G-III Delta Dog

Having seen some great launch dates in 'Charlie' and a stunning victory from Chamnix, I wonder if we'll see the bar raised for this gauntlet. I do hope so...

The settings are

* Mapsize: Standard
* Difficulty: Monarch
* Condition: 100K

Good luck to all participants. Games due in by 15th August 2008.

I've never really seen eye-to-eye with the Feudalism style 100k, but I'll have a go; Celts first I think.
I'm going to assume that 5cc is beyond my ability and would fail to get on the table.

I'll give this one a go, I need to expand my horizons beyond science if I ever want to become a quartermaster.

I have never done a 100k game before so is there any recommended reading for this type of game?

As for mapfinder settings, I would assume grassland cows + river is good, 60% pangea, wet and warm for the high food.

I prefer warm dry pangea, 5 bil, with 60% water, minimum opponents usually all scientific that don't start with alphabet. I use Celts exclusively. To get a good date there is no other way than to get 2 ancient SGLs, (at least not for me.)
It might surprize some I prefer dry (arid) because grassland is better, but I rather deal with irrigating deserts than chopping jungles, it's that simple. Being agricultural makes the difference there, of course, if I were to try Babylon for example I wouldn't like the deserts so much. Because dispite real life examples the desert is just as easy to road and walk across as plains where jungle can really slow your expansion (which really needs to be your total main focus in the first half) and then that irrigating takes 4 worker turns where as a jungle will yeild to a grassland it needs 16 (or is it 24) worker turns to clear not to mention it won't have a road because of the 9 worker turns for that.
You need workers but in this type of game you need settlers more. I'd risk it to say you need no more than .75 workers to town ratio, although I'd have to go open a save and start counting to verify that number but I remember having 130 towns and only about 100 workers and things were just fine.
Don't forget with ICS there just isn't as many tiles to work and every mountain is to be ignored (unless it's your only source of saltpeter or maybe iron) Mountains are bad because they never make food and food is the shields of a 100k feudalsim game. Your basically buying the shields with the food you grow so that's your first priority, grabing as much food as you can. And then cashing in those crops in the form of pop rushing and buying nice things.

As for start, river is a must, cows are always good but wines are good, anything that boosts your trade in the core (which is going to be about 3 or 5 towns in this kind of game) is helpful because research is a problem that has to be worked with, that's why I like to trade up the scientific AI to get more techs even though I don't get one myself. You need to research until gunpowder, and you need a supply of saltpeter. Sometimes I don't even bother to get past Monotheism on the top branch, but certainly never research education as it kills our most splendid culture generator, The Temple of Aigburth.. Artimis, knickers.

To do a 100K game in conquests, the general strategy is:

old. wet warm is normal, but you can do anything - warm/dry gives you a lot of floodplains, I think.

Pick 2 of religious/scientific/agricultural. I suppose industrious could be useful, too.
Expand, expand, expand. Then fill in. ICS outside the core. irrigate everything irrigable.
If religious, beeline republic then feudalism - if not religious, just go feudalism.
Big questions are: ToA or not? Go for education or not?

If you have ToA, no need to rush temples. if not, then pop rush like hell. I generally go temples/caths/libs/unis unless I'm scientific, because the happiness bonuses help cancel out the whipping unhappiness.

On this level, you'll need some military.

Be careful to shut down research at some point, especially if you go to education - maintaince can be a pain. You'll want markets in your core, maybe even banks, to handle the cost. I've had games where I was losing gpt at 100% taxes.

Keep expanding - it's not unusual to see 100-150 cities on a 100K game.

Yes I remember catching myself at New Babylon 5 (though that probaby wasn't a standard map). Marsden has it down for the way I play - the two SGL's are for Pyramids and ToA. I prefer keeping the ToA since it eases the maintainance burden later on. Don't forget to keep building settlers (for more cities) and workers (for pop rushing in new cities) - the key thing in the middle to late stages is to maximise surplus food.

Looks like I am going to have to defend my spot. 1315AD is not going to win.

So, I used Babylon the first time. Since Feudalism is basically required, then Aztecs and Iroquois are out. I could use Egypt, but the UU is not well timed for 100k. It seems like the Celts are it. Is there any chance that the Arabs would work, or is expansionist a waste?

no - with expansionist, you can get a free settler fast and you can get out of republic very, very fast.

Another good feature of the Arabs for 100K games is that the Ansar gives you a 60 shield short rush item. You won't need to worry about gunpowder then.

Hello everyone!

Can someone quickly explain how to enter the gauntlet? Where do I submit the game?

Thanks
stainless_steel

stainless_steel said:

Hello everyone!

Can someone quickly explain how to enter the gauntlet? Where do I submit the game?

Thanks
stainless_steel

Click to expand...

Hi, and welcome to the Hall of Fame.

You just register your name in the Hall to be able to submit games. There is no special entry procedure for gauntlet games; just submit your game to the HOF and the staff look out for any gauntlet games in each month's submissions. Use the Login/submit tab and upload your 4000BC file and the file from your turn after victory. It's also good to include the 1000BC, 10AD and 1000AD files as well just in case we have to look at your submission more closely.

Everything you need to know will hopefully be found via the link I've posted.

The 1000 BC file is a really good one, btw - getting off to a good start is very important and that's become kind of a defacto standard to evaluate a start.

SpiffyKeen7744 said:

Looks like I am going to have to defend my spot. 1315AD is not going to win.

Click to expand...

No... no, it's not.

