I found people on the HOF getting space race victories at very early dates between 1400 AD and 1500 AD !!

How on earth they did that? I tried very hard to get earliest possible space victory and my best was 1920 AD , although I was researching at rocket speed and was ahead in science by one page of techs compared to my closest opponent.

I don't try space victory a lot but I tried few times before to get earliest space victory possible.

Do you have any hints, clues or guides on this?

Playing vanilla helps. conquer half the world in the BC's with quechas, be careful not to trip the dom treshold, get your economy going(work researouces, get enough GP's cottage up a whole lot). then just tech to the techs that improve your economy the most at any given stage and win fast...

Hammer economy seems to be thee most popular way at the moment.

I also think a low difficulty level actually leads to later victory dates, as at high levels you can use the AI to research stuff for you, and due to maintenance and AI bonusses this can help. Since there is a tradeoff (quicker AI research vs being boxed in and attacked sooner) there is an optimum, I guess around emperor?

Nope, easier levels are way easier, but the players often get way better at higher levels which is why it seems to go faster...

Hammer economy seems to be thee most popular way at the moment.

Could you please point me to a description of a hammer economy. I've tried searching the forum but of course "hammer" and "economy" turn up a lot, so it's hard to find anything on the matter.

I play BTS, and here is the strategy that I used:

1- Getting Great library and using great scientists to get Liberalism.
2- Conquering my 2 closest neighbors.
3- After having between 12 to 14 cities on large map I avoid going on any war after that.
4- I stop generating great scientists after Liberalism.
5- I setup 2 GPP Farms, switch to Pacifism and start generating Great Merchants only.
6- After getting my 1st merchant I use it to get 4000+ cash and from this point on I set science to 100% all the time.
7- I use the frequently generated merchants to recover cash and to keep 100% science.
8- I set up 4-5 production cities and switch the remaining cities to research.
9- I set and wait patently for finishing the required research for space ship parts.

Doing all the above successfully and I only managed to get the victory at 1920 AD on Marathon/ Monarch.

I noticed that the AI was slow in research this is the only explanation that I found for the slow research progress because there wasn't enough important tech trades.

Something has to be off in tech choice, city specialization, or micro. I'm one of the worst teching players that wins on immortal and even I can launch in the 1800's ;).

Conquering a ton of land early on with quechas or immortals then going cottage spam seems popular, with some GPP to make it worthwhile. IIRC iron and pauliskhan both go for mining inc too, and when you own a ton of resources it can get really strong (40 hammers!).

After that it's no secret. Put the science multipliers in and keep the slider high.

6- After getting my 1st merchant I use it to get 4000+ cash and from this point on I set science to 100% all the time.
7- I use the frequently generated merchants to recover cash and to keep 100% science.


How about frequent GS and Academies... If ai's are to slow sell them techs.

And don't listen to me about how to built spaceships.

Could you please point me to a description of a hammer economy. I've tried searching the forum but of course "hammer" and "economy" turn up a lot, so it's hard to find anything on the matter.

Im no expert on the matter but I believe it involves making your cities "hammerheavy", so focusing on production mostly, and then building wealth and/or research in those cities. Since building wealth and research doesnt go through the building modifiers, you dont have to build libraries etc.

For civics anything that improves your hammer output is good, as it will increase your research output. (caste system, state property etc)

Im sure people will correct/expand my 2 cents here.

Best I pulled off launching the thing was in early 1600's, with Willem of the Dutch on Noble.
I started on a small patch of land connected to a large landmass with just a small bottleneck. 1 City was enough to block the AI off, and i had room for 11 cities IIRC.

I had stone and build pyramids, had the max scientists in the foodrich cities, which was about half of them, and cottages in the others. I bulbed my way up the techtree quikly. I had a holy city with 2 gold and 2 floodplains, where i build wall street and eventually sid sushi , aluminium corp and creative constr. I spread these corps to the AI as well and was able to run at 100% science untill the end after that.

Something has to be off in tech choice, city specialization, or micro. I'm one of the worst teching players that wins on immortal and even I can launch in the 1800's ;).

Conquering a ton of land early on with quechas or immortals then going cottage spam seems popular, with some GPP to make it worthwhile. IIRC iron and pauliskhan both go for mining inc too, and when you own a ton of resources it can get really strong (40 hammers!).

After that it's no secret. Put the science multipliers in and keep the slider high.

So conquering more land is the way to do it?

Maybe my mistake is concentrating on great merchants to stay at 100% science, concentrating on scientists farms + representation could be better.

That's because they are using lower difficulty levels and popping 3-5 settlers and 3-5 techs in the same game from huts. The limiting factor in a space race is usually research not hammers, which can be converted in mass to work shops or founding a corporation or 2 once you verge the building of parts phase.

Conquering more land is always the way to go. 20 cities at 50% slider is significantly better than 8 cities at 80% slider.

I don't think there is a guide.

I think this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298570) is the last time your question was asked.

One person said 2000 beakers per turn is a good goal. I suggest you start with that. To get there maybe you'll need more land, or maybe you'll to do other things differently.

HOF games are very different from random games. HOF players reroll starts many times and choose AI leaders who are compatible with their goal.

I don't, but then again I'm not a very good HoF player ;)

That's pretty pedantic. But fine: I'm sorry I insulted HOF players.

Pedantic is my middle name ;)

EDIT: No, I lie. It's Dave.

I found people on the HOF getting space race victories at very early dates between 1400 AD and 1500 AD !!

How on earth they did that? I tried very hard to get earliest possible space victory and my best was 1920 AD , although I was researching at rocket speed and was ahead in science by one page of techs compared to my closest opponent.

I don't try space victory a lot but I tried few times before to get earliest space victory possible.

Do you have any hints, clues or guides on this?

Ask whoever posted this, they obviously know something we don't.

Ask whoever posted this, they obviously know something we don't.

That HOF was played at Settler level but 10 BC !!!!! :eek:

What the ... 10 BC !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That HOF was played at Settler level but 10 BC !!!!! :eek:

What the ... 10 BC !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's 1260AD, not 10BC. 10BC is just impossible, unless if you use WB.

Ontopic, conquer more land early, cottage spam and beeline to important techs, like Civil Service, Printing Press etc. Avoid things you dont need, like Communism, or Military Tradition, or Facism.

No, it really is 10bc. Check the log. It's mindblowing.

No, it really is 10bc. Check the log. It's mindblowing.

On a huge map, too!! Amazing! :eek:

It's 1260AD, not 10BC. 10BC is just impossible, unless if you use WB.

Ontopic, conquer more land early, cottage spam and beeline to important techs, like Civil Service, Printing Press etc. Avoid things you dont need, like Communism, or Military Tradition, or Facism.

yes that guy conqured land by popping settlers with settlers.... Saves pretty much tell story.

One thing which surprises is getting enough production...

yes that guy conqured land by popping settlers with settlers.... Saves pretty much tell story.

One thing which surprises is getting enough production...

Yeah. Off topic, hut is really the luck factor in low level games, and I remember in the early days of the GOTM 05, Yurian pulled off a 1900BC conquest victory (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3943537#post3943537) and it was inconceivable for me at the time. He popped 4 settlers in that game. After that, huts were rarely seen in GOTM.

Here's a good text about hammer economy from G-major 45: hammers... (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7779625&postcount=35)

It's cool to have a whole continent geared up for research...:)

Actually I registered on this forum to ask pretty much the same question, what is the earliest space race win :)

I fondly recall Civ II times when there was a long rivalry to get the earliest space race win. At first people thought that 1500AD was pretty amazing. Then Samson and Solo (iirc) showed up on Apolyton forums and started methodically to shave up turn after turn from their landing dates, literally changing the way the game was played. Later on people were doing 300AD landings - in a OCC :)

In Civ III earliest space race victory was kinda pointless due to mimimum time to research technologies cap, but I'm surprised that the theory of early AC landings is still undeveloped for Civ IV.

Games posted in HOF seem to use low difficulty settings and epic/marathon speed which, as I understand, change the number of turns substantially.

I am curious what would be the best date under normal speed, emperor or above.

If anyone knowlegeable could provide some useful links, it would be great. Thanks in advance :)

yes that guy conqured land by popping settlers with settlers.... Saves pretty much tell story.

One thing which surprises is getting enough production...

lol

and workers with workers and probably Fusion from Oracle:lol:

yes that guy conqured land by popping settlers with settlers.... Saves pretty much tell story.

One thing which surprises is getting enough production...

Even though it is impossible , you cannot accelerate research to thar extreme.
Even if I have all the map alone I still need time to develope my cities , building cottages, librares , ... etc.

IMO this is impossible to be erlier that 1000 AD without cheating even at settler level.

IMO this is impossible to be erlier that 1000 AD without cheating even at settler level.Given that it's been accepted into the HoF, Kamino's 10bc game has passed scrutiny by people who make it their business to prevent cheating.

So, regardless of your opinion, the evidence would suggest it to be quite possible (for a player of sufficient ability and patience).

Of course, the hand-picked settings make it far from a 'normal' game of civ. But you did ask how to get a super early space win... :p

Even though it is impossible , you cannot accelerate research to thar extreme.
Even if I have all the map alone I still need time to develope my cities , building cottages, librares , ... etc.

IMO this is impossible to be erlier that 1000 AD without cheating even at settler level.

Did you even look at the save or the log? I don't think you realize what a HoF game is like.

Given that it's been accepted into the HoF, Kamino's 10bc game has passed scrutiny by people who make it their business to prevent cheating.

So, regardless of your opinion, the evidence would suggest it to be quite possible (for a player of sufficient ability and patience).

Of course, the hand-picked settings make it far from a 'normal' game of civ. But you did ask how to get a super early space win... :p

why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not? ok he didn't cheat .. so what did he do? after all this is not magic.

Normal player can hardely get Libarisim before 300AD, now how about lunching the ship before that? I am a normal player and this is totaly impossible in normal game style.

Did you even look at the save or the log? I don't think you realize what a HoF game is like.

Did you look at the log? if so then please give me a samary of how do you think he did it.

why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not? ok he didn't cheat .. so what did he do? after all this is not magic.

Normal player can hardely get Libarisim before 300AD, now how about lunching the ship before that? I am a normal player and this is totaly impossible in normal game style.

why don't you just ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated? ;)

why don't you just ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated? ;)


What is this? is this a kind of puzzle?

Q: How he did it without cheating?
A: Ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated??
Q: How he did it without cheating?
A: Ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated??
Q: How he did it without cheating?
A: Ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated??
Q: How he did it without cheating?
A: Ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated??
..
..
.
.
.

:lol:

What is this? is this a kind of puzzle?

Q: How he did it without cheating?
A: Ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated??
Q: How he did it without cheating?
A: Ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated??
Q: How he did it without cheating?
A: Ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated??
Q: How he did it without cheating?
A: Ask how he did it instead of saying he cheated??
..
..
.
.
.

:lol:
You said: "why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?"

I'll answer this the same way you did ;)


Q: why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?
A:Because you said that what he did was impossible without cheating
Q:why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?
A:Because you said that what he did was impossible without cheating
Q:why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?
A:Because you said that what he did was impossible without cheating
Q:why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?
A:Because you said that what he did was impossible without cheating
..
..
.
.
.

