Please don't eat the sea cows, manatees are endangered (and friendly!).
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[SPOILERS] scooter Reruns Bluey
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(February 22nd, 2024, 20:06)El Grillo Wrote: Please don't eat the sea cows, manatees are endangered (and friendly!). Wouldn't dream of it! I love manatees. In other news since last report.  Perfect. I purposely didn't use my missionary on the capital. I figured river connection meant odds were decent it would natural spread in the first 20ish turns, and I got the lucky roll a couple turns ago. This lets me use the Missionary for a future city border pop instead.  I feel the need to discuss the barbarian cities. It seems like they are souped-up uber cities, but I'm a bit annoyed by this. Mainly because look at this one. Tell me who it's closer to? With the little bay between the Cow and Gold, this city is actually incredibly far from me, relative to Thoth. Ok, so maybe they're supposed to be closer in one direction, so let's check the other side.  This one is literally up against holy city culture. On paper it's the same distance, but in practice due to placements, it's effectively much closer to Commodore because there was no way for me to see any food in this direction on T0, so I didn't settle this way. I just don't see any way I can take and hold either of these cities without it seeming like a massive act of aggression given the circumstances, not to mention that it's going to be quite a bit harder to hold either one. It's def a pretty serious nerf to IMP here, I think. I dunno, not ideal. I guess the flip side is it serves as some aggression buffer from neighbors which gives me more time to do my thing, so it's not all bad. It's just awkward as it feels like I'm "further" from both due to the land shape in both directions, which is painful given how incredibly vital both are by holding strategic resources and just being all-around OP cities. (Yes, there is one thing I could do in either direction, and it rhymes with too sick vulture mom.)  A more recent picture. Got another forest spawn which I'm quite happy with. (February 23rd, 2024, 10:49)Zed-F Wrote:(February 22nd, 2024, 23:06)scooter Wrote: (Yes, there is one thing I could do in either direction, and it rhymes with too sick vulture mom.) I honestly don't really have a super concrete plan for the Artist at this point. There's basically 3 choices. 1) Culture bomb. Super situational. It's generally not that valuable against humans unless you are committed to wiping them out completely, which would not be the case anytime soon. Verdict: a bad use unless a uniquely good scenario comes up (I have considered doing it to try to culture flip that barb city, FWIW.) 2) Bulb. The problem here is there's basically just one choice, which is Theology. Because once you complete Theology, Divine Right becomes the top choice, and it's a dead-end tech that we don't care about here. There's not any special value from actually completing Theology faster as I don't anticipate AP being a big target, so this would purely just be about getting beakers. Which feels weird because it cost beakers to actually complete Music in the first place. That doesn't make it inherently a terrible idea though. 3) Ice for Golden Age. This is the obvious choice, but it results in the Artist sitting for quite a long time. This isn't necessarily the end of the world though. It makes it that much easier to go for an extended GA, and IMP means we can potentially expand out to the point where that's profitable a lot quicker. My general feeling is planning for #3 while keeping #1 in the back of my head. I do need to test out the culture bomb/flip scenario, because that might actually be worthwhile, but it's been so long since the cultural conquest SGs that I'm fuzzy on the odds I'd get, though I do understand the cultural output mechanics pretty well.
IIRC, the culture flip odds converge to something like 12.5% revolt chance per turn, and you need two revolts, with a resistance period between, so the expected time is something like 18-20 turns total. I could be off but I think that's in the ballpark.
Barbarian cities will flip after the first revolt. According to this https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strateg...assembled/ they will even always fail the revolt roll, so as soon as you have enough culure you will get the city.
(February 24th, 2024, 13:39)Erasmas Wrote: ... as soon as you have enough culure you will get the city. Based on personal experience, this is definitely not the case. From skimming the linked post, it looks like there's only a 10% chance each turn of checking for revolt. This would make more sense to me: I've had barb cities flip pretty quickly after I hit majority culture, and I've also had them hold out for an annoyingly long time without flipping.
In the article it states: "If the number is greater than the garrison strength, the city revolts. Barbarian cities always fail this check, so will always revolt". And "A barbarian city will always flip, period. A non barbarian city won’t flip if this is the first revolt (there is always one warning revolt)."
Now if this is really true I do not know. I definitely remember barbs needing only one revolt, the other part was new to me. But it has been a long time since I played civ 4, so your experience certainly trumps mine. But hey, how often do you culure bomb a barb city? Usually you will have taken them by force long before that. That alone is a reason to try it  .
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