Breaking 3.2 Million Score with Sushi

[T-hawk]

Hi all,

I'd like to share my report of a game that passed the mark of 3.2 million score. The full writeup is here: http://www.dos486.com/civ4/sushi/ . I'll use this thread to give an executive summary of the key points and for discussion.

The setup was a Big & Small map, for lots of tiny islands and seafood resources to power Sid's Sushi. I think Darius is the best leader, for the two best economic traits, solid UB, and fine UU for rushing. I also think Immortal difficulty might be better than Deity. (More details in the full report.)

On marathon speed, build two warriors as fast as possible to start worker stealing. You can get something like five workers by turn 50 on marathon speed. One problem can be making peace with the AIs. It seems that their willingness to make peace is heavily influenced by power rating, so kill scouts whenever you can (they start with three on Immortal), and research techs like The Wheel and Bronze Working for power.

Settle just one city for horses (roll a new map if there are none), and start Immortal rushing. Make sure to cut off copper ASAP if the AIs get it connected. Capture capitals and good cities, but raze anything that doesn't have at least two good resources. I don't think it is necessary to take vassals. Leave a couple AIs unconquered and make friends with them by religion, and just trade for whatever they research. As you expand, do build cottages for economy, and courthouses.

Make sure to get the Great Lighthouse and Colossus. The Oracle isn't mandatory but does help a lot, with Currency as a good target. The Pyramids you'll want eventually too, but capturing them is much better than building. Keep an eye on AI building progress, on the espionage screen by looking at the Sabotage Production number. Other wonders to build later include the Mausoleum, Hanging Gardens. The Great Library is helpful but not mandatory, as are Notre Dame, Angkor Wat, Sankore, Hagia Sophia, and Spiral Minaret. One wonder that can be very helpful is Versailles; you don't want to spend research in that direction, but keep an eye on AI progress (you will have tons of EP from all the courthouses) and look to steal Theology and Divine Right.

Mid game, go for Banking as your research target before Paper and Education. With the Pyramids, you can run Representation and Mercantilism together for 6 beakers per city -- and you get that for *free* rather than 4200 hammers sunk into universities and Oxford. (Do build Oxford soon of course, but it's not essential to get it ASAP.)

Then the next target is Sid's Sushi. That means researching to Corporation and Medicine, most probably using Liberalism for the latter. Use the Economics Great Merchant to found the corporation. While researching, get some settlers expanding out to the islands on the Big & Small map, claiming anything with a seafood resource. A good approach is to build the Globe Theater at your highest food site and use that city to whip settlers while other cities grow vertically.

Sid's Sushi should produce 25+ food, up to 40 if you can control every seafood resource on the map. Once you have Sid's Sushi established, expand it as fast as possible. Whip executives even at the empty box penalty. The limiting factor on speed to the end of the game is expanding Sushi to every city, so the faster you can do that the more score you will get. Each executive takes a turn to load onto a boat and can't spread until the next turn, so the theoretical limit is 5 cities every 2 turns. Hit that limit! And make sure to stay far enough ahead on building settlers so that the executives always have ready targets. Once Sushi is expanded to a couple dozen cities, every city should be building a settler (they come very fast with Sushi food) or whipping an executive.

Fill up the map with settlers. Aim for 120 or more cities. Build as many cities as possible. Don't build one city in the center of an island if you can fit two by building on each end.

Almost every Great Person should go into starting Golden Ages, which are the one use of GP that scales up on bigger maps. A couple exceptions might be the capital academy or a shrine, or maybe bulbing Education. But don't settle any or build more than one academy. I can consistently get up to the 4-man GA, plus the Taj Mahal.

Avoid Astronomy. The unexpired Colossus can earn over 2000 commerce per turn - remember that on ocean tiles it gives TWO commerce because it enables the Financial bonus. Yes, moving settlers around by galley gets tiresome, but it's worth it for that kind of income. Fortunately, caravels can carry executives.

After Medicine, the next urgent goal is Communism and the Kremlin. The Kremlin is godly: it will produce over 25,000 hammers by the end of the game. (100 cities x 6 population whipped per city x 45 extra hammers per pop = 27,000, and each of those factors can go higher.)

Here's my build order in all these island cities. Grow to size 4, whip the granary, and let the Kremlin-generated overflow complete the Organized-discounted lighthouse. Grow back to size 4, whip the Organized-discounted courthouse, and let the overflow complete a police Immortal. (Avoid Horseback Riding so that cheap police Immortals are always available.) Then let the city grow vertically, remember you need the population for score.

These island cities will need markets, grocers, and harbors for income, happy, health, and the merchant specialist slots. The best way to build all of these is not whipping or cash rushing. It's Mining Inc. This corp should produce 20 or more hammers, even up to 40 by buying resources. Whip and spread Mining Inc executives as fast as possible, same as you did for Sushi. Yeah, 3 population for a whipped exec does hurt, but it's much better than whipping 7-10 population for all of those buildings.

