i don't care about the score, at all. i just want a time victory for my QM list. i had a good one going over a couple of weeks, 43 hours played time, and lost it since i accidentally closed civ4 and not the program i thought i was closing. as you can guess, i'm really frustrated and quite fed up with the year 2050. it wasn't even a fun game, i was doing it only to get the victory condition met.

i have this feeling i need to kind of "get back on the horse i fell off of" deal quick, and at least try it again, before i give up on all of HoF which i don't want to do, i've been having a ton of fun here. but i can't think of a quick way to do a time victory. so if anybody knows any way to get a fast (as far as real-time spent) time victory i'm all ears. i don't care how cheesy or how low the score, the lower the better actually, and of course, on settler difficulty. thanks.

i don't care about the score, at all. i just want a time victory for my QM list. i had a good one going over a couple of weeks, 43 hours played time, and lost it since i accidentally closed civ4 and not the program i thought i was closing. as you can guess, i'm really frustrated and quite fed up with the year 2050. it wasn't even a fun game, i was doing it only to get the victory condition met.

i have this feeling i need to kind of "get back on the horse i fell off of" deal quick, and at least try it again, before i give up on all of HoF which i don't want to do, i've been having a ton of fun here. but i can't think of a quick way to do a time victory. so if anybody knows any way to get a fast (as far as real-time spent) time victory i'm all ears. i don't care how cheesy or how low the score, the lower the better actually, and of course, on settler difficulty. thanks.
Quick Speed, Settler difficulty, Dual map size, one opponent. Found only one city, let 20+ military units surround the AI city. Research toward future tech, and use a minimal amount of workers.

Quick Speed, Settler difficulty, Dual map size, one opponent. Found only one city, let 20+ military units surround the AI city. Research toward future tech, and use a minimal amount of workers.

hahaha now that sure would be different from my usual style! i shall give it a shot when my mood improves (the giggling at the very thought already helped with that). thanks!

i cannot stop laughing.

so i decide to give this a try, since i can't sleep anyway. i'm huayna and i picked washington as my victim. now keep in mind i've been playing the minor gauntlet, and on my best maps i never did get enough settlers from huts of course.

so i scout around with my settler in this game, to find washington, found him, picked a spot to settle, a hut will open with my first culture pop. and of course, a darn settler is what i get from the hut. in the ONLY game in my entire life i have EVER planned to settle only one city!

sid meier is out to get me, but i'm getting a kick out of it. i laughed so hard it scared my dogs.

Three words: Future Age start.

well i'll do future age if this doesn't work out. but i want the joy of out-teching the crap out of him since he'll have no tiles to work!

i realized i ought to be playing in warlords instead of vanilla. i think i'll be monty, since the whole style is going against my personality-type anyway. time to turn psycho, watch out!!!

maybe vs. mehmed. expansive and organized traits won't do him a heck of a lot of good if this plan comes together.

Three words: Future Age start.


That's so you can toss nukes around, bud. :p :lol:

I think you've become legendary for nuking, especially against Khans. :lol:

Time games are good for experimenting with long-term strats and fiddling with builds to figure out how to do things better. :mischief: One strat I love to do is perfect my OCC skills. It's fun. Just engage in a smackdown and play with transforming your economy from SE to CE to hybrid. It beats the boredom. :lol:

yeah i did learn a lot during the other time attempt that turned invalid. i'd never done total SE focus before. i mean i ended up irrigating my capital and running whichever civic it is that gives exp, as tho i needed 2 more exp when i had modern armor and the bad guys didn't even have musketmen. but i wanted specialists. and boy howdy were those GPs popping out. i was peter in warlords, that UB is seriously overpowered if you're just gonna play for years and years and want zillions of future techs. but, like, how often does that happen?

superslug, i majored in environmental engineering. i just have trouble using nukes. of course in the other game i did make a huge stockpile and then pass nonproliferation via UN. way back when they were like, research i dunno, theology seems like? but i didn't use 'em.

anyway, you guys are totally cheering me up and i am so glad i found this forum! shall we start a poll on whether playing as monty will help me relate to his issues and be more forgiving of his psychotic behavior in the future? nah, not a chance.

oh, just remembered before restarting for a better map to OCC it, to stack up on national wonders if i get the urge. phew, that would have been annoying. but i shall stick to miraculix's plan, since i bet i could trigger dom waaaaaay easy otherwise.