I gave you the summary. :lol:

The strategy is different (and yet somehow the same) at every level (which is why I still enjoy playing HoF at all levels). If you share your typical playing level we can give better suggestions.

If you want suggested settings and tips to help get a good win then try these:
Map type: Pangaea/Terra (I prefer Terra)
Map size: Tiny (if you're going to learn from your failures then you may as well fail as quickly as possible)
Game speed: Marathon, not really optional if the goal is an early finish date sorry. These days I struggle to enjoy any other speed, you'll learn to love it.
Game difficulty: Pick one
Civ: Inca
Opponents: Ghandi, Asoka, Lincoln, Mansa

The start: It's marathon, take your settler for a walk. Spending 10 turns walking around, even on diety is no problem. If your settler pops a hut before the AI find it then you just came out way ahead. Look for a gold or a gems somewhere with land that could be cottaged at a later date. I hate to say it, but it's the only way to stop your units going on strike at higher difficulties, I've played a lot of games in a capital with wonderful long term potential but I just went bankrupt too quickly. Supporting those quechas and your early acquisitions is expensive (another reason to try and find a hut with your settler, cash is king).

Try and rush at least two of the first 3 leaders (Ghandi, Asoka, Lincoln) with quecha (depending on the start I either work a forested plains hill until I'm finished warring, or grow to pop 2 on a 3 food tile and then work two plains forests (or grassland forest hill), it ends up being about the same), Aim for 2 quecha per defending archer on flatland and 4 quecha per archer on a hill (if you want to risk it you can try it with 3 per archer but this usually ends in heartache). Block Mansa off.

Early techs: up to you, sometimes I skip bronzeworking in favour of the oracle, sometimes I go for bronzeworking asap so I can whip quechas for cash. Pottery is a must have. Don't get distracted by things like animal husbandry too soon though, I don't care how many cows you have :P, trade for it later.

Try and get a library built in a city with a corn or pigs and run 2 scientists asap, in ideal circumstances this GS will be used to build an academy in your capital (or future capital)

After that there are a million different ways to play.
Try and get a Great Engineer for mining inc.
Try and get Oxford in your capital asap.
Try and get Bureau asap.
Try and settle the mining inc resources in the new world (on terra map) before the AI get there, liberate the colony and just demand their resources (Dynamic plays with no vassals and keeps the cities without colony maintainaince instead, up to you, he's the master of the low/med difficulties though and I always listen when he speaks).
It's ok to try and get the Oracle and Mids, don't cry if you fail though, the game goes on. I don't remember the last time I got the GLib, but I do vaguely remember enjoying it.
Try and get MoM and Taj, golden ages are great if you're not an idiot like me. It's ok to save up your GP for 2000 years for a later golden age.

Trade tech lots, forget the wtfbbq limit. Worst case scenario you gift the AI settlers and astronomy so they set up a colony on the new world with brand new zero'd trade limit and all their masters tech.

Try and pop astronomy from a hut in the new world. On standard size map you're almost guaranteed to get it if you get there in time, on tiny you're about a 50/50 chance.

ok, I'm rambling now, I'll try and come back later to tidy it up.

-edit- On standard size map a fast space race is bringing in 10,000 beakers per turn. On tiny it will be around 5,000 per turn.
2,000 is ok for a OCC :P.

Kamino did it by chosing AI who don't start with a scout, playing a huge map where maint costs are lowered, killing as many AI as possible asap and popped every hut on the map.

This results in massive amounts of cash, workers, settlers and free tech. Then you just have to play perfectly for 400 turns.


Try my suggestions in the my previous post, get used to winning around 1500AD and re-evaluate what Kamino did.

I've been meaning to do a full write-up with pictures and Venn diagrams of a medium level space colony game (had a chat to Dynamic about doing a shared one but he's busy with other things). If there's any interest I'll go ahead and do it. If there's even more interest in a Deity one I'll do that too (I'd ask Ironhead to do one as he's better, but he doesn't post on the forums as far as I know). There will have to be extra interest in a diety one though because I quite often have a brain meltdown in the middle of a game and do something stupid that destroys the game (although if people are happy with a non first place finish I guess it wouldn't matter so much).

You said: "why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?"

I'll answer this the same way you did ;)


Q: why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?
A:Because you said that what he did was impossible without cheating
Q:why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?
A:Because you said that what he did was impossible without cheating
Q:why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?
A:Because you said that what he did was impossible without cheating
Q:why you don't just explain to me how he did it rather than making an argument about if he cheated or not?
A:Because you said that what he did was impossible without cheating
..
..
.
.
.

I gave you the summary. :lol:

lols

:lol::lol:

PaulisKhan,

I have question, do you build research in your cities?
In my case when I am trying to get early lunch I switch most of my cities to producing research or wealth after having 12-14 cities. I set my cities to research if I am at 80% without losing money, or to wealth if I am at 50% so that I be able to move to 70%.

is this a valid strategy or is it just waste for hammers that can be used for more expansion? Which is better settling down or expanding more?
?

Yay, finally a topic I can talk about! :P

The strategy is different (and yet somehow the same) at every level (which is why I still enjoy playing HoF at all levels). If you share your typical playing level we can give better suggestions.

My latest submission
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?show=playerlog&dsply=0&entryID=15938

1522AD Standard Deity Terra map, marathon speed.


How many turns would that be?

Clearly slower game speed woul lead to earlier victory dates, so IMO the #of turns is a more meaningful statistic.

My best effort so far was 1825AD, emperor, normal map, standard speed, 275/440 turns. Was in Vanilla though. I think my play was suboptimal especially in the post-industrial era. I would speculate that 200 turns victory with a landing circa 1500AD should be possible.

If there's any interest I'll go ahead and do it.


Yes please, Thant would be great


If there's even more interest in a Deity one I'll do that too


Yes please, I don't see Deity guides so often so it would be great if you put a small guide or just a sample game.

I'm working on a prince HoF game right now to get used to the difficulty level again (takes some adjustment), once I've got it sorted I'll redo another game with a full walkthrough.

I have question, do you build research in your cities?

Long answer: I never build research until I can run at 100% science without going bankrupt.
Almost always you will have better commerce multipliers for your research compared to your cash so you want to turn your hammers into cash and use that to support your empire while you let your research multipliers act on your commerce.

Short answer: build wealth until you can run at 100% without losing money (although it's ok to lose money if you have some in reserve).

This is why Mining Inc is so important, it will take fewer cities building wealth to get you to break even, that means more cities can build research instead and speed up your techrate.

How many turns would that be?

Clearly slower game speed woul lead to earlier victory dates, so IMO the #of turns is a more meaningful statistic.

It's not quite so clear as that since on slower speeds all buildings and techs takes more turns to build/research as well, if there are three times as many turns in the game then it takes three times as long to build a granary and three times as long to research bronzeworking. The biggest advantage you get is that workers spend proportionally less time travelling, the other advantage is that you can also build your quechas 50% faster due to scaling of unit build times, I can see why they did it but that's a discussion for another time.
I dont have a comparable date for you though since I never play Vanilla and BTS added a bunch of new techs and changed the nature of the space race win condition, it's different enough that they had to add an entirely new category.

To get a good comparison for your vanilla date on normal speed though go here (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/index.php?show=summ&tablePer=diff&pubID=81&speed=Normal&expansion=1&incBeta=0&submit=Go)

I've filtered it for your conditions so you can see how your date compares. It wont be a true reflection though since most people who are playing the vanilla HOF competitively will be playing on epic speed.

-edit- On standard size map a fast space race is bringing in 10,000 beakers per turn. On tiny it will be around 5,000 per turn.
2,000 is ok for a OCC :P.

With what kind of setup?

The 2000 advice I quoted didn't explicitly specify settings easier, but it was in a thread where HOF-style settings got much less emphasis than here, and the OP did specify some random start-style settings.

That said, the tongue emoticon is particularly uncalled for if you're comparing an easier setup to a harder one.

The tongue emoticon is for light hearted jesting, not direct criticisms so don't take it personally.
Space colony strategy has evolved a lot in the 6 months since that thread was started though and it would be misleading not to acknowledge that.

10,000 beakers per turn was done by several people for Gmajor45 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=310064) on a standard size map, immortal difficulty with Darius.
The settings don't need to be cooked that much. The same thing could be done with several other leaders on any large landmass.

Fractal, pangaea, inland sea, donut, great plains, terra, lakes etc etc. The key is lots of cities (50+) and a strong mining inc (+50 hammers per turn).

On smaller maps mining inc gives about the same number of hammers but the lack of cities reduces the overall tech rate.

That's better and I appreciate it.

50 cities. Interesting. I'm not sure what it would take to get that on the settings I usually play (Immortal/Standard/Normal/Hemispheres, semi-random leader, random AIs, no Tech Brokering) but I can imagine how that might be optimal with those settings. Maybe. At least it is informative if I know exactly what settings you're playing with.

For that reason I still think you're not saying quite enough. The fact that G-Major 45 was Marathon, for example. I don't know what effect that has on the specifics being discussed here, but that (for example) does affect many things in general. And without those details, we can't know.

I discussed why marathon speed was important in my earlier post. The big thing is more time to explore, workers spend proportionaly less time traveling compared to actually improving tiles and the early rush is 50% more efficient. I'll try and write up a detailed guide on tuesday on a duel size map (should be nice and quick and most of the tactics will scale up).

This is a thread for fast space races though so if you're wanting to play with no tech brokering then you're in the wrong thread since tech brokering is the single biggest factor in winning a fast game >.<
Hemispheres isn't the best map for space game because if you conquer your immediate neighbours then you're left with noone to trade with until astronomy. I believe it also has fewer land tiles than some of the other map types, which means less room for cities if you want to stay just under the dom limit. I expect 10k beakers per turn is still doable though if you vassalise your opponents smartly and gain control of their resources that way.

To get to 50 cities on Immortal difficulty I usually conquer/settle 20-25 in the early rush/rex stage of the game and then capture another 20-25 with cavalry towards the end. This is a lot tougher if you don't have one of the good early rushing units though.
That would be Quecha, Praets, Immortals and War Chariots.

In reference to the idea of wandering with your settler and popping some huts before settling:

I tried this the other day after reading about Kamino's BC cultural victory, but I got a sudden loss about 3600BC before I settled. Does anyone know why? I believe my settings were Standard, Marathon, Pangea.

In reference to the idea of wandering with your settler and popping some huts before settling:

I tried this the other day after reading about Kamino's BC cultural victory, but I got a sudden loss about 3600BC before I settled. Does anyone know why? I believe my settings were Standard, Marathon, Pangea.

How did you get sudden loss? what happened?

Sudden loss from not having any civilization probably. You can only not settle for a few turns.

That isn't true. There was a game posted on here not too long ago where the player deleted his opening settler and tried to win with just the starting warrior. In all likelihood, the settler was eaten by a wolf or panther. I'm not sure why that would make you lose and deleting the settler wouldn't though, unless the warrior/scout got eaten before.

That isn't true. There was a game posted on here not too long ago where the player deleted his opening settler and tried to win with just the starting warrior. In all likelihood, the settler was eaten by a wolf or panther. I'm not sure why that would make you lose and deleting the settler wouldn't though, unless the warrior/scout got eaten before.

