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Adv28 -- Muaziz loses faith in missionaries

Introduction

Analysis of the Scenario
Scoring: The scoring for this game is quite simple. On the 1900AD turn, take a screenshot of the total science and cultural output of your civilization.

Pretty straight-forward. My first observation is that it is a lot easier to get culture than to get beakers, so that will have to be an essential component of the overall strategy (once I have researched this a little further). That will probably mean playing the game a little like a Cultural game. Another observation is that the more cities you have, the more culture and beakers you will have. Hence a Domination approach will also be necessary (Uggh! Me smash!).

Scoring is only counted on the 1900 AD turn so we won’t have to worry too much about the details until we approach the scoring date itself. One thing is for sure is that we will want to be in a Golden Age. We will also need the Caste System to turn all our citizens into Artists/Scientists. And when I say “all”, I mean “all” as in no one will be working a city tile unless its contribution to culture/beakers is greater than the Specialist. Representation will be the Government Civic of choice for its +3B per Specialist. On a final note, we will need to make sure we have enough Gold on that turn to run some combination of Science/Culture with 0% Commerce (otherwise the game will automatically drop us to a % that we can afford given our treasury).

Our planned Civics look as follows. These are the Civics for the 1900 AD date and do not at all reflect what Civics we will use until the “scoring” date:
Representation: +3B per Specialist
Free Speech: +100% culture in all cities, +2C per Town
Caste System: unlimited Artists, Scientists, and Merchants, +1H per Workshop
Mercantilism: 1 free Specialist per City
Pacifism: +10% Research

We will want Representation earlier because it is so good. In fact building the Pyramids early will be part of the plan, especially with Stone, but even without. Since we are only on Prince difficulty we can afford to build Wonders without the resource doubler. None of the other Civics are particularly good early in the game so we will simply ignore them until the time of scoring is nearly upon us!

Here is where some math comes in. And despite being very good at Math (being a Physics major with a heavy Math and Comp-Sci background), I have often overlooked aspects of the scoring.

We are playing as Willem van Oranje of the Dutch who is Creative and Financial. Being Financial, we will get a +1C for any tile with at least 2C.

Town: +4C
Town (/w Free Speech): +2C
Town (/w Printing Press): +1C
Total: +7C

Farm: +1F
Farm (/w Civil Service): +1F
Farm (/w Biology): +1F
Total: +3F

When you factor in the Financial bonus, it is basically a trade-off between 3 Food for a Farm versus 8 Commerce for a Town.

There are only two Specialists we care about: Artists and Scientists:
Artist: +3g, +12Cu
Scientist: +1H, +6B

So for scoring purposes, all other things being equal, it’s clear that the Artist is better than the Scientist. The Sistine Chapel will also give us +2Cu per Specialist, and Representation will add another +3B per Specialist. This means a single Artist will yield +3B and +14Cu!

So if we go with Farms, each Farm allows us to have +1.5 Specialists per Farm. This gives us a net average of +4.5B and +21Cu per Farm.


So now we need to look at how Science and Cultural multipliers work. In both cases, all of the “static” culture/beakers from buildings, specialists and the like are added up before any multiplicative bonuses. The only thing that is not multiplied is the production conversion from hammers into gold/culture/beakers.

So what kinds of multipliers are there?
For beakers there is:
Library: +25%
University: +25%
Observatory: +25%
Laboratory: +25%
Academy: +50% (requires Great Scientist)
Oxford University: +100% (National Wonder)

Please note that the +10% beaker bonus from Monasteries no longer apply after the discovery of Scientific Method although the +2Cu does.

For culture there is:
Temple: +2Cu
Monastery: +2Cu
Cathedral: +50% (need 3 Temples per)
Broadcast Tower: +50%
Free Speech (Civic): +100%

There are a few others, but these are the basic ones not including Wonders. But the point is that each city will have a minimum of +150% culture which is more than the +100% beaker that the science buildings will give us.

Assuming +150% culture and +100% beaker, a single Artist will yield +6B and +35Cu! This in turn means that each Farm yields +9B and 52.5Cu.

I will now assume that we will have the slider on 100% Culture on the scoring turn since, on average, cities will have more culture than beakers.

The 8C from a Town will give us 8C multiplied by 150% from the culture slider giving us +20Cu. Nowhere near as good as the yield from the Farm. Not factoring city growth issues, there is no way Towns still make sense (at least not when we approach t he scoring date).


