G-Minor LXXXV

That looks like a pretty strong start, nice. It looks kind of like what I wanted to do in my first game with way better execution. It took me forever to get that 6th city going. Are you planning to take Freedom or Order? And what about first WC vote - sciences funding?
I went Order, I think it's superior to Freedom if you are going for a fast finish time. First WC vote is World's Fair, always easy to pass and the timing is pretty good - by the time it's passed I usually have my public schools and factories up, so there's little left to build anyway.

Not sure if taking an AI cap early is worth it unless it has a nice wonder like ToA. Other AIs will hate you all game afterwards and it'll make trading more painful.
 
I am going to try this. Does anybody know whether the long count GS ups the count for the naturally spawned GSs?
 
T208 win using Freedom with 6 cities. I'm curious to see if Order can do significantly better. I'm happy with how the game went, but I made a big mistake at the very end that cost me some turns.

Basically, everything was going great until I glanced up at my faith on the third last turn...

...and realized I forgot to use my faith bought GS. I had everything planned out to get just enough money to buy my last SS part immediately after bulbing the final tech, so I had three unused scientists on the last turn. I bulbed them all just for fun to bask in the 35k+ beakers gone to waste. Ouch. I attached a screenshot of my final tech tree so you have an idea.

I'm not sure how much earlier I could have hypothetically finished. I bought all 6 parts so I would have been limited by money. However, I could have used those extra scientists to rush Apollo. If I had built just one part, that means at least 5 turns faster if GPT remains the same. I had two very high production cities (cap and Petra) so I probably could have adjusted my strategy to build two parts without much trouble.

Anyway, it was a fun game. Keeping track of scientists at the end gives me a headache. Not sure how everyone does it. I might replay the last 20-30 turns sometime to see if those faith bought GS or lack thereof could have made a big difference.

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Bleidraner: yes it does, and I'm 90% sure the long count Great Prophet also counts towards the GS/GE/GM pool. Not sure if that is intentional or not.
 

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T208 win using Freedom with 6 cities.
Nice one!

Won my game on T216, probably could've been earlier but not by much. Might try one more time if I roll very good land, otherwise I'm pretty happy with this result.
 

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Bleidraner: yes it does, and I'm 90% sure the long count Great Prophet also counts towards the GS/GE/GM pool. Not sure if that is intentional or not.

Great result fils. And with the faith bought GSs you may have gone under 200, wow. Weird about the GP upping the GS/GM/GM count. I'll check that out in my game.
 
Religion:
- I tried going Feed The World in a previous game, but I had no time to build temples in most of my cities (and no need with Maya's unique building). Temples also have a steep maintenance cost which can hurt early. I don't think Pagodas are optimal, but I had to take them to keep my growth pace going at the time. Then again Pagodas negated my need to build a single Colosseum so maybe not a bad choice in the end. I will probably take +2 faith from world wonders next time. I don't like the +15% growth belief because it only affects surplus food so it doesn't provide as much benefit early on. I could be wrong on this one though.

On warlord Feed the world is better than swords into plowshares yes because of poor AI. You'll want to bully the AI to get some extra gold in deals (or complete WLTKD). Swords doesn't work well that way... But I don't really like feed the world.
 
T208 win using Freedom with 6 cities. I'm curious to see if Order can do significantly better.

Impressive. :eek:

For order, I can't say. I failed two try due to lack of alu. And in my current game, I choose liberty due to lack of coal, despite 5 cities.

I have happiness issue with 6 cities, and many maps with only 3 unique luxs nearer. How do you settle your cities and manage happiness ?
 
Impressive. :eek:

For order, I can't say. I failed two try due to lack of alu. And in my current game, I choose liberty due to lack of coal, despite 5 cities.

I have happiness issue with 6 cities, and many maps with only 3 unique luxs nearer. How do you settle your cities and manage happiness ?

Pagodas and Mercantile CS. I actually think Pagodas are the best choice for this setting to avoid that midgame unhappiness problem just before you open ideology. The culture boost is great for tile growth in new cities too, and they prevent that last great prophet from spawning before you hit industrial so the faith basically pays for itself.

I went back to Feed the World as well. I think that choice is really solid as Maya since you should be building a Pyramid as one of the first buildings in all of your cities, and the bonus is the most useful when the city is small.
 
