Gauntlet Three
- Thread starter Dianthus
- Start date
Mad Dog said:
Code:
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</SpeedThresholds>The aggressive approach with Huaynac worked fine, but not fast enough, resulting in cultural victory in 1646, marathon, panagea, 4 opponents. I'm sure I could have done better with a more cooperative AI; it took ages to get the final AI, Mao into my confidence. I also didn't know what the victory conditions were exactly (thanks Denniz), and didn't go into pacifism as early as I could, so I'm sure this time could be improved a lot.
I think the big problem with this approach is that the aggressive trait isn't useful after the initial conquest. A leader with philosophical trait churning out great artists with metronomic regularity is going to be my next effort.
I think the big problem with this approach is that the aggressive trait isn't useful after the initial conquest. A leader with philosophical trait churning out great artists with metronomic regularity is going to be my next effort.
I managed a 1332 AD win (which was preceded by a 1366 AD win) using Elizabeth as a balanced, low sea level, tropical map against Mansas, Hattie, and Gandhi.
I had no stone or marble, but managed to build The Pyramids and Parthenon through normal means and the Sistine chapel and Spiral Minaret through great engineers. I also built The Colossus late in a non-culture city to give a very small boost to my only coastal culture city (I was only working 2 coastal tiles - so spending the time in the city building the COlossus on "wealth" would probably have been a better decision).
I only had 4 religions. I founded Taoism and Confucianism (in that order). Buddhism and Hiduism spread to me early. I also flipped a Christian city too late to exploit it. In both of my games, the early 3 religions got split evenly among the AI opponents, which made them all late to Code of Laws and Theology.
A couple noteworthy choices:
1) Initial expansion is handled differently than most people are probably used to. I build an initial worker who has time to mine a hill before bronze working is complete. Once bronze working is complete, the second worker is almost done. I chop rush the remaining second and a third worker. I then chop rush 2 settlers, another worker, and another settler. So basically 3xworker, 2xsettler, 1xworker, 1xsettler. This generally menas clearcutting anything around the capitol.
Here's the key though - I don't settle any of the settlers until I research pottery. I want my time at 30% to 60% science to be as short as possible. Which means I want cottages to support the new cities almost immediately. So I will move my settlers in place. Sometime before I actually get pottery, a worker will move to each city site as well. Once I get pottery, all 3 cities are founded and cottages are started immediately. It's slower to get cities 2 and 3, but I also get out of the tech deficit very early.
You can use the early settler to explore a bit. A perverse result of no barbarians, to be sure.
The big risk is losing one of my city sites to the AI. This happens, but when it does, I simply move the settler to the next best spot. No big deal.
2) My tech research is optimized to grab 1 religion (at least), have lots of trade value, and get to Liberalism first. I concede the early religions and music. My path in both games was:
Bronze -> Wheel -> Pottery -> Masonry -> Alphabet -> Drama -> Philosophy -> Liberalism -> Printing Press -> (Communism) -> Nationalism
In this game, I skipped Communism since I only had to rush buy for 4 religions (and fortunately, 3 of the cathedrals required copper for double production) and 1 of my cities had hish enough production that it didn't make sense to rush buy there. There simply wasn't enough total rush-buying to justify the extra 100 turns of research to get to Communism. That isn't always the case (The 1366 game I had 6 religions and all cities were low production).
In this game, I had gold at my initial city, which accounts for the very early pottery date. In non-gold games, I get it around turn 103.
I'm not at all convinced this is the ideal strategy. I think a 1300 AD win is very possible under better circumstances with this strategy. But I still think the proper war strategy might work better.
Edited to correct mistake about religion founding.
I had no stone or marble, but managed to build The Pyramids and Parthenon through normal means and the Sistine chapel and Spiral Minaret through great engineers. I also built The Colossus late in a non-culture city to give a very small boost to my only coastal culture city (I was only working 2 coastal tiles - so spending the time in the city building the COlossus on "wealth" would probably have been a better decision).