Culture
Our leader, Willem van Oranje, does not start with Mysticism so getting an early religion will be a little tougher. However, it seems that religion will play an important role in this Adventure so we will probably want to grab one of the early religions… whichever one we can get… if any.

There are a huge number of buildings and Wonders that increase Culture. Building as many of these as we can will also be a goal. The following But one Wonder is an absolute must and that is the Sistine Chapel (available with Music) which gives +2C per Specialist.


Great People
We will want as many Great Scientists as possible since they can give our best cities +50% Research. A couple of Great Prophets to build any religious shrines will also be fine. I think that we want to avoid all other Great People. If we get the free Great Artist from Music that is fine, but we want to get as many Great Scientists as possible. As such, building the Great Library will be an interim goal.


Corporations
There are a number of Corporations that give extra Culture:
Civilized Jewelers Inc: every Gems, Gold, Silver +4 culture, +1 gold
Creative Constructions: every Aluminum, Copper, Iron, Marble, Stone +3 culture, +0.5 hammers
Sid’s Sushi Co: every Clam, Crab, Fish, Rice +2 culture, +0.5 food

And some that give extra beakers:
Aluminium Co: every consumed Coal per turn +3 beakers
Standard Ethanol: every consumed Corn, Rice, Sugar per turn +2 beakers

Standard Ethanol conflicts with Sid’s due to the Rice, so we will stick with Sid’s since it is better for our purposes. So we will need one of each of the following 4 Great People to build all four Corporations: GA, GE, GM, and GS. Getting the Engineer will be the tricky part so that will need to be prioritized before any Caste System craziness starts up.


On the Game!
The starting spot isn’t amazing, but it’s ok. We have Corn, Gems, and Sugar in site. We will have 7 River tiles in city range although the city itself will not be on a River tile. We settle in place and found out capital, Amsterdam (I will leave the weed jokes for later).

I start Researching Mysticism to try to grab an early religion. I start with Agriculture which will allow me to improve the Corn. I will also be farming over the Sugar until I can get Calendar. I will want mining early as well to mine those Gems.

I decide to start with a Worker since we have several nearby tiles to improve.

After Mysticism, I head for Polytheism since there’s little chance I can grab Buddhism when not starting with Mysticism. And of course both Buddhism and Hinduism fall very early. Hmm, I think I will delay Monotheism until after some more key techs. The AI rarely grabs it early and I am no longer in a rush for a religion.

Since I popped Mining from a hut, I will grab Bronze Working next for Slavery and chopping. I also want The Wheel + Pottery, but BW is more important.

Bronze Working arrives, but there is no Copper in sight. I am a sad panda.

I decide to go for The Wheel next so my Workers don’t sit around idle. But after that I plan to head for Monotheism which will hopefully found Judaism.

My first three expansion cities have been outlined. There is a minor debate for the eastern city; should the city be just north or just south of the river. There are pros and cons to both, but all in all, it should not matter. If we were not Creative, then the southern spot would be preferable for sure.

Here is what the first three cities look like. Utrecht, my second city, would eventually become my capital since it was a money generating machine. It had founded two religions and would later become a mecca for corporate headquarters.
[Image: BC2080--First_3_Cities.jpg]

Ragnar, Boudica, Joao… that’s a lot of familiar faces!


Judaism is founded in Utrecht. Iron Working is up next since I’d like to have some metal and Utrecht reeks of jungle fever. I did pick up Animal Husbandry somewhere in there since I wanted to pasture the Cow tile for The Hague, my third city just south of the capital.

Since this is only Prince difficulty, we can complete the Code of Laws to Civil Service Slingshot! Woohoo! We wanted CoL anyways for the religion.

As I grow my economy, tensions are getting high all around. I notice Ragnar approaching with a decent stack. Fortunately he is just passing through on his way north towards Babylon. Going across someone else’s territory to go to war seems like a lot of trouble when there are plenty of civs right now to you looking for bruising.

Ragnar invites me into the war so I accept since I want Hammurabi’s territory for myself. In fact I plan to annex all of it.

Ragnar takes one of the Babylonian cities, but I take the rest. I have Macemen which are really overpowered at this stage in the game when the defending civs don’t have Longbows yet.

