SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[unclethrill]

With that said, I suggest that we do NOT use the Edit function (unless it's a typo or some other minor change) because these changes can easily be missed.

I agree with this completely especially with the mega-long posts.

 

[unclethrill]

Dhoomstriker, you have us all over the map now. At first, we were all convinced that diplo was the way to go. Now, you've been playing with us devil:) and some of us are now leaning toward a Cultural victory. I think that playing Devil's Advocate is a good thing since it challenges our assumptions and forces us to think about the issue from all angles.

However, we need to pick a VC soon so that we can start putting together our high-level strategy -> mid-term plans -> PPP. I hope the Crown Attorney can convice us that either a) Diplo is in fact the winning path for this game or b) the Devil was right.

I look forward to seeing the Crown Attorney plead the case because it will take a heck of a closing argument to convince me that culture is not the way to go (I hate diplo anyway).

 

[Irgy]

Well firstly, thank you Dhoomstriker. It's been so long since I've had such a well structured and thorough rebuttal that I'd forgotten what it felt like. Don't get me wrong, it feels good, I'm funny that way. I'd much rather be wrong and learn something than, for instance, right and never convince anyone.

I conceed the points about the importance of being the population leader, and about avoiding Vassals. If we declare war on someone then I guess we should just leave them with one (preferably off-shore) shoddy city.

On Emperor, we'd have a pretty fair shot at one of the first religions, since we start by working a +1 Commerce square (a Corn on the River).

Well, I did an experiment. 10 games Epic, Emporer, random starts, all working +1 commerce. Researched Polytheism, and made a note of the date when Buddhism was founded. The results?
We get hinduism in 6/10 games, buddhism in 4/10. Most of the time (8/10) one went quick but the other didn't.

Personally I don't find that risk acceptable at all.

I do accept the overall strategy though, which is why...

But, have hope and faith! There is an alternative, best-of-both worlds approach:
Tech Agriculture -> Monotheism -> a couple of Worker techs -> Confucianism -> Theology -> Philosophy (and possibly skip Divine Right, as Islam usually doesn't spread that well).
We'd need to make either Hinduism or Buddhism the world's religion, with the other one belonging to our "targeted AI opponent" in a Diplo vote.

I am perfectly happy with that tech path

I would follow it up with Paper->Education->Liberalism. More on that later.

Don't forget about my stated option of settling 1E. Moving 1E would pick up the Plains Hills square to the SE + SE...

I am of the opinion that this SE+SE square is a peak. Mitchum: Did you consider that option?

I'm generally reluctant to spend a turn without a clear benefit like a resource to pick up, or a plains hill to provide free early hammers.

What Resources do you think could be on 2 Plains, 1 Grassland, and 1 Grassland Forest square (the only relevant squares revealed by sending the Warrior 1NW) that could make up for our capitol only have 2 Hills squares, with neither of said Hills squares being on a River?

To be honest I don't really expect to see anything there. It's just the only potential settling square the warrior can really reveal some information about. It's either that or look at a grassland hill to the E or to the S

Assuming that we played a game where we did not focus on grabbing religions, why not go for an Astronomy beeline? Wouldn't getting access to foreign religions be very important? Wouldn't Astronomy help a ton with REXing off-continent? Wouldn't Astronomy ASAP help us to start getting Open Borders and Resource Trading bonuses that much earlier?

If you recall our practice game, the tech path calls for avoiding Meditation, Philosophy, and Education until after we've bulbed Astronomy, but that path works surprisingly well in most non-Pangea games. It even fits with my idea of a Monotheism beeline, with the exception of letting an AI get Taosim and us putting a priority on spamming Hinduism or Buddhism to the Taoist founder as soon as we meet said founder.

The more that I think about it, we were on the right track with our practice game's Astronomy beeline. Mix that together with a bit more religious beelining and I think that we'll have a winning tech path!

Oxford is not needed for a Diplo game IF you get early Astronomy. The +25% bonus from early (cheaper-than-Universities) Observatories plays a big role in this approach. My GOTM 52 Diplo win listed above was a game where I did not build Oxford until after I built The United Nations.

Some points for Education over Astronomy:
* We're philosophical, so we get +100% production on universities, making them cheaper than observatories.
* Oxford in the beaurocracy capital is more useful than the 25% bonus from either universities or observatories.
* Via Astronomy We'll probably miss the free tech from Liberalism. That free tech might even be Astronomy, it's certainly not unheard of.
* Astronomy is much further out of the way of the religeous techs. Metal casting, machinery, optics, astronomy costs more than paper, education.
* In the previous game, we could just about stop teching once we got astronomy. In this game, assuming diplo victory, we need to get all the way to Mass Media. Or even for culture, we want to get to Liberalism sooner rather than detouring to Astronomy.
* The astronomy beeline for the practise game skips Civil Service and therefore Beaurocracy. This hurts research and probably also wonder production.

Overall Dhoomstriker I'm happy to conceed any matters of judgement to your greatly superior experience, but I hope you accept that I'll argue to the death until I'm convinced otherwise


Just one side point: If we're going to look at or refer to past games, can we entirely avoid looking at games with significantly different settings. Particularly different difficulty settings in relation to founding religeons, and different map sizes and speeds in relation to dates (even relative dates). If these differences exist, then those games muddy the issue much more than they provide useful data. I'm not referring to anything in particular here just putting it out there.