I only had 4 religions. I founded Taoism and Confucianism (in that order). Buddhism and Hiduism spread to me early. I also flipped a Christian city too late to exploit it. In both of my games, the early 3 religions got split evenly among the AI opponents, which made them all late to Code of Laws and Theology.
A couple noteworthy choices:
1) Initial expansion is handled differently than most people are probably used to. I build an initial worker who has time to mine a hill before bronze working is complete. Once bronze working is complete, the second worker is almost done. I chop rush the remaining second and a third worker. I then chop rush 2 settlers, another worker, and another settler. So basically 3xworker, 2xsettler, 1xworker, 1xsettler. This generally menas clearcutting anything around the capitol.
Here's the key though - I don't settle any of the settlers until I research pottery. I want my time at 30% to 60% science to be as short as possible. Which means I want cottages to support the new cities almost immediately. So I will move my settlers in place. Sometime before I actually get pottery, a worker will move to each city site as well. Once I get pottery, all 3 cities are founded and cottages are started immediately. It's slower to get cities 2 and 3, but I also get out of the tech deficit very early.
You can use the early settler to explore a bit. A perverse result of no barbarians, to be sure.
The big risk is losing one of my city sites to the AI. This happens, but when it does, I simply move the settler to the next best spot. No big deal.
2) My tech research is optimized to grab 1 religion (at least), have lots of trade value, and get to Liberalism first. I concede the early religions and music. My path in both games was:
Bronze -> Wheel -> Pottery -> Masonry -> Alphabet -> Drama -> Philosophy -> Liberalism -> Printing Press -> (Communism) -> Nationalism
In this game, I skipped Communism since I only had to rush buy for 4 religions (and fortunately, 3 of the cathedrals required copper for double production) and 1 of my cities had hish enough production that it didn't make sense to rush buy there. There simply wasn't enough total rush-buying to justify the extra 100 turns of research to get to Communism. That isn't always the case (The 1366 game I had 6 religions and all cities were low production).
In this game, I had gold at my initial city, which accounts for the very early pottery date. In non-gold games, I get it around turn 103.
I'm not at all convinced this is the ideal strategy. I think a 1300 AD win is very possible under better circumstances with this strategy. But I still think the proper war strategy might work better.
Edited to correct mistake about religion founding.
I am PISSED!!!!!!!!!
I have given up on going with Ghandi & trying for religions so I thought I would give your strat a try. Played as Elizabeth but I change the opponents a little. You mentioned that they all split the religions so they were slow to code of laws and theology (which I wasn't thinking and thought you wanted them to get to it earlier to trade for it, just now figuring out that is backwards), so I thought about just putting 1 religious leader in there to see if they could get it faster. I chose Ghandi, Cyrus, and Peter. I have never really had a problem with Peter in past games unless he is really provoked.
I restart until I get a nice starting location. Was 1 space off a river with several flood plains. Had stone 2 spaces away and some health resources nearby. I explored around and found that I was in the middle of a wide peninsula. Found 3 GREAT locations for cities that blocked off the rest of the peninsula to settle later. Everything was going good, was 4 turns ahead of your to pyramids but I rush it a little.
I could see the edges of Ghandi but no one was even touching my borders so I thought I was going to get lucky and not make anyone mad when my borders expanded. About halfway into researching drama Peter has chariot outside one of my cities. For NO REASON he declared war. We were +1 relations before that. No negatives. Well, my warrior managed to somehow win against the chariot. He didn't come back for 15 turns or more. He refused to talk to me, was going to give him something to make him happy.
He then takes on of my cities. I thought "not too bad I can get it back if he declares peace". Then he razes a good city and procedes to take my capital next.
I hate Peter.
I have given up on going with Ghandi & trying for religions so I thought I would give your strat a try. Played as Elizabeth but I change the opponents a little. You mentioned that they all split the religions so they were slow to code of laws and theology (which I wasn't thinking and thought you wanted them to get to it earlier to trade for it, just now figuring out that is backwards), so I thought about just putting 1 religious leader in there to see if they could get it faster. I chose Ghandi, Cyrus, and Peter. I have never really had a problem with Peter in past games unless he is really provoked.
