So Diplo works the way I was hoping it might. I didn't want to let out my secret plan in the main thread. You can get 100 points without ever calling for a vote, but you would need to tech all the way to the MassM for 100. With AP alone, I think we can get 58 points. (25 leader + 33 votes) Note: the second you build the AP and become leader of it, you instantly get the points for how many votes you would theoretically get. If we tech to MassM and build UN, then it's an easy 100...if you call that tech path easy. Maybe we just go for 58 points here.
Is an AP victory with various points added up from the other areas a possible fastest way to win this game? Or are we on the war path as always? I'd hate for some other team to beat us by getting an early AP and figure out a way to get enough points.
Updated the Excel spreadsheet for this. The extra 8 points make a difference if we are winning pre-MM. It's the equivalent of two wonders or 12k culture. I assume that the points are accounted on the turn we win?
thinking out loud... Mass Media, if we choose to go there for the UN also has a Civ Jewelers (needs artist). But what I don't like about the Economy Ministry is spreading that corporation to 50? cities. Or do we raze everything? I may have cracked the code: If we end the game with conquest victory. Only one city (or a very small # we can spread corps to in a couple turns) on the entire map, we're AP and UN leader. Wouldn't that be 100pts Military, 100pts Civil, 100pts Diplo, 100pts Economy? We win with only 20 points from tech, culture, and wonders. But maybe there's a better way to get to 420 without teching all the way to MM. Let's see. If we don't want to tech deep, we are probably limited to: 58 Diplo 0 Economy 60 Wonders 42 Science ------------- 160 That means we need 260/300 for culture, military, civil.
Military+civil is automatic 200 points with conquest victory, right? Even with just a few tiles. That leaves 90,000 culture in 3 cities. How many gazillion spies is that? Note that the map is designed for espy-culture since we have several AI-owned cities near our capital. This game is science-unfriendly.
^ Yes, I think we will need up to 90k of culture. Less if we can get more wonders (1 wonder = 6k culture). Do we want to encourage AIs to build us some wonders? Gifting techs and stone/marble/ivory/etc as needed? Does anyone have the code for their wonder build probability handy? Roosevelt is presumably the most likely, but he is also a next-door neighbour and easiest to kill.
We should be able to get 25 wonders, if we so choose, so we could strike a balance between wonders and culture.
It takes only 14 successful spy missions to double your culture. So, one artist bomb is 4000 culture plus 1000 normal culture = 5000 Double that 10k Double: 20k 40k 80k So that's (14 * 5) 70 successful missions. Let's say 80 attempts. But if we go that far, why not use 14 more missions to get... 160k The only thing holding us back is getting the EPs, but I might have a trick up my sleeve. Trick or no trick, it looks like we want to get some GSpies (we have GWall), may need to use courthouse spies. Note: the desire to have GSpies makes it very hard to also attempt a rush to MassMedia with GS bulbs. But, like I wrote earlier, we don't need to mess with culture/spies if we go for 100 pts Economy and Diplo with MassMedia. So it's one or the other.
so the culture version is looking like this: 58 Diplo 0 Economy 42 Science 100 military 100 civil 60 wonders = 2500 base-h (only 100% bonus) (palace, GW, Mids500, GLH200, ToA350, GLib350, Col250, SoZ300, AP400, Part400, Mom450, HG300, Paya450, HE200, NE250) [X factor = kremlin???] 80 culture 3200 base-h (80 spies) + 1 GA + 25,000 eps(?) ------------- 440
You want 20 extra points just for kicks? I think we can get more than 60pts for wonders, but I don't think we need all the hammers. The AIs could build most of those and some others (Chichen Itza, AW, etc.) Hermitage and Moai are also pretty cheap with resources, and even stuff like GT, OU and FP is pretty easy. I know we need the 6 base buildings, but they can be whipped with multipliers, including Kremlin. In fact, towards the end of the game, when we have 30+ cities, we could probably just whip away these in the last few turns. The cool thing about esp culture here is that it gets so much more hammer-efficient when we go for >50k in a city. That last 80k looks so easy, but we may not actually need it if we get all the other points we’re talking about… How do we balance the game so that we can tap into those culture points? Would it mean not going quite all the way with conquest, and triggering the win with AP?
Wasn't going for extra, just analyzing WT's proposition a bit deeper. The idea is to fine-tune the amount of wonders versus culture.The problem with the espy culture is the eps. But that was pre-Kremlin, which is why I called it the x-factor. Makes whipping so much cheaper.
Culture: I don't see the need to use 80 spies and get the culture all in one turn. 40 spies could each do 2 missions (over 6 turns.) And I may have a solution to get 150,000 culture with less than 10,000 EPs!
Will Toku jump to Pleased if we gift him ivory on T0 or thereabouts? Nice to get OBs for rebasing our bomber, easier to find his slaves.