I'm still convinced diplo is the potentially stronger option, for all that I agree it's riskier and more difficult. The question to me is still whether we're playing to have a chance at winning or to finish in the middle safely? It's a genuine question, not some sort of inspirational rhetorical statement or something. Personally I would get a lot more out of a mangled attempt at what could have been an excellent diplomatic win than a successful stoll into a reasonably good culture game. But that's just my opinion.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Your scenario is different and it indicates another cons over Diplo. I try to explain.
We have a small city where we build the UN. This city:
- will take forever to build that wonder, because even if we burn a GE there, he will not contribute much due to city size.
- has to be near the cultural borders of the hated AI, otherwise this will never accept a city surrounded by our or by another AI culture, nor a city too faraway from him, mainly if said AI is on another continent (provided there is another continent).

Okay, it is clear that you won't accept my "under certain conditions" comment in regards to when this scenario is viable and that I will have to detail what those conditions are just to convince you that they are very easily achievable.

Here are some interesting points:
1. The easiest scenario is to capture an AI's city. They love to take their own cities back as gifts, or any cities with some of their culture in it. Such a city will be large and thus a single Great Engineer will complete most of the United Nations Wonder. Further, it will have enough production to finish off the Wonder quickly.
2. We can declare war on 2 AIs as many times as we want. AIs who will not accept a city in peacetime will almost always accept a city in wartime, especially if it has some of their own culture in it, but often you don't even need this requirement and you often don't even need said city to be near them. So, if we have a war declaration available to us or if our "target AI United Nations opponent" is one of the two AIs upon whom we have previously declared war, we can declare war on them, win a little bit (so that they'll want to stop dragging the war on), and then easily gift them the city with the UN in it.
3. A third alternative is to gift the UN city to an AI during peacetime that is reasonably well-liked. Then, we bribe any AIs that still like this AI (Pleased or above) to declare war on them. Obviously, you'd need the right kind of AIs to be able to do so. Alternatively, you'd get our "target AI" to switch religions. Then, we'd declare war on said target AI and bring in as many other AIs into the war as possible. An AI at war with one of the Diplomatic candidates will not vote for them, so we'll cruise to victory.

One argument you can't change: Diplo is RNG-dependant, Culture is player-dependant.
Jesusin demonstrated that a good cultural game can have a better date than a good Diplo game. Can you do the same?

The only RNG-dependent factor is the initial like/dislike of an AI towards us and other AIs. It's very easy to find out shortly after meeting an AI (if you keep careful notes) whether they will be an easy or difficult candidate for being your "voting ally."

Since we're delaying our war declarations in the Diplo scenario, we'll be able to single-out one or two of the AIs that will be hard for us to please and make them our "war declaration targets." We only really need one such target in order to unite other AIs against them and in order to give them the UN city, so we could even afford one early war, as Unclethrill seemed to want to try. By giving the UN city as part of a peace treaty, we won't get the -4 "You Traded with our Worst Enemies" Diplo modifier from the other AIs, as the other AIs will see this "gift" as a peace concession and not a gift.

Basically, it is SO SIMPLE to set up a scenario with a successful gifting of the UN city to our target AI that there is no reason not to do so in our game (assuming that we go for a Diplo win).

 

[Irgy]

I had a quick look at past BOTMs. There's a mix of results as far as fastest victory diplo vs culture. It's about half and half, slightly in favour of faster diplo. It's muddied somewhat by the variations in settings, and probably also the fact that there isn't always anyone going for one or the other victory.

In the hall of fame, for the settings we're on - Epic, Standard map (presumably) and Emporer, the fastest culture date is 1708 AD, while the fastest diplo date is 1575 AD. That's a big difference, but still again it might just be small numbers and biased HOF maps.

Overall not all that conclusive, but leaning slightly to diplomatic.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Some points for Education over Astronomy:
* We're philosophical, so we get +100% production on universities, making them cheaper than observatories.

An absolutely excellent point! Cheap Universities are easily whippable, meaning that a fast Oxford is not only possible but very useful. That's another point in favour of a Diplo game, because a fast Oxford won't help a Cultural game--what do you have left to research after Education (the tech that lets you build Oxford)... all of... Liberalism! That's it. You take Nationalism with Liberalism. Optionally, you can research Printing Press, but any further research has been proven to be not justifiable in a Cultural game.

Thus, a Cultural game under these game conditions with the Philosophical Trait will be no faster than any other game. The Philosophical Trait will not help our Cultural game--any extra Great People production--and no, it's not doubled production by the way--will be "used up" by our Eldine requirement, while the cheap Universities are all but useless. A 200 Hammer University that costs only 100 Hammers and gives +3 Culture is barely better than a 90 Hammer Monastary that gives +2 Culture--it's slightly better, but there are only 3 cities which can benefit and each can only build 1 University, not as many as 7 Monastaries, so the Philosophical Trait is completely WASTED in a Cultural game.

If we go for a Cultural game, however, Diplo-chasing teams will get to Diplo EVEN FASTER than normal, due to the faster Universities and faster Oxford. Further, Philosophical helps getting more Great People earlier on--not much of a difference for a Cultural game, since you often Bomb a lot of your Great Artists (i.e. using them near the end of the game and thus getting Great People earlier doesn't mean as much for a Cultural game), but this point is VERY helpful for getting Great Scientists for Education, Physics, Electricity, etc in a Diplo game--techs that are along the Mass Media line. An earlier Great Scientist does help here, whereas one obtained a bit later in a non-Philosophical game won't be able to help you as much with tech Lightbulbing. Philosophical also means that we'll more easily grab an early Great Engineer for the United Nations. So, with Diplo games being completed even faster than normal, it will be hard to justify a mediocre Cultural date competing.

