A45: RefSteel's Lunacy

[RefSteel]

I didn't think I'd have time for this one - and didn't ... but due to awful time-management skills, I wound up playing anyway. (Oops.) Given that I was spending time playing civ at all when I did though, I'm glad I spent it on this game rather than making plans for the RBP3 Friendly Kittens, because shortly after I finished the first ~90% of this game, something happened in RBP3 that would have meant any time I spent planning for it would have been wasted completely (a minor move with far-reaching impact, which is kind of typical of civ). Yay Adventure 45! So, I'll try to put a report together for this one, but as I may not finish it even with the extension to the end of Wednesday, I'll post the vitals now, and come back for the full report:

Wonders: Statue of Liberty + Eiffel Tower
Goal: Have fun with late-game wonders that have unusual effects in the early game, and win a cultural victory
Gameplan: Solid, but could have been executed better; more detail with the full report
Result: Cultural victory, Turn 222 (the year 1560)
Apology/disclaimer: In the fine tradition of my MoO reports, this one's likely going to be long. I'm not writing an in-character story for it the way I do with MoO though; I've found it difficult to do so in a way that actually works. Civ leaves too little to the imagination.

[T-hawk]

I'd rather read a full report on Thursday than not at all. As long as you've reported your result now, we know you weren't playing after reading spoilers from other reports, and that's what counts.

1560 AD for culture is great, we must see how that was done.

[RefSteel]

Thanks, T-Hawk! I won't get this finished tonight, but at least I'll get it started. So.....

I got a bit long-winded here; probably a lot of the stuff I find interesting is old hat to people who have played the game a thousand times. I've played two games to completion. Including this one. So though I've lurked a lot (a LOT) this is all sort of new to me.

So, on to my report of my first-ever RBCiv tournament event ... and my second-ever completed game of Civ 4!

First, my wonder choices: I picked the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. Why? Mainly because they're both late-game wonders that could make the early game interesting. I did realize the two would provide a kind of synergy in the form of hyperspeed border pops, but synergy wasn't my goal; I was just looking for wonders that come in the late game and would at least do something neat. Early wonders were out just because they show up early; most of the late game wonders were out because they'd do nothing for ages and ages but generate culture and GPP. West Point + Pentagon was out, even though it would've been amusing, because I didn't have the time for (nor really any interest in) a combat-heavy game.

Now that I've read T-Hawk's report, I realize the Kremlin would have been a perfect fit, but I didn't even consider it: It generates Great Spy points, and I despise the BtS espionage system, so I wanted nothing to do with them. I rejected the Kremlin without even investigating what it actually did. (I told you I'm pretty new to this game, right? I ... actually ... didn't ... know!) The fact is though, I wouldn't have taken it anyway. The Kremlin just isn't as interesting as SoL, and not nearly as versatile. It's BETTER, sure, but I wasn't looking for better.

I knew from the start that my choice did not constitute a power combination. In my original e-mail to T-Hawk, I asked if I could have a back-up save with GLib and the Mids in case I got trounced by the AI and wanted to play a shadow "revenge" game. After he wrote back that I could Worldbuild them in for myself for a shadow game though, I replied that I would if needed - but that I wouldn't use the combination I'd mentioned the first time. Now I'm sorry I didn't play the "alternate" game I had in mind then, because three other people took SoL+Eiffel, and my choice would have been unique: Hanging Gardens + Hagia Sophia. I think that would have been a fun one to play, but of course for sheer power, it wouldn't have held a candle to the Kremlin. In any case, I didn't have time to play two games, so this report is just on SoL + Eiffel. (I didn't have time for even one, but I mentioned that already, and I did manage to finish before Closing Monday.)

So, the start: After T-Hawk's comment (in the e-mail in which he sent me the save) about being faux-creative, I thought I'd have to change something in the capital. "Creative" (a trait whose best aspect, in my opinion, is its discount on libraries) had nothing to do with my choice of wonders. I needn't have worried though: Of course T-Hawk knows what he's doing, so Carthage was already set up just the way I wanted it.



An artist would give me an extra beaker per turn along with 6 totally superfluous culture, and might actually have been worthwhile if I was willing to take the ~70% gamble that it would speed up my first Great Merchant instead of just giving me an Artist that - though non-worthless - would have been a huge disappointment at that stage of the game. I didn't like the gamble though, and did like the three turn bonus on building that first Worker, so it was good to see the Citizen (and NOT an Artist) already at work.

Okay, so what's the gameplan? Naturally, it's going to be based around these "late-game wonders that do something interesting," so what interesting things exactly do they do? Obviously there's the border pop thing: Run an artist for two turns, and you've got culture throughout your BFC. That'll come up eventually, but Carthage pops its borders immediately anyway; it gets its SECOND border pop on turn 5! Also to come up later, Eiffel gives us +1 happy in each city, without needing to do anything. SoL gives us +1 hammer per turn at each city except when we need to run an artist, until we get the tech to make it even better ... which should be soon. At first glance, it doesn't look like our wonders help with research, and they don't at first (unless we want that artist for the 1bpt, which ... no) but believe it or not, they're going to let us tech these silly little Immortal AIs right into the ground. You see, we're getting 4 Great Merchant points per turn from the very start of the game. That means a Great Merchant gets settled in the capital on turn 25, providing food (good heavens, MORE?) and plenty of gold to fund us for a good long while. My plan is to settle aggressively for the best commerce sites I can find, and not really worry about distance or number of cities because settled GMs will cover my expenses. Ideally, we'll tech like mad while lots of cottages mature, and then turn on the culture slider once they're towns and we've got all the tech we need. Yes, we're going for culture. One of our wonders is the Eiffel Tower, isn't it? Also, all this cottaging seems like a good way to take advantage of our Financial trait.

