Rhino - Peaceful Domination

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Aug 12, 2011
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Peaceful Domination

After the month-long deity game, I want something fun, even a bit silly. So I'm thinking, always peace, domination victory via culture-flipping. I read about this variant a while ago in one of Sullla's games, and it seems like just what I'm looking for. (That game has lots of good tips for playing this variant, so I recommend reading it if you want to shadow).

I'll mirror most of Sullla's settings:
  • Small pangaea
  • Marathon (My normal speed. Sullla used Epic)
  • Monarch difficulty (A step up from Sullla's Prince)
  • No war (Obviously)
  • No barbs, events, huts (Those are my defaults)
  • No tech trades (Because it's awesome)
  • No culture victory (So we don't trigger it before domination) or diplo victory (No AP BS)
  • Edit: Not a setting, but I won't use corporations or the spread culture mission (see first reply below).
Marathon makes this variant a bit easier, since the game does a roll to flip cities every turn, but Monarch should more than make up for it. Don't worry about time to play. Marathon spreads the same number of decisions over a larger number of turns, so as long as you don't go crazy with micro, it doesn't take that much longer than Epic (Sullla's speed).

Which leader? Well, we'll want to engulf AI cities in our culture, so we'll want to place our cities as close to theirs as possible. That kind of aggressive city placement cries out for Creative, which also gives us super-cheap theaters. And you know of my love for Spiritual, which also gives half-price Temples, which are a big deal since we'll be shooting for Sistine Chapel (and on Monarch, that should be pretty easy). So Hatty it is. (Same as Sullla).

Sullla picked his opposing leaders, avoiding Creative, Financial, Philosophical and anyone who started with Mysticism. Let's not do that, and just let the chips fall where they may.

Detailed settings:

Spoiler :

Start location:

Spoiler :



Stone! Awesome! That should guarantee us Stonehenge, if we want it.

I've put dots at the spots I'd consider. The spot 1E of the start location is also good: It gets the +1 hammer from the plains hill, and keeps the fresh water health bonus. But it has 3 dead water tiles, which I'd like to avoid. (Tip for newer players: Place dots where you'd consider settling, then move the warrior to get vision on the tiles you might lose / gain).

Feel free to shadow. If you're working on Monarch, shadowing the opening might be helpful, you can make your moves then see what other players do. And since the game is pretty silly, I'm not too worried about spoiler info in the threads, and will probably read any shadow games up to my turn as we go.

Autosave and worldbuilder save are below. I use MacBuffy, so you'll need it for the autosave, not sure about the worldbuilder one.
 

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Considering Sulla played this without corps, or espionage, I wouldn't say monarch makes up for marathon. I've played always peace domination on normal and emperor for funsies once, it's not easy, but it isn't hard either. With espionage and always peace and no diplo/culture victory that leaves space. By the time the AI gets that far you'll be getting 4000+ EP/t, there's no way they'll ever launch.

1. there's 0% threats to you ever, and you will use this, the AI won't
2. good corps will overwhelm cities with culture quite fast, you'll be looking at 200+ cpt for even new cities.
3. spread culture is good when combined with corps, and you can easily push cities that aren't yours into legendary with it.

That said you're playing Hatty, who's a good choice for the vanilla game when you're trying this, but terrible in BTS as far as I'm concerned. When attempting this I didn't follow Sullas strategy of expanding to get a foothold everywhere, I just played standard to a very fast lib and creative constructions and started my cultural assault then. I went with Ghandi for the all around goodness, and totally ignored religions the entire game.

Consider playing this on emp at least, I'm confident that won't be much trouble for you.
 
Hmmm. I wasn't even thinking of corporations. (State Property is usually my final civic, and I rarely even get the techs that give corps). But you make a good point, that's the best way to get ridiculous amounts of culture in BTS. Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't thought of it.

But I was looking forward to a game like Sullla played, not a race to corps then spreading execs around all day. So one more restriction for me: No corporations. I won't found any. If an AI spreads one to me, I'll ignore it (not trading for extra resources or anything), and I won't do anything to try and get AIs to give me corps. Also, I'll aim to win before corps come about.

And I won't use the espionage spread culture mission. Other espionage, sure, but you're right, that one really affects this game.