I restart until I get a nice starting location. Was 1 space off a river with several flood plains. Had stone 2 spaces away and some health resources nearby. I explored around and found that I was in the middle of a wide peninsula. Found 3 GREAT locations for cities that blocked off the rest of the peninsula to settle later. Everything was going good, was 4 turns ahead of your to pyramids but I rush it a little.
I could see the edges of Ghandi but no one was even touching my borders so I thought I was going to get lucky and not make anyone mad when my borders expanded. About halfway into researching drama Peter has chariot outside one of my cities. For NO REASON he declared war. We were +1 relations before that. No negatives. Well, my warrior managed to somehow win against the chariot. He didn't come back for 15 turns or more. He refused to talk to me, was going to give him something to make him happy.
He then takes on of my cities. I thought "not too bad I can get it back if he declares peace". Then he razes a good city and procedes to take my capital next.
I hate Peter.
Have a couple questions for you walker.
1) Do you build all cottages or do you put in farms as well to help when you need to grow fast?
2) Do you put the farms on plains or grasslands?
3) Do you concentrate on growing your cities as fast as you can (waiting for happiness of course), on production to get that out of the way, or on working the cottages to get them to upgrade ASAP?
1) Do you build all cottages or do you put in farms as well to help when you need to grow fast?
2) Do you put the farms on plains or grasslands?
3) Do you concentrate on growing your cities as fast as you can (waiting for happiness of course), on production to get that out of the way, or on working the cottages to get them to upgrade ASAP?
Big_Ben said:
1) Cottages and more cottages. The only exception is a rare one - if I found a city in the jungle with 0 food resources (happened in the 1366 game), I will farm a couple spaces to get population growth jumpstarted. If I have +4 food, growth is fast enough for me. Later in the game (when I have Code of Laws and Pacifism, I will replace some cottages with farms at my great person city. If the great person city is a culture city, I keep some cottages around and strike a reasonable balance between specialists (7 is nice) and cotttages. If the great person city is not a culture city, I irrigate everything. I might as well push the great people to the limit.
2) Grasslands, only because 3F, 1C looks like the farms is actually accomplishing something, whereas 2F, 1S, 1C looks like I could do better with a cottage. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter, as long as I have +4F, but it's a psychological thing for me.
Of course in the aforementioned jungle city, I often won't have any plains to farm.
3) There are two cases here -
Case #1 - the culture city - Grow at +4 food (I'll switch to faster if I get a big boost in happiness). Otherwise it's commerce. I normally have set my city automation to emphasize commerce only. I may to manually tell it to work a food bonus square. I will build mines, occasionally use them (again, for world wonders, or for oddball stuff like The National Epic), but never go overboard. I would rather keep the cottages worked and growing than get buildings built.
Case #2 - the non-culture city - I still like to keep growth reasonable (+3 food or more), but I am more inclined to work mined hills (particularly mined grassland/hills) alongside the food resources and some cottages. I want these cities to be churning out missionaries at a reasonable rate mid-game.
I don't spread any religions until all 6 (or 5 or 4) of my cities have a religion. I let natural spread work first. Then I will dedicate a city to generate missionaries for each religion and spread them myself. Temples are the priority after religion spread. In my log, you will see a fair amount of religion spread activity between 0 AD and 1000 AD.
So by the time I hit Liberalism/Printing Press, I generally have only built 1 monastary for each religion, but each religion is more or less completely spread throughout my civ. Perhaps 30% to 50% of my temples are built. Then I have to make the decision to go for communism or start buying immediately.
Ok, thanks for the tips. I guess I am just too used to building buildings that aren't necessary in this gauntlet. I need to concentrate on commerce more.
One thing that I have about all cottages is that your population won't get high enough to work them. My last try at the gauntlet I was only at 12 pop or so in my culture cities and had 15-20 cottages on some. I was thinking about building no more than 15 cottages and the rest farms.
