New challenge: earliest possible cultural victories

Pacifist; What do you think about founding on the coast one East of the Aztec starting position and founding the second city on the Silver?
 
I did that before, but there's still too much desert in Arizona/New Mexico for useful cities. Better do Tultan (1 good city at par with Denver, and better growth and production than Guiyang, Aksum because it's got food AND hills) and New Orleans.

Edit: I find that founding cities on food is usually not a good idea (unless you have a lot more like Germany and England). I debated about founding Tultan and Oaxaca (which will need very little garrisoning since Tultan will take all the barbs/natives and Oaxaca can hook up the stone quicker), but in the end decided that founding Oaxaca after learning sailing is better (get free harbor which will take too long to build, while New Orleans you actually want to chop the trees where cotton will appear in the future).

Tultan is also much more defensible: often the barbs like to pillage unless they think they can win. With Tultan, just don't chop the forest north of it, and garrison jaguars (5 strength plus 20% advantage on forests but cut that in half due to dog soldier advantage) and archers (3 strength plus 25% on hills), both with baseline 25% fortify and 75% hilled forest advantage): i.e. jaguars vs. dog soldiers = 5 vs 4 and archers vs dog soldiers = 6 vs 4, all defending of course.
The silver hill and the hill north of the deer are good choke points with archers and if you get catapults there, you can easily barrage onto a plain. I find that dog soldiers coming from the NE tend to like New Orleans better so you'll have your corn and spice (2N and 1NE of Tultan). unmolested.

Did I mention Tultan can build a jaguar, an archer or a catapult in 1 move, a longbow in 2 moves, and a settler in 4 moves? Just settle your great generals there and you'll get your early Pentagon and theocracy/vassalage without the Pentagon. :)
 
Legendary cities are New Orleans, Chicago and Denver (in that order). America, Inca, Rome and Turkey were voluntary vassals. Only war was the American vassalage (when I declared on Arabia, England and Vikings).

Could have been even quicker since I had to race towards Scientific method to get the 2/3 UHV, so Denver and New Orleans each lack a Confucian and Buddhist cathedral because it wasn't worth it for my only city with the monasteries to build missionaries instead of culture. Same thing for Islam (which Vancouver had). As I said before, just be friendly and get your caravels in range, and because American cities are so profitable, inevitably you'll get religion from trade routes.

Somebody please remind me never to give my vassals medicine until I found Sid's Sushi. :mad:
 

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Ethiopia done in 1940, with Aksum, Buhen, and Gondokoro. Stability was a problem towards the end. It probably could have been done much faster, due to the amount of wars that I got into (first with the Egyptians, then the Arabs (who almost took Niwt-Rst), and finally the English for the second UHV condition).
 

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Very nice war bear. I guess you just have to stay inside Ethiopian lands to avoid collapsing into civil war (like me who went all the way to Mexico and New Orleans, plus the whole of Africa).
 
Yeah, Ethiopia appears to have to stay in eastern africa to avoid collapsing. Even just settling in South Africa seems to be a poor choice for stability.
 
hi all, finished Maya, stability was not a dreadful as expected. The key here is to get lucky early and stay nonaggression. Cities were tikal, los angeles(got the settler from the goody hut near denver), and vancouver. could of been faster, but i failed at planning. i got dragged into several wars due to all the defensive pacts i had, but i didnt actually fight a single one of them.

Stability was not lower than shaky the whole game. since your economy is gonna be -50 you make up for it with the other four and commonwealth.
 

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You must have been really lucky to get the wonders you got (Moai in Vancouver?!--must have taken ages just to get there; Wat Preah Pisnulok and Great Library is just unbelievably lucky).
 
hi all, finished Maya, stability was not a dreadful as expected. The key here is to get lucky early and stay nonaggression. Cities were tikal, los angeles(got the settler from the goody hut near denver), and vancouver. could of been faster, but i failed at planning. i got dragged into several wars due to all the defensive pacts i had, but i didnt actually fight a single one of them.

Stability was not lower than shaky the whole game. since your economy is gonna be -50 you make up for it with the other four and commonwealth.

You are not playing Monarch then. Getting a settler from a goody hut is only possible on Viceroy. Even then its only a 1/20 chance.
You can check it in CIV4HandicapInfo.xml
 
If I recall correctly, it already said monarch only in the origional post. Might want to put it in bigger font.

Also, it is possible to build the Wat Preah Pisnlok as the Maya, but you have to be EXTREMELY lucky. I managed to get it once, due to a collapsed Greece and Persia.
 