O M G! where do i report the AI for exploits? mehmed totally read my post and arranged this gem of a starting position:

http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p285/kmadcandy/nofair.jpg

On topic of time victories, what's best farming or cottaging?

Farming will give you a lot of pop.
Cottaging will give you a lot of techs.

I personally think a SE with farms is best.

On topic of time victories, what's best farming or cottaging?

Farming will give you a lot of pop.
Cottaging will give you a lot of techs.

I personally think a SE with farms is best.

I think I have to agree with DF, SE with farms do rock! Cottages are nice, you get tons of income (and techs), but I think SE gives you a lot more flexibility.

Not to mention, you can easily transform an SE into a hybrid if you plan carefully , building cottages, working them until they grow to be towns, then stop working them in favor of SE (probably isn't the best tactic or use, but it works for emergency cash :lol:), but if you play your cards right, you never need to use them.

O M G! where do i report the AI for exploits? mehmed totally read my post and arranged this gem of a starting position:

That's what you keep nukes in reserve for, ala Superslug. :p

farming gave me tons of techs in the one i exited out of, i had zillions of specialists. i was on settler mind you, but i was getting a future tech every turn even at 40% science. but at this point i just want a low score, and a map that'll work grrr.

farming gave me tons of techs in the one i exited out of, i had zillions of specialists. i was on settler mind you, but i was getting a future tech every turn even at 40% science. but at this point i just want a low score, and a map that'll work grrr.

Mapfinder (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/mod.php?show=mapfinder) is your friend! :)

Mapfinder (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/mod.php?show=mapfinder) is your friend! :)

i keep meaning to check that out. the problem with these maps was #1 finding a map where i had a coastal path to reach him (on duel pangaea you both start on the coast, and sometimes there were ice blocks). and then i decided to try out impis, but kept getting no iron and no bronze grrrrrrr. i think i have a good one going now, i hope so! it's fun torturing him so far anyway.

i keep meaning to check that out. the problem with these maps was #1 finding a map where i had a coastal path to reach him (on duel pangaea you both start on the coast, and sometimes there were ice blocks). and then i decided to try out impis, but kept getting no iron and no bronze grrrrrrr. i think i have a good one going now, i hope so! it's fun torturing him so far anyway.

Well, since you won't use the Superslug Tactic, try the Vikings. They do have those lovely little boats and those absolutely fearsome Berserkers. Get 3 boats crammed full of Berserkers and go raiding. ;)

i don't vant to keeell him. i vant to torture him. i am making him unable to work as many tiles as possible, while building up more impi horde to stand on the tiles and gloat!!! i am gonna kill him some more in a bit to get the higher level units i need for whichever wonder thingies. and GGs, i have no GGs yet and they're part of why i changed to warlords.

yes i'm odd.

i did use the vikings for an arch map, first try on both, for the QM table. the worked out great, but part of it was making them before they went obsolete and upgrading them to keep the amphibious. i'm kinda poor in this game. OCC and mehmed kinda doesn't have a trade route with me atm *giggle*. even a shrine wouldn't help!

i feel like i'm filling up this forum with chatter, i apologize to those who i drive nuts and hope you can just ignore it.

You're not filling it with chatter. It's a tactics discussion :P

I usually find using berserkers are a great way to keep someone crippled - raid his coastal cities improvements, maybe send 2 berserkers you can lose into deep territory to pillage. Yanking towns down hurts financially and research wise. Even better if you can cripple his resources. :D And you get money from the pillaging, even if it's just 2 gold.

