Time games

Seraiel

Seraiel

If you want anything from I please ask in German
Joined
Sep 6, 2011
Messages
8,165
Has anyone of you noticed how seriously difficult (as a personal challenge) it is to play time-games with a maximised score?

I've found it to be basically the biggest challenge I ever had (in CIV) . One's decisions don't matter too much, because 2050 AD is really far away, but they also must not be too bad, otherwise the game itself will only get more difficult and then one has to catch up with the work one didn't invest earlier.

Also the maps, horrible. GLH is absolutely needed to even have a chance to compare with the AIs, but the maps have almost no Fresh Water (making :health: a problem) , no production and the navy one has to build to even have a chance at warfare is ridiculous.
Last time I attacked Frederick, guess what, he had over 25 Frigates! I maybe had 5, so he pillaged most of my seafood and forced me to build nothing else than stupid ships ^^ .

Coordinating the conquest is also horrible, with most cities spread on multiple continents.

Then, to make it not too easy, AIs are still challenging on Deity. Some will sit so far away, that immediate conquest is impossible, giving them a lot time to somehow get crazy tech-rates. In my current game I've just reach Electricity, and I'm not the tech-leader, even with having Oxford and everything!

Lastly, one needs to hinder the AIs from winning the game for about 1/2 to 1/3 of the game. If one could simply kill those AIs, but I again forgot to turn on "requires complete kills" so I can't ^^ .

Don't know, there are several more things that really annoy me, and that will lead me to never ever playing a time game again, although it's the easiest choice if one wants 100 QM / EQM points.

I needed to post this because I think, that many people look down on the winners of time-games, thinking that those games are easy, they're not!
 
I enjoy Time games but tend to play them on smaller maps and lower levels!!

I think the "traditional" way to play them is as a conquest game until the last AI is down to one city, then gift them 2 ice cities at opposite ends of the map before taking their last "real" city. "Require complete kills" is another option I hadn't thought of but you would need to be sure they had a unit wandering about somewhere before taking their last city.
 
Seraiel said:
Also the maps, horrible. GLH is absolutely needed to even have a chance to compare with the AIs, but the maps have almost no Fresh Water (making :health: a problem) , no production and the navy one has to build to even have a chance at warfare is ridiculous.
Click to expand...
What Map Script are you using? I generally play my Time games on Big & Small with massive continents, generally you can get a start with Fresh Water and some Plains Hills with a short Map Finder run.
 
NobleZarkon said:
What Map Script are you using? I generally play my Time games on Big & Small with massive continents, generally you can get a start with Fresh Water and some Plains Hills with a short Map Finder run.
Click to expand...

I currently play "Standard / Normal / Iceage" and I think the most points can be gotten on Archipelagio maps with high Sealevel.

Big & Small is not ideal, because it has less Sushi resources. On Archipelagio, one can almost get 60 :food: / turn from Sushi, on Big & Small it's already hard to surpass the 40 :food: / turn barrier.
 
Sometimes I wished, the AI could simply accept the fact that it's puny and inferior, and would ask the player friendly to accept all of its cities :> .
 
Seraiel said:
I currently play "Standard / Normal / Iceage" and I think the most points can be gotten on Archipelago maps with high Sealevel.

Big & Small is not ideal, because it has less Sushi resources. On Archipelagio, one can almost get 60 :food: / turn from Sushi, on Big & Small it's already hard to surpass the 40 :food: / turn barrier.
Click to expand...
On a Time game one of the bigger issues is avoiding a Culture win so the less food is probably OK, together with the fact you can get more commerce and production than Iceage or Archipelago. In other words I'm not yet convinced that anything other than B&S is a better choice on balance.
 
NobleZarkon said:
On a Time game one of the bigger issues is avoiding a Culture win so the less food is probably OK, together with the fact you can get more commerce and production than Iceage or Archipelago. In other words I'm not yet convinced that anything other than B&S is a better choice on balance.
Click to expand...

Avoiding culture is easy, simply do Maths at which point you can spread Sushi. Doesn't matter if your capital goes legendary, because 2 further cities would be needed.

You can believe me, Archipelagio > Big & Small in time games, just look at that crazy 90k time-victory of WastinTime.
 
