HOF III December Gauntlet

Tone

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As requested the next gauntlet is a 100K cultural game. The full settings are

Level: Regent
Mapsize: Small
Victory Condition:100K

We shall continue with the two month deadline but, as suggested by Spoonwood, we shall introduce a new gauntlet each month.

Please submit your games by February 15th 2011. Good luck to all competitors.
 
Which pays off more

1. Building the Sistine Chapel so you can grow enough to whip in colosseums/get tax farms up and running or...

2. Forget the Sistine Chapel so you can whip in settlers/culture in that city early?

Here's three similar gauntlets, 1, 2, 3. If you feel like the large empire 100k game would be a drag, try what Tone and Bartleby did in Omicron.
 
At regent you can probably wait until you have built all the settlers you need, and then go for sistines.
 
In my 640AD warlord standard game I didnt bother with theology, I did build the oracle and hanging gardens though. In that game I only had 6 luxuries till quite late on, when the vikings finally built a harbour (they were on a different landmass) although it was a pangea
 
Here's a question:

Say you pick a religious civ and fish for an SGL with mysticism or something.
Is it better to build a temple right away (get culture right off) or build a setter right away (and get your 2nd city up earlier)?

I've been experimenting with the temple, but I'm thinking that the multiplicative effect of settler (getting it out 8 turns earlier) is the right way to go.
 
My gut feeling tells me settler before temple with the first city. Later in the game, I build temples before settlers in cities that can complete the temple build in 10-15 turns.
 
Is there any situation when building a city improvement, other than possibly a granary, is better than building a settler? I'd think that the first settler almost always is the winning strategy.
 
I'd think settler. Especially if you 1. have a food bonus around for the second city or 2. play as the Celts and trigger your GA with the Pyramids.

In the game I've got going (Masonry SGL with the Celts) I basically founded only cities on rivers (no lakes, but those would work also) in Despotism while waiting to found cities not on rivers until Republic. I don't think I'd do in non-100k games, or at a high level, and of course with anyone non-agricultural I'd place them wherever instead of only on freshwater spots.

In my standard Regent 100k game I built the Forbidden Palace and then the ToA in the same city. In this game I think I'll build the ToA first, and then the Forbidden Palace in that same city after that. Or maybe I'll go ToA and then settlers and build the Forbidden Palace late. What works better ToA first, then the Forbidden Palace or the other way around? How important should we rank building the Forbidden Palace early, or does it make more sense to throw out more settlers and cities earlier, since basically everything gets build via whipping? Does this vary a lot with how soon one revolts to Feudalism?
 
Dumb question: if you have a temple in a town, and then build the ToA, do you still get doubling from the temple? I know the ToA temples don't get doubling, but does ToA negate doubling of other ones as well?
 
ToA before FP. I might not even build FP.

If you build a temple before ToA, you DO get the doubling from the temple - I just checked it. CivAssist doesn't show it as doubled, but the CPT from the town in the game shows it.
 
Some thoughts on the #1 game in this category, 890 AD by sanabas.

1) He built a total of 4 colloseums, which is interesting.
2) He built SoZ, which is almost certainly a good idea in a game like this - you get some culture, but also, free (very good) units you can use to take down your opponents. Considering that 5 Gallics is the same cost as SoZ, it's probably a smart idea.
3) From what I can tell, the last 30 or so cities he established didnt' cut even a turn off his finish time.
 
post 5 - build a settler - the only improvement to consider is a granery - but if you are restarting until you get an SGL for pyramids, then you don't want that either. the big question is settler worker or warrior.

Post 6 - build temples? - why are you thinking about building temples?

Post 8 - building the FP? I don't think it will actually help. I never seem to get round to it anyway.

post 9 - hand built temples do maintain culture doubling but you still pay maintenance on them (thats how you can tell which will double)

post 11- colluseums are expensive maintenance wise, thats why you build them last (build order is Libraries (3cpt 1gpt), cathedrals(3cpt, 2gpt), settlers (2cpt from ToA, -1gpt) then colluseums(2cpt, 3gpt). SoZ is definitely good (I always underbuild the military, and sometimes that causes a bit of a scramble)

Get used to an early GA if you are SGL fishing - mine started in 3100BC with 1 city and 1 settler!
 
Not so sure about RF's build order. He might be right.

