Challenge-II-06

[Denniz]

Does that mean I can go back to this spot in the game and eliminate Mansa for the fastest Conquest win on a small map at Settler?

No. I guess I didn't read close enough. Sometimes players new to the HOF think that there is a separate submission process for Challenges, etc. Since there isn't, I try to head that off when I can.

 

[Dynamic]

It looks like on low levels optimal number of cities is less then on middle and high levels because of short development time. In my Prince game all 23 cities were well developed, but on Settler one I developed in time just 11 from 17 (and it was main reason why I say this game was not good). In my current Warlord game (not finished yet) even 60 Workers prepared just 15 from 24 cities. Of course, it's Rainforest - very Worker-hungry map, but I see a tendency...

 

[Debanad]

Got a decent 1867 immortal finished on B&S. I went for an aggressive start, stealing a worker from Korea with my warrior and then taking his 2nd city with mass holkans. Took the rest of his cities (except for a crappy tundra one so i could trade him techs for money) with Cats/Phants, and also grabbed 4 cities from the Dutch the same way. Had 10 good cities at that point (lost 2 to Lizzy's culture by the end) and just went for the space race win from there. Liz missed a cultural victory by 5 turns.

Got really lucky that gems popped in my capital's BFC early on.

 

[kcd_swede]

Got a decent 1867 immortal finished on B&S. I went for an aggressive start, stealing a worker from Korea with my warrior and then taking his 2nd city with mass holkans. Took the rest of his cities (except for a crappy tundra one so i could trade him techs for money) with Cats/Phants, and also grabbed 4 cities from the Dutch the same way. Had 10 good cities at that point (lost 2 to Lizzy's culture by the end) and just went for the space race win from there. Liz missed a cultural victory by 5 turns.

Got really lucky that gems popped in my capital's BFC early on.

Congrats on a nice game! I'm glad to see more folks playing at the higher levels, too.

 

[Dynamic]

I've finished my Warlord attempt - turn 271 1255AD. By my own opinion this one is worse then my Prince game but better played then my last Settler game6.
There is 37 turns between my Prince and Warlord games and 30 turns between my Warlord and Settler games. Settler game without any doubts could be played 5-15 turns faster so linear dependancy (20 turns per level) may be actual.
I'll play Settler again but near the and of this tournament.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I've finished my Warlord attempt - turn 271 1255AD. By my own opinion this one is worse then my Prince game but better played then my last Settler game6.
There is 37 turns between my Prince and Warlord games and 30 turns between my Warlord and Settler games. Settler game without any doubts could be played 5-15 turns faster so linear dependancy (20 turns per level) may be actual.
I'll play Settler again but near the and of this tournament.

Yes, you will have to prove your hypothesis by playing actual Games (and no sand bagging ).

I found it interesting that the Difficulty adjusted turn of your Settler, Warlord and Prince Games are exactly six turns apart in the order Settler, Warlord and Prince. So, for that range (Settler to Prince), one could argue that the Chieftain, Warlord, Noble and Prince levels should have an additional Difficulty adjustment of +3, +6, +9 and +12 respectively. Remember, we have to use the data we have, or invalidate points way out of the curve; we can't adjust a Game by the number turns we think we could improve it.

I am extremely impressed by your ambition and results in helping to define the Difficulty level adjustment curves!

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Dynamic]

Yes, you will have to prove your hypothesis by playing actual Games (and no sand bagging ).
...
I am extremely impressed by your ambition and results in helping to define the Difficulty level adjustment curves!

Sun Tzu Wu

Thanks. It looks like I should find motivation and play Emperor one for this game... it's hard because the result with current Formula will be much worse then for lower level games. But it is needed for stats (I'm playing all attempts with the same settings).

 

[azzaman333]

Why doesn't this game qualify? I thought that * must be included meant that those leaders had to be there, but I was allowed to add extra leaders?

 

[Dynamic]

Why doesn't this game qualify? I thought that * must be included meant that those leaders had to be there, but I was allowed to add extra leaders?

