Pyramids + farming GMs???

[futurehermit]

This is something I was thinking today based on the cultural deity thread that was circulating awhile back.

Has anybody tried this?

Basically, assuming stone:

1) Build pyramids
2) Beeline to caste system
3) Start farming GMs (philosophical civs would help)
4) Beeline to optics for caravels
5) Send your GMs on trade routes to other continent
6) Use universal sufferage combined with your fat bank account to buy whatever you want (e.g., lots of military, buildings, etc.)

Great Lighthouse benefits GMs iirc? With stone and a coastal city you could even build that in your farming city (better with seafood) to help with the farming...

Thoughts?

 

[thefais]

Sounds promising. It'd be really beneficial if someone on the other continent had a city with a harbor and the temple of artemis (iirc, both increase trade mission output)

 

[KMadCandy]

This is something I was thinking today based on the cultural deity thread that was circulating awhile back.
...
Great Lighthouse benefits GMs iirc? With stone and a coastal city you could even build that in your farming city (better with seafood) to help with the farming...

Thoughts?

Great Lighthouse is GM points, so are Collosus and Temple of Artemis. i've never yet built ToA but sure sounds like a coastal city would benefit the most from it too. it does give a free priest that would pollute the GPPs a little.

i have no idea how this would work on deity. i am waaaaaaaaay terrified of deity.

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

1) Build pyramids
2) Beeline to caste system
3) Start farming GMs (philosophical civs would help)
6) Use universal sufferage combined with your fat bank account to buy whatever you want (e.g., lots of military, buildings, etc.)

I did this as Frederick on a Monarch game. I took out the two ideas dealing with other continents because the game I played doing this I was on Pangea. The results of this game...I was able to run my slider at 100% almost the entire game once I got caste system, I had absolutely no money problems, all the money+high slider+representation had me first in tech lead by a couple techs.

Basically, it was awesome and I want to try it again.

I should also point out that I had Parthenon and that most of my gp came from one city with two other cities occasionly popping a great person. My main gp farm just blew away all other cities in gpp, but I did run gm's in every single one of my cities.

 

[futurehermit]

Basically, it was awesome and I want to try it again

SWEET

I'll have to try it out

edit: p.s, ToA is a marble wonder so it would make more sense to build GL imo assuming stone. 2 early wonders is pushing it on the higher levels Monarch+ and 3 is probably unrealistic even if you had both marble and stone (unlikely). Plus, as you mentioned, it gives a GP which pollutes the GP pool (bad). I always seem to get the unlikely odds GP

 

[flamingzaroc121]

Sounds promising. It'd be really beneficial if someone on the other continent had a city with a harbor and the temple of artemis (iirc, both increase trade mission output)

they dont improve trade mission output, they improve trade route gold

 

[Tzu Iop]

Imho ToA is useless to build for GMs since it provides also a free priest specialist so you get messed up a bit. Therefore it is better to get caste system and employ some merchants.

 

[futurehermit]

Well, it's not useless, but you certainly have to run merchants with caste system and have a use for a prophet or two should you get one.

 

[frob2900]

This strategy works well without pyramids too.. i.e. all those merchants are producing something much more valuable than +3 gold, +3 research (with pyramids), they are producing Great Merchants.

It is simply amazing what 1 or 2 great merchants can do for a warmongering strategy. I generally get between 1650-2250 gold for an early trade mission, which will cover any kind of expenses early game for at least 50 turns. More than enough time to get another GM

In the meanwhile you can be conquering and plundering to your hearts content all the way until the AI gets feudalism (and probably still some, if you pick on the weak guy ). One can get a HUGE empire with this strategy, and tech probably wont be hurt too bad as long as one is running a few scientists in select cities and building a few cottages.

With pyramids this strategy is simply amazing. Tried it on great plains and got over half the map pre AD. Stopped just short of domination. Its amazing to have such a large empire and not have your economy tank. Of course caste system and slavery exclude each other and slavery is also very important for any kind of early war on monarch and above.

Hence: Gandhi Im beginning to think spiritual is THE trait..

This might be a really good approach together with the Gandhi/pyramids approach detailed in another post.

Im going to go and try

 

[Jet]

Sounds good.

I think it's better to think of this without Optics, because either you'll be able to get a decent trade mission without it, or it won't be worth it to get Optics super-early.

In many games, I think you can get a good trade mission without Optics. The payoff is limited by the minimum of the distance to the city and its population. (I'm not sure, but I think in that formula one pop point always equals one tile.) So you have to get somewhat far away, which depends on the map and the diplomatic situation, and it has to be late enough or at a high enough difficulty that you can get to a big city.

This has a formula for the payoff and a user interface way to preview the payoff:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=198282

The techs on the way to Optics have synergy with coastal economics and trade. And if you prioritize them, you'll probably need to trade for other techs. But if you're set for all that, you can probably get a decent trade mission without Optics.

This might be an interesting tactic if you're alone on an island and going Cultural. On an island what one wants is usually raw research rather than infrastructure or military, but you do want money for cathedrals. I don't know, maybe earlier cathedrals would make it easier to keep teching for defense.

 

[Dirk1302]

This is something I was thinking today based on the cultural deity thread that was circulating awhile back.

Has anybody tried this?

Basically, assuming stone:

1) Build pyramids
2) Beeline to caste system
3) Start farming GMs (philosophical civs would help)
4) Beeline to optics for caravels
5) Send your GMs on trade routes to other continent
6) Use universal sufferage combined with your fat bank account to buy whatever you want (e.g., lots of military, buildings, etc.)

Great Lighthouse benefits GMs iirc? With stone and a coastal city you could even build that in your farming city (better with seafood) to help with the farming...

Thoughts?

