Ace of Gold
MAKE WAY FOR THE BAD GUY
ok here is the link to my latest game. please speak honestly and say some tips and that stuff. In that game i am going for cultural victory but i would like tips for all types of victories.
please judge me
- Thread starter Ace of Gold
- Start date
Keep in mind I'm a n00b here. I looked at your save and had a few questions though....
1. Why aren't you running the culture slider? Or the espionage slider, for that matter? Culture slider = really really good for cultural victory. Especially as you seem to be running a cottage economy.
2. Your civics...I would switch to Free Speech at the least. It ups your culture by 100%. Normally I try to go for more specialists when I'm trying for a cultural win, so I'd turn on Pacifism, Caste System, and Representation (to help with the science lost when you mess with the slider). Caste System isn't really good for you right now because the cottage economy doesn't let you support the specialists. Pacifism is certainly more useful when you have specialists, but it accelerates your Great People points nonetheless. It looks like Paris is your GP farm. I would put more farms in it, as it only has the food to grow to size 21. Size 27 is ideal (because 7 is the max number of any one type of specialist you can run without using Caste System).
You need lots of extra food to make use of the unlimited artist specialists from Caste System... In fact, one of your main culture cities, Orleans, seems to be stagnant at size 11 because you don't have enough farms. You might consider building Culture out of the hammers in your big 3.
3. Power. You're not doing so hot on the power graph. It's a good thing you're doing really well on diplomacy...although I never trust the AI, so I'd keep building those military units. But surely you have a better city to do that in than one of your main culture cities?
Overall, I don't feel I'm really in the best position to critique this game -- my first choice for a culture victory would be a specialist economy, running as many artists and as much culture slider as I can. My big three cities break from building culture only to make buildings that give me more culture.
Another thing I generally aim for is lots and lots of religions. The temples are cheap enough, and let you put more cathedrals in your cities, pumping that culture even higher. Free Religion helps with a science boost there. I don't know how that interacts with the AP -- I play MP teams and one of us builds the AP while the other goes Free Religion so it isn't an issue for us.
I eagerly welcome the input of more experienced minds on all this.
1. Why aren't you running the culture slider? Or the espionage slider, for that matter? Culture slider = really really good for cultural victory. Especially as you seem to be running a cottage economy.
2. Your civics...I would switch to Free Speech at the least. It ups your culture by 100%. Normally I try to go for more specialists when I'm trying for a cultural win, so I'd turn on Pacifism, Caste System, and Representation (to help with the science lost when you mess with the slider). Caste System isn't really good for you right now because the cottage economy doesn't let you support the specialists. Pacifism is certainly more useful when you have specialists, but it accelerates your Great People points nonetheless. It looks like Paris is your GP farm. I would put more farms in it, as it only has the food to grow to size 21. Size 27 is ideal (because 7 is the max number of any one type of specialist you can run without using Caste System).
You need lots of extra food to make use of the unlimited artist specialists from Caste System... In fact, one of your main culture cities, Orleans, seems to be stagnant at size 11 because you don't have enough farms. You might consider building Culture out of the hammers in your big 3.
3. Power. You're not doing so hot on the power graph. It's a good thing you're doing really well on diplomacy...although I never trust the AI, so I'd keep building those military units. But surely you have a better city to do that in than one of your main culture cities?
Overall, I don't feel I'm really in the best position to critique this game -- my first choice for a culture victory would be a specialist economy, running as many artists and as much culture slider as I can. My big three cities break from building culture only to make buildings that give me more culture.
Another thing I generally aim for is lots and lots of religions. The temples are cheap enough, and let you put more cathedrals in your cities, pumping that culture even higher. Free Religion helps with a science boost there. I don't know how that interacts with the AP -- I play MP teams and one of us builds the AP while the other goes Free Religion so it isn't an issue for us.
I eagerly welcome the input of more experienced minds on all this.
Civics
I am presuming "I am going for cultural victory" is the case, and certainly agree with Kate on the appropriateness of your civics in that you can leverage your Specialist Artists and settled Great People more effectively while getting a massive
surge from Free Speech.
Where you are;
Where you might want to be;
Unfortunately 5 turns of Anarchy to get there!
Food
I would suggest that you have a disproportionately low number of Farms that that acted to restrain the population levels of your cities, as you've not 'chain irrigated' into areas with low natural food production.