* Oxford in the beaurocracy capital is more useful than the 25% bonus from either universities or observatories.
* Via Astronomy We'll probably miss the free tech from Liberalism. That free tech might even be Astronomy, it's certainly not unheard of.
* Astronomy is much further out of the way of the religeous techs. Metal casting, machinery, optics, astronomy costs more than paper, education.
* In the previous game, we could just about stop teching once we got astronomy. In this game, assuming diplo victory, we need to get all the way to Mass Media. Or even for culture, we want to get to Liberalism sooner rather than detouring to Astronomy.
* The astronomy beeline for the practise game skips Civil Service and therefore Beaurocracy. This hurts research and probably also wonder production.

All of these arguments are convincing (but it's the cheap Universities that matter the most) and I'd be fine with going for a more typical Civil Service to Liberalism approach (as opposed to an Astronomy beeline), regardless of whether we go for Cultural or Diplo.

I'm still convinced diplo is the potentially stronger option, for all that I agree it's riskier and more difficult.

Is it really riskier?

A Cultural game leaves us quite probably not adopting a religion, as we can't field a military and chase after Wonders and other cultural buildings effectively, leaving us out of the Organized Religion loop. That's a big sacrifice to make. Riskier would be a Cultural game, where we adopt a conflicting religion and risk being declared upon without a military (and without plans to build a military even if the case where we get "declared upon for free").

If we plan to gift the United Nations city and if we plan to get into a couple of wars, then the Diplo game becomes immensely easier--we'll have an army to take on our opponents, we'll be able to pick fights on our terms instead of theirs, and we'll have more cities that can easily pay for themselves and then some, giving us a strong tech rate and a strong empire.

A Cultural game requires a lot of "balance" of peace, trading, and diplomacy just to avoid being declared upon, and at Emperor level, you often miss Wonders that you wouldn't miss at Monarch level or below. The AIs are JUST fast enough to consistently beat you to Wonders, so we can only plan to get 1 Ancient Era Wonder and then probably have to pick between the Apostolic Palace and Sistine Chapel--even if we CAN get both of them, then we're likely stuck missing out on all other Wonders that are available up until then. A Cultural game where you can't declare war on a lot of AIs and "screw up the AIs" early on with Worker steals, etc, is one where you often miss out on Wonders. It's usually great to get The Oracle and Stonehenge in you first two Legendary Cities right around the same time as each other, and the best ways to do so are to declare war on AIs that like to build Wonders (which we can't afford to do due to our limited war declarations) or to play on lower difficulty levels than Emperor. So, it becomes a bigger risk to play a Cultural game on Emperor level when we are limited with our war declarations, as obtaining those Wonders via production is far more important. In a Diplo game, if you really want a Wonder like The Great Lighthouse or The Pyramids, you can capture it, so there isn't much risk in letting it go--just target that AI for our war declaration. But, for a Cultural game, the whole point of the Wonders is to be the builder of them, as you only get the Cultural points for Wonders that you build, not that you capture.

A cultural game has us being weak near the end of the game, hoping not to be declared upon. For all my posturing about being able to be on good terms with many AIs, all we need is ONE AI to declare war on us while we're in 100% Cultural Slider mode, and we're done for. We'd have to greatly sacrifice our empire's advantages, such as having our matured Cottages pillaged, whip units or draft them, and possibly fight with Macemen against Knights, Muskets, Trebuchets, or even Riflemen. Not a pretty picture. It's a lot of risk to take on, unless you happen to draft a lot of peaceful opponents that like you from the beginning. And, if we have a lot of peaceful opponents that like us from the beginning, it becomes a bigger risk to go for a Cultural game, as those going for a Diplo win will have an even easier time of getting a few of the AIs to vote for them!

So, no, I would think that with a good UN-gifting strategy and a properly planned-out "2 enemy AIs to be declared upon by other AIs" approach, we'll have a far less riskier game playing for a Diplo win. Culture is about sitting around and hoping that no one notices you. Diplo is about going out there and showing the world who's boss and gathering AIs to your banner while wiping out those who stand in our way. The Diplo option is clearly less risky in terms of surviving a war declaration--one which we may be unable to avoid if certain Religious Nuts are in the game, such as Montezuma, Isabella, and a few of the BTS AIs, just to name a few.


Is it really more difficult to win a Diplo game?

How easy is it to win a cultural game? Well, a lot of your game depends upon luck. You can't go an conquer a religion like you can with a Diplo game, as you won't have the military to do so. Thus, you have to avoid spreading your religion early on, as you'll have to hope and pray that your "religionless for 200 years" city eventually grabs one of the AIs' religions. We've already proven that we can't get all religions founded, so we'll need to rely on some spreading from the AIs, especially if we want to adopt one that will reduce the number of war declarations on us. A lot of your Wonder builds are also luck-dependent, and let me tell you, missing one of your planned Wonders in the 500 BC to 500 AD Era can easily set your victory date back by 20 turns--missing more than one even moreso, and it's easy to miss these Wonders as you aren't out there kicking butt and taking names.