If you're playing as the Celts, cathedrals and libraries cost the same amount of shields, produce the same amount of culture, while cathedrals compensate for using the whip. So do the advantages of cathedrals outweigh the higher maintainence cost? Settlers before libraries and cathedrals also implies that your empire grows faster. That's what Nikodemus did. Then again, that might vary significantly with amount of food available. In a low food spot getting to size 5 to whip settlers seems to make less sense than getting to size 4 to whip in 40 shields for either a library as a scientific tribe or as a short-whip on something else.
 
Sure there is an argument for settlers first, but you will usually have your core producing settlers at that point in any case, better to get the culture up early for doubling.

re whiping settlers, you will find you rarely whip a settler from a size 5 city, you wait until you have 10 hand built shields and then whip for a single population point. In fact the Micro can be simplified into seeing what you can whip from cities with pop 4 and above, and also in the very low fpt cities (you can increase fpt by whipping any citizen working a 1 food tile) Late game you will also want to review your colluseum builds as they have a better rush path to the end.
 
Just to review information here:

If you plop down a city with the ToA you get 2 culture per turn immediately and that city starts to grow towards whipping out its other improvements.

Whipping out an improvement gives you the double in 1000 years. When this happens in terms of turns varies with build date, since

From 250 AD to 1250 AD we have a new turn every 10 years. Before 250 AD we have a new turn every 20, or more, years.

Which works out better in terms of finish date depends on the above, as well as settler travel time, and other factors of course.
 
You also need to consider that the earlier you build culture the less of it you need as it contributes for more turns.

I just added a graph to my 100k thread which shows the culture per turn. This illustrates that there are 4 phases to my game.

1) set up - initial growth, build Pyramids, ToA, research libraries, and Cathedrals
2) growth - continue to expand, building culture in all cities, core finishes quickly and moves back to settlers (achieving 6CPT growth per turn)
3) Hit dom limit - gift a couple of edge cities if you are too close, fill in any remaining city spots, build culture, switch settler builds to colluseums, crack the whip. (achieving 15 CPT growth per turn which will include some culture doubling)
4) realise that whatever you do won't save another turn so just hit enter.

phase 1 lasted until turn 95, phase 2 ended at turn 135, phase 3 ended at 173, with the game ending at 197. That was for a tiny map, I would expect phase 2 to take longer, and phase 3 to have an even higher CPT rate for this small map. (perhaps 22 to 24)

EDIT

Remembered the reason for my build order.

if you are pop rushing library/cat takes 4 pop and produces 3 CPT, so 0.75 per pop.
settler takes 3 pop (1 for the whip, 2 for the settler) and produces 2CPT so 0.66 per pop (a bit less than this as you also need to figure in the 10 shields)
colluseum takes 6 pop and produces 2cpt so 0.33 per pop
 
Not so sure about RF's build order. He might be right.

If you're playing as the Celts, cathedrals and libraries cost the same amount of shields, produce the same amount of culture, while cathedrals compensate for using the whip. So do the advantages of cathedrals outweigh the higher maintainence cost? Settlers before libraries and cathedrals also implies that your empire grows faster. That's what Nikodemus did. Then again, that might vary significantly with amount of food available. In a low food spot getting to size 5 to whip settlers seems to make less sense than getting to size 4 to whip in 40 shields for either a library as a scientific tribe or as a short-whip on something else.

Settlers first, then libraries, then cathedrals, then colloseums. I prefer to wait in republic till I get at least 150 cities plus settlers on standard, this will be lower on a small map
 
Heres some information for you, in my standard warlord 100k in 570BC i had 79 cities but was only doing 10 cpt, which was just the pyramids and my capital. The TOA was still 7 turns away at the time. At the time I was building Markets then Libraries in my core cities and settlers and workers elsewhere other than a couple of harbours to get a luxury on line.
 
Interesting - in the tiny game I just played I only had 32 cities, but had CPT of 148 (64 from ToA leaves 84, which is palace, pyramids and ToA itself, plus twenty something libraries) Would have loved to have played on from that start - what date did you achieve? 8th century?

Settlers come first if you are cash rushing them (which you appear to be) or if sheild production outstrips population growth (which defines the core)
 
RFHolloway said:
Remembered the reason for my build order.

if you are pop rushing library/cat takes 4 pop and produces 3 CPT, so 0.75 per pop.
settler takes 3 pop (1 for the whip, 2 for the settler) and produces 2CPT so 0.66 per pop (a bit less than this as you also need to figure in the 10 shields)
colluseum takes 6 pop and produces 2cpt so 0.33 per pop

How do you figure in the growth from the new city via the settlers into your calculation?
 
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