[SPOILERS] Welcome to the Kuro Corporation! (Kuro and BaII)

[MaxPower]

If we want some cheap MP we might just wanna get Archery, although do we have the commence to deviate to it w/o affecting our current plans too much.

In Heredetary Rule is better to 2 pop whip an axe/spear and overflow in another as it will cancel your whipping penalty and then increase your happy cap by 1.

[BaII]

But, in our core cities, we might not want to have them whipped, for military, in that case we have the MP as cheap archers that cost very little shields.

[Kuro]

Do the other Lurkers have any opinion? Is 3 too little for a fast cultural victory?

You can do it with 2 religions pretty fast if you decide to commit to it in the next 30ish turns, but assuming lot of risks.

You will need 18 temples for the 6 cathedrals and research up to music, drama and Code of Laws. Once you get there just make cottage heaven in your lands and put the slider into culture. Use the extra happiness for artist specialists and more cottages.

Sistine chapel won't hurt you either.

Of course you will be very vulnerable to enemy attacks, as you will fall behind in research.

It's a big gamble but I think is doable.

What do you think if we get Feudalism/Construction in addition to Music/Drama/CoL? I was thinking that with Longbows + Catapults to protect us and turning our capital into a Great Artist farm, we could get a Cultural Victory quickly: The fact we could get a lot of Great Artists from the capital helps sandbag it, too. We head up to Music for Sistine, found the city with Marble.

I was contemplating it because it doesn't seem like we are well set up for other victories: Space Race is hard with all of our ice and a lack of a true huge production city, for example. Our resources and placement is not well set for a military victory. Time is of course out, Diplomatic isn't really a true MP option...

A lot of culture victories in previous MP games we've seen seem to have failed because the descision to go for them was made late. So that is partially why I was thinking of this early. If we go for it, we want to do it earlier rather than later.

I'll play the turn soon.

Also, who is Damon82?

[Kuro]

Not really much of anything happening. Standard Oil finished a Worker and is putting hammers into a Spear (NOT an Axe so that an Axe can be 2-pop whipped if needed) to grow, since it isn't making really any hammers right now (Commerce!) so there isn't enough to make a Library seem logical. That Worker gets to work on another cottage for the capital.

John Dodge nabbed Hinduism and will now work on Moai since it has the Organized Religion bonus. Vanderbilt finishes a Missionary EOT and I think I might just forget the Lighthouse for now and pump our Missionary after Missonary, maybe stop for a temple. The happiness would be useful and I could bring culture to the sheep city.



Demographics.

[MaxPower]

What do you think if we get Feudalism/Construction in addition to Music/Drama/CoL? I was thinking that with Longbows + Catapults to protect us and turning our capital into a Great Artist farm, we could get a Cultural Victory quickly: The fact we could get a lot of Great Artists from the capital helps sandbag it, too. We head up to Music for Sistine, found the city with Marble.

Pursuing extra techs will delay your culture race but will grant you the ability to defend yourselves for longer, so it could be wise. Turning your capital into great artist farm is a good idea since it is a very food-rich city, but never hire an artist that could be working a cottage. Nothing produce more culture than commerce via culture slider.

I was contemplating it because it doesn't seem like we are well set up for other victories: Space Race is hard with all of our ice and a lack of a true huge production city, for example. Our resources and placement is not well set for a military victory. Time is of course out, Diplomatic isn't really a true MP option...

I agree you got screwed bad with your land, but IMO you lost a golden opportunity of axe rushing your neighbor. You started with mining and executed a very good opening but settled the wrong city first. You should have settled Buick (turn 35-36 I believe you settled Walton), road the 4 tiles to your capital (only 4 turns with 2 workers) then chop/whip 4 axes or more. You could be marching to Willem capital in turn 50ish. I don't think (maybe they could) that at that at point of time they could have researched BW, founded a city close to copper, then mined and roaded it to their capital with only 1 worker to be able to whip proper defenses.

Of course this is past history, let's focus on the present. In order to know if you can achieve a culture victory you should do some maths: you need to generate 50000 culture in 3 cities and so far you have 2 religions that translate to +100% multiplier with cathedrals. Assuming you can pop 6 great artists and use them in 2 culture bombs per city for 8000 culture. Then you will need to "hand build" 42000 more culture. Then you need to consider a time goal to achieve it. It can't be too long because your opponents can/will destroy militarily and too short is not realistic. I believe something in the 100-120 turns range is reasonable. Maths says you need roughly 400 culture/turn.

You should count how many cottages and artists you can work in your 3 legendary cities apply +100% modifier and check if you can reach that amount.

Maybe researching up to liberalism is not a bad idea just for free speech civic (+100% culture and +2 commerce per town). Along the way, printing press will provide +1 commerce and pacifism civic will boost your Great Artists farms.

By the way, is Parthenon taken?

Of course, you must estimate how many turns will take there, and how many turns this path can shave off your cultural race. Math, math, math.....

A lot of culture victories in previous MP games we've seen seem to have failed because the descision to go for them was made late. So that is partially why I was thinking of this early. If we go for it, we want to do it earlier rather than later.

