Epic 29 was a game in which the player was limited to having only five cities, ever, at all times. It was permissable to temporarily control a sixth city, but at the end of any turn the player could never have more than five cities. This is the variant known as the Five-City Challenge (5CC), a highly entertaining one to play since a number of small wonders require having buildings in five cities. To complicate this variant, the main scoring goal was the cultural value of the LOWEST of the five cities. In other words, in order to score well you would have to balance culture across every city as evenly as possible. Needless to say, this was an unusual goal from what one would expect see in a more typical game! With that in mind, I'll start by discussing my philosophy going into the game.
The key thing was the cultural value of the city with the lowest culture. I can't stress this enough; the city with the LOWEST cultural value. That means that if four cities have 10,000 culture each and the fifth city has 100, the score for the game would only be the piddly 100 number. In an odd way, this also meant that what four of the five cities were building at any one time was insignificant; the only culture that actually mattered was what was going into the fifth city lagging behind. My early game would be played out with this in mind. There was no need for an early temple in my capital city; it would start out in front due to the palace. Similarly, going for an early wonder in the capital was a bad idea - that would only put the capital further ahead! The goal here is balance; you want to get as much culture as possible, but if it wasn't balanced evenly, it would be to no purpose. I reasoned that the best thing to do was to found my five cities as quickly as possible, because the earlier they were built, the earlier they could get cracking on their temples, libraries, etc. The date that city #2 was founded was insignificant; the important thing was to get city #5 founded as soon as possible. Therefore, building a granary was clearly the way to go, since it would speed up the later cities at the expense of the former ones (not a problem!) I also had some other plans for a granary in the capital...
The starting position wasn't bad, but it had a lot of desert in the northwest. After moving the scout and the worker, I decided it would be a good idea to move one tile to the southeast to eliminate a number of desert tiles. I did so, and Mecca was founded in 3950BC. It started work on a warrior, then would go on granary; I would have skipped the warrior altogether and went right to granary, using the free scout for exploration, except that this map had barbs and I needed at least ONE defender. The worker began by irritating the two floodplains to get the foot rate up; I crossed my fingers and prayed for no disease (which fortunately never struck).
My scout met the Ottomans in 3850BC, tipping me off to the fact that they were close by. I traded Ceremonial Burial and Pottery (the two cheapest techs in the game) for Masonry and said goodbye. I was reseaching The Wheel first since I needed to be able to see horses to choose my city sites and because I could likely trade it for something. Mecca built its one warrior in 3650BC and started in on a granary; two turns later it hit size 2 and shockingly I did not need the luxury rate increased! Been a while since I played on Monarch difficulty, heh. By 3000BC, I had already planned out the location of four of my cities and was about to discover The Wheel:
There were two good sites close by, to the east. The first one was on a river surrounded mostly by jungle, but also pulling a number of bonus grassland tiles. It was just far enough away to avoid overlapping with Mecca, and it would pull in the spices when its culture expanded to level 3. The next site was further east, close to where I later discovered the Ottoman capital was located. It was not on fresh water, but it did have a coastal location, pulled in the silks luxuries, and grabbed both a wheat and fish resource (though it narrowly missed a cattle one). Looking for further good sites was tough; Mecca was almost completely surrounded by useless desert to the north. Up above that though I found another good site, on fresh water and surrounded with wheat, game, and whale tiles. It would be a great location for a city, if heavily corrupt until I could get a courthouse there. The only question remaining at this point was where to put the fifth city; I couldn't seem to find a good final location. This was a serious question, since it wouldn't matter how good my first four cities were if the final one got an awful desert spot. I resolved to wait for more scouting in the hopes that I would come across something good.
I discovered the technology of The Wheel on the next turn and noticed that there were no horses anywhere close to my borders; ah well, if there's one resource I can do without, it would be horses. I traded The Wheel to Osman for Bronze Working and 22g, beginning research on Mysticism so I could then go for Polytheism after that. I stepped into a goody hut in 2750BC, and was absolutely shocked to get something positive out of it - Warrior Code! It had been so long since I got something other than barbs or nothing, I was genuinely surprised. On the next turn (2710BC) the Ottomans settled a city near the spices, wrecking my dotmap. Gah, is my game over already? On closer inspection though, their city only would overlap three tiles with my red dot city. It would also be completely choked by jungle, unable to get more than 1 shield/turn unitl some of it was cut down, and so I could confidently expect to win the culture war once I got my cities down. So things were not so bad, but it did serve as warning that I had to hurry up and secure my sites before the AI got to them first!
I met Egypt to the north on the same turn; with nothing to trade, I broke off contact right away. I passed up the opportunity to buy an Egyptian worker in 2550BC, since it would unfairly limit Cleo's growth. Unfortunately on the tech front, Osman also went for Mysticism and discovered it the same turn as me (darn him!) Unable to get anything for the tech, I began researching Polytheism @min rate since I had a very good chance to get it first.