The total kill option must have been checked to win with just a warrior

That isn't true. There was a game posted on here not too long ago where the player deleted his opening settler and tried to win with just the starting warrior. In all likelihood, the settler was eaten by a wolf or panther. I'm not sure why that would make you lose and deleting the settler wouldn't though, unless the warrior/scout got eaten before.

from my tries it looks like if you do not have city and there is on other civ left that civ wins.

So if that was tiny map with some military acitivity...

That isn't true. There was a game posted on here not too long ago where the player deleted his opening settler and tried to win with just the starting warrior. In all likelihood, the settler was eaten by a wolf or panther. I'm not sure why that would make you lose and deleting the settler wouldn't though, unless the warrior/scout got eaten before.

No, I was playing with no Barbs.

The strategy is different (and yet somehow the same) at every level (which is why I still enjoy playing HoF at all levels). If you share your typical playing level we can give better suggestions.

If you want suggested settings and tips to help get a good win then try these:
Map type: Pangaea/Terra (I prefer Terra)
Map size: Tiny (if you're going to learn from your failures then you may as well fail as quickly as possible)
Game speed: Marathon, not really optional if the goal is an early finish date sorry. These days I struggle to enjoy any other speed, you'll learn to love it.
Game difficulty: Pick one
Civ: Inca
Opponents: Ghandi, Asoka, Lincoln, Mansa

The start: It's marathon, take your settler for a walk. Spending 10 turns walking around, even on diety is no problem. If your settler pops a hut before the AI find it then you just came out way ahead. Look for a gold or a gems somewhere with land that could be cottaged at a later date. I hate to say it, but it's the only way to stop your units going on strike at higher difficulties, I've played a lot of games in a capital with wonderful long term potential but I just went bankrupt too quickly. Supporting those quechas and your early acquisitions is expensive (another reason to try and find a hut with your settler, cash is king).

Try and rush at least two of the first 3 leaders (Ghandi, Asoka, Lincoln) with quecha (depending on the start I either work a forested plains hill until I'm finished warring, or grow to pop 2 on a 3 food tile and then work two plains forests (or grassland forest hill), it ends up being about the same), Aim for 2 quecha per defending archer on flatland and 4 quecha per archer on a hill (if you want to risk it you can try it with 3 per archer but this usually ends in heartache). Block Mansa off.

Early techs: up to you, sometimes I skip bronzeworking in favour of the oracle, sometimes I go for bronzeworking asap so I can whip quechas for cash. Pottery is a must have. Don't get distracted by things like animal husbandry too soon though, I don't care how many cows you have :P, trade for it later.

Try and get a library built in a city with a corn or pigs and run 2 scientists asap, in ideal circumstances this GS will be used to build an academy in your capital (or future capital)

After that there are a million different ways to play.
Try and get a Great Engineer for mining inc.
Try and get Oxford in your capital asap.
Try and get Bureau asap.
Try and settle the mining inc resources in the new world (on terra map) before the AI get there, liberate the colony and just demand their resources (Dynamic plays with no vassals and keeps the cities without colony maintainaince instead, up to you, he's the master of the low/med difficulties though and I always listen when he speaks).
It's ok to try and get the Oracle and Mids, don't cry if you fail though, the game goes on. I don't remember the last time I got the GLib, but I do vaguely remember enjoying it.
Try and get MoM and Taj, golden ages are great if you're not an idiot like me. It's ok to save up your GP for 2000 years for a later golden age.

Trade tech lots, forget the wtfbbq limit. Worst case scenario you gift the AI settlers and astronomy so they set up a colony on the new world with brand new zero'd trade limit and all their masters tech.

Try and pop astronomy from a hut in the new world. On standard size map you're almost guaranteed to get it if you get there in time, on tiny you're about a 50/50 chance.

ok, I'm rambling now, I'll try and come back later to tidy it up.

-edit- On standard size map a fast space race is bringing in 10,000 beakers per turn. On tiny it will be around 5,000 per turn.
2,000 is ok for a OCC :P.

There's some holes in the advice, although I think I can infer them:

- Most cities run commerce, a couple run GPP. Early cities of course put up enough :hammers: to conquer ridiculous amounts of land using a power UU.

- Early cottages are a priority

- Build mostly the science multipliers in the typical research city, build wealth to max the commerce output through these cities. Mining inc. makes building wealth and space parts substantially more effective/rapid.

How much does only having 15-20 cities slow one down? What's a more realistic time on normal speed? 1700's probably?

I'm going to argue that it doesn't matter when you win, only if you win or lose. :p

I'm going to argue that it doesn't matter when you win, only if you win or lose. :p

Exercises in maxing tech speed can allow one to use a tool that can effectively mean the difference between winning or losing, though. I win very often on immortal now, but if my tech rate were a little better even deity would be doable...so I keep my eye on these threads, always looking for that next extra bit of breakthrough info.

I'm going to argue that it doesn't matter when you win, only if you win or lose. :p

IMO winning it self is ordinary, breaking your own record of early wins is exciting.

I always try to put a target for myself for every BTS game before I play and then I select the leader and modify the settings according to this target, some times my goal is not finishing early but finishing late and trying to do something new like making a super commerce city and a super science city and maximizing that till the end of the game. I had once created a city that had 2 holy buildings + mining + Sid Such +Every commerce building and on top of them I had Wall street and the net gold that was generated from this city was unbelievable, that city alone generated money more than 100 cities.

So winning doesn't matter but meeting your target and satisfying your "Ehh I can do this" does.

yes that guy conqured land by popping settlers with settlers.... Saves pretty much tell story.

One thing which surprises is getting enough production...

Look at his play time, its like 28 hours. He saved and reloaded before every single hut (there is always a new seed for huts whether or not you have random seed on). He basically reloaded every time till he got what he needed. In other words he cheated. Probably regened every map till he got the exact resources. Not cheating but doesn't hurt.

Plus he went Darius. The combo of Organized (whose strength is massive economic boosts in cheap, good buildings), Financial (research and money in general), hunting for starting scout for grabbing huts, agriculture for early growth economy, immortals for a very early and effective rush tactics and save/reload meant the most ridiculous uber rex game ever

A better HOF game baromter I think would have some sort of Iron man mode where saving and loading aren't even allowed. YOu have to live with every decision. Yeah you gotta sit through a long game but HOF games are rushed anyway so a succesful one should be in 3-5 hours or so.

Save-reloading isn't allowed in HoF games. They have a way to detect that and reject games in that case.

How many turns would that be?

Clearly slower game speed woul lead to earlier victory dates, so IMO the #of turns is a more meaningful statistic.

My best effort so far was 1825AD, emperor, normal map, standard speed, 275/440 turns. Was in Vanilla though. I think my play was suboptimal especially in the post-industrial era. I would speculate that 200 turns victory with a landing circa 1500AD should be possible.

That's not necessarily true as on slower game speeds everything costs more (research, buildings, units etc) in an attempt to even it out.

The difference is this though. First off, since every turn is 'less significant' relative to producing a building or research then 'fine tuning' is a lot more effective. You can really manipulate the couple percentage points of production in slower games which can save you a turn here or there (like planning to gain two hammers over the course of a build to save 1 turn) which can add up to a lot, especially on huge maps where there are additional cost increases but many more cities to fine tune.

Plus the super city concept is a lot more valid on slower game speeds. This is because you can equivalently produce many more units with a supercity as the high production can still achieve one unit per turn yet each turn is now worth more. So instead of getting 3-5 cavalry in a war from one city without hurrying you can get 15-20 (if its a long war). Bigger armies on slower game speed and huge maps because of the fine tuning.

Other than the supercity factor and the fine tuning there are no advantages or disadvantages to larger maps and higher game speeds.

Save-reloading isn't allowed in HoF games. They have a way to detect that and reject games in that case.

Wow wasn't aware of that. Is there some downloaded plug in for them?

I guess he spent a lot of time carefully managing each city.

That's really impressive then btw.

Also I want to add that along with his choices of his own leader/starting techs he also chose good researching enemies as this shortens his own research time

This is not necessarily to diminish what he did (at this point, was unaware of save/reload monitoring) just pointing out how the heck he got a BC space race victory. He had to set the conditions right and play perfectly for the whole game.

This probably means choosing exactly the right number of cities to build and conquer in the right places to absolutely maximize research, playing on a high enough difficulty that the AI gives research bonus' early when in contact, and a whole bunch of other factor that I have no idea how he worked out?


Better question. Which wonders did he build? did he go a duel SE/trade route, ocean commerce economy early or did he just try to get as much commerce as possible and inore expensive pyramids?

A better HOF game baromter I think would have some sort of Iron man mode where saving and loading aren't even allowed. You have to live with every decision.

Welcome to the HoF, you should probaly check the existing rules :P

Yeah you gotta sit through a long game but HOF games are rushed anyway so a succesful one should be in 3-5 hours or so

I'm among the quickest HoF space gamers and the challening ones still take me 6-7 hours.

10 hours per game is about typical and the best players are 40+ hours per game. That's not time spent reloading, that's time spent maximising gameplay to the absolute limit, that's why they're the best.

You can see the wonders built in the logs on the HoF site.

The HoF mod is the plugin that prevents cheating. I believe it is secret how they detect it but presumably after every irreversible move they update some value in the save game or the registry.

One thing people do in HoF is use MapFinder to regenerate a lot of starts with visible resources in the BFC of their choosing, turn barbs off and pick their opponents (normally peaceful ones to rush early). Mansa needs to be in the game too for fast space wins since he trades monopoly techs at annoyed.

How much does only having 15-20 cities slow one down? What's a more realistic time on normal speed? 1700's probably?

If Civ II/SMAC experience is of any value, then one gets early landing games not by building more, but by building less. There you had to streamline your play and build/research only bare essentials.

Building 50 cities requires enormous hammer expense in either settlers or military. Then you would have to build courthouses etc. to deal with maintenance costs. And in the end only very few cities would participate in building SS components, right?

My gut feeling is that the optimal number of cities for a quick space race win is about the same number of cities which is required to build Oxford/Wall Street. Of course, lacking key resources may nessecitate settling/capturing additional cities, but I cannot imagine that one would ever need more than 10-12 cities.

IMO an ideal settling is a secluded, but not isolated location (i.e. a smallish continent within a galley reach of the other one or an easily blockable part of a landmass). This allows to save on military early on.

Of course, for a record game you need a good location, not just average location. So IMO it is perfectly acceptable to regenerate until finding what you feel is a good start.

Since strating location better be good, you would gain more by working the land rather than employing specialists. Thus, no SE and no need for Pyramids, Angkor Wat and other specialist-oriented wonders.

Capital and majority of other cities should be coastal to get max trade bonuses for fast research.

Financial is a must. Other good skills would be industrious (for cheap forges more then for wonders), expansionist (cheap granaries and harbors, both crucial). From what I've read here creative gives cheap libraries in BtS, so that might be good, too.

Crucial wonders would be the Oracle for CS slingshot, the Great Library and the GLH. Other wonders might be good situationally, but not essential. The idea is to get the most commerce for the least number of turns invested.