No idea if that change will make Monarch a challenge. But I wouldn't mind an easier game at the moment. If it turns out to be ridiculous though, I'll either use WB to change the AI settings to Emperor, or just start a new game.

If you shadow, your call if you want to use corps and spread culture or not.
 
When you chose Hatshepsut, did you consider UB's as well? I would've thought that the Incan Terraces would fit perfectly here. The Terrace is nice because you can get it from the previous owners (you normally can't capture cities with culture buildings).

Other culture buildings worth considering: Greek Odeon (you can also inherit from previous owners), Chinese Pavilions, Arabian Madrassa (extras slots for Sistine empowered priests and I think you get an extra culture per turn), maybe Ethiopian Steles, or French Salons (also inheritable, but too late in the game to matter much).
 
Good point. The +25% culture buildings would be good here. Zara, with Cre / Org and the Stele, could be a really strong pick. Or cherry pick Hatty with China for cheap UB theaters. Mostly, I went with Hatty because Sullla did and it seemed like a sensible choice, and because I'm considering her for my next Deity game (there were several early cities last game where Creative would have been really nice, plus the general speedup early game would be helpful, too).

But I definitely will build a ton of temples, since you need 3 for every cathedral, and cathedrals are some of the best culture buildings in the game. So Spiritual will probably help a lot. Not sure if Egypt's UB will be a big deal, since I'm not planning to emphasize founding religions. (The extra 4 culture for the holy city = 1 artist. Great early, basically irrelevant later).
 
The Obelisk opens up priest slots, too, so it has some of the same advantages as the Madrassa. Artists would be much better and you're going to build plenty of temples and monastaries, but I guess it could help.
 
I'm very excited to see you play this variant. Sulla's game was one of my favourite ever play-throughs. I think that espionage is definitely going to play a huge role this game. But most important I think from Sulla's game is putting in a big REX, you have to get some far-flung cities up and pressuring the AI from very early on to win.
 
Settle on the plains-hill. Your opening moves aren't constricted by tech here (you have 2 corn resources and start with AGR), so the bottleneck at the start is production. Settling 1SE will finish the worker 2 turns earlier, which will speed up your game as a whole by about 2 turns.
 
Pretty much...and not only is Gandhi SPI, he gives you half price GArtists. How cool is that.

Still not as good as Catherine/Hatshepsut for this variant. CRE is just too strong here.



Also, a note to One Legged Rhino:

You probably already know this, but Cultural Extermination gameplay has changed substantially since Vanilla. GA Bombs were heavily nerfed (Warlords IIRC) so they don't really do much to established cultural borders, which makes it a bit harder to flip cities. However, on the whole gameplay is easier because you can use the AP to give yourself cities, and you get Sid Sushi.
 
I once tried some similar challenge (which I found in general forum) and I remember being it pain in the a..s

This is too random and you have no way of helping yourself with the revolts - you can't declare war and clear AI's units (unlike RR13, RR14 in SG part of the forums)

I thought I would shadow your next game, but I think I will just sit this out. It surely is challenging if you move it to Immortal, but surely boring as hell too (and making it immortal would be real challenge, because AI can and will build so many troops to maybe almost completely null city revolts due to culture) ;-).

I would take Ghandi too
 
Things that I have learned in my game as Huayna on a fantasy map with always peace and flipping: Industrious is good to land the first few wonders quickly, especially stonehenge. Financial is good to get at least 1 or 2 religions fast.

Things that help culture flipping:
1) If you flip a city always watch if you can raze and replace it with 2 new ones who are just 2 tiles away from the next city. This is the only way to get enough cultural pressure on.
2) Corps are needed. New cities grow hard and push hard, but even with superboosted you will have a hard time to flip some cities. That is where spying comes in.
3) You will need spying for stealing cash/inciting revolts/culture missions for the cities that are hard to flip. In my Huayna game I had 6 cities surrounding Madrid and all cities were putting out 1000 cult/turn and they weren't able to flip Madrid, even when it was just working it owns tile only. If there are enough units in there it simply won't flip. So making her go bankrupt was almost the only way to get her to flip. I wasted 50 more turns and not so and still wasn't able to flip the damn city.

