T176 - It's All Over!
Final game state for the Kerbal Space Program. This post will cover the cities, aka, the many vehicle assembly buildings.
The top five cities for reference, you always want to do that when you have multiple on the list.
Starting with Jebediah, the capital and culture city #1, this may seem like a sad city for the best in the world but there it is. I had just begun the process of converting mines into windmills to allow the city to grow onto its last four tiles. It had always been more of a production powerhouse than commerce, hence the lack of an academy or financial infrastructure. For the final culture run Jebediah would be working the three towns currently assigned to Bob along with its own commerce tiles, plus windmills. At some point I would add a grocer to solve future health issues and let the city grow to its maximum size, with excess population and the plains workshop tiles converting to artist specialists. Given the extra commerce from being the capital this city probably would only get culture bombed once to get it over 50k and should be able to produce 1000 culture per turn by the time all five cathedrals are online (with culture slider).
A zoomed in look at the Pyramids, Sistine Chapel, University of Sankore, and Spiral Minaret. I'm not sure why the builders put the SM's tower right in front of the palace, blocking the view. They probably killed an architect over that one.
On to Bill, culture city #2 and surely the most inventively religious city in the world as a double holy city. I only shrined the Jewish religion as there wouldn't be much profit this late in the game on obtaining and spending a great prophet on building the Muslim shrine. At 94 gpt, the shrine was certainly the defining feature of this city, although the Apostolic Palace would be close second once you consider how many hammers that wonder provided to the empire. I have 25 cities, 24 of which have the Jewish religion, 23 of which have Jewish temples and monasteries. Each of those buildings provides 2 hammers (AP) + 2 gold (SM) + 2 science (UoS) for a tidy distributed economic input each turn. I'm not sure how I managed to sweep the monk wonders in this game, but it was definitely working in my favor as I moved forward with trying to win by culture. Combined with representation from the Pyramids (and Bill's sick shrine income), this was the basis of my economy. At some point if there was time I would add Wall Street to Bill's shrine income for maximum effect, but that would have to come after building the remaining cathedrals and pumping non-stop military. I guess Wall Street, then, would come when my economy crashed under the weight of all the unit costs in an effort to keep the culture slider higher for longer. In any case, Bill is a great second city and its location was a huge advantage against Adrien early in the game as it sealed our border. Between my playing Hatty (SPI/CRE) and having Bill as a holy city on the border, Adrien didn't try to cram any cities in against me on this border and I think we both gained from the peaceful border over time. This will contrast with Donovan in the west....
A close up view of Bill, with the AP and Jewish shrine. Oh, not pictured is another major piece, the Great Wall, which saved untold numbers of hammers in the early game on unit defense. I haven't read 2metraninja's thread yet but I know he had barb trouble in the early game. If the Great Wall being on his southern border contributed at all to that, well, that's a net win for me. I have a feeling DZ's slower than expected growth into all his land was due in part to barbarian issues, and me not dealing with any of them probably didn't help him much. Yay!
Next up is poor Bob, city #3. This city was the ultimate helper city, giving all to the empire and never getting the infrastructure it needed for itself. For the longest time its inventory consisted of granary, barracks, and forge, building constant streams of struts (units in KSP parlance) for defense wherever needed. Bob was due to shrink when Jebediah would eventually take those three towns back, but we never got to that point. Oh, and while shrinking? That's right, Bob was going to starve for the empire producing artists. Thanks Bob!
Valentina was always a production poor city, but did a solid job producing great people. Earlier in the game Valentina produced the great prophet that was used to build the Jewish shrine in Bill. Here she is three turns away from allowing my second GA (as long as I missed the 22% chance on the great merchant). In the event that Valentina got the low odds artist, that would be saved and I'd take a shot at the golden age from another one of the mixed pool cities coming due soon, like Jebediah.
Wernher was another consummate helper city that I never allowed to grow to full potential. With reasonably good production in the early game, Wernher built a lot of struts, particularly of the horse archer and crossbow varieties.
Gene, on the other hand, was the military production powerhouse. In the early game Gene was an economy city but by the midgame when caste workshops became strong the villages and hamlets had to go. Part of the problem was geography, as I had to create long irrigation chains to grow the western half of the empire. There are no water sources anywhere from that lake SW of Gene all the way up to the old Aztec capital region, so I made a long farm chain that at one point went through Gene. That was helpful for getting Gene up to size, but once the Heroic Epic finished the farms were workshopped over in favor of maximum struts production. During the Aztec war Gene produced a lot of HAs, crossbows, and catapults. Since then, it's been on knight duty almost exclusively, other than stopping for necessary bits of infrastructure, including the cathedral to push against Donovan's annoying border plant city. More on that in a bit.
