G-Minor 208

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I never liked the idea of teching Music to get a free Great Artist for the Espionage Assisted Cultural Victory.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Well, my first submission for this Gauntlet has been accepted. It was a very non-optimal game, deserving of last place, where it currently is.

As it turns out, every LC city revolted and joined the English Empire without a single weapon raised in anger. Even the last LC city revolted, because I wanted to finish Biology and steal Mass Media by delaying one turn. The last LC city revolting with LC in it tripped the won Cultural Victory check, so Biology has one turn left and I missed my chance to steal Mass Media.

I always had the -20 Trade Route discount for every Civ (5 surviving ones), except when I was in Mercantilism.

At the end of the game, I was generating ~600 Ept with 00% slider and ~1200 Ept with 100% slider. I probably generated 2-3 times more Espionage than I needed for the LC cities.

I learned a lot about this new victory condition by playing this game, despite it being extremely non-optimal. I plan to start another game that is far more optimal; hopefully, I can finish it by the deadline.

There is one game ahead of mine, currently.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

So whose game is currently #1?

 

[WastinTime]

So whose game is currently #1?

That was fast, I just submitted a short while ago. I see my game is accepted too.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

So you did not tech Music as you originally stated you would.

Did you even seed the LC cities with a Great Work from one Great Artist per city?

Or did you seed with your own culture from an ancient Great Wonder in each LC city?

Or did you let the AI seed the culture for you and through successive Inject Culture Missions got the City Culture discount close to 50 for most of the later Inject Culture Missions?

WastinTime, please answer my questions posted earlier and quoted above.

 

[WastinTime]

Only one of my LC's was freshly settled.

All of my LC's got an Artist bomb.

No AI culture, just mine.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Only one of my LC's was freshly settled.

All of my LC's got an Artist bomb.

No AI culture, just mine.

Thank you, WastinTime!

So you generated all three Great Artists to create Great Works for seed Culture. Used all Great Spies for infiltration. Used one Great Person for a Golden Age; built the Taj Mahal for a 2nd Golden Age.

How many Spies did you build?

Did you steal any technologies?

Well done!

 

[WastinTime]

I stole HBR (probably not worth it)

I built 74 spies. About 7 more than I needed.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I stole HBR (probably not worth it)

I built 74 spies. About 7 more than I needed.

If I were to guess, I would have guessed none. I don't believe that is necessarily optimal, because techs can be stolen so cheaply through the gifted LC cities. One must be careful to steal only those needed for the Espionage Assisted Cultural Victory though. Anything more would delay the final winning turn.

I was trying to determine an optimal number of Spies. Seraiel suggested 120, but even though I had 12 cities that seems like a lot of Spies to produce.

So you made your cities Legendary one at a time. That is exactly what I did as well and each one revolted to English Empire control just as mine did, except perhaps for the last one (I'm sure you did not wait for that one to revolt on its own, like I accidentally did). Or, perhaps you did not use the City Flip after Conquest option and captured them all on the final turn.

How much culture did your two older LC cities have before you started the Inject Culture Missions?

Did you gift the LC cities to the same AI? I believe you gave it to the same AI and I believe I know why. You're secret is safe with me.

 

[WastinTime]

Did you gift the LC cities to the same AI? I believe you gave it to the same AI and I believe I know why. You're secret is same with me.

same AI. What's the secret?

 

[WastinTime]

How much culture did your two older LC cities have before you started the Inject Culture Missions?

Over 2000. Not much

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

same AI. What's the secret?

Well, I can't tell you here; Otherwise it would no longer be a secret. Well, if you don't know, perhaps there is no secret after all.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Over 2000. Not much

So, you did generate significant non-Great Works culture in two LC cities before starting the Inject Culture Missions and the Great Works for these cities came later after these two LC cities revolted back into English Empire control via the CFaC option.

This suggests that you planned a minimum of one Great Artist and ran a few Artists with Spy Specialists to speed up the generation of Great Spies. You did control how many Artists you ran based on the number of Great Artists already generated. You wanted no more than four Great Artists, one for each LC city and one for a Golden Age.

 

[WastinTime]

I conquered all the cities to get them back

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I conquered all the cities to get them back

Well, does that mean you didn't use the City Flip after Conquest option or were you able to cripple that AI's economy with three distant cities?

I crippled Mansa Musa's research by both destroying his Towns and Villages and forcing him to maintain four distant cities, one was a gift city near my capital when he had only three cities, so he accepted it, despite it being far more than 9.5 tiles away. This ensured that I could gift him the three LC cities later.

 

[Seraiel]

@ STW:

Conquering back the cities is the usual approach, I don't actually see the problem? You found 3 cities in a 3-tiles distance of the capital, gift the AI those cities + all cities on the way that are needed so that it is willing to take the 3 cities, you then spy all cities to legendary and then you conquer them back. The only thing important is to bribe the AI to which one gifts those cities into a war against another AI so that it doesn't move in its stack .

I btw. don't understand how you can spy a city towards legendary with 80 Spies, if something like 72-74 are already needed for 1 city having a success-rate of 82 or 84% (or whatever it is) .

 

[WastinTime]

Well, does that mean you didn't use the City Flip after Conquest option or were you able to cripple that AI's economy with three distant cities?

I crippled Mansa Musa's research by both destroying his Towns and Villages and forcing him to maintain four distant cities, one was a gift city near my capital when he had only three cities, so he accepted it, despite it being far more than 9.5 tiles away. This ensured that I could gift him the three LC cities later.

everyone was very close, so I didn't have to gift a distant city.

I think I did use the CFaC option, but no city ever even revolted--much less changed hands.

 

[Pangaea]

Is it not also possible to put the cities in such a location that the AIs can't send units there, and keep the borders closed? Not ideal for spy costs though.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Is it not also possible to put the cities in such a location that the AIs can't send units there, and keep the borders closed? Not ideal for spy costs though.

There might be a way to do this by getting an AI to close its borders between the AI controlling the LC cities and it's capital such that there is no land path between the AI's Capital and your LC cities. There could still be trade routes though via galley accessible islands around the blocking AI's land or trivially via Astronomy (though it's not likely to be an early EACV in this case).

Serial is right though. Bribing an AI to declare War on the AI being gifted the LC cities will probably be enough to keep his large stacks away.

On the other hand, not needing to capture the LC cities in the end game could save building a few military units. I had Longbowmen, Grenadiers, and Riflemen defending in my LC cities. I whipped Cannons and drafted Riflemen to capture the LC cities at a significant cost in hammers and unit maintenance.

I like how my game ended in total peace; I did not need any of the later Era military I had built.

I actually had to give the 2 of the LC cities back because I was not finished injecting culture to LC status. I had to give the 1st LC city back twice because it flipped. The raze option was scary though and I had to avoid it a total of six times.

 

[Pangaea]

When relying/gambling on the cities revolting back to you, can't that take quite a long time? It's pretty rare in normal games at least, so does this 'flipping' option and so much culture mean they flip very easily?

It sounds so based on what you write above