Chartres is an example where it's so food-poor that it can't even work the Gold Mine, while stealing the Cows from near-by Marseilles will only put that city into starvation;
Now clearly a Lighthouse would provide a heap of 2
tiles, but it's really the lack of food from land tiles that could do with review.
Another one? Kate noted Orleans;
It is making a handy contribution to your empire with those developed Cottages > Towns, but it will be unable to work any of those Mines or the Quarry. Biology will give your Wheat Farm another, but certainly not the wholesale elevation in food production required to support the Mines.
Avignon has a different problem - Jungle is making the city unhealthy, but you have idle Workers who could be clearing the Jungle away and not only fix the unhealthiness, but create far more useable tiles;
From Here
If you're still going to pursue a Cultural victory, then you're almost certainly going to have to go after the late game Cultural Wonders and could boost this by going with some of the-providing Corporations such as Civilized Jewellers - as such, press on with your technological leadership down that 'Mass Media' path. Unlike Kate, I'd keep up the science push until you're comfortable with the technologies that you have or can trade for before turning up the Culture slider. Moving out of Hereditary Rule may require you to put some 
to just to deal with unhappiness.
If you want a Christian Cathedral to be built in Paris, then you'll want another city (maybe near the Spices in the south east) and for that city to have Christianity spread to it so it can build your ninth Christian Temple. Unfortunately you're so close to Scientific Method that trying to pick up and spread new religions without Monasteries (i.e. through Organised Religion) may be more effort than it's worth.
I would say that you are completely safe from any attack at this point. Germany and Portugal are both Friendly and neither 'has enough on their hands', while no rival tribe has Astronomy. As Kate suggests, you might want to be mindful of an invasion at some later point however, and going after Rifling + Assembly Line or even Industrialism once you have acquired Mass Media could be worth considering as the AI improves its capacity for invasion.
A final note - Cultural wins are a lot about timing so that you minimise the waste of in cities that have already gone legendary, so think carefully about where you'll be putting those last World Wonders and when and where to 'build Culture'.
Other victories
Unfortunately the Apostolic Palace Diplomatic victory is going to be tough – you can’t spread Christianity in Russia or Spain as both have adopted Theocracy, and Isabella will be reluctant (to say the least!) to move out of her favourite civic. The alternative then is to invade Spain and hope/encourage Catherine to flip out of Theocracy if not invade Russia also. You might be able to pull off a stunt involving capturing a foreign city, spreading Christianity in it, and then gifting it back to the original owner.
I think you would probably have a fair shot at a UN Diplomatic win – you could well be up against the very unpopular Catherine, which might be sufficient to get you a long way there. A flip into Free Religion will give you ‘favourite civic’ bonuses with Willem and Elizabeth, but you’ll therefore lose the ‘brothers and sisters of the faith’ bonus with Frederick and Joao. Look for ways to boost your own voting power.
With your technological lead and decent sized empire there’s little reason to suspect that you can’t pull off a spaceship win, but it’s unfortunate that you’ve spent so much effort spawning Great Artists to then redirect your efforts away from a Cultural win.
Both Conquest and Domination I’m sure are do-able. With your technology lead and some severe backstabbing you should be able to take out Germany and Portugal with a couple of SoDs on Industrial Age weaponry, and take on the other continent with more modern warfare.
Hope some of this helps!
I am presuming "I am going for cultural victory" is the case, and certainly agree with Kate on the appropriateness of your civics in that you can leverage your Specialist Artists and settled Great People more effectively while getting a massive
surge from Free Speech.Where you are;
Where you might want to be;
Unfortunately 5 turns of Anarchy to get there!
Food
I would suggest that you have a disproportionately low number of Farms that that acted to restrain the population levels of your cities, as you've not 'chain irrigated' into areas with low natural food production.