You should set huts OFF.

 

[azzaman333]

Oh damn.

 

[greatbeyond]

Soooo mad. I got my best date so far, 1690AD and won by Domination the same turn apparently as I landed on AC. When you check the Space Race status it says, "Welcome to Alpha Centauri". Looking at the figures I was over in land area by .22%!
I guess it's back to try and win much earlier.

 

[shulec]

This Challenge game has been extremely painful. I caved on my initial plan to play on deity only. In one of about 30 significant deity attempts, I actually launched my spaceship 3 turns after Liz. I was super weak and had no way to take her capitol. She declared on me ended up nearly wiping me off the map before her spaceship arrived. I hit my limit on losing efforts and had to play a winnable one...

I stepped down to Immortal and was amazed at the difference! Start to finish this was a breeze. I played this on Big and Small, which made teching very easy at the end. Myself, Mansa and Willem owned most of the continent. I didn't get oil, uranium, and bronze, so I went after Willem who had the most space. I used rifles and cannons. It turned out that I wouldn't have gotten Aluminum without Willem's lands either.

Mansa threatened culture, so I had him declare on Wang Kon when he was about 60 turns from cultural victory. This held him up until I could arm myself to take out a soon-to-be legendary city and not lose any cities on the counter-attack.

I finished 1879. This was totally enjoyable, but now it is time to start banging my head against the wall again on deity to attain some serious gratification.

The one thing that I will try to take from this game is to prioritize my GP farm. I found on Deity, I could not get it going quickly enough to get me into the liberalism race. In this current game, I started in a very food rich site and moved my capitol. It is a lot of hammers to give up early, but I hate losing a strong bureaucracy/oxford/wall street city to a GP farm. On deity, my first few cities always go to the land grab and I haven't had a map that worked well to put my GP farm in one of my first two settled cities.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

@shulec:

For Deity level, your starting position needs to be nearly ideal in many ways, including none of the AI Leaders not being too close too soon.

You probably want many high Food and high Commerce Tiles in your starting Position. Long Rivers in all Cities Site are good for leveraging Levees and are great for an extra Commerce of course.

I would REX about five Cities near the Capital to reduce Distance from Capital maintenance.

If you could describe more about what is happening with your Deity attempts, I'd be willing to provide more specific suggestions.

Good luck with your future Deity attempts.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Dynamic]

I'm now near the finish of my next Settler attempt for this game. It will be near turn 225 that is very close to my linear prediction (20 turns per level) for Settler-Warlord-Prince SS (228(225) - 268 (271) - 308).

 

[Dynamic]

I finished my second Settler attempt - turn 223(745AD). Same settings. It's 18 turns earlier then first game so I think it's good enough game.
This time I killed 4 AI on start (2 in 1st game) and more focused on city development instead of science. At finish I had 18 cities: 14 for SS parts, 3 resource cities and National Park. All 14 main cities and Park were developed in time so I'm happy with that. Note, I built 60 Workers per 16 cities (17th and 18th didn't require much improvements) so I had almost 4 Workers per city.
I researched Education and built Oxford later then 1st game but cumulative effect of well developed cities is better and I reserched much faster in the late BC and AD.

A few mistakes - Fishing after Pottery, Barbs attack delayed 5th University by several turns, Late GA series start (should be 6 turns earlier) and useless Pyramids built several turns before Constitution. Of course, it could be played faster, but I mark this game quality as close to my Prince game.

 

[Debanad]

I've been trying for a while to get a good Deity attempt in, but I think its beyond my current skill level and patience. I did manage to get my immortal finish down to 1860.

