The Impossible Walkthrough

[Morgrad]

Though part of it also was to save some face I guess, as it was hinted I may be doing some fibbing

I think that was me...... sorry. Heh. I only said I didn't believe it "yet" and asked more questions, though.

I tried it last night, and I certainly have to say it is a viable strategy if you have the right start.

I had a much less ideal starting location and pretty crap land all around me, but my first load gave me seafood + 2 flood plains, 2 hills, and 9 forests. The less-than-ideal part came in that the rest were 4 coastal tiles and 2 ocean tiles. But, it worked like a champ.

I REX'd out to 4 cities - but once the first settler was built the capital just went nuts for wonders and the other three (mediocre) cities were building infrastructure and troops. I don't think I've ever had that many Great People generated with just once city. Without ever using caste system I had 15 super-specialists (7 engineers, 4 priests, 2 scientists, a merchant, and an Academy) somewhere around 1300 AD all settled into the capital.

For a first attempt I have to say I did it *way* less than ideally and made a number of mistakes, but I definately stayed solidly in the tech race with a monster production city cranking out whatever I wanted it to - it's pretty rare for that city to be my capital.

Using my other three cities to crank out only warriors ('cause it's all I could build), I ended up culture-flipping an iron city from Carthage - and with my moderate pile of gold (along with asking nicely from the Hindu block of Qin, Huayna and Isabella for more), I did a one-turn upgrade to macemen - which was insanely expensive - after building half a dozen or so catapults, then used that stack to easily overrun Carthage.

He ended up vassalized with one wee city way to the south on the ice - I ended up with 4 previously-jungle cities cottaged to the max without having to build any myself - which satisfied the cottage spammer in me. I then went for the cavalry beeline just for the hell of it while building HAs, ended up with a less than ideal stack of 12 upgraded due to my shakey economy - but that was enough to grab some nice land from the Incans, which put me solidly in the tech lead for the rest of the game.

It was wierd, it was interesting, and it was entertaining. I recommend people give it a go! Even without the cavalry beeline you can beeline macemen for an earlier war, which was also fun. It does, in my opinion, limit the ability to do an axe-rush, simply because so many hammers are being pumped into the wonders that you just can't build enough axes unless you have a second power-house production city.

Was it ideal? No. Was it the fastest way to hit Liberalism? No. Was it a solidly viable strategy that won me the game? Yep.

Thanks Obsolete!

 

[Quornix]

I would like some insight into this 'lightbulbing' everyone keeps talking about.

Firstly, from what i've gathered everyone seems to think that the best use of a GP is to lightbulb, yes?

Secondly, from the GP that i've even considered lightbulbing I had to forego their use because I could have just as easily discovered the tech in like 4-6 turns, doesn't that seem a waste?

Thirdly, the GP can be settled for a huge benefit or used to build a structure or something that would last more then just the 4 turns it would take to discover a tech right of the bat.

Fourthly, I may be missing something but their must be a specific strategy when lightbulbing that i'm missing?

There is a rather specific lightbulb plan for a lot of players -- lightbulb Philosophy, Paper, Education, and you're sitting on top of Liberalism, Nationalism, and Gunpowder. A little research, and you've got Cavalry way earlier than settling the GS's (much less a cottage economy). Not only that, but you've got a religion (from Philosophy), and great techs to backfill with, since the AI tends not to prioritize those techs.

So you end up with all the techs the AI has, plus Military Tradition and all the gold everyone else had sitting around. Basically the same thing that happened in this showcase game, but significantly earlier. It's a short term gain that can be leveraged better than what was seen here, but doesn't have the long term payoff except for what you can rip from the AI's hands with your very early Cavs.

What this showed was not that lightbulbing is useless, or even that you can win on Monarch without lightbulbing, but that settling GP can also be a very powerful technique. Great Priests, which are generally loathed, were put to very good effect here.

One game that I played (admittedly on Prince), I did about the same thing, except that I had three core cities. One was cottaged, and had my GSs and GAs, Oxford and HE. One was cottaged, had a Shrine, Wall Street, and Hermitage, and had my GPs and GMs. The last was all farms and mines, produced my wonders, had the NE and WP, and had my GEs.

Why the HE on my Oxford city? GSs give a hammer, and I had a couple of mines in the city, but of my three super cities, it was the only one unable to crank out a good unit every turn or two. I fixed that I wound up winning Cultural, but could have taken any victory I wanted.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I'd never really tried purposely building an uber city before, but thought I'd have a go in the same mode as this thread. Picked Roose for Ind /Org me Monarch / Ai tech at Emperor (don't ask my very altered rules), plus huge map(fractal)/ marathon / agg ais / rand pers.

