The Impossible Walkthrough

[frob2900]

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?

National Wonders are limited to 2. World Wonders aren't limited at all.

National Wonders:
Heroic Epic
National Epic
Globe Theatre
Oxford University
Wall Street
Mount Rushmore
Ironworks
Red Cross
Scotland Yard

 

[TM Moot]

National Wonders are limited to 2. World Wonders aren't limited at all.

National Wonders:
Heroic Epic
National Epic
Globe Theatre
Oxford University
Wall Street
Mount Rushmore
Ironworks
Red Cross
Scotland Yard

Thanks for that. I thought that Nat Wonders were restricted, but I'm sure that I couldn't build some World Wonders in certain cities, which I put down to a Wonder limit. I'll check it out later.

 

[frob2900]

Thanks for that. I thought that Nat Wonders were restricted, but I'm sure that I couldn't build some World Wonders in certain cities, which I put down to a Wonder limit. I'll check it out later.

No. No. No. That's not the way it works.

What might have happened is that you were building the world wonder in one city (or had it enqueued there). In that case you cant start building it in another (unless you remove it from the queue in the first city, in which case it will slowly start decaying).

Also, an AI might have built it before you?

 

[InFlux5]

your victory doesn't come from the settled GPs. It comes from the cavalry beeline.

And how often do you see a Cav beeline with 2 cities? Without the super-specialists there would have been no Cavalry beeline.

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.

If you decide to build one, the real question is whether to get your 2nd city up before you start. I usually don't. Stonehenge adds 10 culture-per-turn to the city where it's built. So building it in your capital means you get 2 border pops very early. This allows a city at least 3 squares from the capital. (I often have overlapping tiles between my capital and 2nd city, but that's another topic.)

Building your 2nd city first is fine, and probably best if you fear an early war. But then you have to get the wonder up faster, through chopping, whipping, traits or resources.

I don't want to give the impression that one should always go for an early wonder. It's very situational. Stonehenge is usually a good idea, but a super-early axe rush often is too.

 

[obsolete]

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?

I would love to have both IW and Ox in my capital. The problem is that by doing so, we can no longer use the NE inside the capital, which is tied to specialists for obvious reasons. That is the problem.... and is one thing that I've done some thought on, and probably would make a really good discussion in another thread on it when judging all the numbers and conditions.

At least when we have IW, a UN vote cant shut down the hammer production. Oxford gets sorta nerfed when that happens. And furthermore, even if we don't build the UN, someone else is going to anyhow, it's just a matter of time. But yes, I should not have completed it, I should have put it back into the Que until I was sure i would be secretary.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I would love to have both IW and Ox in my capital. The problem is that by doing so, we can no longer use the NE inside the capital, which is tied to specialists for obvious reasons. That is the problem.... and is one thing that I've done some thought on, and probably would make a really good discussion in another thread on it when judging all the numbers and conditions.

At least when we have IW, a UN vote cant shut down the hammer production. Oxford gets sorta nerfed when that happens. And furthermore, even if we don't build the UN, someone else is going to anyhow, it's just a matter of time. But yes, I should not have completed it, I should have put it back into the Que until I was sure i would be secretary.

No your dead right about this. I tried it as Roose and settling everyone and just building wonders in the cap produces a ridiculous number of GP pts. This combine with pacifism in middle ages makes NE in cap absolutely essential. The whole idea (as you know its your idea ) is really based around using the settled Gp and wonder Pts to produce yet more Gp as fast as possible and settling them and so on. Its a clasic snowball effect. You have really once choice, NE and IW or Ne and Ox Uni. Ox uni and IW just isn't effective. Whether to build IW or Ox? Well if you have loads of scientists settled, then Ox, but this strat generally produces far more Gp and Ge, so Iw is really a no brainer.

Trying something similar with Bismark atm, had marble and gold AND copper in cap, have already knocked out Henge, Oracle, Parth, Collossus, Grt Light, Grt LIb, Hanging Grdns in Berlin(missed GW so I actually had to build a decent army too and didn't bother with Pyramids as no stone, I'm still basically running a CE in most other cities)...all well BC. It's now 100ad, Berlin is producing over 120 GP pts per turn (without Pacifism yet wow) I've around a dozen cities, a massive tech and power lead, and even a land and pop lead. And this btw is me having Monarch penalties, and Ai having Emperor bonuses. Crazy........