You'll need to stay under the domination limit while your score continues to increase. Islands are the priority, since they take only three or four land tiles per city. Give away mainland cities if you must to stay under domination. Build some cuirassiers or cavalry, and conquer back all the border cities you can reach on the very last turn to slingshot past domination.

To crack 3 million score, you need a population of around 4,000 on a standard size map and to win by roughly turn 500 (1000 AD). I have a score calculator here that can help you figure that out. http://www.dos486.com/civ4/index/calc.shtml

Good luck and enjoy!

[georgjorge]

...and Attacko was right all along: "Kill all scouts" is the key to winning games

[srad]

Nice writeup, thanks!

[ZPV]

T-Hawk: it's "War Success" from killing scouts that lets you get a free ceasefire - scouts don't contribute to power. (1 worker stolen + 1 scout killed are enough if you don't lose any units)

[Seraiel]

Hi This is what I think towards your strategy article:

Originally Posted by T-hawk

The setup was a Big & Small map, for lots of tiny islands and seafood resources to power Sid's Sushi. I think Darius is the best leader, for the two best economic traits, solid UB, and fine UU for rushing. I also think Immortal difficulty might be better than Deity. (More details in the full report.)

I have to disagree with Darius there. In your Writeup, you were a lot slower than I was in my game with HC (Signature) in the beginning. Oracle Currency can be achieved in 2200 BC with HC, you missed it in 1500 BC, which is 70 turns later, or 50% later!

No discussion about that Immortal is better for high Scores then Deity. Immortal is so much easier then Deity and gives only slightly less points... I. e. using Liberalism to Slingshot Medicine in 280 AD (your game) wouldn't be possible on Deity, some AI would have teched it by then.

On marathon speed, build two warriors as fast as possible to start worker stealing. You can get something like five workers by turn 50 on marathon speed. One problem can be making peace with the AIs. It seems that their willingness to make peace is heavily influenced by power rating, so kill scouts whenever you can (they start with three on Immortal), and research techs like The Wheel and Bronze Working for power.

Disagree on both of those. The Wheel, BW (and in your game, you even researched AH) are too many Beakers not towards Currency, and they don't help at all, because it's War Success which makes you get peace, not those techs.

I don't think it is necessary to take vassals. Leave a couple AIs unconquered and make friends with them by religion, and just trade for whatever they research. As you expand, do build cottages for economy, and courthouses.

If you have the chance to take a Vassal, take it. A vassal fastens up the research so immensly, there is no comparison for that. Also, Courthouses are good, but they're ony that good because you played with Darius. With HC, one will want a Forge before those and building Cottages + having Currency + getting Gold from Techtrade is usually enough to allow some crazy expansion, like 20+ cities at 1500 BC (T200) .

Make sure to get the Great Lighthouse and Colossus. The Oracle isn't mandatory but does help a lot, with Currency as a good target. The Pyramids you'll want eventually too, but capturing them is much better than building. Keep an eye on AI building progress, on the espionage screen by looking at the Sabotage Production number. Other wonders to build later include the Mausoleum, Hanging Gardens. The Great Library is helpful but not mandatory, as are Notre Dame, Angkor Wat, Sankore, Hagia Sophia, and Spiral Minaret. One wonder that can be very helpful is Versailles; you don't want to spend research in that direction, but keep an eye on AI progress (you will have tons of EP from all the courthouses) and look to steal Theology and Divine Right.

I agree on the first Paragraph (though I find Oracle mandatory, as it's the most powerful Wonder of all imho) , especially agree on the MoM and the HGs, but I don't find AW, UoS and SM worth their cost, because they need Temples, and Temples are too huge of a investement. Using those for Failgold probably is better, as it lets you reach Sushi earlier.

Mid game, go for Banking as your research target before Paper and Education. With the Pyramids, you can run Representation and Mercantilism together for 6 beakers per city -- and you get that for *free* rather than 4200 hammers sunk into universities and Oxford. (Do build Oxford soon of course, but it's not essential to get it ASAP.)

This one will get problematic on Deity. If one wants to Slingshot Medicine or at least Bio with Liberalism, there's no way to research Guilds onesself. Of course, if an AI does that, trade for it, Banking is awesome, Mercantilism is better than nothing, but it's also not as good as Free Market (in terms of Research) which is only 1 Tech away from Banks if one went the Education route, which one has to on Deity.

Also, keep in mind: Your route took you longer to reach Sushi than the route I take in my games, and Deity tech-trade makes nothing at that point anymore. Maybe trading for Engineering, ok, but that would have delayed Sushi by sth. like 8T. In my game I was able to reach Sushi in the BCs, so roughly 200y earlier than in your game.

This is because of playing Incans, researching far less in the beginning and because of Oracling -> Currency so much earlier. Going Education after that is just something that's needed on Deity I think, because AI will reach Liberalism at about 300 BC, and one has to have Scientific Method by then.

Almost every Great Person should go into starting Golden Ages, which are the one use of GP that scales up on bigger maps. A couple exceptions might be the capital academy or a shrine, or maybe bulbing Education. But don't settle any or build more than one academy. I can consistently get up to the 4-man GA, plus the Taj Mahal.

