Culture, should we invest in it

[alva]

Since many of us have not played any MP games, this can be tricky.

Therefore is it worthwhile to invest in culture in MP games?

Give the pro's en con's as you see them

[Meshelic]

I think culture will be important. Regardless of whether we're playing against human or AI, there is still the same potential to initiate culture flips as their is in single player games.

I don't believe our opponents are illogical enough to trust culture flips to fate and not try their hand in preventing them, as I would hope they'd feel the same way about us.

Besides, culture improvements help the cities as a whole anyways. Without temples, marketplaces, libraries etc, our cities will be backwards and barely a step above Ruins.

So I see it as always important. It paces the game to our liking, depending on how much culture we can afford to build up.

[notyoueither]

A place for everything, and everything in its place

There will be periods of peaceful build up of the cities. There will be times of war and preparation for war.

Should we have a neighbour, like the Glory of War, and they are sitting in Monarchy, and the Mil advisor tells us we are at a disadvantage...

We'd best build Knights, and not Cathedrals.

[Arrian]

Personally, I'm a big fan of early temples, both for happiness and for border expansion. Border expansion has two primary effects: it allows you access to the full city radius and it helps you defend by forcing an enemy to slog his way through your culture before attacking your city.

However, it really depends on the lay of the land. If we start next to a couple of AI civs, we can afford to build our temples and prepare to beat on them normally. However, if we pop up next to a strong human team, we may be forced to forego culture initially in order to defend ourselves (best defense being a good offense, of course).

-Arrian

[Theseus]

I tooo am a fan of early Temples, but I can tell you that the strongest start I ever had on marginal terrain was the second 1337 game, as Rome.

Arrian, you'll kill me for this , but 3-tile spacing, 2 luxuries, Barracks, Archers for an early rush, and Warriors up the yin-yang for upgrade were unbelievable. I believe this will work even better if we are industrious.

(oops, the Dark Side enters the discussion )

Course it depends on what we get.

[DeepO]

What's this for a provocative thread title? How on earth could we go without culture? I didn't join this team to start having CFs

If we are religious, we should make sure we build the first temple of the game... after that we can watch the culture graph, and see if someone else is overly eager to build up culture. Also, and this might be something not many people have thought about in the other teams, we should get the Colossus, or the GL, preferably both. The reason is that the Colossus is good enough for 3 temples culture wise.

If other teams are squarely going for culture, we should always stay within half their culture, if no-one is focussing we should aim to have the best culture. This doesn't mean we should build more temples and stuff then everyone else, but we should be smart in when we build what. A 3000BC temple will provide enough culture to be safe for the next 2000 years, add the colossus or another 2 or 3 early (1500 BC) temples and we're safe for the entire ancient era. If this is built well, we have enough resources to build troops, build settlers, capture cities, build marketplaces (still one the most important buildings in the game). Of course all of this depends on the situation and chosen Civ, but I'd say we look at culture as something that is simply needed and thus a priority, but as we're not builders per se it's not the goal of the game.

DeepO

[Theseus]

Dependent on the map, maybe we should try to have at least one BIGGG city relatively early... Temple, some lux, some garrison...

But I still predict some ANCIENT war.

[DeepO]

Ah, we need ancient war... super ancient war if possible. But there is no point in gaining territory to lose it to cultural flips later.

As to a super wonder city: the last few games, this has worked very wel for me, to pick one city and focus it, building towards size 12 early. But yes, this depends on the situation when you do it: either you start your second city after the first settler, or you can catch up later after the first round of conquest, adding slaves or own workers to speed things up. It's a choice of timing, but to have it easy we should need at least one wonder city by the time the Hanging gardens become available. Happiness is, just like culture, one of those priorities we simply need, and one way or another we have to get some wonders to support that.

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

Honestly, in MP games, I have found that wonders aren't always worth the shields

I had one game where I put everything towards MW's and avoided all wonders but the Great Lighthouse while my opponent built the oracle and something else. He should have been building swordsmen. Needless to say, I crushed him.

If we are on archipelago, I would say the only useful ancient wonder is the Lighthouse. then we could get off the rock and on to battle.

If we are not on archipelago, and there are other civs nearby, I wouldn't even bother with a wonder unless I got a leader.

But that's just me

This game will go probably a lot slower than a 1x1 or similar game, so we probably will have time to build some wonders and generate the culture and happiness.

[Arrian]

I would like to try for the Colossus if we have a viable spot for it. We're leaning heavily toward a civ with an ancient UU, which we WILL use, so the ensuing GA ought to polish of the Col... on a normal map the commerce boost is worth the shield cost, IMO.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Wonders may not be so crucial (they never are, not even in SP), but I'd rather build a few of them, instead of having to face them. Plus, building is many times better than spending a GL on it: GLs should at first be reserved for armies, palace moves, and stuff like that. If we get into the position of having too many of them, a few wonders would be nice.

One thing we (and prolly everyone else) should go for is the GL, tech trading will be a lot less frequent than in SP, so gaining free techs from it will be awesome. But still, I think we need early wonders simply for the culture they generate... the Oracle also produces 4 culture (8 in 1000 years), which is not something to discard that easily.

DeepO

DeepO

[Dominae]

Unless we invest heavily in culture early on, I can't see why we should invest in it all. Explanation: culture flips are great in SP, but I can't see them happening too often in MP. I think we're going to see a lot of warmongering, and the fact is warmongering beats culture every time. If they've spent their time building Temples and such, we know how to deal with it; if we spend our time building Temples and such, they will know how to deal with it when they start conquering our cities. If we end up picking a Religious civ building Temples early will obviously be a fine decision; if not, I'm not certain it's worth the 60 shields, unless we really need to deal with unhappiness.


Dominae

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Dominae
Unless we invest heavily in culture early on, I can't see why we should invest in it all. Explanation: culture flips are great in SP, but I can't see them happening too often in MP. I think we're going to see a lot of warmongering, and the fact is warmongering beats culture every time. If they've spent their time building Temples and such, we know how to deal with it; if we spend our time building Temples and such, they will know how to deal with it when they start conquering our cities. If we end up picking a Religious civ building Temples early will obviously be a fine decision; if not, I'm not certain it's worth the 60 shields, unless we really need to deal with unhappiness.


Dominae

Agreed

and welcome to the team, Dominae

[DeepO]

Ah, but if we lose culture at a rate that we have less then half of the civ we're conquering, we will get into problems. Culture isn't a goal here, it's just a terrain where we can't afford to lose too much

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by DeepO
Ah, but if we lose culture at a rate that we have less then half of the civ we're conquering, we will get into problems. Culture isn't a goal here, it's just a terrain where we can't afford to lose too much

DeepO

good point, we will have to build enough to claim territory and resources

I imagine that the AI will be ahead in culture, if they survive the first couple millenia.

Of course, I think it would be hilarious if legoland won via culture. I think that would actually be a posititve thing, other than the fact that we would lose. Regardless, it will be hilarious when the glory of war takes cities of legoland only to have them flip a few turns later or will they just raze everything? Will we have respect for a human that razes? hmmm