[GS] Stacking yield bonuses - an OCC example

[Bangau]

Recently we talked on here about getting (very) high yields having only one city by using all sorts of yield bonuses that stack and multiply. I successfully finished an OCC (deity) culture victory yesterday with Catherine of France and thought it would be a good example to show how strong this can be.

Here you can see Paris at turn 125,with ok yields already: 52 science, 88 culture,38 faith,31 gold and 54 tourism.

Spoiler turn 125 :

At this point the bonuses are mainly from Kilwa and being the Suzerain of Antananarivo (the best one there!)/

More than a hundred turns later I have been focusing all of my policies towards culture to get to the policy card Hallyu, that lets you chose your rock bands promotions. As you can see, the culture from this one city is sky high:

Spoiler turn 261 :

How can they get so high? To show this, after the turn I won,I changed all the policies to the ones boosting science and culture (the end game policies giving 5% per suzerainty are the most important,but all help). (To win the culture victory I had all the policies in that boost tourism and faith...)

Here you can see the culture the city makes, and directly beneath the culture the empire makes:

Spoiler science at turn 326 :

As shown the city gets culture from:
- Great works
- Trade routes
- Districts (extra because of suzerainty of Nan Madol and being in a Digital Democracy)
- Population
- Buildings
- Worked tiles (special thanks there to the Mausoleum)
The sum of the above then gets two percentage bonuses:
- +10% from being very happy
- + 45% from modifiers: the governor Pingala (+15%) and Kilwa Kisiwani (+30%)

The city by itself already makes almost 346 culture. Quite nice,but the empire bonuses almost double this:
- The Raj policy gives 14 culture
- Paris gives 345.8
And there come more percentage bonuses:
- +5,9% from a level 3 cultural alliance (this one is a bit odd, the description says "you gain +10% of your ally's culture from cities,which imho is different than what happens here...)
- +30% from recruited great people (this is the Antananarivo bonus)
- +35% from suzerainty of (7) city states (the Collective Activism policy card)

All combined give 615 (!) culture with only one city.

Similar things happen with the other yields like science and faith:

Spoiler science :

Spoiler faith :

Here I was obviously focusing on culture and tourism. 500+ yields can also be reached in science and faith.

 

[Aurelesk]

I see you only have 2 Trade Routes. Every time I try for a OCC, I tend to maximise them:

• Building the Harbor and the Commercial Hub (+1 Trade Route).
• Get the great medieval admiral Zheng He (+1 Trade Route, +2 Gold per Trade Route).
• Get the great classical merchant Zhang Qian (+1 Trade Route, +2 Gold per Trade Route).
• Get the great medieval merchant Irene of Athens (+1 Trade Route).
• Get the great medieval merchant Marco Polo (+1 Trade Route, +2 Gold per Trade Route).
• Get the atomic atomic merchant Melitta Bentz (+1 Trade Route).
• Building the classical wonder Colossus (+1 Trade Route).
• Building the renaissance wonder Great Zibabwe (+1 Trade Route, +2 Gold per ressource for Trade Route).
• (Optional) Building the medieval University of Sankokre (+2 Science for received Trade Route)

You may end up with 9 Trade Routes granting a lot of Gold, and with some alliance and policies, Food, Production, Culture and Science. The thing is: too much district in so little time:

• A Campus is needed as soon as possible for the Science, and hope for some key Scientist.
• A Holy Site is useful: having a real religion with good belief.
• A Theatre Square cannot be delayed for too long, because you may want those books and increase your Culture early enough (Apadana, Great Library).
• An Harbor / Commercial Hub for those trade route.
• A Industrial Zone for extra Production for those wonder you will produce.

You may patronage one of the medieval engineer for the extra district. But each time, I run out of time:

• I need Food / Housing to grow and get the Population to build districts. Temple of Artemis is great for this, and the AI didn't even know that thing exist.
• I need Envoy like crazy, so Apadana, or Kilwa Kissiwani.
• I need to have Science and not get too far left: Campus and Great Library.
• I need Culture and get to the key policy quickly.
• I need the Pingoracle for the early great people war.