Also, when I say "settle aggressively," I mean right into the AI's teeth. If this combination provided a "faux creative" bonus without the cheap libraries, it would allow us to skip monuments and get second ring a little faster and have a little bit of an advantage in culture battles. This is not the case. My cities get three times the "Creative" culture bonus when they want it, and all their other culture boosters (apart from building culture post-music) are time and a half as effective as they should be. We're not going to lose any culture wars in this game.

That's the theory, at least. Let's see if this long-lurking rookie can execute it, shall we?

[RefSteel]

Turn 1: Borders pop, giving us hunting from a hut, prompting a wild outburst of indifference. We're researching agriculture while we build our 12-turn worker because that irrigated corn tile is mouth-watering. Now that our borders have popped, we're working the oasis of course, cutting down on Agriculture's ETA.

Turn 7: We meet a Ramesses scout in the east. Seems like there's a nice land-bridge choke-point between us. (Note I'd never played on this mapscript before.)

Turn 8: Agri in; start Bronze. Is it a bad thing that I've basically started 4 games of civ (two in progress after finishing this one, including RBP3) and the opening is already starting to feel like too much of the same routine?

Okay, no more going turn-by turn here, even with gaps in between. After the worker, I built a couple of workboats, completing the second with a chop, then an MP warrior. Apart from farming the corn first though, I think I fumbled my early worker actions a bit, delaying some things by a turn (with cascading effects) and others by more, mainly because I wasn't paying sufficient attention to all the details. I also should have waited to work hammer tiles for the first workboat until I had grown another size or two, I think, thanks to our oasis and (maybe) floodplain. Early micromanagement has a ridiculous impact in this game.

Tech went Bronze - Wheel - Pottery - AH - Writing - Sailing.

My warrior continued scouting east until...



The bears attacked. My warrior had gotten to Woody 1 by killing a couple of wolves already, and was standing in a forest. He got badly mauled, but did (bearly, har har) survive with 0.2 hp. The combat odds were basically a coin flip, I think, so I guess that was a reasonable result. Thoroughly unreasonable results were distinctly possible too, but I'm not going to use this space to rant about civ's granularity problems. The next guy I met was Mansa, via his scout coming from the east.

Having read T-Hawk's report: It never struck me, by the way, that the empires on this map were in their "appropriate" Mediterranean positions, for a number of reasons: For one, I never saw this map as resembling the Mediterranean; I was too caught up in its squareness by the time I had any idea of where everyone was. For another, Mali's position relative to my civilization was very, very different from real-life Mali's relative to real-life Carthage. And for a third, the strait of Gibraltar is very important: France and Mali never shared a border. And if Rome decides to invade Carthage on a real-world map, they have to use boats or go through Egypt. Even so, it's pretty neat that T-Hawk set it up that way!

Right; so, back to the game:



I revolted to Slavery on T35. I don't remember why I chose that moment, as I was utterly failing to follow my plan, and still hadn't started my first settler, never mind finished him (a lot of this has to do with the early worker/tile management issues mentioned above, I think). The first thing I whipped, a few turns later, was a granary. Also note the event giving Mali and Rome a diplo penalty. I was ridiculously lucky with events this game. Only one bad event ever hit me, and it was both irrelevant and late. (The first event I got was good but equally irrelevant: Truffles (+1f, +1c) on the grassland 1W of the oasis. I promptly forgot about it and never founded a city with the truffles in the BFC.) I would also "pop another one" in a couple of different mines toward the end of the game.

I met France when I saw their scout to my southwest - not very suggestive of the Mediterranean. If our first view of the map had been an overview shot, more people might well have caught on. Meanwhile...



Third place in land area isn't bad, right? On Immortal difficulty?

Right?

What Toynbee doesn't realize is that Carthage's wonders have long since popped the city's borders to fourth ring. It's turn 51 and I'm only now about to found my second city! Remember how I was supposed to use merchants to fund unfettered expansion right into the AI's teeth?



Why, yes, those are Carthage's borders right next to which Nevermore (don't ask) is planted. In fact, there's a tile of overlap (just a plains) in the two cities' BFCs! I have yet to decide where my legendary cities will be; indeed, I haven't even scouted except via border pops and a bit to my east! Um. I didn't play the early game very effectively. That said, I did an even worse job at the start of the very first game I ever played (remember, this will be the second one I ever finish!) and I came back with a vengeance in that one. Of course, it was on Noble difficulty. Oh, and notice my "fake Creative" trait in play! Yes, that's right, Nevermore is working ... a ... Citizen. That's on purpose. I'll switch to an artist for a couple turns shortly when I'm ready to improve the wheat, but right now I want to work the horses to speed up the granary. This wonder combo is way more fun and interesting than just having a Creative leader.

Meanwhile, what do you suppose Carthage is doing? Building more Settlers, right? Errr ... would you believe building a library? And then it's going to work a couple scientists.... (One of them free, of course.) At least I'm doing some resource trades....



Since we have pretty much no happy resources anywhere in sight, I'm sending excess health resources to Mansa for Ivory. Open Borders is a separate, long-standing deal, of course. It's turn 59, and I still have only two cities. And now NEVERMORE is building a library ... slowly! My wonder choices are like being creative? Ha! If only! (You can see in the background that I'm working on Alphabet now, with Sailing in.)

