Oh no, I'm not done. What's better than a size 102 city? A size 102 city running 80 artists.
I'm the Realms Beyond resident master of culture wins, at least according to timmy. (Which isn't an entirely accurate perception, Olodune has done it faster than I ever have, and zeka is pretty good too.) I simply must try it here.
The plan is clear: exactly six cities, tech to Music and Liberalism and stop. I'll want a bigtime Bureaucratic capital stocked with Globe Theater and National Epic pumping out artists. Caste System all the way, as in the space game. Get religions as possible, which will include one of the early ones. Parthenon and Sistine Chapel are musts.
The Pyramids should be reachable even against industrious Germany if I try hard enough. But I'll pass on that, they're brutally expensive without industrious or stone. And I've got a better plan. Since we want Bureaucracy so badly, and down on Prince difficulty, let's try the good old Oracle to Civil Service start. That also dovetails nicely with claiming some religions - starting with Hinduism, then Confucianism, later Taoism, maybe even bulb Christianity off the Oracle's prophet. (I'm fully aware that you don't need to found religions for a culture game. Just get access to them somehow. But founding them is the easiest way to do that.)
I toyed with the idea of moving the starting settler elsewhere, but decided against it. Madrid's seafood is the only strong way to push research before 1000 BC. Let an inland city later become the monster Bureaucratic artist farm.
Incidentally, I'm having no trouble at all moving back and forth between this mod and regular Civ games like Epic 26 and LotR27. It's a bit scary that I've gotten so comfortable with these mod mechanics. I imagine it's like being bilingual (I'm not) where you can just instinctively think and work in either tongue.
First research was Polytheism, landing Hinduism. My warrior found the England worker at the same time and place as before. I debated, but went ahead and nabbed it. No sense pretending I'm not spoiled here. But this time I didn't choke or chariot rush, just made peace.
Polytheism - Hunting (furs) - Mining (food) - Bronze Working (chop for population) - Priesthood - Writing - The Wheel (give the workers something to do) - Mathematics - Code of Laws.
I got to ignore a whole area of the tech tree that usually can't be. Agriculture, Wheel, Pottery, Animal Husbandry all got skipped in the rush to Civil Service. Also this time I finally correctly mined the sheep hill.
Build order was worker - scout - scout - warrior - work boat (now chopped up to size 6) - settler (triple whipped 1 turn before Writing) - library (helped by overflow from the whip.)
I tried to run two scientists for the academy, as usual, to speed research to Code of Laws. But I kind of botched the timing there and the Great Scientist wouldn't pop until I had CoL anyway. Madrid ended up timing Code of Laws and the Oracle perfectly anyway.
Shazam, Bureaucracy in 1120 BC.
Barcelona is my second legendary, at that awesome hilly valley. It's shifted one tile from the previous games, to make use of the Iron that the city had been founded on before.
Madrid immediately whipped a settler for the marked spot, Seville, my third legendary. Confucianism went in Barcelona as it had to. I sent the Confucian missionary to Seville, and actually switched back to No State Religion for a moment, to allow Confucian culture to border pop both cities.
Oh yeah, Bureaucracy is abusive here alright. Besides crazy growth, it also so happens that both sides of the Bureaucracy bonus apply to settlers and workers. So Madrid cranked out a half dozen workers, while waiting for some happy cap from gold and ivory and trading for Monarchy.
England beat me to that barbarian city down there (cheatingly so, I think - one single English warrior sat there and killed three barb warriors, healing between each one. My own warrior only ever had 11% odds to win.) I wanted to declare war again and snatch it by killing England's cheatyface warrior. But that was not an option thanks to an English axe wandering around near Barcelona. Carib is doomed to me anyway. It's within fourth ring of my Legend to be.
I got Alphabet, and traded for the usual Monarchy and Iron Working. (Had to gift Writing to Carthage in order to trade him more expensive techs for the ones I wanted.)
And in the classical age, I thought long and hard about every research decision. I needed all of the following, but here's the order they came:
Aesthetics to start all three wonders
Currency for the passive boost (cities busy on wonders) and a whipped market in Madrid
Drama to get my mighty Globe city going ASAP and the slider to manage happy during Golden Age
Metal Casting for forges finally
Literature for National Epic
Music for Sistine and settle the great artist
Philosophy to lock in Taoism.
Madrid built Shwedagon Paya, and I immediately went to Pacifism and hired max specialists. Madrid spawned Great Person #2 in 50 BC. Finally I had the early explosive Golden Age I wanted in the last two games.