Similarly, no need to research things like Theology, Divine Right, Military Tradition, Music, Mass Media and in fact anything which is not directly related to space technologies.

Just my $0.02.

Other than the supercity factor and the fine tuning there are no advantages or disadvantages to larger maps and higher game speeds.

Wait. Is this a joke thread and I missed it :p? I don't think this is a joke thread :lol:! Surely you can't be saying this seriously! With the triple move speed, all workers having effectiveness similar to that of fast workers on normal, and an effective free military academy in every city from turn 1 that stacks MULTIPLICATIVELY with all other :hammers: multipliers and works for all units except settlers?

It seems there are a lot of misconceptions about HoF and the HoF mod for general plays, sadly. Marathon is without a doubt an overwhelming advantage for finish dates, at all difficulty levels.

I'm going to take pauliskhan's word for it here that more cities = better, considering the implications it has on the power of the game's best corporations and the output possible. However, it truly isn't possible to cut off 25-30 cities worth of land on normal speeds with just quechas or immortals unless your start is overwhelmingly favorable. That's why I'm asking the HoF leaders what the impact of "only" having 15-20 has on finish date...to gauge the extent of the variance caused by settings/start differences vs my own gameplay shortcomings. I know both are very real elements, but a clearer goal would be nice for me.

If I could put up even 2/3 of the beakers that I see out of PK, maybe even 1/2, I could hit space wins before the immortal AIs could do anything, and my understanding of diplo is strong enough that I could usually do it in peace. I want to master immortal in such a way before going to deity, and micro/tech rate is what I'm missing in that mastery.

TMIT, how many cities can you get on one continent? 25-30 is definitely doable and it doesn't require a special start. Just go for domination one way or the other and gear up for research instead of winning by domination. 50 cities could be a problem though on normal random settings. ;)

I only tried this approach once in BOTM 15, Epic Emperor game after reading PK's posts in G-Major 45. It took me some time to conquer the continent so the victory was somewhat delayed till 1886. However, the continent was giving 4k in beakers per turn in the end so it was quite cool. I also didn't have many Mining Inc resources so I just used State Property. Definitely some room for improvements for my games. :)

TMIT, how many cities can you get on one continent? 25-30 is definitely doable and it doesn't require a special start. Just go for domination one way or the other and gear up for research instead of winning by domination. 50 cities could be a problem though on normal random settings.

I get that many all the time. What I was saying is that it's going to be difficult to CONSISTENTLY get that many with JUST immortals or quechas, which PK was saying he does in a typical strong marathon space game.

I can launch/win in the mid-late 1800's also, though usually it's early 1900's because I sell out on war/production so much.

The major issue is getting those cities in time w/o a huge investment. In a normal forum game I find it quite rare to pull an immortal/normal rush effectively, so instead my first offensive war is frequently in the renaissance where it's easy to get land. However, after the first opponent or two, further cities captured tend to be for land/pop rather than improving tech. This is why I'm asking in the 15-20 city range, because I believe mid-late 1700's may be possible with that many, and definitely early 1800's, but I wanted to hear expert opinion on the benefits/drawbacks of that approach.

BOTM 15 I just pulled domination :lol:. I hit the other side before conquering my continent, invading with infantry/cannon. My BEST opponent over there, who I conquered last, got rifles! Haha! I then came back and whooped my side @ tech parity, though I'd imagine I could have just teched to space peacefully w/ my 12 cities peacefully and won in the 1800's...I want to win FASTER though with less outlay time such that my space launches are competitive with immortal culture AIs...I'm not there yet.

Yes, it's much harder to get all those cities in a normal game... It's hard to judge by HoF games, everything is so sterile there. BOTMs on the other hand are great for learning, I'd like to see some expert space games there. Btw, PaulisKhan, how did BOTM16 go for you? I remember that you said you were going for Space in the first spoiler. Although that was Archipelago there so it isn't really best for demonstration.

Off topic, I went for diplo there, hoping for a good result with all the heavy hitters busy with milking. :D When will the results appear already, I'm biting my nails. :lol:

Wait. Is this a joke thread and I missed it :p? I don't think this is a joke thread :lol:! .

Clearly I've stuck my foot in my mouth in this thread.

I did think though that I mentioned high move speed but apparently not. Also the whole 'free military academy' thing I was including in the supercity analogy. You get higher relative troop production rate.

Anyway I'm done posting on this thread. Learned something though. Hopefully I'll be able to pull off earlier wins now.

I'd recommend playing HoF gauntlets, or at least reading the threads about them.

There's a complete list of previous gauntlets (with links to the discussion threads, after I moaned about it ;), here:

http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/gauntlet.php?show=list

I don't see any discussion threads.

The links are in the "Gauntlet" column

Clearly I've stuck my foot in my mouth in this thread.

I did think though that I mentioned high move speed but apparently not. Also the whole 'free military academy' thing I was including in the supercity analogy. You get higher relative troop production rate.

Anyway I'm done posting on this thread. Learned something though. Hopefully I'll be able to pull off earlier wins now.

The 50% multiplicative boost to all units is relevant to ALL cities, not just supercities. All units, including workers, are that much cheaper and from turn 1. This is EXTREMELY relevant to finish date, especially coupled with the ability to move them at 3x the rate. Abused to its potential, one can completely dominate the fixed-unitprob AIs compared to other speeds. Note that since the remaining AIs also have the benefit of cheaper workers, even they are somewhat faster, meaning more available for trade.

Once corps roll around or one has a holy city, you once again look at cheaper execs/missionaries, that move and deliver the bonuses to cities faster.

These are crazy bonuses and the reason that marathon dominates HoF...earliest finish dates are marathon for ALL VCs...except of course time ;).

I believe the best scoring time games are marathon though. Far too tedious for me ;)

The 50% multiplicative boost to all units is relevant to ALL cities, not just supercities. All units, including workers, are that much cheaper and from turn 1. This is EXTREMELY relevant to finish date, especially coupled with the ability to move them at 3x the rate. Abused to its potential, one can completely dominate the fixed-unitprob AIs compared to other speeds. Note that since the remaining AIs also have the benefit of cheaper workers, even they are somewhat faster, meaning more available for trade.

Once corps roll around or one has a holy city, you once again look at cheaper execs/missionaries, that move and deliver the bonuses to cities faster.

These are crazy bonuses and the reason that marathon dominates HoF...earliest finish dates are marathon for ALL VCs...except of course time ;).

I think marathon and normal are totally different level games, no need to compare at all. If you just want a good looking finish date, marathon is no brainer. If you just like to play normal speed, you can still compete with those normal submits. Still fun if you like to compete.

so everybody her was talking about how insane the 10 BC win was.. did anybody realize it was culture not space?

It WAS space

http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?entryID=15842

Culture is down to 290BC

http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?entryID=15753

IMO winning it self is ordinary, breaking your own record of early wins is exciting.

I always try to put a target for myself for every BTS game before I play and then I select the leader and modify the settings according to this target, some times my goal is not finishing early but finishing late and trying to do something new like making a super commerce city and a super science city and maximizing that till the end of the game. I had once created a city that had 2 holy buildings + mining + Sid Such +Every commerce building and on top of them I had Wall street and the net gold that was generated from this city was unbelievable, that city alone generated money more than 100 cities.

So winning doesn't matter but meeting your target and satisfying your "Ehh I can do this" does.

Have you considered moving up a difficulty level? :)

I also note he didn't found Persepolis until 3715 BC (turn 19!!), discovering Currency by 3445 BC! I'd kill to know how he pulled this off.

I believe he walked the settler to a good spot whilst popping scouts, workers, settlers and cash. Then he popped a load of huts after settling getting a lot of techs.

I also note he didn't found Persepolis until 3715 BC (turn 19!!), discovering Currency by 3445 BC! I'd kill to know how he pulled this off.

That is called hut luck ;).

I think marathon and normal are totally different level games, no need to compare at all. If you just want a good looking finish date, marathon is no brainer. If you just like to play normal speed, you can still compete with those normal submits. Still fun if you like to compete.

I think the ratio (victory turn)/(total # of turns) would be a decent statistic for any game speed.

@TMIT

There are so many variables that I don't know all my theories are correct and changing game speed/map size/difficulty can significantly change were the emphasis in the strategy needs to go.

For example the Deity game I just submitted in the last update on a standard map size I only conquered 4 cities in the early war and settled another 4. That was it for pretty much the entire game, 9 cities for a 1522 finish date which goes against everything I just said in my previous posts.
However that was on Deity where the AI will tech at a competent rate so I always had tech to trade for and by leaving them more land they were able to tech even better. I don't think I've traded for more techs than I did in that game.
I think the fact that the date was top is more a reflection of the lack of competition on Deity Space rather than an indication of the effectiveness of the strategy though.
I think Ironheads response in the next update should provide a better clue (I'm picking a 1250 finish for him which I won't be able to beat as I can't match his early conquest ability/risks).

In anything other than Deity however (and Immortal to some extent I guess) the AI won't tech the late era fast enough for your finish to be competitive, this is when you start needing massive empires to drive that research. If you can war well with mobile units (I prefer Cav) then you can conquer a significant amount of land in a short period of time late in the game and still set it up nicely with mining inc to speed through the end game.
The frst phase is getting to mining inc as quickly as possible (it's almost worthwhile to treat is as a different game). The reason I like Terra maps is that it usually allows you secure a bunch of mining resources by peaceful means later in the game.
the second phase is getting a +30-40 hpt mining inc to as many cities as possible, building courthouse+forge (factory/power if there is enough time) and then building wealth

Minimising the transition from getting to mining inc, to getting it running in every city at +40 hpt is a major part of the game.
If you can minimise it by conquering the cities early on when it easier, without delaying your tech speed, then do that. If you can conquer 20-30-40 cities with cav at a good rate in the late game then do that instead.

However to be honest I don't have all that much experience on standard sized maps because my computer struggles in the late game (and you spend a lot of time in the late game).
The game I just played reminded me very much why I hate how slow the game gets. It was a 7 hour or so game, yet 3+ of those hours were spent on just the last 50 turns (the AI kept blowing up my spaceship components - a downside of powerful deity AI running around) pretty much just hitting enter. At midnight the game was effectively over and I was going to beat Ironhead and I figured it wouldn't take long to clean it up, just one more turn....

5 am rolls around...


Another thing people don't see on the HoF is the failures. I've gone from close to 100% success rate on my attempts (the run through the middle difficulties I did in Oct/Nov last year) to what is probably a <4-5% success rate now (although possibly a function of trying to beat better finish dates).
HoF will completely fry your brain in regards to what constitutes a "reasonable risk". In some ways it makes you a worse player until you learn to control it (which I haven't).
There is a big difference between a normal forum game and a HoF game and I often have to prevent myself from stepping in and offering bad advice on normal forum games, which is why I was excited when I saw someone just wanted to know how to win fast :P

I've gone off on a tangent though, I need to go back and reread your specific questions >.<

I think the ratio (victory turn)/(total # of turns) would be a decent statistic for any game speed.

Ss far as I know 1500AD (or any date) is the same played/max ratio for all game speeds. So it would still favour marathon for the reasons that TMIT has listed.

Mining is is pretty huge, huh. How do you get the engineer? Just run one off forge and save it, or do you use factory/IW to farm it?