Chartres is an example where it's so food-poor that it can't even work the Gold Mine, while stealing the Cows from near-by Marseilles will only put that city into starvation;
Now clearly a Lighthouse would provide a heap of 2
tiles, but it's really the lack of food from land tiles that could do with review.Another one? Kate noted Orleans;
It is making a handy contribution to your empire with those developed Cottages > Towns, but it will be unable to work any of those Mines or the Quarry. Biology will give your Wheat Farm another
, but certainly not the wholesale elevation in food production required to support the Mines.Avignon has a different problem - Jungle is making the city unhealthy, but you have idle Workers who could be clearing the Jungle away and not only fix the unhealthiness, but create far more useable tiles;
From Here
If you're still going to pursue a Cultural victory, then you're almost certainly going to have to go after the late game Cultural Wonders and could boost this by going with some of the
-providing Corporations such as Civilized Jewellers - as such, press on with your technological leadership down that 'Mass Media' path. Unlike Kate, I'd keep up the science push until you're comfortable with the technologies that you have or can trade for before turning up the Culture slider. Moving out of Hereditary Rule may require you to put some to just to deal with unhappiness.If you want a Christian Cathedral to be built in Paris, then you'll want another city (maybe near the Spices in the south east) and for that city to have Christianity spread to it so it can build your ninth Christian Temple. Unfortunately you're so close to Scientific Method that trying to pick up and spread new religions without Monasteries (i.e. through Organised Religion) may be more effort than it's worth.
I would say that you are completely safe from any attack at this point. Germany and Portugal are both Friendly and neither 'has enough on their hands', while no rival tribe has Astronomy. As Kate suggests, you might want to be mindful of an invasion at some later point however, and going after Rifling + Assembly Line or even Industrialism once you have acquired Mass Media could be worth considering as the AI improves its capacity for invasion.
A final note - Cultural wins are a lot about timing so that you minimise the waste of
in cities that have already gone legendary, so think carefully about where you'll be putting those last World Wonders and when and where to 'build Culture'.Other victories
Unfortunately the Apostolic Palace Diplomatic victory is going to be tough – you can’t spread Christianity in Russia or Spain as both have adopted Theocracy, and Isabella will be reluctant (to say the least!) to move out of her favourite civic. The alternative then is to invade Spain and hope/encourage Catherine to flip out of Theocracy if not invade Russia also. You might be able to pull off a stunt involving capturing a foreign city, spreading Christianity in it, and then gifting it back to the original owner.
I think you would probably have a fair shot at a UN Diplomatic win – you could well be up against the very unpopular Catherine, which might be sufficient to get you a long way there. A flip into Free Religion will give you ‘favourite civic’ bonuses with Willem and Elizabeth, but you’ll therefore lose the ‘brothers and sisters of the faith’ bonus with Frederick and Joao. Look for ways to boost your own voting power.
With your technological lead and decent sized empire there’s little reason to suspect that you can’t pull off a spaceship win, but it’s unfortunate that you’ve spent so much effort spawning Great Artists to then redirect your efforts away from a Cultural win.
Both Conquest and Domination I’m sure are do-able. With your technology lead and some severe backstabbing you should be able to take out Germany and Portugal with a couple of SoDs on Industrial Age weaponry, and take on the other continent with more modern warfare.
Hope some of this helps!
DMOC
Mathematician
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2007
- Messages
- 5,594
Perhaps I can offer some mild bits of advice judging from the last poster's screenshots of your game (these are actually some general concepts of the game you might want to know).
Why do you have forts out? Just wondering, because I never build them.
Your current civics are geared towards warfare--nationhood, theocracy, etc rather than cultural.
Generally, unless a certain city has lots of surplus food, you don't want to be building cottages on plains tiles since they only have one food in contrast to a grassland's food output of 2. Grasslands are a far better choice for placing cottages on (and also for farming as well if your city needs more food, which yours really need). Workshops are what I usually put on plains.
For city placement, Orleans appears to be a bit off its optimal location. It is not on the coast, so it cannot produce any naval units. I can't tell where your other cities are (as I do not have time to look at your save) but unless you have cities that desperately need the fish/clam resources nearby, you should have placed Orleans one tile east, so it keeps the cows, stone, and makes up for losing the wheat by gaining clams and fish. A much better trade - off. So many of the tiles are useless deserts with useless forts on them.
Good luck on a cultural victory. Like what has been recently mentioned, make sure you are the first to Mass Media and make sure you build much more farms to make cities grow (even put farms on plains if necessary) and take advantage of chain irrigation. Your cities are fine production-wise, they just need more food.
Why do you have forts out? Just wondering, because I never build them.
Your current civics are geared towards warfare--nationhood, theocracy, etc rather than cultural.
Generally, unless a certain city has lots of surplus food, you don't want to be building cottages on plains tiles since they only have one food in contrast to a grassland's food output of 2. Grasslands are a far better choice for placing cottages on (and also for farming as well if your city needs more food, which yours really need). Workshops are what I usually put on plains.
