Player gives most of the money to AIs to research with their Deity Bonuses and makes his money worth more. You need some research to get to some tech to trade it around. If in strikes, you give all money to AIs, get it back in trades and use the same turn for rushbuys.
I'm currently 99% in the camp that believes Mining Inc first. I used to debate this a lot. The final straw was that Mining pays for itself instantly where sushi takes a long time to grow cities on Marathon. It's also a lot easier to collect 20 mining resources out in the ocean than it is to gather 40-50 seafood. That's a lot more cities and a lot more workboats.
I know I talk about rush to sushi in my 10M point game, but I think I've been careful to say 'rush to corps' this game. If all goes well.... I'll get them both, almost simultaneously!. Sushi just a few turns after Mining.
I found this post from Snaaty who seems to agree with you. As I had said, my best space games have always involved Mining first as well. I don't want to reopen the debate here but I think gunning for that early GE makes a lot of sense.
Not sure everyone got my hint on what WB stands for. It's a little obsure. I'll provide all the WB Economy details later today, but right now I'm gonna take a break and make some sammiches ((tm) Mitchum)
OK, so now that people have a hint and at least one person came up with the right answer, it will be interesting to see if people can guess what WB has to do with CIV how to use abuse it. A free sammich to the first person to get close.
It was first sold in 1921 in the United States, and it later became one of the first to be sold pre-sliced, being marketed like this nationwide in 1930. This led to the popular phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread", upholding a paragon of culinary innovation.
Maybe now it's his economy that's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The hint is no pun. WT called it the "Wonder Bread Economy." What two elements of CIV are contained in that moniker and how can you combine them? It's something that you can use pretty much all game since WT has already claimed to have been using it in this game. WT will end the suspense soon but knowing what WBE stands for and knowing the mechanics of the game, I'm assuming you guys can figure out the major elements of the WBE and how they might be used.
Spend the whole game whipping overflow into wonders everywhere? Thus abusing strike mechanics to cover a ridiculous amount of maintenance costs, and occasionally getting an enormous influx of failgold that could either fuel some research or buy techs off the AIs... probably the latter, as it would accelerate Mansa's tech rate and you don't have any commerce to actually generate that research.
I suppose it's no accident that both of the demonstration starts have nearby a nearby wonder resource....
The whole strike thing wasn't brought to my attention until I was halfway thru my HiScore game and I used it in the end--a lot. I'm still considering strike, but it's not part of the Wonder Bread Economy.
Having marble and stone starts actually was just an accident. I don't feel you need those early (forces you to research Masonry if you really want to use them early). The way you expand, you always seem to get your hands on those two soon enough.
Anyway, let me fluff up my post with bold and smileys and get it posted soon...
If I simply told you in 5 words or less what the basic tactic is, you'd be unimpressed. It's like being told about how the Culture Espionage mission can help win a culture game. You'd be like: Ya, I know about that. It's not until you take the culture mission to the extreme and adjust your whole game to amplify it that you make it game changing. Focusing on Wonder Bread affected my whole game. Tech path, tiles worked, improvements I prioritize, buildings I build and which ones I skip--including skipping many wonders (national and world) that used to be must-haves.
Note: discussion uses Marathon speed numbers.
LowtherCastle;14221654 said:
WT broke free from his previous 7/8 city strategy and went for 20 cities. His fear: going broke. Conclusion: The strategy solves how to survive the REX, that is, how to pay all the different maintenance costs. CIV REX is limiting factor and the realm of greatest opportunity in terms of earlier Sushi, Launch and other dates. So any strategy that radically speeds up REX is game-changing.
LC's reasoning is sound, but I don't just want to survive REX. In my new economy, my goal is also to run the research slider at 100% the entire mid-game! To do that, you need $$$ (as LC correctly concluded), so I started to think how to get tons of gold, and how I would play differently if I had that gold.
The search for unlimited wealth production:
If you're interested in my lengthy thought process, these are the things I considered:
Spoiler:
I started by imagining that I could begin the game with infinite gold. How would that make me play differently?
- never make a GM for trade mission. With unlimited gold, you'd want GS bulbs.
- never build wealth.