Egypt is also impossible right now. The built in agricultural bias is impossible to overcome, just like Maya and Mali. There's just no room to expand.

Maybe lessening the penalty to 6/5 instead of 4/3 would help?

Just by goofing around with the Egyptians this afternoon, I noticed that you can create a quite solid economy rating by whipping your cities down to a population of 2 or 3. I was solid on monarch until the Arabian spawn, which seems to drive Egypt's foreign rating way down.

Of course, the problem with this is that you quickly fall behind in techs and production capability.

Anybody want to see how well this would work in terms of actually winning something?
 
Just finished Egypt in 1480, and I'll descrbe how I won.
(Forgive me that my writing sucks.)

Plan
The very first thing we should do is to plan. If we start playing the game right away, the likelihood is that we will make some nonsense decisions. Here is the plan I made for this time:
1) Cities: Niwt-Rst (capital; 1N of the starting tile), Per-Wadjet (1W of Wheat), and Yebu (2W of Gold) will be built. 2 Greek (Athenai and Byzantion), 1 Babylonian (Babili) and 1 Indian cities will be conquored by a chariot-rush. 1 more city will be captured or built so that there will be eight cities.
2) Legendary cities: Niwt-Rst, Babili, and Athenai. There is no need to worry about respawn, since it is presumably possible to win the game before anyone gets Nationalism.
3) Civics: Early civics - Monarchy, Slavery, and OR. Later civics - Monarchy, FS, Caste, and Pacifism.

Early game
I built Niwt-Rst (1N of the starting tile) and sent the warrior to get goody huts (4 total). I got small amount of cash, tech (pottery), map, and a warrior. Niwt-Rst built worker, worrior, worker, granery, settler, and war charriot. I kept checking mercenaries after I got cash from a hut, and I was lucky to get a war charriot for the hire cost of 21 and maintainance cost of 2. The two war charriots invaded Babylon and captured Babilu (turn 60) and razed Ninua (turn 61). The hired war chariot was then fired. I built the Pyramids (turn 69) and started preparing for invading Greece. I surprise-attacked Greece from the sea (Per-Wadjet whipped a galley) and captured Athenai (turn 81; landed turn 80) by two war chariots. Loaded the war chariots on the galley (turn 81), gave them a turn to heal, and attacked Byzantion from the sea (amphibious attack) and captured it (turn 83). One thing to note: before invading a civ, check mercenaries. If you do not hire them, your enemy might hire them. Oracle gave me theology (Christian holy city!), and I got Mining, Hunting, BW (I had to research it a bit), Alphabet, and Monarchy through trades with Carthage, Rome and Persia. From here, everything is self-explanatory: make important buildings (e.g., granaries and libraries), trade techs whenever possible, build some units and prepare for barbarian hordes, build wonders in cities which will be legendary, and so on. Persia and Rome decleared war on me, and Ethiopia became my vassal. Nothing special. But one thing to note is that you should constantly ask for a small amount of cash if a civ is pleased or friendly with you. It helps your research and might avoid a war.

Mid game
I partially researched paper and philosophy and kept a GS. I don't remember exactly when, but techs become chaper a little bit before Arabs spawn. After Arabs spawned, I finished researching those techs and used the GS to partially research Education. I have been unlucky that until the 10th C, I got only one GA, which came from Music. I finished researching all the techs I need in 960AD (see the pic below; Constitution came from Liberalism) and switched the civics to the four I have planned. Unfortunately, I have underestimated the terrible instability of Egypt, and I lost Babilu due to instability during revolution. I reloaded back to few turns ago (it did not give me anything special but a chance to switch civics differently and to whip few more buildings, but if it constitutes cheating, please don't add my score on the record). This time, I switched to FM and Pacifism before finishing researching Liberalism (when I was not so unstable), and then I switched to FS and Caste after I whipped some temples and courthouses. My stability was about -19 most of the time, and I really regretted that I razed Ninua. Later I adopted Viceloyality, since I got an extra vassal, Mali. With 0% research rate I also started researching Optics. Neither Aztec, Inca, nor Maya (alive!) became my vassal.

