Cornflakes dictates Russian history in Adventure 55

[Cornflakes]

This is the first ever adventure write-up that I've attempted, so here we go ... The History of the Technologically Backward, yet Culturally Affluent Russians, as recalled by Cornflakes, both the documenter and the guiding hand behind all that transpired ………

First of all, results for scoring (not that I have the slightest chance of earliest Cultural Victory)
Cultural Victory T264 – 15 (Catherine) = T249
Number of cities flipped by culture: a pitiful 1 single city

Now, why Catherine of Russia?
1. The pick was to a large degree random
2. I wanted someone near the middle of the rankings
3. Since I would be unable to declare war on the AI to claim territory later on I figured that it was to my advantage to pace my cities in the best long-term position, and creative provides greater flexibility for settling early cities by popping borders right away (not sure how much this really benefitted me though, since I probably didn’t choose the best locations anyway)

General thoughts on strategy which guided my play (I’m interested to see how other more experienced players thought, and whether this was a good line of thinking for this situation):
1. No war = no need for military = no need for military tech
2. No need for military tech means the vast majority of the tech tree is unnecessary, meaning no need for research after a certain point
3. Since Taj Mahal provides a free golden age I set that as the final tech, and Printing Press provides +1 commerce (+1 culture with slider) so I decided to get that too, but looking back I’m thinking that printing press and paper might have been wasted beakers/culture-using-slider. In the end though, I’m pretty sure the commerce culture was affected by multipliers so this probably came out even or positive
4. PRIMARY STRATEGY: run slider as soon as possible, and get down multiplier buildings as soon as possible.

I finish playing about two weeks ago and didn’t start the write-up until today, but here is the history as far as I recall. From humble beginnings …

… the Russian advanced through Agriculture > Animal Husbandry > Wheel > Pottery > Bronze Working … and at this point I forgot the “no civics swap” condition and switched to slavery out of habit …

…As soon as I clicked the “yes” button I realized my mistake. I decided the proper course of action in this case was to simply reload the turn and decline the civics change.

T66 overview …

Empire


Moscow



St. Petersburg

… About turn 70 I decide it’s about time to start looking for Marble in preparation for National Epic, Hermitage, and Taj Mahal. Since none of the AI had Marble I thought for sure I would find it down south in the ice wasteland, but no luck. By turn 90 I was getting desperate, because I had explored the whole southern region, I knew that if I did not find Marble soon it would be too late. I hadn’t yet explored the northern ice region, and because of the distance I did not think that I would have enough time to locate the marble and then send a settler to claim it, so I decided to send out a chariot/setter pair so that I could settle on the marble immediately, and bring along a worker to road to the nearest AI to get it into the trade network …

This is about 10 turns after I sent them off on the exploration mission

… Unfortunately it turned out that the map did not contain a single source or Marble, so after about 30 turns of wandering I disbanded them after revealing the entire continent (by this time I was wrapping up teching and preparing for full-culture so the extra city would have simply been an unnecessary drain wherever it was planted)

T104 overview, these six cities are the extent of my empire, which turned out to be a perfect number of cities as you’ll see in the future …

*Side note* Why doesn’t the AI settle 1-North??? A pigs and plains-hill are absolutely wasted in this position.

… On T148 I researched Nationalism and from this point on I ran 100% culture slider. Final technological achievements for the Russians … *picture is large*

I didn’t think to get an overview of the empire until two turns later, so T150 overview …

General Overview


Moscow



St. Petersburg ***NOTE: I decided against building Sistine Chapel, which turned out to be a good decision because it was completed by an AI about 12 turns later.



Novgorod

… The three cities in the above spoiler I chose for my three culture centers. The single greatest mistake I made in the game is also pictured in the screenshot of Novgorod. I am ashamed to say that I committed a mistake that even the greenist of noobs wouldn’t make. I built the National Epic thinking that is was the Hermitage , and so put the national epic in a city that only had enough food to support a maximum of 3-1/2 specialists (alternating between 3-4 to avoid starvation).

