Once more on Warlord for 100K

My second Warlord 100k game has reached the 1000 AD mark with 42K of culture and about 950cpt. I used a similar setup to my 1st warlord game. As of now Portugal & the Hittites are gone and France will be next turn as 3 Crusaders are lined up against a wounded spearman in Joanie's final city. It's going to be very tense for the next 30 turns or so. America just discovered Theology & Carthage has Invention. I built the Great Library in my capital (as well as Sun Tzu & ToA) and need to eliminate America & Carthage before either gets Education, so ToA can continue to provide temples for about 100 cities. So far Feudalism is interesting. I've been whipping lots of citizens to death to add libraries, cathedrals and colisseums to my cities. I've got over 25 settlers in route to new locations. I'm about to declare war on Carthage and will align America & England against him in hopes of slowing the tech race again. I've got about 40 knights, 15 crusaders, 10 AC and 2 Crusader Armies about to attack Hannibal's cities. I'll have to be quick in eliminating his 13 cities as he's got a lot of NM, Warrior & MDI units wandering back home from the ex-Hittite lands near 4-6 of my undefended cities.

Sounds like an interesting game deny. I love the part of the game where it's "DO OR DIE" and one wrong move can spoil disaster for a good game. That is where I'm at on my standard Domination game. I've gotten the ToA and now I just have to see what, and how quickly I can make good use of it.

I have conceeded Warlord to you and moved to Emperor for my Large 100K game. Currently I'm at 670 AD with one of two good candidate games. I'm at 22K in culture and adding 454 CPT but I wont be where you are by 1000 AD because I captured the Great Library and got Education along with some other techs which made the TOA obsolete and I lost all those Temples. I'm only 8 turns from the IA and with luck will get Steam Power for free which really speeds up the game.

I currently have 157 cities and will capture many more before 1000 AD because I have 41 Cavalry with 3 Armies along with 16 MI and 1 Army which really plays a secondary role right now. My other game at 10 AD will not use the TOA so I can see if Temples that double their culture are better than ones that don't.

I'm way ahead of my Warlord game so will easily be number 1 on Emperor Large worlds and after I finish will drop down to Monarch and try to finish a Large world before 1400 AD.

Good luck with your Warlord game it will be interesting to see just how low you will lower the fastest finish. What is your target date BTW?

I stopped the first 100K Emperor Large map game at 1000 AD and like I predicted I am behind you in culture at 41K and CPT at 741. But this game is well ahead of my previous 100K Warlord Large map game where at the same time I was at 26K culture and CPT at 591 so the finish should be about 6 turns earlier.

I'm playing with a Monarchy government because I like being able to cash rush buildings. For this strategy to work I want lots of grassland to place cities in so even in totally corrupt areas I can grow cities to population 6 and with railroads set 3 citizens to civil engineers. There are many cities in that situation now and a temple can be built in 9 turns while a university can be built in 15 turns. The real advantage though is in attacking another Civ culturally by cash rushing a library and university back to back. Place a city and rush a library, next turn rush a university and on the following turn when the university is completed your border expands because your city culture is already 10.

The present game doesn't have the best mix of terrain to really be a good 100K game but I did build the TOA when I failed to beat the Byzantines to the Pyramids. That gave me an initial boost in culture but the Byzantines turned out to be on a seperate island and capturing the Pyramids would do me no good since all my cities are on the mainland of a Pangaea world.

My present situation has me with 224 cities and 167 native workers. My military consists of 69 Cavarly with 21 of them in 7 Armies. There are 41 other odd military units including 1 Infantry and a MI Army that usually provides protection to my stack of artillery. There isn't much need of the military now though since I have probably as much land as I need to complete the game. The total number of units is 309 and I am allowed 536 so there is no cost.

Having the TOA caused me to slow down the tech pace until after I captured the Great Library and got Educaion so I was slow in reaching Steam Power and Replaceble parts. In the other game now at 10 AD I don't have the TOA and maybe the Pyramids will be located in a Civ on the main continent so I can capture it instead of the Great Library. I think rapid growth (Pyramids) and quick tech pace to Replacable Parts is the key to a fast finish on the larger worlds.

It's all over except the whipping.

It's now 1250 AD, America and Carthage are gone so it's just England left. Sitting about 75K with 1400cpt looking at a mid-1400's win. I've had to abandon about 15 cities and raze another 10 to stay under the domination limit. For the next 60 turns or so it's going to be build settlers and try to find a spot to plant them. My original core is filling up so they'll have to head for the old Carthage, Portugal and Hittite lands.

A couple of things about Feudalism.

1. The military support is way too much. I have about 60 knights and 30 other military units plus about 60 native workers with 20 settlers (total about 170) and I'll allowed over 700

2. The ability to pop rush is great. Nearly every city has a library and most now have colisseums with cathedrals in process (free temple from ToA). I had trouble cash rushing colisseums with Republic, so this seems to be a way to continually increase culture.

