GOTM 24 Final Spoiler

Suddenly, out of nowhere, China declares war on me, with a wave of cavalry, cannon and riflemen. Luckily, I had just gotten redcoats. So, I thought, that is. Before was all said and done, I lost 4 cities to the Chinese. I retired in disgust, before my score got any lower. My redcoats may as well have been warriors. I lost nealry every battle, with my redcoats. Fortified in cities. Cities on hills. Didn't matter. Riflemen beat them. He lost maybe two cavalry. It was unreal. I figured I had maybe my worst battle luck in all of Civ 4. Here, I was saying "give me what you got". Thought my redcoats, with 25% vs horse and 25% vs gunpowder, would be good enough, with 4 per city. Forget it. They went through them like scissors through paper.
Two things to look at to explain the soft butter of your defense:

1. What kind of promotions did his units have? Or your units for that matter?

2. More likely the explanation, how many cannons battered your defenders before the cav and rifles attacked? If you look at the combat logs (if you still have saves of those time points), you can see this, but otherwise the exact nature of the AI attack may not be obvious.

Two or three rounds of collateral damage, with city defenses battered to 0, can make any defender a sitting duck.

dV
 
Contender Save. Cultural victory in 1912. about 4K points

This was my second ever cultural game. i used Jesusin's base strat from the HOF discussion thread. I only had one religion spread until Qin manually sent taoist missionaries my way very late in the game. That meant only one cathedral in two cottage cities and the GP farm for the third. I also chose my third culture city pretty poorly.

GP Farm had two banana, sugar and rice, NE and very slowly built the Globe. I was only getting 60 GPP with pacifism. i have no idea how jesusin got 120 GPP. also i couldn't come close to 450 cpt in my second city. London had a cathedral and Hermitage and was getting about 450 or so cpt. I think my second city just did not have enough food. it only got up to size 10 or so.

I was very late teching. i though i was way behind. i didn't send out boats to meet people, so i didn't meet the last AI until very late in the game. luckily washington and Qin were farthest ahead. i was able to trade to tech to parity by researching Nationalism first. I was able to get Liberalism first. i took Printing Press and shut down tech. Later Mansa gave me Chemistry and Astronomy. I didn't build any wonders and for most of the culture accrual period i built only culture. I learned a lot, but would love some feed back on how to get so many GPP and all the culture in the second city. thx
 
GP Farm had two banana, sugar and rice, NE and very slowly built the Globe. I was only getting 60 GPP with pacifism. i have no idea how jesusin got 120 GPP. also i couldn't come close to 450 cpt in my second city. London had a cathedral and Hermitage and was getting about 450 or so cpt. I think my second city just did not have enough food. it only got up to size 10 or so.
...
I learned a lot, but would love some feed back on how to get so many GPP and all the culture in the second city. thx

I'll try my best.

I think we both had the same GPFarm, with NE and Pacifism. My capital was a cottage city (as much as it could be in this map). All the other 5 cities were minor GPFarms. So all cities together were doing 120GPPpt in 1000AD. Were your auxiliary cities farmed and generating GPP?

I had a difficult time choosing my 3 legendary cities. The capital, the secondary GPFarm just North with 2 fishes and the silk city S of the capital were my 3 cities. This was not a map for a bright cultural game.

The silk city was doing 450cpt at 1500AD with 2 cathedrals only because I had settled 4 GA there. Without them it would have been 300cpt. It was size 20 maybe and was working every tile, all cottaged or sea. Where was your second city?

Finally a minor difference, since you choose PP as a free tech, maybe you got Natio much later, thus delaying your Hermitage. (Or maybe you traded for it inmediately?).

If you want a deeper analysis, please tell me: how many GP did you get? How did you use your GA? When and where did you use the last one you settled?
 
Were your auxiliary cities farmed and generating GPP?

Where was your second city?

Finally a minor difference, since you choose PP as a free tech, maybe you got Natio much later, thus delaying your Hermitage. (Or maybe you traded for it inmediately?).

If you want a deeper analysis, please tell me: how many GP did you get? How did you use your GA? When and where did you use the last one you settled?

I had one auxilliary GPP Farm, but it could only support 3 artists for 18 GPP. I think it put out three GA. I didn't focus other cities on farms, but on production and later cottages for my final research.

We had two of the three culture cities the same. The capital and the city south of the capital were both cottage cities for me wth the third culture city being the primary GP Farm. I settled my second city to grab the southern ?silk? and cows. I did not use the ocean tiles, so it maxed out at size ten. in retrospect i could have grown quite a bit larger using the ocean tiles.