For city placement, Orleans appears to be a bit off its optimal location. It is not on the coast, so it cannot produce any naval units. I can't tell where your other cities are (as I do not have time to look at your save) but unless you have cities that desperately need the fish/clam resources nearby, you should have placed Orleans one tile east, so it keeps the cows, stone, and makes up for losing the wheat by gaining clams and fish. A much better trade - off. So many of the tiles are useless deserts with useless forts on them.
Good luck on a cultural victory. Like what has been recently mentioned, make sure you are the first to Mass Media and make sure you build much more farms to make cities grow (even put farms on plains if necessary) and take advantage of chain irrigation. Your cities are fine production-wise, they just need more food.
Ace of Gold
MAKE WAY FOR THE BAD GUY
thanks for the tips. keep them coming. I was thinking earlier in the game to switch my civics but i relied on them so much i couldnt. i mean all of my happiness comes from monarchy i would be in riot if i switched and also because of my small army(i build so many buildings i dont get a chance to build military) i need the military civics, theology nationalism etc. anyway thanks for the tips. i would love more reviews too
Unfortunately I haven't got the game with me at the moment, but there really shouldn't be huge disruption to your cities' happiness by moving out of Hereditary Rule at this stage.
You have a wide range of happiness resources being; Dye, Gold, Fur, Incense, Ivory, Silver, Spice, Sugar, Wine, and Whale, and many of them are at +2 happiness thanks to; Forges, Markets, Theatres, and the occasional Cathedral. Representation also provides extra happiness to your largest cities, and if worse comes to worst, there's the slider.
I believe that you will need to address your military at some stage, but as noted in my earlier post, you are currently in no danger of being attacked - the question may be more whether you want to attack another tribe or not! You'll soon run out of useful buildings in many of your cities, and can start pumping out units in your non-going-for-legendary-culture
-oriented cities.
You have a wide range of happiness resources being; Dye, Gold, Fur, Incense, Ivory, Silver, Spice, Sugar, Wine, and Whale, and many of them are at +2 happiness thanks to; Forges, Markets, Theatres, and the occasional Cathedral. Representation also provides extra happiness to your largest cities, and if worse comes to worst, there's the
slider.I believe that you will need to address your military at some stage, but as noted in my earlier post, you are currently in no danger of being attacked - the question may be more whether you want to attack another tribe or not! You'll soon run out of useful buildings in many of your cities, and can start pumping out units in your non-going-for-legendary-culture
-oriented cities.You can switch civics into Representation and still tech at a nominal rate. There's enough super-specialists to warrent this. With the revision of the Sistine Chapel in BtS, and since you're playing on... Marathon? I have to reassess the whole culture bomb strat in these types of games.
Cottaging is fine in culture wins simply because you get great culture from towns... when the slider is 100%. However, when you run an Industrious wonder spam cultural game, it's very difficult to produce Great Artists consistently. Normally, you can win just by having a Great Artist produce great works in all three of your cities. With a wonder spam, you end up with a bunch of priests that are best settled. A dedicated GA farm becomes ineffective as well. You basically end up having to build your cathedrals/Hermitage on top of all those wonders and wait it out. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to get more GAs, though. Run as many artists as you can.
I went ahead and clicked through the five turns to see what would happen after the recommended civics change, which I completely agree with: Scientific Method will finish in 17 turns as opposed to... 11? turns. Nothing great, but nothing weak, either. (Sorry for the spoiler, but I suspect you'll do this anyways.) Any happiness lost from switching out of Monarchy will be gained from the culture slider at 100%.
The other posters in this thread pretty much summed up what needs to happen, especially the civics changes. Here's some more general play issues to address:
You have some potential to be invaded, especially from Izzy, who is capable of anything. Protect your coastal cities. I would be very careful diplomatically as to not lower your standings with your continental neighbors.
I find the excessive roads... "disturbing." Forts are useless here, too; did you automate workers at some point? With smart and tightly controlled play, you can trim off a good number of years from your victory date; this includes good worker control. Build what is immediately necessary, then move on.
Cottage spamming is fine, but even CE experts know that a food source or just a basic farm or two is necessary to maintain a nominal level of production. As you gain experience with setting up cities, you'll learn the value of specializing them. I find in my own cultural games I end up having a cottaged capital with nominal production, a heavily farmed GP farm for artists, and a heavy production city with a few cottages as my three legendary cities. The other cities emphasize science/merchant specialists. This may not apply as much since you went all-out on an Industrious wonder spam, but clearly the inside of your cities could be tweaked out so as to better use the resources available.