3. On the negative side all this pop rushing is going to really hurt the final score, though early completion is the primary target, under Republic a large happy empire also produced a pretty good score (improving the chances for multiple tables for one game)

At this point in the game, I'm considering creating a single city on an off shore island, gifting that to Lizzie and wiping out the rest of her cities. I'd then be able to disband those knights, crusaders, etc to help speed along my initial city builds (libraries) without fear of English Agression. I would have to raze the English cities (except for London with Mausolem & Colossus and York with Great Lighthouse).

Question for the gurus out their. If I let England build Smith's Trading Post and then conquer the city, will I get the effects even tough I've yet to discover Economics?

denyd said:

I've had to abandon about 15 cities and raze another 10 to stay under the domination limit.

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Have you tried gifting those cities to the AI instead of razing them? That way the cities push back your cultural borders so they don't extend quite so far. You can get more cities into the same number of tiles this way.

I actually did this when I first hit the domination limit, gifting 4 Carthaginian cities to England, but now that I'm thinking about the Gulag option to allow my military to be converted to shields, I think it's better to reduce the number of cities that I'll need to take.

I did have my first war weariness expierence with feudalism, which I didn't think was possible until I re-read the civilopedia.

denyd said:

Question for the gurus out their. If I let England build Smith's Trading Post and then conquer the city, will I get the effects even tough I've yet to discover Economics?

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I'm 99.99% sure that you would get its effects even when you haven't yet discovered Economics. That would be my guess!

Based on that answer, if I take York, which has The Great Lighthouse and is building Magellan's would my ships get a +2 bonus?

IIRC correctly magellan doesnt stack with great lighthouse?

If you capture the Great Library before you discover Literature, I'm sure you would get all the techs (known by two other civs, of course). IIRC, if you have enough swordmans to capture the UN, you could hold the election just like you have build it yourself (even when your civ is still in the ancient age).

I seem to remember a game where someone took the UN with cavalry to steal a Diety level win. It seem the AI that built the UN didn't have oil or rubber, so it was cavalry against rifles & guerillas, which is a pretty even matchup.

In this one England is still quite a ways from the IA (no chemistry yet) and just got Navigation last turn. I'm not sure she's researched banking yet or went straight from education to astronomy to navigation. It doesn't really matter because in 30 turns she'll be a OCC and in 60 turns the game will be over. I might just leave her alone and see how many wonders she can build for me that I'm not qualified for.

denyd,

How many cities do you have? In my Emperor game which is the one with TOA, the other one wasn't going to catch it I determined in 600 AD and went back to the first one, I place my cities just slightly too far apart and found that tighter city placement would have allowed me more cities in the same cultural border.

Over 150 and approaching 200, with 25 settlers in motion and at least 40 being built. Once a city has completed library, cathedral & colisseum, it gets set to settlers forever at this point.

I am getting a little concerned about if this game will be accepted. The last 2 days I've played 3 hours each day yet I only managed 10 turns during that period. Each turn is the same, manage about 90 workers (40 mine & 50 imported) to have them road, chop & irrigate. The give goto orders to the settlers, then watch the auto-moves and finally visit all potential pop-rush cities to see if some people can be whipped for a culture building. Then there's the save and check the domination limit and to prevent potential riots. That takes about 30 minutes per turn.

How does a player milking on a huge world manage to keep the turns per reload to a higher level?

On my huge map game the turns per reload is approaching 1. The reload count doesn't mean much when you start milking, since there are no events that you would want to re-roll anyway.

I do have earlier saves with better stats if they are needed for validation.

Sometimes I leave my computer on for extended periods, but I also have periods of one-turn-per session.

denyd said:

I am getting a little concerned about if this game will be accepted. The last 2 days I've played 3 hours each day yet I only managed 10 turns during that period.

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Just make sure to submit some earlier .savs as well. We're aware that the later game turns take longer than the earlier ones and take account of that.

denyd said:

Each turn is the same, manage about 90 workers (40 mine & 50 imported) to have them road, chop & irrigate. The give goto orders to the settlers, then watch the auto-moves and finally visit all potential pop-rush cities to see if some people can be whipped for a culture building. Then there's the save and check the domination limit and to prevent potential riots. That takes about 30 minutes per turn.

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Only 30 minutes per turn? Wow, you are fast! Moving workers alone could easily takes me about 30 minutes per turn right there.

My average time per turn for a huge milk game during the middle phases runs about 2 hours. That results from manually moving up to 600 workers and managing over 400 cities. During those times I rarely average over 10 turns per reload and will leave my computer on overnight to achieve that.

I use a lot of stack movement for the workers and I'm pretty sure I need more workers, but I've been too busy building settlers since 10 AD to have time to add any more. Most of the workers added since 10 AD have been slaves either captured or from razed cities.

I tried leaving my system up a couple of weekends ago, but my 3-year old likes playing with the keyboard.