Seraiel said:
You can believe me, Archipelagio > Big & Small in time games, just look at that crazy 90k time-victory of WastinTime.
Click to expand...

I did see that, thought perhaps that was back in the days before the power of B&S was discovered. Very interesting.
 
Seraiel said:
Avoiding culture is easy, simply do Maths at which point you can spread Sushi. Doesn't matter if your capital goes legendary, because 2 further cities would be needed.
Click to expand...
I normally have 2 Legendary cities, the Capital and another where I build Wonders. Maybe you're right and it's just a case of doing the maths and not spreading Sushi too early.
 
NobleZarkon said:
"Require complete kills" is another option I hadn't thought of but you would need to be sure they had a unit wandering about somewhere before taking their last city.
Click to expand...

I don't think this works if there are no cities left.
You can use Require Kills on any AI except the last one!
I'm 99% sure that you will get a conquest victory if you take the last city.
 
NobleZarkon said:
I normally have 2 Legendary cities, the Capital and another where I build Wonders. Maybe you're right and it's just a case of doing the maths and not spreading Sushi too early.
Click to expand...

Actually, to get a super high score, you also want to get to the point where you are researching 1 future tech/turn. So you need to get sushi spread around and grow your cities, then turn it off using State Property. This will halt the culture explosion. Then, like you said, you need to calculate when to turn sushi back on.

Also, after Cristo, you can turn sushi on for a couple turns, then off again. This trick will keep all your cities from losing population while they slowly starve in StateProp.

Time game are a lot more fun than some people think. But they still annoy many people.
 
WastinTime said:
Actually, to get a super high score, you also want to get to the point where you are researching 1 future tech/turn. So you need to get sushi spread around and grow your cities, then turn it off using State Property. This will halt the culture explosion. Then, like you said, you need to calculate when to turn sushi back on.
Click to expand...
Brilliant - would never have thought of that!!

WastinTime said:
Time game are a lot more fun than some people think. But they still annoy many people.
Click to expand...
I love them but understand why some people don't.
 
WastinTime said:
Actually, to get a super high score, you also want to get to the point where you are researching 1 future tech/turn. So you need to get sushi spread around and grow your cities, then turn it off using State Property. This will halt the culture explosion. Then, like you said, you need to calculate when to turn sushi back on.

Also, after Cristo, you can turn sushi on for a couple turns, then off again. This trick will keep all your cities from losing population while they slowly starve in StateProp.

Time game are a lot more fun than some people think. But they still annoy many people.
Click to expand...

I don't use that method, because I also use Mining Inc. in Time-games. Mining Inc. at least can pay for itself, so the maintenance it causes is negligible, Sushi however comes with huge maintenance-costs with having so many resources, so during the times it is turned on, research would be completely crippled.

If you can teach me how to compensate the cost of Sushi, I'd be very thankful. I've lost i. e. at least 200y of the victory-date in my 1120 AD spacerace, because I couldn't keep research at 100% once I discovered and spread Sushi.
 
Seraiel said:
If you can teach me how to compensate the cost of Sushi, I'd be very thankful. I've lost i. e. at least 200y of the victory-date in my 1120 AD spacerace, because I couldn't keep research at 100% once I discovered and spread Sushi.
Click to expand...

Ok, but I'm going to blow your mind. This might be one of my biggest secrets.
 
WastinTime said:
Ok, but I'm going to blow your mind. This might be one of my biggest secrets.
Click to expand...

C'mon ^^ Tell it ^^ Or are you afraid, that I could beat your non-finished 7M Incan game if I knew? ^^
 
WastinTime said:
How much gpt would feed your sushi habit? 200 gpt? 500 gpt?
Click to expand...

Reloaded my Spacerace. I'd have needed 1250 GPT to run research at 100%.
 
Seraiel said:
Reloaded my Spacerace. I'd have needed 1250 GPT to run research at 100%.
Click to expand...

