Dianthus' 100K games

[Dianthus]

I thought I really ought to have at least one entry in the HOF now that I'm on the staff. I decided to specialise in the little seen (at least in the HOF) fast 100K culture game.

Here's the current list of games (so far):

• Standard Chieftain Babylon : Finished at 1200AD.
• Tiny Monarch Sumeria : Finished at 1080AD.
• Tiny Chieftain Sumeria : Mapfinder still searching.

 

[Dianthus]

Here's the start:


I went for The Republic slingshot, learning The Republic in 1650BC. I really hadn't expanded all that well by this point:


I was hoping for an SGL to build The Pyramids, but gave up on this and triggered my GA in 510BC by pounding on the Iroquois. I feel so bad doing this on Chieftain. Seems a bit like David vs Goliath. This time Goliath won though .


In 250BC I completed The pyramids, and expansion started to speed up a bit. I continued to research quickly as I wanted Steam Power and Communism, so kept up a 4 turn research rate pretty much the whole time. Steam Power was completed in 370AD and Communism in 430AD. I used The Republic throughout for my last 100K attempt. There's a problem with cash rushing though in that every building you rush results in less gpt that can be saved for the next rush. Hence going for Communism for pop-rushing.


I continued a little longer on the research. I researched Replaceable parts to speed up the workers (took quite a while to do the railing and clearing marsh/jungle), get Civil Engineers to speed culture building in corrupt towns, and to get access to Infantry for drafting. Drafting Infantry is actually more efficient than pop-rushing (22 shields/pop for drafting Infantry). I also researched Espionage so I could build Secret Police HQ. I'm not sure this made much difference, but I didn't need cash for anything in Communism.

By 750AD I had finished settling. Apart from the core I settled pretty much as dense as I could, reaching 241 towns with just 77 tiles to the domination limit. I soon had to battle to stay under the dom limit with all of the cultural expansions.


I'm going to continue my GOTM tradition of graphs here in my HOF writeup . Here's a graph of my culture rate:


When I started this game I was intending it to be a quick game on a standard map for my first attempt. I kind of underestimated the number of towns I would be building and how long it would take to maintain them though. Despite playing quickly this game took around 30 hours, though I don't expect any sympathy from the insane milkers among you .

 

[a space oddity]

[...] I kind of underestimated the number of towns I would be building and how long it would take to maintain them though. Despite playing quickly this game took around 30 hours, though I don't expect any sympathy from the insane milkers among you .

Why do you think I played a couple of 'Tiny' games recently...?

Good to see another active player! I was thinking about filling some of the slots on 100k myself, but I need to get a bit further with my current Huge/Monarch game first.

 

[boogaboo]

I love graphs
I fell for them while studying some of their algorithms...
G = (V,E) rulzzzz

 

[superslug]

Despite playing quickly this game took around 30 hours, though I don't expect any sympathy from the insane milkers among you .

We insane milkers aren't likely to be too harsh on you. I'm rather thankful for all the tiny activity going on. If huge maps were all that were submitted we'd be lucky to be posting ten games a year...

 

[Gyathaar]

These games seems to be pretty fast.. and this thread inspired me to attempt to beat the 1200AD date for normal chieftain. Currently on 3rd attempt (been adjusting map parameters, civs and strats... and didnt finish the first 2 games..)

first one I tried to use faudalism so I could poprush culture buildings all the time.. at first it seemed very good, since I had like 20k culture in 500AD, but the cost of all the culture buildings, and no commerse bonus made research grind to pretty much a halt, and without replacable parts and rails, it was hard to expand fast enough since there was lots of jungles and swamps. Result was I was only at 15% area and about 80 cities in 700AD, so I gave up that game. Feudalism would work much better at higher difficulty I think since AI's would be able to do some reasearch for you.

2nd attempt was much better, but had problems with too much jungles preventing fast expansion.

Still working on 3rd attempt, and so far it looks good. I have reached about 1200cpt and 25k culture in 770AD, so slightly ahead of Dianthus' game

 

[Dianthus]

first one I tried to use faudalism so I could poprush culture buildings all the time.. at first it seemed very good, since I had like 20k culture in 500AD, but the cost of all the culture buildings, and no commerse bonus made research grind to pretty much a halt....

