Challenge-I-07

[AutomatedTeller]

Well. This is turning into a pain in the butt.

Lost by SS (x2), UN, Culture, barbs eating me. Interestingly, I've never had an AI eat me, though some have tried.

 

[kcd_swede]

Well. This is turning into a pain in the butt.

Lost by SS (x2), UN, Culture, barbs eating me. Interestingly, I've never had an AI eat me, though some have tried.

Yeah, these games are generally very fast to play, so it gives plenty of opportunity to find new ways to lose.

My game advice wouldn't be worth much, but my exp in losing this one many times might be useful... trying to do the same things "better" will be very frustrating. Instead, look for something that you've been missing, or try something totally new.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I got a 1915 victory! woo and hoo!!

I tried the "keep all your forests and zoom to the NP" strategy. Had a start with corn, 2 pigs and 3 FP's, plus a gold. Was able to trade for stone later and marble later later, but missed taj mahal by a turn anyway.

Picked Isabella, Mansa, Sitting Bull and Napolean over and above the required ones. This really helped keep AI's from running out of control - there was nearly constant wars, but no one got anywhere until Mansa rolled Nap.


First GS in 1600 BC
Oracle in 1320 BC
Pyramids in 625 BC
Glib in 350 BC

Liberalism got me physics.

At my peak, I had 10 forest preserves, 22 scientists in total, size 26, 15 settled GS, plus the GM, GS and a couple of GE's.

Once I got my tech done, I switched to state property and spent a couple of turns finishing workshop and mine pre builds on the forests. Nothing like 1656 hammers in one turn

Several civs built apollo - no one built a part.
Mansa built the UN, but never had more than 1/2 the votes he needed. I had to defy a bunch of resolutions on global civics, though.
Mansa was about 15-20 turns from a culture win when my SS got to alpha centuri.

I flipped at least 2 AI cities, I think 3.

What I think the keys were:

1) Lot's of civs
2) No vassals
3) Tons of food and not worrying about towns
4) Not trading for everything as soon as it was available. This probably cost me a bunch of turns in end time, but I managed a win

What I'll do different next time (if I try again)

1) Make sure I have stone or marble, which gets you pyramids/Glib/Nat Epic faster
2) make sure I have chemistry before I go for liberalism->physics
3) Be willing to make some more trades for late game techs.
4) Put my citizens to work right away when I get my nat park up - I didn't right away, so it took longer to get up to size 26 that it really needed to and probably cost me taj mahal
5) research calendar myself to get MoM.
6) Time my GA better for civics changes.
7) Think through the trade off between settling and bulbing. I used my last scientist to cut a turn off of a modern era tech, which was the right call - I didn't need the hammer and I got more beakers from it than I would have from settling. I might have cut off some more time had I bulbed before.

Winning was fun

For those who are trying and getting frustrated:

I have found that Oracle sometimes goes very early to the AI - as early as 1800 BC!! There's nothing you can do then, if your strategy is Oracle. Actually, Oracle isn't vital to this game (Flourescent didn't build it) though Pyramids probably is.

I don't know if how a cottage economy does in comparison. Probably similar - fewer GS, obviously, but a town on a river gives more science than a scientist, and that's before printing press.

 

[kcd_swede]

^Congrats!

Nice finish date. If Mansa was as close as 20 turns, I'm sure I would have lost that one.

I'd have to substantially improve my space race skills before I try this one again. Once hhhawk gets a #1 in every game... a point here or there isn't going to matter much to me. A pint here or there would do wonders, though.

 

[MyOtherName]

I'm not convinced The Mausoleum of Maussollos is worthwhile.


I pulled up the 1870 AD autosave where I started my last golden age -- I jumped I jumped from 1072 / 340 to 1126 / 423 . (After all modifiers) The extra is insignificant (?) at this point.

Assuming this is representative, each turn of Golden Age saves me only a quarter turn of production and like a twentieth of a turn of research. Since I had three golden ages, that means MoM amounts to 3 turns of extra end-game production.


What does the diversion cost us? Surely a lot more than three turns early on -- I can't tell if we get enough insulation from the AI research to cover it.


What about early golden ages? I guess I haven't considered that -- I figured that settling early people is better in the long run (even for an artist!) and didn't really think it through. I still can't imagine the bonus / + anarchy free civic change would ever beat settling overall except in esoteric situations. But can the surge of early make up for it? Hrm....


The Taj Mahal is something I've never bothered with -- it's a lot of hammers, and it might be better to just build research. Doing it just to deny the AI might even be counter-productive!

 

[WastinTime]

You say you had 3 golden ages, and had you built Taj, that would be 4. This means that MoM = 2 free golden ages! (+50% extension of 4 GAs) It's way cheaper to build than Taj and twice as powerful. So clearly MoM is worthwhile if you can be convinced Taj is worth the effort.

I'll let you take a crack at comparing the hammers needed for Taj to the benefits of the MoM-extended GA it produces. Figure in a few turns on anarchy saved. You'll find it is easily worthwhile too.