RB19 - True Cultural Challenge

[Sullla]

Good turns, Blake, even if you mostly just assigned some Artist specialists for us. Stinky the Smelly Camel, however, was classic.

Just as an update for our readers, here are the current cultural totals:

Mecca: 27870 culture, +572/turn (39 turns to go)
Medina: 29239 culture, +552/turn (38 turns to go)
Damascus: 27516 culture, +540/turn (42 turns to go)

I guess the Great Prophet goes in Damascus then. (Wow, just look at how close those totals are! Did we do a good job of spreading out the culture equally or what! ) We're going to finish in just about 40 turns, hopefully with one last Great Artist to push us over the top. We actually ended up playing a mini-variant here: it will be possible for us to get the Cultural Victory without using a single Great Work in the whole game. I don't think anyone expected that to happen either.

Qwack is up. As long as you can hit enter 10 turns without someone declaring war on us, we should be in good shape.

 

[Qwack]

As long as you can hit enter 10 turns without someone declaring war on us, we should be in good shape.

That sounds way too difficult.. . Lol @ the Camel Blake. It was a valiant stinking effort. Got it. Ill need 24 hours to play this one.

 

[talchas]

lurker comment

anybody know the game mechanics behind the City Garrisons as far as culture flipping is concerned, as in, what quantifiable effect they have on keeping a city out of revolt??

Well, looking at the SDK, it appears that first the city's plot must be effectively owned by another player. Then there is a random probability of continuing defined in GlobalDefines.xml's REVOLT_TEST_PROB.

Then cultureStrength needs to be greater than cultureGarrison for there to be any chance at all for a revolt, unless its a barb city, in which case there will always be a revolt.

cultureGarrison is a simple sum of each unit's iCultureGarrison values defined in the XML. A warrior has a value of 3, a mech inf or modern armor has 16. If the civs are at war, this is multiplied by 2. There is no hard or soft cap to this value - pile in more units, and more culture will be needed to take the city.

cultureStrength is a complicated formula that depends on:
+the highest population the city has ever been
+the current average era of all the civs times the number of neighboring plots that are owned by the flipper
+the percentage difference between the flipper's and flippee's culture on that plot
+whether the state religion of the flipper is a religion of the city
-whether the state religion of the flippee is a religion of the city

Then a random number between 0 and cultureStrength is calculated, and if that is greater than cultureGarrison, the city revolts.

So basically, the more units in a city, the harder it will be to take, with no limit. If the civs are at war, it will be harder to take. If the city has the same religion as a civ's state religion, it will be more inclined to flip to that civ or stay with that civ. The more plots around the city that you own the more likely it will flip. The more culture you have there and the less the owner has there, the more likely it will be to flip. And apparrently, the bigger the city has ever been, the more likely for it to flip.

The cude is in CvPlot.doCulture, CvCity.cultureStrength, and CvCity.cultureGarrison

 

[Qwack]

Finito.

Nothing really happens. Sent Narak to Damascus to settle him. Started grocer in damascus to improve health situation, this will let us run some extra artists pretty soon. Physics comes in 1828 AD, set research to electricity. Not that it matters at the moment, broadway probably wont make much of a difference...



Qin Shi completes pentagon, and then cyrus comes asking for a defensive pact. No thanks buddy. Declined.



This is when you know you should be sleeping instead of playing civ4. 1 worker building mine while the other building windmill



More of the same, hatty comes demanding us to cancel deals with Rome. Declined... Artist born in Mecca, I put him to sleep for now. With some luck, we have a chance at giving birth to 2 more artists before the games end. Damascus has 39% odds and Medina has 75% odds... 1 will do also. Grocer being built in mecca, this will allow us to run some more artists there as well.

This is pretty much cruise control to victory. Everyone is pleased except hatty, so someone declaring war on us now does not seem likely, even with our crappy power

 

[jerVL/kg]

lurker's comment:

This is when you know you should be sleeping instead of playing civ4. 1 worker building mine while the other building windmill

HA!!! I've made some real moves while Civ'ing when I should be sleeping...but that's a new one!

