Epic XI: Sunrise089 goes to Hollywood

[sunrise089]

My report is far from complete, but since I'm pushing the report deadline as it is, I figure I might as well get my scoring info up.

Main Scoring
25 points: Cultural Victory: Victory in 1944, 25 points
4 points: EACH rival civilization still “alive” at the time of your victory: Alive were Monty, Khan, Alex, HC, Peter, JC. 24 points

Wonders: Score these points only for wonders NOT rushed with a Great Engineer!
7 points: build the Parthenon
2 points: build Versailles
1 point: build Eiffel Tower
1 point: build Hollywood
Total of 11 points

Other Scoring
1 point: EACH library built by 260AD: I had 3
1 point: EACH temple (any type) built by 260AD: I had 2
1 point: EACH university built by 1500AD: I had 2
2 points: EACH cathedral (any type) built by 1500AD: I had 0

Total: 67 + (highly unlikely) fastest finish bonus.

EDIT: Well my memory appears to have failed me - I made some mistakes with the above, now corrected.

[sunrise089]

Report:

I need to arrange for new webhosting, since I feel bad piggybacking my friend's hosting account with all of these pics; so for now I'll be sticking to text.

I settled in place, and set research to Polytheism. I successfully founded Hinduism in the capital. I quickly dotmapped out my first two cities: New York would go 1NE of the gold to the capital's east, and Boston would go 1W of the southern gold. I figured the early gold would allow me to grab lots of religions while keeping up on other techs.

Judaism was founded in 2110BC in New York, nicely arranged to be discovered the turn after the city was founded. Writing was finished in 850BC along with The Oracle in the capital, and I took CoL to place Confucianism in Boston.

Since the difficulty of the game was only get to Prince, and I had no need to keep up in tech in the late game, I decided early on to build a good amount of Wonders, rather than an early military. I imagine the aggressive AI was turned on in this game to counterbalance that strategy, and I did get annoyingly declared on a number of times. Still, the AI is pretty ineffective at actually capturing the player's cities, so wars weren't the end of the world. All in all after the Oracle I built the Parthenon in Washington in 150BC, the Great Library in 395AD, the Hanging Gardens in 530AD, and then Sistine Chapel a while latter in 1166AD.

The benchmark date of 260AD saw me with merely three cities, but I still wasn't worried since early alphabet had kept me fully up to date on tech. I also had four religions (I had taken Theology with a GP) but no shrines. My first shrine (the Hindu one) was actually not built until 695AD.

My first war came in 815AD, when Saladin to my south declared on me. Although I'm sure he could out-produce me, and he certainly achieved strategic surprise, the fact that I had Elephants meant I was in little danger. Unfortunately I made the mistake of bribing several of the AIs onto my side, and when I declared peace in 1055AD the AIs kept the war going. It was obvious Saladin was going to loose cities, so in 1262 I redeclared with a small strike force and grabbed Mecca before an AI ally could. That would be the extent of my empire for most of the game.

The AIs on the other hand had no intention of letting up, and they succeeded in knocking four points off my score in the early 1500s. Also, before Saladin even declared the first time Fredrick and Issy had been knocked out, so AI vs AI warring was definitely not lacking.

Tech wise I had discovered Liberalism first in 1346AD, and taken Nationalism. Besides the usual trade opportunities I also took advantage of Free Speech, and would remain there for the rest of the game. I should also take this opportunity to say that while many of my cultural plays in the game were subpar (I never ran an artist specialist until the final 20 odd turns) and while I built the essential cathederals late as well, I am proud of two of my moves. First of all I did priortize religion more than in almost all of my other games, and I did spread it well - all of the religions I founded (Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam)were all spread around to all of my cities quickly. Additionally as soon as I had the option (Drama?) I went ahead and set my culture slider to 20% and left it there all game. This did put me at a disadvantage relative to the AIs in research, but it sure made border expansions and happiness not a problem.

I gained my fifth (!) city in 1583 when Delphi flipped to me from Alex. This city would be a pain in the butt since it would later be taken by Toku i war, and then recaptured by Alex. Guess what that means - it revolted almost every turn for the rest of the game, but couldn't ever flip back to me.

Monty declared on me in 1613AD, and gave what was still a Longbow and Jumbo based army a good deal of trouble. Once again I bribed three other allies into the war. In 1616AD Toku joined in, and I actually convinced Kahn to declare on both of them for Education plus Printing Press. This was really a nice development, since it allowed me to continue to build cultural buildings with my three settled cities even during wartime. I ended up capturing a single Aztec city and making peace in 1673AD. Toku wasn't so lucky though, as once again I had asked for less than the AIs wanted to offer, and they continued the war with him until elimination.

