STR-04: The Three City True Cultural Challenge (3CTCC)

As usual, I had to do some MM'ing on our cities after pholky ;) ... but relax, it's just focus more on commerce/hammer rather than growth, nothing significant that demands a send off to the woodshed.

The Year 640 BC is a busy one ...



I choose ...



Was debating between CoL vs MC, but figured that the variant being cultural, a religion would do us more good than the Colossus:



I never understood what does Confucianism has anything to do with "water" (i.e. for those who don't read Chinese/Kanji, that character is Water) :crazyeye: ... maybe because Confucius once said "Water can move a boat, but it can also sink a boat".

Anyhow, I started an obelisk in Thebes. That is our Unique Building, might as well make used of it.

I did not revolt to Confucianism, even when we have the religion spread:



The first was the work of the free missionary, and the second was a gift from the RNG. I delayed revolting for fear of alienating our neighbors (read: crazy izzy) ... but in retrospect, a switch of religion now would increase our culture/happiness a bit ... so up to next player.

Speaking of CrazyIzzy, look at the outrageous capital of hers:



Fortunately she was forced to settle on the cows and lose the extra hammers in order to nab in the all the other five resources.

And speaking of happiness, I started the Confucian Temple ...



This will be prime for whipping the next turn ....

Now on to the more diplomatic side of this game: Brennus came making demands:



I rejected him, and then he returned with this offer:



Huh? Go figure.

I also met one more civ ... none other than mister conquer-the-world-is-so-cool:



Barbs are starting to appear, fortunately I was prepared:



This is one change of warlords I like most .... giving charriots 50% boost against axe ...

Before handing this game back to the real Straussie Boy, some notes on production: Pyramids is about to be completed ...



The Great Wall not too far behind. I have also started the Parthenon in Thebes after whipping out the Temple.

We should, however, start to build some axes for protection. Research wise I went for Alphabet to unlock Literature (Great Library and Philosophy).

Being 3CC, we should obviously swap to Representation when we can start to afford specialists, but meanwhile, it might be better to go for HR first, to give our cities a temporary happiness boost.

>>> The Save (400BC) <<<

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<<ping>> So what is up, Strauss? Your 24 hours to raise your hand ran out. :hammer:
 
I'll steal your save Straussie boy ;) It will be back (15 years later) this evening or tomorrow morning.

I've got it, Strauss is on auto-swap :hammer:
 
385 (1) - Memphis builds the Pyramids, starts the Chich(k)en Itza for a higher overall city defense.



Revolt to HR. Thank god we're spiritual. So we can switch and swap a lot.




355 (3) - Izzy offers clams for our pigs. I agree. In this game it will be better to befriend her. Another note on Izzy. I think it would be good to wait for her state religion to spread to us. She will be one of the greatest civs soon as she has no one to fight for land with. So she should be a close friend of us.

We whip the Great Wall in Heliopolis.



340 (4) - Heliopolis built the Great Wall, continues with a Granary. HC converts to Confusianism. Obviously we must have infected him without knowing it.




325 (5) - HC offers Iron Working in exchange for our Code of Laws. I decline because he has a monopoly on Alphabet and I know how AI trading works. It's just too dangerous that all the others have CoL soon as well.



Whip the Parthenon at Thebes very gratefully that no one else has build it so far. Now it's ours. I very much like the change since Civ4 that buildings are finished directly after your turn, not before it. This way if you have only one turn left, it's yours. So whipping (or buying as in Civ3) is no gamble anymore.

310 (6) - Thebes builds the Parthenon and continues with a granary. I see now, for this many ermergency wonder whips, that we need more food.




235 (11) - Someone writes a book where it is written that we're a very poor people.

220 (12) - A Granary is whipped in Thebes. Temple of Artemis is next. If not for the culture, at least for the money.




190 (14) - Alexanders offers Open Borders. And we take them. But a little smile would do you no harm, Alex. The whipped Granary in Heliopolis is whipped as well. And a temple is next too, though a smaller, Confucian one.


And now for the stats!



Cuzco is even more ridiculous than Madrid is.



Athens isn't as funny, but to me it seems that the AI always gets a resource gifted under the capital. It seems like Alex will turn Athens into a commerce power plant.



We're last in power and this is NOT funny at all!!! It's up to Strauss to do something about it. We need arguments against our aggressive neighbours.



This one looks better. The three wonders that finished during my reign make a good start. In your reign, Strauss, you can complete two other wonders. Whip them if needed, especially the Artemis Temple is very unlikely to win, but if we can, we will! It's worth 8 culture!



This might be the last shot of this stats showing us as a leader in Land Area... I don't understand the life expectancy stats, how are we first when half of our population died through the :whipped: during my reign???



The world as we know it... with our Great Wall visible from space!!! Please note that the farm east of Heliopolis is there for irrigation chaining, Strauss! If we chop the forest NW of Heliopolis and build a farm instead the wheat farm will be irrigated as well. The same goes with Memphis. Memphis is already short on food. The two grasslands N of it should be farmed as soon as we can farm the tile near the river N N N NW. No cottages here!

Who's number one in culture???

Strauss, you're up ... now!!! :hammer:
 
That's a fair bunch of wonders we got here and the better part is that our second and third cities managed to get their owns as well :goodjob:

Would we use a couple scientists in the capital to shot at taoism ?
 
yeah, definitely a nice bit of wonderizing for us ~ and to think, i started those and we got them! :lol:

some scientists would be nice, esp w/Representation. even if not for Taoism, for popping other usable techs. We should also head towards lit > drama > music, too, next
 
Good job getting the wall and Parthenon. :clap:

But, sorry to pour cold water, we are building too many wonders, guys ... all 3 cities building wonders??? That is gonna cost us big time ... all 3 neighbors are running out of space to settle ... and we will be a sitting duck (or 3, in fact), with lots of golden eggs (read: wonders) to tempt the weasels, and no dogs (read: defense) to deter them.