OK, no problem. There are several variations of this. It depends on how urgently you need the money. Or if you can patiently generate it more efficiently. Here's how you generate 1250 gpt ! :cooool::
Spoiler :

:nope:
Wait. Do you believe me? or do you think I'm blowing smoke?
I need one of your famous predictions like "it would be impossible to make over 1000 gpt" or "no one can finish that game in the BC years" :mischief:
 
WastinTime said:
OK, no problem. There are several variations of this. It depends on how urgently you need the money. Or if you can patiently generate it more efficiently. Here's how you generate 1250 gpt ! :cooool::
Spoiler :

:nope:
Wait. Do you believe me? or do you think I'm blowing smoke?
I need one of your famous predictions like "it would be impossible to make over 1000 gpt" or "no one can finish that game in the BC years" :mischief:
Click to expand...

Spoiler :

Haha. I belive you, but I fear that it involves using some kind of bug that doesn't get punished from HoF, like the GPT-trading exploit i. e..
 
Ok, so where did I leave off...

WastinTime said:
There are several variations of this. It depends on how urgently you need the money. Or if you can patiently generate it more efficiently. Here's how you generate 1250 gpt ! :cooool::
Click to expand...

To set the stage, you've got sushi spread most places. You're on marathon speed, playing a score or space game, or any game where you have a huge empire. You've built the Kremlin.

You probably got to medicine/sushi using conquest gold, wonder fail gold, etc, and over the past 30 turns you've likely killed off several AI and have a couple dozen new cities fresh out of revolt--or coming out soon. You've spread sushi to those new cities, but all they have so far is a granary, forge, and maybe a courthouse.
These are not your library/university/cottage/etc. cities. Some of them are probably complete junk surrounded by jungle.
The perfect money making machine.
Spoiler :

For sake of argument, let's say you have 4 sushi execs running around and are building the 5th one in the capital.

Quick and Dirty way
1) Take 5th exec out of the queue.
2) Pick one of the crappy jungle cities of size 4+.
2b) 2-pop Whip a sushi exec at 0h. :sad:
2c) take it out of the queue
3) Still on the same turn!..Repeat this in more cities as needed. In this example, you'd need probably 4 more.
4) Put the 5th exec back in the queue in the capital.

Result:
When the 5th exec is born, the other 5 you whipped are converted to gold.

You've generated 1125 gold in one turn (close enough to 1250, you can get the rest from conquest, or tech trades, or begs, or just add a 6th city to the plan)

Each of the 5 cities will require about 80 food to regrow the 2 population, so 400 food becomes 1125 gold.

Fortunately, sushi means those 5 cities will produce around 100-150 food per turn.
They will all be ready to give another 1125 gold every 3-4 turns.

Too much whip anger? :mad:
Spoiler :
You can have 100's of turns of whip anger. With sushi, you don't need to work any tiles and still grow. But maybe you want to clear that anger and start using the city 'normally'....
No problem. Give the cities away to an AI you beat down. Re-capture. All whip anger is gone and sushi is still there. Maybe the granary, etc too.

- To repeat this, you will need to spread one of your sushi execs (or disband) so you're down to less than 5 again.

More efficient way
Spoiler :
Instead of only getting 225 gold per city that you're messing with, you can be smarter.

Set up a whip of something else first and put the overflow into an exec (or chop into an exec).
Now, when you whip, it's only 1 population for the exec (instead of 2 above)
This will produce about ~350 gold per city.

For this you'll want to plan more long term..
You can even do this in your nice cities (ones with factory, power, etc.)

turn 1) start with zero execs. Build execs in 5 cities with good overflow or a chop.
turn 2) whip those 5 exec and remove them from the queues. Build execs in 5 different cities, ideally with good overflow or a chop.
turn 3) repeat turn 2
turn 4) optional:for fun, let's repeat turn 2 again, but this time, don't bother with overflow or chopping. just start 5 execs.
turn 5) whip the execs started in turn 4, but this time, let them resolve.

Result:
You should get well over 5000 gold after 5 turns. (> 1000gpt). If you really want 1250 gpt, you'd have to run 6 or 7 turns.

This way is much less harsh on your empire, but it takes time to plan it, and you have to wait for the payoff.

:devil: Hot tip: :devil:
Spoiler :
Can't wait for sushi? and Kremlin?
You can do something very similar in the early game with missionaries!

 
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