Italy 1.16: building the wonders

[jorissimo]

I did two test runs with Italy on Regent at least up to and including the second UHV goal. The second goal, culture, is easy but the first one, the wonders, I can't seem to get right. I usually manage to build two wonders, but one of them always gets snatched by another civ. On the first try, Portugal built Fiore and on the second one, HRE built the Sistine Chapel.
My approach has been fairly simple: conquer peninsula with starting units, beeline Patronage > Humanities > Finance, buying/trading techs on the way, building buildings with artist slots or wonder prereqs (harbor for San Marco), starting construction of the first two wonders in Florence upon researching the respective techs (researching Humanities tends to sync with finishing the Fiore). I then build the San Marco in Napoli. To Rome I only assign the Sheep and one hill, assigning the rest of its tiles to Florence and Napoli. After Finance I put the culture slider to 100% while equalizing any culture discrepancies with GA great works. This gets me to 3x influential around 1540.
Has anyone had any luck building all of the wonders? Also, a question: when does Italy's core shift from the north to encompass the entire peninsula? Does Rome automatically become the capital at some point? This is pretty crucial for the third UHV.

 

[HighFunctioningAlcoholic]

War generally solves most wonder problems.

 

[jorissimo]

True but how do you know who is building them? I know there are some wonder-under-construction spotting tricks but I don't think I would be able to recognize anything other than the pyramids lol.

 

[1SDANi]

From CvRFCEventHandler

# Italy's core extends when reaching the Industrial era
        if iPlayer == iItaly and iEra == iIndustrial:
            utils.setReborn(iItaly, True)

 

[DanLT3]

You can get Patronage fairly fast by using Espionage on Portugal as they spawn at 1130 AD. Still it might need to acquire a GE to build it instantly in Rome (ofcourse you need to capture this city on your first 2 turns).
But after that war against Holy Rome and France is a must both to delay their wonder production but also to give you some space in your core for 3 cities (raze Wien and Marsielles).
After that it will require alot of GAs to achieve the culture goal.

 

[jorissimo]

Those are some pretty good tips. So basically, set espionage on Portugal, build a spy and send it to them, pop a GE, and rush the wonder. Regarding what you said about razing Marseille and Wien, I feel like this might not be strictly necessary as my overwhelming culture tends to push their borders back quite a lot, getting access to Pig for Venice and Wine for Florence. It even opens up room in Croatia, where I tend to found Spalato at some point.

 

[jorissimo]

Okay, I finally achieved the wonder goal. The secret seemed to be using two GEs (combined with luck, as always), one for Sistine, and the other for San Marco. Researching Patronage turned out to be faster than stealing it. Also this was generally a weird roll: HRE didn't declare war over the Venice flip, meaning I missed out on the free units, and I had to be the one to declare to take Rome. They then later declared war on me again and took Venice with a big stack. But of course I reloaded to the last autosave to get them to pleased and beg 1 gold off them hehe. Plus I founded Tunis really early and took Tripolis before the Moors. With workshops they are good production cities and provide a North African foothold for future expansion. I didn't even bother with Napoli and the Byzantines, instead letting the Ottomans collapse them. Now my goal is to simply culture flip indy Napoli which is pretty much bound to happen eventually.

 

[Theophilos]

what civics do you guys like for this? I thought maybe to go with regulated trade and despotism

I thought whipping might be useful but more and more I think its fine to leave at republic because

1. With your free specialist its like having +1 food in every city by default
2. There are very few reasons to build a farm in italy
3. Without republic new cities will not have a place to put their free specialist except as a citizen

I am going to try republic this time, because I failed with despotism.

IDK if regulated trade is better though. I mean, it would seem to me anyway.

edit:

Yeah republic is way better LOL

 

[DanLT3]

I would go for the default Monarchy/Vassalage/Merchant Trade/Manorialism/Clergy/Tributaries or maybe Conquest early on.

