Of course, I stacked up the deck here playing Shoshone, without a doubt. Nevertheless, any other civilization can do the same. It`s just a matter of restarting different starts and playing the game until the chance passes as you wish. I chose shoshone so I could play a single game and demonstrate how silly it can become. Here`s the thing. Civ5 is supposed to make these difficult trade-offs in the initial phase. You have to choose between different options: Do I want to build an attic for growth? A monument to make things happen? A sanctuary to claim an early pantheon? That`s how it`s supposed to work. But instead, with a little luck, everything that comes out of the window comes out of the window and the player can get the best of any world. Completely free. In fact, I was unlucky and had very few city-states that started near me, I could have drawn dozens or even hundreds of free gold here just because I had explored the map. As with other cultural buildings, it is worth it if you want to achieve a cultural victory, but also if you want to unlock social policy faster. If you use a great writer to write a political treatise instead of a great writer, the great writers will generate about 8 revolutions of your current cultural production.
If you are not interested in a cultural victory, you can measure the culture created by a Great Work until the end of the game compared to 8 times your current cultural edition to see which one brings you the most culture. Another impressive construction project of Qin Shi Huang was the preparation he made for his own death. He had a huge tomb built on Mount Li, near present-day Xi`an, and was buried there when he died. The tomb was filled with thousands and thousands of life-size (or larger) terracotta soldiers to keep the emperor in his afterlife. This terracotta army was rediscovered in the twentieth century. Each soldier was carved with a different face, and those who were armed had real weapons. In the screenshot above, I had also accumulated enough culture for the third social policy of the game: Anyway, let`s go back to the game example. The opening of the tradition adds +3 culture per turn in the capital, which allows the capital to reach the tiles faster, as well as accelerate the acquisition rate of the next font. (However, it will never „catch up”; the bonus culture of the traditional opener never exceeds the jump rate of politics if you didn`t want to open the tree.
Of course, since we wanted to open up the tradition anyway, it`s all sauce in this particular game.) With Moson Kahni adding culture four times faster than the previous rate, it wouldn`t be long before I unlocked the second social policy of the game. Ancient ruin #3 at your service. As the cultivation and population options were lacking, I decided to take gold this time („Trade with the lost tribe for gold”). This resulted in a stroke of luck of 65 gold coins, again for nothing but getting into the tile. But wait, there was also a city-state that was also visible in the West. It was Kabul, a cultural city-state that donated 30 more gold coins because it was the first to contact them. My capital was earning 3 gold per spin right now, and those two events that popped up back to back brought me a total of 95 gold or 32 rounds of income at this early stage of things. This was another example of random factors that served to speed up my launch far beyond what he could achieve on his own.
I remember one of the posters on Realms Beyond that said, „In Civ4, you build your civilization and make things possible. In Civ5, you react to things that are already happening on the map. Or, as T-Hawk once summed it up on its website, „Civ 5 is a game in which you enjoy the things that happen to you instead of intentionally letting things happen. It`s a useful way to think about some of the differences between the two games. From the Brave New World, culture works differently: beyond the monument, each cultural building offers a trivial +1 culture as well as places for great works. Don`t think of an amphitheater as a „+1 culture.” Think of it as „+3 culture and +2 tourism once it`s full”. In Civilization V, you have the choice between two socio-political trees at the beginning of the game, tradition and freedom. Tradition is supposed to be the „big” choice to better improve a smaller number of cities, while Liberty is supposed to be the „wide” choice to expand quickly into many cities. However, with the Gods & Kings expansion, in many games, I still feel like the tradition is always better, even if it`s built widely. This article is an in-depth discussion. The tradition is best suited to empires that remain about 4 cities in size, since they do not receive the largest cost reductions that a civilization with freedom receives, as well as the fact that 2 of the bonuses only apply to 4 cities.
You`ll see other reasons why you should consider building a smaller empire by reading the descriptions of each social policy below. The „free cultural building” in each of the four cities will be the first of the cultural chain that has not yet been built in the respective city – the chain is the monument, amphitheater, opera, museum and broadcast tower, in that order (the temple replaces the amphitheater in the base game). If the technology needed to unlock this building has not been unlocked, it will be displayed once the search is complete. Let`s stop to recap this beginning of the match. Moson Kahni reached size 5 (despite working with high-production tiles and finishing Pathfinder + Granary) because I extracted two populations of ancient ruins. I have already received three guidelines, although I have not invested in culture at all. In a „normal” game, it would take another three rounds for the first policy to land! I can`t think of a better example of a snowball in action. Similarly, I have my own pantheon, although I have not produced faith and have not built belief structures. It`s a great position, and I owe most of them to the stupid chance of finding a bunch of ancient ruins sitting around when I left. I took Landed Elite, which is the best option available if your civilization is in good condition fortunately. (If you need more luck, then the politics of the monarchy is the way to go.) One of the reasons legalism is such a strong policy is that it leads directly to The Landed Elite, arguably the best policy in the tree of tradition. In a game where building your capital is the clear strategy of the beginning of the game, Landed Elite offers free food and a flat growth bonus every turn.
Thanks to the addition of fertility rites, I would actually get +20% excess food at Moson Kahni. And because I was about to finish an attic in the same round (for another +2 food bonus), the population increase would only be much stronger. Why could I afford to finish an attic so early? Well, what else would there be to build? I receive a monument without tradition. I can land an early pantheon without having to build a sanctuary. Cities defend themselves in Civ5 (see the beard archer who is repulsed), so I don`t need many units. I can steal a worker from a city-state more easily than I can build one myself.