Alpha came in at the same time as my second great merchant, whom I settled in Carthage like the first. Alpha went to Louis for Iron Working (which would allow me to improve Nevermore's pigs) and Archery, and to Mansa for Masonry and stronger relations. Ramesses got Writing for Mysticism and some good vibes. I went right to work on Mathematics, which I traded to Louis for Polytheism and grins, and to Ramesses the following turn for Priesthood and Monotheism. By turn 76, I'd finally met Justinian, so I traded him Math and Alphabet for Monarchy and the pleasure of his company. I was just about to finish currency, still making gold at 100% research. I was also just about (that same turn) to plant Clementine, my third city. (!!! Finally! And yes, that's third INCLUDING Carthage.)

[RefSteel]

Unlike Nevermore, Clementine IS an aggressive city!



That's a picture from turn 83. When ... uh ... I still have just three cities. But you can see some interesting things:
- The jungle-filled gap between Clementine and Nevermore (whose borders are just visible at the left edge of the image). Do you think "Clam Filler" is a poor choice for a city spot in the area? Me too. I did eventually build a city in that gap, but not on that tile.
- The iron I would mine and two-thirds road, but not connect for approximately ever.
- The galley I built in the outer sea because I didn't know what this mapscript looks like.
- The beaker symbol in the upper right: I'd just finished Code of Laws, and was about to start Metal Casting. I play with pop-ups minimized because everything about the game's preferred order of actions gets on my nerves.
- A Jewish Missionary coming in from Egypt. Judaism had been founded in the Egyptian city right next door to Clementine's eventual location, but I had no serious trouble with its culture because...
- Egypt had also founded Hinduism (not in that city) and taken it as their state religion; I'd gotten a free spread and converted for the diplo bonuses.
- I was second in the score chart (among civs I knew to that point) mostly as an artifact of the free wonders and their attendant border pops.
- I had finally met Julius Caesar.
- I still hadn't discovered the stone resource on the island. [EDIT: Errr ... oops. I seem to have cropped that part out of the picture. I hadn't, though. It was still completely fogged.]
- The fish in the south is hilarious. The only way to get it into a BFC would be to plant a city on the peak tile. (Wait, you say Controlled Snowpeak Environment tech isn't in our planetology tree?)

What you can't see from the picture: Confucianism was just founded in Nevermore; the missionary would go to Carthage. Clementine ran an artist pretty much full-time, getting control of all but one tile of its BFC by this point in spite of established Egyptian culture. And the following turn (if I recall the timing correctly) I revolted to HR and OR; I flipped Math to Mansa for Meditation and 30 gold a few turns after that. I wasn't too worried about WFYABTA. I was more worried about Mansa, as I'd planted another city by the time I made that incredibly-lopsided-in-his-favor trade. The city in question would also run an artist constantly for a long time; it was in a slightly aggressive location.



Check out the mini-map in the lower right-hand corner. I don't have a contemporary image that gives a full-size picture, partly because I can't fit it on the same screen as the rest of my empire. The is what I meant about Mali being in the wrong place relative to Carthage in my game: Mali was to my NORTH! The new city was named Chicken, and indeed I was playing chicken with Mansa, among other things. I had a galley ferrying units, workers, and the settler itself from a peninsula nearby because it was actually BEYOND a barbarian city near the southwest corner of the map that I didn't yet feel prepared to take. It's also exactly three tiles from one of Mansa's long-established cities (his second, I think, which in turn was three tiles from his capital) and wound up having to fight his CAPITAL'S fourth-ring culture (and his second city's first ring) over the northernmost tiles in its BFC. This wasn't a mistake, but planting it this late certainly was. The picture above is from more than a dozen turns after Chicken was planted, but if I had my act together, my city would have been a lot older than that.

In the meantime, as you can see, I'd finally acquired the full set of contacts, finished MC and moved on to CS, and given Currency to Julius Caesar in exchange for Calendar. Just after this image was taken, I also got Theology and 60 gold from friendly Ram-Ram (yeah, I'd started using a nickname for the Ruler of All Egypt) for Currency and Metal Casting. I was about to finish civil service, and had yet to drop my research rate below 100%. (For those keeping track at home, this is a bad thing: It means I haven't been expanding enough. In civ, it can be a bad sign if you have TOO GOOD an economy!) Oh, and that's Pliny reporting on the most powerful civilizations. If Ram-Ram really has a lower Power level than the Human player in an Immortal game, his army is Hopeless indeed.

One last note on that image: See that little symbol beside Mansa Musa's name? He'd gotten a free spread of Confusion to one of his cities, and converted to the faith. Yay for the shrine I would never build throughout the game? Anyway, five turns after Pliny's masterwork...