Another disagree to this one (sorry ) . One should use the GA from Music to start the first GA, then create as many GPs as possible, use 1 GS for building an Academy and the rest for bulbing. Otherwise, Sushi will be later and not in the BCs. Also, I often find myself then taking the GM from Economics to start a 2nd GA and create another GM easily while researching Corps. Takes good planning, but works.

Avoid Astronomy. The unexpired Colossus can earn over 2000 commerce per turn - remember that on ocean tiles it gives TWO commerce because it enables the Financial bonus. Yes, moving settlers around by galley gets tiresome, but it's worth it for that kind of income. Fortunately, caravels can carry executives.

Partly agree and partly disagree. On Huge maps, one cannot avoid Astronomy as that would mean missing out too many good Islands on which one wants to settle. For standart size, this might be good though.

After Medicine, the next urgent goal is Communism and the Kremlin. The Kremlin is godly: it will produce over 25,000 hammers by the end of the game. (100 cities x 6 population whipped per city x 45 extra hammers per pop = 27,000, and each of those factors can go higher.)

Kremlin is godly. It's even so godly, that I researched Communism before Corps and delayed Sushi by that. Taking this order of research is something one has to think about imho, because once Sushi is there, "the Whip" is so heavy, that one needs the Kremlin, and that one takes about 20-30 turns to be built.


A lot of disagreeing, but don't forget, I only quoted the parts I disagree on. Most of the guide is well written, and a special GZ to you beating the 3M points!

Regards, Seraiel

[T-hawk]

I noticed I didn't mention anything about civics, which I'd like to cover.

Government - Representation via Pyramids for research up to Railroad. Universal Suffrage later once you are finished whipping, to cash rush executives.

Legal - Bureaucracy for most of the game as usual. Nationhood is the best choice late, both for no upkeep and for the barracks happy. (Free Speech is bad, you don't want its culture stealing land towards domination.)

Labor - Slavery most of the time; you can flip to Caste during Golden Ages. Late game you must stop whipping to let population grow, and you need Caste to hire all the surplus as merchants.

Economic - Mercantilism ASAP, for the synergy with Rep. Free Market once the corporation starts expanding, ideally after 10-20 corporate branches.

Religion - Organized Religion most of the time, unless you need Pacifism to push out particular Great People.

There is a big changeover point, when you are done researching and whipping, so it's time to let the cities grow and rush with cash instead. Aim for a Golden Age at this time. I changed from Rep-Bureau-Slavery-Pacifism to US-Nationhood-Caste-OR all at the same time, when Pacifism got me the GP for the 4-man Golden Age.

[T-hawk]

Seraiel, it is fine if we disagree, that is what forums are for.

I like Darius, because I think Organized is so much better than Industrious. It saves so many hammers, 270 per city on the courthouse and lighthouse. Industrious would build forges to try to catch up, which costs an extra 180 hammers. (I didn't build forges with Darius.) The forge can catch up with that 270+180 hammers only after 1800 more base hammers. That is a long time, 60 turns with Mining Inc or 13 Kremlin whips. The game will end first.

But remember that Organized saves half civic upkeep, which puts it over the top. You don't need to Oracle Currency so early when Organized is already saving as much expense as Currency would produce. And half civic upkeep is 700+ per turn in the later game, which Industrious can't match at all. Finally the EP from the cheap courthouses is also nice, that let me steal Divine Right immediately, and Versailles saved hundreds of expenses.

Also don't forget Darius's UB. About half of my cities were over the health cap, so the Apothecary provided 2/3 extra population in them, which is 50 pop = 37500 score. Not a lot but more than the Terrace can do.

Of course rushing with immortals is slower than quechuas, but the AIs develop the cities for you in the meantime. I conquered most of the cities at size 3 to 5, many came with a granary, plus Stonehenge. I agree you might need quechuas on Deity to rush before AIs hook up copper, but Immortals do fine on Immortal (of course! )

Vassals for researching: You have to get to Feudalism to enable vassals, right? What units do you use for conquering at this time? I would rather not build a new medieval army instead of expanding with settlers.

I don't find AW, UoS and SM worth their cost, because they need Temples, and Temples are too huge of a investement.

I got lucky that Ramesses built the Apostolic Palace in my religion fairly quickly. The other important part of building a temple is the priest specialist slot for Mercantilism. That means the temple provided +4 hammers (with Angkor Wat), so with Org Rel, the temple paid for its own cost in 48 turns, plus gave happy. That seemed worthwhile in the medieval era (it's not in the corporation era), and then so were UoS and SM. I agree that this line of play is a small advantage at most, and you could easily go without it. Especially with Industrious Forges giving the engineer slot, then the priest specialist slot is much less important.

Kremlin is godly. It's even so godly, that I researched Communism before Corps and delayed Sushi by that.

That I'm not sure about. I think you need to get Sushi to start spreading as soon as possible. You can whip executives without Kremlin for a little while. That is early enough that the cities will have time to grow back. Probably not a big swing either way though.

