[PB59 SPOILERS] Cornflakes comes along for the ride

[Cornflakes]

Looking back through the last page on this thread, it has been a long time since I've posted any screenshots. How did you let me get through the Golden Age without demanding a screenshot of my bureaucracy capital? lurkers be slacking

   

Overview of the empire. I'm 100% committed to culture as the victory condition. I'm remaining flexible with the tech path and will pursue military if the Piccadilly situation calls for action. Currently I'm running mass wealth builds to outside of the immediate culture builds. Temples (to unlock Synagogues) get priority, and I'll have 6 end of turn, 8 shortly, ... and 12 a few turns delayed. Getting all three religious buildings of Temple/Monastery/Synagogue in the culture cities ASAP is my goal so that they double their culture output about 65 turns from now (which I found out also doubles the +5 Sistine Chapel bonus). Those 3 buildings alone will account for at least 65*18*1.5 + 40*36*3 = 6000 culture per city, and the biggest factor there is getting them completed early. Since years/turn decreases as the game progresses, each turn of delay now cost 3.5 turns delay in doubling of the culture output.

   

The capital will be one of the culture cities purely due to the strong city site. High food and high production make it easy to build infrastructure and I can run a lot of artists here. It is unfortunately a coastal location and vulnerable to galleons from anywhere in the world. I just hope I can stuff enough material in here, and surprise everyone with a very early finish date and an unexpected pile of Great Artists to catapult across the finish line. I will be whipping the Jewish buildings and overflowing into Sistine Chapel construction. This will cost me some turns working the cottages, but the early completion of those buildings is critical.

   

Chaco Canyon will be the Globe + National Epic city which can run 8 artists at size 14 or 9 artists at size 17! Overall this city can account for about 1/4 of my total GPP production. It is my most secure location and will have the highest overall culture output. In 5 turns it will generate a great person. If Engineer, I'm considering a push straight to Nationalism to rush Taj Mahal. The the wonder culture will be worth about the equivalent of a Great Artist, and the golden age should get me to Liberalism for a free swap to Free Speech ... plus denial of the GA to one of the huge 40+ city empires. I ran artists for a couple turns during the GA to speed up the birth timeline, and give about 2/3 chance for non-GSpy. I'm somewhat regretting my choice now to built Great Wall.

I don't have a spectacular 3rd culture city identified ... which in a way is good because I can focus multipliers on the better 2 cities. Chaco Canyon which is currently working on Statue of Zeus is the best of the remaining cities due to safe inland location and decent food and production overall. It is stunted in size now since it knocked out 2 back-to-back GScientists. Statue of Zeus might be a mistake. The GArtists points and deterrence value of the war weariness, plus the 10 culture/turn are the reasons I'm building it.

[Cornflakes]

Piccadilly's power continues to spike. Jowy came begging for 100 gold, I figured that since Piccadilly is my biggest mid-term threat that propping up Jowy as much as possible is in my best interest and gave him the money. I'm building wealth in most cities, so 100 gold is equivalent to building 2 catapults and sending them to help. If funding his construction research allows him to whip his own catapults in a meaningful timeframe then I'll come out ahead.

Some further math on the culture victory suggests that I may have made a mistake pursuing Music ahead of Philosophy ... a 2nd religion in the culture cities shaves off a meaningful 10+ turns on the overall timing if I can get the 2nd cathedrals set up early! The additional 50% multiplier if applied over 70 turns is equivalent to about 3 GArtists! Also the cathedrals reduce the overall risk of delay if one of my non-culture cities that is generating a critical artist gets razed towards the end. I have 5 cities without Judaism now so I can either cross my fingers for a random spread , or conquer an island city without triremes and extract a missionary , or take a risk in pursuing Christianity which has not been founded yet .

I decided to take the risk and control my own destiny rather than waiting and praying for a random spread (which would more likely be Judaism due to proximity of the holy city). I am pursuing Christianity. I can 2-turn Theology with my mass wealth builds. Charriu (IND/SPI) I think is the only Spiritual rival who would contest me, the others are either eliminated (AT) or seem to be weakened and occupied in conflict.

Hmmm, if I roll the Great Engineer in 4 turns, should I rush the Apostolic Palace? I already have 10 Jewish buildings for +20 hammers immediately. And I'll be building 10 more easy between the temples and synagogues. I could also build Monasteries everywhere which would have about 25-turn payback period and about 75 turns of profit. That would be an additional 3 longbows or catapults that I could build per Monastery. Total of around 4500 additional profit hammers over the 100-turn victory horizon. Obviously other Jewish nations (particularly my neighbors) would benefit from the AP hammers as well, but each additional unit I can build is 2 that they have to bring to wipe me out. 60 additional defenders would make an overseas invasion a logistical nightmare for a T225 target date.

