G-Minor 187

WastinTime said:

I suggest going with max opponents. that's more free cities and more cities close to your capital. IIRC, on Prince, the AI will leave the capital empty briefly, and Sitting Bull starts with a warrior, so you should be able to start the game with 2 capitals! unless normal speed is just too fast. I don't have a lot of experience on Prince/normal, so I'm not sure.

The current Deity record is 50 AD and that was done with max opponents where each AI starts with 2 cities.

I would just research Bronze and let the Dog's out. Let the AI hook up metals.

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Actually, I killed 5. I miscounted. 2 remaining, so I think I did have the maximum available. I could do better optimization in a couple of areas, the order of target civs I warred on was inefficient. I also should have turned on no razing, lost some time there.

TheSunIsDark said:

Probably too fast to walk your starting warrior into their capitals. Five turns with a 3-hammer start, eight with a 2-hammer start. Although, as it's the HOF, might have to risk it.

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Yeah, I couldn't find them fast enough. Maybe with some more tries I could do that. Taking a break from this though before I tackle again, trying for a non-inca cultural victory for the regular HoF charts. Not happy with my first run, though.

TalladegaKnight said:

Yep. That's what testing revealed for me too. Best bet so far is research BW 1st. Whip 2 dogs out and you can get 2 AI caps if close. I think 4 opponents is better than 7 from my test play throughs.

I was mistaken earlier, the current HOF date is 300 BC. He oracled COL, wiped out 3 civs and settled a bunch of cities. Did not see what he used to conquer the ai's with. 1st ai was with his initial warrior. He did it with an imperialistic leader on a Pangaea map.

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With 7 opponents I needed 62% of the land. What are you finding with 4 opponents? I had plenty of targets to choose from, just got bogged down in areas.

mattie_p said:

With 7 opponents I needed 62% of the land. What are you finding with 4 opponents? I had plenty of targets to choose from, just got bogged down in areas.

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With more opponents, the ai tech quicker due to bonuses of known ai having techs. I had to abandon a few runs because the ai got to archery too quickly. While dogs are good for choking, they suck at taking cities with archers. 4 opponents is 68% of land. Not a huge difference. Maybe 1 more city. Building a settler vs the units needed to take ai cities. I think building cities is cheaper. So less ai cities to take the better.

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TalladegaKnight said:

With more opponents, the ai tech quicker due to bonuses of known ai having techs. I had to abandon a few runs because the ai got to archery too quickly. While dogs are good for choking, they suck at taking cities with archers. 4 opponents is 68% of land. Not a huge difference. Maybe 1 more city. Building a settler vs the units needed to take ai cities. I think building cities is cheaper. So less ai cities to take the better.

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That is an interesting perspective, and may well prove to be correct. I guess we will see as more entries come in.

mattie_p said:

That is an interesting perspective, and may well prove to be correct. I guess we will see as more entries come in.

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Fell flat on my face. Not being gifted at counting I underestimated the number of cities needed.

Selected Al's that started without hunting and mining. Tech was mining-bronze working. Whipped out 3 dogs immediately. Killed 3 out of 4 Al's. Feeling good about the game. Got the 4th ai choked up with 1 city. He gets some lucky rolls and wipes out a few chokers. He picks up 2 more cities that block off a big chunk of land. No problems I think. Just mass produce settlers and start taking barb cities. Get myself 25 cities. Measly 5% away from domination with not enough city sites left. Ahhhhhh.

Strategy was good. Not aggressive enough with the final choke and keeping that ai down. Should have teched a little further to HBR to grab his cities.

Will try again with same ai's and tech to HBR to take some cities.

How come the great plains map give out some crappy caps? All of the ai's caps were unimpressive. Razed them all.

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TalladegaKnight said:

Fell flat on my face. Not being gifted at counting I underestimated the number of cities needed.

Selected Al's that started without hunting and mining. Tech was mining-bronze working. Whipped out 3 dogs immediately. Killed 3 out of 4 Al's. Feeling good about the game. Got the 4th ai choked up with 1 city. He gets some lucky rolls and wipes out a few chokers. He picks up 2 more cities that block off a big chunk of land. No problems I think. Just mass produce settlers and start taking barb cities. Get myself 25 cities. Measly 5% away from domination with not enough city sites left. Ahhhhhh.

Strategy was good. Not aggressive enough with the final choke and keeping that ai down. Should have teched a little further to HBR to grab his cities.

Will try again with same ai's and tech to HBR to take some cities.

How come the great plains map give out some crappy caps? All of the ai's caps were unimpressive. Razed them all.

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If it helps, I had 28 cities at the end of the game. I had captured stonehenge early, which helped with land area, but I definitely needed it. I could have done it with maybe one or two fewer, I think (last couple of cities didn't pop their borders yet to the BFC), but was distracted by my final war in timing it.

mattie_p - looking forward to seeing how you do with the Challenger games

mattie_p said:

If it helps, I had 28 cities at the end of the game. I had captured stonehenge early, which helped with land area, but I definitely needed it. I could have done it with maybe one or two fewer, I think (last couple of cities didn't pop their borders yet to the BFC), but was distracted by my final war in timing it.

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Thx. I think 25 cities should do it too, maybe fewer pending placement. Try #2 is going much better. Increased the ai count to 7(no mining or hunting). At 1440 BC, 4 out of 7 ai dead to the dogs. HBR in 3 turns to wipe out the remaining 2 and cripple the last. Not sure what the last 3 are doing. Only 4 cities between all of them at 1440 BC. One of them I have harrased stealing workers and razing their 2nd city. But the other 2 have remained untouched so far by the dogs.Oracled COL for quick border pops and to run merchants if need be. Stonehenge captured. Hopefully finish up tomorrow. Why can't SB be imperialistic?

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Finished my game. I got a 375 BC finish date.

Capital had 2 wheat, 1 gold. Initial build was worker-warrior-Dog(whipped)-Dog(whipped)-Dog-Settler

Initial tech path was Mining-Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry.

Oracled COL for running merchants and artists. After that went HBR and shut down research. Did not tech IW, Masonry, Math or Alpha.

Death by dogs to Willem, DeGaulle, Lincoln, Ramesses (thx for Stonehenge and holy city).

Built a small HA army to kill Washington (thx for the Great Wall) and Isabella (thx for double holy city). Left Roosevelt alive with 1 city, but he was constantly harassed the whole game (razed 1 city and stole a bunch of workers).

After the HA army just went full on settlers everywhere. Workers were busy building roads for quick movement to the city sites. 22 cities netted 95% pop and 67% land. Had 2 more settlers 1 turn away from settling and 2 more city border pops in 1 turn just in case.

The dogs really worked well here. I got a lot of mileage out of them. Philo helped some, got 2 GP (settled 1, shrined another) and 1 GM (trade mission). Protective not so much, I think I built 1 archer despite having Stonehenge and barracks in the core cities. SB's UU outshone his traits here.

Very impressive, TalladegaKnight. Congratulations! I'm going to have to step up my game, it appears. (I already knew I needed to do better).

Results:

G-Minor 187 - Domination, Prince, Ancient, Small, Normal, Great Plains, Native America (check options)
1^st TalladegaKnight 375 BC
2^nd mattie_p 800 AD
3^rd raistlin1967 1600 AD

Congratulations!

Congrats to Sumorex for beating my time. He got 475 BC. Why didn't he qualify for the gauntlet? I didn't look at his settings.

I think I might have had barbarians off... looking at stats I don't see any animal kills /sigh I bet I read "no barbarians" and thought that had to be the setting rather than "Must not be checked".

Grats y'all though!