Alright, another round in the experiment! My usual notes and rules apply. I was much better at record keeping this time, so the results are very accurate.
Gameplay Wise, very similar to Experiment 2. I went the same pantheons as noted before, and including a Petra for both, with Hanging Gardens for Tradition as an extra wonder.
So overall lets see how both did in overall goalposts:
Goal - Turn Number (T) - Turn Number (P)
City 2: 38 - 38
City 3: 57 - 56
Policy 3: 60 - 68
Petra: 67 - 64
City 4: 77 - 84*
Policy 4: 87 - 95
Religion: 100 - 98**
City 5: 108 - 90
City 6: 109 - 97
Hanging Gardens: 99 - X
City 7: 125 - 99
Policy 5: 120 - 122
Oracle: 125 - 125
* I made a slight goof when going from Progress' 4th city, and sent my settler to a slightly wrong location. So although I founded it on Turn 86, it would have been 84 if I had sent him properly.
**For Progress, my GP showed up in a secondary city (instead of the capital). Both had the same faith, so it was a coin flip on where it would show up. So although I founded on Turn 100, I had the GP on 98 and could have founded then if I had chosen to found in a satellite city, or if RNG had given me the GP in the capital.
So the notes:
1) Progress was actually very competitive with Tradition on the first 2 cities, which was surprising. The 4th city is where Tradition took the crown, but then Progress blew it away with cities 5, 6, and 7. A few factors for this:
a) Tradition is incentivized to keep their capital at 6+ population for the culture bonus, so some turns were spent growing the capital there instead of making a settler a little quicker. So part of Tradition's culture boom later was paid for with some slower expansion.
b) Building the Hanging Gardens took the place of building a settler in the capital.
c) Progress' satellite cities are just better at producing settlers.
2) The major division in this experiment. Once again I got a crash in happiness by the ~118 mark on the Progress run, so bad that it caused Orleans to flip. This likely skews the last 7 turns.
Looking at similar results from my last run, I actually think the issue is less Progress' ability to generate happiness...and more the fact that 7 cities by Turn 99 is simply not viable without a major happiness source (like a +6 happy monopoly might keep me out of the red, but still wouldn't be enough to make me happy). Of course, the fact that Progress cities are growing faster could also be a factor.
So I think if your going to actually leverage Progress' power to go 7 cities this quickly, you might actually need to take Equality 3rd to get enough happiness to make it work.
I am intended to rerun the Progress run and hold on the 7th city for longer to again see if this makes the big difference.
3) Culture Wise, what you'll notice is even by Policy 3, Tradition starts showing a pretty solid advantage (I didn't record it, but Progress normally beats Tradition to Policy 2 by a few turns). I think Policy 4 is the most telling, because at this point Tradition actually has another city working against its culture, and still out did Progress
What I was surprised at was Progress majorly caught up by Policy 5. The Orleans flip a few turns early could certainly make some difference, but considering Progress went from an 8 turn culture deficient down to 2 is very interesting. My assumption is that Progress' faster monuments in the satellites started to make some difference + the backfill of some cheaper techs to get more culture. I will see in my rerun if the flipped city were was a critical factor here or if Progress really did just make up the difference.
That said, one thing CrazyG mentioned was a possible reduction of Tradition's Splendor policy. I'm just noting here that while that may change the longer term prospects, it would not change Tradition's earlier culture advantage.
Gameplay Wise, very similar to Experiment 2. I went the same pantheons as noted before, and including a Petra for both, with Hanging Gardens for Tradition as an extra wonder.
So overall lets see how both did in overall goalposts:
Goal - Turn Number (T) - Turn Number (P)
City 2: 38 - 38
City 3: 57 - 56
Policy 3: 60 - 68
Petra: 67 - 64
City 4: 77 - 84*
Policy 4: 87 - 95
Religion: 100 - 98**
City 5: 108 - 90
City 6: 109 - 97
Hanging Gardens: 99 - X
City 7: 125 - 99
Policy 5: 120 - 122
Oracle: 125 - 125
* I made a slight goof when going from Progress' 4th city, and sent my settler to a slightly wrong location. So although I founded it on Turn 86, it would have been 84 if I had sent him properly.
**For Progress, my GP showed up in a secondary city (instead of the capital). Both had the same faith, so it was a coin flip on where it would show up. So although I founded on Turn 100, I had the GP on 98 and could have founded then if I had chosen to found in a satellite city, or if RNG had given me the GP in the capital.
So the notes:
1) Progress was actually very competitive with Tradition on the first 2 cities, which was surprising. The 4th city is where Tradition took the crown, but then Progress blew it away with cities 5, 6, and 7. A few factors for this:
a) Tradition is incentivized to keep their capital at 6+ population for the culture bonus, so some turns were spent growing the capital there instead of making a settler a little quicker. So part of Tradition's culture boom later was paid for with some slower expansion.
b) Building the Hanging Gardens took the place of building a settler in the capital.
c) Progress' satellite cities are just better at producing settlers.
2) The major division in this experiment. Once again I got a crash in happiness by the ~118 mark on the Progress run, so bad that it caused Orleans to flip. This likely skews the last 7 turns.
Looking at similar results from my last run, I actually think the issue is less Progress' ability to generate happiness...and more the fact that 7 cities by Turn 99 is simply not viable without a major happiness source (like a +6 happy monopoly might keep me out of the red, but still wouldn't be enough to make me happy). Of course, the fact that Progress cities are growing faster could also be a factor.
So I think if your going to actually leverage Progress' power to go 7 cities this quickly, you might actually need to take Equality 3rd to get enough happiness to make it work.
I am intended to rerun the Progress run and hold on the 7th city for longer to again see if this makes the big difference.
3) Culture Wise, what you'll notice is even by Policy 3, Tradition starts showing a pretty solid advantage (I didn't record it, but Progress normally beats Tradition to Policy 2 by a few turns). I think Policy 4 is the most telling, because at this point Tradition actually has another city working against its culture, and still out did Progress
What I was surprised at was Progress majorly caught up by Policy 5. The Orleans flip a few turns early could certainly make some difference, but considering Progress went from an 8 turn culture deficient down to 2 is very interesting. My assumption is that Progress' faster monuments in the satellites started to make some difference + the backfill of some cheaper techs to get more culture. I will see in my rerun if the flipped city were was a critical factor here or if Progress really did just make up the difference.
That said, one thing CrazyG mentioned was a possible reduction of Tradition's Splendor policy. I'm just noting here that while that may change the longer term prospects, it would not change Tradition's earlier culture advantage.
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