Dinkelstein was all you could ask of a Moai city with 15 water tiles, including two seafood. The land tiles included gems and copper, not bad. This city would have been my first alternate culture city, obviously capable of producing whatever it needed but seriously vulnerable to being razed by any of a number of seafaring players interested in not letting me win.
Mortimer was another helper city. It grew two of Jebediah's cottages for a long time and producted a lot of struts (catapult variety). It doesn't look as nice now as it recently gave up its food to a new filler city, but Mortimer was an important border city and launching point for the Aztec campaign.
Linus was a nice island grab on the border with Adrien. As shown here it's an even better city, as it recently grabbed Adrien's wheat tile to increase its food output. At some point I probably would have increased the production here by workshopping the remaining three land tiles, given the new food surplus, the better to build struts with. There's also room to cram a city 1W of the hill mine, but Adrien isn't an AI and as good as our relations were, he probably wouldn't have liked that too much. There was another late game filler I could have settled north of Bill that would have been profitable (I mean, with the monk economy everything is profitable), but I refrained from that too, in the name of good relations. If this game had gone on another 20+ turns, though, I'd have been curious to see how peaceful this border would remain as all of Adrien's western cities started losing lots of land. He may have taken exception to that.
Speaking of taking exception, here's Walt. I settled it in a compromise location; I wanted to settle it 1N on the hill in a more defensible location, but Donovan crammed in a really bad and unnecessary city 3N1W of where I ended up putting Walt. At the time I was looking to settle Walt Donovan still had a ton of land available to setting from his conquest of Dark Savant, so surely there were more profitable sites available elsewhere. As it happened, though, DZ crammed his city on the border, I responded by planting Walt as close to the border as I could, and DZ and I entered a cultural war for supremacy that he was doomed to lose from the start, as his one city competed with both Walt and Gene for this area. It took a lot longer to overwhelm the border with culture than I expected, despite me running artist specialists here and in Gene, so I have to assume DZ spent a lot of hammers on culture buildings that probably could have been better spent on almost anything else if he had only settled the border more equitably with me. In the end it didn't really matter as I won the tiles in conflict and we never got into a hot war. I have to wonder, though, how DZ's game might have been different if he hadn't had to invest so much military in guarding a dangerous close border with me when it wasn't necessary. Given his huge size he should have had the output to conquer Joey at some point but he never got around to it I guess. Also, while on DZ, I know he never built the Buddhist shrine, which is a missed opportunity, but to my knowledge he never had a golden age. I'm not sure what went wrong there, but that seems like a huge oversight in his planning. I guess I'll find out when I read his thread.
Gus was a solid island city. Like Linus (settled on silks), Gus was a resource grab (settled on sugar) on the border with DZ. Gus was a slow grower despite its dual seafood because it stalled growth for a long time to produce the great person that spawned the first and only golden age. Gus built a fair amount of struts for the Aztec war, as well.
Dawton was an unfortunate city that had to settle on dry wheat to grab an otherwise unreachable fish. Thanks map team! :P Dawton recently produced a great merchant, which when paired with the (hopefully) non-merchant coming soon from Valentina would create the second Kerbal golden age. Other than that, this is a fairly unremarkable city.
Eumon, on the other hand, is a great production city. As currently configured it is still set for growth and given the attempted culture victory this city would be running a lot of artist specialists in the future. In the meantime, though, Eumon was a solid unit producer and held the border with Adrien well in this area. It was also, along with Mortimer, one of the launch points of the Aztec invasion.
Mun is the former Aztec city of Teotihuacan, 2MN's southernmost city. As currently configured it doesn't look like a good choice for the National Epic, but it can borrow two food tiles (cows and corn) from neighboring cities to allow massive GPP generation. At the moment it is waiting for great people to come out in Jebediah and I think one other city before I shift it to heavy GPP duty. The thought is that I want those to come out before Mun kicks into gear, because otherwise the others may not come out at all given the rate possible here.