There are a lot of strategies that might work if all the circumstances are right. I remember that we were talking about GW then pyramids strategies, we both concluded that this was tricky on emperor at least and probably near impossible on immortal and higher. Basically stone can't be assumed, Beelining to masonry (instead of AH and BW) is incredibly dangerous on emperor, more so on higher levels. I'm doing fine on emperor as a builder (space races) now with a strategy that is a mix between Acidsatyr's aggressive approach funding early research with 1-2 scientists/city and Snaaty's strategy with growing cities to the max population (with farms and specialists later in the game) only making short wars to take as many cities as possible during these wars. Research in a FE/SE doesn't have to come from specialists alone, a lot can come in from huge trade routes (especially the coastal cities).

Your strategy is a fun strategy but i can't believe something like this works consistently on higher levels. I also don't see where the pyramids are important in this strategy. Mind you i've never tried something like this myself and maybe it could work, just a feeling i have that it is not possible.

 

[DaveMcW]

You don't need the Pyramids at all. You can convert gold -> hammers by upgrading units at almost the same exchange rate as rush-buying.

Universal Suffrage is only useful for building units from scratch if you have the Kremlin.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

(harbors) dont improve trade mission output, they improve trade route gold

The last time I looked, these were the same thing (the calculation for trade mission yield being based on the value of a trade route from the city in question back to your capital). Might be worth checking in the World Builder.

 

[dar]

Yes, trade multipliers from buildings in the target city affect the size of the trade missions.

 

[Ruler]

I did this as Frederick on a Monarch game. I took out the two ideas dealing with other continents because the game I played doing this I was on Pangea. The results of this game...I was able to run my slider at 100% almost the entire game once I got caste system, I had absolutely no money problems, all the money+high slider+representation had me first in tech lead by a couple techs.

Basically, it was awesome and I want to try it again.

I should also point out that I had Parthenon and that most of my gp came from one city with two other cities occasionly popping a great person. My main gp farm just blew away all other cities in gpp, but I did run gm's in every single one of my cities.

This was my favorite strategy on Prince and made it way too easy and boring. I'm kind of sad to hear if this works on Monarch too. I haven't succeed yet.

Farm 4 GM, get a religion, build markets, bank, crocers and wallstreet and you don't need never think about gold or units with science slider at 100%. Yuoi can do basically whatever you want.

This can be done definitely without pyramids or wonders but I liked to do is chop one of the GM wonders too.

 

[futurehermit]

Yes, but farming GMs isn't really a strategy per se. It's just farming GMs. Combining it with early universal sufferage makes it a strategy imo.

 

[GoodGame]

This is a cool strategy but in testing it I found a flaw or too.

#1 You might not have stone (IND will help though)

#2 Even with 4 Merchants, Pyramids, and Colossus, I only had about 66% of Great merchants. Instead, I kept spawning Great Engineers (the odds!!!!! The other 34% was split between Engs, and eventually Engs and Artists)
The only way to keep going was to spread their
wonders among my junk cities (or I could have settled
them I suppose). Only good thing about this was I built National Epic quickly, and Parthenon in another city to avoid adding more artists.

#3 Lost out on GL while building Colossus (after Pyramids). EDIT: Sailing is important early, before Colossus. But by the time you build these two, its starting to look like a OCC game. When to start workers/settlers? Before/after Pyramids?

#4 The trading partner on another continent (played this on Tiny, 2 opponents) was Montezuma!!!! He wouldn't be nice even when I switched to his religion (I was his worst enemy for no reason...he was ahead in points too).


Test was Nap, figuring the AGG would help, but not really. In all it took about 1000 AD for Trade Missions to start paying off.

 

[futurehermit]

This is a cool strategy but in testing it I found a flaw or too.

#1 You might not have stone (IND will help though)

#2 Even with 4 Merchants, Pyramids, and Colossus, I only had about 66% of Great merchants. Instead, I kept spawning Great Engineers (the odds!!!!! The other 34% was split between Engs, and eventually Engs and Artists)
The only way to keep going was to spread their
wonders among my junk cities (or I could have settled
them I suppose). Only good thing about this was I built National Epic quickly, and Parthenon in another city to avoid adding more artists.

#3 Lost out on GL while building Colossus (after Pyramids). EDIT: Sailing is important early, before Colossus. But by the time you build these two, its starting to look like a OCC game. When to start workers/settlers? Before/after Pyramids?

#4 The trading partner on another continent (played this on Tiny, 2 opponents) was Montezuma!!!! He wouldn't be nice even when I switched to his religion (I was his worst enemy for no reason...he was ahead in points too).


Test was Nap, figuring the AGG would help, but not really. In all it took about 1000 AD for Trade Missions to start paying off.

Not having stone isn't a flaw, I said the strategy REQUIRES stone. No stone, try something else. Don't farm GMs primarily in your pyramids city. Better to farm them primarily in another city so your GMs will 90%+ of the time beat out the GE. I never said build the colossus. I said build the great lighthouse since you have stone it will be relatively cheap. Great library > colossus although it will require you to watch out for getting GSs instead of GMs (not the end of the world but it hurts your strategy). Playing it on a normal-sized map will result in you having at least one favourable opponent on the other continent. Switching to free religion by this point will help your relations.

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

The other thing is even if you arent getting gm's, you're still making all that money that each merchant specialist provides. So its not like a total loss.

 

[aelf]

Actually, I see no reason why Pyramids are so important in this strategy. By the time you can send GMs on faraway overseas trade missions, Democracy isn't that far off. Why not just use the gold to beeline to it at 100% research instead of wasting early hammers on an expensive and marginal wonder? I think the hammers are probably better spent on the Great Lighthouse and Colossus, both of which produce GM points.