The city Ragnar took will probably fall to my culture eventually so I will just ignore it for now.


The year is now 1700 AD and the Portuguese have just been defeated. My forces will take a brief rest before conquering the Mayan lands. The entire eastern territories will be mine!

Only 70 turns remain until 1900 AD: 20 x 5 years to get to 1800 AD and then 50 x 2 years to get to 1900 AD. That’s a lot of time, but I will need to monitor this carefully to make sure I have a chance to do everything that needs to get done.


The Rest of the Game
This is the part where I had to rush through to get it done so this part of the report will be very compact.

I spread all the religions and expanded with “filler” cities where there was room, although I did not do this as early as I should have.

Spreading the religions sucked. I took over 20 screenshots of turns where only 1 or 2 missionaries out of 10 succeeded, but for brevity’s sake, here’s the final tally.
[Image: Units_Built.jpg]

It took 74 Hindu Missionaries to spread the religion to about 38 cities… wow! This was extremely annoying and I considered stopping this adventure since I was spending way too much time trying to micro all this stuff.

There were two of Ragnar’s cities that should have flipped to me that never did. One was being overwhelmed and the territory was over 80% in my favor for 50+ turns, but it only revolted once towards the end of the game.

As you can see from the screenshot below, I spread the 4 Corporations that I mentioned above to all of my cities.
[Image: AD1900--Cities_Report.jpg]

From that screenshot you can also see my 1900 AD score:
11,527 Science
51,510 Culture
63,037 Total

Note that I starved every single city on this turn such that there were 0 citizens working city tiles. If you want me to get a total were no cities would lose any pop, I can go that.

I was originally going to time the Cultural Victory to occur exactly on 1900 AD, but I got so caught up spreading the stupid religions that I dropped the idea. So the Cultural Victory came 5 turns later:
[Image: AD1905--Cultural_Victory.jpg]

Here are the final Globe and Culture views at the end of the game.
[Image: AD1900--Globe_View.jpg]
[Image: AD1900--Culture_View.jpg]

Overall was a fun game and I liked the concept. But if I never have to spread religion again it will be too soon.
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Well, you blew me away. I had a lot of room to improve the last 60 turns but I'm not sure I could've gotten to your mark!

As to your analysis - you have the numbers for settled Great Scientists and Artists, not the normal variety, although you draw the correct conclusion about artists are best. Also, if you're financial and in a golden age, towns are +9C. Also, Civil Service allows chain irrigation, not +1 to farms.

How long did your game take? I was at 21 hrs for mine and couldn't take anymore; the early domination was really a relief. Missionaries became my most hated unit as well; at least there is an auto-spread button....
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timmy827 Wrote:As to your analysis - you have the numbers for settled Great Scientists and Artists, not the normal variety, although you draw the correct conclusion about artists are best.
Whoops

timmy827 Wrote:Also, if you're financial and in a golden age, towns are +9C. Also, Civil Service allows chain irrigation, not +1 to farms.
Yeah, I'm too lazy to redo all the math, but you are correct. Maybe I shouldn't have farmed over all those Cities. Oh well, I'm certainly not going back to replay the last 50 turns.

timmy827 Wrote:How long did your game take? I was at 21 hrs for mine and couldn't take anymore; the early domination was really a relief. Missionaries became my most hated unit as well; at least there is an auto-spread button....
31.5 hrs... that's a long game especially when the outcome was never in doubt for the last 100+ turns.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that I built the Kremlin and was hurrying buildings left and right for 50 turns. That means that each turn, I would have 15 cities that I had to assign new builds to, and each turn I had to hurry the other 15 cities.

Utrecht became my capital and was the HQ for all 4 corps as well as the Holy City for 2 religions with shrines. I think it was generating over 2000g/turn which was more than keeping up with all the hurried buildings I completed. Note that I did allow 1 turn of production before hurrying to not incur the penalty.
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Very impressive.
Detailed analysis and execution of the plan.
Good job.
mh
"You have been struck down!" - Tales of Dwarf Fortress
---
"moby_harmless seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!"
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A stirling effort...13.5 hours is a lot of game time for normal speed, so 31.5 must be some kind of record!
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You must really enjoy this game to stick to it for so long. Are you Dutch yourself? Micromanaging all the missionaries and corp reps must be a chore. 30 hours of chore - I wouldn't want it for a paid job.