After some utterly abysmal starts, I regened something approaching passable (hey its a try out game). Well it was highly different for me, to say the least. I normally can virtually match the ais rexing, then I get the warring over very early, take my land, generally flat out CE it, play tech catch up, then run away with the game.

This was oh so different. I too, build the Henge, then the GW in Washington, and then quickly knocked out New York, and settled down to build Pyramids (all without BW, and No stone or marble ANYWHERE). I then realised that even though Gandhi was my immediate neighbour (talk about coincidence), he wasn't Gandhi he was quite like Alex, as he was already in a war with Inca, and wasn't pleased when I turned him down. Miraculously, (for a huge map) I then researched BW and popped Copper in a plains/hill mine I was already working in Washington (talk about luck!). Eventually I had to go to war against Gandhi, my 2 cities against his 10 or so (ouch), but when Wash could produce an axe per turn (and this is on marathon remember) in 15 turns I had a mixed stack, and took him on.

Most cities were build in completely loony 2.08 ai positions, and I just refuse to keep a city that early on, which when moved a tile or 2 in one direction, would be a great city, instead of a mediocre one, or one just built on a hill to be an annoying ai bastard Anyways, that over, I had 5 or 6 cities.

I'm going to have to cut this ramble short, Im far too tired, but as others said, the accumulated effect of settled GPs in the cap, really is amazing for building wonders, and was a nice change. I was generating 150+ gp pts per turn in Wash in the late 1300s (having built almost every wonder in the game), which is rather a lot

You really do need a lot of hills / lots of food cap for it to work best, and on a side note, there is a point where taking the folk off working the mines and assigning them as priests or engs is actually a better long term strat (even those you lose hammers in the short term), as you get more priests/ eng to settle quicker, and this of course then gets you yet more GP to settle quicker.

To sum up my findings, it was different, fun to have an ubercity, the teching rate (with pyramids and rep) wasn't really much different than mega rexxing then cottage spamming, but as a change, it was fun to play. It was probably a lot harder to attempt to keep up in tech than on a normal sized map, as virtually all the ais (I played with 12 other civs)will manage 10 or more cities early on, and your 2 will just not really keep up when there are many more to inter trade.......

Anyway, a nice change , apologies for the ramble, pulled an all nighter, very very tired

 

[Dirk1302]

For the love of God, please don't think that the game can be won "easily" without cottages, lightbulbing, or early war. The reason those three are always mentioned is not some conspiracy by better players "to force" people to follow a set of rules, but rather advice to make the game easier.

Yes. It's true. The game is much easier if you fight an early war, build cottages and use lightbulbing.

The way it was done here was interesting and different, sure, but I can guarantee you that a two city, no cottages approach will more often give you a hard time than not.


Follow this strategy and you will win even less consistently, I almost guarantee you. It's a complete miracle that the AI didn't stomp those two cities back in the classical/medieval. Just try it with Shaka or Napoleon present.

With BtS coming out soon the Cavalry spam is also out the window.

I agree with Frob2900, except you had reason not to be afraid of Ghandi. I agree there. But not lightbulbing and using no cottages can be an interesting manner of playing but it's certainly not optimal. I don't think this can be repeated on emperor , no way on immortal, BTS or not. The finish date 1983 is fairly late , you hinted that a few turns could be shaved off but as it is i don't think a finish before 1950 was possible which is way late on emperor + so imo this strat ends on monarch.

I have some sympathy for the argument that you look at the others more than at the absolute timeline, if i play immortal i do the same, i just try to win the game, on emperor and certainly monarch i try for more because there's no real challenge for me otherwise.

Just as Frob2900 i'm a bit baffled at your claimes that people saying lightbulbing (especially with the philo trait) and cottages (especially with the financial trait or with lots of grass/floodplains river tiles) are proposing useless strategies. What makes you think that? These are good strategies and probably you need one or the other to win on emperor + (i've never seen otherwise).

So my challenge to you is:

Post an emperor 4000 bc game, win it in the matter you describe here and let others play out the game for comparision, it would tell me more than this rather onesided story (which i admit was a fairly good read).

 

[futurehermit]

Tried this out with Louis. Couldn't get it to work. I SEE how it would work, don't get me wrong, but I had some problems:

1) First problem is not getting a high-enough production capital. Had to regen a number of times (not a problem in itself as all strategies are situational, but to say "no lightbulbing" all the time, you would have to regen a lot or adapt the strategy imo).

