G-Major LIX

Well, I had a chunk of time this weekend, and made it to t438.

I'm now faced with a dilemma. Does anyone know at what point during the calculations the fixed point limit of 214k beakers is applied? IE is it an intermediate value that is limited to 214k or is the final value left over?

This is a real problem because I'm at 37k bpt. If I bulb, I get 296k beakers, which is over the limit. But let's assume the intermediate value is preserved as a 32-bit number.

Techs are 107k. If I currently have zero overflow, my overflow will be 296k-107k=189k. (Possibly 185k because overflow is now limited to 5x bpt)

If I then hit next turn, I'll hit 226k, which is over the limit. But if the tech cost is applied before the limit, I'll be at 119k, and everything is fine.

The only case I'm worried about is the 2 possible intermediate values being stored in fixed-point.

If 296k is stored in fixed point, it will be translated as a negative number, and I'll *lose* turns of beakers by bulbing. If the 226k is stored in fixed point, it's an even larger negative number.

However, if overflow is only stored as fixed point after techs are applied, then I think I'm fine, because in both of the above cases, the subtraction would prevent the overflow.

Anyone know for sure what will happen? I'm already getting 1 Future Tech every 3 turns, so I might just plant the stupid GS as an academy and not risk it. But I'm curious.

Also, a few key updates for those who may attempt this later:

1) At t438 I've already exceeded my prediction of 15k score, but population growth is diminishing fast. I'll probably finish with about 17k, which is probably about 2k below the potential score with a better map and an earlier WF. So for those trying to get an unassailable gold for the HOF, you'll probably need to hit 19k+.

2) I'm at ~500 Happiness. My obsession with getting the ice&snow-locked cities to the happiness cap was *totally* misguided. I see that now. Once a city hits size 14 it has enough population that your local happiness isn't capped. (max local happiness = population)

Because of the reduced unhappiness from specialists of roughly 5.5/city, reduced unhappiness from liberty and Forbidden Palace, and religious + liberty global happiness, a city of size 14 with full buildings generates like +7 happiness, which can be used to compensate for cities that exceed the happiness they generate. I was capping my fastest-growing cities at 32 to leave happiness room for the other cities to grow into, but because not all cities will have time to cap out, and some don't have the food, there's no point in doing so.

This leaves you free to send trade routes to the cities that *benefit the most*, IE cargo ship always, never caravans. (Except possibly early on to get a city to size 14)

I say 14 but 21 is better. 14 * 0.85 = 12, - 1/10 = 11. 21*0.85 = 18, -2/10 = 16. The population unhappiness reduction on a size 21 city is noticeably better than a size 14. But it can be difficult to get a city to size 21 when they have zero workable food tiles...

Coliseum + Zoo + Stadium + Pagoda + Temple + Bank + Stock Exchange + Hospital + Medical Lab + Garrison = 15 local happiness. So 14 is almost enough in the worst case. But in the typical case, your snow-locked city is at the bottom of the map, so technically it's coastal, and gets an extra +3 for being coastal. So you need at least 17 population to get the max happiness value of that city. Possibly 21. if the city has Stone Works/Mint/Water Mill. Which is another reason 21 is better. But at least 17.

Point being... sure, it's not as efficient, and the cities at size 32 grow slowly, but a one-tile island has 36 food tiles around it, and with King Days and everything else, even at size 47 it will still have a very significant food surplus. (ToA really adds up when your base food is 90...)

The only thing that matters is that every city generate the max local happiness it can.

3) One last thing about happiness. +500 seems like a lot, sure, but with 180 cities, that's not even +3/city. Meaning that I could conceivably go negative before the end of the game. When I was at +220 I thought it was wasteful, but with 50 cities growing each turn, even -1/city would have taken me negative temporarily. (Like, without garrison happiness for example)

So, perhaps I was wrong about the happiness policies being excessive...

Anyway, now I'm also faced with the possibility that my total gold could go negative. Hopefully that isn't capped at 214k also. Even building research, I'm at 13k gpt, and I have nothing to buy except nuclear/solar plants. (To eke out a few extra beakers)

I may just rush-buy air units in every city to keep that number under 214k. It'll make capturing the last CS hilarious at least.