Your post says, you play by HoF Rules, besides that you reload for "misclicks" . Learn not to Misclick, and you'd have a 3M+ Score in HoF now

It stresses me out. I have tried the HoF mod, and I play twice as slowly with it, because I check everything so many extra times before ending any turn. This game actually took me "only" 65 hours, not multiple hundreds. I would rather relax and play on my own terms than care about a scoreboard on some website. But we would not have anything in common to talk about if I ignored HoF rules and played as Darius of HRE with domination disabled.

On war success: I understand, but I have also seen several times where an AI would not sign peace, but then immediately would right after I researched a power-providing tech. I don't think those were all coincidence that I happened to produce a warrior on the same turn. I'll see if I can find an example save to demonstrate.

[Tachywaxon]

Originally Posted by T-hawk

On war success: I understand, but I have also seen several times where an AI would not sign peace, but then immediately would right after I researched a power-providing tech. I don't think those were all coincidence that I happened to produce a warrior on the same turn. I'll see if I can find an example save to demonstrate.

War success has its influence, but power rate has its great impact too as you mentioned.
I remembered my tests I did while back on emperor; a special case where Alex was refusing any CF/peace treaty. I worldbuilded a couple more warriors within the same turn and then he was willing to talk about peace (power rate of from 0.1 to ~0.4). So, that is the main problem on deity with worker stealing, AI's power early is so crushing that cases of cease fires/peace treaties are extremely rare (but I encounted some). And one has no time (on random settings) to raise an army just to make peace. Expansion is far more important. But on cases like yours where immortal army is raised, then peace may come along.

But if you wish to capture the two workers on deity, you have either to capture both on the same tile (quite rare) or capture one via normal path and the second via road from A to B bug. ("Road to" between cities). That bug which push the worker to do his task before considering immediate danger will push him into shark's jaw. With experience, it is easier to perform.
(If you don't know this trick, then this is a make up for the great tip about sabotage production I found on your site two months ago).

Somehow I feel scouts are not included in power value just like their military value is zero in demographics. But I don't remember well.

[cseanny]

Imo this is by far the most impressive high score write up . You don't know how nice it is to see someone using a civilization that isn't unanimously regarded as broken. So,........ VERY nicely played. Personally, I don't care what level is played......after all, the goal is to get the highest score right?

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by T-hawk

Seraiel, it is fine if we disagree, that is what forums are for.

I like Darius, because I think Organized is so much better than Industrious. It saves so many hammers, 270 per city on the courthouse and lighthouse. Industrious would build forges to try to catch up, which costs an extra 180 hammers. (I didn't build forges with Darius.) The forge can catch up with that 270+180 hammers only after 1800 more base hammers. That is a long time, 60 turns with Mining Inc or 13 Kremlin whips. The game will end first.

1800 aren't that much with the Infrastructure Sushi-Cities need.

HC:

(Terrace (Granary) , but that one doesn't count as it's built without a Forge) .
Forge = 180
Courthouse = 360
Grocer = 450
Market = 450
In some cities one will want a University and a Bank, for Universities one needs Libraries, but it's actually only "at least 8 cities" (less on smaller Maps than Huge) but I won't count those as you suppose Banks to be superflous (though I don't think so) and Universities one definately only needs for Oxford (which is less stronger than I though, one could even skip it imho to save Pop)
Harbor = 240
Aequeduct = 300
Lighthouse = 180

Those are already 2000 . What I didn't even consider were Hospitals and Supermarkets. The Forge only costs 180 for Incans, so it would have payed out 2.5 times already. Now lets see Darius:

Monument (only in cities without Sushi, so I won't count it)
Granary (again not taken into account)
Courthouse = 180
Grocer = 450
Market = 450
Harbor = 240
Aequeduct = 300
Lighthouse = 90

Those are 1710 so even with being more expensive, the Forge would nearly have payed for itself. Especially in your case, as you built Hospitals which are tremendously expensive, but I can see a point for those. At least all your cities having a Bank / University / Hospital should have had a Forge.

Now let's see the real Hammers between HC with building Forges and Darius with and without one:

HC = 1586 Hammers after only the most necessary buildings including the Forge as a 2nd build, so less than Darius without Forges.
Darius = 1710 Hammers without a Forge and only 90 more with a Forge, so the Forge pays out after 3 turns of Mininc Inc!

Think about that.

But remember that Organized saves half civic upkeep, which puts it over the top. You don't need to Oracle Currency so early when Organized is already saving as much expense as Currency would produce. And half civic upkeep is 700+ per turn in the later game, which Industrious can't match at all. Finally the EP from the cheap courthouses is also nice, that let me steal Divine Right immediately, and Versailles saved hundreds of expenses.

Ok, let's take your Numbers and talk about Endgame Civic Upkeep is 1400 with HC (I find that a little over the top as that is only with OR, with PAC it's lower, but doesn't matter) and 700 with Darius. Now every Incan City has already saved 1710 - 1586 = 124 . One has about 150 cities (standart sized map) so that is already 19k . Now every Incan City is also producing 30 * 1,25 - 30 = 7,5 more with Mining Inc than one of your cities not having a Forge. 150 cities * 7,5 = 1125 . So the Incan Forges make already more profit than the Persian cities not having one .

