially when the additional Culture produced by the Golden Age shaves off a turn.

On the other hand, your Game as a whole was truly inspiring!

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[SirDrake]

I have a new 1954 (T124) submission

The game was with Elizabeth, and not only did I use both her Financial and Philosophical traits, I made good use of her UU and UB.

The UU helped in the early game, since we get 3 redcoats for free. With an initial civic switch to Universal Suffrage, Bureau, Caste and Mercantilism (NB, I ignored religious civic at the start to save a turn of anarchy and get building sooner) I was able to start cranking out grenadiers through cash rushing. My nearest neighbour happened to be Frederick who kindly built 4 cities for me, including an excellent cottageable capital and a religion of course. By 1834 (T37) Frederick is dead and by 1846 (T43) I have 9 cities having built (mostly cash rushed) an extra 2 settlers. I was also fortunate enough to have a 3rd religion spread to me.

Congrats!

Nine cities seems insane, at first glance. But by a staggering coincidence, I, too, managed a 1954 finish with Elizabeth. I'm assuming you beat my score easily, with the larger empire.

Back to the drawing board.

Some notes:

I used your suggestion (from earlier posts) of starting with Universal Suffrage. By cranking out plenty of workers fast, the cottages can start growing early (and keep growing, as I could work cottages instead of mines).

I figured out another thing with Liz, too: Typically, two of the cultural cities will be focused on working cottages (hopefully towns at this point) + food resources + windmills, so they won't have more than 2-3 artist specialists, and not even that until later in the game (growth first).

So... I turned city #4 (or even #4 & #5) into a second artist farm. This can be very efficient even without food resources, as Biology lets you work, say, 5 grassland farms for 22 food (20 + 2 on the city tile), which gives you 6 artist specialists. Best of all, once it pops an artist (or two) that city's gp threshhold resets; now you can run all merchants (to turn up the cultural slider) without having to worry about getting an unwanted Great Merchant.


Cheerio,
Jason

 

[adrianj]

Congratulations! Excellent write-up! An inspiring Game!

Thanks

However, a few of your decisions seemed less than optimal for a Cultural Game. Not knowing the details of your Game, my petty criticisms below are likely unjustified:

1) Running the Culture slider at 80% to accumulate Wealth to Wealth rush Temples and Cathedrals is sub-optimal either way one looks at it. If one wants to build Temples and Cathedrals via Wealth rushing, one should set the Culture slider to 0% to gain the necessary Wealth ASAP. Also, if one needs to run the Culture Slider at < 100%, it best to do this before all Cathedrals are build rather than after (another reason for 0% Culture rather than 100%). Also, if one's three Culture Cities are someone close to Legendary Culture, it may be far better to run Culture 100% rather than divert some/all Commerce to Wealth to Wealth rush Temples and Cathedrals.

Once I switched to Caste System my large legendary cities (most important cities!) had unhappiness issues, so the slider needed to be at least ~60% anyway. Yes, probably sub optimal to be any higher than necessary. I guess another question I should ask myself is if selling out luxury resources for corporation resources, ie, trading happiness hence culture slider for extra food and raw culture was worthwhile. I think yes, especially the food was essential for growing the 3rd legendary city to work all it's cottages as it was pretty low on food resources and had some annoying plains tiles.

2) Pairing a Great Engineer with a Great Artist to create a Golden Age seems to be a waste of two Great People. Surely, one can find something useful for the Great Engineer to build; if not the GE can be settled or even bulbed. When close to the end, it could be that the final GA is useless in finishing even 1t earlier; in such a case it might be reasonable to use a GA for a Golden Age, especially when the additional Culture produced by the Golden Age shaves off a turn.

I definitely thought long and hard about this, and most likely I made the wrong choice. I ended up building Broadway in the capital, but it was more than half completed when the GE arrived - perhaps rushing the remainder was a better choice despite not getting full value. As for spending the GArtist, I'm quite certain that the golden age allowed me to gain an extra GArtist thanks to the +100% GP production (in a secondary GP producer that otherwise wouldn't have produced anything), so I don't consider that one to be a waste.

 

[The-Hawk]

Back from holiday, finally got a chance to try this a second time. I just submitted 1949 AD (turn 118), need to see if it will be accepted. I played Gandhi. Two reasons: I was in a hurry to improve my cities and I expected to make several civics changes.

Some key stats:

22 Great People. One planned GS (bulbed tech), one planned GM (Sushi), one unplanned GE (rush Statue of Liberty), one unplanned GM (golden age), 18 artists, all bombed.

22 cities. 4 built in initial REX (3 for cottages, 1 for National Park), 3 captured from Freddie to give me sufficient temple cities and access to coast, 13 built for sushi resources, 2 culture flipped (one of these on the last turn).

Civics:
Turn 0: US (to allow rushing of workers/grens), Bureau, Caste (to get a GS and GM), Merc, OR (spreading religion).
Turn 37: Switch to Representation (for science) and Emanc (grow cottages)
Turn 59: Switch to US (to rush settlers, temples, missionaries)
Turn 64: Switch to Free Speech (culture), Caste (for Natl Park), Pacifism (great people)

Sushi was giving me 23 and 92 . I spread it to my three cottage cities and to my national park city. I believe my national park city was running 29 artists (12 from preserves, 15 from , 1 from Merc, 1 from statue).

My culture cities were producing 875, 661, and 555 cpt. I was never able to run the slider over 70%, often ran on 60% (my maintenance was too high with all the cities). I did not build courthouses (except for my 4 corp cities), I think this was a bad decision.

This will be my last try, I will not have time tomorrow. I suspect this can be improved on by finding the right balance between founding lots of cities for Sushi and keeping the culture slider high. Also, losing two artists on low probability hurt.

One last note: I think for the first time in my career, I actually managed to bring all three cities to legendary on the same turn. It looked like city 3 would be behind by one turn (1950), but I popped my last GA on the turn cities 1 and 2 went legendary. The artist was able to reach city 3 and bomb on the same turn.

 

[adrianj]

22 cities.

Oh man, you HAD to give it a second go didn't you! I was almost feeling like I had this one in the bag.
Great job showing us what was possible with the corporations. 875, 661, and 555 cpt sounds quite small, but what I think really made your game shine was all the FOOD and Great People. Well done

 

[The-Hawk]

Thanks adrianj, sorry about the late bump .

One other item to mention. I only had two religions (a third spread to me late, but after my temple expansion period). So herm/cathedral in one city, 2 cathedrals in a second, 1 cathedral in the third. An early third religion would have been big.

 

[adrianj]

Thanks adrianj, sorry about the late bump .

Hmm, actually I now see I'm in third position, I was bumped days ago. I wonder who?

 

[SirDrake]

Hmm, actually I now see I'm in third position, I was bumped days ago. I wonder who?

I managed 1952, but seeing as I used your strategy, you can take credit for it.

 

[adrianj]

I managed 1952, but seeing as I used your strategy, you can take credit for it.

Unfortunately for me, this statement won't live on in the annals of the Civ 4 Hall Of Fame. Nice work!

 

[Denniz]

Results:

G-Major 70 - Cultural, Monarch, Standard, Normal - Industrial Era Start
1^st The-Hawk 1949 AD
2^nd Sir Drake 1952 AD
3^rd adrianj 1954 AD

Congratulations!

 

[ParadigmShifter]

6th place, fun gauntlet.