You're playing Chieftain, right? You don't lose buildings/units when your economy goes into -gpt. I was just wacking the sliders up to 100%. Of course, this means I'll have to make some adjustments to my technique for the harder difficulty levels .

Feudalism would work much better at higher difficulty I think since AI's would be able to do some reasearch for you.

Personally speaking I would much rather go for communism. The corruption is much less in communism and you still get the pop rushing/drafting.

Still working on 3rd attempt, and so far it looks good. I have reached about 1200cpt and 25k culture in 770AD, so slightly ahead of Dianthus' game

Good luck Gyathaar. How many cities have you got at 770AD? Anywhere near my 241?

 

[a space oddity]

Good to see all this interest.

I think I'll have a go at a 100k, Monarch, small map game (so strictly speaking it's a 80k game). I've played a few turns already and that SGL just in time to rush the Pyramids makes chances high that I'll finish this one.

 

[Gyathaar]

You're playing Chieftain, right? You don't lose buildings/units when your economy goes into -gpt. I was just wacking the sliders up to 100%. Of course, this means I'll have to make some adjustments to my technique for the harder difficulty levels .

DOH! I totally forgot about that.. here I am strugling and building wealth to not go negative from the building maintainance... hmm.. I get get culture up much faster now that I stop worrying about that

Had I though of this I would have kept researching and buldt internet too... (kinda amazing how much science I can get in communism.. just babylon is getting 251 beakers per turn at 100% sci .. wonder how much it would be with seti and research lab and in republic )

Personally speaking I would much rather go for communism. The corruption is much less in communism and you still get the pop rushing/drafting.

Yes.. I am using communism (switched to it in 590AD).. but was trying to use feudalism while researching to communism.. but maintainance was killing my research so was only able to run 10% sci in end.. ofcourse with the no loss of units in chieftain feudalism would be much better than republic while getting to communism... with feudalism every new city would have temple and library within a few turns of being founded. So I had insane culture early.. meaning lots of temples and libraries had culture doubled before 10AD. Untill where your cpt curve got steep, I was way ahead at that point.

Good luck Gyathaar. How many cities have you got at 770AD? Anywhere near my 241?

In 850AD I now have 226 cities, and still 134 tiles from domination.. at one point I stopped expanding fast, and only added a city from time to time.. mainly because no good lands to expand into without going long distances, and had lots of unimproved lands behind me. At this point most lands is railroaded and most jungle and marches cleared, so may expands a little bit again. I currently am in 850AD, with 36406 culture and 1699cpt.

After I finish this game I might try with feudalism again, but prolly on a different map size

 

[LulThyme]

Keep going guys, I love reading about your experiences, and its giving me taste for trying some of this stuff

 

[Gyathaar]

How do you make those graphs btw?

(Looks like your date for chieftain will be beat btw.. Once I stopped careing about the budget my cpt has gone up a lot.. from 1699cpt in 850AD to now 1940cpt (and 40128 culture) in 870AD.. if my cpt stays the same rest of game.. and it wont... I will finish in 1170AD..)

 

[Dianthus]

How do you make those graphs btw?

I use CRpMapStat to copy all of the autosaves to a dir, then CRpStats to extract the data from those autosaves.

 

[Gyathaar]

Hmm.. I dont have mapstat set up to backup the autosaves.. thou I take manual saves almost every turn.

But for score, cities and culture would not not be easy to extract those datas from just the end save? Since CRpViewer can display the culture for each turn from just one save...

Perhaps could add something to the HoF to automatically generate viewable graphs for city count, score, culture and culture per turn from just the submitted saves? Perhaps even ability to compare graphs for 2 or more games?

 

[Dianthus]

Hmm.. I dont have mapstat set up to backup the autosaves.. thou I take manual saves almost every turn.

But for score, cities and culture would not not be easy to extract those datas from just the end save? Since CRpViewer can display the culture for each turn from just one save...

Yes, the culture is in the histogram data, so could be extracted from the final .sav. I could write a utility to do that....