I guess a semi-comparable but inferior approach is SP + workshops + wealth. Any hammer city would pay its (reduced) cost several times over, but this wouldn't come close to touching 40 hpt mining inc.

I have done the massed cavalry dealie on immortal/normal before, but I like cannons better. After the mandatory build-up phase cannon can cut through 10-15 cities in 20 turns pretty easily, not ambitious for a uberfast space win but probably what I'm looking for to be more dynamic in my immortal games and switch to space mop-up afterward.

So the vast majority of your truly beaker-generating cities are commerce-based then? I guess I can picture 10-15 100+ :commerce: cities with full :science: multipliers going over 2k beakers. Edit: especially as some cities are able to convert :hammers: into :science: with favorable :hammers: multipliers since you can still run 100% research...probably pushes 2.5-3k at full development + 20 cities then?

What about tech path? Rocketry/tech for labs? Varies? In games where I'm struggling I tend to go computers (internet) -----> genetics/fusion while AI gives me some space techs on the side, but with 700 BPT more or so that probably isn't optimal anymore.

Ss far as I know 1500AD (or any date) is the same played/max ratio for all game speeds. So it would still favour marathon for the reasons that TMIT has listed.

The dates are sometimes off by a few percentage points, but the margin of error is much smaller than the Marathon bonuses.

Mining is is pretty huge, huh. How do you get the engineer? Just run one off forge and save it, or do you use factory/IW to farm it?

I pray to the gods and sacrifice a goat.
Getting that Engineer causes me more headaches than anything else because it doesn't mesh well with the rest of the strategies you need to implement.
I'll run an Eng in my "gp farm" (In that last deity game it took me something like 400 turns to generate 2 GP, I'm that bad) and hope, in addition I'll have a city trying to run a pure Eng GP pool from a combination of Mids+Forge+HG that I can fall back on.
If I get one early on I will sit on him for 3000 years before I even dream about burning him on a WW. I've only used the steelworks emergency fallback once, because steel is so close to completing Railroad+Corps, by the time steelworks is finished your GE is already close to being late.
It's definitely viable though and I always have it to fall back on.


I guess a semi-comparable but inferior approach is SP + workshops + wealth. Any hammer city would pay its (reduced) cost several times over, but this wouldn't come close to touching 40 hpt mining inc.

I always recommend state property for normal forum type games because securing 30-40 hpt worth of mining resources is just not usually feasible.
The Terra map type is a huge part in being able to secure that many mining resources without crossing the dom limit.


I have done the massed cavalry dealie on immortal/normal before, but I like cannons better. After the mandatory build-up phase cannon can cut through 10-15 cities in 20 turns pretty easily, not ambitious for a uberfast space win but probably what I'm looking for to be more dynamic in my immortal games and switch to space mop-up afterward.

I've used both. My tiny deity map I think was won with cannons and maces and my standard map was won with just cavalry (vs machine guns >.<) I don't have an objection to either, and there's usually a reason in any given game to prefer one strategy over the other.

So the vast majority of your truly beaker-generating cities are commerce-based then? I guess I can picture 10-15 100+ :commerce: cities with full :science: multipliers going over 2k beakers. Edit: especially as some cities are able to convert :hammers: into :science: with favorable :hammers: multipliers since you can still run 100% research...probably pushes 2.5-3k at full development + 20 cities then?
This varies a lot from game to game, depending on the land. There are still so many variables in space games that the optimal strategy is still yet to be determined (I think unlike culture, religion and dom), I know Ironhead and myself are still changing the mix in almost every game and I think Dynamic is swinging slowly back to more commerce oriented improvements. This means our advice should also be taken with a grain of salt because we change our minds and our strategies quite a bit (and being flexible is ALWAYS important).
Here's the big thing though, a good Oxford/Bureau capital is usually of paramount importance. In most of my stress free games I've had a capital that can pull in 600 bpt or more by 500 AD (these days I aim for a total empire output of 800-1k bpt by 500AD). I've even moved my capital during the game to make that happen.
I'm a very lazy player though who doesn't like to waste time on micro, general rule though if I see floodplains I cottage them, if I see river+grassland I almost always cottage it. If a city has x number of river tiles I usually cottage all the rest of it too.
Having rules like that lets me minimise the amount of actual thinking I have to do (I think we are very similar in how we enjoy the game). More than 5 hours on a game starts to get frustrating for me and my favourite ones are <4 hours (which I think is pretty good for marathon).
I don't think I often have more than 6-7 good commerce cities though (on standard) that's usally all the land will support early on, and when I conquer more land in the second wave it's usually too late to develop cottages so I go with whatever is there, or drop down workshops and irrigation.



What about tech path? Rocketry/tech for labs? Varies? In games where I'm struggling I tend to go computers (internet) -----> genetics/fusion while AI gives me some space techs on the side, but with 700 BPT more or so that probably isn't optimal anymore.

I'd check Ironheads/Dynamics gamelogs for this. Trying to shave of 4-5 turns at the end by getting the right order just doesn't interest me yet, especially when compared to decisions at the start than can shave 50-100 (marathon) turns off the game.
I never research the Internet though, most of the techs I want are pre-reqs for the end game stuff anyway so I'm forced to tech it myself because the AI is retarded.

I'll usually try and go for composites and fusion to get the many and the expensive components building and then I go for genetics/ecology (whatever) for the last two components which can be chopped because you were smart and saved some trees, or you're an idiot like me and have to spend another 15 turns (and two hours) mashing enter because you forgot and in the meantime the AI just blew up your expensive docking bay and it's 3am and you just want to go to sleep damnit all.
-edit- just reread what you said, yes in a more normal game Internet is definitely viable and is what I do too, and tech fusion myself while the AI gets stuck on facism. I think my Immortal Willem normal speed game with zero cottages abused the internet.

I learned a lot in the recent OCC space gauntlet. I was going for astronomy (observatory), then superconductors (labs), then going for industrialism (aluminium), followed by rocketry. Is there a better path?

Yes, it's much harder to get all those cities in a normal game... It's hard to judge by HoF games, everything is so sterile there. BOTMs on the other hand are great for learning, I'd like to see some expert space games there. Btw, PaulisKhan, how did BOTM16 go for you? I remember that you said you were going for Space in the first spoiler. Although that was Archipelago there so it isn't really best for demonstration.

Off topic, I went for diplo there, hoping for a good result with all the heavy hitters busy with milking. :D When will the results appear already, I'm biting my nails. :lol:

I'm not very good at completing and sumitting BoTMs, even though they were what got me interested in space games some time back in October (before that I'd barely touched space in the years the game had been out).
They're a fun distraction for me but I don't put serious effort into them

Just loaded up my BOTM16 for you,
I played up until 1350AD and am teching repleacable parts with 14 cities by the looks of it. My techrate is laughable and I have cities working unimproved grassland and forests and wines. I must have been getting pretty lazy.
Leading in score and roughly equal in tech (although they wouldnt keep up if I kept playing)
I have a stack of East Indiamen and Attacko the Amphibious Elephant ready to go on a rampage but I never got around to finishing the game. I'm not that great at *OTM's though compared to some of those other guys, who I think overall are much better players than me.

Best of luck on your result though and I'll be cheering for you =)

I learned a lot in the recent OCC space gauntlet. I was going for astronomy (observatory), then superconductors (labs), then going for industrialism (aluminium), followed by rocketry. Is there a better path?
Yeah that one was a great read. I wouldn't have been competitive on that one, too much emphasis on micro once the optimum strategy was nailed down but I learned a lot about the power of a smart national park/national epic city which I plan to implement as often as possible in my future space games.

Me neither, 24/29. It was fun though ;)

^Well thanks, I'm hoping that my 1735 Diplo will be good enough. :D

Regarding space races, have you tried systematic spanning of Hermitage(s) in the end game to effectively double the wealth rate? It worked great for me in that one game, but I didn't know about the hammer decay, next time I'll plan it better.

Another thing are banks and WS, do you bother with that at all? Since scientific multipliers will be generally higher than money multipliers 100% science + wealth will be stronger than other options. I've started doubting the WS with this setup lately, possibly it's not worth the effort at all.

If only I could turn down my playing time to play more...30h+ for one game is really too time consuming. I tend to think too much and micro everything and I also like to war a lot, that's a bad combination I guess...:mischief: And it's 4am already right now, dangit. :sleep:

If Civ II/SMAC experience is of any value, then one gets early landing games not by building more, but by building less. There you had to streamline your play and build/research only bare essentials.

My gut feeling is that the optimal number of cities for a quick space race win is about the same number of cities which is required to build Oxford/Wall Street. Of course, lacking key resources may nessecitate settling/capturing additional cities, but I cannot imagine that one would ever need more than 10-12 cities.

Just my $0.02.

Civ II experience favoured a small number of cities, but just around the time that interest in Civ II was coming to an end, someone (I can't remember who) was managing better results with a large number of cities.

Be that as it may, I'm not sure the Civ II experience is relevant. The "small is beautiful" approach worked well because of the ability to develop an SSC which on its own could deliver a new tech per turn. Add to this the bonus from caravan delivery and the result was that extra cities were only needed to accumulate vans and build spaceship parts. (Defence was pretty rudimentary because of the diplomacy system.)

It is certainly true that a science city in Civ IV can deliver quite a punch. We had fun a while back seeing how much was possible. I think the record was between 2,000 and 3,000 bpt. This is good, but doesn't dominate in the way a Civ II SSC did.

At the moment, evidence seems to suggest that the best total research rates come from large empires.

RJM

Regarding space races, have you tried systematic spanning of Hermitage(s) in the end game to effectively double the wealth rate?

nope, but you can bet I'll be trying it out in my next game =)

Another thing are banks and WS, do you bother with that at all?
I should have mentioned this. Wall Street is almost a "must have". You need it in the city that founds the corp in order to mitigate the cost. It can be VERY expensive supporting a strong corp.
I've never played a game and not built wall street for the corp headquarters. For the same reason Free Market is an unavoidable civic.

Someone could convince me a wrong with a healthy dose of math though since I haven't done it myself.

Ah yes, WS for the Mining Corp of course. I had State Property in mind, I'm not sure that WS is needed there. Will see in my next game...:)

Does anyone bother with computers if they aren't going to build the internet?

I've stopped researching it now and go refrigeration->superconductors for labs and laser->fusion.

Does anyone bother with computers if they aren't going to build the internet?

I've stopped researching it now and go refrigeration->superconductors for labs and laser->fusion.

Exactly right.

Ah yes, WS for the Mining Corp of course. I had State Property in mind, I'm not sure that WS is needed there. Will see in my next game...:)

Yeah I agree, with state property in mind I'd probably avoid WS unless I had a particularly strong holy city with a shrine.

Have you considered moving up a difficulty level? :)

Duhh.. I play Emperor and yes I am considering moving up to Immortal

I also note he didn't found Persepolis until 3715 BC (turn 19!!), discovering Currency by 3445 BC! I'd kill to know how he pulled this off.

goody huts

Does anyone bother with computers if they aren't going to build the internet?

I've stopped researching it now and go refrigeration->superconductors for labs and laser->fusion.