2) Second problem is aggressive neighbours. Even without open borders, I was still getting DoW'd on by Shaka, etc. When pumping wonders, the power graph is not growing. I wasn't able to get a large enough tech lead FAST ENOUGH (you DO get a tech lead) to be able to bribe to war. I was also leery of bribing to war because I don't want someone I upset to come back at me down the road. Keeping the peace with a low power graph is not always easy.

3) Not having horses. Even with Louis being creative and flipping some cities, which was nice tbh, there were starts where I didn't have any horses. With iron, I suppose you could prebuild some maces and then upgrade to grens to breakout, but it would be slower imo. I think this strat works better with horses, but could work with iron.

Those were the three main problems. When I got stone, it was a huge boon. But it's doable without stone of course.

With an industrious leader, a high-production capital, horses, and peaceful neighbours, I would say this is a nice strategy to have in one's repertoire.

Thanks for an interesting new strategy. I will also just generally consider settling great people in the future when going for space race. I think a mix of settling and lightbulbing (e.g., phil, ed in particular) might be the way to go in certain cases.

 

[Dirk1302]

Settling can be good, i usually settle great prohets unless there are shrines to be made or there's theo to be bulbed. I try to avoid great prohets as the plague though.

If i have a very capital centered empire i might settle a GS there, usually an academy is better let alone lightbulbing key techs.

Settling a GE is dubious, there's almost always a better thing to do with these guys (if there's no world wonder to be made use them ironworks for instance), once i had four of them after building GW and Pyramids, i settled them in desperation at last.

Great artist is a useful settle on the border, i really like to save them for wars though especially playing a domination attempt.

I love great merchants and i always use them for gold except in the endgame where all the great persons are sort of equal and you have to get the right one's for a golden age (or GE's for the space elevator)

 

[vicawoo]

I think obsolete demonstrated a very good understanding of the game. He knew what techs the AI had at all times, or at least enough to know that he had an advantage with cavalry. And because he knew he had a lead, he didn't have to lightbulb.

It felt like he was doing a tech denial strategy, actually. And maybe you'd want a temple of artemis for a city that large. The trade routes would be enormous.

 

[Morgrad]

Settling a GE is dubious, there's almost always a better thing to do with these guys (if there's no world wonder to be made use them ironworks for instance),

I almost wholeheartedly agree with this, but when I had 7 of 'em settled in my test game it made a monstrous difference in the production level of the capital. I was able to straight-build any wonder (national or world) in my capital in a smattering of turns.

I ended up building the Space Elevator from scratch just to deny it to the AI (as I was pushing for domination) and it took a paltry number of turns to do so. GEs are fantastic at rushing wonders of either type, but using this particular strategy, I just didn't need them for it.

All that being said, Futurehermit has an excellent point that this is a very situational strat - you either must be industrious (which doesn't happen a lot on random leaders) or have stone *and* marble online pretty quickly and must have a high-production capital to begin with.

But - it is fun, it's certainly different, and I can definately see myself choosing to do this if all the ducks line up at the start of one of my future games.

 

[frob2900]

Despite my serious misgivings about the optimality of this strategy, I do agree with everyone that it is rather interesting and fun to play (I tried it yesterday with Qin Shi Huang).

How about someone post a start with Louis or some other Ind leader, and then:

Let's play pimp my capital! (as many settled specialists/wonders as possible )

We could have a capital city scoreboard for each checkpoint
-Most wonders
-Most settled specialists
-Most beakers per turn
-Most hammers per turn

(unfortunately I don't have Civ on the computer I'm using now, so I can't roll one up)

 

[hotstuffjsn]

Influx

Thank you for the insight into lightbulbing of the GP. As i'm improving at my game by taking note of people's tips here, I may have to lean towards using my GP to discover new techs if it really does help my early game. My only problem is, I rarely if ever seem to have time to build a wonder with all that's going on in the first part of the game. I've been trying to go to war early to get a lead with a few more cities and to help ease border tensions with those sneaky AI's that settle on the fringe of borders.

 

[obsolete]

All that being said, Futurehermit has an excellent point that this is a very situational strat - you either must be industrious (which doesn't happen a lot on random leaders) or have stone *and* marble online pretty quickly and must have a high-production capital to begin with.

Well I guess that depends on what we are talking about. The whole wonder-building thing I just decided to go with?… or the other part about not building cottages and not lightbulbing?