Cromagnus said:

Well, I had a chunk of time this weekend, and made it to t438.

Click to expand...

Gauntlet threads usually go quiet after the Gauntlet is over, just wanted to let you know your continued updates are appreciated,....This was a great Gauntlet, and I learned a lot moving forward. Can't wait to see the end result, I'll probably take another run at this in the near future,...My effort was thwarted in the late stages because I mismanaged one of my puppeted cities (Hotel), and I got lazy managing my tourism (Cultural Victory). So, I still need to get on the board (I ran out of time before the deadline when restarting a recovery game), and have a feeling the result will be better than my original after learning so much from your effort,...Thanks Cro.



P.S. Question:
Is your game going to be a submitable game,...??
The HoF is O.K. with you restarting from Manual saves every 50 turns,...I think I would have payed better attention to details on Gauntlets if I knew that this wasn't frowned upon,...

It's only frowned upon to replay turns, not to load save games. Minimum # of turns between loads is the only way the HOF staff can deter replaying turns. You can't save on turn 0, play turn 1 and then replay turn 1 without a one-turn play session, which would set off alarms.

I don't know whether my submission will be accepted. Since 3 turns can take me an hour, and I'm only playing about 5 turns/day *tops*, it's entirely possible I've saved and quit after only 10 turns or less. I think there was one point I saved and quit because I was having graphical corruption after leaving my computer on for a week straight. (I can only imagine my total playtime on this one!)

However, I haven't replayed turns, and I hope you didn't mean that by "restarting"... I assume you meant "Save and quit then load later", not "reload".

In my case, I think my first session was like 250 turns. Maybe even 300. And I've been leaving my computer on for days straight to minimize save/loads. So I'm honoring the rules as best as I can, but I probably have some saves that are less than 50 turns apart. /shrug

Cromagnus said:

I think there was one point I saved and quit because I was having graphical corruption after leaving my computer on for a week straight. (I can only imagine my total playtime on this one!)

However, I haven't replayed turns, and I hope you didn't mean that by "restarting"... I assume you meant "Save and quit then load later", not "reload".

In my case, I think my first session was like 250 turns. Maybe even 300. And I've been leaving my computer on for days straight to minimize save/loads. So I'm honoring the rules as best as I can, but I probably have some saves that are less than 50 turns apart. /shrug

Click to expand...

Yeah, funny...My electrical bill has actually gone up quite a bit since I started playing Gauntlets,...I almost always leave my computer on, and usually perform a complete game from start to finish without shutting down my computer.

Lately, I have been using past submitted games as reference to learn from, but loading a HoF game obviously requires leaving my current effort on a Gauntlet. I was just looking for some advice on that, and also was looking forward to seeing this game, so I wanted to make sure I was going to get the opportunity.

Of Course I meant "Save and quit then load later", and obviously would never question your integrity since I consider you the most respected player on here, and a big reason why I have advanced as a player on HoF competitions.

Do you have any issues with tourism on your current game, and therefore approaching a Cultural Victory?, maybe it is wise to leave one of your competitors around for a while before throwing Citadels on him,....I noticed that Mesix's Gold Medal effort came REALLY close to being thwarted, and 10 (or so) more turns probably would have spelled "Doom".

I have no tourism issues because I wiped the floor with my opponents before any of them could build the Parthenon or generate Great Works. I have generated exactly zero tourism in this game.

Which is a good thing because even at t430+, Attila has like < 2000 total culture.

I did have a close call where I misjudged the turn of completion on a hotel and forgot to annex before that point. But luckily there are no archaeological sites in that city. So, not a problem.

You can always gift cities to the AI to rid yourself of tourism. It's expensive, but you can place a number of great works in a city and then gift it. That's one way to get your tourism down to zero.

I'll build the two tourism Wonders on t499, and I don't have to worry about Attila doing it because he has a pop-1, 1-tile city.

Fast domination and a high-production start will make all this much easier, along with making sure everyone is at war so they don't have time to build Wonders. Once the Great Works are in the game though, yes, it's a city-juggling act to prevent your tourism from being a problem.