If you are playing small Pangea then settling the borders will be your biggest priority as well as agressive settling. There was a game of the month if I am not mistaken that did this. Maybe one of the guys here still know which game it was.
 
Yeah, Always Peace makes the game very tedious, since the AI can just stack troops in cities to lower revolt risk.

A more fun variant is that you can DoW, but your troops can never enter or capture a city. The actual city must always fall to your culture.
 
yknow what dude before you sink another month into a game, be aware that i and apparently others are less interested in this variant.

Why not try epic speed, or a non-EE, or something?

Yknow what it is I think, is that a 'peace only' game, where the AI is stupid enough to still create stacks... that just doesn't seem fun
 
Meeting the Neighbors, Invading Their Yards (Turns 1-224, Years 4000-1260 BC)

When half the readers think it's too easy, and the other half think it's too hard, that's a sign of a game worth playing. So I'll keep the map and get started.

Thebes goes 1SE for the +1 hammers on the plains hill. Even if it's worse lategame, my goal right now is to get my expansion started.

Spoiler :

And almost immediately, I meet Hannibal. Excellent, I should be able to place some aggressive cities without running across the map.

Spoiler :



Other AIs: Mao, Wang Kon and Gilgamesh. Gilg is creative, and I quickly see how much more of a fight that lets him put up. It's hard to settle as close to him as it is to the other AIs.

Spoiler :

My opening: Worker, build 1.5 warriors while growing to size 2, work the 2 corns, worker, settler. Worker improves the 2 corns, then starts a mine until Bronze Working completes.

Spoiler :

I thought about shooting for religions, but I don't think that's necessary. A holy city is +4 culture per turn, which is the same as working an artist. Past the very early game, it won't matter, and you won't flip cities in the very early game anyway.

Later on this turnset, I realize the main value is denying the AI any holy cities (and if possible, denying them any religion at all). Still, given how pressed my economy is this turnset, I think skipping religion was the right call.

So my first techs are Mining --> Bronze Working, so I can chop out settlers.

A shot of the land:

Spoiler :

That's Mao in the NW and Gilgamesh in the SW. I'm in the NE. Wang Kon is further West, and Hannibal is off screen to the SE.

3055: Bronze Working completes. My workers start chopping.

Spoiler :

If I were not Spiritual, this would be the right time to swap (because my workers keep going, and they're putting in most of the work). But when playing Spiritual, it's best to hold off until you actually want to whip, because sometimes Slavery costs 1 GPT more than the default.

Also, note the copper in Thebes. I so want to axe rush Hannibal.

I think about growing 1 more to use the copper, but I really want a city right on Hannibal's borders. So I stick to the settler, chop him out, chop a worker out, then grow.

Next tech: Mysticism, then Masonry. I want Stonehenge.

Wang Kon gets Buddhism. A bit later, Hannibal gets Hinduism, with Carthage as the holy city. If I'd beelined religions, I could have gotten both, but then I couldn't chop settlers.

2830: I found Carthage-N, directly North of Carthage.

Spoiler :

The plan: With stone, Stonehenge is only 3 chops. I'll have one worker pre-chop forests in Carthage-N, another road between my cities (which will also give me more commerce), then help the third quarry the marble. Should get me a fast Stonehenge to crush Carthage.

In Thebes, I change my mind about growing, and chop another settler right away. (I have extra worker turns while researching Masonry).

Spoiler :


You can see the workers: One mining copper, one roading to Carthage-N, and one chopping.

He'll grab a wedge city in the West.

2430 BC: I wind up going 1S of the cow:

Spoiler :


It's right on the borders of Mao's city to the North, and as close as I can get to Gilgamesh's capital. This shot was taken a few turns later, but it gives the best view of all the cities.

Also, my scout finds some islands. Looks like it might be a significant landmass:

Spoiler :

After the turnset though, I open world builder to make the WB save, it turns out it's only 5 tiles or so. Shouldn't interfere with my domination plans. (I couldn't help but notice on the minimap, and it's pointless to pretend I don't know).

Thebes cranks out another settler to grab this spot between Gilgamesh and Mao. Hopefully, it'll also keep an open channel to Wang Kon in the West.