The analysis is also interesting. I'm beginning to wonder if a specialist-powered cultural victory may be faster than waiting for cottages to mature.
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Swiss Pauli Wrote:A stirling effort...13.5 hours is a lot of game time for normal speed, so 31.5 must be some kind of record!
I am sure there was plenty of afk time in there. Not sure if the game keeps track of that or not. Although it wasn't the case here, I've been known to leave my computer on for over a week with civ in the background alt-tabbing to it whenever I had some free time.

But yes, micro-managing the spread of all seven religions and four corporations to ~40 cities was an enormous pain in the ass.
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Woah, another incredible game! I really liked your adv 27 report, and this is just as ridiculous! You went completely overboard again - and I like it nod
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The following is a list of corrections from my original post. Corrected items are marked in red. Thanks to timmy827 for pointing out two key mistakes that I made.

Town: +4C
Financial: +1C
Town (/w Free Speech): +2C
Town (/w Printing Press): +1C
Golden Age: +1C
Total: 9C
I forgot to factor in the bonus from the Golden Age. The total under GA is actually 9C, 10C if on a River, but we will not to count this to avoid double-counting.

Farm: +1F
Farm (/w Biology): +1F
Total: +2F
I previously mistakenly wrote that Civil Service added +1F from Farms with Irrigation. I got this information from the Civ 4 BTS Reference Guide (which is otherwise very good). In any case, Irrigation simply allows you to chain-irrigate, but does not provide a food bonus from farms.

It is basically a trade-off between 2 Food for a Farm versus 9 Commerce for a Town.

There are only two Specialists we care about: Artists and Scientists:
Artist: +3g, +12Cu
Scientist: +1H, +6B
As timmy827 pointed out, the number above are for Great People settling! While I did try to maximize generating Great Artists this game, the actual (lower) numbers for city Specialist are:
Artist: +1B, +4Cu
Scientist: +3B


So for scoring purposes, all other things being equal, it’s clear that the Artist is better than the Scientist. The Sistine Chapel will also give us +2Cu per Specialist, and Representation will add another +3B per Specialist. This means a single Artist Specialist will yield +4B and +6Cu. (Corrected the numbers here based on the Specialist rather than Great Person.)


Assuming +150% culture and +100% beaker, a single Artist Specialist will yield +8B and +15Cu. (Corrected the numbers here based on the Specialist rather than Great Person.)

I will now assume that we will have the slider on 100% Culture on the scoring turn since, on average, cities will have more culture than beakers.

The 9C from a Town will give us 9C multiplied by the city’s cultural bonus percentage (since we have the culture slider at 100%) giving us +22.5Cu for a city with +150% culture. This is just slightly below the total bonus that our Farm allowed us by feeding an Artist Specialist.

However, there are two things I did not factor. For Towns on River tiles, the options are almost exactly break even. But then you also have to factor in that such towns will likely have Dikes that, under the Golden Age, will yield +2H. The hammers are not multiplied, except by production bonuses (+50% form Buildings with Forge and Factory, and +50% from Power). So that gives us +4Cu, and makes River Towns a much more attractive option than Farms.

The overall conclusion is no longer the same, especially when you consider some of the other factors. Up until you get close to the “scoring” date, you are probably much better off with Towns than with more Farms. Also, this math doesn’t factor in the Health issue that you will run into as your cities grow larger. In my game, I made sure to research Genetics for the Health boost, and even ended up with Future Tech 2. Finally, because large cities take a while to grow, it is not always clear when to switch from Towns to Farms.

I think the correct play would have been to keep all River Towns, and only convert the other ones into Farms. But even keeping all Towns would have been sensible and saved me a lot of time to boot.

Ironically, actually working some of the River Towns that I had kept in my capital would have netted me a couple extra hundred points. It’s sad that I forgot to double-check the math when it was actually time to score.

Thanks again to timmy827 for correcting me on the Artist Specialist and Farm math.
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Actually I think you were correct to stick with Artists over river towns, this is because your "max output" is not done sustainably. So that farm supporting a specialist up until 1898, actually turns into 2 artists for the last turn, clearly better than one riverside town.

River towns are better if the scoring had a "no food deficit" caveat.

Great report thumbsup


Edit: Health cap space, would shift this towards river towns, again lol
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