It seems like all of Carthage's Great People are Asian imports. As Xi Ling Shi builds an academy in Carthage, you can see that I'm still losing just 21gpt at 100%. And I'm finally building a settler. For my fifth, total, city. If you think this is a little late to be finishing Horseback Riding, maybe you're not a Pacifistic Technologist like me. Or maybe you just aren't playing as Carthage. Numidian Cavalry are one of the few UUs which in many situations are actually worse than the units they replace. (The Vulture is probably the most infamous; the Praetorian is one of the only units with a drawback - the cost of production - over its regular unit that is pretty much always better, and that's in no small part because swordsmen are nearly worthless in BtS.) I've already revolted to Bureaucracy, so the capital is about to go crazy. Which probably makes the very next turn a bad time to do this, but good(?) events don't consult me on timing:



We were already Friendly with Ram-Ram, but I figured it was worth cementing things. I wonder what the event looks like from the other side though. Do you lose all your food stores in a city unless a neighbor sends you aid? Compass would come in three turns later, and Aesthetics two turns after that, with Construction in between from Ram-Ram for Civil Service. (He also threw in 30 gold, enough to fund me for over a turn of research at this stage of the game.) Oh, and I finished Literature the turn after Aesthetics. When I said my capital was going crazy, I was not kidding. Costs wouldn't stay down forever. I was about to build two new cities on the very next turn.



Pastoral's specialist was an eternal artist for a different reason: The place was meant to be my artist farm. (Actually, I might have run a citizen here when/if appropriate early on, but I did want to pop borders to get that fish into range.) Trouble is, I had forgotten that irrigation only passes through a city when the city is on flatland. It was still okay, but I can't help thinking I could have done better. Notice that it overlaps with Carthage's clams. The theory was that Carthage was going to go legendary before anything else no matter what I did, so it could afford to give up good tiles to help another important city. Of course Pastoral switched to the fish and pigs ASAP and let Carthage have its clams back, but they would belong to Pastoral for most of the game for exactly this reason. The other city I built just two turns before the calendar switch was Romulas - a very unusual city indeed!



You can see the oily borders of the barbarian city to the northwest (just beyond the edge of its BFC). And no, Romulas isn't working any tiles. It's got both broadcast-tower-enabled artists going. (I took this screenie before starting the granary.) The problem with this city is of course that I didn't have enough workers in the area soon enough to really imrpove the place. Luckily, by doing this, it popped borders after a single turn(!) and proceeded to work the oasis (and a free Citizen). I guess I could have worked the jungle hill pigs with the free artist for a couple of turns, but I hate working that kind of tile, and this was more fun. What I loved about this wonder combination was the flexibility. The Creative trait (apart from the lovely cheap libraries and theaters) means your borders pop in 5 turns. (Sooner with religion or chopped library, etc.) These two wonders, apart from the GM points, free hammer per turn that later graduates to still better yields and other GP points, plus free happy, mean your borders pop when you want them to pop - be that in two turns, ten turns, or (as here) one! Note that I'm not saying, "Hey, having these two late-game wonders is even BETTER than being creative!" I'm not; that goes without saying. I'm just using the Creative example to which they were compared as the background on which to explain some things I found fun and interesting about them. It would have been even more fun and interesting if I'd planned a little more carefully and played a better game!

[RefSteel]

So, the next turn, Drama came in, and I started Music to nab the artist. It was a three-turn tech at 100% ... the rate at which I still had been running research for basically the entire game! (I think I may have shut it down to 0% for a couple of turns before Aesth, but I'm not sure.) Yes, this means I hadn't expaned enough. I was working on that, finally. And at least I technically had 6 cities out by the year 1. I also was doing okay on tech in spite of my sub-optimal play.



And by "okay" I do mean "breezing past these Immortal AIs as though they were standing statues." Remember, I'm in HR here; failing to spot the stone until late, I didn't even attempt the pyramids.

So the next turn, Mansa called up and urged me to convert to Confusion. "Religious wars can be so unpleasant..." he explained. That's hardly to the point. Religious wars are going to happen whatever religion I'm in unless I can get everyone to share it; it's just a question of with whom. But he did make his point. He just didn't realize what point it was! Though I pointed it out above in this report, I hadn't actually noticed until then that Mansa was Confused. Obviously the REAL problem was that he didn't worship the One True Faith! (Which one is that? Isn't it obvious? As everyone knows, the truth value of a faith is directly proportional to the number of its deity's limbs.)

In the meantime, the barbarian city had been sending archers out periodically for no discernible reason. They would threaten the countryside, I'd move units to intercept and prevent them from pillaging, and then they'd turn around and disappear. The various Immortal AIs had scouts rambling through my land in all directions, so I imagine they kept wandering too close to the barb city and getting eaten. (I lost my Woody 2 warrior this way when he foolishly strayed onto flatland right next to a barb city with a 2-archer garrison; the second one just couldn't resist the opportunity to kill something.) This would explain why, often, the archers in question would be injured when I spotted them. When this happened, I would attack and kill them, gaining nearly-free xp. Sadly, it didn't happen quite often enough to get a heroic chariot out of the deal ... before turn 120. That was when the xp generator dried up for good and all ... because, like the city that killed my warrior, the barbs left only one archer in their city. I sent a chariot in with 26% odds of survival, and lost, but did enough damage that my second chariot had odds of 99.6%. I had an archer standing there ready to clean up in case of a second loss, but it wasn't necessary. The battle nudged the chariot up to 7/4 xp, just shy of Heroism, and I kept Tartar for the marble in its first ring. Here's an overview screenshot of my empire at that time. It's kind of long and narrow, so if you want to see any of the details, you'll have to click through to the full-sized picture and then probably do some side-scrolling. It's also a composite; I couldn't make the empire fit on one screen.



