Ruff_Hi's Antics

All Happiness is the Release of Internal Pressure

 
Game Report: Epic 22 - Tree Huggers (4/4)

I have 5 religions in my empire and I am busy spreading them around, building temples and then religious culture multipliers. I am also 1 turn from completing the Taj Mahal, teching chemistry and trying to figure when I should take my Liberalism inspired free tech - the AI tech rate was horrible. All of this in the middle of a 3 Great Person inspired Golden Age. With the completion of the Taj Mahal - I had a nice little Golden Age that ran for 45 turns.

go spread thyne word(s)

I had originally thought that I would be doing really well to Liberalism-sling Biology but when I got there it was only a 9 turn tech and the AIs were no where close to Education. So I reset my free tech target higher - I pulled of a few trades netting Astronomy and a few other techs that I needed to speed me towards...

yay, free tech

... and enable me to build The Eiffel Tower for free broadcast towers everywhere (+50% culture). I've also selected my 3 Legendary cities; The capital, my second city found (Hariharalaya) and the ex-Barbarian city (Aryan) that use to be under Russian cultural pressure. This last city was my selected site for the National Epic and (mystery objective about to be revealed!!) ... The National Park!

I was able to put 16 Nature Preserves in this city - couple that with the National Park and that is 16 free specialists! This city had enough deer to grow to size 25 for an additional 5 Artists ... and it was generating over 177 Great People points per turn(!) [+100% buildings, +100% golden age] and that was before the swap to Pacifism (delayed as I needed to remain in Organized Religion so build missionaries).

free specialists are fun

Notice the little chevrons near the artists - those are BUG additions that let you see how many specialists you are running. A single chevron indicates 5, a capped chevron indicates 10 while a capped boxed chevron indicates 20. The picture above shows 19 artists specialists (10+5+4).

At this point (Turn 276 1280 AD), I swapped over to Culture Victory mode, swapped civics to Free Speech and Pacifism and started the run for home. On turn 292 (1360AD), my 3 'to-be-legendary' cities had 12,653 (100+ turns), 6,958 (100+ turns) and 9,608 (97 turns) of culture. I was able to dial the culture up to 80% and still break even on the $ front (later 100% with most non-Legendary cities building cash and some building units - legendary cities were building culture) to bring those counters down to 76 (Capital), 74 (ex-Barb city) and 95 (2nd city - Hariharalaya) turns.

By Turn 343 (1615AD), my capital (Yasodharapura) was putting out about 1000 culture per turn - 7 turns to go, Hariharalaya was putting out about 900 culture per turn (6 turns to go) and the old Barbarian city (Aryan) was putting out about 1100 culture per turn - 7 turns to go. A short bit of MM later and those numbers were 1212 per turn (6) and 1336 per turn (6) - nice. I even had 7 turns to go on my tech so I MM'd that down to 6.

All 3 legendary target cities were getting +250% from religious buildings, +50% from broadcast towers, +50 from wonders (Hollywood, Broadway, Rock & Roll - yes, each city built 1 which was probably a bit of smoke given the 15-20 turns they took and thus the lost culture) and +100% from civics. Hariharalaya also benefited from +100% from the Hermatige, 1 settled Great Artist and 2 or 3 +6000 Artist culture bombs when settling would have provide less.

And so, finally, after on Turn 349 (1645AD), victory...

3 for 1
victory!

In conclusion, let me share the city that I am most proud of ... Aryan, the ex-barbarian city. This picture is from Turn 310, about 30 turns from the end of the game while the insert is from turn 186.

and the wheels of the bus go round and round, ...

List of Great People I got in the game - a bit boring, but notice Aryan at the end ...