 

[Sirian]

Almost reached your goal. Nice work.

- Sirian

 

[LKendter]

lurker's comment:
How long until someone notices the save is missing.

 

[Compromise]

lurker's comment:
How long until someone notices the save is missing.

As the next one up, I noticed that too. But, I figured we'd better let Qwack get some sleep. But I think he's given me enough info--what with those worker actions --to reconstruct his turns.

@talchas: Thanks for digging up that info from the SDK. It's kind of impressive that the AI is programmed to use that knowledge when it can. No wonder Hamburg and Munich are still under German control. It does seem like there should be an upper limit of protection that troops can give, though.

 

[Qwack]

Here it is

 

[Sullla]

Thanks for posting the save Qwack - just make sure you're not asleep at the wheel when the game is at a critical moment. (Seriously, don't worry about the save file, we've all done it at some point.) There was one funny thing in the save that I had to report:



Tokugawa is FRIENDLY with us! I have NEVER seen that happen before. How did we manage THAT?

Mecca: 33590 culture, +612/turn (27 turns to go)
Medina: 34759 culture, +560/turn (28 turns to go)
Damascus: 33036 culture, +572/turn (30 turns to go)

By the way, Damascus can support two more Artists if we strip away the plains forest and the horses tile. We may as well run the extra Artists at this point; that will get the city to 620 culture/turn, which will drop the ETA to 28 turns (same as Medina - wouldn't that be an awesome coincidence! )

 

[Compromise]

Got the save and Sullla's advice on the artist possibilities. I'll run the turns tomorrow morning.

 

[Blake]

Wait... Cyrus offered us a Defensive Pact and we don't even have Open Borders with him?
Well if he wants to be our friend maybe he should share the weed!

 

[Compromise]

In 1840, at the start of this turnset, I pulled workers off the forest and the horses in Damascus to run another artist there. I also noticed that by running a food deficit of only 1, I could run another artist in Medina, so I did that.

Most of the turns were uneventful. I tried to think of things to assign the workers to do. I felt bad about the poor starving artists in Medina, so I sent a couple workers up to convert a lumbermill into a plains farm. That brought them to even food.

So now, there is no population growth and no unhealthiness in our 3 cultural cities. Each has many resident artists. All available cultural buildings have been constructed.

When we discovered Electricity in 1848, I decided to start Mecca working on Broadway. Without rearranging tiles and unassigning artists, we can't build it before our cultural victory, but hey, we might as well be consistent with the flavor of the variant and start construction, right?

In 1856, I received this rarest of offers:



I, of course, accepted. I promptly celebrated our closeness by renegotiating our Wine deal from 6 to 8 gpt.

The people of Basra requested a road to investigate this strange substance seeping up from the ground near their beaches. Because of worker boredom, I obliged.



On a slightly disappointing note, the children of Damascus ran in terror when this fellow started roaming their streets in 1858.



Parents in Damascus let out a great sigh of relief when a blue bolt from the heavens converted this scary person into an academy.

In 1860, the highly cultured people of this community await their penultimate guide. A quick calculation reveals that Mecca, Medina and Damascus are scheduled to go legendary in 15.9, 16.1 and 16.5 turns respectively. I think an artist or two in Mecca can be convinced to work in the Meccan hill mines and we can--very fittingly, I think--watch all 3 cities go Legendary on the same Sullla turn!

Any great artists generated before then can create later Great Works that celebrate this monumental achievement!

 

[Blake]

Nice .

Having all 3 cities go legendary on the same turn is too awesome to pass up, we gotta do it .

 

[Sullla]

Nice going with the Artists there, Compromise. All we have to do is remove one Artist in Mecca and set him to work one of the plains hill tiles, that will ensure all three cities go Legendary on the same turn. Current projected finish date is in 17 turns (1894AD). And for the readers, here are the current cultural totals:

Mecca: 39902 culture, +636/turn
Medina: 40599 culture, +584/turn
Damascus: 39252 culture, +648/turn

Help bring us home, Garath.