Jool is the former Aztec city of Tlaxcala. 2MN unhelpfully chopped the forest from under the deer during his epic defense, but he can't be blamed for that at all. As configured the city is growing rapidly and would be set up to run many artists for GPP generation. Also, crushing the stupid city Donovan crammed 3W1N of Jool would be an added bonus. Why does he do that??? Especially against the player already holding the Sistine Chapel....
Anyway, like almost all of the former Aztec cities, Jool was slow to integrate since only ONE of the eight cities I captured retained their granaries. As I need caste/rep at the time, whipping in new granaries wasn't a viable option so it took forever for these cities to build the granaries and begin growing at reasonable rates. Obviously 2MN didn't leave any forests at all to accelerate granary rebuilds, so it was a slow process. Helpfully, Jool is a Buddhist city, as that is now being spread as quickly as possible.
Minmus was originally the Aztec city Malinalco. At the time of the conquest it was crushed by DZ's culture from the city 4W1N, but over time thanks to Sistine artists that was sorted out. Minmus became the Christian holy city, contributing another religion for the future culture win attempt. Other than that, just another growing, food configured city ready to run artists for GPPs. At some point I would probably overwhelm the culture of DZ's city and steal his banana tile, which would be nice.
Additionally, as shown here it is building the Forbidden Palace to get costs more under control in the former Aztec north.
Kerbin, formerly 2MN's capital Tenochtitlan, and the planned culture city #3. This one was a tough call but it has more developed cottages than any other city in the empire, excluding Jebediah and Bill, so on that basis it seemed reasonable to try here for CV#3. With that said, there's certainly risk in that it's the closest of the three cities to likely enemy territory, as Mack would have only to sweep through Mr. Cairo and the end of Adrien's empire to get here. But when crammed with a few hundred units, maybe it would have held.
In addition to the complement of five cathedrals, Kerbin was going to receive the Hermitage as well as it would need the most work in culture generation, since Jebediah and Bill have head starts.
Eve started as 2MN's Tlatelolco, a crammed capital helper city. Now it's a crammed Kerbal helper city, responsible for building the required monk infrastructure and then building struts until its death. Other than being my only land border with Mr. Cairo, there's nothing remarkable here.
Duna was the Aztec city Xochicalco, grabbed during the mop up phase after the fate of the Aztecs was sealed at Tenochtitlan. At the moment it is a bit lacking, as Donovan's capture of the former Aztec city to the west retained the seafood (for now...), but it helpfully added Confucianism to the empire, which it is now spreading around.
Moho is a little space filler at the end of the world, formerly Tamuin in happier Aztec days. As it is in the extreme north and coastal, this city is imminently indefensible from naval invasion, if Mack chose to do so, and its investment has been lacking as a result. For a while it ran rep scientists to help research, so thanks for that. This city is too small to generate a great artist so there's no concern about pool pollution here.
Dres is the former barbarian/Aztec city of Sangian, and when grown this one will be a solid producer of struts and religious commodities. It was also the last Aztec city I captured. As I had no naval presence and, at the time, no production capacity on the northern coast it was left to DZ to finish off 2MN by capturing the island city to the west. As a result, DZ has completed the conquest of more civs in this game than Mackoti has, and that includes not taking the chance to finish off Elkad!
Bobak is a great little filler city that I should have settled sooner, but for the longest time neither Jebediah nor Bill could afford to share food with a kid brother filler helper city, so it went unsettled. But now, it does the best filler cities can do, sporting a temple, monastery, and religious commodity construction to go along with the occasional struts.
Kirrim is a good filler city that became possible to settle once 2MN was eliminated, but given worker constraints it went unsettled a while as I hacked through tons of jungle elsewhere. Once I got my booster (worker) supply in hand, though, Kirrim was created to occupy some nice, green land. Focus here is straightening out the border with DZ and being available for religious commodity and struts creation.
Felipe is probably the most filler city that ever fillered. It added only three new workable tiles to the empire, but it comes with a free specialist (Mercantilism!), low maintenance (borders the capital), and will soon have a temple and monastery. Obviously that justifies a 100 hammer investment.
Last and currently least is Eeloo, the last filler site in the waning jungle band that previously separated Aztec from KSP. Shown here it has taken Mortimer's deer to bootstrap. Originally I had planned to leave the jungles and forests for forest preserves in an eventual national park city, but no way, the tech is just too far out to justify it. So the plan was to chop the jungles and lumbermill the forests, and cram in the typical religious builds for maximum profit.
This wraps up the tour of KSP cities. To be continued.