No matter what leader I would have had, I would have NEVER lightbulbed, you can bet money on that.

Anyhow, I think I was a little biased towards the wonder building, because it was a great way to prove the killer power that you can get with this system. Building an elite modern unit (one a turn) doesn’t seem to catch attention (even without the use of a HE, etc) But pulling down wonder after wonder on the higher levels, certainly does make people think twice.

I don't think this can be repeated on emperor , no way on immortal, BTS or not. The finish date 1983 is fairly late , you hinted that a few turns could be shaved off but as it is i don't think a finish before 1950 was possible which is way late on emperor + so imo this strat ends on monarch.

I have some sympathy for the argument that you look at the others more than at the absolute timeline, if i play immortal i do the same, i just try to win the game, on emperor and certainly monarch i try for more because there's no real challenge for me otherwise.

Just as Frob2900 i'm a bit baffled at your claimes that people saying lightbulbing (especially with the philo trait) and cottages (especially with the financial trait or with lots of grass/floodplains river tiles) are proposing useless strategies. What makes you think that? These are good strategies and probably you need one or the other to win on emperor + (i've never seen otherwise).

So my challenge to you is:

Post an emperor 4000 bc game, win it in the matter you describe here and let others play out the game for comparision, it would tell me more than this rather onesided story (which i admit was a fairly good read).

Alright, one last walkthrough and then I give up trying to prove it. It’s Emperor 4000bc, same manner basically that I described. I also have intermediate saves. I’ll be posting a new thread for it now as I only just now finished uploading all the images, etc.

 

[vicawoo]

obsolete, i'd like to see a war start. Not in terms of lightbulbing, but because I'd expect some earlier expansions to you can whip out units.

I think the advantage of this type of settling is wonder building. Not focusing production on one city means it's harder to build wonders, but you may have more total production, which gains more units.

 

[Nkot]

While I admire obsolete trying to get the forum to think outside the box, I just don't think he will ever be able to prove something radical to a satisfactory manner, simply because people will often claim that it was merely situational and they will fail to see the bigger picture.

I have no doubt that you could get a win without lightbulbing or spamming cottages on monarch, most if not all of the time. Basically, you just have to run SE and settle great people instead of lightbulbing. Not much to it.

 

[Calder]

Well I know this strategy can work just as well without the help of the Industrious trait, as some time ago I played a very similar game as Wang Kong (Financial/Protective). Sorry it was a while ago and the game save deleted. Settings were large continents/marathon/monarch level, 10A1s. I only had my capital which was churning out wonder after wonder and didn't build a 2nd city until nearly the AD's near bronze. Seoul was a monsterous production powerhouse. If you get a chance to build on a plains hill with marble then do it! I wasn't planning on doing a new strategy as such, its just how this game panned out. I think I had 7 wonders of the world built in Seoul before 1000AD! (GW, Oracle, Pyramids, Parthenon, Colossus, Great Library, Chichen Itza). By the end of the game Seoul had built no less than 14 wonders.
I thought I was just having fun and would sooner or later resign due to no military. I had Carthage, Persia and Ottomans as my border neighbours. I think if this were any kind of new strategy, it would be very situational - with the right terrain. I had 2 Fish, 1 Crab, Wheat, Cow, Marble, Silk (later Coal & Gold) in my capitals fat cross. All the other tiles were plains/desert-hills and trees. (not one tree chopped, and not one cottage built). It was also in some ways quite a commercial powerhouse, only because I was financial and had good sea tiles with the Colossus built, and good research bonuses running Representative with quite a few settled GP's + Academy + 2 GS from GL (+9 beakers each). Beauracracy was no brainer. I too figured out the two most appropriate National wonders to build in Seoul were National Epic and Ironworks. If you can get this to work, a capital like this is as good as 20 cities, but not paying the early maintenance. I was pretty much the tech leader all the way through the game. The Protective trait is also what saved me from an early demise with Hannibal constantly harrassing me. Hilled city walls/castle and free CG1, Drill 1 Longbowman work magic even against elephants. I did declare on the Ottomans and had him capitulate to me, which apart from the 5 early Punic wars with Hannibal was the only war I had. Also important in a game like this is shared religion/good diplomacy. I won space race in 1790 with something like 15 cities at the end. (only built 2 cities).
I've never played a normal speed game; I always play large/huge maps and marathon, so i can't really compare how much easier or harder it is. I never had any space ship parts built in 1 turn; the best was Engine in 8 or 9 turns (with space elevator GE'd). Wish I had saved the game to show screen shots of Seoul - it was amazing.