I don't know what tech path you took along the way. Obviously, you picked up Christianity, meaning you opened up the path to Paper > Education > Liberalism through Theology. Next time, consider the CoL > Civil Service > Paper line. CoL opens up a religion, and also opens up a path to Philosophy, providing another religion. Monotheism provides the Organized Religion civic, which is useful for a time since you don't need monistaries to build missionaries. However, you're better off picking up the necessary worker techs to give you an adequate start in your first two-three city sites, then beeline out to CoL/Alphabete. Then, you can back-trade, and begin the task of pacifying your neighbors so you can peacefully build up your culture. Finally, Civil Service is far too important and powerful of a tech to pass up for a weaker tech line; Buerocracy is very nice for gaining an early tech/production lead.
Cottaging is fine in culture wins simply because you get great culture from towns... when the slider is 100%. However, when you run an Industrious wonder spam cultural game, it's very difficult to produce Great Artists consistently. Normally, you can win just by having a Great Artist produce great works in all three of your cities. With a wonder spam, you end up with a bunch of priests that are best settled. A dedicated GA farm becomes ineffective as well. You basically end up having to build your cathedrals/Hermitage on top of all those wonders and wait it out. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to get more GAs, though. Run as many artists as you can.
I went ahead and clicked through the five turns to see what would happen after the recommended civics change, which I completely agree with: Scientific Method will finish in 17 turns as opposed to... 11? turns. Nothing great, but nothing weak, either. (Sorry for the spoiler, but I suspect you'll do this anyways.) Any happiness lost from switching out of Monarchy will be gained from the culture slider at 100%.
The other posters in this thread pretty much summed up what needs to happen, especially the civics changes. Here's some more general play issues to address:
You have some potential to be invaded, especially from Izzy, who is capable of anything. Protect your coastal cities. I would be very careful diplomatically as to not lower your standings with your continental neighbors.
I find the excessive roads... "disturbing." Forts are useless here, too; did you automate workers at some point? With smart and tightly controlled play, you can trim off a good number of years from your victory date; this includes good worker control. Build what is immediately necessary, then move on.
Cottage spamming is fine, but even CE experts know that a food source or just a basic farm or two is necessary to maintain a nominal level of production. As you gain experience with setting up cities, you'll learn the value of specializing them. I find in my own cultural games I end up having a cottaged capital with nominal production, a heavily farmed GP farm for artists, and a heavy production city with a few cottages as my three legendary cities. The other cities emphasize science/merchant specialists. This may not apply as much since you went all-out on an Industrious wonder spam, but clearly the inside of your cities could be tweaked out so as to better use the resources available.
I don't know what tech path you took along the way. Obviously, you picked up Christianity, meaning you opened up the path to Paper > Education > Liberalism through Theology. Next time, consider the CoL > Civil Service > Paper line. CoL opens up a religion, and also opens up a path to Philosophy, providing another religion. Monotheism provides the Organized Religion civic, which is useful for a time since you don't need monistaries to build missionaries. However, you're better off picking up the necessary worker techs to give you an adequate start in your first two-three city sites, then beeline out to CoL/Alphabete. Then, you can back-trade, and begin the task of pacifying your neighbors so you can peacefully build up your culture. Finally, Civil Service is far too important and powerful of a tech to pass up for a weaker tech line; Buerocracy is very nice for gaining an early tech/production lead.
From the screenshots, you have +20 happiness in Chartres and +16 in Avignon. If those two are typical, switching out of HR shouldn't present much of a problem, even before the culture slider is introduced. Remember, surplus happiness is only good for soaking up future unhappiness, and new opportunities to add to your happy cap without HR come along periodically as the game progresses.
Ace of Gold
MAKE WAY FOR THE BAD GUY
ok thans again for all your tips. its too late for my game so i will start a new one with this new knowledge. i did finish the old game and won cultural. take a look. it was pretty interesting game
Ace of Gold
MAKE WAY FOR THE BAD GUY
just curius what civics should i have for domination and conquest
There's a lot more flexibility with those I think. If you want to go all-out though, I'd run Police State, Vassalage, State Property (no distance maintenance = good on big maps), and Theocracy.