This does not even take into account, that a city has base which also get multiplied and it doesn't take into account that IND helps one get Wonders more easily. And earlier, the more Failgold makes up for not being ORG, so IND definately > ORG imho.

Also don't forget Darius's UB. About half of my cities were over the health cap, so the Apothecary provided 2/3 extra population in them, which is 50 pop = 37500 score. Not a lot but more than the Terrace can do.

As you say, not much, but I give that point. Anyway, a Terrace saves lots of Monuments and helps greatly in the early game.

Of course rushing with immortals is slower than quechuas, but the AIs develop the cities for you in the meantime. I conquered most of the cities at size 3 to 5, many came with a granary, plus Stonehenge. I agree you might need quechuas on Deity to rush before AIs hook up copper, but Immortals do fine on Immortal (of course! )

That's the point, you played on Immortal. Most Deity players say Immortals are "meh" because one runs into Spears. I've tried Immortal Rushes myself, they are possible on Deity if starting out with Horses in the BFC (so one has to be very lucky) , if one pillages the Metals in T1 of the war and if one only plays against peaceful Civs, as those will build less Metal Units (= Spears) and more Archers.

Anyway, Immortal Rushing comes too late and cannot catch up for what is possible with Incans. With Incans, one has 15+ cities at 2000 BC if one wants (normally one can't pay for it, but it is possible in some games) . Now how many do you have with Darius if rushing on Deity with him? 1

Ok, that's unfair, but talk about 1500 BC when Darius has rushed too, how many cities do you have? About the same probably as with HC, but, difference is: With Darius you have to throw away 4/5 games because having started without Horses , it takes time to find that out. Then you will fail many Immortal Rushes because of the opponent having Metals and having built Spears (that's again 2/5 games out of the 1 game where you started with Horses) so we're at 8% of all games already in which you'll succeed. With Incans, you know if a game will make it after half an hour, with Darius, it'll take twice the time and because you can only take 8% of the games, that means 6.25h wasted / approach!

And then, you won't get those early Wonders you want, because on every map, it can happen that the Pyramids are built somewhere too far away. Getting every wonder is more difficult and you have to play 10 times the games. Also, the Snowball isn't that big, as by the time Darius has it's cities, Incan-Cities already have a Granary + a Forge / Library / Barracks.

And cities one conquers with the Inca-Rush are also size 4, sometimes 5 or even 6, wonder that yours weren't way larger.

Vassals for researching: You have to get to Feudalism to enable vassals, right? What units do you use for conquering at this time? I would rather not build a new medieval army instead of expanding with settlers.

It's normally realtively easy to conquer someone at the time some AI researches Vassalage, Units don't matter. I prefer Maces or XBows, but I've also done good with Elephants or even LBs at that time. HAs are definately not the way to go, those suck badly at least in my games, where AI tends to build 7 spears out of 8 units, Elephants are also tricky, because even Shock-Elephants have a hard-time against spears. Drill II XBs / LBs conquer even Hills cities with 2:1 easily, Maces have an even easier time, and I'm not even talking of how easy it is when one takes siege. Most important is, to do this before the AI got Engineering, because then, this is a pain, but before this, it's piece of cake usually.

I just wanted to point this out, as a totally different playstyle that probably is just as good as any other, but maybe, it's better. I've run an Oracle-Feudalism testgame, I was exactly as fast as with Oracle-Currency on the way to Sushi, no difference at all. If one gets a Vassal really early, like 1500 - 1000 BC, he can research Guilds + Banking for onesself, building 20+ LBs / XBs / Maces are between 2k and 3k , that's missing 7-10 Settlers, but one will conquer at least 1 great and 2-4 good cities with those. If one does this by the time AI researches Feudalism, one at least will have a Vassal who can research Steampower, Railroad, etc., all the expensive Techs on the way to Mining Inc!

You cannot imagine how much easier / faster the game with Vassals is, also, I think you could have made a few hundred k's more in the end, if you had checked if the Civs you attacked were already willing to capitulate, maybe you'll wanna reload for that

Also, one point you completely missed out in your post (I think, I don't remember it atm. tbh) is that one needs good research partners for reaching Sushi-early. One notices this with Ramesses (maybe) if one reads your complete report about your game. In my last game, I build Shwedagon Paya, went Free Religion, and wasn't really able to get AI to friendly with that, so I had no research Partners at all! This slowed me down by at least 200y, just look in Replay #3 how much I traded there, so many I didn't have to put up myself.

Again, an early Vassal, and trading is garantueed

I got lucky that Ramesses built the Apostolic Palace in my religion fairly quickly. The other important part of building a temple is the priest specialist slot for Mercantilism. That means the temple provided +4 hammers (with Angkor Wat), so with Org Rel, the temple paid for its own cost in 48 turns, plus gave happy. That seemed worthwhile in the medieval era (it's not in the corporation era), and then so were UoS and SM. I agree that this line of play is a small advantage at most, and you could easily go without it. Especially with Industrious Forges giving the engineer slot, then the priest specialist slot is much less important.