Spoiler :

(I realize later that I can just open borders and walk a settler through, but at the time I was worried about being sealed in).

2280: Stonehenge in Carthage-N. Now it has 9 culture per turn, vs Carthage's 5.

Spoiler :

My next tech is Pottery. I think about Animal Husbandry, but the pigs is covered in jungle, and I really need commerce, not food / production. These city maintenance costs are killing me. As it turns out, though, I hardly use cottages, and the granaries don't have a huge impact, so probably going straight for AH-->Writing would have been stronger.

To get some cash, I put Thebes on The Great Wall, and Carthage-N on The Pyramids. Strictly for failgold.

2160: Mao grabs another city right next to the spot I want:

Spoiler :


This is just North of Cow-W.

I'm lucky. It's just far enough away. This city will pressure all 3 cities. I found it next turn.

Founding the city sets me to 0 GPT at 0% research. And I don't even have Pottery. Ouch.

Spoiler :

I make a road between the two Western cities, and the trade route puts me back in the black. Still, my research rate crawls for the rest of this turnset.

But that doesn't stop the expansion. There's a spot to the South with gold that I can safely grab.

1900: S Gold founded. It applies decent pressure to Hannibal's cities, too.

Spoiler :

That's the end of my expansion for a little bit. Thebes goes back to making failgold, until 1830, when:

Spoiler :

I never thought I'd get the wonder. Do I want The Great Wall? A Great Spy would be nice, but what I really need right now is failgold. So I swap my wonders, putting Carthage-N on The Great Wall and Thebes on The Pyramids.

In the West, Cow-W is starting to flip tiles. It claims a wet corn from Gilgamesh. Creative is so convenient.

Spoiler :

Somewhere in here, Mao completes writing, and we open borders for a few extra GPT. I'd hoped all the AIs would have writing by now, but it's Monarch difficulty and they're slow.

1620: Pottery completes. Very slow, but that's what happens when you're grabbing cities on the other side of the world. A bit later, I find out that I am, indeed, the least advanced:

Spoiler :

1540: Mao grabbed another city, moving East. So I do too, applying pressure to both that one and Shanghai:

Spoiler :


Mao's city is on the plains wine 3N.

1270: Gilgamesh also places another city. I plan my dotmap:

Spoiler :



But can I afford to place those cities? Isn't my economy already in last? (And on Monarch no less!) I've even cottaged some riverside plains in Cow-W to keep my economy hobbling along.

But more expansion is safe, because:

1260: Thebes completes The Pyramids.

Spoiler :

I'd planned to go for failgold, but with 2 priest slots everywhere, Representation is more valuable. And with cheap libraries, I'll be running 2 scientists soon, also. Which means I can expand all I want, since it's pretty easy to use failgold to break even on new cities.

Also, Carthage-N completes The Great Wall. I hadn't intended to, I really was just building it for failgold. There's no barbs, I don't particularly need Great Spies, and it's only 2 culture. Basically useless for this map. But at least it gets me another 400 failgold in Thebes. (That will come in next turn, pushing me over 1000 G).

I turn research back on, and turn on 4 priests. Writing in 7, and my specialists should take over research after that. Thebes will have another settler in 15, and Cow-W and Carthage-N will have settlers soon after. I should have a full dotmap soon.

Looking back on the turnset, I have a few thoughts:
  • This game will go much faster than my last one. No war and lower difficulty = much less micro.
  • I think grabbing religions would have been good. If I'd gone worker, settler, settler, and teched religions, I could have plopped holy cities all over the map. (I wouldn't even have needed Creative). Also, religions are on the way to Code of Laws, which is the gateway tech for artist-based culture.
  • Once again, failgold beats cottages. I made a few cottages in Cow-W, but barely worked them. Wasted worker turns. (Fortunately, since I don't need troops, I have plenty of workers).
Goals for next turnset:
  • Claim the remaining dots.
  • Once I can open borders, see about wedging a city somewhere in Wang Kon's backyard.
  • Tech to Code of Laws. (Courthouses and Caste System artists).
Also, I've added a worldbuilder save to the first post, if you'd like to shadow the game.
 
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