 

[Sirian]

Having all 3 cities go legendary on the same turn is too awesome to pass up, we gotta do it .

That would be... legendary.

(No, please don't shoot me for writing that! )


- Sirian

 

[Tarkhan]

Keep up the good work guys. Still, i'd like to see JC crushed, in vengeance for that little war in the beginning.

 

[Garath]

Well, as anticipated my 10 were somewhat uneventful. I told a bunch of workers to build us a bunch of roads, they didn't seem to have anything better to do.

I told Medina to build Rock & Roll once we got Radio. If you set Damascus to Hollywood just before the end, we'll have all three of the modern happiness wonders under construction, for added amusement.

Some people talked to us. I gave Mao Astronomy and denied Hatty Open Borders, I think, but neither matters.



This dude was born. He doesn't have much to do, since it's far more fun (or legendary, if you want to listen to more of Sirian's bad jokes) to have all cities reach legendary status on the same turn under their own power than to use Great Works to even them out.

You can probably gain us another turn by settling down the two artists in the weaker cities and setting them all back to full culture rate, but fundamentally if you hit Enter 7 times we'll win this one, now.

Garath

 

[Sullla]

(0) 1880AD Well friends, it's been a true pleasure so far this game, and I'm glad that I have the opportunity to close things out. First off, I check our cities one last time and confirm that they will all reach Legendary status in 7 turns. In the meantime, since there's nothing else to be done beyond hitting enter, I decide to have a bit of fun on these turns.



Everyone is at Pleased or better with us, and both Qin and Tokugawa are Friendly. The diplomacy reflects our standing as cultural leaders of the free world. At this point, it would cheapen our achievement to declare war on someone. We will be the bigger men and overlook Caesar's treachery in the distant past. Let all nations of the world unite together to bask in the glow of Arabian culture!

(1) 1882AD Qin asks us to sign a Defensive Pact with him, so we do. The peace-loving people of Arabia DARE someone to attack them now! In an unexpected move, Tokugawa completes Broadway. So much for that idea! Not like we need it, of course...

Since we also don't need the two Great Artists that we have saved up, I decide to have some fun with them:



Ker-pow! Essen wants an additional water tile to work!



Bam! Kufah grabs a couple more useless tiles. Take THAT Munich and Hamburg!

(2) 1884AD Our failed Broadway attempt turns into 440g. I start Eiffel Tower in Mecca, for the heck of it. That will make our pictures look better.

(3) 1886AD Discover Mass Media, and Damascus starts on Hollywood. At 67 turns, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

(6) 1892AD With one turn to go, Bis pops a Great Scientist in HAMBURG!



Seriously, what are the odds of that? Anyway... Mecca is at 49694, Medina at 49799, and Damascus at 49620. I save the game and end the turn. Let's wrap this thing up in style.

 

[Sullla]

(7) 1894AD All three cities top 50,000 at the same time and we are the winner!



I watch the cultural victory movie for the first time ever, a little short but nice nonetheless (nothing is as cool as the conquest movie though). Now for some endgame pictures!

Economically, we didn't do so hot:



But culturally, we seriously kicked some boo-tay!



We were #2 in population, by the way. The AI just doesn't do a good job of growing its cities in this game. Guess who dominated the Top Five cities?



And look, Tokugawa cracked spot #4. Amazing! So HE was the one stealing the Pyramids and Great Lighthouse from us! (It wasn't Mansa Musa and Gandhi out in the fog after all.) Must have been some kind of great city to pull off such a strong cultural performance. And how about the irony of Toku building the Great Lighthouse, the civ least inclined to get benefit from it in the entire game!

The score of 18232 was good enough for tenth of my personal hall of fame. No screenshots though, because there are some ongoing tournament games there that I can't show!