Quiz Time #2: The Eternal City
What is the biggest city size you can achieve at least for one turn on a theoretical setup with the following rules?
- Map is duel sized (24×16 tiles), e.g. Inland_Sea
- Resources on flood plains are not allowed.
- You can make any tile on the map be whatever you like just it have to be tiles occuring on usual civ maps.
- You can use the entire map = make it be in your cultural borders (just as if you planted it all)
- There is no turn limit: You can have your city build anything you like and you can research any technology you want.
- The number of GPs you can breed is limited to 705.
Think up a theoretical setup (=the land to plant and work) and name what is necessary to achieve maximum population in your city.
Post your solutions as comments. I´ll not approve them until I update this post with the solution two days after this post has been made.
*Update* *Update**Update*
Disregard “overflow growing”. Ideas like Shizanu´s “I do 700 merchants at pop 4 and then settle them all at the same time” don´t count.
I though about doing Overflow growing trick aswell (easier way is to draft at size 21), but, from what I know, and that includes intense reasearch to tweak a high score in OCC
you CANT reach higher pop due to that, even if you stack massive, massive, amount of food. You just can’t grow over the top of that, i.e. you can still have your granary full of 1000 Food, if you produce 101 food a turn, you will only reach size 51.
I suppose there is an excellent incentive to do it anyway, you have instananeous growth in-between each size, so it only takes 1 turn to grow between size 50 & 51. (It would have taken : food for growth/2 turn, idk about size 50, probably 40 turns), so in order to reach that size, Nationhood IS effective.
Anyway, Jobe, I’m guessing, we can use merchants for something else than merging, can’t we ? That leaves us with 704 of them, right ?
Yes
How can you have 700 merchants? I’m not sure I understand the quiz.
First to make sure we speak about the same thing: It´s “Great Merchants”, not merchant specialists we´re talking about.
It´s a theoretical question. Since there is no turn limit, you can play as long as you want. If you do that, you can theoretically breed an infinite number of GPs.
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Actually the 705 GPs are much more realistic than other parts of the solution
If you look at the solution to the first quiz, the one with 146 hammers, you´ll also see a constellation which never, ever happened in any civ game – even though it´s of course not as extreme as here. After all going barracks, then Pyramids first doesn´t exactly make much sense either
In the end this is about understanding civ mechanics and knowing the game. I could have created something “realistic”, but that wouldn´t change the knowledge you need to solve it in any way. It´s funnier this way and I don´t have to restrict or ban certain actions.
Map : Every Single tile is an Corn (with irriguation)
Buildings necessary : Parc, Globe, Baray, Supermarket
Tech : Bio, Civil, and the corp techs
Corpo : Spread Cereal mills (704 merchants left)
Size :
(ROUNDUP(Corpo Food + Citizen food + Buidling food + Settled GP food)/2)
Map height * map size * food from corp for ressource by tile + City vicinity tiles * food by tile + Initial planting tile food + Buidling food + GP settled * Food by GP
Duel size height * duel size width * 3/ressource on duel by corp + 20 tiles vicinity * irriguated corn + Initial corn + Supermarket + Baray + merchants * merchant food
ROUNDUP((24*16*3+20*7+3*1+1+1+704*1)/2)
ROUNDUP((1152+143+2+704)/2)
—> City size 1001
That one…I didn’t test in the WB
That´s correct Penny
– I´ll leave it unapproved for now.
I did world builder it all and then clicked start and forgot that I had deleted the settler – and I couldn´t do anything ^^. Will do it again for the solution
24×16 is a total of 384 tiles. 363 of them will not be in the city’s BFC.
Let’s see:
Capital’s National Wonders: Globe Theater (not technically necessary, but makes it faster). National Park. Presumably, it is possible to prevent these two wonders from spawning any artists or scientists. If not, well, there’s always 1000 Future Techs.
Civ: Khmer.
Leader: Peter.
All 363 tiles outside the city will be a combination of farmed & connected corn, rice, and wheat.
Sources of food:
Cereal Mills (Consumes 1 great Merchant): 384 resources*3 food per resource = 1152 food.
20 worked tiles: All Rivered Grass Corn (7 food per tile): 140 food.
City center: Grass Rice. 3 food.
704 Settled Great Merchants (704 food).
Baray: +1 food.
Supermarket: +1 food.
Granary, of course.
Health buildings as needed.
Grand total food: 2001 food. Size 1001, at least half the time in the steady-state endgame.
Civic Choices: Rep, ANY, Caste System, Mercantilism (after Cereal Mills is founded), Pacifism.
I assume the AI is the first to research Physics. The other great person techs are not needed.
If it is impossible to avoid the National Park and Globe Theater from spawning GPs of the wrong type, then instead teching 1000 future techs will suffice.
Few questions: What is my starting era? How exactly is defined “breeding” of GPs? I don’t want to ask directly what I have in mind, not to give any spoilers.
Starting era is ancient – in other words, there is nothing in civ, that you cannot fully do in this game. Whatever you have to do, it can take 1 billion turns if necessary.
“Breeding” is just my slang here for getting GPs. Just like when you´re Philophical and work 2 specialists, you need 6 turns to “breed” the first GP.
OK, it still doesn’t answer my question. “Breeding” means only getting GP as a result of reaching the necessary GP points for a GP to be born in city or getting it any way possible?
Overall, you cannot use more than the number of GPs mentioned in the initial post, no matter what way you get them, whether that be via breeding or getting them from a tech.
@Penny Actually I didn´t even consider drafting, but with that I am 100% sure you can go higher then the pop you can supply, since you can store an infinite amount of food in your granary. Presume you can support 50 pop: Just store as much food as it needs to grow to pop 53 +12 food and you will 1 pop grow all the time and have the spare food to compensate the last 3 turns.
If I disregard overflow abuse (drafting, slaving, stacking merchants – which way I can grow city to any size I want), it should be 1002:
Basically what Mike wrote only I build Hanging Gardens after I grow to 1001 and before I starve to 1000.
I don´t think that´s possible if you have Biology researched, but very clever!
Hanging Gardens are never obsolete. You can build it on medieval or earlier starts whenever you want. I’ve just tried it for sure and Biology did nothing, Gardens perfectly safe to build.
Then you clearly win Quiz #2
Well, it’s “possible” to keep the AI from building HG: sabotage every single aqueduct that they build.
Lucky one is Robinson Crusoe in this game
Except that then you get a GSci at Physics if you want the Supermarket.
Well, get all the merchants you need, settl em and when you research Physics, delete it so quick no one notices. Then deny any knowledge – after you´re leading an empire, you´re a politician…
go into world builder set pop to as high as it will go. solved.
I thought you wanted to post the solutions to challenge 2 and 3 before continuing with other stuff?
It´s a long and boring story… :/
Let´s see what the next days will bring…