The next turn, I finished Philosophy, founding Taoism in the just-conquered barb city. Let me just say in passing that this game's religion mechanics are hilarious. Jewish Missionaries? A Taoist holy city? Parents, feel free to laugh out loud if your kids claim that playing civ teaches them about stuff like world religions or history. Anyway, turn 121 also saw the solution to my Mansa problems: My Hindu missionary finally reached his capital and spread the religion. I don't remember what I gave him to convert (some random tech, getting some cash into the bargain; as you may recall, I had a slight tech lead....) but that was pretty easy.

Anyway, by this time, it was about 4 o'clock in the morning (remember what I said about time management?) and though I executed long-planned stuff like the Mansa spread just fine, I was starting to do things that were very, very silly. First up, I traded Civil Service and Music to Justinian for Feudalism and 50 gold. This would have been perfectly fine if I'd built the Sistine Chapel (and hopefully Notre Dame). I hadn't started. To my minimal credit, I realized my error almost immediately. Next, I used my Great Artist (from Music) to bulb toward Divine Right. I ... don't know what I was thinking. (Obviously the correct move was to settle him in one of my non-Carthage Legendaries-To-Be.) As if to prove the point, Islam was founded in Romulas, where the holy city would do nothing of any value. I went on to trade optics and feudalism to Ram-Ram for machinery and 110 gold, which wasn't completely foolish at least.

I had finally gotten serious about building the wonders I would need; I'd actually been setting them up for a long time, preparing builds to contribute whip overflow and (where possible) roading and pre-chopping forests, while I prepared to hook up marble.



Note the missionary already in the queue, with a couple of hammers invested, so I can double-whip him with massive overflow. Note also the double-chopped, roaded forest in the southwest. As the signs suggest, the two forests I just chopped will be farms in a moment so the city can grow back for more whipping. Yes, I should have gone with the Kremlin as one of my wonders if I wanted a power play. Also note that I'm working an engineer with my free specialist even though Clementine still hasn't claimed that last tile in its BFC. I'll get it eventually. The upshot is, when Paper hit on turn 127, Clementine finished the Parthenon simultaneously. On the very next turn, Carthage got the Great Library, the theory being that I'd still be able to kinda sorta research after switching the culture slider on: An accurate but largely pointless theory. More importantly, the next turn saw (Alex demanding and receiving my world map, and) the birth of Blaise Pascal, a Great Engineer, in Egyptian Thebes. Ramesses didn't have music, so Sistine wasn't in danger, but I was paranoid enough to whip the Mausoleum in Nevermore: 2 pop to shave just one turn off the date of completion. It turns out he had a different project in mind anyway: His Apostalic Palace, built in our shared Hindu religion, started giving me helpful free hammers right away.

Meanwhile, I was so far ahead of the hapless Immortal AIs that WFYABTA was irrelevant to the game. I kept trading techs to the AIs, but always and only techs I didn't mind giving away, for money to keep my research funded toward techs I wanted for me. I think a lot of the money I got in this period was wonder-fail cash. I would soon complete the Sistine Chapel in Chicken. (Not a legend-to-be, but the place that could build it fastest; I could have taken my time and built it in a better location if I hadn't foolishly traded music away.)

I did trade for Engineering, getting it from Friendly Ram-Ram for Divine Right while I researched Education. I also founded the city of Krakatoa for the stone, ON the stone. It turned out to be a great city location even though I'd forgotten that SoL only works for mainland cities. Krakatoa actually worked an artist (instead of tiles) for a couple of turns anyway, to bring the fish under its cultural influence. Meanwhile, various AIs were telegraphing their warlike intentions by revolting to vassalage and theocracy. I responded by making a bunch of resource trades, including finally hooking up my iron, only to immediately trade it away to my good Egyptian buddy!

All this led eventually to my most foolish single move of the game.



I could certainly have sandbagged liberalism for Democracy, but I didn't realize the importance of that tech. At the time, I thought Nationalism was the most expensive tech I'd actually need in the game, so I just used liberalism on that. Notice that I'm building the Hagia Sophia at the capital. Wonder spamming is a common mistake of inexperienced players in the early game. I think a much better time to wonder spam is when you already know you're going to win.

Lucky for me, I was also ... well, lucky.



I got a free spread of Christianity to my island stone city before I got a Hindu missionary there, for six religions in my empire out of seven (half of them founded by me). Ram-Ram's border city with me was the Judeo-Christian double-holy city, but since he was sticking with Hinduism, that didn't contribute any culture; it just improved the chances (short distance) for that lucky spread I got in Krakatoa. (The Temple of Solomon, just completed, would add culture, but that was going to stop mattering very soon anyway.) And did I mention I wasn't getting bad events here? Louis had another, losing the stores in his granary. And finally, a forest grew near Clementine, in the neighborhood of the corroded old "Clam Filler" sign.

[RefSteel]

I researched Guilds for Grocers, en route to Banking. I'd long since noticed that Julius had enough on his hands, but he was on the far side of the map, needing to go through two to three other AIs in order to reach me. But just before Banking came in, I noticed a stack of two Roman horse archers in Friendly Mansa's territory, just north of my borders. ... ... ... You have got to be kidding me. I still had no metal(!) - still thinking about building warriors for HR happy - but I'd taken measures to allow me to hook the copper in the corner very quickly. Also, I'd been trading stuff to Mansa for ivory. For the moment though, Chicken, my city right on Mansa's border, had minimal defense; I hurried some more up there right away, and ... yup. Caesar declared on me. His HA stack should have been able to attack Chicken, and since I had only two units in the city, he'd have had a small chance of taking the city (eep!) ... but he didn't. (Note to readers: Do not try this form of "defense" in an MP game.) Inexplicably, he didn't even pillage anything. Also, the AI's left hand doesn't know what its right hand is doing.