 

[RandomLeader]

I tried this on prince, continents, large map, sea level normal(?).

I must say that results were unbelieveble. My immidiate neighbors were Isabella, Shaka and Ragnar and some chinese fellows, yanks and some others on other continent.

I didn't have stone or marble, didn't have iron either. I still managed to pull every desired early wonders (not including the ones with artists) and managed to get parthenon to sister city. Sister city pumped out war chariots, while other city build either wonders or desired infra, other times simply turned hammers to science. I was so far away with tech lead that in time of liberalism I stopped it just before I got it, traded missing techs (usually I trade everything, but this time I simply chose the ones I really wanted), research 3 other techs and after that discovered liberalism and I got chemistry as a free tech.

I had few early wars with Isabella and shaka, but lacking offensive power without iron I just defended and got 3 great generals during the times. So when I got chemistry I started to pump out grenadiers and trebs. Then I simply ran over everybody. Sad that I didnt have time to play it to the end because it would have been nice to see what would have happnend on other continent with infantry (got assemblyline sooooo fast that never). I'll surely try it again.

Greatest thing about this super city was wonder production.. I took normal wonders without stone or marble within 5 turns and even statue of liberty in 10. I never get the statue of liberty otherwise, this was like a dream.

I mainly used representation, bureacracy, slavery and pasifism. Only problem was lack of food with my super city (didn't get it past 13 pop), lack of stone, marble and iron. It didnt seem to bother toe.

 

[UncleJJ]

No your dead right about this. I tried it as Roose and settling everyone and just building wonders in the cap produces a ridiculous number of GP pts. This combine with pacifism in middle ages makes NE in cap absolutely essential. The whole idea (as you know its your idea ) is really based around using the settled Gp and wonder Pts to produce yet more Gp as fast as possible and settling them and so on. Its a clasic snowball effect. You have really once choice, NE and IW or Ne and Ox Uni. Ox uni and IW just isn't effective. Whether to build IW or Ox? Well if you have loads of scientists settled, then Ox, but this strat generally produces far more Gp and Ge, so Iw is really a no brainer.

I appreciate the snowball effect. Incidently, you said that settled GP produce GPPs when of course they don't. It is the wonders and the food specialists which produce GPPs. And it is the food specialists (engineers and priests) plus the settled GPs that produce extra hammers to add to those from hills + forests. And it is those hammers that produce more wonders. So the rate of GPP production does increase as more wonders are built and as more specialists can be run because more buildings with specialist slots are built.

If the intention of this city is to maximise hammers and GPP production then IW and NE are the right combination. And that is what obsolete did here.

But I noticed in this game that obsolete captured Delhi, which already had useful wonders built (Temple of Artemis and the Budhist shrine) lots of hammers (marble, cow and 2 plains hills) and loads of food to run more specialists. If the NE had been built there; it would have produced a lot of GPPs. Meanwhile Thebes with a lot of wonders already built could have helped produce more troops using the hammers from hills and settled GPs. Those troops would capture more cities until enough Universities could be built so that Oxford was built in Thebes. Now we would have a Super Science City in Thebes with the beakers from Representation and the specialists getting the +100% bonus as well as all the other ones. Also we would have two cities producing lots of GPPs - Thebes and Delhi - and that might be a better arrangement.

Then we come to the other part of my argument, gold Delhi was a Shrine city extraordinaire. Its Budhist Shrine was making 23 gold in the final save... just combine that with market, grocer, bank and Wall Street and then run 7 merchants (easily possible after Biology) and we get (23 + 7*3)*300% = 132 gold plus whatever commerce is there That is enough to get your attention I'm sure Of course you could run some priests in Delhi as well if you wanted to turn the food into hammers to build more wonders. My point being Wall Street should have been built there for maximum financial advantage. The combination of merchants and priests (in Delhi) would give either GProphets or GMs (as does the Temple of Artemis) and they would both be useful if settled in Thebes providing food, hammers, gold and beakers (from Representation).