Good Math! Will think about temples + AW more then last time. Only problem I still have with AW and building those temples is, that it's just so many which could be so much to reach Sushi earlier. Sometimes, the immediate benefit is better than saying "this will pay for it in 48 turns", if one delays Sushi by that decision for only 5 turns, it won't have been worth it because then, one would have gotten so much more pop that one could have whipped the temple for free.

That I'm not sure about. I think you need to get Sushi to start spreading as soon as possible. You can whip executives without Kremlin for a little while. That is early enough that the cities will have time to grow back. Probably not a big swing either way though.

I wonder... 8 turns earlier Sushi is probably more pop than saved by an 8 turns earlier Kremlin... That thing is so enormously powerful, Sushi probably is even more powerful. One should think to save a GE for Kremlin (easy to get 2 of them if one gets Pryamids + HGs in one city + a Forge) .

I wonder if someone could do Math on that, Communism takes about 8 turns, now, 8 turns earlier 40 pop saved if whipping 5 execs each turn, 8 turns earlier Sushi? If cities grow every 2nd turn (they do at that time) one has to have 20 cities to get more than 40 pop, so Sushi before Kremlin sounds more logical to me. Don't know if this is right.

It stresses me out. I have tried the HoF mod, and I play twice as slowly with it, because I check everything so many extra times before ending any turn. This game actually took me "only" 65 hours, not multiple hundreds. I would rather relax and play on my own terms than care about a scoreboard on some website. But we would not have anything in common to talk about if I ignored HoF rules and played as Darius of HRE with domination disabled.

On war success: I understand, but I have also seen several times where an AI would not sign peace, but then immediately would right after I researched a power-providing tech. I don't think those were all coincidence that I happened to produce a warrior on the same turn. I'll see if I can find an example save to demonstrate.

I understand now, playing with more concentration can be really stressing at some times. I remember the times where I still want to play, but don't, because I know, that I cannot concentrate anymore. If not playing for HoF, one could simply reload from the time one wants and where the errors started to happen.

Last point, Tachywaxon already pointed out. Again, with Incans, one would not have to care anyway, as one can annihilate the Civs one steals from ;P

Regards, Sera

[Krill]

IIUC, the point is to get as high a score as possible. Therefore, the difficulty is a variable: doesn't matter if something won't work on Deity if it produces the highest score on Immortal.

[T-hawk]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

At least all your cities having a Bank / University / Hospital should have had a Forge.

I didn't explain correctly. All my early cities (founded pre Sushi) did get a forge. I meant I didn't build forges in island cities. This could have been wrong - I didn't realize early how good Mining Inc was going to be. Forges might indeed be correct, and the forge happy might also let you go bank before market.

So Darius can just build forges anyway and Organized still stays ahead on hammers. The forge and courthouse trait savings are equal but Organized still gets the cheap lighthouse. Also, the timing matters: you don't really care how fast a forge completes, but it makes a big difference to whip the courthouse at size 4 rather than size 8, getting it sooner saves 400 gold per city (say 8 turns x 50 cost of Sushi.)

And earlier, the more Failgold makes up for not being ORG, so IND definately > ORG imho.

This could be something I'm missing. I have never tried to do a failgold economy.

With Darius you have to throw away 4/5 games because having started without Horses , it takes time to find that out. Then you will fail many Immortal Rushes because of the opponent having Metals and having built Spears (that's again 2/5 games out of the 1 game where you started with Horses)

That's just not true. Horses are available probably 2/3 of the time. It is okay if you have to walk a settler 10-15 tiles to get them. And I rarely saw the Immortal rush fail on Immortal. Worker stealing is the key there - the AI can't get copper online without workers. Worker stealing works extremely well on Immortal; that is one of the problems with Deity, that you can't get peace after a worker steal.

How do you get workers early on Deity? Just build one? Steal one anyway and live with the problem of no peace? Or ignore them entirely and build quechuas using unimproved tiles?

I've run an Oracle-Feudalism testgame ... If one gets a Vassal really early, like 1500 - 1000 BC, he can research Guilds + Banking for onesself

Hey, that is a great line of thinking. The unit support from Vassalage civic might be almost as good as the Currency trade routes, and then the vassal can just research Currency. Maybe for the last rushing target (either quechua or immortal), keep that war active until reaching Feudalism, then take the capitulation. So you get the vassal right away without building a medieval army!

I think you could have made a few hundred k's more in the end, if you had checked if the Civs you attacked were already willing to capitulate, maybe you'll wanna reload for that

I did check originally, they were not willing to talk. And I didn't do enough damage in one turn to cap anybody anyway. I conquered 11 cities but spread across four different civs. The right way would be to plan much further ahead so that you can have boats loaded with amphibious units to capture all of a civ's coastal cities at the same time. But I didn't do that.

Also, one point you completely missed out in your post (I think, I don't remember it atm. tbh) is that one needs good research partners for reaching Sushi-early.