Jeez, talk about overshooting... happiness peaked at 639. Could have been 700+ but I didn't work all specialist slots and I still had 20 stadiums in the build queue.

Cromagnus, you are building the time game to end all time games! Please keep posting, this is amazing.

Further evidence in favor of an earlier WF... (IE without all happiness policies)

Once you finish rush-buying and building all happiness/growth buildings, there's nothing for you to do with your 10k+ gpt. So you can start buying culture buildings. With an earlier WF, you can get all culture buildings by t400, and thus boost culture output to the point where you can get a few extra policies by game's end.

Since the last few population in each city come rather slowly, you have time to do this. You can afford to go without the happiness from medical labs & hospitals (~360) until after t400. I think this buys you an extra 2 policies, allowing one to focus on the gpt & trading post policies earlier.

Also, here's a management tip. Once you hit unreasonable game slowdown, you want to minimize turn times or even clicking on cities. Things that cause slowdown include:

1) Selecting a unit.
2) Mousing over a city.
3) Moving a unit through a city. (Even without mousing over the city)
4) Changing a city. (Rush-buying, changing citizen allocation)

This creates a problem for micromanaging city growth. How do you minimize turn times while still allocating newly spawned citizens into specialist slots? (A requirement to stay in positive happiness most of the time if you're not at +600 happiness like me lol)

How do you purchase pagodas or rush-buy buildings once you've done 70 of them and have 110 left to go? How do you find the cities that need it?

Here's my strategy. I alter city names to keep track of where I was and what I was doing. I add letters to the beginning of the name based on status. Example: Instead of "Gao", "NPGao" indicates that this city gets a pagoda next.

That way, at the beginning of the turn, I can find that city by name from the city dropdown without searching for it. It saves tons of time. Here are my letter codes:

F - "Finished" - IE NOTHING more needs to be done with this city. Ever.
P - "Pagoda" - This city has a pagoda.
H - "Happiness" - This city has all happiness buildings.
G - "Growth" - This city has all growth buildings.
T - "Trade Route" - This city would benefit from a trade route.
N - "Next" - This city needs something done with it next turn.

Example: You delete a caravan, rush-buy a cargo ship, or just relocate a cargo ship. You have a specific city in mind, and you don't want to lose track of that when you come back from waiting for the turn to end, or after you spend 20 minutes managing all the things that need addressing during a turn. I use N on multiple cities. And often with codes. NP = next pagoda. NT = next trade route. NH = Next happiness buildings. NC = Next culture buildings. NG = Next growth buildings.

Also, using the enhanced UI that keeps track of all city growth each turn is very helpful, albeit slow. The key is to to not mouse over or enter cities unless you have to. That's where the names come in. It'll say "Such and such city grew" or whatever, and the name tells you whether you care or not.

This may seem excessive, but for me, mousing over or entering a city is 5 seconds of lag.

This cut down my turn times dramatically. It also minimizes waste... you might have a city with 6 unemployed citizens, while you rush-buy universities, factories and stock exchanges elsewhere where they're not immediately useful... losing out on 3 food/turn and 3 happiness.

/shrug

EDIT: Just to be clear, putting the letters first allows you to re-sort the list by name and quickly find that city in the list.

omg you are good in time games Cromagnus.

Peets said:

omg you are good in time games Cromagnus.

Click to expand...

"good" (read: patient enough to put in the time it takes to micromanage 180 cities)

Seriously though, I would normally not have decided to micromanage to this degree. But, this will probably be my last time game ever, and due to life constraints, may very well be my last HOF submission. Plus, I got a "late" start expanding, (IE t290) whereas it is probably optimal to expand on t250 or earlier. As a result, I have a lot of ground to make up. I think with a t250 expansion you could just leave your cities on autopilot and probably be ok, but in my circumstances, each city will get an extra 1-2 population by the end of the game if I micromanage to maximize food/turn.

Little things make a big difference. If you have two cities next to each other, and one is on a trajectory to be size 34 and the other size 27, by reallocating food early enough they could be 32 and 32, for a net gain of +3 population. But if you wait until the first one is size 32 to reallocate, the other city might only make it to size 30. The difference between +4food/turn and +6food/turn is very significant in the end-game.