What buildings do you build in your culture cities? I think I build too many. I usually try and get library, granary, aquaduct, theatre, monasteries, temples of course, and then cathedrals. If I have time I go for universities as well but I think that is a waste now. I try and get the buildings built as fast as possible to get them out of a way but that can sometimes sacrifice commerce. I am probalby just better off waiting until the end and rushing temples and cathedrals.
One thing that I have about all cottages is that your population won't get high enough to work them. My last try at the gauntlet I was only at 12 pop or so in my culture cities and had 15-20 cottages on some. I was thinking about building no more than 15 cottages and the rest farms.
What buildings do you build in your culture cities? I think I build too many. I usually try and get library, granary, aquaduct, theatre, monasteries, temples of course, and then cathedrals. If I have time I go for universities as well but I think that is a waste now. I try and get the buildings built as fast as possible to get them out of a way but that can sometimes sacrifice commerce. I am probalby just better off waiting until the end and rushing temples and cathedrals.
Big_Ben said:
Granaries, obelisks (very cheap culture that will double by the time the game is done), temples, catehdrals are the only truly mandatory buildings. Temples aren't even mandatory if you you end up with more than 6 cities with that religion (happens if a couple cities flip before 500 AD). Libraries almost always get built. Theaters always get built. Theaters are very cheap culture that when doubled are almost worth a cottage. At least some monastaries will get built (but only all of them in a high production culture city). Universities come after monastaries (50% more culture for more than 50% more cost than monastaries). Harbors go into coastal culture cities. Aqueducts and grocers are on an as-needed basis for health. Banks are situational (I usually build a couple somewhere, such as a city that has multiple great artists added as super-specialists) or a flipped holy city.
Note that I don't actually research guilds or banking, but usually get these through trade (or unsolicited gifts, if the AI is doing fairly well).
Once nice thing about the balanced map is assuming you build 3 culture cities, 1 great person city, and 2 "extra" cities, you can usually place the cities in such a way to capture most of the health and happiness resource types (at least after a couple border expansions).
I forgot to comment about this bit. City placement is pretty critical. I tend to place culture cities (well, all cities, really) in range of 2 food resources, because that allows me to work many more plains. The exception is the pure jungle location, which is pretty much ok with or without food resources, though you do need some irrigation in the latter case, so having a banana or rice resource in range is better.Big_Ben said:
I've absolutely been taken in by spots that initially look spectacular, but once I get into the game I realize that the single food bonus is only a 4F spot and there are far too many plains to work more than 10 or so cottages at once. For this guantlet, I had to become much more careful about knowing exactly how many food a resource would give me and count exactly how many cottages I could work at max population so I wouldn't get any nasty suprises at the end of the game (two cities cranking out 900 culture/turn while the lagger is at 500 culture/turn). 13 is fine. 15 is really good. I count coastal as half a cottage, certain resources (the ones that give you 4 to 6 culture when worked) as half a cottage, and being on a significant river is worth an extra cottage due to the sum of the +1 bonuses. Gold and silver are worth 0 cottages, because while they provide a cottage's worth of culture, they provide no food, so they replace working another cottage or having another artist specialist. Grassland/gems, however, is worth a cottage. Having enough forest to chop rush an early wonder is worth 1 or 2 cottages. I'll build The Pyramids somewhere, but it's far better if it goes into a cultural city.
Don't forget to count grassland/hills as cottage spots as well. They are equivalent to plains. I might mine them early to get the valued 1F, 3S production and convert them into cottages before I get fully into buy mode. They still will have time to get to village status and provide 5C by the end of the game.
Of course, I don't have to really commit to a particular city for culture until liberalism or so. The +50% culture buildings don't do a lot of good before then (cottages aren't developed enough and you aren't running the culture slider high yet), so if another city overtakes one of my initial 3 due to a couple of wonders, I won't hesitate to shuffle the culture cities around a bit.
godotnut
Inverted Unicycle
Wow Walker, that's really impressive. Nice job.