- get mids and run Universal Sufferage all game? Finish every build by rush-buying it for 3 gold/hammer (until Kremlin)
In the real world, you can't get infinite gold. Maybe someone can get a wealth-machine running that can afford to pay for U.Suff, but I ruled this strategy out . 3g is just too much to pay for 1h, and Representation's +3 can't be ignored. Maybe I'll re-visit this after Kremlin
- ignore smaller wealth generation tactics which usually have a large cost (example: shrine needs a GreatPro and lots of missionaries)
But what if you could make a realistic amt of gold--enough to pay for REX and 100% research. Let's go thru the options:
Limited gold sources:
- hut gold (great for the start of the game. best if it can hold until your first conquest)
- capture gold: nice, but limited to 100-200 per city and there are only so many cities available.
- GM trade mission. The problem here is: every GM you cash-in has a cost I equate to the loss of a GS bulb. The beakers you get are greater than the cash. So you need to ask yourself if that's a good value.
- Shrine gold:
a) you've got to get the AI to build it or else include the cost of the GPro (-7000 beakers) to the value the shrine provides
b) you've got to spread the religion (or get the AI to spread it)
c) You've got to build market, grocer, bank
Shrines are nice, but they certainly take a lot of investment/time to pay off. And you'd be lucky to get one by turn 200. By the time you get the bank, you're already close to getting Sushi. Maybe shrines are better for a longer game like Space.
- The Religious trifecta
This is the combo of Sankore, Spiral, and AP. You build temples everywhere. Possibly even monasteries and cathedrals.
So you get +happy, +2h, +2g, +2b, sometimes +10% research.
a) goes best with a shrine and comes with some of the same costs above
b) temple cost (Spiritual civ works best here)
c) possible cost of 3 wonders (ideally have the AI build the AP--you don't need to own it. then capture the other 2.)
Problem is waiting for the AI to get DivRight and build those wonders.
Again, probably a strategy for a longer game than Score.
- Spy gold (steal). The AI only has so much money in the early/mid game. Also, you can't steal all of their money until you beat them down to 1 city. Another big problem is that you don't have a lot of free EPs built up. Running the EP slider just to steal wealth seems counter-productive.
- trade tech for gold
Nice supply of gold, but still quite limited--especially in the BC years and worse when you're killing all the AI
- gpt resource trades
A slightly frowned on strategy. (banned in SGs) It's overrated and did not need to be banned. It's not very powerful when you play really fast games and finish research in the BC years. You also can't get the income until you have an excess of resources you don't need. And again, you're killing a lot of AI and even the ones alive aren't very big. The amt of gpt you can get increases with their population. Every bit counts, so I'll probably do it , (update: I didn't use this tactic) but it doesn't solve the cashflow problem by any means.
Limitless gold supplies:
- build wealth:
This has always been a go-to method to keep the slider at 100% research. But if gold can be gathered some other way, then any city that has the time to build wealth could be building research instead. So you're losing 1 beaker for every 1 gold you generate. The whole point is to get the highest bpt rate and then find a way to pay for it. Build Wealth had a direct negative effect on bpt.
- warrior whips
This works best on marathon because a whip is 90 and warrior is 30. On normal it's 30 and 15. At least this method is limitless. Best if you can put 29/30h into each one before whipping. Or chain two whips. I use it to survive until I get Alphabet in trade. This method can become more efficient later with multipliers like forge and/or Police State, but isn't ideal once you have enough warriors/quechua.
- missionary failgold
Unlike warrior whips, you don't need to produce so many units. Due to the 3 unit limit, missionaries can make more gold than warriors and again, it is a limitless supply of gold. Biggest problem here is that you can't get multipliers other than forge. OrgRel and Police state don't work here.
- Wonder failgold. Finally! a limitless source that has several possible multipliers
After granary, forge, IND trait, Kremlin, Stone/marble/etc and OrgRel bonus. One whip OF could be about 270g! or 405g with Kremlin! And the cost of re-growing that one population starts as low as 33 food! (realistically closer to 40).
The Wonder Bread Economy
The entire game, post-Alphabet, focuses on food (bread) for both production and generating gold by putting overflow and chops into Wonders. And obsessively repeating that process.
In case you skipped the 'Search for Wealth' above, the conclusion was that food is king , and it can be converted to wealth using Wonders at a rates of:
Note: If not IND leader, then subtract 1g. Still not bad, but IND is even more important to me now)
Mid-game, on average it takes ~38 food to grow 1 population. The 90h from that pop being whipped becomes ~270g with all the bonuses.
After Kremlin
Spoiler:
~40f whips into 405g, so 1f = 10g
however, 1h still = 3g
I've yet to explore post-factory/power. HiScore games don't build those.