I have no experience in attempting cultural victory in MP. In SP, AIs don't check too often the victory conditions screen so you can easily sneak a cultural victory even on deity. But on MP, you should assume your foes will.

Also, who is Damon82?

No clue.

[MaxPower]

But, in our core cities, we might not want to have them whipped, for military, in that case we have the MP as cheap archers that cost very little shields.

Slow building archers will divert too much of city production that could go to something useful like markets, forges, etc..

Whipping efficiency depends on city size and food surplus. I don't recall the math behind it, but for example your capital has potential for an obscene food surplus, so after the whip will regrow like weed, maybe 3-4 turns at size 10. It won't cost you too much commerce or production.

Of course, archers could be a good cheap unit to overflow the whip extra hammers.

[BaII]

Hey Kuro, is it possible that u give me the password so I can take a look around and see if we can potentially pull off this CV?

EDIT: Nvm, I figured it out, btw u can change it to something else if it is easier for u.

[BaII]

After doing some Math, with 40 turns of 100% Culture Tax our Captial, Vanderbilt, and Sam Walton will be able to reach Legendary Culture. With catherdrals, theaters, and library. I believe this would take about 60 turns to set up, so it would roughly take us 100 turns to complete this CV.

[Kuro]

We probably did miss a chance to just bum rush WilliamLP. I suppose we went for a TGL gambit over an axe gambit, since if we'd have gotten TGL, I think our position would be twice as good, as it'd let us do a lot more to get going early on and so on and such forth.

BaII, do your calculations take into account any Great Artists? If it doesn't, we can probably shave a decent amount of turns off it, depending on how many we pop out of our capital.

Let's run some calcs on that anyway...

Our capital can make 17 surplus food if we do not work John Dodge's Deer and do work both Clams. If we assume that 2 of this food goes into a Plains Hill for production until we totally ramp up culture, this works out to 15 food, or 7 Artists, which comes to...3 x 7 = 21 GPP per turn? 21 GPP per turn over 40 turns = 21 x 40 = 840 GPP. IIRC, it is 100 GPP per level, so that gives us 8 Great Artist, assuming we do not go into Pacifism at some point.

8 Great Artists bombing is 4000 x 8 = 32,000 culture, or enough to take a lagging city a good way or, my preferred idea, to have the capital hit or nearly hit it naturally and bomb the other two to make it sudden, quick and harder to response too.

If we took the hill off and went to 8 Artists for 24 GPP, 24 x 40 = 960 GPP, and we could start a few turns earlier to hit 1000 GPP. Theoritically, we could hit 11 Great Artists with Music, or 44,000 culture in culture bombing.

Personally, I'm thinking we might just wanna run with this. Even if it presents the largest possibility of us LOSING, since it is risky, I think it also presents our best chance of WINNING. And everyone wants to win! Winning is good.

The hardest part, to me, would seem to be actually GETTING "40 turns of 100% culture", which seems like it'd end up costing a lot of treasury. Perhaps we would need to exchange an Artist for a Merchant? We'll need to think deeper into this before commiting to it, I suppose. Another thing would be how many techs we can actually get before we need to go 100% culture and still have a reasonable finish date...we need Monarchy, Code of Laws, presumably Currency to keep our econ going, Drama, Music, presumably Feudalism to not die and possibly up to Liberalism (Though we could at least probably beeline Lib at that point). A good deal of techs, especially since we probably couldn't Scientist-bulb Education...

One good thing is that, if we decide to make our culture cities Capital/Walton/Vanderbilt, production city John Dodge could be used to produce any number of things while we do this...though on that note, would John Dodge actually make a better culture city than Walton?

[MaxPower]

The hardest part, to me, would seem to be actually GETTING "40 turns of 100% culture", which seems like it'd end up costing a lot of treasury. Perhaps we would need to exchange an Artist for a Merchant? We'll need to think deeper into this before commiting to it, I suppose. Another thing would be how many techs we can actually get before we need to go 100% culture and still have a reasonable finish date...we need Monarchy, Code of Laws, presumably Currency to keep our econ going, Drama, Music, presumably Feudalism to not die and possibly up to Liberalism (Though we could at least probably beeline Lib at that point). A good deal of techs, especially since we probably couldn't Scientist-bulb Education...

I don't think you will run 100% culture for that long. I think more like 50 turns at 80% culture or so. If you cottage all your cities and build courthouses and markets, at 20% slider you may pay your maintenance costs.

Remember you can't run binary mode with culture as you do with science. Why would you turn all your cities in a bloody messed disorder for a turn and then turn them in "we love president" situation on the following turn?
On real life, several democratic governments use this logic for election years but you aren't running for the Whitehouse!

One good thing is that, if we decide to make our culture cities Capital/Walton/Vanderbilt, production city John Dodge could be used to produce any number of things while we do this...though on that note, would John Dodge actually make a better culture city than Walton?

Your 3 highest food-yield cities should be the legendary ones. More food, more cottages and artists to run.