1430 following your strat. I made a couple costly mistakes. I missed pyramids by 4 turns which meant not having that extra 3 happiness which hurt growth a lot. My cities also got too spread out, should have kept them close by. For some reason the map had very few happiness resources. I had gold and hatty was willing to trade me spices. Other than that I was out of luck.
Going to give it another go tomorrow. I will be happy breaking 1400 for this gauntlet but would love to make top 3 again.
Going to give it another go tomorrow. I will be happy breaking 1400 for this gauntlet but would love to make top 3 again.
1450 AD win using Incas on a high sea levels balanced map against my usual opponents.
Gandhi started 5 spaces from me (as the crow flies - 10 by foot around a bay) and was conquered before he settled a 2nd city (he had the settler built - I captured it).
I conquered Isabella as well (3 cities), giving me Stonehenge and the Hindu holy city.
I wasn't blown away by the quality of either capitol, though both did end up being culture cities. I really didn't like the lack of control of city site selection. On the other hand, I did really like the excess food at all of the AI cities. Even though my 3 culture cities were only fair (generating 2600 culture/turn combined at the end with 5 cathedrals in each), all 4 non-cultural cities were generating 50+ great person points a turn. Despite not being philosophical, the great people were flowing steadily.
I also didn't like having only Mansa left as an opponent. The quality of trading went down considerably, since I could only make 1 trade for each tech I got. I probably ended up with more wonders (I built Notre Dame, for example, which I have never done in other games), but I had to research more myself.
One important note - I have rejected mercantilism in the past as basically rubbish. Better trade routes are almost always better than a single specialist. When you don't have economics or corporation, however, and you are on a pangea-style map, you only have 2 trade routes. You may lose +2 to +4 commerce by switching to mercantilism, but that is more than offset by the +4 (+6 with Sistine) culture from an extra artist specialist. Plus you get the extra specialist in all your great person cities. I'll have to more seriously consider mercantilism in future games.
After this game, I still think there is a lot of promise in good warmonger dates. I need to raze some cities (to reduce early costs - I can always rebuild in the area) I capture. Inca on an LvR battleground is the next attempt.
Gandhi started 5 spaces from me (as the crow flies - 10 by foot around a bay) and was conquered before he settled a 2nd city (he had the settler built - I captured it).
I conquered Isabella as well (3 cities), giving me Stonehenge and the Hindu holy city.
I wasn't blown away by the quality of either capitol, though both did end up being culture cities. I really didn't like the lack of control of city site selection. On the other hand, I did really like the excess food at all of the AI cities. Even though my 3 culture cities were only fair (generating 2600 culture/turn combined at the end with 5 cathedrals in each), all 4 non-cultural cities were generating 50+ great person points a turn. Despite not being philosophical, the great people were flowing steadily.
I also didn't like having only Mansa left as an opponent. The quality of trading went down considerably, since I could only make 1 trade for each tech I got. I probably ended up with more wonders (I built Notre Dame, for example, which I have never done in other games), but I had to research more myself.
One important note - I have rejected mercantilism in the past as basically rubbish. Better trade routes are almost always better than a single specialist. When you don't have economics or corporation, however, and you are on a pangea-style map, you only have 2 trade routes. You may lose +2 to +4 commerce by switching to mercantilism, but that is more than offset by the +4 (+6 with Sistine) culture from an extra artist specialist. Plus you get the extra specialist in all your great person cities. I'll have to more seriously consider mercantilism in future games.
After this game, I still think there is a lot of promise in good warmonger dates. I need to raze some cities (to reduce early costs - I can always rebuild in the area) I capture. Inca on an LvR battleground is the next attempt.
BlueRenner
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2001
- Messages
- 121
Alright, remember that earlier post where I guesstimated that 1370 was the bottom end for this gauntlet?
I am stupid.
I took some elements from the Elizibeth players here and managed a 1296 win.
Me: Elizibeth, on a Small Low Sea Temperate Pangea Marathon.