I think one of the major issues with getting good times on the higher difficulties is a large portion of your research comes from tech trades. So basically the more land you personally own the less the other Civs have and the slower their tech rate will be. I was able to block off a large chunk of land this game and consequently I was constantly gifting or trading techs very cheaply to allow the others to keep up. On the lower difficulties you are researching all your own techs and corruption is trivial. On Emperor and higher it looks like there is an upper limit to how quickly you can finish the space race since expanding too much will cripple the other Civs tech pace and cripple your own economy.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I've been trying for a while to get a good Deity attempt in, but I think its beyond my current skill level and patience. I did manage to get my immortal finish down to 1860.

I think one of the major issues with getting good times on the higher difficulties is a large portion of your research comes from tech trades. So basically the more land you personally own the less the other Civs have and the slower their tech rate will be. I was able to block off a large chunk of land this game and consequently I was constantly gifting or trading techs very cheaply to allow the others to keep up. On the lower difficulties you are researching all your own techs and corruption is trivial. On Emperor and higher it looks like there is an upper limit to how quickly you can finish the space race since expanding too much will cripple the other Civs tech pace and cripple your own economy.

For higher levels (especially Deity), I would surmise that the ideal number of Cities is exactly the same number needed to build Oxford University (Education should be one's Research focus early on). If one incorporates Mining Inc., settles Cities on Rivers with Numerous branches (builds Levee), and builds all other Hammer multiplying buildings, no further Cities should be needed to build SS parts. After all, one is only going to be able to build those SS parts for which the necessary Technology has been completed. As each "SS" Technology is Researched, the SS parts allowed by the previously completed "SS" Technology will be completed, freeing all Cities to complete the next batch of "SS" parts enabled by the newly completed "SS" Technology.

I really think that a building vast 15, 20, 25, or 30+ Citiy Empire for either Space Colony or Space Race is a huge waste of excesses of everything. A vast Empire actually makes a Space Colony or Space Race Victory slower and possibly impossible at Deity level.

I'm not saying you can't Win a Space Colony or Space Race Victory with a vast Empire. You certainly can, but you will NOT Win the absolute earliest Victory. Only those using close to the Optimal number of Cities and do it very well will be able to achieve a #1 HOF slot in Space Colony or Space Race Victory (excluding Permanent Alliances of course).

Caveat: I have very little experience with Space Colony or Space Race Victories, but I decided to put my opinion forward on the subject anyway. Despite my lack of experience with this particular Victory Condition, I'm quite certain that my assertions above are correct.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[iggymnrr]

@ Dynamic
745 AD is really nice. I'm just now noticing this challenge and suspect that 500 AD is possible on a settler rainforest. I've had some nice test starts by researching pottery first instead of BW. Unfortunately in some trial starts the AI end up 17 tiles away from me like they know I'm coming for them. They can't escape forever.

@ Sun Tzu Wu
I suspect that the optimum number of cities is number parts +1 for some, as of yet undetermined, map size/level. But then I'm only considering n, n+1 and n-1 as possibilities.

 

[Dynamic]

@ Dynamic
745 AD is really nice. I'm just now noticing this challenge and suspect that 500 AD is possible on a settler rainforest. I've had some nice test starts by researching pottery first instead of BW. Unfortunately in some trial starts the AI end up 17 tiles away from me like they know I'm coming for them. They can't escape forever.

With Hats and without Barbs yes, may be 500AD is available for Small Epic Settler. But without Hats the main speed limit is time for cities grows and development. Lack of free Workers and Settlers, delay of Workers building for rushing Warriors and Holkans gives common starting delay of development.

 

[iggymnrr]

I'm currently playing out what was originally a trial start that has turned into a good game. I was experimenting with the obvious capitol for a settler rainforest: a 3 food city center. I've been able to out tech Dynamics game to the point of education and printing press by 1000 BC without using the Oracle yet. The game has been so casual I don't know what to do next. Only wonder built has been the GW. I'm tempted to say "telwitchit" and lib in communism. The game has just sorta flowed despite some really bad RNG luck: 2 holkans lost, 5 or 6 HA's lost, 1 chariot lost. Blah! Perhaps a 2 hammer city center for a capitol is the other main choice? (Good luck finding a suitable one in a rainforest.)