I've already laid out a few strategies for approaching a Diplo game, but honestly, with only 6 AI opponents, 2 of them being declared upon by war is probably all that we really want to declare on, anyway. Declaring on more would just give us too great of a chance of "You declared war on our friend" negative Diplo modifiers, and really, we could probably be the first in land area without any wars with a Diplo-based-expansion path. A Cultural path requires you to invest so much infrastructure into 3 main cities and sacrifice everything else just for these 3 cities such that you'll fall behind in tech, power, and adaptability. Also, we'll want a few AIs to vote for us in a Diplo game, so honestly, 2 AIs being declared upon by us is about the ideal number anyway. It's not a difficult proposal and that restriction isn't a big risky one, either.

A Cultural game requires a lot of luck with Great People, too. Either you get the Great Artist Wonders exclusively, which means probably not chasing after religions and not getting them to spread to you, or else you'll probably get a lot of the wrong Great People and will require a building-based (i.e. Wonder-based) Cultural game to win. A Great Artist type of game is generally a bit faster than a Wonder-based one, but both are hard to pull off if the AIs are competing with you for the Wonders.

You really need to luck out in finding Stone, Marble, AND Copper nearby for a Cultural game, otherwise the religion or religions that you found become almost useless. In a Diplo game, you can afford to have a bigger empire so you can take these Resources by force or expand father away to get them, so that you can use them for "surgical builds" of preferred Wonders, such as getting Stone simply for the University of Sankore and Oxford University. With a Cultural game, we'll need the luck of having these Resources available early on for early-Wonder production (later-game Wonders don't double their Cultural production so they are often not worth their cost), plus we'll need those Resources for our Cathedrals.

Simply building the Cathedrals is such a huge investment at a time where any other victory condition is specializing cities to build Markets, Universities, and Courthouses... Cultural games have to delay these buildings in favour of building Cathedrals at the worst time possible. Throw in the chance that we don't end up with one or several of our religions' Cathedral Resources and a Cultural game goes from being challenging to downright difficult.

Also, consider that a Diplo game gives us the freedom to spam the Apostolic Palace's religion, which is a Wonder that we probably won't get, regardless of our chosen Victory Condition--it's not only a Wonder which is hard to get, it is an expensive Wonder that has no "half-priced Resource." Not only will we have trouble finding the production to spare to spam this religion to avoid losing to an Apostolic Palace Diplo victory condition, we won't have a big city base in a Cultural game, meaning that we'll be more vulnerable to that Wonder's requests than we would in a Diplo game, even in the case where all of our cities manage to get that religion.

In fact, we could end up losing a Cultural game by having the Apostolic Palace force us to declare war on an AI at an inopportune time, while with a Diplo game, we'd have the spare production available to spam the correct Missionaries ASAP and we'd have more cities to spam it to, so that we can completely avoid having to declare war from an Apostolic Palace resolution.

Further, Missionary spread is based highly upon how many Religions already exist in a city. A city with 0 Religions in it will have a 100% chance (or as close enough to 100% as failure to be a negligible option, should someone manage to prove that it's a 99.99% chance) to have a Missionary successfully spread a religion to it. In our Diplo game where we are founding many religions, we'll have little need to spread many of the religions, for fear of their popularity causing them to be spread world-wide... we'll want to stagnate as many religions as possible. Thus, most of our cities will probably have 1 to 2 religions each and thus once we obtain the Apostolic Palace's religion, we'll be able to spread it easily with little failure from Missionaries. On the other hand, for a Cultural game, we'll probably have 3+ religions in each city, making many of our future Missionary-spreading attempts become failures. A couple of early failures at spreading the Apostolic Palace's religion can cause a chain-effect of not being able to spread that religion quickly enough and thus being at the whim of whatever the Apostolic Palace Resident decides to have us do. So, a Cultural game on Emperor (where it's tough to get the Apostolic Palace) and where we are spreading several religions (since we'll want to win as early as possible in our Cultural game and doing so requires having a lot of religions in each of our cities) can make the game very risky when we first get the Apostolic Palace religion, particularly because unlike a regular Cultural game where you can basically ignore an "AI-pile-up on the heathen" type of war declaration, as the target AI will already be beset by war from other AIs, here we will have to worry about said situation, as that extra war declaration will count against us in Eldine's eyes. So, yes, a Cultural Victory approach becomes far more riskier for an Apostolic-Palace-induced undesired war declaration or loss.


The Spiritual Trait will help us a ton in a Diplo game, too, as it will other teams. About all it will do for a Cultural game is shave off a couple of turns when switching Civics--the same bonus that a Diplo game gets, so we won't save turns here. In fact, a Diplo game will normally involve far more turns of anarchy, as a Cultural game only relies on a few set Civics, while a Diplo game can have you switching a lot. Thus, in this particular game, our Diplo competition from other teams will benefit a lot more from the Spiritual Trait's no Anarchy than will our Cultural game. Yes, Temples are cheaper as Spiritual, but a Cultural game, that benefit hardly matters--Temples are normally easy to build and because they provide happiness, whipping them is usually the easiest way to build them. It's the Cathedrals that are hard to build, but Spiritual gets no bonus in building them. Really, I'd rather have an Industrious Leader over a Spiritual Leader for a Cultural game, as you hardly switch Civics at all in a Cultural game (Hereditary Rule is good till the end, Bureaucracy and Free Speech are all that you'll need for the next category, Slavery and possibly a "free switch" to Caste System at the same time as switching to Philosophy, you probably will stick with a Decentralized Economy {no Civic Switch}, and Organized Religion most of the game, with the possibility of Philosophy during a Golden Age or once near the end). Those few Civic switches really don't add up to a lot, while you'll be switching all over the place for a Diplo game--Free Market and State Property are often used for your Economy, you might use Nationalism to get a mid-to-late game army, you'll probably research up to the Republic and end up using it, you'll probably switch to Emancipation (a Cultural game won't need to waste a turn of anarchy to switch to it, since 100% Cultural Rate means that no one in your empire is pissed off that you aren't using Emancipation), and often Theocracy or Vassalage at times get used for your war efforts, switching back to Bureaucracy and Organized Religion, as appropriate. And that's not even counting the Diplo game's Civic switches to get the shared Civic bonuses with other AIs.

