G-III Eta

Hello and welcome to the September/October Gauntlet for HOF III.

• Mapsize: Tiny
• Difficulty: Deity
• Condition: 20k

Have your submissions in by October 14th, and good luck.

Ahh... another 20K game!!

we love our 20K games, don't we?

This will be fun - am gonna try greece - commercial will help a lot, since the the OCN is low.

burn up sgl patience,
how ever, let's see whether game with greece or other civ on pangea will win, or byz on archi safely.
and will he try repetitiously until more than 2 AA sgl or just a plain game to win?
does he use a conquest or vanilla version...
....
of course I am sure he use conquest.

I'm not much of a Deity player, but I'll have a bash. Probably as the Spanish, 'cos I've used the Byz. quite a lot lately.

well, I've played a bunch but not got anywhere. I had a good one going as babylon... but I didn't build up enough military and the arabs took my capitol. *sigh*

got another one with an early SGL as greece, but couldn't find the arabs and by the time I found the japanese, they had both alpha and writing and got philo before me as I was going for the slingshot, so I was pretty much screwed.

I left mapfinder running today when i went to work. Got home this evening and found that I had 1 map saved.

I started to play my 'pelago map with the Babylonians but as soon as I'd got a warrior out, I found that the Americans and Zulu were on my island. A few turns later, an Incan scout also showed his face, so my 'island' looks to be a bit crowded. (Don't ask me why I had four civs-I don't know why myself. Maybe I wasn't thinking straight in the early hours.)

I want a slow tech pace so I guess I'll do some more searching for a true 'pelago map.

@archphoenix: I'm going to try for any half decent date. If that means no AA SGLs, well so be it. I'm in the mood to play out any reasonable start after a couple of weeks without civ.

I've been trying greece on a warm, wet 80% water arch map. One thing I found is that the AI was *always* on the same island, which meant that by the time I found them, they already had writing, so I couldn't trade for anything until I got CoL. Also, no rivers, so my tech pace was reasonably slow to start, and it took *forever* to get luxes on other islands hooked up, cause harbors are 60 shields instead of 30.

and, in general, the AI started to out research me around education, because they had all the luxes and had been trading them, so I couldnt' get them. Or, basically, I ran into all the problems of an arch map and few of the benefits, other than not being killed early by the AI.

So, will raise the land and try byzantines, plus try the mongols and zulus as opponents. One nice thing about byzantium is that if you just bombard a galley or two, the AI will turn tail until the advent of caravels, so you can basically hem them in, at just the cost of declaring war. of course, you have to be careful of your rep, but it seems well worth it.

First entrant is 1740 AD. Not so great start position - only 13 workable tiles and no hills, just one mountain. Got an SGL for code of laws, though, and found ivory on my island, so I played it. That, however, was the only SGL I got (used it on pyramids) and had the usual lack of resources.

Ton;s of war. I find that I try to expand a lot on arch maps - the problem with that is that the common human strategy of crust defense doesn't work when every city is on the crust!! I landed guys to get both horses and iron, plus a gold hill... Zulu's decided they needed a different distribution of land and resources, where they had it all, and I didn't have strong enough defenders there.

But I got him back later, landing a city filled with longbows and spears next to his coal and another one next to iron, so I could rail and factorize. Then I spent the next 200 hundred years fomenting war so I could try to steal luxes by landing cities on or next to them and leader fishing. never got one, though.

It's good for 2nd in the table, though! at least for now. it's quite beatable, though. I missed Oracle, ToA, Sistine Chapel and Copernicus (Copes by a cascade started Sistine Chapel), as well as the Wall, Leo's, Sun Tzu's and Templar.

Tone said:

I left mapfinder running today when i went to work. Got home this evening and found that I had 1 map saved.

Click to expand...

what a rigid rule!
I presume that you use a P-IV level computer and use default setting to run mapfinder.
so which detailed entry do you use?
I commonly use this:
&&(fresh water>0)
&&(food bouns>0)
||(hill>1 or 0)
||(lux>0)
this will give me 1 map within 2 hours at most.commonly roughly 1 map per 30min.

I have used a rule of having a river - but on arch maps, rivers are rare... and on tiny arch maps with a lot of water, rivers are really rare. I've seen small and tiny maps with no rivers, at all.

so don't expect a river, just a fresh water.

I was after a river and a cow!!!!!

I might see what the freshwater starts are like but no river=poor commerce=reduced SGL chances.

That's the thing I have had to deal with - the lack of rivers on arch maps.

I might try a pangea map, but frankly, doing a 20K with 2 deity opponents on a pangea map kind of scares me. I just assume they will be coming after me very quickly....

Second entry is 1625. Much better game - 3 luxes (including ivory), 1 horse and 2 iron! on my home island, AI were sidely separeted and in mediocre land. But I didn't have a lot of shields - I may try a 3rd game, and set mapfinder to make sure I get a river, multiple hills and multiple food bonuses, just to see what is possible with a size 12, 30 shield capitol. And the island was very small - I fit 5 cities on before having to go offshore for more.

The dromons ruled the seas - probably spent 3/4 of the game at war, most of which was me sinking galleys who came out in an attempt to expand.

I went leader fishing late, so didn't get heroic epic until late in the game. This was probably a mistake - the AI's were pretty pathetic by that point - the Zulu's surprised me with a an attack that caught me off guard and I had to leave 3 cities undefended, but I took those back.

This time, I got everything but Pyramids, MoM (missed it by 1 turn!!), Great Wall, Leo's and Sun Tzu's. It's definitely beatable, but I got 3 SGL's, 2 of which were useful (Math or Lit, which was used to rush GLib and kick off my GA), Democracy (which was used to rush Sistine after I finished Shakespeares)

And here's something I haven't seen before - I hit 20,000 exactly!!

Was a fun game, though. Dromons kick ass.

Ask, and ye shall receive!!



Start position:



Doesn't look to great, does it? It turns out that is one of 2 sources of fresh water, on the entire planet (Mongols have a lake, too)

My empire at 1000 BC:



This game would have gone no where with those fish - that's how I could start a worker factory (and settler factory, of sorts)

very nice!

Are you able to post a list of build dates (from CAII for example)?

I had a good game as the Aztecs in a kill em and build em game. Finished in 1485 with a really good capital city able to do 33 shields and at times 34 to finish builds a turn quicker.

A couple jags against the Indians and Japanese left the continent in my hands, they really didnt put up too much of a fight. Ivory was close by to the North. I got 1 SGL at Gunpowder or so to rush JS Bachs but not in a timely fashion, as I had yet to research Music Theory with 2 turns left on a wonder build. That would have saved a turn as final culture was 20, 142 at 160 somethign per turn.

Aztecs strike me as pretty good as you can wait to build the wonders that do not go obsolete (Pyramids, MoM) until you have nailed the good culture per turn wonders. I had 4 turn research for the entire game after Education (except for modern age). Heroic Epic was built in anarchy after generating a 2nd leader against India.

Builds from the end:

And the Jaguar Warrior proves he is unstoppable yet again!!

Wow - and I was feeling pretty damn good about my time.

Having just submitted a Deity domination game with the Egyptians, I thought that I'd try the aggressive approach with them in this gauntlet. It's good fun but I just couldn't get enough chariots out before the early wonders roll in for the AI. I might have been able to push for 2nd place but highly unlikely and so I'll try to find some time for another attempt rather than play this one out. I fancy giving the Persians a go but maybe the resource-less Jags are just too powerful in that early game blitz. This is good fun so I left wondering why I came to it so late????? Thanks for suggesting the 'alternative' 20K approach, killer!