If a city is at +10 food/turn, it might be 12 turns until growth, vs 15 turns with +8 food. After growth, it's 15 turns vs 20 turns. Then 20 vs 30, then 30 vs 60.

Total turns of growth lost = 3 + 5 + 10 + 30 = 48. With a city that was planted on t350, 48 turns is 30% of its total lifetime! All that lost due to one 2 food tile.

That math is probably off but it's indicative of how much micromanaging matters.

So I'm micromanaging like mad to make up for lost time. And it's making a difference. I might even break 18000 pts by the end-game.

Side note: I'm at ~45k beakers. I think with an earlier WF you could hit 54k beakers, which would be 1 future tech every 2 turns. :boggle:

~30 turns to go, home stretch!

EDIT: Out of curiosity, I checked my total culture in the tourism influence page for Attila: ~630,000.

Yeah, renaming cities was something I did as well. When I'd planted all of my cities, I went into the last city's menu, buy some set of buildings then hit the left arrow key to go to the previously settled city and do the same, and so on. When I ran out of gold I'd name the city "stopped here" or something like that and continue next turn.

I'm surprised you buy the pagodas manually though.

vadalaz said:

Yeah, renaming cities was something I did as well. When I'd planted all of my cities, I went into the last city's menu, buy some set of buildings then hit the left arrow key to go to the previously settled city and do the same, and so on. When I ran out of gold I'd name the city "stopped here" or something like that and continue next turn.

I'm surprised you buy the pagodas manually though.

Click to expand...

Only until I ran out of cities that were outgrowing their cultural boundaries.

I had a lot of one-tile islands that were outpacing cultural expansion and I wanted to give them pagodas first.

I think the last pagoda dropped in around t460.

Whee, just had a crash on t486. But it's the home stretch. I almost rage-quit when I realized I lost 50 turns of growth due to a bug. But, I definitely won't ever play another time game, so I need to submit this one.

Here's the bug, for those who haven't discovered this. If someone had mentioned it on the forums, I completely missed it.

If you have every luxury in the game when you found a city, that city will never have King days.

This caused me to lose 150-200 turns of +25% growth in about 170 cities. That's roughly 50 turns of growth. Maybe 40 because there are other bonuses. (+10% Tradition bonus)

40 TURNS OF GROWTH in a TIME GAME. RRAAAAARARRGH.

I only noticed around t470 or so, but I quickly built forts on all instances of one luxury to test the theory that it's a permanent bug. By t486, 2 of my original cities started asking for salt. (When their king day ran out)

None of my newer cities are asking for salt. And I did the math to verify they aren't getting the bonus. Only about 10 of my cities are getting the bonus. That's a MASSIVE bug for a time game, and one that is extremely painful to find so late. Also trivial to avoid if you know to watch out for it.

So, let this be a warning to you if you decide to play this table!

Anyway, still going to submit. I'm going to have to revise my earlier estimate for max score. I'm going to break 18k. I estimate the peak theoretical score with a better map is closer to 20k.

I'm almost certain that with the extra growth I lost from not having King Days I could have capped out my happiness, meaning the only extra score I could have gotten would have been from more cities and future techs. (10 cities = ~800 pts)

So, once again, I must recant, and say that I do now believe this table is happiness-bound, meaning you do need every happiness policy, assuming you play efficiently enough to max out growth.

PS On t486 I'm about to drop below 200 happiness. I expect to bottom out around 100 happiness, and if I max out specialist slots, perhaps 120. (Growth is REALLY slowing down)

120 surplus happiness is less than 1 per city, and, as mentioned, I lost tons of growth. Thus, every happiness policy/belief is necessary for max score.

I think you might be able to boost it slightly higher by shooting for 40/30/30/30/30 instead of 32 for every city. Population unhappiness is empire wide, but +1/10 citizens happiness is per-city.

So, a round number is always better, and with 40/30/30/30/30 you'd get 36 additional happiness in 180 cities compared to every city being 32. But that's a level of micro-management even I don't think I'd ever do.

