Strategy - Victory without Temples or Cathedrals

[WoundedKnight]

Sulla:

I'm going to have to disagree with the author of this thread on the whole 'Temples and Cathedrals are not Necessary' idea. From reading through the posts, I've gathered that these comments are based on experiences playing on Huge Pangea maps on Regent difficulty. With no offense intended, these conditions are hardly typical of all games of Civ3 being played.

To be honest, this strategy is just going to fall flat on its face on Emperor/Deity. You CANNOT get through the game without ever building the happiness city improvements. Remember, you only get 1 content citizen at these levels; you need military police or a temple just to stay content at size 2! Whether you like it or not, each city IS going to need a temple just to avoid running a high luxury tax all the time

WoundedKnight:

No, it works all the way up to Monarch. Not Huge (where did you get that idea)? But I usually play a variety of map types with success.

If you look at my original post, I identified accurately that one of the limitations of the approach is on emporer/diety level with whiny citizens. Look at it again. I stand by my post as accurate as written. I agree that you DO need temples on emporer/diety level, and my original posts reflect that.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Hey Zouave! Double posting in two threads saves a lot of typing

 

[Ozymandius]

Zoauve:
did you try moving troops out of the city to keep it from flipping?

Strangely it works sometimes.

 

[Ozymandius]

Woundedknight:

my point is that despite this game being called CIVILIZATION, the game (at lower levels so far) does not reward civilized behaviour with a higher score than barbarism (lack of building temples, libraries cathedrals, Oracle, Michelangelo but Bach is wonderful. )There is no great leader like an archbishop, or pope or ayatollah or confusius etc that results from being nice. Only frequent mayhem is rewarded by elite troops & GL and a high score.

 

[Sylock]

I don't understand the aversion to culture flipping. It is a part of the game as much as war mongering. I hate it when another civ comes into my territory and takes over a city, but it's part of the game and I have to defend against it. Culture flipping is part of the game and you have to defend against it or use it. In my emperor level games I take over more cities from culture flipping than I am able to settle myself. My last game I settled 7 cities and took over more than 10 from culture flipping. It's part of the game just like war mongering is.

 

[Ozymandius]

Sylock:
Problem with culture flipping while attacking another civ in war is that you can lose substantial forces that way and there is no solution such as piling in more armies other than the FINAL SOLUTION. I don't like razing a city just to obtain slave labour. If keeping as many units as population size I could understand. There should be some type of warning... having all happy citizens because of market luxuries etc.. there should be a trasnsition such as content... unhappy... rebellious etc. That at least would make sense. Happy citizens should have no reason to rebel.

 

[Portuguese]

Zouave: To avoid culture flip with this strategy, just:
- Make strong and big cities
- Use the sea as you natural border when possible
- Attack massivelly and finish the enemy ASAP
- Never leave too many units in a city, because flips can always happen
- Take stupid (backwarded) troops with your invasion. So, if city flips you'll only use 2 legions in the modern era (if you don't have warriors )
- Make a defense barrier outside the city, to defend those stupid units
- Attack! Strike strongly and quickly. Finish him ASAP.

So, finish him ASAP!!! And don't loose good troops in flips...


Sella: No strategy win all the game possibilities... This won't work after monarch level. It has been written previously and it's generally accepted. As i don't play emperor\deity (too much cheat for me to accept...), I now like this strategy very much

 

[Crow T Robot]

FWIW, I am nearing the end of a game using this strategy. While it MAY produce cheap smileys, it encourages more wars more often to secure more and more luxuries.

The WORST thing I saw was that lots of happy people DOESNT translate to a large cultural aura. Several times key resources like oil and coal were JUST outside my border, which often remained minimal (9 tiles). I would build a temple and a few turns later POOF cultural influence expands and key resource is acquired without costly war.

I was also victim to more than normal culture flipping.

It *IS* noteworthy that automatically building temples and the like near the center of the empire or around the Forbidden Palace seems to be a waste, ESPECIALLY if you have access to a number of luxuries.

In the future though, I will neither avoid building them nor automatically build them out of habit.

 

[Ozymandius]

Crow T:
I agree. I often build a temple to expand the "hinterland" of a city, especially on the coast, but sell the temple after expansion takes place. Your cultural score remains low so as not to trigger a cultural victory and allows you to build game score higher.
ANd war is the key to success because it is the only way to get a GL and cheap GW.

 

[Sirp]

Sullla: while I don't completely agree with the sentiment in the original post, I do think he had some good points. I noticed that on your site you rank the Civ traits, but also list militaristic, and even more so, expansionistic as being very dependent on game conditions and playing style. I would suggest that the benefits of the religious trait also depend fairly heavily on the game conditions. If you can secure only 0-1 luxuries in the initial expansion phase, then being religious is indeed of extreme importance (maybe even more important then industrious, but of course being industrious you probably have more chance of securing luxuries due to faster expansion). If you can get 3 luxuries (particularly if you can get more than 1 of each luxury, so you can trade them for other luxuries) then I would conjecture that being religious is diminished somewhat. Why? Well, all of a sudden, a marketplace looks much better then a temple, since a marketplace gives you the happiness benefit of the temple, plus the money; money is usually more important then culture on a high-level game.