In the process of converting food to hammers (with whip) and then to gold means: 1 hammer = 3 gold
Spoiler:
For non IND trait leaders, 1 hammer = 2.5 gold.
This is also true earlier in this game when I don't have OrgRel+forge yet.
(One reason why you wouldn't want to use Universal Sufferage to buy 1 hammer with 3 gold)
Trying to make the most of 1food -> 7gold affects all aspects of the game:
- Production,
- what tiles to work,
- which improvements,
- when and how to use forests,
- tech, etc.
Production:
Since 1h = 3g, every hammer you put into a non-wonder has to be monitored. It's best if you don't cross the next whip barrier. In other words: always whip every non-wonder for the max population you can. So it's OK to put 89/180 into a lighthouse. Or 44/180 if you have OR+forge. But don't cross whatever barrier that would make it a 1-pop whip. Instead, do the 2 pop whip and always put overflow into a wonder. And try to chop that same turn too! The biggest exception to this rule of thumb is the Granary. You need to chop/whip that ASAP and ideally when you have a half full granary.
Tiles and improvements:
So with 1f=7g and 1h=3g and 1c = 1g, value tiles like this:
riverCorn (6f1c) = 43g
grassRiverMine (1f3h1c) = 17g
grassFarm (3f) = 21g
My past SGotM teams might remember how I used toresist making a grassriverFarm, and if anyone farmed a non-river grass tile, I was afraid my head might explode . Now, I value a grassFarm over a grassRiverMine
Warning:
The hard part about the Wonder Bread Economy is that you need wait to build up food (grow pop) first, then invest it into wonders and wait again until the payout. You've got to plan ahead, way ahead.
Whip anger
I covered this earlier, but since this economy relies heavily on whipping, I'll mention it again so this post is a more complete plan. Anger can be erased with gift/recapture of cities. I do it in the early game in a couple cities, but is often not necessary later when multiple happy boosters come in.
Note: The previous owner(s) of the city has to either be dead or not have culture there. You need at least 1 culture in the city so it won't revolt on recapture and buildings survive. You lose the food in the bin and partial builds and culture buildings (so one reason to skip the library.) Terrace is of course an exception.
Example:
You might get some gold on Henge and/or GreatWall, but Oracle is where it all begins.
In my 10 million score game, I suddenly had 3500 at 2000 BC because I partially built Oracle in 8-10 cities. Even early in the game with no forge and no OrgRel bonus--just marble, you can put 449/450 into Oracle with just 1 population whip + 1 chop.
You can attempt to run 100% research from then on if you continue to work hard on Wonder Bread, but 3500 goes faster than you might think, so stay focused. Good Luck!
Never considered that. There should always be a wonder to work on. After Oracle, I can do ToA or Mids for failgold.
I don't need Parthenon quite yet, so Aes can wait till closer to T200.
Yup i learned using this in Isolation games, makes early stone so good there too..
ofc my games had nowhere the size and dimensions of yours lol, but early the Pyras with stone + Ind give 50g / forest (normal speed) and i tried having at least 1 chop or whip OF on most turns in one of my cities for Pyras.
Until i thought now i better build them or an AI steals
Hmm, I am lately using this on Standard/Normal but in Mid-game I don't really have large empires, while I do get gold in trades and from captures so, typically, my max bpt is bottleneck and not really a gold, also, I still need units and can't commit to wonders. Can this strategy really be that helpful on all speeds and settings (normal AIs and not weaklings)? And I mean more than it already used.
On Marathon you can put OF 3 times as often (from different cities).
I never played HoF Space Race so this should in theory help a lot in these conditions. Anyway, I can see myself trying to utilize this strat on different settings too.
I will agree with Shakabrade that this strategy is three times as powerful on Marathon. But the general principle to overflow into every wonder every turn applies to all speeds.
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I'll get them both, almost simultaneously!. Sushi just a few turns after Mining.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
. 3g is just too much to pay for 1h, and Representation's +3
can't be ignored. Maybe I'll re-visit this after Kremlin 
, (update: I didn't use this tactic) but it doesn't solve the cashflow problem by any means.
Finally! a limitless source that has several possible multipliers
, and it can be converted to wealth using Wonders at a rates of:![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
. Now, I value a grassFarm over a grassRiverMine
at 2000 BC because I partially built Oracle in 8-10 cities. Even early in the game with no forge and no OrgRel bonus--just marble, you can put 449/450 into Oracle with just 1 population whip + 1 chop.