I researched Nationalism before Liberalism and traded it away to get education among other techs, then i got to liberalism first and took PP.

I got 14 GA, bombed 0-5-9. The capital cultured itself to legendary first. I bombed the last one in the GP Farm. It went legendary second, with the last city having to wait ten turns to gain its last 2k or so culture.

Thanks for the feedback.
 
I researched Nationalism before Liberalism and traded it away to get education among other techs, then i got to liberalism first and took PP.
Wow! That must have been a very close race to Liberalism with the AI that had Education before you!
Researching Nationalism is an idea I have considered sometimes, but I never have had the guts to try it. If you later have to research Educ+Liber yourself, then it means a delay in your transition to 100% culture. Now, if you get to trade Educ, then even if you lose the race to Liber you have already taken Natio for free!:goodjob:

I got 14 GA, bombed 0-5-9. The capital cultured itself to legendary first. I bombed the last one in the GP Farm. It went legendary second, with the last city having to wait ten turns to gain its last 2k or so culture.
I think this could have been improved. If the second city had a single cathedral under FS, then a settled GA would need 6000/12/2.5=200 turns to provide more culture than bombed, not to speak of the money. Surely your first GA was born more than 200 turns before the end of the game. It should have been settled, not bombed.

Thanks for the feedback.
My pleasure. I really enjoy exchanging ideas about cultural games.
 
Wow! That must have been a very close race to Liberalism with the AI that had Education before you!
Researching Nationalism is an idea I have considered sometimes, but I never have had the guts to try it. If you later have to research Educ+Liber yourself, then it means a delay in your transition to 100% culture. Now, if you get to trade Educ, then even if you lose the race to Liber you have already taken Natio for free!:goodjob:

This was really just a fluke. I was behind in tech and thought the AI would be slow to get Nationalism. THen i could trade it around more heavily. When i got Education I started Liberalism. I needed it anyway. Washington adopted Free Market when i had four turns left in liberalis, so he went for Economics first. I don't know about the other AI, but not too many had education. I got it from Washington - he was friendly with me most of the game.

Actually Qin, George and I were confusious until qin founded taoism and adopted it. I figured i was home free as far as not having to worry about being invaded by someone on our continent.

I have a question about religion. Do religions only spread naturally to cities without any religions already present?
 
I have a question about religion. Do religions only spread naturally to cities without any religions already present?
No, I definitely think not. I've had Islam spread into my Hindu capitol without any missionary activity. But I believe it's much harder for a religion to spread to a town that already has a religion.
 
I have a question about religion. Do religions only spread naturally to cities without any religions already present?

Yes. (Oh, I see one of us is mistaken, Niklas).

Anyway, in my experience natural spread is a rare ocurrence, compared to the much more usual missionary spread.
 
I could certainly be mistaken, but I think I would have noted if there was a missionary involved. I'll leave it open though, keep an eye open, until I can find proof. ;)
 
Anyway, in my experience natural spread is a rare ocurrence, compared to the much more usual missionary spread.

I waited and waited and waited for a second religion to spread to me by any method in any of my cities. Then i realized i had not open boarders with qin and that he had founded a religion. His missionaries moved in immediately, but by then it was too late to build cathedrals. I did build the temples and monastaries in my culture cities. I came out slightly ahead over building culture, but it didnt even save a turn.

Assuming I had some cities that did not have a religion, do you have to have open boarders with an AI for a religion to spread from that AI. Say a civ founds a religion, but does not have an OB with any other civ. Will the religion spread to other civs?
 
This was really just a fluke. I was behind in tech and thought the AI would be slow to get Nationalism. THen i could trade it around more heavily. When i got Education I started Liberalism. I needed it anyway. Washington adopted Free Market when i had four turns left in liberalis, so he went for Economics first. I don't know about the other AI, but not too many had education. I got it from Washington - he was friendly with me most of the game.

Actually Qin, George and I were confusious until qin founded taoism and adopted it. I figured i was home free as far as not having to worry about being invaded by someone on our continent.

I have a question about religion. Do religions only spread naturally to cities without any religions already present?

No, I definitely think not. I've had Islam spread into my Hindu capitol without any missionary activity. But I believe it's much harder for a religion to spread to a town that already has a religion.

Yes. (Oh, I see one of us is mistaken, Niklas).

Anyway, in my experience natural spread is a rare ocurrence, compared to the much more usual missionary spread.

no natural spread to cities that already have a religion.
I guess Niklas has played too much FfH ;).
 