The Chichen Itza, IMHO, is not strictly necessary. Memphis should have built some more units for defenses ... The Temple of Arthens is also not necessary, IMHO. I would used this time to build us some decent defenses so that we can afford to build the more crucial wonders later as we unlock them, such as the TGLibrary, the Sistine Chapel, Hemitage, National Epic, etc.

Agreed on the scientists for the taoism shot. We sure could use another holy city.

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what a party-pooper fox is ~ i don't think it's as bad as all that. We've got no religious tension right now against anybody, and i think btwn the AIs having different religions, that might work in our favor. (of course, i'm the one who keeps losing cities games lately, so i may not be the best to ask)
 
Yeah I am ... no wonder nobody is inviting me to parties anymore .... :cry: ...

Seriously, I hope people don't get too upset or offended by my constan blattering of my teammates decision (it is prefectly reasonable to get mildly upset or offedned though ;)). You guys know I do that just for the good of the team, right? Right? RIGHT?

Having said that, if anyone wished I would bugger off, please tell me straight off. Games are supposed to be fun, afterall. I will then switch off my grumpy-module ... usually I only switched it on for pholky though :D .... hmmm ...

Now I looked at it, maybe I was a bit too conservative.. It is afterall prince, and our UU is in effect, so perhaps we can get by with a little obsession with wonders. ;)

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:lol: guys, calm down. You're perfectly right, as I already said: defense is most important. But our golden eggs as you call them are prince eggs, thus easier to keep.

Don't forget that we run out of buildable high-culture-wonders. And the oldest wonders generate most of the culture per wonder (per specification) and over time (because they're older). So it's quite important to spam some early on, though risky. But who said it should be too easy a game :D

That's why, Heliopolis should build military now. Given this, maybe it was a wrong decision to build a temple there

Strauss!!! Build more military :whipped: (who said military can't be party? :lol:)
 
I agree on building more military and will definitely do so. I tried a 3CC twice with Egypt already and lost/forced to retire early because of a failure to build sufficient military. That was on Monarch though, so we may have some more breathing space here.

Will play this evening.
 
Nothing to do with this game, but about the Confucianism symbol.

They picked "water" the same reason why Chinese restaurant in the US writes nonsense Chinese characters on their signs. It's to make a foreign culture more exotic and simplified at the same time, reinforcing both the stereotypes and the egos of their customers. It's like the myth that Russians have bigger penises and Asians have smaller ones (height is a much better predictor): anything to make "US" more normal. Unfortunately (actually, fortunately), CIV4 players are probably the least ignorant of PC gamers.

A better character for Confucianism is li, meaning 'ritual', 'rules' or 'order'. It's the crux of the entire belief.
 
sylvanllewelyn said:
It's like the myth that Russians have bigger penises and Asians have smaller ones (height is a much better predictor): anything to make "US" more normal.
Wow, talk about a non sequitor ~

i'm not so sure it was nonsense but more like a sloppy mistake ~ the 'water' symbol would seem most appropriate for Taoism (at least, IMO) ~
 
:goodjob: blid. Sometimes (or better: almost always) it's better to read than to believe to know it :)
 
You might want to try shooting for theology rather than the usual liberalism-first route. More religions = more temples = more cathedrals = more 50%'s. Divine right is actually relevent, and if you're worried about trading, you could get paper and trade that plus divine right for civil service plus machinery or something.

First of all, "Confucianism" is not even a religion - Chinese immigrants filled in "Confucius" in the religion column of the forms because they didn't want to be identified as non-religious, which in the Communism-fearing era was equated to atheism and hence Communist, which was suicide. In fact, it's not even a complete school of philosophy, but just a collection of philosophical thoughts, which were very liberal back then (which got him into a lot of trouble and caused the man to suffer 19 years of exile and brink of death multiple times) and then were twisted to suit the need of rulers of the Han dynasty centuries later. The form of Confucianism we see today is more akin to the Ming dynasty "call to (Han) tradition" to boast it's legitimacy, as the first emperor was of peasent upbringing. TheTrueLight.Net looks suspiciously like a "cow-manure" website about as low as scientology, and actually this weekend I could research more into this site, if people feel it's necessary.

Anyhow, the only Confucian reference to "water" I could really think of is when he had a water container of sorts hanging on a rack. He told one of his students to pour water in, but when they poured too much, it all spilled. One of his ideas (not the major one, though) was 'everything in moderation', whether it be little things in life or matters of the state. I guess that's "slightly" relevant. And no, there is NO special emphasis about water being the source of life in Chinese culture, except that if you don't drink any you die, but everything knows that already. In Taoism there might be qi, the breath that needs to be balanced, but again that's all I can think of.

But in the contexts of Civ, Confucianism does act like a religion when it comes to the diplomatic, cultural and hapiness sphere, because it boasts a culture-system supported by "religion" (like the term "Islamic culture", cultures heavily influanced by Islam although Islam is not a culture), sort of like "Confucian cultures" in Korea and Vietnam. So I'm not against Firexis defining Conficianism as a religion at all. I'm just trying to make a point, that's all.
 
Thanks for the clarification sylvanllewelyn. My point was just that Firaxis didn't roll some dice to choose the confucianism symbol :)

Strauss said:
Will play this evening.

Long evenings you got there in ... Alaska ? :p
 
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