Sooooo... a team going for a Diplo win will get a faster-than-normal win due to being Spiritual, while a Cultural game probably won't be sped up much at all--consider that an alternative trait such as Cultural (for cheap Theatres and Libraries) or Industrious (for cheap Wonders) or Financial (for more base Cottage Culture) or even Expansionist (for cheap, early Granaries and cities that can grow a bit bigger--remember that Happiness is not an issue for a Cultural game, so Health is your city-size-limiting factor) are all going to provide a benefit to a Cultural game, which would be similar to the benefit of getting cheaper Temples and a small few number of turns of no Anarchy, thus the Spiritual Trait really doesn't get you a faster-than-average Cultural game.

Thus, we have 2 Leader Traits that speed up a Diplo game, while both are sub-optimal for a Cultural game, giving our competition a further edge on us if we go for a Cultural game.

The question to me is still whether we're playing to have a chance at winning or to finish in the middle safely?

If a Cultural game were that simple, then sure, we could go for it. But the fact is that a Cultural game is laiden with risks--missing founding religions and missing religions spreading to you, missing Wonders that must be built by you whereas other victory conditions can capture said Wonders, missing out big-time if we get religions that correspond to Resources that are not placed near our starting location, the risk of having one AI hate us enough to declare war on us--we will certainly have a low enough power level that simply enough "hate" on an AI's part will be enough to be declared upon, while in a Diplo game with more land and more units, the AI might also fail the dice roll check which looks at our relative power ratios and reduces the chances of being declared upon the higher our power level is. Power level isn't just from military units--it also comes from having a larger empire, which we won't be able to afford in a Cultural game. So, there's not much safe about a Cultural game--it will be an uphill battle and even when we're close to winning, a belligerent AI that asks us to cancel deals that we keep refusing can quickly become pissed off enough to declare war on us instead of their previous worst enemy.

Plus, we'd have to go out of our way in a Cultural game to do stuff that you normally do not do: research up to Astronomy. That's sacrilege in a Cultural game, as you don't have the Research power to do so and you really can't plan to take that tech with Liberalism, either, as you won't have anywhere close to the pre-requisites at that time. In this game, we WILL need to go out and capture a Barb City (or raze it) which I suspect will be NEAR but not ON the Fur Resource. How can you go for a Cultural game if you have to keep dumping what should be your Cultural Slider points into more Research? The answer is that you can't. Research in a Cultural game after grabbing Liberalism can often take you 50 turns per tech. That's how long it took me to grab Democracy in one such game and I often take that long to grab Printing Press. If we go for 100% Gold and then 100% Deficit Science Research to get up to Astronomy, we'll delay our Cultural Victory by a good 30 to 40 turns easily, and if we research up to Astronomy the hard way and take more than 50+ turns to do so, the AIs will capture the Barb city first.

We MUST be the first to the Barb city if we don't want to be forced into another war declaration and a Cultural game does not allow us the flexibility to research Astronomy ourselves and to get a date that is close to or just before 1700 AD. The math is simple: by needing to go out and grab the Fur city (which for sure won't be easily grabbed from our continent otherwise they wouldn't have made a big deal about it), we are forced to research Astronomy, which for me is a big no-no in a Wonder-based Cultural victory game. You MIGHT pull it off in a game where you spam Great Artist Bombs, but even then you're pushing things a lot and we don't have such freedom in our game, due to having to give up 4 of our Great People.

In fact, a Diplo game needs what...
1 Great Scientist for an Academy
1 Great Engineer for the United Nations
The odd extra Great Person to bulb a few techs can be helpful, but not required

A Cultural game usually uses 10 Great People in order to get a winning date around 1700 AD and you'll often need to use more Great People to beat that date.

Assuming that we get a lot of Great People, the Philosophical Trait is usually only good for an extra 4 or so Great People, and even less if we don't focus on getting Great People (it's not double the amount of Great People, as things like the National-Epic-doubling of Great People Points and Golden-Age-doubling of Great People Points get added side-by-side with the Philosophical Trait's doubling of Great People Points, instead of being multiplied against each other). So, our Philosophical Trait gets wasted in the Cultural game, meaning that compared to a different game with different Traits, we're actually further behind than an average Cultural game. The Diplo game, however, hardly needs that many Great People, so we'll have more than enough to "waste" 4 Great People without affecting our finishing date at all.

EDIT: Consider that in a Philosophical game, when you focus on getting Great People, 16 Great People is about your maximum amount. So, losing 4 of those is a considerable chunk and there's no way that we'll be able to pull off a Cultural game much sooner than 1700 AD given the game's constraints, and even that date is going to take a lot of hard effort to achieve.