Against: Asoka, Roosevelt, and Mao
I changed my opponents this game. I usually avoid Religious civs, but I had the idea that if one civ founds all the early religions, there was a good chance everyone would join their state religion, and there would be no war. So I picked Asoka (who loves him some religious tech), and Roosevelt and Mao, who are builders who couldn't care less. The strategy worked out -- Asoka discovered everything, and save for one Indo-Chinese war, it was a peaceful Buddhist world.
I really micromanaged my Great People this game, as which is opposite my usual playstyle. I had 11 Artists, 2 Prophets, and 1 Engineer. The engineer built Notre Dame in a city that needed it, and one of the prophets discovered Theology for me. The other prophet made his living as a super specialist.
You can guess what I did with the artists. I stored them up (I had nine on the board at one time) until it was obvious which cities would need them and in what proportion (post cathedral-building-orgy), then popped them all at once. My culture graph has a nice spike that just makes me smile.
I made one hideous error that I've personally vowed never to repeat. One of my great people farms has a single unit of food, right? Not enough for a full specialist, but the worker is just wasting his time out there gathering. So I decided to add another Artist and starve the city down a population point. Good plan, right? I can even cycle this up and down.
Again, I lose track of things. And before you know it.. the city starves down a population point, and I'm not watching. The next turn.. an artist starves. And another on the next turn. And the next. And the next. Until I'm left with a 1-population former GP farm.
Man, I'm an idiot.
Luckily, it built itself up again.. it might have produced another Great Artist if this blunder hadn't happened, but that artist would only have shaved off about 3 turns from my overall time. So it didn't turn out to be a huge disaster... but it easily could have.
- Bill
I am stupid.
I took some elements from the Elizibeth players here and managed a 1296 win.
Me: Elizibeth, on a Small Low Sea Temperate Pangea Marathon.
Against: Asoka, Roosevelt, and Mao
I changed my opponents this game. I usually avoid Religious civs, but I had the idea that if one civ founds all the early religions, there was a good chance everyone would join their state religion, and there would be no war. So I picked Asoka (who loves him some religious tech), and Roosevelt and Mao, who are builders who couldn't care less. The strategy worked out -- Asoka discovered everything, and save for one Indo-Chinese war, it was a peaceful Buddhist world.
I really micromanaged my Great People this game, as which is opposite my usual playstyle. I had 11 Artists, 2 Prophets, and 1 Engineer. The engineer built Notre Dame in a city that needed it, and one of the prophets discovered Theology for me. The other prophet made his living as a super specialist.
You can guess what I did with the artists. I stored them up (I had nine on the board at one time) until it was obvious which cities would need them and in what proportion (post cathedral-building-orgy), then popped them all at once. My culture graph has a nice spike that just makes me smile.
I made one hideous error that I've personally vowed never to repeat. One of my great people farms has a single unit of food, right? Not enough for a full specialist, but the worker is just wasting his time out there gathering. So I decided to add another Artist and starve the city down a population point. Good plan, right? I can even cycle this up and down.
Again, I lose track of things. And before you know it.. the city starves down a population point, and I'm not watching. The next turn.. an artist starves. And another on the next turn. And the next. And the next. Until I'm left with a 1-population former GP farm.
Man, I'm an idiot.
Luckily, it built itself up again.. it might have produced another Great Artist if this blunder hadn't happened, but that artist would only have shaved off about 3 turns from my overall time. So it didn't turn out to be a huge disaster... but it easily could have.
- Bill
1262 AD Inca on a Team Left vs Right tropical Team Battlefield againt Gandhi, Hattie, and Mansa.
I was on the same side as Gandhi. It seems to me either Gandhi or Hattie will do. Restart if stuck with Mansa. Build about 5 quechas. You probably only need 4 quechuas total to take out the AI on your side (they will likely have 2 archers defending the capitol). If they are built on hills, give it a try, but restart if the attack fails.
In any case, you should be able to conquer that opponent before they settle a second city. In fact, a good trigger to declare war is the appearance of their first built settler. Capture it and you can get 2 workers out of the war.