Julius had a scout wandering through my lands (like everybody else) which got kicked out into the still-unclaimed "Clam Filler Sign" region, allowing a local zone defense medic chariot to rack up some cheap xp. Note the snow-covered trees in the corner of the picture, by the way, on a tile surrounded by jungle. Yep, that's the forest that grew near Clementine. And ... wait ... oh NO! I don't have enough gold to cover my expenses! I might have to lower my slider below 100% for maybe the second (or first?!) time in the game!!! (Nope, just kidding: I switched things around and did some whipping, and wound up still researching at 100% anyway!)

The Roman attack force (or the part of it that made it all the way to me) consisted of three HAs and a Chariot. I lost two archers (one at marginally improbable odds) before my local Mobile Defense Force cleaned them all up. I also lost a mine to pillaging, which was quickly replaced. I then sent a Sentry Numidian Cavalry unit up to the far end of Mansa's territory, and one to the far end of Ramesses', where they could see from one end of the narrow continent to the other. I noted that my "friends" wouldn't close borders with the Romans in spite of Caesar's war with me, so I thumbed my nose at them and persuaded Alexander to declare war on the idiot instead. (I had to give him Education for it.)

A few years later, Rome has "surprisingly" sent no more units to get ground to bits by the tech leader on the far side of the planet while his score-leading next-door neighbor eats his lunch, and Saint Augustine composes a moving tribute to my wonders.



His greatest work, eh? I guess that quote for Engineering is true: It's perfect when there's nothing left to take away. Note that I've got over twenty turns' worth of cash saved up, and I'm teching economics. Oh, and Augustine doesn't know the half of it. I'm not only tops in culture, but the margin is gigantic, and I've yet to even touch the culture slider. Note the time of day too. I believe that was played on the train on the way to work. Yes, my schedule is crazy. Oh. You can also see I have Open Borders with everyone but Rome and Louis (Mansa's eternal enemy, who got unreasonably annoyed when I refused to stop trading with my Malinese buddy). I periodically got diplo penalties for trading with people's worst enemies and (sometimes) refusing to stop. Also sometimes for refusing to give techs away. I courted Ramesses and Mansa within reason, but just took the penalties with everyone else - and sometimes even with them. I considered the gold I'd get in trade more important than the +1/-1, kind of, but it was in no small part a matter of principle. Even with Ramesses and Mansa, if they won't even close their borders to Caesar's laughable "attacks" from the far side of the world, they're not getting anything from me. (Well, they'll get techs at a massive discount to increase my cash reserves, but nothing for free.)

It was also around this time that I made an important discovery: You don't need three (as the screen claimed, nor six, as I'd originally assumed) temples of each type to "unlock" their Mandirs/Cathedrals/Whatever the way you do with Oxford and the FP: You need three temples to support EACH such building! Up to that point, I had figured I'd cruise with the cities I had already - there were eight of them - so it was time for a quick trip back to the drawing board. For one thing, when Economics hit on turn 153 (the year 860) I finally, finally dropped my science slider down below 100% - and my sentry NC, approaching the north of Mansa's land, saw another incoming Roman force! Three turns later, my tech slider was still at a dead zero percent.



Okay, so maybe that was a little misleading. The Roman force I spotted was a single Explorer (!?) - here you can see me cornering him. That chariot is preventing him from entering the jungle (where he'd get a serious defensive bonus) from the end of the peninsula, where he'd been standing the turn before. The chariot is also in position to finish him off in case my NC retreats. (Only about a 75% chance for the NC to win the battle, but nearly a 90% chance to survive.) I did win the battle though, making that NC my first(!!) Heroic unit when I promoted him the following turn. The HE went into Chicken, further securing my northern border (since Friendly Mansa was defending it so inadequately). Oh. And that tech slider? Yeah, it's at zero percent permanently. As mentioned above, I now believe I should have teched to (and then liberated) Democracy, then perhaps saved money for a bit to cash-rush some culture buildings. Instead, I turned off research after Economics, and went to 100% culture immediately. I *was* still teching with a zero percent slider, at a not-really-all-that-respectable rate. Looking at the clock time, I believe this was played during my lunch/dinner break at work.

[RefSteel]

After enabling the Heroic Epic for me, my northern sentry NC watched French and Malinese forces (they were at war at the time) glare at each other across the border, presumably attacking from time to time, but really accomplishing nothing until Ram-Ram used his Hindu Popely powers to end the war against "our brothers of the faith" - meaning Mali, of course, not me. (Yes, Rome had Hindu cities.) Louis was never going to get open borders from Mali, so I wasn't worried about him getting bought into Rome's war - his forces would never reach me! - but I nevertheless got tired of all the not-fighting eventually, and gave Aesthetics to Caesar for peace. Then I canceled and/or renegotiated some trade deals, including one in particular with Rameses:



Yes, turn 162 is the first I ever started with access to iron, in spite of having the resource in the BFC of my third city. I did this because something I'd been told about barbs was mistaken: It appears that - if the tile is in fog of war - they CAN spawn within two tiles of cultural borders, at least diagonally. The first barbarian mounted unit I'd ever seen showed up near Tartar - a horse archer - and I decided that upgrading a local NC to a knight would be my best response. Since I'd forgotten that an upgrade ends the unit's movement, I lost a sugar plantation to pillaging, but it was easily fixed, and anyway the city had three. More importantly, on the same turn, the results of my return to the drawing board were realized in the actual game:



Can you guess what I'm going to do with my new city? Chopping Block is two tiles north of the old "Clam Filler" sign, mostly just to get five forests in its BFC. It chopped a granary, then chopped most of a forge (This was another mistake: Since I knew I'd be chopping both in short order, I should have done the forge first to gain its hammer bonus and still have the granary by the time the food box was ~half full). Its tiles would all be farmed (later, some would be workshopped) and it would build and whip temples and/or missionaries until it had no more to build. This was also the first time I noticed that Eiffel's Broadcast Towers *actually* add half the base culture to the city, even if the result is fractional, without rounding down. That's theoretically great news, though it doesn't really matter for this game. Of course the game couldn't do the same thing with food or hammers to save on pointless micro; that would be too easy. CB's SoL specialist was a Citizen until it could switch to an engineer. With the slider at 100%, it didn't have to worry about border pops (and no matter how much I whipped them, none of my cities had to worry about happy.)

Okay, see those signs? My personal methodology for recording partial improvements that I'd otherwise forget changed when I built the Hagia Sophia; the "1/2" signs are more recent, and mean we've finished one of the two worker turns required. The half-built roads on the workers' tiles were just a timing mistake. The "DON'T COTTAGE 2" sign means I had put two turns into a cottage there back when I thought Clam Filler would be built and might want to be a commerce city. The sign is totally superfluous; I tend to err on the side of too much communication, even with my future self.

You can also see Krakatoa in the image, building its Moai statues. It had a coastal fish and banana for food, plus a grassland farm on the mainland that my workers would get to shortly, and would have Moai sooner than the screenie claims, using whip overflow from temples and things. Um. And also because....



...I popped iron at Krakatoa's lone grass hill mine three turns after founding CB. (Yes, I built a couple Jumbos while I was borrowing Mansa's ivory. One of them helped make Rome's silly mounted attack look even more silly.) That city has 17 water tiles, 14 of which are coastal, including the fish. I have the Mausolleum already, I'm building the Taj, and I would end up using two scientists and a merchant (the Econ merchant, and another soon after him out of Carthage, both went for trade missions, but that last GM was too late for even a trade mission to matter) to trigger a pair of GP golden ages. Krakatoa was pretty okay.

Right. So, while slllllowwwwwlllly teching Military Tradition, I traded away my tech lead for (as they came available) Optics (just before I got to Economics), Gunpowder, Printing Press, Ram-Ram not trading with Louis (so the French land army couldn't travel literally all the way around the world just to annoy me), Replaceable Parts, Constitution, and eventually, Chemistry. Okay ... so that didn't quite use up my ENTIRE tech lead.

When the Taj was finished, I switched civics to Free Speech and Free Market and ... ... Serfdom? Um, okay. I was playing at an hour when I should have been sleeping again, and clearly, I was insane. I switched back to slavery (having never left OR) by the end of the golden age, realizing that I still desperately needed cultural infrastructure. It would have been much, much better to go to Democracy for UniSuf and cash-rush things, thereby retaining city growth, allowing me to be in Caste System, and sacrificing nothing but some 100%-culture turns that came prior to the completion of most of the multiplier buildings anyway. And of course errors cascaded upon errors....



Here we see the only GE I spawned in the game, hurrying the Globe Theater in Pastoral. Y'see, Pastoral was to be my Artist Farm. After reading a bunch of T-Hawk's report, I knew that your artist farm is a good choice for one of your legendary cities. It was a late-built city though, and didn't have as many farms as I thought it would since I didn't understand all the rules of irrigation spreading, so it was definitely going to be my THIRD legendary, and the Hermitage (an artist wonder on top of everything else) would be key. First, though, I built the Globe here so I could run three more artists. The four permitted by a theater and my broadcast tower just weren't.......

Okay, you see the problem here, right? Building Globe in the artist farm is ridiculous! You don't want to run seven artists; you want to run whatever your food can support, while in Caste system, ignoring slavery since you have Universal Suffrage to ... I've gone over this already. And once I built the globe there, with the NE already present, I couldn't add the Hermitage (National wonder #3). I didn't have UniSuf for cash rushing, couldn't whip the place since it had to run artists, and only had two hills to work (which needed to be windmilled, at that, if I was going to grow onto more artists once I finally entered Caste System!) ... that city was NEVER going to get its cultural infrastructure. So, when I finally realized the Hermitage wasn't allowed there, I came to grips with the fact that Pastoral was NOT a legendary city. And so Clementine was elected Cultural City #3. (Carthage and Nevermore were the obvious numbers 1 & 2.) Hey! The first three cities I planted! Almost as if I planned it that way! (I didn't. It's just that it took me so long to plant the other cities that there was no hope for any of them. Fortunately, the culture war with Ramesses over tiles Clementine shared meant that city had a pretty good head start going. My next two Artists settled there, which was another small mistake. I didn't run the numbers until I'd already settled the second one, but it was close enough to my victory ETA that I should have just saved him for a bomb. (My very first Great Artist, not counting the Music one I wasted on a Divine Right part-bulb, had settled in Nevermore.)

So, while I think I could have been doing a lot better, things were still going great for my civ. After all, I was still getting lucky!