Of course, you still probably have to build a temple eventually, to get the border expansion if nothing else, but often this can be postponed until after a marketplace, and perhaps after other improvements. This is exactly what I did in RBCiv Epic 4. Starting near 3 luxuries was one of the things that made the game winnable for me. I also used a fairly tight build to gain access to as many tiles as possible, as well as to make border expansion less necessary.

Further, I don't think that building cathedrals is a must. In fact, I don't think I built many cathedrals at all in RBCiv4. By the time my cities had built marketplaces and temples, I think I had access to about 5 luxuries, through trade. This is easily enough to keep a city with a marketplace out of civil disorder up to size 12. By the time I could build hospitals, I had access to 7 luxuries, if I recall correctly (I did have a problem with one of my suppliers though, the babylonians got themselves into a war and managed to lose sea access; thus cutting off my trade route with them, I ended up giving them flight for nothing, and building an airport in Rome, hoping they would build an airport somewhere, and thus reestablish trade, which they did do eventually).

Of course, my culture was appalling all game, but it always is on Deity. In fact, I think the only time I built cathedrals in the game was in cities which didn't have much else to build; it was never a priority.

Don't get me wrong, I do think that religious is an important trait to have. Avoiding anarchy is a good enough bonus in itself! However, I don't take it as a given that temples, and especially cathedrals, are necessary. Indeed, with the new bonuses for commercial civilizations, I am warming to that attribute as being a competitor to religious, at least in some instances.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by Portuguese
Zouave: To avoid culture flip with this strategy, just:
- Make strong and big cities
- Use the sea as you natural border when possible
- Attack massivelly and finish the enemy ASAP
- Never leave too many units in a city, because flips can always happen
- Take stupid (backwarded) troops with your invasion. So, if city flips you'll only use 2 legions in the modern era (if you don't have warriors )
- Make a defense barrier outside the city, to defend those stupid units
- Attack! Strike strongly and quickly. Finish him ASAP.

So, finish him ASAP!!! And don't loose good troops in flips...


Sella: No strategy win all the game possibilities... This won't work after monarch level. It has been written previously and it's generally accepted. As i don't play emperor\deity (too much cheat for me to accept...), I now like this strategy very much

Yea, thanks. But I never asked HOW to deal with it. I know the various theories that sometimes work.

I DO NOT WANT TO DEAL WITH IT AT ALL because I consider it goofy.

And the irony remains - in a game that pushes "Culture" at us, it also encourages us in many ways to be warmongers in the ideas you suggested, by razing, by profligate use of nukes. etc.

 

[Mad Bomber]

Zouave:


Culture Flipping Sucks, & yes, I also want my cheat mode back.

 

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Portuguese
Welcome to warmongers Ozy
That's the path

Don't you get bored with easy military victories?

I've been conquering neighbouring civs and winning easily since Civ 1 ten years ago, so been there, done that and got bored with that obvious and easy path.

The challenge of playing and winning with peace strats on the higher levels of Civ 3 is what interests me.

 

[Ozymandius]

Cort Haus:

At present I'm working on achieving a high score for HOF submissions. Firaxis will not allow a cultural, civilized or peaceful solution to achieving a high score. Only the Borg solution will suffice. Resistance is futile.

 

[Arrian]

My goodness, spamming two different websites about how much you hate culture-flipping, huh Coracle... errr, Zouave?

Anyway, with regard to this strategy, I have to agree with Sulla. I've played a lot of Monarch and some Emperor games, and you need happiness improvements. Further, on the higher levels, the AI's production advantage kicks in and they WILL have more culture than you if you don't get those temples down early. I find that having the cultural advantage is important.

As for the traits... well, it's all about your style of play, but I prefer either Religious or Industrious combined with Militaristic. Great Leaders are immensly powerful, and Militaristic provides elite units in bunches, not to mention jumpstarting early conquest w/cheap barracks. The newest patch has beefed up Commercial a tad, but I still rank it down near the bottom, at least on the standard size maps I play.

I totally agree, however, with the emphasis on luxury resources. I started focusing on that a few months ago, and believe me, it works wonders. First off, not only do luxuries cost nothing and provide huge benifits (w/marketplaces), but you can trade them for cash or tech. Plus, they never become obselete or "exhausted." I target luxuries. Weak civs with more than one type have an imaginary bullseye on them.

-Arrian

 

[Cort Haus]

Ozy,

Yeah, right. If we're talking high scores then we have to forget the ploughshare! I tend not to play for score but for playstyle & strategy objectives.

 

[Portuguese]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


Don't you get bored with easy military victories?

I've been conquering neighbouring civs and winning easily since Civ 1 ten years ago, so been there, done that and got bored with that obvious and easy path.

The challenge of playing and winning with peace strats on the higher levels of Civ 3 is what interests me.

As a matter of fact, THAT is something that doesn't anoy me...

But sometimes I also use a peacefull strategy... The problem is that I have to win by histograph, since I can't finish the game in the normal 540 turns...

So, I play this way to relax some times, but I play warmonger when I want to win...

 

[Portuguese]

I must admit: I can't pass with some temples on my borders to CF enemy cities to me. I can't resist it. (Unless I plan to conquer them next; I was refering to more permanent borders )

And I use the marketplace later, since settlers is the best to make people content...