I put it off when I have a good AW/SM/UoS block from conquests. It hurts a lot to (at 45 cities) lose the 120 beakers/Gold pre multiplier per turn, and AW'd priest specialists are sick...

But computers are necessary for the best military units in the game.

Mining is is pretty huge, huh. How do you get the engineer? Just run one off forge and save it, or do you use factory/IW to farm it?


In general this is one of the few things that makes the German UB actually valuable. You can get an Eng pretty quickly in GP farm and can set oneself up pretty quickly for Mining Inc.

Also running NE with IW with Germany/Freddy not such a bad idea late for popping a few/several late GE and gain some strong boosts for components/late wonders etc. ( I try to build like 2-3 GE wonders in my GP farm. Trouble is finding good GE wonders that aren't uber expensive and still provide a strong boost despite tying up a production city for 15-20 turns)

Anyway, I don't know if Freddy would be any good for Space race. Theoretically very strong eco traits, starts with mining for axe rush and hunting for scout but I don't know anything about launching early

PaulisKhan,

I have tried another game and it didn't work like I wanted, I am trying to idetify what I did wrong and I am interested in your opinion and others opinions:

Game settings: Playing with Darius and Emperor, Marathon, Pangaea, 15 AIs, No Barbs, Standard resources.

Opponents: I selected Mansa and Asoka and the others were set to random, I wanted Mansa to be in game to speed up our research.

Capital: Contained 2 Gold + 1 corn.

Short summary:

1- The 2 gold in my capital gave me big advantage and I was teching really fast and I was always in the lead in techs.

2- After writing I went to Mathematics->Currency->COL then Aesthetics then Feudalism-> Civil Service->Paper->Education

3- Used my first GS to bulb Philosophy and burned second on Education.

4- Finished Liberalism and took Nationalism as freebee

5- I have built very few wonders and was very poor in generating GP, After forges I put one engineer on my GP farm trying to get a GE to be saved for Mining Inc.

After getting Liberalism first everything became so easy and the game was almost in the bag at this point, I was trading techs very actively with the AIs mostly to get cash.

Regarding the situation of my civ:

1- I didn't do any early rush because I had plenty of space in my backyard, I blocked all the AIs and built 7 cities comfortably.

2- The problem was is that Mansa is my closest neighbors and this was very bad for me because I have to wipe him away, which is against my plan and Mansa will not be available all the game. Until I get his land I have to squeeze every tech from him.

3- I focused on developing my cities mostly for research and I so early prepared a wall street city and an Oxford city.

4- Captured Saladin , Mansa and Asoka , at this point I had 30 Cities many of them were quality cities especially Mansa's and Asoka's which contained almost all the wonders and holy buildings generating big money (I had 5 holy buildings in my cities).

5- Luckily I got GE after many many turns of waiting , I was very lucky to get him at 30% chance a giants 70% great prophet chance (the farm was corrupted by a wonder generating great prophet points).

6- I Built Mining Inc and later on Sid Sushi both in my Wall Street city.

7- I settled down and Stopped expanding and focused on spreading Mining Inc to most of my cities, and spreading Sid Sushi to most of the AI cities.

8- I had 5 super production cities 2 of them at 200+ hammers.

9- At the end I had 4000+ beakers

10- I only managed to lunch at 1820 AD :confused:

I know I did something wrong the game was so easy.

I think the following could be the reason of the delay:

1- AIs researched at very slow rate even Mansa, I don't know why! Maybe PaulisKhan was right bout Deity being much better than Emperor for early space race.

2- Mansa was out of the game early (unfortunately)

3- Initially I was very slow in generating units with my 7 cities because my land was more rich in food and commerce and poor in hammers. I had only one production city and another semi production city.

4- I did the mistake that I always do , I try to build most cities improvements. If I ignored most of my building habits I may have pulled an earlier win.

5- I delayed my expansion too much, I started wars at 750 AD, and only managed to capture Saladin at 1350 AD, and finished Mansa at 1480AD , and Asoka at 1650 Ad.

6- I started building wealth and research at 1650 AD after finishing my wars, which again was very late.

7- I forgot that Aluminum is revealed by Industrialism :blush: but recovered it after building 2 space ship parts.

His earlier outline called for more cities earlier, and a specific focus on science buildings (or hammer multipliers in cities building wealth/research w/ mining inc). Also, pangaea is likely weaker for mining resources than terra (PK was emphasizing the importance of terra for getting enough resources)..

Capital: Contained 2 Gold + 1 corn.



I believe the HoF standard is stronger than that, like 3 gems + 2 corns, all riverside.

I believe the HoF standard is stronger than that, like 3 gems + 2 corns, all riverside.

It matters for those people who use map finder w/ 1000 maps or so, but how many turns earlier do you envision the gems start providing someone, given equal play ability? I'm not sure the OP wants a HoF win so much as earlier space/better tech (I know that's how I am) Obviously a favorable start shaves turns in tight competition but it's not like an emperor or even deity win is frequently explained by starts alone.

Now...handpicking AIs and turning things like permanent alliances on...:rolleyes:

But that's neither here nor there. How much difference do you think the start variance makes, or is it too hard to quantify?

A powerful capital makes a lot of difference. Check Duckweed's deity All Warmongers challenge or Snaaty's deity Always War challenge to see what a bit of extra commerce from gold can accomplish...and that's nowhere near to 3 gems.

I agree a special start makes big difference, 2 or 3 gold + food resources + financial trait means you get a huge boost in research from the beginning. And you know in marathon saving between 6 to 10 turns for each tech accumulates to big advantage.

I believe the HoF standard is stronger than that, like 3 gems + 2 corns, all riverside.

I
Now...handpicking AIs and turning things like permanent alliances on...:rolleyes:


Hall of fame games have some fun in them but sometimes i start doubting how much they got to do with regular CIV...

Gems should always be grasland as this is incomparably better:lol:

So answering to deep blue:
You picked wrong opponents and to weak capital.

Just to clear up a couple of things first, 1 gold/gems/silver and some rivers with enough food to grow to pop16-18 is good enough for me. It's better than an average start but it's not "omg".
I've also quit plenty of those 3 gold, 2 corn, floodplains holy crap type starts because the rest of the land was all plains or desert.
I also haven't used mapfinder for over 6 months now, There are too many combinations of tiles that make up what I consider a decent start for me to program them all in and walking around with the settler for the first 10 turns or so is the most enjoyable part of the game for me.
Sometimes I find that the AI is the one who got that fantastic start so I'll go and settle near them and move my capital later.
In short; don't get too hung up on the perfect start. There are so many other ways to fail that if you keep waiting for that perfect game you'll never get anywhere.
Learn for yourself what constitutes "good enough" and run with it.
Space Colony HoF isn't nearly competitive enough yet to require the perfect start in the same way that Religious HoF is. The game goes for so long, plenty of other ways to screw it up :P

In general this is one of the few things that makes the German UB actually valuable. You can get an Eng pretty quickly in GP farm and can set oneself up pretty quickly for Mining Inc.

Problem is Assembly Line comes AFTER corporation which means that the Eng is already too late =/
That's why it's a problem, you need the GE before the good GE buildings are available.


Deep Blue: I just played a large prince tectonics map as Darius with barbs on for a 1590ish finish to get used to prince again and don't worry about Deity being easier to trade techs, it's much harder in many other ways :P
Now that I'm used to prince again I'll make some time to finish a full walkthrough. I might do it with the HoF disabled though, just so that if something goes wrong I don't have to start an entire new writeup (I already started a couple for you but I usually did something wrong and I got so frustrated that by the time I started playing properly I had given up doing the writeup so the game was useless to you).
This will also allow me to post saves as checkpoints so we can compare games.

WRT your game, Mansa starting next door is one of those annoying things that happens sometimes. If he's teching well he usually builds a bunch of wonders and crushes you with culture too which is annoying. It's ok to find another start where he's further away.
I do think you need to be more aggressive at the start regardless of whether you think you have enough room. Immortals still do pretty well on Emperor so play a couple more games and get used to capturing 2-3 capitals before worrying about your tech and your economy. Let the AI do the teching for you until you're in a position to pull away from them.
If it wasn't for the conquest requirements of a good finish date I wouldn't even worry about finding gold in my starting bfc, but I find you need it to avoid going on strike once you capture a few cities. It's the financial riverside cottages that really kickstart the tech rate.
How many hammers per turn was your mining inc giving you? In my tectonics game I was getting around 27 hpt with about 54% of the land and ended up with a peak tech rate of around 9000bpt (without losing gold).
1640 really is too late to be warring, try the early conquering, even if it wrecks your economy and see how your game feels at around 1000AD.
I've had games where I was getting to liberalism around 500BC that ended up being a lot worse than games where I was still struggling to get 10% research at 500BC. One of my best Deity games (that did get beaten back by Ironhead) I was at -35 gpt at 0% research and I lost all of my units and workers to strike. I only managed to dig my way out of it by whipping quechas in all my cities for the gold overflow so I that could finish teching writing.
Since the best space finish dates are constantly improving I can't say what the "best" strategy is, I can only speak from my own experience and in that regard I do strongl recommend more war early.
Drop down to monarch for a couple of games if it will help. The AI still start with a worker for you to steal =)
(I hate that about prince).

So answering to deep blue:
You picked wrong opponents and to weak capital.

What a great answer you solved all my problems and gave me light to true knowledge.. :lol:

I only picked Mansa and Asoka the remaining 13 were random.

And no I believe my start was very good because in addition to my 2 golds in capital I had plenty of space and pretty quality locations, my second city had 4 spices, 1 Gems 2 cows and all river tiles, it was my gold engine and later my super commerce city.

Guys,
release PaulisKhan! he needs to play SG turns!!! :lol:
nice discussions... I should check out this mapfinder... 3 gems/2 corns is not my standard :crazyeye:

How many hammers per turn was your mining inc giving you? In my tectonics game I was getting around 27 hpt with about 54% of the land and ended up with a peak tech rate of around 9000bpt (without losing gold).


It was giving me 15 hpt and in the end game I was at around 4300 beakers.

Note: I had less than 30% of land with 30 cities, I got most of metal resources that are required for Mining from Charmalenge , I had good relations with him and I converted to his religion to keep the rsources arriving..



1640 really is too late to be warring, try the early conquering, even if it wrecks your economy and see how your game feels at around 1000AD.


The problem is that it takes too long to built a decent army in the beggining and I tend to improve my production first before start building units.

I also tend to focus on research and commerce and give priority to library+uni and to market+Bank thats why I wait to long before warring. I am trying to adjust my gameplay and to find balance between military production and economy, I tend to go to wars when I hit 70% break even next time I will start warring even at 50% or 40%.

Don't try and find a balance. Go crazy, use your immortals like an insane conquering person. Don't build a single settler/library/granary until you've conquered 3 capitals minimum (other than settler required t get horse if you don't immediately have them).
Replay a dozen starts until you can do it blindfolded. You do NOT have an economy worth speaking of for the first 200 turns so I don't want to hear about "70%" techrates!!!!!!
Conquer conquer conquer until you go bankrupt and then beg the world to forgive you. Whip warriors to save your sinking economic ship and pillage the land of your enemies.

