This is the story of my game of Civilization IV Adventure Twenty-eight from Realms Beyond Civilization.
Hi everybody! So, I've finally decided to jump in and play a game of Beyond the Sword.
Why did this game draw me in? It evoked a bit of history. In the days of the Civilization 3 Epics, Sirian and I had a bit of an informal personal rivalry beyond the actual Epics competition. We always looked forward to comparing our game approaches, not just by the stated Epic goals, but the general game plan and execution. A trend that developed over time was that Sirian usually outdid me in directing an empire across a broad range of goals, but I was better at tasks of focusing on one specific goal. I enjoyed that sort of game more as well, going in extreme directions.
And the scenario setup of this one plays directly into that: maximize your empire's culture and science output on one particular date. Micromanagers, rejoice. And it turned out that I had nothing else to do on the last two weekends before the Adventure 27 closing date, and I happened into a Gamestop selling BTS cheaply. So here I am.
As pre-game planning for this Adventure, I'd like to make one broad note. The scoring is based on the total of the empire's science and culture output, but half of that is a red herring. In the late game, the available cultural multipliers far exceed the available science multipliers, led by a free +100% simply by adopting the Free Speech civic. And artist specialists produce more culture than scientists produce science. So the real goal of this adventure is even simpler than the stated goal: maximize culture production by 1900 AD.
This in turn brings a couple of strategic points. First, a dense city build will absolutely be correct, just like playing for the civilization-wide cultural victory (100k) in Civ 3. More cities mean more copies of the base cultural buildings, more temples to qualify for more cathedrals, and more instances of Sid's Sushi. Yes, Sid's Sushi will be a must-have, with direct culture production, and more food to support more specialists. Civilized Jewelers and Creative Construction are also in play, with no competing resources. (OK, the cultural corporation trinity is well known, but I was working all this out for myself. :) )