Mercantile CS weren't enough in my last try. I thought about pagodas for happiness but not for border expand which is a problem in my games. I'll try.

I struggle to put settlers quickly and barbs are really, really annoying. I lose in each games something like 3 to 4turns to settle a city, sometimes more if a barb campement spawn in my spot.
 
First try 268. Tried 6 cities tradition, did nothing innovative. Yep barbs are a pain. Started great with a really low 50s NC, Theo at like 61, and Edu by t91, but I must be playing my midgame badly, as I could not get my science up and my cities to grow quickly enough, yes I made some mistakes that could account of 10-15 turns but even with that I could not get anywhere near the 220 finish time I was targeting.

Re: aluminium. I could see 2 of my CS allies with Alu and the Aluminium tiles were being worked with mines, but they did not gift it to me. What can be going on there? Had to plant a nearly useless 7th city at the end to get to the aluminum.

Spoiler :
Screen Shot 2014-09-23 at 7.26.46 AM.jpg
 
Re: aluminium. I could see 2 of my CS allies with Alu and the Aluminium tiles were being worked with mines, but they did not gift it to me. What can be going on there? Had to plant a nearly useless 7th city at the end to get to the aluminum.
I'm pretty sure you can't get strategics from CSs if they don't have the required tech and have improved the tile themselves. But if the tile is still unimproved, you can gift them 200 gold to connect the resource immediately.
 
To have access to strategic ressources from CS, you need to be ally with them and after improve them alu or coal. If a mine is already built before you became allies, you won't have access to this strategic ressources.
Also, you can improve the tiles then be ally to have access. But you can see all tiles only if you are allies. So if that CSis far away and you didn't scout all its tiles, it's impossible sometimes to improve the good tiles.
I'm pretty disillusioned, I had alus only in one game and drop T200 as I didn't yet reach sattelites. :(
Like current try, only three alus in fifth ring.

Despite this, pagodas work a lot. :goodjob:
 
I managed a Turn 232 victory with ten (ten!) cities. I learned a lot this game -- in particular, I learned that ten cities is probably too many. But I also made a ton of mistakes due to unfamiliarity with this type of game, so I think there's still room to explore unusually wide strategies.

My build order was Great Library into one-city National College, then three quick Settlers, then Temple of Artemis, then chill and do infrastructure for a while. I beelined Theology (got there on turn 60) and thus was able hurry Petra in an expo very quickly. Around turn 120 I spammed out five more cities, then I made one more after Industrialization.

Policies were fairly standard -- full Tradition, full Rationalism, a dip into Commerce, and Order. I normally prefer Freedom, but I felt that getting buildings up would be my biggest constraint, so I went Order for Skyscrapers. I also had tons of faith and two great production cities (thanks to Petra), so building/hurrying spaceship parts seemed easier than usual. Coal and Aluminum were no issue with ten cities worth of dirt.

Religion was Desert Folklore (despite no desert in capital), Tithe, Pagodas, Mosques, Itinerant Preachers. I needed a lot of extra happiness for all of these cities, and I figured the local culture for border expansion would also be very important for late-founded cities.

In the attached files, I have a screenshot at endgame as well as one around turn 70, so you can see my settling pattern. I placed my initial cities very far away, with the idea that I could seal off space and then backfill later. There were a couple problems with this:

1. Cities were too far away for trade routes with the capital
2. Cities were too far away to get roads up early
3. Lots of fog of war between cities = lots of barbs spawning

I think on this difficulty I should've placed my initial cities closer together. The AI is so pathetic that you don't actually have to worry about claiming spots in a timely fashion. Another thing you can see in my screenshot is that Theodora never expanded. I DOW'ed her early, stole a Worker and Settler, and then never made peace. Just keeping 1-2 units near her after this completely crippled her for the rest of the game. So I could've just prevented AI expansion using units, settled my initial cities in more normal spots, then expanded outwards later. This probably would've chopped off a ton of turns.
 

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Im gonna try some 8 city NC opening aiming for freedom with tradition liberty mix this time, hopefully can get a good game with a horrible computer
 
Dumb question:
"Each map may only be played through once"
What this means exactly ? I cant go back on a saved game to improve my play ?
 
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