For Darius you want something like irrigation-bronzeworking-animal husbandry-wheel-potterry-writing-OMG MAKE THE HURTING STOP I HAVE NO MONEY AND MY PEOPLE HATE ME

Now I'd better run and play my SG turnset before Rrrrrrrrrr whips me.

-edit- you want 50% of the land, not 30%. It's alot cheaper and quicker to do it early on rather than later.

Great advice..

I have to change my mentality from city builder to crazy conqueror

@PaulisKhan
I just want to thank you for your posts on this thread. It's helped me a lot with my space strat. I set up a game to work through some of these ideas: monarch/marathon, pangea, normal size, low sea level, Hattie, Mansa, Ghandi, Lincoln, Ashoka, Liz. The wandering settler trick worked great - found a 3 grass gems +rice spot right next to Ghandi with horses that I could grab with a second settler. Took out Ghandi and Hattie with immortals and settled around 15 cities early. Got the win in 1832 (my best time) for 101K. That certainly doesn't set the world on fire :lol: but it was a good testing ground for trying out some of your ideas. Certainly I could have rexed a lot harder in the beginning, and I definitely build too much infra in my cities. Next I think I'll try a large terra map.

@PaulisKhan
I just want to thank you for your posts on this thread. It's helped me a lot with my space strat. I set up a game to work through some of these ideas: monarch/marathon, pangea, normal size, low sea level, Hattie, Mansa, Ghandi, Lincoln, Ashoka, Liz. The wandering settler trick worked great - found a 3 grass gems +rice spot right next to Ghandi with horses that I could grab with a second settler. Took out Ghandi and Hattie with immortals and settled around 15 cities early. Got the win in 1832 (my best time) for 101K. That certainly doesn't set the world on fire :lol: but it was a good testing ground for trying out some of your ideas. Certainly I could have rexed a lot harder in the beginning, and I definitely build too much infra in my cities. Next I think I'll try a large terra map.

That sounds a lot like my early games, I am really happy that it worked for you too =)

All I can say is keep playing games, mix up the difficulties or the map sizes so you don't get too bored and just have fun, hopefully you find some of aspects of your gameplay will improve in ways that help in other types of games too.

I look forward to seeing you on the Hall of Fame soon!
If your computer can handle a large map I think you'll be a real threat Large/Noble finish date (1730AD).
What I did to get started was just look for relatively weak finish dates across all the difficulties I was comfortable with and try to pick them off one at a time, gradually my dates got better and better and although I've hit a wall in my ability and won't ever be as good as Dynamic and Ironhead and Kamino it's been a lot of fun and taught me many things about Civ that I never knew before.

If you're not familiar with it, the HoF can be found here http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/ complete with a link to the appropriate mod and the rules for playing a HoF game (no reloads etc)
The no reloads was the biggest change for me and broke me of some very bad habits.

If you're not familiar with it, the HoF can be found here http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/ complete with a link to the appropriate mod and the rules for playing a HoF game (no reloads etc)
The no reloads was the biggest change for me and broke me of some very bad habits.

I'm definitely up for this, if I can get BUG to play well with HOF. Any thoughts on that?

I don't think you can submit a game that uses anything else that the HOF mod...

Unfortunately you cannot run both mods simulatenously, however HoF mod implements several of the BUG mod features already and is likely to incorporate several additional features in the near future as I understand an update is currently being planned/worked upon.

The notable features that are currently included are the tech trade, gold, health and unhappy warnings.
The WHEOOHRN feature however is not nor is the GP tracker or the smiley/sad face icons.


I do love BUG very much but have grown used to the features provided by the HoF to the extent that I feel spoiled when I play with the full BUG =)

BUG/HoF simultaneously isn't allowable for XOTM/HoF to my knowledge. Although you CAN run them together, I don't recommend it. I did that once, and while everything seemed normal at first, eventually I hit end turn and all of a sudden I'm netting -1,000,000 gpt. Yes, losing MORE than ONE MILLION gpt. I was talking w/ rolo at the time, and I told him

"I might strike".

The HOF team is reviewing BUG and looking into adding features from there into the HOF mod. You may not need to run both.

"I might strike".

:lol: It might be worth trying just to see this!

Seriously, though, thanks to everyone for the advice. I'll just bite the bullet and reinstall BUG as a mod, so I can unload it when I need to. I'm also itching to try the
"King of the Hill" deity AW game. :crazyeye:

PaulisKhan,

Q1:Your advice is getting 50% of land, my question is at which date you usually achieve that in a Huge map at marathon ?

I am asking this because I found it painfully slow and tedious to get 50% of a huge map even when I have a very good game.

Last time I played the game I had been in wars all the history but it took me forever to capture 50%, not because the AI was strong on the contrary I was attacking longbows with rifles, but there are so many cities to capture and moving units/healing takes too long , and the longer it takes the stronger the AIs become (no more longbows but rifles and maybe infantries aftter a period of time). I only managed to do this on huge map at 1700's, after that a long build up is followed and I will have no chance to finish in the 1700's.

Q2: On Terra map when do you start colonizing the new world?

Again I usually delay this after I recover from the bad financial situation due to wars, because I cannot handle the colonies cost when I am in the middle of multiple wars (at 30% bar!). And I start building cities in the new world as late as the 1700's but then I find it congested with other AIs.
I can do it earlier as soon as I get Astronomy but that would be in a peaceful game when I have good economy and the time to build settlers and galleons.

Q3: I get the general concept but I found it very hard to implement parallel techniques for example:

Military side: I need to expand fast to get 50% land so I need to build tons of units.
Science side: I need to build universities and then Oxford uni but my cities are busy building units.
Economic side: I need to build banks and the Wall Street but my cities are busy with the above 2
Production side (Mining Inc): To get the new world resources I need to build settlers, galleons and Frigates to protect the galleons, but my cities are busy with the above 3

My point is it takes too long to complete these tasks simultaneously, and it is hard to mix between them efficiently.

1) I can't run huge maps on my computer and it wouldn't surprise me to see the optimum expansion strategy differ somewhat from what I've been saying. On huge I would without a doubt choose Darius, 50% seems like it would be incredibly difficult to do in the early rush though.
For your own sanity I think we'll have to assume that my strategy only works for standard sized maps and below (it still works for larger maps but needs to be modified in ways that I'm not overly familiar with).

2) On Terra maps I try and colonise the new world asap. To do this I send a caravel with an explorer over as soon as I get optics and try to pop astro from a hut. To maximise the chance of doing this I try to trade for music/drama/horseback riding first (as they can also pop from huts and interfere with getting astro).
The key is to liberate the cities and form a new colony immediately after you settle them in order to avoid incuring maintenance costs. Keep settling near the resources and gifting the cities to your colony. Not only does this help you avoid those pesky costs, it also halves the contribution of the land to your dom limit and thus lets you claim more resources without going over that limit.
The alternative strategy is to select "no vassals" at the start of the game, this disables colony maintenance penalties, however does not affect the distance cost of the cities, which can be quite large.

3) Yeah, chosing the right thing to do at any time is why I love competitive space games, so many variables compared to some of the other win conditions.

In general

phase 1: WAR
phase 2: library-uni-oxford path
phase 3: various infra - banks etc for WS
phases 4/5: WAR+spread mining inc (the order can vary depending on the tech situation and whether the AI looks likely to get rifling any time soon), the two tend to happen in and around each other in quite a few of games.


I'm working on a writeup now. I'm at around 1000AD finishing up bio, I had to take a break because my writeup was getting less and less detailed as the game progressed, I'll try to finish it in the next couple of days but I have a few things going on that could slow it down.

I will try your strategy in Standard map.

good look with the write up

I'm working on a writeup now. I'm at around 1000AD finishing up bio, I had to take a break because my writeup was getting less and less detailed as the game progressed, I'll try to finish it in the next couple of days but I have a few things going on that could slow it down.

I''m looking forward to this. I'd also appreciate it if you cuold share your thoughts on the optimal end-game tech path. With the type of dominating end-game situation that this type of strategy produces, I find that it makes little sense to factor the Internet in my strategy (everyon's so far behind that there's nothing to steal), yet most articles Ive read on space end-game tech path make it somewhat of a priority. I'm thinking beeline superconductors, then rocketry, industrialism, radio, satellites, plastics, composites, computers, fiber optics, fusion genetics, ecology.

@TMIT

Perhaps there was no glitch. Maybe your banking leaders had bought too many poisonous loan portfolios with too many sub prime loans. Had you built Wall Street yet? Were you at war or Rexing a lot flooding the market with cheap real estate?

Was China in the game? they could have loaned you some gold for an economic bail out....

I''m looking forward to this. I'd also appreciate it if you cuold share your thoughts on the optimal end-game tech path. With the type of dominating end-game situation that this type of strategy produces, I find that it makes little sense to factor the Internet in my strategy (everyon's so far behind that there's nothing to steal), yet most articles Ive read on space end-game tech path make it somewhat of a priority. I'm thinking beeline superconductors, then rocketry, industrialism, radio, satellites, plastics, composites, computers, fiber optics, fusion genetics, ecology.

I think it will help to understand the sort of artificial "game within a game" I'm advocating here. My strategy doesn't help anyone win a tough game that they might otherwise lose. All it really does is help someone turn what would normally be an early dom win into an early space win.
I think that's the key point, once you get underneath the surface, an early space win isn't really all that impressive. I enjoy it alot but I appreciate that it isn't for everyone.

Civ started getting boring for me a while back so I had to look at other ways to keep it interesting. The Hall of Fame provides me with that extra incentive to keep trying new strategies and learning new tricks.
If I played a game to really test myself against the AI, impossing whatever sort of handicaps were required, I'd probably be heavily advocating the use of the Internet project, since almost by definition I'd be struggling in to remain competitive with the AI.

For a HoF game though (and this thread is specifically asking how to win fast), you've already beaten the AI before you even generate the map. You're playing under conditions in which you know you will win. The only question to be asked is "how fast".
Internet is not for winning fast, it is for winning against all odds and so it is understandable to see it discussed in strategy threads on how to beat the AI at various difficulties, and depending on level of skill.

Now that I'm done badmouthing HoF space colony games, I'll throw in some positives.
You'll learn a lot about optimising tech paths, tech trading, worker improvements, city optimisation, econonomy management. All these are things that will help you out in your other games and will almost certainly improve the level at which you play.

To answer your other question: I generally try to leave ecology until last so that I can chop out the last component in 1-2 turns for minimum delay.
If you're prepared to dig through a turn log though I think Dynamics small monarch game is probably the best guide to tech path.
Dynamic-Monarch-Small (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?show=playerlog&dsply=0&entryID=15403)

That sounds a lot like my early games, I am really happy that it worked for you too =)

All I can say is keep playing games, mix up the difficulties or the map sizes so you don't get too bored and just have fun, hopefully you find some of aspects of your gameplay will improve in ways that help in other types of games too.

I look forward to seeing you on the Hall of Fame soon!
If your computer can handle a large map I think you'll be a real threat Large/Noble finish date (1730AD).
What I did to get started was just look for relatively weak finish dates across all the difficulties I was comfortable with and try to pick them off one at a time, gradually my dates got better and better and although I've hit a wall in my ability and won't ever be as good as Dynamic and Ironhead and Kamino it's been a lot of fun and taught me many things about Civ that I never knew before.

