The importance of knowing the game mechanics.

[ainwood]

For the first time, I was planning on really milking a game for my GOTM submission.

I was nearing 100,000 in culture, so I figured I better sell off a few 1500-odd culture point temples. I did this and carried on.

I check a few turns later, and found that my culture was around 97,000! I didn't realise that you can't decrease your culture - all you can do is decrease the rate at which it accumulates. So I've now sold all temples, universities, libraries, cathedrals and colosseums. Even so, I'm now still generating around 60 culture / turn from wonders, meaning I'm on target for a culture victory in around 40 turns.

Those extra turns before I noticed "cost" me around 2000 culture points, or around 30 more turns.

 

[Rain]

Yup, a rough rule of thumb would be to allow 60-70 pts a turn for wonders with zip all else if you've built most of the ones in the first 3 eras, then calculate backwards from 2050 to see when you should offload your imps. So roughly u need 6000-7000 pts headroom for each 100 turns remaining depending on what u have built and what u plan to build.

I havent had a lot of experience with this but i found a staged approach works well. I get rid of the science first, then work my way up through the temple/coll/caths.

A retrospective examination of this would lead me to think I might be better off dumping temples much earlier, since they dont do a lot for happiness.

 

[ainwood]

Yeah - I'm rich enough, and have enough luxiuries that even with no happiness improvements (except wonders) I have no cities in disorder, and quite a few in WLTKD.

Research rate is a bit dead though! At least this won't really bother me with only 40 turns left.

 

[wohmongarinf00l]

this is exactly the situation i faced. i was over 98K though so i took drastic measures and abandoned my palace and all those wonder cities i had built, just to rebuilt them on the same spot.
that brought down my culture to 35/turn.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Rain
A retrospective examination of this would lead me to think I might be better off dumping temples much earlier, since they dont do a lot for happiness

Yes, I think temples should be the first to go. I try to review them all every once in a while and dump the temples in all cities where the sphere of influence can't expand any further, either because it overlaps other cities or because it has reached the ocean. (Can't expand past sea tiles.)

 

[LaRo]

Milking, so boring

Firaxis should change the score system to avoid this stupid situation.

You should get a better score when finishing sooner.

(Am I becoming another Zouave?)

 

[Erdrick]

I agree, not all of us have the time to sit around "milking" the game for more points. Sometimes it seems like it's not about who the best player is or who the best strategist is, but it's rather about who has the most free time on their hands. I mean, if your style is milking the game, and that's what you enjoy, and you have the time to do it, then that's fine, have fun; but I don't think players who only have time to get the job done quickly should have signifigantly lower scores (if they do in fact get the job done).

I'm not bitter or angry or anything, it's just a game just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in.

 

[ainwood]

In actuallity, I'm not really Milking-milking.

I've just made about 50 or 60 more cities than I normally would. Th rest of the game mechanics are the same (I' at war etc etc).

 

[Zachriel]

I couldn't imagine destroying temples in order to increase score. Is this supposed to represent an attack of the iconoclasts?

 

[IronKnight]

The talk has been about destroying improvemsnts to slow culture.

I'd like to hear from the big culture people...who do you build it up?

I typically build a temple early in a city, then I usually have to switch to military units to survive. Great Wonders seem to be the best way to build Culture. Which are the best? Are culture points listed anywhere for wonders? Do some wonders produce more points in certain cities? Is it better to spread the wonders out in different cities or build them all in the same one?

For those of you who build big culture, how do you produce enough military to survive? What is the balance?

I'd like to hear the thoughts.

 

[LaRo]

Originally posted by IronKnight
The talk has been about destroying improvemsnts to slow culture.

I'd like to hear from the big culture people...who do you build it up?

I typically build a temple early in a city, then I usually have to switch to military units to survive. Great Wonders seem to be the best way to build Culture. Which are the best? Are culture points listed anywhere for wonders? Do some wonders produce more points in certain cities? Is it better to spread the wonders out in different cities or build them all in the same one?

For those of you who build big culture, how do you produce enough military to survive? What is the balance?

I'd like to hear the thoughts.

For the best wonder and city improvement for culture, this graphic modpack is a must: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9675

Each wonder produce same number of points in each cities.

I usually build the wonders in my most productive cities to get them faster. If I remember correctly, you can win if a city get 60000 culture's points.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I'd like to hear from the big culture people...who do you build it up?

This is what works on Large and Huge maps.

First, expand as quickly as possible, to claim as many cities as you can, just put 2 warriors or spearman in each city, so you at least have a mediocre defense in all cities. Note: the AI judges your military size by pure numbers, not the strength of them, so you could maybe get by with just building warriors in between building of the settlers, just to build up the number of military units you have. Eventually, though you want 2 spearman in at least your border cities. You can just use the warriors as military police in your interior cities temporarily (but watch out for ROP abusers, "sneak attacks!"). Eventually get spearman in the interior cities as well. So if you want to just build up the number of units, build warriors (cheap), but for more longer-lasting units, spearman (upgradable throughout the game).

Temples in every city is good. But you need alot more culture than this. For a quick culture win, a dense build will help ALOT, by getting you more cities. You don't really need them built super-dense, unless you're playing a tiny or small map. Build temples AND libraries in all cities. Universities, cathedrals and colleseums also help, but probably only practical in your big cities that can build it themselves. Later on, if you have lots of money to spare and have enough military units, you can start rush-buying the extra culture improvements in those high-corrupt cities. Wonders do help, but if you have 100+ cities, the wonders don't help a whole lot. Get them if you can, but not a major loss if you can't get them. Having more than 1 city building different wonders at the same time, and using the 'pre-build palace' trick will help you get all or most of the wonders. I usually use the domestic advisor, and if you click on the shields produced column it ranks all your cities. The most productive city will be my wonder building city(ies).

In all those 1-shield, high-corrupt towns, if you are a religious civ rush temples. If you are scientific, rush the libraries. If you are Babylon, rush both. You want as many culture buildings as possible while you are still in the B.C.'s. Once a culture building is more than 1000 years old, the culture doubles. So if you had 50 cities all with temples before 10 A.D., by 1000 A.D. you would have 200 culture points/turn just in temples! With Libraries, those 50 cities would get you 300 cp/turn, both would be 500cp/turn!

The big cities you have close to your capital should be productive enough to quickly build those culture improvements and start making more military units to help defend your border cities. They might also have time to build marketplaces and banks to help you get more money to rush-buy culture improvements in all those corrupt cities.

For the one city culture win (20,000 culture points) you would want to build as many wonders in one city. You may not get all of the wonders if you're trying to put them all in one city, since there are usually several wonders able to be built at the same time. The one city culture win would be easier on the smaller maps. On huge maps, a culture win is most often by the entire civ culture (100,000 cp).

 

[IronKnight]

Bamspeedy. Thanks for the great info. I will give this a try.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by LaRo
Milking, so boring

Firaxis should change the score system to avoid this stupid situation.

You should get a better score when finishing sooner.

(Am I becoming another Zouave?)

What situation? I only have 50,000+ culture in my GOTM. Then again, I can't even play right... Oh well, looks like I'll have to do some massive micromanagement from the start in the diety GOTM.