1802AD     Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall - Who is the Most Cultured City of All?


I actually managed to get from 1786AD to 1802AD without any more wars; maybe the other civs had actually learned something from my barbaric treatment of Rome. Not likely though; they were probably too preoccupied with poaching the former Roman land with their settlers, which immediately began flooding through my land. I let them go; they weren't important enough to bother forming a blockade at this point. When I reached 1802AD I was still some distance away from a space race, but things didn't take too much longer after that. You didn't actually think the AI could beat me in a space race, did you? Here were the highlights of the post-1802AD (non-scoring) portion of the game:








And that was that. I didn't get into any more wars (thank goodness) and stayed caught up with France on all techs but The Laser, which I safely stole right before launching. I never planted a spy, since the risk for doing so and having another war on my hands was too much to bear. As I said, the victory was a foregone conclusion since the AI sucks at winning the space race. With that out of the way, time to look at the scoring.

Interestingly, the cities which had been at the top of the cultural list for most of the game ended up near the bottom at the end. The initial lead in culture that Mecca and Medina had started out with caused me to ignore putting any of the Middle Age wonders in those cities, and they ended up finishing at the bottom of the list. Damascus lead for most of the Industrial Age due to building Bach's, but the total lack of any later wonders caused it to slip down as well at the end of the game. And, amazingly enough, the cities that got all of the attention during the Middle Ages were the ones that ended up at the top of the list:

Of all cities, it was Cairo that was the cultural leader at the end of the game. Cairo! The city that was a worthless patch of jungle for almost the whole time ends up as the cultural capital of the world. Amazing, simply amazing. I was able to keep the cities relatively balanced in culture overall; the difference between the top one and the bottom one is only 289 points - not too bad when you consider all of the factors involved. Mecca and Medina are only separated by 33 points; I guess I should have put one of those small wonders in Medina rather than Mecca. Ah well, it wasn't that big of a difference. I wasn't about to deliberately sell off improvements to make the results look more perfect (as I have known more than one GOTM player to do).

This game played out very differently from any other game I had played, even other 5CC games. The complete and utter focus on the fifth city made it unique, and an interesting twist. The game concept was almost socialistic in nature; I had to do my best to level out the cities in culture as much as possible while also trying to nail all the wonders. That made it ironic that the only government I DIDN'T try out at some point in time in this game was communism! It was a novel idea and one well worth trying, even if I bogged down at the end with always-pissed AI civs to contend with.

I really want to see what approach others took to this game. My philosophy of ignoring all early wonders and focusing everything on cities #4 and #5 was certainly different from my normal play style, and I'm very curious indeed to see how different strategies worked. I realized when I was writing this report just how little space there was around the starting spot; if I had been even a tiny bit slower, the Ottomans would have grabbed the choice territory around my capital and I would have had to settle for some poor desert tiles. Anyone who could not get five strong spots for their cities simply couldn't have done as well as I did, since the scoring was based so much upon the condition that the last city was in. I'll best interested to see how others dotmapped their cities, and how those who didn't move their settler on the first turn arranged things. I squeezed the Ottomans out of almost all their land, so in other games they probably were a lot more fiesty than in mine. It should be a good report day!

Scoring

Culture of Fifth City: 6707 points
Victory: 500 points
Top Five Cities: 500 + 200 = 700 points
Honorable Play: Ha ha ha! Not in a single age, my friend.

Total: 7907 points

Spaceship Victory
1868AD
1716 points