If you're not familiar with it, the HoF can be found here http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/ complete with a link to the appropriate mod and the rules for playing a HoF game (no reloads etc)
The no reloads was the biggest change for me and broke me of some very bad habits.

I want to thank you, too. I used the guidelines I learnt from here on the NC XI Catherine on Noble/Normal and got an 1770AD victory. However, the map was not set up for an early rush rather an early REX. I had to delayed my invasion to ADs and wiped out neighbors on my continents a little later than 1000AD (the prime land was already grabbed, of course). However, this gave me huge land (around 51%) and I used it to pushed my beakers to 5K+ in the end combined with Mining spamming and pre-saved GPs triggered GAs (4GAs total, 1 from Taj, 3 from GPs). I built Mids and HG really late and yet still got lucky to get an GE in time. And my beaker just flied once I entered my 1st GA and changed to US/FS/Enman/FM/FR. My science rate never fell down below 80% after that, and the teching was so fast that I barely had time doing the indurstrilization before space ship parts are ready to build... :cool: In the end, the AIs on the other continent barely reached Astro and nobody bothered to send a fleet over, so I landed some spare nukes i built after ship launch the turn before victory. :lol:

@TMIT

Perhaps there was no glitch. Maybe your banking leaders had bought too many poisonous loan portfolios with too many sub prime loans. Had you built Wall Street yet? Were you at war or Rexing a lot flooding the market with cheap real estate?

Was China in the game? they could have loaned you some gold for an economic bail out....

Actually I think my elephant and catapult-men formed a union. I didn't have astronomy yet, so I couldn't outsource key functions abroad and sunk into economic inefficiency and irrelevance.

I did it !!

I have just pulled out a space victory in 1524 AD .. Yay :D

Thanks PaulisKhan you really gave me valuable information and advice. The strategy I used is not far from yours, Playing with Huayana Capac I just went to very early rush with Quechas taking 3 capitals from the beginning which gave me huge advantage, I conquered most of the continent by 100 AD, created Mining at 940 AD and Sid Sushi in 1040 AD and spread them to all my cities, at the end I hit something around 6000 Beakers per turn.

Here are the game settings:
- Monarch / Marathon / Small / Terra Map
- 7 opponents
- No barbs

And I looked at the settings of one of Dynamic games and followed him with the following settings:

- No vessels (to avoid huge costs from captured cities and colonies)
- No city razing (Because capitals will be usually at pop 1 when you attack with Quechas very early in the game and you don't want to raze them and lose the prize)

And my final score was: 275000 :D

Here is a screenshot:

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8789/image1flp.jpg (http://www.imagehosting.com/)

And yes I was researching Future tech 2 in 1524 AD :cool:

Note that PK's advice applies to "late" culture wins too. If you have a chunk of land, cottages + sushi/jewelers (even just jewelers) + at least 2-3 shrines + FS/broadcast towers will get you a culture win in 50-70 turns, tops. Possibly less if you get a strong boost to your culture corps.

Modern culture was explored here a long time ago but you don't see it very often from players...more so from the AI. However, it's not too much hassle compared to space. You auto up some missionaries, spams some temples, and turn the slider up for 50 turns. Done!

@PaulisKhan,

Thanks for this thread. I'm trying the strategy for the first time, on Prince small terra. I'm in 400 BC, with 9 cities (5 conquered, 3 founded), soon to be 12-13, a couple of turns from Forbidden Palace, teching Printing Press at 230 bpt. The first city I conquered in 3850 BC was a perfect GP farm, so I've got it all set up and I've popped 4GS so far.

I pray to the gods and sacrifice a goat.
Getting that Engineer causes me more headaches than anything else because it doesn't mesh well with the rest of the strategies you need to implement.

The problem is, I don't think I can get this GE, without giving up half a dozen GS. The only thing I can think (and I blew this already), would be very early Pyramids, followed by very early HG and a forge Eng, plus Pacifism and pop the GE as my second GP at 600gpp. At this point I need 1500gpp, and that's not gonna happen, since Pyramids and HG are in different cities. I figure I need, at the very least, a first GS for a Cap Academy, but then I'd have to hold off on another academy, and forget about bulbing Education (which I did in this game). Also, I like OR at this stage for all the buildings. Seems like a major sacrifice...

I guess I don't really have a question, unless you have some more wisdom to impart here.

@PaulisKhan,
The problem is, I don't think I can get this GE, without giving up half a dozen GS. The only thing I can think (and I blew this already), would be very early Pyramids, followed by very early HG and a forge Eng, plus Pacifism and pop the GE as my second GP at 600gpp.

That's the problem in a Nutshell.

There is a backdoor emergency procedure you can use.

Go for steel before steam power, build ironworks as quickly as you can.
Running 5Eng Specialists (1 from forge, 4 from IronWorks) might be enough to get you the Eng in time, if it looks like it still won't be quick enough then tech for Assembly Line before RailRoad and get your cities working on factories while you wait.
It does delay your Mining Inc slightly, but at least the time isn't wasted. If you get the factory in your IronWorks city then you have the potential to run 7 Engineers, start a golden age with any GP you have sitting around and that should be enough to pop the GE in a timely fashion.



DeepBlue: Grats! sounds like you have the plan all sorted out now. I look forward to seeing some submissions on the Hall of Fame =D
No city razing is a setting that varies from game to game for me, mostly depending on the difficulty. On Immortal/Deity I just can't afford to keep all of the cities I capture, and enemy culture is more of an issue (in situations where you might want to raze a border city to cut back on cultural pressure).
Vassals or not is also somewhat difficulty dependent, on the higher difficulties where you tech trade a lot WFYABTA can be a real pain in the butt, using vassals as proxy traders is one of the little tricks I've developed to bypass this feature and makes it worthwhile to have them around.

That's the problem in a Nutshell.

There is a backdoor emergency procedure you can use.

Go for steel before steam power, build ironworks as quickly as you can.
Running 5Eng Specialists (1 from forge, 4 from IronWorks) might be enough to get you the Eng in time, if it looks like it still won't be quick enough then tech for Assembly Line before RailRoad and get your cities working on factories while you wait.
It does delay your Mining Inc slightly, but at least the time isn't wasted. If you get the factory in your IronWorks city then you have the potential to run 7 Engineers, start a golden age with any GP you have sitting around and that should be enough to pop the GE in a timely fashion.

All right, I'll try beelining Steel. I'm building the Hagia Sophia in my Pyramids city and running a forge engineer there. The gene pool is a bit polluted, but shouldn't be a problem. I've got a few things I need to do differently the next time - probably in a couple of months, given how long marathon takes. I'm used to normal and quick, and I don't have much time for Civ, which is why I really appreciate that you take the time to write up strategies like this.

No city razing is a setting that varies from game to game for me, mostly depending on the difficulty. On Immortal/Deity I just can't afford to keep all of the cities I capture, and enemy culture is more of an issue (in situations where you might want to raze a border city to cut back on cultural pressure)

It's a real game-breaker on middle levels. It allows you to capture a number of cities early, with very minimal troops. Getting the first city in the 3800's is huge. Lets the capital grow while spamming warriors and then go straight for a library, while the other city spams some workers at the same time.

The problem is, I don't think I can get this GE, without giving up half a dozen GS. The only thing I can think (and I blew this already), would be very early Pyramids, followed by very early HG and a forge Eng, plus Pacifism and pop the GE as my second GP at 600gpp. At this point I need 1500gpp, and that's not gonna happen, since Pyramids and HG are in different cities. I figure I need, at the very least, a first GS for a Cap Academy, but then I'd have to hold off on another academy, and forget about bulbing Education (which I did in this game). Also, I like OR at this stage for all the buildings. Seems like a major sacrifice...


It is not that complicated, I never needed the Pyramid or HG to get an engineer. The pyramids are too much without stone which I rarely get. So here we go simply do the following:
- You only need 3 GS to pulp Phil, education and Liberalism so after receiving the 3rd GS assign an engineer. give early priority for a forge in GPP farm, the AI will usually research Metal Casting for you, if not then research it immediately after paper.
- Just be patient and wait, and to avoid fail from polluted GPP farm remove all scientists+assign the engineer immediately after receiving the 3rd GS.
- Try not to get more than 3 GS before GE because the more GPs you receive the longer it takes to finish a new one.
- If you fail which is extremely unlikely, then go for steel path and Ironworks as PaulisKhan immediately. In fact Steel path is in the same way of Mining Inc path so you can recover in time.

And don't worry about giving up some Great Scientists in the time needed to get a GE, because Mining is huge and getting it early it is much better than 3 extra academies. The trick here is in Mining Inc not in receiving as many GS as you can.

It is not necessary to build research very soon, you can start building research and wealth after Building Mining because it will be much more effective.

DeepBlue: Grats! sounds like you have the plan all sorted out now. I look forward to seeing some submissions on the Hall of Fame =D
No city razing is a setting that varies from game to game for me, mostly depending on the difficulty. On Immortal/Deity I just can't afford to keep all of the cities I capture, and enemy culture is more of an issue (in situations where you might want to raze a border city to cut back on cultural pressure).
Vassals or not is also somewhat difficulty dependent, on the higher difficulties where you tech trade a lot WFYABTA can be a real pain in the butt, using vassals as proxy traders is one of the little tricks I've developed to bypass this feature and makes it worthwhile to have them around.

Thanks , I started submitting some games to the HOF I have 4 games in there so far but non with early space victory. I am planning to setup a new one and aim for a early space HOF game .. sounds fun.

No razing I was forced for it with Queches because I couldn't capture those capitals very early in the game without it. With city razing it was very annoying and I had to wait outside those cities waiting to grow to level 2.

No vassals, I used this just to capture cities and then forget about them, but to be honest on Terra vassals are better.

Well, I was on vacation, away from my computer for a while, but I just managed to finish that first game. 1512 AD on prince small terra. I made a lotta mistakes throughout, though. I'll try and go for an hof spot this month or next. I need a specific goal to get me going through another 500t.

Thx, PaulisKhan.

I'm glad this thread got bumbed a bit; a very educational read. :)

Not gonna say this is easy, not at all. But with quecha rushes you can get any victory fast.
Getting an early space race victory like this with a civ like America or any civ without a good early UU is something I find a lot more interesting.
Anyone that could get 1500AD space race win without a good early rush civ?

My most recent submission was a 1486 space colony with Gandhi whose UU is not so effective at rushing.

This player was feeling pretty confident right from the start, as he waited for 19 turns before founding his first city.

I sent a post accidentally in a wrong place, so now I'm editing it, because I don't know how to remove the whole thing.

ok im kinda a newb, but could he have gotten it really soon by setting his town to turn hammers into beakers and chopped down a bunch of forest?

It all depends on the game, the settings, the map, the AI, the difficulty settings etc etc etc etc.

Financial helps.
Organised helps.
Marathon helps.
Having one big religious block helps.
Huge map helps.
Alot of land to settle early helps.
Low difficulty setting helps.
Micro helps.
Luck helps.
Early rushing unit helps.

You have all this at the same time? You get a ridiculously early Space Win.
There is no secret, no special way, no cheating/hacking just all of the above.