Yep. Two turns before the Globe mistake, one of my Caravels had carried an Explorer up to the central islands, and spotted an unguarded hut, which popped ... Astronomy. Good heavens. I would later pop two guarded huts on the islands, using knights (I never built a spy. If I wanted a 40-hammer unit build, it was going to be a missionary. Getting six different religions into each of nine cities takes some doing) and popped hostiles and a pittance in gold, respectively. I thought the hostiles would be good for free xp, but instead of attacking, the warriors that appeared around my knight got upgraded to maces. Injured from the archer battle to claim the hut in the first place, Sir Robin climbed right back on board his Galleon.

By this time, all my cities were growing madly (and whipping stuff occasionally) - health was the limiting factor since I had no effective happy cap with the culture slider. So in spite of having only nine total cities, I was easily elected Pope when Mansa Musa voted for me. As I approached the end of the golden age, knowing I had another coming soon (I had a Scientist saved up who'd bulb nothing but Scientific Method, which wouldn't help unless I slogged my way to Biology ... least of all since obsoleting my GLib and Monasteries would slow my tech rate to something between "a crawl" and "stationary". That said, it might well have been better to just have him build an academy in Clementine - the [EDIT: Obviously-Trailing Culture City] - ASAP.) I decided to try out Mercantilism for yet more free specialists. It went okay since I was still building things, but even a free artist couldn't beat Free Market trade routes for my culture cities. I did revolt to representation at the same time, speeding tech a little bit at the expense of nothing. (HR is superfluous with the culture slider going.) But UniSuf would have been so, so, SO much better. I *still* didn't have Democracy. I started teching that straight away after Military Tradition, which I traded to Ram-Ram for Corporation. (I intended to build Wall Street at the time, an ambition that was frankly silly.)


[I could summarize the rest of the game quickly, but that wouldn't really do it justice, and I'm hoping to get a few more pictures set up to go with it. See the first post in this thread for the final game result. I'll post the rest of my report when I can.]

[T-hawk]

The Kremlin just isn't as interesting as SoL, and not nearly as versatile. It's BETTER, sure, but I wasn't looking for better. ... This wonder combo is way more fun and interesting than just having a Creative leader.

Yeah. As with many games (with a choose-your-freebie or not), some players like the power plays and some prefer more interesting plays. We're best off when we have reports of both types.

What I loved about this wonder combination was the flexibility.

Glad you enjoyed it, and loved the report. Yeah I enjoy doing the micromanagement for the Statue specialists even in normal games. I'm pleased that you found use for Citizen specialists. They seem like they should be laughable filler, but sometimes you really do just need the one hammer more than anything else.

- The fish in the south is hilarious. The only way to get it into a BFC would be to plant a city on the peak tile. (Wait, you say Controlled Snowpeak Environment tech isn't in our planetology tree?)

I've never played MOO, but I do lurk and read most of the reports here.

As everyone knows, the truth value of a faith is directly proportional to the number of its deity's limbs.)

Is that a Flying Spaghetti Monster reference?

For another, Mali's position relative to my civilization was very, very different from real-life Mali's relative to real-life Carthage.

A couple players did notice the Mediterranean. But it seems that Mali interrupted the pattern enough that most players didn't. Howcome 1/7 civs out of position is more noticeable than 6/7 correct civs? But anyway, that was just a fun little tidbit, and I think Mali there did make for a better (more peaceful) event than if it had been Isabella.

[T-hawk]

And a few more serious comments on the culture gameplay:

1560 AD is a great finish, especially for your first culture game! Sounds like Eiffel was indeed pretty good. I was hoping to see a full-blown culture treatment with that wonder.

Next, I used my Great Artist (from Music) to bulb toward Divine Right. I ... don't know what I was thinking. (Obviously the correct move was to settle him in one of my non-Carthage Legendaries-To-Be.) As if to prove the point, Islam was founded in Romulas, where the holy city would do nothing of any value.

This wasn't necessarily a mistake. It's rare to get any missionary spread of Islam from an AI, since whoever founds Islam is probably using an earlier religion. Founding Islam is not a bad idea in culture games. Your Great Artist, if settled, would have produced something like 5000 culture before the finish with multipliers. If you got some Islamic mosques built, it's possible that they produced more culture than that.

And if founding a late religion (Islam or Taoism), I prefer to have its holy city not in one of the legendarys. The holy city goes to waste anywhere, since you're always in another widespread religion for Sistine, and you won't ever care to build the shrine. So this way, the holy city can be dedicated to monastery (I'm usually in Pacifism for culture) and missionary production for that religion.

Y'see, Pastoral was to be my Artist Farm. After reading a bunch of T-Hawk's report, I knew that your artist farm is a good choice for one of your legendary cities ... I came to grips with the fact that Pastoral was NOT a legendary city.

Hehe. But I think you came to the right conclusion after all. Whether to make your artist farm a legendary city depends largely on the map. On most maps, you make the three highest food sites your legendarys, and then there's not much left for any other city. But this map had quite a number of sites with 2-3 food resources, enough to spare one for Artists.

The upside of a legendary artist farm is that the artists' culture itself helps towards legendary. And you can synergize by putting Artist wonders (things like Parthenon, Statue of Zeus) in the city for both their culture and Artist GPP. The downside is making a single city try to both run artists and work hammers for cathedrals. It's very dependent on the map and can go either way.

As for Hermitage, most often it should go in the #2 culture city. The leader needs no help and it would be overkill. The trailer will be brought up to par with the endgame Great Works, since those are equally powerful regardless of the city's multipliers. Hermitage neatly brings city #2 up to match city #1.