I must admit, I dropped the idea to even get a religion. But, now, I tend to fail because someone get the religious victory.

 

[Bangau]

Every time I try for a OCC, I tend to maximize them

Trade routes are nice and if the opportunity arises I might try to get an extra one, but I tend to prioritize culture, science and faith. Before I even get to a harbor or CH it's unlikely to catch up to the AI beating them on GPP to get a great merchant. Spending faith or gold to buy them isn't a good investment I think. In this game I also had Mansa Musa, so all the great merchants went his way.

I played half of a religious victory on this game (could have won one as well, but was going for culture). Fez was in the game and I used apostles and missionaries to make science from faith. Not sure about the efficiency of that trade-of (I could have had more rock bands, had I not converted half the world to my religion), but I like to play with what the game gives me.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

Thanks for the detailed breakdown, sometimes I find it difficult to understand how exactly the % bonuses work.

I also recently finished an OCC deity game with Kongo, and I have been toying with ways to try and make OCC/Smaller Empires competitive to more traditional wide sprawling gameplay.

So it seems that % bonuses from governor/wonders/amenities only get added to the initial city yields. Then % bonus from Collective Activism/Unique CS (Antananarivo/Geneva etc) gets added as an Empire wide bonus.

Knowledge of how this works will defo make setting up for OCC/Small empires more fun in the future. I guess it will be somewhat dependant on which CS's spawn on the map, also if other players kill CS's it could be bad.

You don't happen to have a turn 1 save of this do you?

 

[Bangau]

You don't happen to have a turn 1 save of this do you?

I keep one 4 times out of 5 normally, but forgot this time. These were the settings though:

And these are the seed numbers:
map seed: 740117065
game seed: 740117064

You should be able to play the same start with these. Let me know if you do. Would be curious to see how you played it!

 

[GrumboMumbo]

Thanks! I might give it a go, but I think if I do load those settings, it will spawn different City States, so might change the gameplay slightly.

 

[Bangau]

I think if I do load those settings, it will spawn different City States

You think so? I always assumed that that was included in the game seed, so that two games with the exact same settings and the exact same seeds are in fact the same. You could try: if you move your warrior east from the start and find Nazca, it worked.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

I tried it but the CS to the east in my game is Bandar Brunei, everything is in the exact same location but the CS's will all be different (I've tried this before because I wanted to restart a particular game). I loaded all the same leaders too, but yeah, I think if the CS's are different it probably changes the game a fair amount.

 

[Bangau]

I tried it but the CS to the east in my game is Bandar Brunei, everything is in the exact same location but the CS's will all be different (I've tried this before because I wanted to restart a particular game). I loaded all the same leaders too, but yeah, I think if the CS's are different it probably changes the game a fair amount.

Shame. Well, learned something there...

 

[UWHabs]

I do always wonder how much city-state options change things. Like, obviously Antanarivo in this case gave +30% culture which is huge, but like how different would the game be with Bandar Brunei instead of Nazca (which in this case is obviously nearly entirely wasted since there's no desert). Although obviously finding a faith city-state on turn 1 means you get nearly first choice of pantheon, which can be quite useful.

I will say looking at that map, it's a pretty nice location for a OCC. You only really have a narrow gap to defend, and otherwise are essentially fully isolated. Although I still am surprised people can get OCC done with so many wasted tiles, in this case the water tiles. Although the Mausoleum does actually make them quite pretty for yields in the end, so maybe they're not entirely wasted.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

I do always wonder how much city-state options change things. Like, obviously Antanarivo in this case gave +30% culture which is huge, but like how different would the game be with Bandar Brunei instead of Nazca (which in this case is obviously nearly entirely wasted since there's no desert). Although obviously finding a faith city-state on turn 1 means you get nearly first choice of pantheon, which can be quite useful.

I think it depends what kind of gameplan you have, maybe I will try the map anyway just to see...