Time to set up for the stretch run towards 1500 AD population. Assign all the overlapped tiles to cities in priority order of their max population potential. Activate all the automated workers -- over a hundred of them -- to convert mines to irrigation everywhere. In 1400 AD, we pass 50,000 overall culture and are racking up about 750 per turn, which is constantly increasing due to 1000-year doubling and bits of new construction.

In 1450 AD, I join workers to each city so that one more Longevity-enhanced growth before 1500 will maximize it. (It wasn't that tedious; just join workers until the city's food surplus is either 4 or 5. A surplus of 4 food is always sufficient to get one growth within ten turns.) We had 135 workers before beginning this, and afterwards we have 52.

Was it milking? Nah; it was just a shortcut. This entire population could have been reached anyway by irrigating everything earlier. To work out the math, Longevity came in 1380, 24 turns (actually 22.5 upkeeps) before 1500 AD. That's time enough for a city as much as 12 sizes below its potential to still reach its maximum. Such a city would have 24 surplus food, and so would grow in intervals of 2, 2, 2 (with 16 surplus food), 3 (with 12), 4, and 8 turns to its maximum size. Sanitation came in 1030 and Hospitals were built by 1100. My biggest cities were size 39 at the end, so would need to be 27 before Longevity, and with max food could have grown (most actually did) sizes 12-27 in the 41 turns between 1100 and 1380.

Also, this ensured that no city overgrew into an unsustainable size before 1500. (Besides, what else were the workers going to do? I needed maybe 24 for pollution duty; the other 100 were surplus anyway.)

Tlacopan, building Cure for Cancer in this picture, was the Forbidden Palace.

I also shut off the research until we've rushed all remaining cultural buildings everywhere and a bunch of Mass Transits. (Global warming is bad.)

In 1485 AD, as we finish the Cure for Cancer, some complete and utter moron researches Chivalry. I trade America some lux for it, just to give them less reason to attack me.

1500 AD Population: 137,145,008. (What's with the 008? Did some variable overflow?)

Total culture: 65,414, and after hitting end turn, 66,235. At 800/turn and rising, we'll win around 1700.

Around 1570, the AIs do make the Modern Age.

1600 AD: 82,387 culture.

1640 AD: 89,441 culture, and we'll win in exactly 1700. But...

I take screenshots of the culture histograms from 1600 and 1640 and load them into a paint program, to determine the exact width of the culture bars at the bottom. Working out the math reveals that Egypt has about 48475 culture to my 89k, and we're not gaining on them anymore - we're producing at just about exactly double their rate. Sigh... we'll have to go to war to get this win. I am absolutely not in the mood to go crawling through with armors (they'll have Mech Inf soon if not already.) The problem with nukes is that, if we collapse into anarchy, we'll have to eliminate Egypt to get the cultural win.

I actually work out the math of the cultural rates on a spreadsheet. If I killed 12 Egyptian cities in 1680 (could build/buy a dozen ICBMs by then), that were each producing 20 culture/turn, I'd get the cultural win, at 108991 to 54410, in...

the year 1755.

No way would the Democracy survive that long in a nuclear war.

Sigh. The best laid plans...

Too late I realized the fundamental flaw in the original plan. Playing for maximum population and maximum culture aren't congruent paths. The latter requires a denser build, which I did for most of the expansion period, but then later on towards the fringes founded most of the cities with no overlap to facilitate higher population. Plus, I probably should have expanded to the islands in the north. Less than ten more cities worth of culture, or a bit more patience in the war with Egypt, and I would've had the cultural win on schedule.

Also, I'm really wondering if the Democracy revolt was the right move. The worker speed bonus wasn't really necessary with the zillions of workers running around, and losing the culture production (not just those 7 turns; every building from then on came 7 turns later and doubled 14 turns later) did in fact hurt in the end. Oh well.

To recap:
10 AD Population: 2,979,000
1500 AD Population: 137,145,008
Modern Age: 1320 AD
Spaceship Victory: 1675 AD

I love discussing Civ 3, especially with fellow Realms Beyond Epic players. Send comments to erik - at - dos486.com .

- T-hawk, 7/2/2002

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