Sullla
Patrician Roman Dictator
Now the Big Three themselves. First Mecca, the oldest and sturdiest pillar of Arabia:
Medina, the city with the food resources!
And Damascus, the red dot city that could:
Now some shots of Hamburg, the other star city of this game, courtesy of the debug tools:
We had over 60,000 culture on that tile, and Bismarck had only 15,000. But there was never a revolt... riiiiight.
And inside the city:
We can control 19 of the 21 tiles within the radius of this city, yet it never flipped or revolted. Bismarck had 26 units inside to suppress the revolt odds, which never rose to even 1%. Apparently it is absolutely impossible to flip enemy core cities in Civ4 (new colonies are flippable, but nothing built up). You can bet that I'll be directing some eyes at Firaxis towards this game's thread! (No clue if anything will happen as a result, of course.)
And one of the coolest screenshots I've ever taken, showing all three cities hitting Legendary Culture the same turn. Great stuff.
One interesting thing to come out of this game is that the cultural victory condition is a bit better balanced that I believed. Everyone thinks that winning a cultural victory is all about building cottages and running 100% culture tax, but as we proved in this game, that's merely ONE way to go about doing things. There are actually three major ways to produce culture in this game:
1) Via commerce (and the culture tax)
2) Via food (by using Artist specialists and Great People)
3) Via shields (through wonders and city improvements)
Most cultural victories go heavy on #1 and #2, but we emphasized #2 and #3 and got a VERY competitive overall result. Pre-1900 cultural victories are pretty rare. It's just a shame that route #1 requires the least planning and the simplest execution. I think the cultural victory condition could be vastly improved if we just put in some kind of a cap on culture that could be achieved via the culture tax (say, 50 culture/turn or something). Then you would actually have to build culture with wonders or Artists, instead of just spamming cottages. That would be an awkward kludge, but something like that would probably improve the gameplay. THIS is how a cultural victory is supposed to look!
I want to thank all of our team members here, it was a true group effort.
The ending was anti-climactic, but that was a good thing, right? 
This how a succession game should be run, with prompt playing and great input from all the members. Hopefully I'll have the chance to meet up with all of you again down the road. But for my next succession game, I have something a bit different in mind. Stay tuned...
Here the save from the last turn for everyone:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/RB19-AD-1892.Civ4SavedGame
Medina, the city with the food resources!
And Damascus, the red dot city that could:
Now some shots of Hamburg, the other star city of this game, courtesy of the debug tools:
We had over 60,000 culture on that tile, and Bismarck had only 15,000. But there was never a revolt... riiiiight.
And inside the city:We can control 19 of the 21 tiles within the radius of this city, yet it never flipped or revolted. Bismarck had 26 units inside to suppress the revolt odds, which never rose to even 1%. Apparently it is absolutely impossible to flip enemy core cities in Civ4 (new colonies are flippable, but nothing built up). You can bet that I'll be directing some eyes at Firaxis towards this game's thread! (No clue if anything will happen as a result, of course.)
And one of the coolest screenshots I've ever taken, showing all three cities hitting Legendary Culture the same turn. Great stuff.
One interesting thing to come out of this game is that the cultural victory condition is a bit better balanced that I believed. Everyone thinks that winning a cultural victory is all about building cottages and running 100% culture tax, but as we proved in this game, that's merely ONE way to go about doing things. There are actually three major ways to produce culture in this game:
1) Via commerce (and the culture tax)
2) Via food (by using Artist specialists and Great People)
3) Via shields (through wonders and city improvements)
Most cultural victories go heavy on #1 and #2, but we emphasized #2 and #3 and got a VERY competitive overall result. Pre-1900 cultural victories are pretty rare. It's just a shame that route #1 requires the least planning and the simplest execution. I think the cultural victory condition could be vastly improved if we just put in some kind of a cap on culture that could be achieved via the culture tax (say, 50 culture/turn or something). Then you would actually have to build culture with wonders or Artists, instead of just spamming cottages. That would be an awkward kludge, but something like that would probably improve the gameplay. THIS is how a cultural victory is supposed to look!
I want to thank all of our team members here, it was a true group effort.
The ending was anti-climactic, but that was a good thing, right? This how a succession game should be run, with prompt playing and great input from all the members. Hopefully I'll have the chance to meet up with all of you again down the road. But for my next succession game, I have something a bit different in mind. Stay tuned...Here the save from the last turn for everyone:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/RB19-AD-1892.Civ4SavedGame
Sullla, Blake, Qwack, Garath: It's been an honor and a pleasure! 
. You sure you didn't have random personality on? 
?
The game is not set up to handle it. 