True. I mentioned that in my full report but forgot in the post here. I did have good researching partners. AIs gave me Alphabet, Construction, Philosophy, Compass, Optics, Theology, and Divine Right. I picked my opponents based on favorite civics (Ramesses is Org Rel, Qin is Bureaucracy) so it was easy to get them to Friendly. This does conflict with the vassal approach; if you take a vassal, other AIs will almost never like both you and your vassal enough to become Friendly.

Originally Posted by cseanny

You don't know how nice it is to see someone using a civilization that isn't unanimously regarded as broken.

Really? I thought Darius was widely regarded as the next most broken civ after Inca.

Originally Posted by Krill

IIUC, the point is to get as high a score as possible. Therefore, the difficulty is a variable: doesn't matter if something won't work on Deity if it produces the highest score on Immortal.

Hi Krill, you found us here. Yes, the point is the high score, but we haven't figured out yet whether that can be on Immortal or Deity. I think Deity can indeed go higher but it's harder to make everything go right. Immortal was much easier to break 3.2 million but only Deity can approach 4 million.

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by T-hawk

This could be something I'm missing. I have never tried to do a failgold economy.

Try it, it's 2.5 - 3 times as strong as building Wealth. Even if you continue to play with Darius (and don't switch to HC, with which I bet you'd had beaten 4M) you will have stone + marble in 80% of the cases, giving you 100%, then you get 25% from OR and another 25% from having a Forge. Read the Money grows on trees thread to improve your Failgold economy. On Forrest-heavy maps, one can often build Wonders 3-5 times before the AI completes it, that often gives an instant of 5-8k of which fuels your 100% deficit Research for hundreds of years. Key is to chop forrests in different cities and switch in the Wonder once the chop has completed, then switch back to the city that has spare production, chop again, switch again, a.s.o.

That's just not true. Horses are available probably 2/3 of the time. It is okay if you have to walk a settler 10-15 tiles to get them. And I rarely saw the Immortal rush fail on Immortal. Worker stealing is the key there - the AI can't get copper online without workers. Worker stealing works extremely well on Immortal; that is one of the problems with Deity, that you can't get peace after a worker steal.

How do you get workers early on Deity? Just build one? Steal one anyway and live with the problem of no peace? Or ignore them entirely and build quechuas using unimproved tiles?

The problem with early Worker-stealing (when you cannot annihilate the Civ) is, that they'll go to warmode, and build a ton of units. Maybe Immortals make the difference here, as they have high chances against normal Archers. With Quechuas, one could not outproduce the AIs, so one waits to declare war until the worker is in place, has enough Quechuas in reach, and then stomps over the AI like a Blitz. One uses unimproved tiles in the first city, all cities after that will have been improved by the AI and one has Workers then. Note, that Incans attack in T45-50, so it's not that long till one has Workers.
With rushing 3-4 Civs one usually gets between 5-10 Workers and 8-12 cities, it's hard to even pay for those, even with having something like 3 times Gold, 4 seem to be the magic number . Then Oracle Currency kicks in and one can instantly expand to 20 cities. Skipping techs like The Wheel, Pottery, AH and BW are the keys to this imho. That is all till 2000 BC, to expand further, one needs Cottages or Courthouses, one is always at the limit of expansion.

I think it's just a lot different between Deity and Immortal. I tried out Immortal rushes on Deity as I wanted to have a game without HC (I will play Darius again, that's for sure! ) and having Horses in the BFC seemed necessary for all of them. Settling a 2nd city delays the rush to much, 1 city is just 5 Immortals that could have already taken 2 cities from the AI, and the 2nd city doesn't add that much to production.

Hey, that is a great line of thinking. The unit support from Vassalage civic might be almost as good as the Currency trade routes, and then the vassal can just research Currency. Maybe for the last rushing target (either quechua or immortal), keep that war active until reaching Feudalism, then take the capitulation. So you get the vassal right away without building a medieval army!

Also, Feudalism is awesome Tradegood at that time, it get's you everything until (including) Philosphy, so you can have research at 0% and expand endlessly. With HC though, one has to take the Vassal with LBs, with Quechuas one has simply too many losses to get the 40 War-Success, here Darius has a real advantage (his disadvantage though is, that he cannot Oracle Feudalism as fast) . Best thing of LBs: One can 2pop-whip them, so one gets 2 in 2 turns. With Incans, you'll have the named 8-12 cities, 2pop whip in 3 of them 2 times and you have a dozen of LBs at 2000 BC, all of them having Drill II from Vassalage or Drill I + Combat I.

It's a totally different style to play, but I'm not the only one who says that an early Vassal is the biggest advantage one can get, tbh, I'm still not sure which is the best way. Having a Vassal to research Mining Inc for oneesself after Sushi has been reached is the way to go imho.

I did check originally, they were not willing to talk. And I didn't do enough damage in one turn to cap anybody anyway. I conquered 11 cities but spread across four different civs. The right way would be to plan much further ahead so that you can have boats loaded with amphibious units to capture all of a civ's coastal cities at the same time. But I didn't do that.