In this game, I built 5 quechuas total (the last wasn't necessary), I conquered Delhi on turn 59. In the process, I got 2 workers. Furthermore, Delhi was the Hindu holy city. I never did found a holy shrine (I had a great prophet, but I really didn't want to up the great propeht sources in Dehli. In hindsight, the holy shrine would have been marginally better than the prophet super specialist).
At turn 59, I stopped all war. It seems a little silly to use the UU and one of the leader traits for a total of 59 turns, but the Team Battleground LvR map is built for this. Conquer your one opponent very quickly and then go into normal builder mode.
Your capitol and the enemy capitol should provide two great culture city spots. The jungle in the middle should provide a third spot (and perhaps a couple of potential spots). I placed all other cities based on access to resources and excess food potential. I wanted every other city to be a great person city. In the end, I founded 6 more cities (beyond the capitol and captured Delhi) for a total of 8 cities. Initially, all of these cities were cottaged up to speed research. Once I stopped research (in 575 AD), the other cities had cottages replaced by farms. My 5 great people cities supported a base 6, 5, 6, 6, and 7 artist specialists. This could have been higher with more time (more grocers and aqueducts and more time to grow would have led to higher population sizes), but every city produced 1 great aritst and most produced 2. There was space for a 9th city, but it controlled no resources. So I left it empty, and Hattie settled it. This proved fortuitous in getting Judaism, when the city flipped to me.
My research path changed a bit from Elizabeth games. In this case I went:
Pottery Bronze -> Masonry -> Priesthood (to build Oracle) -> Code of Laws (free Oracle tech) -> Alphabet -> Monotheism -> Theology -> Liberalism -> Divine Right (to get Islam) -> Printing Press -> Nationalism
I obvioulsy went after late religions more aggresively. I ended up founding Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam. I missed out of Taoism by at least 20 turns. I captured Hiduism. Buddhism and Taoism spread naturally. I flipped a city with Judaism with about 130 turns to go. So I had all 7 religions, and had time to build 20 of 21 possible cathedrals.
I built Pyramids, Oracle, Sistine, Stonehenge, and The Parthenon normally, and The Spiral Minaret and The Taj Mahal through great engineers. In hindsight, Stonehenge might have been a mistake. The +16 base culture/turn is nice, but it replaces 3 obelisks (+2 base culture/turn at the end), so the net is lower. And you'll get a at least one great prophet to deal with, which is about my least favorite great person in a culture game. It's hard to say whether Stonehenge is really a net gain or loss. I suspect a small positive (as long as it goes in one of your culture cities).
I was on the same side as Gandhi. It seems to me either Gandhi or Hattie will do. Restart if stuck with Mansa. Build about 5 quechas. You probably only need 4 quechuas total to take out the AI on your side (they will likely have 2 archers defending the capitol). If they are built on hills, give it a try, but restart if the attack fails.
In any case, you should be able to conquer that opponent before they settle a second city. In fact, a good trigger to declare war is the appearance of their first built settler. Capture it and you can get 2 workers out of the war.
In this game, I built 5 quechuas total (the last wasn't necessary), I conquered Delhi on turn 59. In the process, I got 2 workers. Furthermore, Delhi was the Hindu holy city. I never did found a holy shrine (I had a great prophet, but I really didn't want to up the great propeht sources in Dehli. In hindsight, the holy shrine would have been marginally better than the prophet super specialist).
At turn 59, I stopped all war. It seems a little silly to use the UU and one of the leader traits for a total of 59 turns, but the Team Battleground LvR map is built for this. Conquer your one opponent very quickly and then go into normal builder mode.
Your capitol and the enemy capitol should provide two great culture city spots. The jungle in the middle should provide a third spot (and perhaps a couple of potential spots). I placed all other cities based on access to resources and excess food potential. I wanted every other city to be a great person city. In the end, I founded 6 more cities (beyond the capitol and captured Delhi) for a total of 8 cities. Initially, all of these cities were cottaged up to speed research. Once I stopped research (in 575 AD), the other cities had cottages replaced by farms. My 5 great people cities supported a base 6, 5, 6, 6, and 7 artist specialists. This could have been higher with more time (more grocers and aqueducts and more time to grow would have led to higher population sizes), but every city produced 1 great aritst and most produced 2. There was space for a 9th city, but it controlled no resources. So I left it empty, and Hattie settled it. This proved fortuitous in getting Judaism, when the city flipped to me.