 

[rmontaruli]

I'm playing a game at a low level. In my first try Holy Rome built Fiore a few turns before me.
In second try i changed a civic to get 100% GP, and i was able to get some GE to speedup Wonders.
Three wonders built before 1400 in their historical location: Florence, Venice and Rome.
Now i'm running for culture level and training army for UHV #3

 

[Theophilos]

yeah, thinking about it, republic does this:

you get +1 food for free because of Unique Power of having a free specialist. This essentially creates an additional free specialist for all of your cities.

Plus, everytime you put a great general or build one of those wonders which give free specialists (versaiisles) (louvre) it gives even more free food to give you free specialists. To complete the culture UHV, I only had to use one great artist great work, the rest I simply put to settle in the city, which put it in time to complete culture, and again it gives another free specialists from the +1 food

I got so many wonder specialists/great people/ giving free food in Rome, that I hardly had to use any tiles at all in Rome and I couldn't get it to get any bigger, even with all health buildings that I could get. I had around 22 population or so. I had tons of statesmen, and combined with the regulated trade +50% .... It was very fun to look at.

Later in the game, moving to central planning, it giving all specialists +1 production.... all of my italian cities became uber productive as well. I didn't dare leave republic

 

[LukeAtmey]

Only recently got in to trying out Italy and so far enjoying them a ton! I've done many of the other euro civilizations a lot of times so I myself am quite puzzled how only now did I give the Italians a proper go. The start as a minnow nation squeezed between france, holy rome, byzantium and later on the ottomans I feel does keep you on your toes to find the right balance of being ready for an invasion while investing resources for the cultural and wonder UHV goals. Luckily the Alps provide good defense as well as excellent chokepoints to build forts in case of an incoming doom stack.

I have to empathize with the struggles of OP. For me it's been sort of a diplomatic game to try and figure out which civs to war to ensure the necessary wonders. Holy Rome is exceptionally strong with big military and productive lands and so far my biggest ace in countering them has been just playing it nice with all my neighbours, waiting for a france-holyrome/poland-holyrome war breaking out and making a quick invasion while they lower their guard! The 2nd and 3rd UHV on the other hand seem pretty easy though. The culture requirement to me looks very doable if you just get a 4th city for a cathedral. Furthermore Great Artists just make it trivial which I found out by running Monasticism and generating several GPs. 3rd UHV will likely require nothing special as I feel 65% mediterranean is easy enough to get by just picking on the lands of Egyptians, Moroccans etc.

 

[rmontaruli]

Only recently got in to trying out Italy and so far enjoying them a ton!

Tell me, can you play a good game with Italy from any starting condition, or were you very lucky in the starting condition you found?

Because Italy can have a very excellent starting condition with a weak Rome, a strong Venice (that will flip with its whole garrison units), and Holy Rome that declares war to you (and you'll get an extra army); or a very poor starting condition with a strong Rome owned by French and a weak Venice.

I usually give up and reload if i'm not confortable with starting conditions.
Rome requires to be conquered ASAP, not only for UHV, but also to play a decent game.

 

[LukeAtmey]

Tell me, can you play a good game with Italy from any starting condition, or were you very lucky in the starting condition you found?

Because Italy can have a very excellent starting condition with a weak Rome, a strong Venice (that will flip with its whole garrison units), and Holy Rome that declares war to you (and you'll get an extra army); or a very poor starting condition with a strong Rome owned by French and a weak Venice.

I usually give up and reload if i'm not confortable with starting conditions.
Rome requires to be conquered ASAP, not only for UHV, but also to play a decent game.

Sorry for late reply! As you said, the extra units from a declared war by Holy Rome greatly helps you towards early growth and I personally would reload until you get such a start as I feel the standard starting Italian army is hardly enough to even take Rome. Luck surely plays a part in it I think, and that applies even later on in regards to what I mentioned about waiting for a France-Holy Rome/Holy Rome-Poland war breaking out. With such reasoning I'd say yeah, maybe my strategy is a bit luck dependant.