Late game
Golden ages (from the Taj Mahal and GPs) really improved my stability for a while. Nevertheless, the stability went into unstable in 1350 AD. And there came an unlucky event - plague. Well, I guess Rhye will fix it, since it's certainly an exploit, but there is a way to avoid a plague. That is, when plague hits one of your cities, gift the city to another civ. It is usually more costly than plague, but in this specific case, it's helpful. In order not to lose any essential city, I did that. Niwt-Rst became legendary in 1450AD. Babilu became legendary in 1460AD. My golden ages ended in 1455AD, and the stability became collapsing in 1465. There were three more turns until Athenai would become legendary. I prepared a galley with units and removed all the units from every city except the capital, so that I can recapture them quickly. Fortunately, my empire did not collapse and I won in 1480AD.

Summary and other stuffs
So, there were some lessons I learned. First, never raze a city. -4 stability point is extremely large when your empire is shaky. Second, it's not good to quickly build the Pantheon and the Leaning Tower if the Greeks are already dead. I got way too many useless GPs. Third, I totally forgot trading with East Asian civs. They usually do not OB with me, but Japan usually declears war on China about twice in a game, so, in such occasions I could have decleared war on one side and OB with the other side (depending on who's the master of Khmer). I must have been able to obtain Silk and Banana too.
I have made two decisions which can be seen as cheating (reloading) or exploit (avoiding plague) as noted above, and I must have not been able to win without them. I was also planning to play Egypt with four cities, since it seemed to be better in terms of stability. However, it turned out that the greatest amount of instability in the current game came from Economy (-49 at the end), and Expansion (-24) was no so problematic given that there was a great positive from Cities (+32). The last thing to note is that a golden age might actually harm our stability in a long run, since there will be a huge drop in commerce when it's over. It might be a good idea to win the game before the golden ages are over.
 
Does it really matter for your economy when you switch to commonwealth? From what I remember it doesn't do anything for agricultural penalties. I would have done that instead of viceroyalty.

Vassals are a double-edged sword. I found that out playing Ethiopia. They do a little good for your city happiness but take a severe toll on your economy. And the +4 stability from viceroyalty often doesn't outweigh the economic damage.

Egypt has the worst trade routes ever, so without optics/astronomy, it's impossible to improve economy.

Good job anyway (I've always suspected Egypt can't win anything staying inside Egypt alone).:goodjob:
 
Cultural victory in 1888AD. Legendary cities were Moskva, Tallin and Lublin.
Strategy was to eliminate Germany so that Lublin could be founded, stick with 4 key cities (legendary ones plus Kiev) for the early-middle game and then found cities 5-12 to the east after Turkey has spawned. Cities 5-12 do not get a religion until one spreads. I actually got all 7 religions speading to me, but quite late (well after Sci Meth).

Spoiler :
 
Japan (3000BC) won in 1685.
Toukyou, Pekin, and Dairen (Sanshan) were the legendary cities.
I razed a city (1N of Marble) but my empire was solid or very solid most of the time.
I was lucky that I got Christianity, but Rome got some Literature or Aesthetics wonders.
It could have been done earlier if some wonders including the Mausolus of Mausoleum were not taken by others.

Some tips are:
1) Do not quickly connect Copper by roads. You should build some warriors to make your people happy.
2) Send one of the workborts you started with to the West. Alphabet, IW, Monotheism, and Horseback Riding can be obtained through trades (though you might have to research Alphabet a little bit).
3) Conquor China ASAP. Swordsmen, Axemen, and Catapults are strong enough, and Samurais are just too late and expensive.
 
Cities:
Only 4 cities within spawn area.

Religion:
Christianity and Islam, 2 Cathedrals.

Tech:
-Went straight for Music but lost out on the free Artist(to the Chinese, I think).
-On to Liberalism for Free Speech but missed the free tech by 3 turns.
-Tech shut down.

Great Persons:
-Assigned an Engineer and used it immediately for Sistine Chapel.
-After that almost only Artists but one more Engineer that couldn't be used for much.

Wonders:
-Sistine Chapel(by Engineer)
-I probably could have gotten the Leaning Tower and the Statue of Zeus(I decided to trade for Calender instead of waiting for the fourth Monument:rolleyes:)

Stability wasn't a big problem in this game(I even moved my Capital due to bad planning:crazyeye:). I ran Commonwealth and Mercantilism most of the game and dodged all but one light plague. After going 100% Culture with Theaters, I exported all happiness resources and got all health. I attempted to get to +10 health but that apparently didn't immunize me completely from the plague.

 
Good job, although I don't think you could have won if you started from the 600 AD (simply because the Euros don't have Rome/Greece to deal with).

This is a sad state of affairs: to win cultural victory one has to stay in the African homeland (at least for Mali and Ethiopia). So much for having a decent score AND winning. :lol:

What was your economy score at the end?
 
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