Best use of Great Artist?

[NFIH]

OK, thanks for the info, folks! I appreciate it.

[joncnunn]

The one thing I NEVER do with Great Artists is settle them.
I often use them for a Golden Age, sometimes use them for CJ, and other times use them as instant culture time bombs.

[snoopy369]

The strange way in which the 4000 is applied to the city's territory sometimes can justify settling them instead of bombing them, in a city where you need the culture for a long-term border war (we're talking early in a city's life where you need the culture later, not now, and need as much as possible over time). That's about the only time I really would settle them, though.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Overall I vote save - save to the bitter end, in fact, because you won't know until fairly close to your victory exactly where you'll need it; usually your #2 and #3 cities are determined later, and if it's me they're both close to each other in culture.

But if you're rolling in Great Artists (which you will be, if you make a GA GP farm), then you can afford to make your best guess, settle the first couple of them, and use the next 12-15 for bombs to even things out in whichever cities turn out to be the lowest.

Wodan

[Willem]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
The odds of the +12 points being useful is slight considering free speech and those other absurd buildings come so late. I am right about this.

Cathedrals don't come in late.

[MoonWolf]

If I'm running a cultural war with anyone (either going for victory or grabbing land/ trying to flip my neighbour's city), I'll settle it if I'm not too late in the game. Otherwise, I'll save them for bombs in newly captured cities or use them as fuel for my Golden Ages.

[couerdelion]

Just finished an Inca cultural victory and my only Great Artist (from Music) was settled. By the end of the game it was generating 49 culture pt (ie 120 turns for pay-off on Epic).

I settled it in the capital simply because it had quite low production so was running quite low on culture from wonders. In the end, they passed legendary status within around 5 turns of each other.

If I had received any artists after 1500, I think they would have been used for a culture bomb

nb Sistine also gives a little boost to the settled GP

[wodan11]

Originally posted by couerdelion
nb Sistine also gives a little boost to the settled GP

Good point, we forgot about that. Sistine for sure will be one of the top-priority builds of a CV attempt.

Only 1 GA? Did you not have an artist GP farm?

Wodan

[NFIH]

Does a city's culture have any effect on borders before its next expansion?

For example, let's say I've got a city (city A) bordering a rival city (city B). The next border expansion for city A is set to come at 10,000 culture points (CP). City A currently has 6,000 CP. City B has 4,500.

Does anything happen with the border between the two cities while City A is on its way to 10,000 CP? Can city B's borders be pushed back before the the 10,000 CP mark is reached?

And once city A's CP total does reach 10,000, does it automatically push back city B's borders, or is there some other calculation that goes on to determine whether this will in fact happen?

[Ming]

Take a look at the surrounding squares and see the percentage ownership. If you do it every few turns, you will see if you are winning the battle or lossing it. Progress or loss is occuring between different levels.

[snoopy369]

Approximately how culture to land works (better and more accurate discussions exist elsewhere if you want, this is a short summary):

Each turn, the tile is given the amount of culture the city is currently generating, plus a bonus based on which level the city has expanded past that tile, of 20*(expanded layers-1). For example:

City A has expanded 3 times, so 2 past the BFC (4 tile radius in each direction). It produces 10 culture/turn.

A tile immediately outside the city gets:
(10) + (20*(4-1)) or 70 culture applied to it each turn. The city center gets 90, I believe (not 100% sure about that one). A tile on the far outside of the radius gets 10 culture per turn.

This 'exanded' does not require you to actually control the tile, by the way - simply in theory you would control it if there were no other cities in the area. So if you have two cities 3 tiles apart from different cultures, it is quite possible they could each give culture to the opponent's city tile (this is how you flip a city). However, in order to overpower that city, they have to put out a LOT of culture to overcome the 20cpt bonus * border expansions - or else have 3 more border expansions than the opponent (very unlikely).

This is where the GA comes in. A GA culturebomb applies 4000 culture to the city culture value, but that culture value is not related to the culture value of the tiles (directly). I don't precisely remember the mechanics of this other than that it applies it in 20 increments, and each time recalculating the amount of culture the city is outputting - meaning that the more culture you are producing at the time of the culture bomb, the more you will put out to the tile. Build culture in that city, and you will have more applied to the tiles than if you don't build culture (for example).

[NFIH]

Ouch, snoopy! My head hurts. I think I'll just not worry too much about how it works. LOL!

Yeah, I know--I asked!

Thanks for the reply.

[snoopy369]

Give or take the answer is "Yes, and in fact the city expansion itself has only a limited effect on tile ownership". Each tile accumulates culture for each civ that has a city radius including that tile, and whomever has the most culture at the moment keeps the tile. Also don't forget that the ownership is not directly related to the city - if a city is razed or captured, the culture on the tiles remains, and as long as at least one city contains that tile in its radius, it is still owned by the original civ. Hence why you have a very hard time taking tiles away from enemy civs late in the game

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by wodan11

Good point, we forgot about that. Sistine for sure will be one of the top-priority builds of a CV attempt.

Only 1 GA? Did you not have an artist GP farm?

Wodan

The only cities that generated GP were the cultural ones and since most of the culture came from wonders I ended up without three cities producing lots of GPP (Parthenon, Pacifism) and Great Lib or Temple of Arty but little to contribute towards Great Artists.

Not that it would have changed much unless they had arrived early. By the end, two GA would have saved me around 6 or 7 turns.