My first settler was produced in 2430BC and went to secure the yellow dot location, since it was the most likely to be taken by the Ottomans. The cultural boundaries of Istanbul were right there, but my yellow dot carefully avoided overlapping culturally with the Ottoman capital (by accident, ha!) Sometimes in a race to get to an important location, one turn can make all the difference. It did here:
This picture has been lost.2190BC was thus the single most important turn in the game for me. I got the spot I wanted, crowding the Ottomans out of territory which should rightfully have been theirs, and drove their settler off to the north. I can't even begin to imagine how differently my game might have played out had I not gotten this location; if I had been even a little bit slower, I would have lost one of my carefully picked spots. Good thing I didn't settle red dot first! Medina began by building a temple and whipping it after it had built 10 shields and hit size 2; this was a patten that all of my cities would follow upon first being fouonded.
A short period of time later, Damascus was founded on red dot in 1830BC. It also started on a temple, but since it could pull 2 shields/turn, it completed it naturally instead of whipping it (a 10-shield whip would not be worth it). By that time, I already had a settler on its way to green dot up in the north and was working on a final settler to complete my 5CC. Here was the situation at the time:
Medina is about to whip its temple. The settler is, as mentioned, on its way to green dot located on the hill one tile west of the game forest on the north coast. And I have finally settled on the location for my fifth city, right on the tile where a barb camp is currently sitting to the southwest of Mecca in some jungle. It was a lousy, lousy location now - but it was on freshwater, and unlike the desert everywhere else it would be productive once the jungle was chopped down. There was a good chance that there were some bonus grasslands under there too, plus the possibility of coal and rubber in the future. I didn't really like the location, but the rest of the map was even worse or so far away from Mecca as to be hopelessly corrupt under despotism. So the jungle location it was.
After whipping its temple, Medina next immediately started on the Colossus. I was all but assured to get that wonder, and landing it so early would provide a huge cultural boost for Medina. The extra income was also not insignificant when working with only three cities! A couple turns later in 1725BC I bought Alphabet from the Ottomans @3rd civ price and sold it to Egypt (who lacked contacts) at 2nd civ price for Iron Working. This revealed that my green dot city also would have iron, a happy conincidence when I founded Baghdad there on the next turn in 1700BC. It wasn't much longer before I founded my fifth and final city of Cairo in the southeast jungles (with a warrior escort to clear the barbs; gotta love that Monarch combat bonus versus the barbs). Now that I had all my cities founded, the plan for Mecca was clear: sneak in a quick temple, then pump nothing but workers non-stop for a very long time. The workers would quickly get my cities up to speed on tile improvements, then I would merge them into the cities to instantly get them from size 7-8 to size 12. This way, I could ignore granaries early on and focus solely on building culture. It was a solid idea, and since the RBCiv community didn't seem to have an objection to using population transfer, I resolved to use it to full effect in this game. Here was my situation with all five cities locked for all time in 1550BC:
Rather amuzingly, I found myself #1 in land area on F11 at this point. Two turns later, I suddenly found that I had contact with Rome. I had actually never run into any Roman units up to this point, since my scout had been killed fairly early by barbarians, and I was surprised to find another civ on my continent. I exchanged contacts and managed to get Writing and some gold out of it, which I used to found embassies with everyone I knew. Brokering here was just too easy compared to managing the transactions on Deity. I soon traded for a ROP with all civs on my island as well; I could get them for free with most civs, but I was willing to pay Rome a little bit for one to deter his wandering warrior from walking into an undefended Baghdad, which was furiously prebuilding for a library at the time. It would be a while before I could get some vet spears, being produced in Damascus, up there and provide some credible defense.
I whipped Cairo's temple in 1300BC, and from that point on all of my cities had at least some culture. At this point Cairo and Baghdad, my last two cities to be founded, were lagging far behind the other cities and would need the most attention to catch up. I discovered Polytheism second in 1175BC after the Ottomans (dang them again!), but could still trade it for another 100 or so gold. I then slammed research on Literature at max rate, needing to get libraries as soon as possible so I could take advantage both of their culture and to get their 1000-year doubling bonus into play early on. Map Making was discovered in 1000BC and traded around by the AI civs; I bought in at last-civ price and made some money back by sending my world map around.
So by 1000BC the world was pretty well set up for the struggle to come. I had gotten all of the city locations that I wanted and was in prime shape to start making a run at some wonders in the near future. The only problem was that the wonders would do me no good if they weren't in my "backwards" cities of Baghdad and Cairo, neither of which could pull more than 5 shields/turn at this point in time. This could get interesting!