When you look at the evidence this way, this particular game's setup SCREAMS for us to play a Diplo game, while a Cultural game keeps getting slower and slower than average for just about each factor that you examine. Even if you can claim that the average Cultural game is as fast as the average Diplo game, this game will not have that effect (Cultural will be even slower than normal), due to all of the special constraints on the game and due to the fact that the Leader Traits are extremely in favour of a Diplo win but are worse than almost any other Leader Traits for a Cultural game, given the game's restrictions.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

(from Taipei airport)

How good is your Mandarin ability?


Most of my messages have had edits made to them, so I'll have to start relying on the Preview Message feature more or else start living with appearing to be wrong more of the time and not editing the mistakes that I spot immediately after authoring my messages.

EDIT: I really can't help myself. A lot of disambiguation occurs when I edit my long messages. So, you will get a lot more out of my messages by reading the forum's text about 30 minutes after I initially author the messages than you will by reading the emailed original text. An ALTERNATIVE way to get to read all of my disambiguations and typo fixes is to change your subscription option to not email you so frequently--I get my updates daily, for example.

EDIT: On another note, we seem to be leading the pack in terms of the number of messages authored in our team's thread...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'll be watching this from the sideline. I'll maintain my thread viewing lockdown until it's confirmed that you guys aren't in a major player shortage though my time is somewhat limited these days anyways.

I would ask that you take on one of two approaches:
a) Restrict yourself to ONLY reading our thread. Period. That way, even if you can't play, your odd comment can be helpful and it will not break the rules for you to give said comments
b) Don't write any more messages in our thread. This way, you can feel free to read other teams' threads at any point in the future, as you will have promised yourself to stay quiet here, meaning that you won't be accidentally helping us to cheat--which is something that we definitely do not want to have happen

I'd prefer if you stuck with option a), as we'd love to have your input, but I ask that you pick one of those options NOW and stick to it. Cool?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Roster:
...
Havr
...
Tata

BLubmuz, have you been able to contact Tata?

Havr, please feel free to throw in comments on any issue at any time. Whether you are quoting something that you don't understand or want to add a point to or whether you have a new idea, please just jump in and start sharing! I'd much rather have to re-explain a point and thus help to further convince the team of a decision than to have you stay quiet for fear of sounding stupid. In my book, there are no stupid questions.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

A request for you:
Please quote or list your top 3 favourite reasons (they can be reasons that I listed or any other reasons) for why you think that we should go for a Cultural game. If the Crown Attorney's random comments so far haven't been enough to convince you back to the Diplo path, then he'll make a more official appearance to properly address each of your points with reasons for why a Diplo game is superior in each of those cases (or at least I'll try my best to do so!).

If, instead, I have (or if someone else has, such as yourself) already convinced you of Diplo's superior merits, you can simply say that Diplo owns Cultural for this game, in your eyes, and I won't bother trying to convince you guys further.

 

[Tata]

Hello
I found yesteday that I'm assigned to your team.
I would realy like to join the game and learn from you (since I'm an mediocre monarch player).
Is there something to read more about how to participate?
thanks
you convinced me for the diplo option.

 

[BLubmuz]

Hello
I found yesteday that I'm assigned to your team.
I would realy like to join the game and learn from you (since I'm an mediocre monarch player).
Is there something to read more about how to participate?
thanks
you convinced me for the diplo option.

Nice to see you too, now the team is complete.

You must first read all the threads i linked here in that same post there're also our team rules, yet to be completed, but you can have a good picture.
Please, if you're new to GotM read carefully mainly the 5 threads i linked there.

 

[BLubmuz]

A request for you:
Please quote or list your top 3 favourite reasons (they can be reasons that I listed or any other reasons) for why you think that we should go for a Cultural game. If the Crown Attorney's random comments so far haven't been enough to convince you back to the Diplo path, then he'll make a more official appearance to properly address each of your points with reasons for why a Diplo game is superior in each of those cases (or at least I'll try my best to do so!).

If, instead, I have (or if someone else has, such as yourself) already convinced you of Diplo's superior merits, you can simply say that Diplo owns Cultural for this game, in your eyes, and I won't bother trying to convince you guys further.

Reading all your posts as the Devil's Advocate for Culture and now this page where you sustain Diplo doesn't help my decision.

When i asked you to join i was impressed by your accurate list of your skills on culture and diplo. I would probably have invited you even if this had been a Space game, since i was looking for good players and when one is good, is good, period.

I had the pleasure to have a top player like WastinTime in this team for 2 games, whith whom i'm still in good relations (BTW when he gently declined my invitation for this one due to time constraints he suggested me to go for Diplo).
But even his great skills won't be able to avoid the bad luck we have in both those games, in the form of early war declarations by 2 neighbours.

I have this reasoning for this game and its particular constraints:

The earliest date wins. No matter the VC​

with this in mind and looking to the HoF tables we can consider Diplo the fastest option. But:
WotM 28 fastest culture: 1685 (Dhoomstriker) Fastest diplo: 1742 (ngraner42)
BotM 26 fastest culture: 1760 (ngraner42) Fastest diplo: 1650 (Vynd)
BotM 25 fastest culture: 1720 (Dhoomstriker) Fastest diplo: 1565 (Jove)
BotM 20 fastest culture: 1635 (Grey Cardinal) Fastest diplo: 1804 (Marshall Wp)

Most of of the times Diplo beats Culture. Not always. Sure that in BotM20 Grey Cardinal decided to go for Culture instead of his loved Space. Probably if he went for Diplo his date had been great too.
There's also the Jesusin's cultural game in Small map which beaten Diplo by 1 turn.