All kinds of nasty things you can do with those. Impi are good for that tactic too, anything is. Pity scouts/explorers can't pillage. I'd love to see an explorer unit have that ability, it would make them useful in a tactical sense, rather than the strategic sense of scouting to find troops and improvement locations. They'd be cheaper than mounted units for that purpose, but eh.

now see there's a tactic i hadn't thought about in this context til i saw you post it here. i've had him trapped in there since like turn 15. he built one farm on corn and since then his poor widdle worker has been cooped up in town. now there's 4 archers, 2 warriors, 2 workers, and a work boat in there. none promoted, i guess he hasn't built a barracks.

if i get too poor (76g now and losing 3 a turn at 100%, never did change it off 100 but got a bunch from huts), i just may give him a break to build stuff so i can tear it down. pillaging wars are fun, i did those in the other game to cripple the bad guys. i didn't want their cities, would put me in danger of domination, but ripping up those towns is profitable for me and quite painful for them techwise, you are so right!

i just built globe theatre. believe it or not, i have never ever used the nationhood civic but i'm gonna try it out this time. nifty.

superslug, i majored in environmental engineering.
Interesting, I have Ph.D in Mongolian Radioactive Cremation Rituals.

Believe it or not, i have never ever used the nationhood civic but i'm gonna try it out this time. nifty.

It's pretty useless under most conditions. I admit I've never used it before. How did it come out for you?

Interesting, I have Ph.D in Mongolian Radioactive Cremation Rituals.

That made me laugh so hard I added it to my sig. Thanks! :goodjob:

Interesting, I have Ph.D in Mongolian Radioactive Cremation Rituals.

I laughed out loud at work at this thanks :lol:

Future age start on quick speed settler would be the quickest finish. Wouldn't matter which civ you played, you'd win for sure.

On topic of time victories, what's best farming or cottaging?

Farming will give you a lot of pop.
Cottaging will give you a lot of techs.

I personally think a SE with farms is best.

Best way to get score is to get future techs!

I havent tried SE but population doesn't make much of diff in the end anyway so thats outta equation. And bulbing futuretechs isnt very effective as GP cost goes through the roof. So it leaves cottages, alot of them, and no mines just windmills, watermills could be good if you run stateprop for the extra food. Count cottage +7 beakers (+1 if financial) versus +2 food farm for 6 eakers scientist. Beakers are multiplied by lib, university, observatory and laboratory. Its not much in a round but in long run you cant outrun that by specialists. Youll get anyway specialist with cottaging and few gpp farms. Specially as it takes alot of time to get +2food and not so much to get to democracy and free speech.
But to make sure check winner of G-minor huge chieftain time and chech what he did...

Best way to score future techs is to play russia and hit alot of laboratories (well warlords at least).

And best way to win time quickly is to play duel quick future with 1 opp and you only have aluminium! Any diff is easy just nail that bastard down to 1 city.

-Dracandross

Best way to get score is to get future techs!
Count cottage +7 beakers (+1 if financial) versus +2 food farm for 6 eakers scientist. Beakers are multiplied by lib, university, observatory and laboratory. Its not much in a round but in long run you cant outrun that by specialists.

-Dracandross

if i do run on specialists i usually take representation, i do not need to rush anything in the end game and due to the lack of towns the +1 hammers doesn't come into play either

so it should be 9 beakers per scientist....

yeah the original game was russia, labs everywhere, GPPs galore. it went great and i learned a lot but then i *@&$%ed it up by exiting civ without meaning to, not saving it first because of course i didn't know i was doing it :wallbash: .

this one is way more fun, and quite bizarre. i don't have any horses, but i do have elephants, so i made jumbos. and more jumbos. and more jumbos. they're really cute, i couldn't resist. and then i researched industrialization, which previously had only ever meant a happy face went away. well now it means i can't make any more jumbos! and i have no oil. no oil!!! i never realized how many things need oil! i knew tanks and some ships, but i didn't realize even gunships need oil. so i have jumbos out there running around with my artillery and mech infantry, they sure are cute. good thing it's on settler eh? cuz i'm still 3 techs away from future tech and mehmed's on longbows already so that's a close call.