I am awe. Seriously.

Hehe, well I'm ready for it to be over. t496, 3 turns to go! I started buying Guided Missiles to ensure my total gold didn't exceed 214k, after running out of things to buy that could be conceivably useful.

I'm really frustrated about the King Days thing, but oh well. Through painstaking micromanagement I've managed to adjust food levels so that almost all my cities grow on t497-t498, so that when I kill off all the CS on t498 (and lose 4food/city, or 720 food/turn) none of them will miss out on a chance to grow.

Between that last growth turn, and the extra population from the 4 CS, and CN Tower on T499, I'm hopeful I can break 19000.

I'm also going to burn some GS on t499, hoping that I get at least 1 free tech before the total goes negative.

Also, I'm close to dropping below 100 happiness finally! I'm not working all citizen slots, so I'm going to go back on t498 and set all specialists that aren't set, so I can see what my actual happiness buffer truly is. No matter the result, aside from bad map luck with total # of cities, to be within 100-200 population of the cap feels like an accomplishment, especially given the Kings Days thing.

Finished. Final score 19301. Micromanaging in the last 50 turns made a huge difference.

On t498, after capturing the remaining 4 CS, I was at 44 happiness. (Puppeted, without all happiness buildings and with no specialists)

Before I finished CN Tower, I loaded all specialist slots to see my happiness buffer. I was at 108.

So, essentially I was around 120-150 population away from running out of happiness.



It occurred to me though that if I hadn't lost King days I would have capped out much earlier and thus been able to capture the CS much earlier, and once annexed with all happiness buildings and specialists, I would have been around 150-200 happiness. So, if you expand early enough you'd have time to annex and *fully* grow your last few CS for extra happiness. In fact, you might cap out even with them annexed, at which point it would be worth an early CN Tower. (which generates more happiness than unhappiness)

So I estimate that I could have squeezed an extra 3 population/city out of this game with an earlier expansion. I had 49 policies, which was massive overkill. Once I ran out of everything else to buy, broadcast towers in every city and faith GW generated enough culture to get at least 4 extra policies after expansion.

All that plus a start with better map luck, city spot-wise, and I think the peak score is closer to 21k. I know I keep bumping that number up, but this time I think it's pretty close.

Considering my "late" expansion and lack of King days, I think it's reasonable to expect someone could get more techs and more population equivalent to 2000 points.


Anyway, real life has finally gotten in the way, and this will almost certainly be my last HOF submission. It's been a pleasure competing with y'all.

I'm not gone for good, but I doubt you'll see quite as many (tl;dr) posts from me. I'm mostly going to tinker with my mod. I promised Acken I'd get him an early version, so I have to at least do that. If I make enough progress I'll publish it so y'all can try it on Steam.

Otherwise, good luck, congratulations to all the new faces who are kicking ass, congrats to zenmaster for the HOF and VVV domination, and I must say I'm excited to see all the activity these days, especially at Deity Level.

Moriarte and I tried to drum up interest for an ongoing unofficial Deity Gauntlet a year ago and had almost no takers, but the HOF has really picked up steam. I'm bummed I missed the boat on that. But I'll definitely be following the gauntlets/challenges.

Impressive game and a worthy last HOF submission, Cromagnus. Competing and discussing strategies with you has been immensely fun. I wish you best of luck with your mod and real life endeavours!

Cromagnus, it's been an honor and a privilege. And what a monument you have left us. By the way, that real life you guys keep talking about, what's that all about, I am sure it is overrated.

I will echo those sentiments. It has been an honor and a privilege to play alongside your games and analysis. You alone kept me interested in the gauntlets and the community during some low ebbs of forum participation. Wishing you the best of luck in all your civ and real life endeavors. Looking forward to seeing your mod and seeing you chime in on the forums from time to time.

Thanks, you guys are awesome.

I remember when BNW came out and I was like, "Self, you really shouldn't buy this expansion. You'll get sucked in again. Like you always do."

And I did, but it was really the civfanatics community and all y'all especially that kept me playing long after I normally would have burned out. Cheers!