No Wonder Challenge

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I'm curious about this challenge. I gave it a whirl over the weekend and, while the game isn't over yet, it seems very strange. I decided to play at emperor rather than deity, just to give myself a bit of a break first time through. I also decided to limit my expansion, since happiness was going to be a serious problem; in the end, I built a dozen cities, and have recently conquered five more. My strategy was effectively to treat every city like an OCC: bang out caravans first, and again whenever there wasn't something I absolutely needed to build. So here's what I've found:

1) Happiness isn't that big a problem. In fact, I have yet to build a Cathedral -- though, admittedly, my largest city is a size-16.
2) Science isn't that big a problem. All game I've been just a tech or two behind the leading civ; I fell behind recently during my efforts to subdue a neighboring civ, but it's nothing a transport full of spies won't fix.
3) It's a really slow game. It's 1897, and no one's discovered flight. I set out to play for an AC landing, but at this rate it's hard to imagine. In retrospect, it might have been better to start down the world-conquest path as soon as I got Fundy or Commie.

Just wondering what others' experiences have been with this. Well?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

*bump* that I hope will compensate for the poor subject line

[samson]

Rufus,

See the game logs and comparison table for OCC fortnight #24. That was a No Wonders One City game. Ribannah landed on AC in 1872.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

I've never tried a no-wonder game, but have played without happiness wonders many times. I focused on SunTzu, Leo's, and some others.

Building the Statue of Liberty, of course, makes the game much easier... Without the SoL and centuries of communism before discovering the tech, your tech path will unfold more slowly, but not so much to cripple your gains. I've stayed in monarchy thru the 19th century a few times, and still been in the lead in many categories.

I've found that a colluseum or cathedral and a bank are often enough to keep a city's citizens peachy until it grows large. I trade heavily, so the luxury rate can be kept at 20% or less. With no wonders, the SSC is more of a GoodSC - library, university, later a research lab. And hey, if the AI leads in tech, roll out a few diplomats to even the tables. They'll declare war (yawn), but they probably would have sneak attacked eventually anyway.

If find it an enjoyable way to play - essentially giving up the tools that make your game easier. A challenge to use only units and city improvements to become supreme. I can't see not having SunTzu or Magellan's or some other wonders setting me back too far. Soon I'll play a wonder-free game to compare...

[East Street Trader]

I tried this once or twice but without trying to set up any special conditions.

The problem I hit was that I took cities with wonders. I did try playing with a rule that I had to get rid of those cities but it's really very artificial and it takes quite a while to do even if you wreck yourself for a while to do it a bit faster.

So I got bored with it.

From recollection though I am not sure that it was noticeably slow. But maybe you play styles which are quicker than I usually do. I don't generally adopt an early landing objective. If I did I suppose I'd either copy or spend time reinventing the established techniques.

I will say, though that I build fewer and fewer wonders and I'm nearly convinced that this doesn't slow you down.

I'm going through a longish phase of always building HG but I reckon I've nearly bottomed its benefits and am almost looking forward to a couple of games where I have to find different answers.

In my current game I've been noticing the way size 4 cities seem to celebrate (with one elvis) when you've built HG and expanded to the point where all the citizens are blackhats. A kingdom with even an HG city celebrating and a number of these size 4s doesn't get near matching representative gov.t for research or cash but you can sustain continued expansion off it virtually for ever. You also get a strange thing with getting more unhappioness if you build a temple. So you get to keep three units waiting by the empty city ready to both complete a temple and move the three units in - sometimes all just to get one more citizen to work. (Easy to understand the attractions of sleasing!!).

Now that's a slow game for you. Fun though.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Well, as I said, it didn't really seem a difficult game, just a slow one. I'm sure I need a better trade strategy, and I probably could have expanded a bit more than I did. So maybe this is the question: without wonders, in a democracy, what would you say is the maximum manageable empire size? I would guess 2*(riot factor)-1 (which I think would be 19), but I'll have to experiment.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

19 cities seems very low. Don't forget that the luxury rate can help you enormously in keeping people happy. I think you could get by with 30+ cities if each has happiness improvements and high trade values. I've done that in monarchy on emperor level, so democracy should give you even greater benefit from luxuries. There will always be some unhappy citizens in this situation, but as long as they are outnumbered by the happy citizens, they don't matter much. Going to war requires elvises wherever you draw your troops, to prevent disorder.

[DaveV]

It's worth noting that if you're running a non-zero luxury rate, building more cities actually makes it easier to keep your citizens happy. The two cups that change an unhappy citizen to content will change a very unhappy citizen to happy. So those black hats can be your best friends, allowing WLY where it would not be possible with fewer cities. The worst possible situation for celebrating is when the first citizen is a red hat, so I think the optimal number of cities is either less than or equal to the riot factor (so the first citizen is blue in all cities), or greater than or equal to 4x the riot factor (so the first citizen is black in all cities). I think that certain levels of city population are counted as extra cities for riot factor calculations, so I'd recommend going for the large number of cities; otherwise your carefully planned happiness may go awry as you grow your cities.

[East Street Trader]

DaveV

If you're right on that last point (which your acknowledged expertise in the happiness field makes me think you will be) it would explain something I notice every now and then. It's commonplace to have one happiness hit turn up out of the blue while expanding, the explanation because the effect of getting the additional cities down. But when I check round at the end of a turn (at a stage where I've got a good few cities down) I sometimes find that I've taken an unexpected hit in several cities at once. It's noticeable because sometimes it buggers up some bit of micromanagement that's going on in the cities concerned.

Anyway a link to population would explain it because, if you are a perfectionist, your population is expanding quite a bit for reasons other than just the establishment of new cities.

[SlowwHand]

I've been soliciting a No Wonder or One Wonder Only game for quite some time.

Let me know if a game forms.

[Species8472]

Originally posted by DaveV
It's worth noting that if you're running a non-zero luxury rate, building more cities actually makes it easier to keep your citizens happy. The two cups that change an unhappy citizen to content will change a very unhappy citizen to happy. So those black hats can be your best friends, allowing WLY where it would not be possible with fewer cities. The worst possible situation for celebrating is when the first citizen is a red hat, so I think the optimal number of cities is either less than or equal to the riot factor (so the first citizen is blue in all cities), or greater than or equal to 4x the riot factor (so the first citizen is black in all cities). I think that certain levels of city population are counted as extra cities for riot factor calculations, so I'd recommend going for the large number of cities; otherwise your carefully planned happiness may go awry as you grow your cities.

i always thought that a very unhappy person would get unhappy with 2 lux and decend with 4 and happy with 6 lux. Now you are telling me that 2 lux make a very unhappy person a happy person??? where is the logic to that? is this really true or did i misinterpret something?

[DaveV]

Species - no, you didn't misinterpret. And there is no logic to the way it works; I think it's yet another bug.

[La Fayette]

Species8472
DaveV forgot to mention the name of the best professor you can choose if you wish to learn how to take advantage of that bug. The name is :
DAVEV
(you should switch to the GL at once and read 'ICS The definitive strategy guide')



(the guy in the middle is La Fayette, refusing to take advantage of the 'black faces bug')