the only hard part was getting mehmed to actually make enough units to get me enough exp to hit level 4 and then level 6. come ON dude, i finally got off of your forests long enough to let you make some combat-type stuff, do it already. took ages! i didn't want to waste the fascism general hitting level 6. i mean come on, i'm fighting longbowmen with jumbos and mech infantry, clearly i want as many military instructors as i can get in my one city to make my troops tough enough for that challenge! i did finally achieve level 6 with an elly i promptly named "Go Go Jumbo!" tonight, and made west point. i had to work hard to do that. i mean, i pillaged my own iron so that i could make catapults to soften up his longbows for jumbo to kill, rather than risk trying cannons for collatoral damage. they'd probably kill them, and they're not anywhere close to level 6 yet and he was.

and then i put my troops back on all mehmed's tiles so that he can't make anything, since nothing he could make would be useful to me atm.

i think he's a bit confused in this game. but it's awfully fun.

and now i sure do know why they say check for oil when you play future start games! not an issue here but sheesh. and it is of course one tile away from my legendary culture ring /sigh. so are the ponies /sigh. at least i have bronze, and the iron finally got into my ring last pop. mehmed has no iron, no bronze, no ponies, no elephants *giggle*. he does have oil, but he'll never see it.

ps don't tell superslug but neither of us can reach either of the 2 uranium sources.

yeah the original game was russia, labs everywhere, GPPs galore. it went great and i learned a lot but then i *@&$%ed it up by exiting civ without meaning to, not saving it first because of course i didn't know i was doing it .

Have you tried the autosave option in the HoF mod? It saves the game automatically every time you quit a game.

if i do run on specialists i usually take representation, i do not need to rush anything in the end game and due to the lack of towns the +1 hammers doesn't come into play either

so it should be 9 beakers per scientist....

Well superspecialists are 6 beakers w/o repre but just normals are +3GPP and +3 beakers w/o repre. It was calculation whater farm is better than cottage in the long run. So 1 farm can pull out +6 beakers compared to +7 beakers (+8 with financial) cottage.

If you play low diff its better to dump scientist in the startgame to superspecs. Capital can pull out 225% science that is ~30 beakers per specialist which means you need at least 40 rounds to get that useful, in addition to that 1 hammer they give (= ½ beaker). Even with CE its more useful to run representation because of gpp farms.

-Dracandross

Quick Speed, Settler difficulty, Dual map size, one opponent. Found only one city, let 20+ military units surround the AI city. Research toward future tech, and use a minimal amount of workers.

so i scout around with my settler in this game, to find washington, found him, picked a spot to settle, a hut will open with my first culture pop. and of course, a darn settler is what i get from the hut. in the ONLY game in my entire life i have EVER planned to settle only one city!

It looks like you forgot to check the OCC option KMad. If you check the OCC box you cannot pop a settler from a hut nor can you build one. I believe Miraculix is stating to play it as an OCC in his suggestion. Try that.

Well superspecialists are 6 beakers w/o repre but just normals are +3GPP and +3 beakers w/o repre. It was calculation whater farm is better than cottage in the long run. So 1 farm can pull out +6 beakers compared to +7 beakers (+8 with financial) cottage.

If you play low diff its better to dump scientist in the startgame to superspecs. Capital can pull out 225% science that is ~30 beakers per specialist which means you need at least 40 rounds to get that useful, in addition to that 1 hammer they give (= ½ beaker). Even with CE its more useful to run representation because of gpp farms.

-Dracandross

Don't forget the population part of the score formula (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3354736&postcount=82). Farms with specialists give you more pop than cottages, so the question is wether this additional pop will be a match for the additional techs from cottages. One interesting option would be to cottage everything at the start, and then start turning cottages into farms just in time to reach approximately max. pop on 2050.

edit: It looks like when you can get more than 2,8 pop/missed tech, farming is better.

It looks like when you can get more than 2,8 pop/missed tech, farming is better.[/B]

Hmm, seems like this has to be playtested. But that pop score can't be right as bigger maps give less for 1 pop than smallers as Qscore is counted from standardized score. Just without any proof I'd say that pop score will be enormously smaller than score from future techs in either economy mode.