The second greatest mistake I made was wanting to build the Hermitage in Novgorod in the first place. I chose (almost at random) St. Petersburg as the future site for my Great-Work culture-bombs, which led to me misplacing the Hermitage and Cathedrals in Novgorod. Since my strategy was to rely on commerce for culture I should have placed the multiplier buildings in the city with the greatest commerce. Since Novgorod had the National Epic misplaced already in it I was running specialist instead of working cottages. The base culture of Novgorod was about 30 less than St. Petersburg, and my multipliers were modifying the lower number.

From turn 150 onward the game was pretty much enter, enter, enter, enter … enter, enter, enter, etc.

T166 a great Engineer was born. At this time Taj Mahal was 2 turns to completion. I decided to fire the golden age immediately …

… This resulted in 24 turns of Golden Age, with commerce complete devoted to culture.

I mentioned above that 6 was the perfect number of cities. This is because each cathedral for each religion takes 3 of its respective temples. I had three religions (Hinduism, Taoism, Budhism) and with 6 cities I was able to build a cathedral for each religion in two of my three culture cities (the other city I was going to artist-bomb). I put one set of cathedrals in Moscow, and as noted above I misplaced the other set of cathedrals in Novgorod. ***I remember seeing someone comment in the Adventure 55 opening thread about the spiritual trait being completely negated, but because of the use of temples/cathedrals I think spiritual would still be at least as good in the long run as creative (which I chose)***

… enter, enter, enter … occasionally a Great Artist is born

This was my first ever attempt at a cultural victory, and I discovered that it’s not quite as straightforward as it sounds in an all-peace game. Through inefficiencies like the one above I ended up with and odd mis-balance of culture when my last Great Artist was born. By planning ahead I could probably have shaved off another 15-20 turns, but since I was just hitting enter every 3 seconds I did not trouble myself too much with the details. Moscow ended up with 10K extra culture, while in my other cities both Novgorod and St. Petersburg ended up about half a GA short each, with one GA to spare. If I had put the multiplier buildings (hermitage & cathedrals) in St. Pete it probably would have made up the difference through its superior base-culture. Oh, well. I just put the last GA in the limiting city and spent another 30 seconds ending the final 10 turns until the third city finally caught up.

Oh, one minor benefit of waiting the extra 10 turns is that my first (and only) city flipped by culture occurred in that period …

A final scare: With one turn left until victory, Roosevelt decides to try for religious victory. Fortunately Hatshepsut abstained, because her 95 votes would have been enough to pass the religious victory.

A final look at the three Legendary Culture cities

Moscow


St. Petersburg



Novgorod

VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Swiss Pauli]

General thoughts on strategy which guided my play (I’m interested to see how other more experienced players thought, and whether this was a good line of thinking for this situation):
1. No war = no need for military = no need for military tech
2. No need for military tech means the vast majority of the tech tree is unnecessary, meaning no need for research after a certain point
3. Since Taj Mahal provides a free golden age I set that as the final tech, and Printing Press provides +1 commerce (+1 culture with slider) so I decided to get that too, but looking back I’m thinking that printing press and paper might have been wasted beakers/culture-using-slider. In the end though, I’m pretty sure the commerce culture was affected by multipliers so this probably came out even or positive
4. PRIMARY STRATEGY: run slider as soon as possible, and get down multiplier buildings as soon as possible.

Correct, except for point 3 which was - as you reflected on post-game - sub-optimal for this game. As you've probably seen, T-Hawk's game was a masterclass on cultural victory, and he traded for PP.

Strictly speaking, the switch to Slavery makes this a shadow game for scoring, but I'm not feeling particularly strict :angel:

Thanks for taking the time to play and report :D

[Cornflakes]

After reading the other reports it appears that I was generally on the right track. I picked up on the importance of religions but just didn't take it far enough. I thought three religions was enough, and since I only had 6 cities I was only able to build 2 of each cathedral. The real issue with my so-called "misplacing" of the cathedrals was in fact me not even realizing that I could solve my problem by building another three cities. Next time I'll know better!