In the meantime, I finally cracked the Ghaznavid UHV. Now I have a kind of love-hate attitude about this UHV. I love it because it is a fast paced game and the Ghaznavids are fun to play with a nice UP. I hate it because its too mechanical and consequently too restricting. So here's what I did :
1. Opening moves : - The Ghaznavids start out with a sizeable military and surrounded by weak opponents. This is both the case with 3000 BC and 500 BC starts. To avoid any possible bugs I was playing on a 3000 BC start. The Gokturks never conquered Samarkand or Bukhara so those two cities were independent, while Huns ravaged all of North West South Asia. Half the old Greek cities were barbarian and the one city in Sindh.
With my starting settler, I settle Ghazni on the spot. Its a great place to settle and it grows very nicely allowing you to train a lot of artists which you'll need for the game. Owing to the Ghaznavid UP, I ran clergy (50% GP boost), feudalism, state monopoly. In my earlier efforts I'd chose nobility, which is a mistake I learnt. Your entire focus in the game is one dimensional, i.e accumulate culture, to be precise enough culture to have 15000 culture in all of your cities. The other settler I sent with a missionary and a pikeman down South to Balochistan and settle on Pasni.
Now the really annoying aspect of the goal is, you can only afford 4 cities and no more. You'll have to chose your 4 culture monger cities carefully. The only thing you should be aiming for is a large food production and population to sustain a lot of artists. Ghazni grows, especially with the right civics. Pasni grows owing to its access to coastal resources. The other two cities should ideally be in the Indus. You can take a Central Asian city, but I would advise against it, if you're culture bombing Ghazni then these cities would disturb against it.
Mansura was barb so I exploited my early barb victories ( I counted, you get 5 free wins ). Lahore was defended by a small force but it still cost me 2 units of my invading army to get it . All other cities are to be razed, including what is my favorite Afghan city, Alexander in Archosia/Qandahar
. The four cities thus, were 1) Ghazni, my capital , 2) Pasni, 3) Mansura, 4) Lahore.
2. First UHV :- While your army is out conquering the right places for culture mongering, your starting workers *( luckily I had 3 more workers flip to me ) should work quickly to hook up every possible food producing resources around Ghazni. There is a deer camp 1 East of Ghazni, flood plains to its North, a Caravan some tiles West. A spice resource and lemon resource is within Ghazni's BFC as well.
I sent the other workers to work on the tiles around Mansura and Lahore. The caravan is very helpful in getting silk route Great Artists, hooking up Silk Route resources is a good booster. Pasni should set to work training work boats, while Ghazni and Lahore and Mansura should start working on shools ( to get the free specialist artist ) . Ghaznavid's good head start on techs make for good ground for tech trading with other civs, the faltering Gupta Empire was pleased enough, as were the Gokrturks, who traded some useful techs, like maritime trade and seafaring and education with me.
Burma and Tibet too, traded fairly with me. Throughout the game, I didn't have to touch the culture slider but I managed to tech ahead well enough despite 50-60% science. The initial plunder from conquests lasts you for a while, but eventually you'll have to become frugal. Again, nothing really matters to the Ghaznavid UHV but culture
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With Ghazni growing and training artists I had my first artists within 10 or so turns after I started, and before 1100 AD came I could churn out 3 GAs easily enough from Ghazni alone. Lahore and Mansura were the first cities I chose to culture bomb to get Lahore a good culture buffer against Delhi's large culture expanse. I got the 10000 culture goal very easily enough.
Between 1100 AD and 1230 AD you would need another 8 Great Arists to get to 45000 culture. This is where you feel the need for 4 cities and not 3. I did manage to get 45000 culture with 5 cities once, but failed the third goal. I churned out 5 out of the 8 Great Artists from Ghazni while Lahore and Pasni made the others. Lahore was a great cultural centre throughout the game and so was Pasni and Mansura.
By the end of goal 2, two of my four cities had over 13000 culture while two others had around 10000 each. For goal three I needed only 2 GAs to culture bomb two underdeveloped cities.
3. The Last goal :- With a 4 city strategy, you can get the third goal almost by default if you have the first two. There are only two things to keep in mind. Firstly, the Delhi spawn, usually they don't act very aggressively on their western border. But it is still safer to keep a substantial troop presence. Being co-religionists helps in taming tensions with the Delhi Sultanate and that works to secure an early peace. The Delhi Sultanate didn't move their stacks out of Delhi oddly. The Gupta empire collapsed shortly after the Delhi spawn, they were collapsing already.
Secondly, you'll need to keep an eye for Keshik barbarians reaving across Central Asia. Here, I found the true usefulness of not conquering the two central asian cities. They're your buffer to absorb the Keshiks. The Gokturks absorbed the rest of the Keshik barbs. Even so, training pikemen are useful enough to counter the Keshiks who come. Still, once you're in for the first two goals, the third is literally a breeze. I managed to get 3 GAs by 1300 by which time Ghazni had 18,000 culture, Mansura had 17,000 culture, Pasni had 18000, and Lahore had 18000 culture. ( approximations all ) . The Golden age helps with the third goal.
My next effort is going to be getting a cultural victory with the Ghaznavid's UP
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) . If not, what's the best way to deal with stability ?
I even built two additional wonders there at the end.
) do have more resources than you