That score/pop is from duel as we were speaking of fastest way to win time? If given indefinitely time farmcity can have compared to nonfarmcity +40 food if all tiles are farmamble. That means +20 pop per city. On duel you can have max ~150 squares before domination kicks in (? just quess) which means tops 7-8 cities. That give 150 pop or so more ie techs needed to outscore will be somewhat <50 techs. Which is most likely rounded due hills/food specials/other indifferent tiles to 25-35. Wonder if that is enough of a difference.

Now I want settler quick duel time gauntlet to avoid extensive timeusage compared to time/huge/chief.

-Dracandross

Is that a challenge? :p

Currently #1 and #2 in that table (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?entryID=5219&show=&addEntry=Add&addEntryChoice=4056)

i did it, i did it!! i won in, not surprisingly, 2050. mehmed was researching optics at the time. no idea why.

for the last, i dunno, zillion turns i had 3 ironclads parked on his crabs, which conveniently were located on the only tile he could have left the city from. ironclads because i had no oil (BIHNO). 3 galleons (BIHNO) full of marines parked there too. you know, just in case he happened to use his longbowmen and catapults (which he bravely would sometimes try, one at a time, on my biggest stack) on my troops which were covering every land tile in his cross. mech infantry, artillery, and jumbos (BIHNO) ... zero modern armor (BIHNO).

one thing did make me nervous, BIHNO i was not able to have a jet circling my city on intercept, you know, just in case. but it was never an issue.

hubby watched me play for quite a while last night and learned some things about OCC in the process. and as usual puzzled over my weird ways of playing. he asked why i had 4 missionaries sentried on hills on different parts of the pangaea. well duh ... they were to watch out for barbs, in case the game forgot i turned them off. i got them free, and couldn't delete them since they're, like, holy men. it's perfectly logical to have them serve as the sentries, since if they did unfortunately happen to lose their lives to nonexistent barbarians, i think they'd have considered it a worthy sacrifice for letting me know that said nonexistent barbarians had popped up. what else would you do with the free missionaries in a game like this? silly hubby.

i ranked as dan quayle *giggle*. thanks guys i got it done!!! and it was hilarious fun.

Don't forget the population part of the score formula (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3354736&postcount=82). Farms with specialists give you more pop than cottages, so the question is wether this additional pop will be a match for the additional techs from cottages. One interesting option would be to cottage everything at the start, and then start turning cottages into farms just in time to reach approximately max. pop on 2050.

edit: It looks like when you can get more than 2,8 pop/missed tech, farming is better.


Not sure what the numbers you were referring to but farms are not "better" than cottages as the points they generate are finite, whereas you can tech thru-out the game until the last and generate continuous points.

Now, there may be a point where changing the cottages to farms may be better, but I doubt it. Each (future) tech gives 7 points which translate into 37 or more more actual score, for the same map size and difficulty 1 pop gives 26 or so points. (The numbers are roughly based on my memory, probably not exact and likely differ per difficulty or map size.

At any rate in the Time research game I played it was clearly more benficial to continue teching at maximum speed until the end. Of course I was still maximizing my pop and other scores, but wasn't sacrificing tech speed to do it.

if you didn't follow the discussion about g-minor 12 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=198506) (chieftain/huge/marathon/time victory), you'd probably find it interesting.

the winner (by a mile) ended up going SE. to the extent that he ran bureaucracy but forgot to cottage his capitol *giggle*. he made 130ish cities, many with only 5-6 pop, but had 2 free specialists in each from merc and SoL. anyway, i liked reading all the theories about milking score in that thread and seeing how the actual games turned out so wanted to insert a pointer here in case anybody missed it.

Interesting thread. There are some inaccuracies. I don't see any point in playing a cottage tech game and choosing a non-finacial civ, so the baseline would be 8 g (not 7 or 8), also once you're building research with Suffrage thats an additional effective 0.5 g per town. At any rate that you need to grow the cottage is if no concern as you need to grow your population to support a specialist too.

But while I am not ruling out the SE (my post was specific above but I didn't intend it to be, or certainly to not exclude SE) sacrificing tech for that extra pop does not make sense score wise. But if you have a way to do that (like SE) without harming tech then the extra pop is a bonus.
Its still too gray in my mind, I'll have to do a side by side comparison. The gauntlet tend to be contrived situations (ie non-optimal) so using those games only account for the people that competed which is less than all the people that contribute to HOF.