My argument is that using two good cities (Delhi and Thebes) to generate GPPs is likely to be better than just one (considering we have Parthenon and could use Pacifism at least part time with Spiritual). It gives more options to optimise the various outputs we want ... gold, hammers, beakers, and GPPs. So I would have built the NE and Wall Street in Delhi and Oxford and Iron Works in Thebes. That would give more gold, more beakers and more GPPs but possibly less hammers.

 

[AThousandYoung]

350 BC. Another great person arrives. We are going to lighbulb him so we can get courthouses. (Just kidding).

Our great prophet is perfect. I love priests and priests tend to own in this game. After I absorb him, I’ll be getting 2 hammers and 5 gold.. Not only that, but +3 also for running representation. This should help point out why burning them off on silly shrines is very rarely worth it. A lot of newbs go after shrines like there is no tomorrow. But it’s a bad strategy, let the AI do it, it’s suppose to play bad!

Also note, hanging gardens is on the way… literature is being researched. We want to get that great library. And just maybe… we can get that marble ready in time.

Spoiler :

I thought settled GP don't count as Specialists for the Representation bonus.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Then we come to the other part of my argument, gold Delhi was a Shrine city extraordinaire. Its Budhist Shrine was making 23 gold in the final save... just combine that with market, grocer, bank and Wall Street and then run 7 merchants (easily possible after Biology) and we get (23 + 7*3)*300% = 396 gold plus whatever commerce is there That is enough to get your attention I'm sure Of course you could run some priests in Delhi as well if you wanted to turn the food into hammers to build more wonders. My point being Wall Street should have been built there for maximum financial advantage. The combination of merchants and priests (in Delhi) would give either GProphets or GMs (as does the Temple of Artemis) and they would both be useful if settled in Thebes providing food, hammers, gold and beakers (from Representation).

I'm no about to do the in-depth math, but it all depends on who does the religion spreading. In nearly all of my games, if I intend to found a religion and build its shrine, I have to do most of the spreading work ... a spiritual AI who adopts my religion might spread to two of their cities for every three I spread to, and non-spiritual AI is more like 4:1 (at best).

Consider this (I think this is the point Obsolete's getting at):

• 1 Settled GP == spreading religion to 5 cities
• Spreading religion is done mostly by you (3:2 or 4:1)
• [Using the above assumption] 3 Missionaries == 1 Settled GP
• 3 Missionaries == 120
• etc ... you see where this is going.

Basically, for all the effort you have to focus into getting your religion out, you could've built a stack of Axemen or a couple other wonders altogether.

Plus, at the onset of the game, when resource management is so crucial, having a couple extra hammers and 5 you can set and forget about is golden.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Settled GPs count for every specialist bonus going apart from GP point generation. So they get the +2 culture from the Sistine, for example. Even settled Great Generals get the representation bonus, it is great.

 

[UncleJJ]

I'm no about to do the in-depth math, but it all depends on who does the religion spreading.
<snip>

Basically, for all the effort you have to focus into getting your religion out, you could've built a stack of Axemen or a couple other wonders altogether.

I might have misinterpreted your comment, but as far as I know it was Ghandi that spread Budhism in this game. So the shrine giving 23 gold was captured in that state (no GProphet or missionaries needed). My comments on Delhi getting Wall Street etc., were predicated on that assumption.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I might have misinterpreted your comment, but as far as I know it was Ghandi that spread Budhism in this game. So the shrine giving 23 gold was captured in that state (no GProphet or missionaries needed). My comments on Delhi getting Wall Street etc., were predicated on that assumption.

...

nvm

...

Somehow, I read into that somewhere an argument against settling GPs and instead for building a Shrine.

I really should lay off the multi-tabbed browsing.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I appreciate the snowball effect. Incidently, you said that settled GP produce GPPs when of course they don't. It is the wonders and the food specialists which produce GPPs. And it is the food specialists (engineers and priests) plus the settled GPs that produce extra hammers to add to those from hills + forests. And it is those hammers that produce more wonders. So the rate of GPP production does increase as more wonders are built and as more specialists can be run because more buildings with specialist slots are built.

You of course right about settled Gp not producing pts. What I actually meant was that adding more specialists got wonders built even quicker, and therefore led to more Gp pts being generated. My excuse, I was typing very quickly as it came out of my head, and didn't explain what I meant properly

I was just using part of Obsolete idea, the "build as many wonders as you can" in your cap and settle all the Gps bit, the rest I was making up on the fly.