Comparing those games doesn't help much my decision.

Reading your posts doesn't help me too. The only way i can think of a Diplo is Diplomation. Every other way i know is too much RNG dependant for my taste. And even too much kiss-the-axx-to-the-AI dependant for my disposition.

Can be this decision taken after we know more of the map? Mainly resources like stone and marble and close neighbours.

Do we need to target the VC by the first turn or we're not penalized if we wait some 2-3 turnsets? I know it's preferable decide now, but many of your points in favour of Diplo can fall if:
- we have marble and stone, copper will arrive almost for sure
- we have 2 or more warmongers as neighbours

In fact, if i got it right, our start will not differ much or at all for the early TSs. It will start diverge long after them, but of course we need to know where we'll go in about that time.

To make it short, my proposal is to post-pone the decision on the VC when we know something more of the map.

We also need to set a dead line to have the first TS submitted. I propose Friday 30th.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Can be this decision taken after we know more of the map? Mainly resources like stone and marble and close neighbours.

Do we need to target the VC by the first turn or we're not penalized if we wait some 2-3 turnsets? I know it's preferable decide now, but many of your points in favour of Diplo can fall if:
- we have marble and stone, copper will arrive almost for sure
- we have 2 or more warmongers as neighbours

In fact, if i got it right, our start will not differ much or at all for the early TSs. It will start diverge long after them, but of course we need to know where we'll go in about that time.

To make it short, my proposal is to post-pone the decision on the VC when we know something more of the map.

Assuming that we go with my suggestion to chase after most of the religions, as most of you seem to like, and assuming that we are comfortable letting the AIs grab Buddhism and Hinduism but with us chasing after Monotheism immediately after researching Agriculture (trying for Hinduism immediately after Agriculture but completely not expecting to get it), then sure, we won't need to decide right away.

We won't be researching Writing (and thus not even Alphabet) for a little while, so only if an AI grabs Writing will we even be able to Open our Borders. Since we'd be playing the game with both victory conditions in mind, the first player that gets the chance to Open Borders (your BUFFY settings should be enable to give you this kind of a notification in light blue text in your Event Log), should stop play and consult the team on whether we should Open Borders. Early foreign Trade Routes will be important, but if we don't have a Trade Route connection, then Opening Borders may not be as straightforward a decision as in a normal game--i.e. we might not want to do it.

Further, whenever we have a Resource hooked up, and once we've connected our Civ's Trade Routes to foreign Civs' Trade Routes--usually by way of Rivers and the Sailing tech or by way of Roads--then the UP player will need to pause play for us to decide which Resources to trade away to which AIs, if any.

If we're happy with the Agrilcuture -> Polytheism -> Monotheism tech path, then the first biggest decision that will be different between Diplo and Cultural games will be where and when to settle Cities 2 and 3. For a Cultural game, we'll want to settle our first 3 cities early enough, without settling more cities for a while, but Cities 2 and 3 will have to be in Resource-rich locations that may not have Copper or Horse Resources. For a Diplo game, we don't care as much where we settle the cities, so, to play it safely, we'll have to stick with the Cultural game's requirement.

After Monotheism, if we want The Oracle, we'll need to next grab Priesthood, followed by Bronze Working (there aren't that many barren Hills to be Mined--the Forests will need to be removed in order to get enough production in our capitol). After that, we might consider Sailing or The Wheel for Trade Routes, possibly followed by Pottery -> Writing, Animal Husbandry -> Writing, or else straight to Writing. Writing will be required for the Theology-Oracle-slingshot, so the timing of when we can pop out The Oracle will be a factor.

For a Cultural game, we'd like to try to find Marble, if possible, and regardless of whether we find it, attempt to build The Parthenon--but we'd have to grab Aesthetics, so it would be a while in coming, anyway. A Diplo game would have us REXing, as the only useful Ancient Era Wonder after The Oracle for a Diplo game would possibly be The Great Lighthouse, which we'd need to found a Coastal city just to build.

If we manage to slingshot Christianity, then both paths (Diplo and Cultural) might be well served by chopping out the Apostolic Palace, as that early production boost (with the up-front cost of a very expensive Wonder) plus the ability to manipulate Diplomacy will make that Wonder a very worthwhile one to have. I'd still rather have a nearby AI build it for us, especially if they do so in a religion that we also have (we can switch between religions easily enough, due to being Spiritual, and as long as at least one of our cities has said religion, it doesn't matter which religion the AI builds the Apostolic Palace for), THUS, if we can Slingshot Christianity and if we are somewhat isolated from some of the AIs, Continent-style, then trading Christianity to one of our neighbours that has a similar religion as we have will be a stronger option (there are better Culture-per-Hammer buildings for a Cultural game).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

First turnset suggested build order, assuming that we go with the Agrilculture -> Hinduism -> Monotheism tech path:
Worker -> Warrior -> ?
We'll want to grow to Size 3 before starting on a Settler, and possibly grow to Size 4.
Size 3 = Corn, Corn, Plains Hills River square
Size 4 = Will there be anything else worth working before we get Bronze Working to improve the Forested Mines? If not, then a Settler at Size 3 is probably a good way to go.