I would still consider gold as the universal lubricant, and its use early, mid and late game still exceed the specialisation power.

Its still too gray in my mind, I'll have to do a side by side comparison. The gauntlet tend to be contrived situations (ie non-optimal) so using those games only account for the people that competed which is less than all the people that contribute to HOF.

glad you found the pointer interesting. and yes, the gauntlet was a specific set-up and drew a specific subgroup of civ players so it's not the be-all and end-all by any means.

if you do take the time to do a side-by-side comparison some day i bet i'm not the only person that would be interested in the results if you find time to share!

[...] he asked why I had 4 missionaries sentried on hills on different parts of the pangaea. well duh ... they were to watch out for barbs, in case the game forgot I turned them off. [...] Ofcourse, why else! :goodjob: :lol:

sweet!!!!!! with the HoF update i got credit for shaka, time victory, and quick speed with this game ... and with a stunning "date q-score" thingy on my QM table of 0.9. that is awesome, and will surely help me in my quest to be worse than superslug, Ph.D MRCR, by the time we're both QMs. thanks for helping me with this guys!

that is awesome, and will surely help me in my quest to be worse than superslug, Ph.D MRCR, by the time we're both QMs.
I have no idea when I'm going to be a QM. I'm still waiting on a "beatable" Major. :blush:

I have no idea when I'm going to be a QM. I'm still waiting on a "beatable" Major. :blush:

me too, i got the the minor done now woohoo! but major is gonna be terrible. and we get what, only 12 of those a year? do you have any connections with anybody in charge of those things so you can arrange one we have some shot at before civ5 comes out? maaaaaaaybe?

i can dream. meantime i'm filling up other boxes. and as far as that goes, you did a terrible terrible thing. i stole your 'future start, build eiffel, settler spam your way to domination' method to get emperor/dom/highlands/brennus out of the way all at the same time. but now there's a 35 on my tables waaaaah. must get more 0.9s somehow.

do you have any connections with anybody in charge of those things so you can arrange one we have some shot at before civ5 comes out? maaaaaaaybe?
I'm not quite sure if you're joking, or if you really don't know, so I'll assume the latter. superslug is the one in charge of the HOF, so you could say he has connections!

superslug is the one in charge of the HOF,
Oh crap, I forgot about that.

Okay, the next G-Major is going to be Duel/Future/Quick/Settler/Conquest with Khan as opponent....:mischief:

Okay maybe not.

Okay, the next G-Major is going to be Duel/Future/Quick/Settler/Conquest with Khan as opponent....:mischief:

Okay maybe not.

Don't tease us like that, bud! :lol:

Well... one can dream :p

I'm not quite sure if you're joking, or if you really don't know, so I'll assume the latter. superslug is the one in charge of the HOF, so you could say he has connections!

yeah, i was teasing, but i tend to the 'don't assume, explain' side myself posting in cases like that too, so thanks ;)

Oh crap, I forgot about that.

Okay, the next G-Major is going to be Duel/Future/Quick/Settler/Conquest with Khan as opponent....:mischief:

Okay maybe not.

he said maybe not. he didn't say definitely not! *giggle*.

the winner (by a mile) ended up going SE. to the extent that he ran bureaucracy but forgot to cottage his capitol *giggle*. he made 130ish cities, many with only 5-6 pop, but had 2 free specialists in each from merc and SoL. anyway, i liked reading all the theories about milking score in that thread and seeing how the actual games turned out so wanted to insert a pointer here in case anybody missed it.

Well that strategy doesnt so much tell is CE better than SE but just shows that extra 4 free specialist from Research lab(Russia) 2/SoL 1/Merc 1 is just equal to +4 pop per city. Just only thing you need is to get observatory+lab => few hammers for that. Youd be stupid for not going that way on low level anyway.

-Dracandross

I havehad multiple time wins, but the score is always way to low to make the HOF. you need 15,000+ for an augustus caesar victory, which is hard in time because of the negative score you get for time. Or, can a score <15000 work for QM?