Hurry Maoi seems better than hurry Hermitage. The extra hammers are flexible and could help you building culture stuff anyway. It is like a two for one that way.
Already played the next session. Hurried Hermitage, and the city makes 22 culture/turn (IIRC) now to hurry grabbing that seafood, but I suspect your way overall was better.
Ah... I ended up choosing mercantilism for two artists (1 free) in the city, but I might change it to FM soon, since mercantilism loses a
lot of commerce on this map.
I thought: first grab the seafood, then the rest, I wonder if it was a good choice, I gain only 1% / turn which means I need about another 15 turns (IIRC) to get those tiles inside cultural borders...
Great game so far. Please take "I can't believe you're doing so well" as the compliment it's intended to be.
I tell you a secret: I was trusting my strategy, and I thought I had a chance, and since the skepticism was already enough, I couldn't let myself be on doubt too much.
However,
if I'll manage to bring home this game, I'll be the first to say: "I can't believe it worked!"
A big part of UN diplo victory is your final civics for favored civics bonus. Keep that in mind before choosing the merchantile/Free aspect. I am pretty sure Hannibal loves free market for example. In contrast SItting bull is environmental. Luckily Free Religion will actually help you in this game with Willhelm and Darius if I remeber right. Anyway eventually civics will have to optimized for votes and not commerce.
The second part is figuring out who your opponent will be and therefore who you can afford to piss off. Who is top dog in population? As important as getting people to like you is to get people to hate them. Ties go to the AI I believe. A good phony and balanced war is very risky but the easiest way to create the blocks you need if you have the techs needed for bribing.
Oh, I forgot the "You have shared your technological discoveries with us" bonus. For every 10 techs you give an AI, you get a +1 in relations. These techs can be either through tech trades or tech gifts. I've managed +3 a few times. +1 and +2 aren't too hard to reach if you trade aggressively and gift techs towards the end of the game.
You can get Darius and Willem to vote for you with free religion (and it'll remove religious negatives against the other leaders). I think Hannibal's favorite civic is free market so he shouldn't be hard to court. Sitting Bull is probably not worth courting as he's likely hated by others (so you risk picking up trading with worst enemy penalties). You can get both Peter and KK using bureaucracy. If you add on Nappy (representation), that should be enough votes to win. You just need your opponent to be Sitting Bull.
TMiT put together an
excellent short guide to UN victory a while ago which might be useful to consult at this point.
Just in terms of vote-counting...
You need 60% of the votes.
Looking at how the land is broken up, I think your most likely opponent is Sitting Bull (but you might end up running against Willem). It'd be important to figure out which of them is going to be your opponent, so you don't waste time trying to win their votes.
If you lose Sitting Bull, Willem, and Pacal, it's going to be almost impossible to get enough votes. Ideally you'd earn the votes of 2 of those 3 (the 2 you aren't running against), plus several of the smaller civs' votes.
If Sitting Bull ends up your opponent, you're going to want to use espionage to switch his religion and/or civics so Pacal doesn't like him so much.
Wow! Thanks all! That's a lot of inputs to meditate on. As I said I played a bit more, and discovered (quite slowly since switching to mercantilism) scientific method, but Willem discovered physics already. I miss Oxford University now so much...
However, the hope is the next great scientist being able to bulb part of physics (4 turns IIRC, and after 3 GEs and just 1 GS, I'll get another great scientist (83% IIRC) next I guess...). Then it will be about Willem: if he beeline mass media, it will be very close, I have the production bonus of two GE ready for the UN, but he's discovering techs quite faster than I am atm.
Now, the important part: diplomacy. I linked the detailed session in my signature, however I add a couple of screen shots and the save here.
From what I read from your comments and links above, bringing Peter to friendly (as I thought) was a good move, and I'm glad about it. The issue is of course about the opponent being undecided yet.
I'm thinking on getting votes from tech trades and tech gifts, but I wonder if I should start gifting now or wait a bit more, as I'm thinking atm to don't drop too much technologically wise.
I'm still thinking and pondering atm...
Cheers!