[Cornflakes]

Christianity is still un-founded. Coinflip at worst end of turn!

I recently saw something veeeeery interesting while doing some opposition research (i.e. reading old threads). Apparently failgold can be generated from missionaries! I was able to reproduce the missionary failgold in a test game:

   

Procedure:
1) Whip missionaries, then drop them out of the build queues.
2) Complete 3 missionaries
3) Wait one more turn without spreading religion from one of the 3 missionaries or deleting any of them
4) count your mounds of of wealth!

Limitations:
• No extra hammer bonuses apply (other than forge, etc. which would be active for wealth building)
• Since 3 missionaries must actually be completed, the maximum amount of failgold is limited to (NumCitiesWithReligion - 3)*69
• Only 3 missionaries can be actively in production at any given time. Thus to avoid the whip penalty it takes multiple turns to set up maximum failgold at more than 3 cities
• 3 missionaries must actually be produced. If you don't have a use for missionaries, then that production is wasted

Since wonder bonuses like IND/Stone/Marble don't apply, extra wealth cannot be generated this way. Essentially this allows converting food (and happiness) to wealth build via the whip. I see very few situations where this would be useful, but my present situation where I'm building wealth everywhere and plan on continuing for the next 10 turns might be one of those very rare cases. I still need a few more Jewish missionaries so I could potentially convert some food to wealth in a couple more cities and shave off maybe 2 turns from the Liberalism timeline. The whip-happiness penalty is actually the biggest negative because I want to start running artist specialists everywhere as soon as I hit Liberalism.

[Cornflakes]

   

Christianity was founded in 200 AD on the Native American isle of Puye Cliff. Rumors of the religious stirrings had previoussly reached the governor and a galley was dispatched in anticipation. Although founded in isolation, the barbaric Native American ruler demanded that the doctrines of Christianity be immediately disseminated throughout the land in pursuit of his legendary aspirations. The governor was ordered to whip the citizens mercilessly and ship missionaries to the mainland with all haste.

[Cornflakes]

Uhhhh, Lewwyn ... did you disable Diplomatic Victory when you set up the map? The Apostolic Palace is not available to build:

   

[Cornflakes]

I logged back in and confirmed that Diplomatic Victory is not listed on the victory screen

[Old Harry]

Is that a thing Ramk can fix through the console?

[Cornflakes]

Is that a thing Ramk can fix through the console?

I PM’ed Ramk to see if that is possible

[Cornflakes]

The problem is resolved

Thanks again to Ramk for his wizardry!

   

I rolled the GEngineer at around 50% odds (40% spy, 10% artist), and rushed the Apostolic Palace. I already have 9 temples, 2 monasteries, and 1 Synagogue for 24 hammers per turn ... a 25% increase over my current production. In 15 turns the GEngineer will have paid back the investment in the AP and converted the GE to a combination of military and/or wealth. I figured that was a better overall investment than keeping him on ice and gambling on the Taj Mahal. The AP could also convince my neighbors to spend production on religious development instead of military in my vulnerable next 30 turns when I want to be skating by with minimal military while trying to reach Liberalism for Free Speech as soon as possible. Once I have free speech I can complete units, spike the power, and tank the economy with unit costs.

   

   

   

Piccadilly declared war on Jowy 2 turns ago and is on the march with a stack of 15+ HA and 15+ catapults I'm going to whip all of the units in the above build queues next turn, and immediately whip another round afterwards. I need to ensure safety above all, and my power graph current says "come take a bite out of me"

[Cornflakes]

I am a little concerned polluting this GPP pool with prophet points. I considered locating the AP in a different city but decided that I would rather pollute one city for one single dice roll rather that rely on good dice rolls at several cities. I am however considering relocating the National Epic to Chaco Canyon which will have about 2 food per turn less but can maintain a pure artist pool.

EDIT: another advantage of splitting Globe Theater from National Epic is that I can continue whipping Poverty Point heavily every 2-3 turns with GT and Chaco Canyon with the NE can start running 2 artists immediately in the Theater slots while growing on the big food surplus for the eventual swap to Cast/Pacifism, when I’ll be able to run 8 scientists.