[PTW] GOTM 167 Rome Emperor 100k - Spoiler

[Più Freddo]

This is the thread where you tell us the whole story of your game and how in the end you did -- win, lose or retire.

Only read or post in this thread when your game is ended and successfully submitted.

 

[CKS]

I hit 100k in 1752, but didn't reach twice the culture of the Iroquois until 1762.

My plan was to expand, head for republic, research at max to railroads and communism, and then pop-rush like crazy. Overall I was pleased with how it went. I wasn't ready to take on the Iroquois when I needed to, but at least I noticed the MPP and waited it out before declaring, so the war went okay once it started. The Mongols and Koreans protected me nicely, but weren't much help taking cities.

Sistine Chapel was nice for my towns that got cathedrals, but 160 shields isn't easy to get by pop-rushing. 100k isn't very speedy when no cultural buildings are cheap.

Switching to communism crashed my economy, but I was prepared for it. I hadn't thought about this meaning the lux slider was useless, but I hadn't planned to use it anyway, because I knew I'd have no money. For a while I was selling my maps after every tile improvement, though. The Iroquois paid me a lot of money, but once I had to declare on them my financial situation was pretty poor. By the end of the game, each of corruption and maintenance was costing nearly 3/4 of my income from cities.

Notes:
Settle in place, worker to wine, CB at max, start a warriorx3
Hut to south gives warriors
CB to BW
3100 meet Babylon
2800 meet Mongols, new settler goes toward cows on lake
2630 meet Carthage, settle Veii next turn
2030 meet England
1990 learn iron working, trade for many techs
hut to east is empty
1790 settle by iron
1700 trade for all contacts, many techs
900 trade lit for techs and workers
630 refuse a demand from Mongols as they are pretty far away, they declare
410 learn republic, revolt, 4 turn anarchy, see barb hordes.
330 become a republic, start golden age when Korea attacks
Take out Babylon, most of England, some of Carthage
Mongols attack
1255 anarchy ends from revolt to communism
1555 Carthage is down to one far-away city. Waiting for Iroquois MPP with Korea to expire so I can attack Iroquois safely with allies to eliminate Iroquois culture threat. (Currently 49208 + 949 per turn for me, 39070 + ~463 per turn for them). Iroquois have been paying me big money, so this will cause financial woes for me.
1635 Selling maps after each tile improvement is keeping me afloat, 11 turns in to war with Iroquois. Now at 66k, 1182 per turn. Iroquois at 45781 + 387 per turn, still with 25 cities.
1752 Hit 100k, gaining 1654 per turn. Still a bit more to make 2x Iroquois, now at 53k + ~200 per turn.
1762 Win with 109204 culture, 1741 per turn, and 191 towns. Iroquois down to 9 cities, MapStat says 54011 culture.

 

[Lanzelot]

I settled in place, set up an RCP4 + RCP6, which gave lots of very productive cities at 20spt or more without GA. Around 100 AD I got an MGL that came right in the nick of time for setting up the Forbidden Palace in Babylon. An RCP3 around Babylon gave a total of 7 more cities that were capable of producing 20spt. Once they were done building all available culture buildings, they were producing Cavalry, first for getting to the domination limit and then for disbanding in the outlying towns.

A funny coincidence: around 1 or 2 turns before I had planned to trigger my GA with a victory of a Roman Legion, I accidentally triggered it by building Leonardo's Workshop... Fortunately almost everything was already prepared for the GA, only 2-3 cities still needed a worker join or two, so no harm done.

I stopped research when reaching education, but the AI was quite good at research in this game. So when I much later captured the Great Library in London, I got nearly all medieval techs for free, except for the last two. As Nationalism and Steam are quite useful, I fired research back up, did the missing techs in 4 turns each (thanks to the lots of Libs and Unis I already had) and gifted up Babylon. (I had left them alive for that reason.) They got Nationalism, so I did Steam in 4 and then traded with them.

Thanks to that, I was now able to stay in Republic and use both, cash-rushing and pop-rushing! They way to do this is:

• Set up as many of the outlying towns on rivers and lakes. (Also some of the towns captured from the far away AIs luckily already had Aqueducts!)
• With irrigation and rails make sure they have +10 food per turn at size 6.
• When they grow to size 7, you can draft one conscript Rifleman, town drops to size 6, but grows back to size 7 in the next interturn.
• The conscript can be disbanded for 20 shields. So basically even the 99% corrupt towns in the boondocks make 20 shields a turn!
• Happiness penalty is the same as when using pop-rushing, but with 8 luxes, Cathedrals and Sistine and the Bach Cathedral on top of that, you can "draft-rush" for quite a while, before unhappiness becomes a problem. And then you can hire 1-2 entertainers and just grow/draft every other turn at +5fpt.

Combining all four factors (cash from a thriving Republic, disbanding Cavalry from the core, drafting&disbanding Riflemen and finally planting&cutting forests) allowed me to reach 100K in 1380 AD.

 

[CKS]

I suspect that what allowed you to reach 100k in 1380 also had a lot to do with healthy early expansion. I have trouble getting big even on low levels. (I was shocked by the outcome of the last game.) I doubt I was the biggest civ by 1380, maybe not even second biggest, and I wasn't that close to the domination limit at the end.

I also put my FP in an area that I thought I was going to be expanding into, but then ended up not expanding there for a long time as that war ground to a halt and I grew in a different direction. Consequently my FP did not help much.

This was the first game in a long time that I've had a lot of jungle land and cleared it all though. I didn't get much planting and chopping done. By the time I was done clearing the jungle so little time was left that I didn't bother.

 

[Lanzelot]

PtW and C3C are different in this regard, because of two factors: Artemis and the Feudalism government. So in C3C it is important for 100K to expand as fast as possible: every new town gives you a free Temple, and the sooner your towns grow, the sooner you can switch to Feudalism and start pop-rushing. But in PtW it is different (especially when we are non-religious and non-scientific). Here I kept a balance between culture buildings and expansion (military/settlers), because what good does it do you to acquire new towns, if you have no cash anyway to rush a culture building in all of them?

So after setting up a strong initial empire (first and second ring), I stopped expansion for a while and first built some early Libs, Temples, Pantheons and Collosseums. Once a city had finished these buildings, it started building military (squeezing in a Cathedral or a University, when the required techs became available). Consequently it was quite late, before I was ready for the first war, and also the domination limit was reached much much later than if it were a C3C game. (I need to check the game, but I think it was around 1000 AD.) Expansion became important again only towards the end of the middle ages, when Nationalism came into sight. Before that, it was enough to have just the right number of towns where you can burn your spare cash.

 

[Cotta]

Yes, different to C3C. Anyway, Ptw is obviously not mine. I knew, Artemis and Feudalism is not possible so I try to expand (after a while) beeing Monarchist and changed second to democracy. Disband Units and rushing temples and bibs. But I miscalculate how many towns (and how much territory) will I need for a balanced game.
At least it was 1665ad
6973 firaxis points
7394 Jason score