Suggested initial Worker 1 moves
Worker 1 should Irrigate the 2 Corns and then Mine the Plains Hills River square, unless we somehow reveal a better square in our fat cross when we settle.

Early exploration suggestion:
Early exploration should be focused on finding good spots to settle nearby. If you come to the Coast, I'd say follow the Coast, so that we can see if there are any Seafood Resources there. Exposing the nearby hidden squares should be a priority over any other task.

As for the Coastal exploration, here's a tip to improve your gameplay, if you have the following layout:
C1 C2 C3
L1 L2 L3
L4 L5 L6

where C = Coast and L = Land

and where you are at L3 and plan to uncover hidden squares by walking towards L1, then you're better off going from L3 to L5 to L1, instead of L3 to L2 to L1, as L2 won't reveal any new water area, but moving to L5 gains us free exploration.

Early contact suggestions:
Meeting AIs early on is discouraged (although you can't control whether an AI's Scout comes to meet us), as we are tech beelining Monotheism and thus they won't have any techs that we can piggyback off of--instead, they will be able to piggyback off of our tech knowledge, should we meet them.

Upon meeting the first AI, stop playing your turnset and go into the Espionage menu. Assign a weighting putting all of our Espionage points towards that AI. If you meet 2 AI at the same time, save the game and stop play to consult with the team to see which AI should get 100% of our Espionage points, before you finish the current turn.

 

[havr]

Glad to see you, welcome aboard.
Good luck to you too in reading all our delirious.

Can you please tell us where are you from or at least your time zone?
And if you want a short introduction of yourself.

Hi,

Now getting to reading it... I have been busy the last couple of days.
It is quite a lot of discussions. I will give my inputs, whatever they are worth, once I read them all.

I have from Tel Aviv, Israel, so timezone is GMT+2

I like to play CIV, played all version since CIV-1 (so you can understand I am not very young). CIV-4 I played the least, so I am not even close to being a pro like you guys. I will give my inputs, but don't count on them too much

Anything else you want to know?

 

[unclethrill]

A request for you:
Please quote or list your top 3 favourite reasons (they can be reasons that I listed or any other reasons) for why you think that we should go for a Cultural game. If the Crown Attorney's random comments so far haven't been enough to convince you back to the Diplo path, then he'll make a more official appearance to properly address each of your points with reasons for why a Diplo game is superior in each of those cases (or at least I'll try my best to do so!).

If, instead, I have (or if someone else has, such as yourself) already convinced you of Diplo's superior merits, you can simply say that Diplo owns Cultural for this game, in your eyes, and I won't bother trying to convince you guys further.

1. I'm not bad at cultural games
2. I suck at diplo games
3. Don't really have a third reason after reading this explanation.

I am good with either choice. I like cultural games more than diplo games but it sounds like you are convinced of the merits of a diplo game and have enough experience to make a solid effort at this one even with all the weird stipulations.

At this point I think that the captain's choice is best. Can we wait one or 2 TS to see where we are and who the opponents are before we make a VC choice?

 

[havr]

OK, I read the posts, and was impressed with the discussions on the VC.
Dhoom made good arguments for both VCs, and made it hard to reach a decision

In general I am leaning to towards cultural.

I am not going to get into the arguments made fir both of them. There are just too many... the decision is not clear-cut and the discussion is going around in circles (although it is still useful).

Nevertheless, I did reach the following three simple conclusions from the discussion:
a) Diplo has a better potential in terms of speed.
b) Speedness in Diplo, especially with the crazy conditions of this game, is random. It is a much more complicated game. A lot of random factors. To fulfill the potential the game has to be played perfectly, and even then it is not sure and depends on luck!
c) Cultural has less random and unexpected factors. It will be much easier to execute perfectly. Potential is better fulfilled.

Summary: This game has very constricting conditions. This limits our maneuverability. Handling the many factors that involve in a diplo win may be hard. Cultural is less affected by constricting conditions.

 

[Irgy]

1. I'm not bad at cultural games
2. I suck at diplo games

This applies to me too, but it just makes me all the more keen to try diplo. I'm confident in being able to handle my share of it with the rest of the team's (particularly Dhoomstriker's it seems) experience to back me up.

 

[Mitchum]

Thus, a Cultural game under these game conditions with the Philosophical Trait will be no faster than any other game. The Philosophical Trait will not help our Cultural game--any extra Great People production--and no, it's not doubled production by the way--will be "used up" by our Eldine requirement, while the cheap Universities are all but useless. A 200 Hammer University that costs only 100 Hammers and gives +3 Culture is barely better than a 90 Hammer Monastary that gives +2 Culture--it's slightly better, but there are only 3 cities which can benefit and each can only build 1 University, not as many as 7 Monastaries, so the Philosophical Trait is completely WASTED in a Cultural game.

I agree that the benefit of the cheap universities is greatly reduced in a cultural game. However, I disagree with the assertion that the Philosophical trais is completely WASTED. All things being equal, a Philosophical leader will generate more great people. So, at the end of the game, we have n-4 great people to bomb, settle or bulb. A non-Philosophical leader will have m-4 great people where n > m. So to say that the trait is "completely WASTED" is not quite right.

I'm not arguing for a cultural victory over diplo. I'm just arguing for arguments sake...

(from San Diego )