Perhaps could add something to the HoF to automatically generate viewable graphs for city count, score, culture and culture per turn from just the submitted saves? Perhaps even ability to compare graphs for 2 or more games?

Wow, sounds like you're thinking quite big there Gyathaar! It's definitely feasible, but quite a bit of work.

 

[Gyathaar]

Yes, the culture is in the histogram data, so could be extracted from the final .sav. I could write a utility to do that....

A utility for creating culture/culture per turn and/or score/score per turn graphs would be very nice for writeups for milking or culture games

Wow, sounds like you're thinking quite big there Gyathaar! It's definitely feasible, but quite a bit of work.

 

[Dianthus]

I just had a quick look at the CRpViewer code (while I'm supposed to be working ), and it appears there is a hidden "Ctrl+C" shortcut that copies the culture to the clipboard. You can then paste that into Excel. I guess I started adding that at some point and never finished it!

 

[Gyathaar]

Very nice.. and also interesting.. I also noticed a couple bugs in the CRp Suite from this...

In CRp Viewer.. if I open my 920AD save (the year I am at.. I cant scroll past 890AD for some reason.. scroll goes to 900AD, but all values goes blank then.. for the 890AD save I can go to 880AD, then get blank at 890AD

The cpt values in CRpMapStatus is wrong... for example.. :
830AD - 33021 culture
840AD - 34692 culture
850AD - 36406 culture
860AD - 38215 culture
870AD - 40128 culture
880AD - 42143 culture
890AD - 44244 culture

in 840AD mapstat showed 1677 cpt while it really was 1671
in 850AD mapstat showed 1699 cpt while it really was 1714
in 860AD mapstat showed 1783 cpt while it really was 1809
in 870AD mapstat showed 1940 cpt while it really was 1913
in 880AD mapstat showed 2037 cpt while it really was 2015
in 890AD mapstat showed 2065 cpt while it really was 2101

this explains the oscillation numbers I saw for culture per turn in early games... it would usually alternate between a higher and a lower number every 3nd turn or so... looks like every 3rd turn it adds some number that it should not, and the other turns subtract

 

[Dianthus]

I've decided to give Sumeria a try. During my last attempt it seemed that my game was split into 2 basic phases:

1. Expand to domination limit with ICS build pattern while researching to Communism/Replaceable Parts.
2. Pop-rush lots of culture buildings.

It seemed like I was spending far more time in the 1st phase than the 2nd, and I thought maybe the aggricultural trait would help with that.

Here's my start:



I moved north and settling popped the hut to give me CB. I researched Masonry but didn't have Dave's luck with an SGL. I continued anyway 'cos I need the practise . I got an SGL with the Philosophy/Republic slingshot and built The Pyramids in 1870BC. The start was quite food rich with the 2 floodplains Wheat, 2 floodplains, a grassland Wheat and a grassland Cow all quite close. By 1000BC I had 17 towns and 3 settlers enroute. Here's a minimap at 1000BC:



I continued expanding/researching. In 430BC I decided it was time to trigger my GA to help keep the research going and to build some Universities. I saw 3 Portuguese warriors just inside their border, 1 of which was conscript. I declared war, killed the 2 regular with Horsemen and killed the conscript with an Enkidu. I couldn't help continuing on from there and pretty much wiped out the Portuguese, leaving them with 1 town in the Tundra and another off the main continent. Here's a minimap at 50AD:



At this point (50AD) I've got 99 towns, 17 tiles from the domination limit (wow, didn't realise it was that close!), and I'm 2 turns from researching Physics (at 4 turn rate) with just Banking/Magnetism/Theory of Gravity left in the Middle Ages. I've got the following luxuries connected:

• Dyes
• Furs
• Gems
• Incense
• Ivory
• Silks
• Wines

The only one I'm missing now is Spices:



I might have to "borrow" those Spices soon . The reason I'm mentioning luxuries in a non-milk game is that it means I'm currently able to have a 0% lux while researching, and later I'll be able to turn up the lux and start doing some poprushing/drafting.

 

[Gyathaar]

What size is that map? looks smaller than standard.. or did you just zoom in?

 

[Dianthus]

What size is that map? looks smaller than standard.. or did you just zoom in?

It's Tiny.