My research path changed a bit from Elizabeth games. In this case I went:
Pottery Bronze -> Masonry -> Priesthood (to build Oracle) -> Code of Laws (free Oracle tech) -> Alphabet -> Monotheism -> Theology -> Liberalism -> Divine Right (to get Islam) -> Printing Press -> Nationalism
I obvioulsy went after late religions more aggresively. I ended up founding Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam. I missed out of Taoism by at least 20 turns. I captured Hiduism. Buddhism and Taoism spread naturally. I flipped a city with Judaism with about 130 turns to go. So I had all 7 religions, and had time to build 20 of 21 possible cathedrals.
I built Pyramids, Oracle, Sistine, Stonehenge, and The Parthenon normally, and The Spiral Minaret and The Taj Mahal through great engineers. In hindsight, Stonehenge might have been a mistake. The +16 base culture/turn is nice, but it replaces 3 obelisks (+2 base culture/turn at the end), so the net is lower. And you'll get a at least one great prophet to deal with, which is about my least favorite great person in a culture game. It's hard to say whether Stonehenge is really a net gain or loss. I suspect a small positive (as long as it goes in one of your culture cities).
BlueRenner
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2001
- Messages
- 121
Whew. Alright.
1256 on my usual Small Low Sea Temperate Pangea Marathon.
This was essencially the same as my previous attempt, except I put even more empathsis on getting Great Artists out. I believe I produced 14 this game.
My One-Religion-World strategy backfired on my pretty badly this game. Asoka took Buddhism and Hinduism, as expected, but Mao grabbed Judism, leding to a schism on the continent. This was bad -- there was constant fighting going on. I even had to repel and invasion once myself. Luckily, my crushing tech lead meant I could bribe Roosevelt to attack Mao whenever he went after Asoka. In this way, Mao lost a little ground with each attack, and in the end was eliminated.
I also had problems with happiness... my area of the map was health-heavy, happiness-light, and I couldn't exactly spare the time to build the multiplier buildings. This meant that many of cottages didn't get worked high enough by the end of the game, slowing me down a great deal.
The starting location was almost ideal. Two gold hills and corn on a river. I founded on one of the hills and had an extremely nice +2f +2p +3c city right from the start, with a second gold mine on the way.
I'll wait a few days for this game to sink in and see if I can come up with anything else I could have improved on.
- Bill
1256 on my usual Small Low Sea Temperate Pangea Marathon.
This was essencially the same as my previous attempt, except I put even more empathsis on getting Great Artists out. I believe I produced 14 this game.
My One-Religion-World strategy backfired on my pretty badly this game. Asoka took Buddhism and Hinduism, as expected, but Mao grabbed Judism, leding to a schism on the continent. This was bad -- there was constant fighting going on. I even had to repel and invasion once myself. Luckily, my crushing tech lead meant I could bribe Roosevelt to attack Mao whenever he went after Asoka. In this way, Mao lost a little ground with each attack, and in the end was eliminated.
I also had problems with happiness... my area of the map was health-heavy, happiness-light, and I couldn't exactly spare the time to build the multiplier buildings. This meant that many of cottages didn't get worked high enough by the end of the game, slowing me down a great deal.
The starting location was almost ideal. Two gold hills and corn on a river. I founded on one of the hills and had an extremely nice +2f +2p +3c city right from the start, with a second gold mine on the way.
I'll wait a few days for this game to sink in and see if I can come up with anything else I could have improved on.
- Bill
BlueRenner
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2001
- Messages
- 121
I stopped playing with Mansa. I found that Financial civs expanded way too fast for my liking, picking off spots I had marked as my future GP farms.
- Bill
- Bill
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