 

[cabert]

congrats on the win
thanks for the effort, showing something different is always a good thing.

But (yes, there is a but) I don't think that because you never understood how lightbulbing works you should say it's not a good strat.
I agree it's not the only strat. I too settle a lot of GPs (for production or cash or even food!). But it's a good strat.

Your way of putting things closes options (no lightbulbing no cottaging). If your goal is to think out of the box, you should not close any option, never!

Just a few examples that show other people are thinking out of the box :
- trade route economy (=grow your cities as big as it gets with open borders for maximal trade route output)
- gifting techs all around to make the whole game faster and open trading opportunities
- GM economy (it's a change from those lightbulbs isn't it ?) (see Sisiutil's ALC with genghis I believe)
- there is a "no slavery" emperor or immortal SG game, proving you don't need this
- there is also a "no promotion" SG game, proving you don't need those
...

Now, how come lightbulbing and cottages are mentionned so often ?
Because :
- there is no luck factor involved, it's not situationnal, it always works (to some degree of course, you can factor a map where you can't feed the cottages, like the desert war scenario in vanilla)
- they give really good results.

IMHO your victory doesn't come from the settled GPs. It comes from the cavalry beeline. A faster cavalry beeline, using lightbulbs and/or cottages would have given even better results (= earlier victory).
The fun factor shouldn't be discarded, and having a supercity certainly is a lot of fun, but it doesn't mean this strat is better.

 

[frob2900]

IMHO your victory doesn't come from the settled GPs. It comes from the cavalry beeline. A faster cavalry beeline, using lightbulbs and/or cottages would have given even better results (= earlier victory).

Yes, this is exactly what I have been saying too, but theres seems to be little comment on this. Then again, the OP states that it would work with grenadiers as well, so...

more walkthroughs?

 

[UncleJJ]

I'm sorry I didn't notice this thread earlier. You have done something here I'm very interested in, and you seem to be having fun too.

Using settled engineers and priests is certainly a powerful way to make a manufacturing behemoth. You did win the Space Race, but 1982 is not a great launch date given the situation (good start position and peaceable neighbours that were easy to take over). I guess you could have even gone for a cultural win, and won earlier as well, if you changed direction and spammed the religions you had (all 7 at the end ) But then you'd not have made the hammer monster in Thebes.

However, I wonder if concentrating so many wonders in the same city is really the best way to generate the GPs you need to settle to get the hammer output. Obviously you need to put a lot of wonders in that city as it can build them so easily and that is where you put the NE. But that makes other cities less able to contribute their GPPs to make GPs. You captured several wonders, in Delhi for instance, and they could have (and probably did) contribute to the GP total.

Building the UN and losing Representation was funny and a self inflicted wound We all make mistakes like that from time to time. Concentrating lots of specialists including MI's in Thebes was a good idea but then you built Oxford in Delhi and missed a lot of it's research potential. Would Iron Works and Oxford (without building the UN) not have been a better combination for Thebes? It would lose some GPPs but gain a lot of beakers and be better in the late game when GPPs get harder to make. You had Parthenon and could have run Pacifism (if you'd spread a state religion) so nearly the same total GPPs could have been made with a lot more beakers from Oxford. Delhi with that good Shrine (23 gold) and plenty of food could have had Wall Street and NE plus its old wonders Ghandi built for you . Running 7 merchants in that city with +200% multipliers could have been incredibly lucrative and let you run the research slider 10 or 20% higher most of the game after it was set up. Any GMs generated and settled in Thebes would have increased hammers indirectly by letting you run more specialists. I guess you wanted to maximise the number of engineers and priests and so discarded that arrangement.

Overall a great demonstration of the power of concentrating settled specialists and combining them with good multipliers. Thanks for sharing it, I only wish I'd found this thread earlier.

 

[aelf]

Sorry, I meant this for the other thread.

 

[madscientist]

One comment, If this stategy was used with an industrial/philosphical leader woruld it be overpowered? Oh yeah.

 

[TM Moot]

Cheers for the interesting thread obsolete, its similar to my latest Monarch strategy (H.C., Fractual, Epic, Wonders galore) which I've failed to win at more then likely because I spread myself to thin.

One question though (apologises if this has been mentioned elsewhere). I understood that there was a limit on how many world Wonders a City could build (3 springs to mind). You uber city had 7+. I'm confused?