RBTS7 - L'estasi Dell'oro

[T-hawk]

Well, we had teams in charge of domination, space, and culture, but nobody in charge of beating the AIs. Yes, the AIs did surprisingly well in our game.

I loaded the 1920 save and poked around Hatty's cities (by worldbuildering in a dozen great spies and infiltrating.) Thebes has 90 culture from the slider and 60 from buildings (two big wonders, Oracle and Spiral Minaret), +350% (Free Speech and 5 cathedrals) for 680. Memphis is 72 slider, 45 buildings (no big wonders), 20 from specialists (one settled Great Artist), +450% (Broadcast Tower and Hollywood) for 770. Heliopolis has 99 slider, 34 buildings (only big wonder is Confucian shrine), 12 specialists (one settled GA), +450% (Hermitage) for 836/turn.

Interestingly, the cities are actually building Wealth, not Culture, which is incorrect for a culture game plan because it wastes culture income in non-legendary cities. They should build Culture, and drop the slider as necessary to cover expenses.

Looks like this AI did an excellent job of balancing its culture in the three cities. It got just enough wonders, great artists, and religions to beat us. It's not often that an AI gets access to five religions and stays in compatible civics long enough to spread them all.

Well, thanks to the team!

 

[Garath]

"The paranoia comment to Culture is mostly a bit of subtle psychology, in the hope that they will think that since I'm saying that to them I'm probably saying exactly the same thing to the Space team, thus covering the fact that I really do want to talk to Space, whereas I don't care about Culture."

You really over-estimated my thinking about sneaky alliances, Garath It did work, although I thought at the time that a comment to the Space team was kind of meaningless because I was up next and they weren't.

Well, I was feeling a bit silly that night. I might have done more, except that Darrell reminded me that it wasn't really in the spirit of the game to be trying to arrange deals with other teams - I hadn't entirely got rid of the thinking from the original talks about the game.

I have to admit, right from the start I thought the game was going to be a Culture victory. I just thought it would be ours!

Garath

 

[darrelljs]

Well, that stinks . The irony is if I had been watching for the opportunity to vassalize Alexander, we would have finished off Elizabeth two rounds earlier. That would have put us in a position to take Hatty out. Kind of odd the cultural team lost because of the incompetence of the domination team (me, not Garath). Of course, at that point the domination team probably would have won .

Darrell

 

[mostly-harmless]

I will chime in with "Interesting Experience".
I apologize for being the cause of a few delays.

mh

 

[ZPV]

First of all, thanks to all three teams, really good game, I'm just sorry that one of you couldn't win in the end.

Interestingly, the cities are actually building Wealth, not Culture, which is incorrect for a culture game plan because it wastes culture income in non-legendary cities. They should build Culture, and drop the slider as necessary to cover expenses.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Ideally a city will build the right amount of Wealth/Culture turns to just be bombed up to Legendary on the winning turn. Often this means a lot of turns on Wealth for all three cities.

Of course, the AI doesn't micromanage like this, and it is only capable of culture bombing one of the three cities, so it is really neither here nor there.

Looks like this AI did an excellent job of balancing its culture in the three cities. It got just enough wonders, great artists, and religions to beat us. It's not often that an AI gets access to five religions and stays in compatible civics long enough to spread them all.

Some AIs are better than others at doing this, but you will often see peaceful religious ones like Hatty and Gandhi accumulate religions like this.
It was just dumb luck that all three went Legendary so close to each other, usually one of two things happens:
a) The Capital is way ahead (20-30 turns or more) of the other two, which are fairly close.
b) The Capital and one other are close, and a third is 20-30 turns behind

If you are capable of generating a lot of great artists, and using them intelligently, then having all three cities balanced is actually suboptimal. You should put the highest multipliers (i.e. Hermitage and all Cathedrals) in the city with the highest base culture, and culture bomb the other two up to speed.

 

[sooooo]

Oh dear! You all suck!

I was betting on the domination team, but didn't factor in the Blake AI team