Got a very nice one going now as Sumeria (actually got the requisite two early SGLs!), 23000 CP at 500 AD, CA2 projects 1405 AD but I'm still expanding/ICSing and a lot of the early cathedrals/libraries are coming into 1000-year land right now.

AutomatedTeller said:

Keep expanding - it's not unusual to see 100-150 cities on a 100K game.

Click to expand...

I think that's an understatement. I think I had roughly 100 cities on tiny. This is standard. The time and effort involved in doing one of these well is probably too great for me at the moment as I'm doing a Histographic game. But here are some tips from my last experience:

I think ToA outweighs Education by miles. It saves on maintenance and provides free temple for less pop. For the civ, I'm still undecided on who is better, Sumeria, Celts, or Babylon. AGR is very nice for the bonus food (and Marsdens idea of Warm/Dry intrigues me for requiring less workers) but the shield discounts require a lot less pop to get your buildings out earlier.

Some numbers on the big three (concering the ToA route, ignoring the initial growth of 20 food, add ten food if you wish):

Babylon = 40 sh Library and 80 sh Cath = 6 pop ~ 60 food w/ granary
Sumeria = 40 sh Library and 160 sh Cath = 10 pop ~ 100 food w/ granary
Celts = 80 sh Library and 80 sh Cath = 8 pop ~ 80 food /w granary

It's a trade off... Babylon has the least pops to sac, but more difficult in getting fast settler factories. Sumeria and Celts have the extra food for settlers and getting the extra pop they need. Celts seem to have the best of both worlds but the other two have the ability to pop out libraries at size 3 (30 food after settlement) which gets those critical building earlier while the celts will have to wait for 5 (assuming you have muskets for short rush) or 6 population to whip.

Having played Sumeria for my one game. Those 160-shield cathedrals are a pain in the rear. Even with AGR and being on Monarch, some cities were unable to get Cath early because of the happiness limitations, not to mention there is no short-rush option for 140 shields, meaning you had to get to size 4 for the last rush (120 to 160) and thus have one extra population not used for whipping. Thus, I'd probably play Celts or Babylon next time.

It's probably a close call with Celts vs. Babylon. I bet Babylon's success is a little more map dependent as it will need excellent conditions to offset the Celts growing power. The only thing Babylon has going for it in my opinion are those super early libraries (well, not entirely, free MA tech and SGL chance help some too). I also think that ToA games have been ignoring the slight maintenance edge they have over Education games to build colosseums. With their extra maintenance (free temples, not building unis) colosseums give the edge to complete a few turns sooner. (I believe this helped me get my #1 spot.) I think Babylon will take advantage of this better because they have less pop to sac and may be able to get those 6 extra pop for the colossuem earlier. Is that those enough to outweigh AGR? I don't know yet.

I agree with the earlier sentiments that 2 SGLs for pyramids and ToA will be essential for best dates. (Occasionally, an AI will build ToA for you, probably not optimal at this difficulty, but a possibility if that 2nd SGL won't pop) A third, if occurring, I would probably use for Sistine to help with happiness issues. Sometimes a core city will end up building Sistine if I don't need wealth or markets. Babylon's slightly higher SGL percentage will help reduce re-starts. Still you're giving up AGR.

Okay, those are my 2 cents on this one. I hope some people find it helpful.

The problem with Sistine is that it implies you have researched Theology... which in turn cancels the Oracle. In my current game I have the best of both worlds, having built the Oracle, shutting off research after Monotheism, and then capturing Sistine.

And yes, the expensive cathedrals suck as Sumeria. It requires diligent partial-whipping and coming back to cities later. It also requires, in most cases, building a LOT of cities on rivers. You can get by without, but it is progressively suckier.

Offsetting this somewhat is the ability to control the golden age, which Celts don't have (Pyramids = instant GA). That GA saved my bacon this game as I was running into severe cash flow issues until I could capture Sistine and a couple more luxes. (Having an opposing spice town flip to me was also a big help! )

So far I've been cramming in library-cathedral-colosseum, usually in that order; then that town produces settlers/workers. I'm not sure exactly what my finish date will be but it's 780 AD and I think I'm projected to finish in 1285 by CA2. Which will mean it'll be a lot earlier than that. And I'm sure I'm not doing this perfectly.

free temple + lib + cath = 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 cpt, only 5 of which double.

lib + uni = 6 cpt, all of which double.

If not scientific, I would probably not go to education, because the uni is 200 shields.
As Babylon, I'm not sure what I would do, to be honest - I might well ignore ToA completely.
As Sumeria, I would definitely go to education.

btw - I haven't actually tested to see which is better.

ATM,

I would not put a huge amount of stock in doubling up on a university... Really, how many can you build en masse before say 400 ad?

Probably a few less than cath. Cath are a bit sooner in the tech tree and a bit cheaper, but
neither will sprouting like weeds in time to get a double.

Not a huge amount earlier (only two techs), but in terms of time, it's a crucial 20 turns or so. I know in my game I have quite a few cathedrals that were built in maybe 100-200 BC, or a touch later. Those can get some useful doubling time, to the tune of 300 years or so (which is 30 turns at that time frame). A university 20 turns later (roughly 300 AD) would not double for me. The game will be over by then.

I think the double culture bonus is a red herring, in this kind of situation, A false positive. I mean, double the culture certainly sounds good but when you would need to build it to be around long enough to double you should be building settlers. At least the way I do it. In my last few 100k games I'd guess only about 15 to 20 % of my culture buildings doubled at victory, which is only about 7 to 10 % of my culture. If you do things right you should win before things get a chance to double. Really.