By the late 1790s I realized while I was in no position to capture enemy cities, and while all of the land had been long since gobbled up, my culture had carved out lots of available tiles outside my cities' big fat crosses, so I went and settled 3 cities over a pair of turns. Within the next hundred years my culture also really took off, as I built Eiffel Tower, Hollywood, Rock and Roll, and Broadway, one each in my four core cities.

Monty redeclared in 1886AD, but this time I was more than ready with numerous City Garrison Infantry awaiting his Cavs and Cats. He was willing to offer peace as soon as he was willing to talk. Much more annoying was Alex's declaration from Pleased in 1927AD. He had tech parity, and I knew I only needed a few more turns to win. Fortunately I had all the tech I needed, and I had Universal Suffrage as my civic, so I simply bought several tanks a turn for the rest of the war, and saw my power shoot upwards. By 1943, facing Peter, and Khan and I and having lost several cities (one razed by me) Alex finally made peace.

From that point I clicked End Turn and saw the cultural victory screen in 1944AD. I ended the game first in GNP, but only fourth in food or production. I also stand fourth in score, behind Alex, Khan, and Peter. I did find satisfaction in taking the top four spots in the Five Greatest Cities page, but my Herbert Hoover level leadership award wasn't as impressive.

All in all I greatly enjoyed this game, especially the balance between cultural and military builds and the experience I gained regarding religion spread. I appreciate Sullla for hosting it, and look forward to finishing up the nice and easy Desert game before getting my @$$ kicked by the Gauntlet event.

[Michelangelo]

Your approach to the game regarding religion was the same as mine, you're end score of 67 points therefore was also the same (well probably not therefore, but the same still but I beat you to victory by a measly four turns.

I think from our games and reading up on some of the others I can, for now, conclude that going for religion was not the fastest way to go.

[Sullla]

I'll echo Michelangelo's comment: self-founding the early religions ended up being of questionable benefit. That's one of the things I wanted to see from the reports, whether emphasizing growth or religion at the start ended up with faster cultural finishes. I'm also curious as to the merits of running 20% culture at all times post-Drama versus putting that into research and reaching the end of the tech tree faster. What impressions did the rest of you have on that issue?

I don't think I've seen Tokugawa get killed in any other game. Alex must have been a monster in your world! Good job holding off the Aggressive AIs and coming out with a victory.

[BWardly]

This game has been beneficial in helping me take a closer look at the costs and benefits to the religion strategy. If your aim is controlling diplomacy with an iron fist, then you gotta found every religion. If you are in need of happiness, then founding a religion or two is a good way to get that along with shrine income. But in an aggressive game, especially one like this, even founding all the religions and only spreading one isn't going to preclude warfare. Given the lack of a happiness crunch in this game, it should have been clear that letting other civs give your cities religion a la T-Hawk/Kylearan was the strategic move. But I didn't think beyond "uhhh...temples gives points!"

Running 20% culture from the get-go...might have quickened the end cultural victory by a few turns, but I think in this came being three steps ahead technologically was more crucial, since getting to Liberalism and Radio and whatnot sooner was more important.

[sunrise089]

Well I have a few thoughts:

For me, obviously my religion first strategy wasn't fastest, since I ended up a lot slower than several other players. Still, the total lack of happiness issues was nice. As far as the culture running, perhaps it did put me less ahead in tech, but being behind was never an issue - I won the Liberalism race, and easily got to Radio and Electricity before the AIs.

I think the big weakness of my culture early and less expansion strategy was that it left me quite vulnerable to AI wars - I had no real buffer of front-line cities, and couldn't spare my Cultural Three with many military builds. I was definitely taking a calculated risk that no AI would beeline for one of my cities and try to take it, which was certainly a possibility. In the end, my feeling for the AI was right however - it almost always gives you enough warning on Prince to keep your core cities from falling.

I haven't had the time to carefully read all of the other threads yet, but I will actually say I'm a bit surprised some of the other teams were so much faster than me. I don't particularly think more outright expansion was the key to victory, and I wasn't really ever behind the AIs in tech (though the other games might have been much further ahead). I think my weakness was not managing my cities well for culture - specifically not running hardly any artist specialists and not using NE to make an artist farm.

The one thing I will say about my game is that by prioritizing culture early, I might have been well-situated for a conventional Culture Slider victory. Nothing set in stone, because I would have run the risk of an AI knocking me out as I fell behind in tech, but I do think my finish date wouldn't have been quite so poor if we had been using the slider.

Thanks for the comments all.

[Speaker]

Sunrise, catch me on the new RaY TS in the near future (I will be out of town from the 14th until the 27th) and I'll be happy to set you up with some webspace. I don't use it much anymore besides the odd trinket, so I'll be happy to let you use it for reports. Sounds like a fun game by the way.