Amphibous Elephants? No without joking, I myself didn't manage to coordinate an all-world-blitz in one of my games aswell, it's just tremendously hard to plan that and especially to get the for that! One needs 100+ Cavs and at least 40+ Airships, but just think of how many points a Vassal adds, how many points would 2-3 Vassals in the end and getting something like 60% of total landmass be... I'm very excited about Mining Inc, as that seems to be the production one really needs, the Math I did on that was so convincing, I couldn't believe that I didn't think of it before.

True. I mentioned that in my full report but forgot in the post here. I did have good researching partners. AIs gave me Alphabet, Construction, Philosophy, Compass, Optics, Theology, and Divine Right. I picked my opponents based on favorite civics (Ramesses is Org Rel, Qin is Bureaucracy) so it was easy to get them to Friendly. This does conflict with the vassal approach; if you take a vassal, other AIs will almost never like both you and your vassal enough to become Friendly.

Convert the Vassal to your Religion and your friends won't have a problem with him? Also, think about taking Toku in your game! Everybody hates him, you can bribe everybody against him! If he sits at the other end of the world, join wars for free +5 Diplo-Bonus, get +4 from Fairtrade, +1 from lasting Peace, +2 from open Borders, then you're already at +12, more than what is needed. Also dealing with the techs you were first to discover gives +1 (this bonus can easily stack up to +3) !

Have to agree with cseanny for doing this with Darius, he's not nearly as broken as HC You really might want to try HC out sometime, I bet (again) that you'd have gotten 4M, because his Snowball is just so much bigger and the Quechua is the most broken unit as long as there are not too many hills-cities.

Cya, Sera

[pixiejmcc]

Originally Posted by ZPV

T-Hawk: it's "War Success" from killing scouts that lets you get a free ceasefire - scouts don't contribute to power. (1 worker stolen + 1 scout killed are enough if you don't lose any units)

Is this guaranteed against any leader? I feel as though there must be more to it than this.

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by pixiejmcc

Is this guaranteed against any leader? I feel as though there must be more to it than this.

I had problems in my last games, when attacking Civs having Alpha early. Normally, they always bribed everyone they could get with some cheap tech against me. I was though always able to make a seasefire after I had killed their scout, so capturing the Worker does not even seem necessary. Once I had reached Currency, I could see, that their terms for peace were that low, that they wanted 10g on plus (If I didn't manage to kill anything from them) , so it seems quite easy to get a seasefire.

Main problem I find with those AIs T-Hawk and I have chosen is, that they make friends with each other too quickly, therefor, one gets huge diplomatic maluses from lots of Civs if rushing them. Maybe some "interemdiate" AIs like Willem or Suleiman are the better choice, because one doesn't get the -1 for YDWOOF from them.

[ZPV]

Originally Posted by pixiejmcc

Is this guaranteed against any leader? I feel as though there must be more to it than this.

It is more complicated than that; sparing some of the irrelevant details (like if they declared war on you, or if you have AggAI switched on) it's:

half-ceasefire: We pay
(100+(ourCities+theirCities)*3+ourpop+theirpop + theirwarsuccess*20)
*(Theirpower+10)/(OurPower+TheirPower+10)
--------------------------------------
forDaggerAIs: *9*Theirpower/10*OurPower
forAIsw/morelandthanus: *Theirland/Ourland*.9

and they pay the reverse.
So putting up "our" war success by two battles won on attack (one vs worker, and one vs scout = +8 total) is typically enough to outweigh the AI's power advantage.

[Tachywaxon]

Originally Posted by ZPV

So putting up "our" war success by two battles won on attack (one vs worker, and one vs scout = +8 total) is typically enough to outweigh the AI's power advantage.

I thought worker worths 1 point in war success count. Anyways, cool stuff.

[ZPV]

Originally Posted by Tachywaxon

I thought worker worths 1 point in war success count. Anyways, cool stuff.

It is if you capture the worker by killing its escort.
If you attack an undefended worker, you get 4 for a battle instead.

[pixiejmcc]

Originally Posted by ZPV

half-ceasefire: We pay
(100+(ourCities+theirCities)*3+ourpop+theirpop + theirwarsuccess*20)
*(Theirpower+10)/(OurPower+TheirPower+10)
--------------------------------------
forDaggerAIs: *9*Theirpower/10*OurPower
forAIsw/morelandthanus: *Theirland/Ourland*.9

Perfect thanks. This is the first time I've come across the term, DaggerAI. A quick google suggests this is an AI which may DoW without going into WHEOOHRN mode. And that this includes Alex and Monty. But I've no idea if that is correct. Sorry for the mini-derail T-Hawk!

[Tachywaxon]

Originally Posted by ZPV

It is if you capture the worker by killing its escort.
If you attack an undefended worker, you get 4 for a battle instead.

This post contradicts what you said...

Escort? I don't think it is happening all the time early in the game. Yes it occurs, but rarely. I thought it has to do with early worker stealing. Anyways, how to kill an archer with a warrior.