Edit: Damn, I just noticed I even said I was playing Bismark in current game, when I'm not, I'm playing Fred. Kentucky Fried Brain

 

[Morgrad]

You have really once choice, NE and IW or Ne and Ox Uni. Ox uni and IW just isn't effective. Whether to build IW or Ox? Well if you have loads of scientists settled, then Ox, but this strat generally produces far more Gp and Ge, so Iw is really a no brainer.

I agree with the first part, and disagree with the second. NE is truly a no-brainer, but if you're pumping 400+ hammers a turn without IW, do you really need to crank that city up?

The answer, of course, is maybe yes and maybe no. Most people seem not to build HE and IW in the same city - one of the reasons is because it's usually better to build two units in 7 turns than one in 5.

Using the wonder-spam strat with Pacifism + Oxford + National Epic + Parthenon in my test run (which I didn't even do all that well on) was insanity. It was the best science city I've ever had *and* the best GP farm I've ever had all rolled into one, and still a massively good production city (though not the best I've ever had - go figure without IW and with the coastal start).

I much prefer HE + Oxford - but I think that would depend highly upon the game you're playing.

Fun stuff!

 

[Fronx]

Thank You obsolete for this interesting post!



To contribute something to this discussion:

I think some people above are thinking this as a direct walktrough guide on how to play; I think the main point (atleast for me) in this whole thing was more about the game philosophy; not about what to do, but WHY to do.

So focusing on irrelevant things like "but you only made 2 cities, you had easy neighbours, ect." are kind of useless, its about the meaning, about the idea behind the things that were done. Important isn't what was done, but why it was done.

if opponents would have been different, the strategy on building/teching/ect would have been different. If the starting location was different, again same thing. But the philosophy behind would remain somewhat same.

Atleast this is how I read this post =)


PS. Haven't yet read the other topic (The UNREAL Walkthrough), but surely will.

 

[aelf]

So focusing on irrelevant things like "but you only made 2 cities, you had easy neighbours, ect." are kind of useless, its about the meaning, about the idea behind the things that were done. Important isn't what was done, but why it was done.

if opponents would have been different, the strategy on building/teching/ect would have been different. If the starting location was different, again same thing. But the philosophy behind would remain somewhat same.

And this philosophy has to do with settling GPs and not cottaging or lightbulbing, I believe? It's not irrelevant when people point out parts of the game that were not optimal. This is not a some sort of variant challenge game that go through great lengths just to prove a point or to amuse players. In fact, it says "Walkthrough" on the title. Now, a comprehensive walkthrough outlining an effective strategy has to be able to account for itself. The best possible thing must be done. If it is optimal to lightbulb a GS at a certain point, do so. If it is optimal to cottage some cities, do so. If it is optimal to expand early, do so. If it is optimal to be more selective about which wonder to build, do so. We've seen how this approach can work, but we haven't seen how it can even match a more balanced play.

Nobody is saying that it sucks. People are only saying that it could do better with some of the things it chooses to skip, and therefore this approach has to be taken with a scoop of salt.

 

[jihe]

Actually this plays a lot like the OCC walkthrough for immortal.

 

[sucinum]

Actually this plays a lot like the OCC walkthrough for immortal.

Imho playing OCCs opens you for that strategy. I played like this before ever reading any strategy guides and it worked out fine. A supercity can outproduce and outscience 10 others without any problem.
To simplify it, you only calculate xxx hammers/beakers now against x per turn. And while they are great boons to this strategy, you don't absolutely need pyramids or anything, only a single early wonder (i prefer stonehenge, but doesn't really matter) to get the GP started and to switch to bureaucracy lateron. The surroundings of your capital don't matter too much, you always have 2 ressources around it and that is enough to build a wonder. The settled specialists do most of the work anyways. So to say, the worse the land is (highlands or something), the better your supercity will be compared to what the AI can build.
You can combine it with attacks of any kind, be it with axes, maces or everything and so adapt to your surroundings and any situation in the game. Actually this strategy is much safer than any lightbulb gambit, i even consider waiting for cav wrong and would use maces combined with cats for the 1st "border correction", since civil service is a core tech anyways (so important that you even should lightbulb it ).

 

[The Bowman]

Where is this OCC walkthrough? Sorry for being a newb.