Boston went first in terms of producing a Great Person, and misfired! I had 60% odds to get a Great Artist, but it popped out a Great Prophet instead, argh. (He was merged back into Boston to ruminate on his failure.) That left New York to produce a Great Artist, this time at slightly over 60% odds. Please don't let me miss out on BOTH chances!
New York swings... score!
Say hello to Raphael, Great Artist #6 and the final piece of the puzzle. I've done the math, and I needed one final Great Artist to win on the next turn. Otherwise, I would have had to wait until a SHOCKINGLY late 1808AD. Much more stylish to win on the dot, in 1800, with the help of a final Great Artist. Let me present to you the final pictures of my Big Three cities after they each received a pair of Great Works. First up, Washington:
Washington looks pretty much the same as it did when I last showed it, including working that stupid plains watermill tile! Notice how I've run the food in the box down to almost nil, trying to maximize culture in pursuit of the early finish. I needed that last Great Artist to boost Washington over the top. With only five Great Artists, this city would have been stuck at just under 71,000 culture, needing five more turns to go over the top.
Next up, New York:
Two Great Works have pushed up the culture from 62k to 74k, and New York produces just enough culture per turn to take the city over the top. Even though this was my "weakest" city, it still topped out at 781/turn. (I was actually over 800/turn here while running a food deficit to pop out that last Great Artist.) I lavished a lot of TLC on this city, but I think it paid off!
And finally Boston, the late-charging cultural monster:
Boston is still more than a thousand culture shy of 75k, but by dint of superhuman effort (and a truly massive food deficit) it will jump over the threshhold next turn with culture to spare. Just look at that cultural output, over 1250 per turn! Clearly not sustainable, but it was fun just to see the number. Boston actually maxed out at 1023/turn when running a sustainable amount of food, which is still pretty crazy (especially with 0% on the cultural slider). This was probably my favorite city of the three to work with; that run of medieval wonders was very fun.
So I saved the game, ticked over the date, and won a Cultural Victory in 1800AD:
Now maybe those poor saps in Boston can stop starving themselves to death producing culture, eh? As the game Sponsor I'm ineligible for scoring, but it will be interesting to see how this compares to other games. You guys are going to have to do some work to surpass this date! This is actually the fastest Cultural victory ever submitted in an RBCiv Epic/Adventure, although I had the fastest Diplo victory ever submitted in Epic Eight, only to be beaten by an even FASTER game from Blake. (Then all those dates were obliterated in Ruff's Warlords Three game, heh.) So I will not be surprised at all if someone can pull this off with a better date. T-Hawk posted that he finished this game; I'll enjoy comparing notes against his inevitable 1750AD finish.
Needless to say, in my game the whole "it takes forever to win a Cultural victory on Epic speed = too boring!" thing was not an issue.
Here are some random stats I'll throw out:
* I popped nine Great Artists throughout this game. One came from the tree (Music tech), five were from my Artist factory at Seville, and the other three were random pops from the Big Three cities with their mixture of Great Person points. I used the first three Great Artists as super-specialists (the first two in New York, the last in Boston) and saved the final six, all of which were used on the 1798AD turn. Two Great Works in each of the Big Three cities.
* In terms of wonders, I largely ignored the early Ancient ones, but after missing out on the Great Library, I proceeded to clean up on EVERY medieval and renassiance wonder, most of which had very high cultural outputs. Washington ended up building Stonehenge, Oracle, Angkor Wat, Notre Dame, Spiral Minaret, Eiffel Tower, and Hollywood. Boston built Chichen Itza, Hanging Gardens, Sistine, Versailles, Hagia Sophia, Taj Mahal, Broadway, and Rock N Roll.
* I made this chart tracking the culture of my Big Three at the scoring benchmarks:
I mostly wanted to highlight here the importance of tracking base culture, as opposed to the total culture per turn. For example, from 260AD to 1502AD the base culture of New York only increases from 28/turn to 57/turn, while the overall culture balloons from 28/turn to 228/turn due to all the modifiers! The base culture was the number I focused the most on throughout this game, putting the cathedrals in New York first to have it keep pace with the other cities in overall culture. While it was doing that, the other two cities built the medieval wonders, thus falling behind temporarily and catching up with their later stronger culture overall (especially Boston). I'm sure it could have been done better, but this strategy seemed pretty effective.
* Here are some shots from the replay. Starting positions:
With a start that crowded, there's no way everyone will be able to live in peace together. By 500BC, all the land around the player's start has been taken:
Atlanta is the city out there by itself. This felt like a very easy game for me, but I can see it being difficult for many players if a few things shake out differently. A hostile Alex, Saladin, and/or Peter would certainly make things a lot tougher. And the player is definitely crowded in this game; I solved that by attacking the weak Spaniards - it may not be nearly so easy in some other games. We will see what happens!
By 1000AD, the Spanish and Germans have been pushed back to "loser's corner" to the north of my civ:
1700AD sees the destruction of the Germans and Egyptians, and the filling in of the remaining open territory:
And the final map:
I think one of the keys to this game diplomatically was preventing the aggressive civs from getting too far out of control. Alex was my friend, and after destroying the Germans early on, he was contained in terms of the damage he could cause. He was "Friendly" with me and Saladin, so Toku was the only place a war could have taken place. Montezuma's expansion was crippled by building the Pyramids so early (925BC!) which never had him as more than a second-rate power. Monty had to attack me to get anywhere, and he never did (my power rating was his equal or higher at all times). Of course, he still screwed things up by killing off Fred...
Temujin is the only one who started to get out of control in my game. He and Peter wiped out Hatty, and you saw from those pictures how strong he had gotten at the end. Caesar was absolutely steamrolled. Huayna Capac would definitely have been next, but the game ended before any more action could take place. (The quick victory helped significantly here.) The fact that I basically got a total free pass on the military side of this game was absolutely huge. Those who did not will definitely struggle a lot more, both in terms of finishing date and in the scoring.
Here's the final Top Five cities:
All mine, including Seville and Philadelphia! If I had continued spreading religions around and building cathedrals, I probably could have gotten Seville (my Great Artist factory) over 75k before 1900AD. It was hitting 200 culture/turn without any multipliers - good stuff.
Now for the actual scoring:
Victory: 25 points
EACH rival civilization still “alive” at the time of your victory: 4 x 9 = 36 points
Hagia Sophia: 3 points
Chichen Itza: 2 points
Versailles: 2 points
Eiffel Tower: 1 point
Hollywood: 1 point
Wonder Subtotal: 9 points
EACH library built by 260AD: 5 points
EACH temple (any type) built by 260AD: 7 points
EACH university built by 1500AD: 9 points
EACH cathedral (any type) built by 1500AD: 2 x 5 = 10 points
Total: 101 points
With possibly more after fastest finishes are calculated. I won't try to guess a winning score, so I'll simply thanks all participants for their interest. If you enjoyed this game as much as I did, you definitely had a good time.