Assuming I had some cities that did not have a religion, do you have to have open boarders with an AI for a religion to spread from that AI. Say a civ founds a religion, but does not have an OB with any other civ. Will the religion spread to other civs?

I *think* OB are not necessary. I *think* OB increase the probability of natural spread.

To increase the probability of missionary spread, OB with a closeby neighbour, keep a frontier city big, keep its number of religions small.
 
Cultural victory in 1778 AD.

This is my second cultural victory ever. The first one was in 1812 in a previous GOTM. But considering how much went right for me in this game, I am a little disappointed in the date. Probably I should have settled some GA's, as Jesusin suggested in this thread.

As the date got later and later, I started to wonder what is the earliest cultural victory ever achieved in civ4 ?

After I conquered the Americans, no less than 5 religions spread to me! I think they were all atheist before that. A sixth religion I got when I conquered the Chinese. So I built 6 cathedrals in all three legendary-to-be cities: London, Washington and Beijing. Built the Hermitage in Beijing.

When I was already in full cultural-mode (after Liberalism), I conquered the Malinese at my leisure ; that's how powerful I was then. They had Pyramids and Parthenon to give me.

I got 10 GA's and (through stupidity) 3 other great people. I bombed all the GA's at the end.
 
Cultural victory in 1778 AD.

Wow! Very different games but vey close finish dates.

I started to wonder what is the earliest cultural victory ever achieved in civ4 ?

It's currently around 900AD in Settler, 1400AD in Noble, 1235AD in Deity (WastinTime).

So I built 6 cathedrals in all three legendary-to-be cities: London, Washington and Beijing. Built the Hermitage in Beijing.

Let me calculate hammers: 6 monasteries + 50 missionaries + 54 temples + 18 cathedrals + units for 3 wars = zillions of hammers.
Do you think that the sixth set of cathedrals was worth it? Maybe you could have employed the people at the mines as artists,,, What's your impression about it?
 
Do you think that the sixth set of cathedrals was worth it? Maybe you could have employed the people at the mines as artists,,, What's your impression about it?

My impression is that you are right ;) I just thought one should build as many cultural buildings as possible. But it would probably have been better to stop building a bit (or a lot) earlier.

Let me calculate hammers: 6 monasteries + 50 missionaries + 54 temples + 18 cathedrals + units for 3 wars = zillions of hammers.

True, except for the monasteries, I didn't need them because of organized religion. And the wars were really cheap. For the last war I had only one unit-building city, with heroic epic in it. Of course, you have to add a *lot* of courthouses, and some other buildings to keep my economy going.

It's currently around 900AD in Settler, 1400AD in Noble, 1235AD in Deity (WastinTime).

I'd be interested to read descriptions of those feats.
 
True, except for the monasteries, I didn't need them because of organized religion.
Monasteries are among the best culture yielders of all, on a culture/hammer basis. At 60 hammers/2 culture (on Normal speed), that's 30 hpc, few other "normal" culture yielders comes close. The Monument is also 30 hpc and takes shorter to build at that, but you're a lot more likely to get Calendar than Scientific Method, and earlier too. EDIT: Theatres, of course, beat that by a long margin (50/3=16.7 hpc). Of course the various Cathedrals (and Broadcast Tower!) likely have better hpc ratings, but they also take a lot longer to build, something that becomes increasingly more important the closer to the end that you get.

I'm definitely not an expert on cultural games, though I think I understand the theory just find, and it seems to me that it might be worth it to spread more religions to a town just for the chance to build a monastery!
 
I'd be interested to read descriptions of those feats.

Go to Civ4 HOF, press on the feat you are interested in, look down and you might find a "writeup" link.

If the winner hasn't writen a writeup you can look up, press the ADD buttom to look at the second best game and look for its writeup. There's a compulsive writer that has some of the second place positions in the Deity table. :mischief:

A cultural player should also read Godotnut's guide, the sub-1000AD-deity thread in the HOF and another thread in the HOF about a no-cottages-game (if an admin reads this, how can I find an old thread that doesn't appear in the forums anymore?).
 
Go to Civ4 HOF, press on the feat you are interested in, look down and you might find a "writeup" link.

If the winner hasn't writen a writeup you can look up, press the ADD buttom to look at the second best game and look for its writeup. There's a compulsive writer that has some of the second place positions in the Deity table. :mischief:

Thanks, I am reading a writeup by that player now. Too bad I can't open any of the saves, since I installed 3.13 in preparation for WOTM15
 
Top Bottom