G-Minor 118

[shulec]

Horrible, horrible game.

Key data: cultural victory 1370AD

Horrible by your standards, impressive by mine!

3 religions, multiplier 4,5 3,5 3,5.

What is this 4 5 3 5 3 5 mumbo jumbo?

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Key data: cultural victory 1370AD, 3 religions, multiplier 4,5 3,5 3,5. 16GA bombs.

What is this 4 5 3 5 3 5 mumbo jumbo?

That's the Total Culture Multiplier in each Culture City (Europeans use "," rather than "." to denote a decimal value):

4.5 3.5 3.5

It appears that each city has 3 Cathedrals (3 x +50%) and Free Speech (+100%). The first city probably also has Hermitage (+100%):

So the second and third city has Base Culture (100%) + 3 Cathedrals (3 x +50%) + Free Speech (+100%) = 350% = 3.5x.

And the first city has Base Culture (100%) + 3 Cathedrals (3 x +50%) + Free Speech (+100%) + Hermitage (+100%) = 450% = 4.5x.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[jesusin]

Horrible by your standards, impressive by mine!



What is this 4 5 3 5 3 5 mumbo jumbo?

Sorry about the confusion. Sun Tzu Wu is right. I'm editing my post now for clarity and for adding some key data (like I played a 10-cities game).

 

[jesusin]

Horrible by your standards, impressive by mine!

Let's not talk about me, but about thing s that had got too much focus in this thread:

- Traveling North. If this was emperor it probably would still make no sense. Nothing is worth losing a dozen of turns int he beginning of the game. Now, this is Prince and cities stay defended by warriors forever. A WarChariot rush is overdoing things. A warrior rush or an archer rush is more than enough. And you don't need to go anywhere for doing so.

- WW: Imagine you've got Sistine's and Liberalism, it's 500AD and your hammer city has 5 PlainHills. You should not try to build GLib now. Nor any other WW. First of all you will pollute your GPFarm. It's not so bad, I know, but it is not a good thing. More importantly, you are losing culture. Every miner you hire as an artist now is giving you 6 base culture, as much as many WW. Not to speak of the additional GPP you will get if you get artists now.

- Settling a GA. It's 1AD, you have 3 religions and you get a GA. You think about settling it in your third city, to make it catch up. Don't do it! Some maths:
From 1AD to 1200AD, your intended victory date, only 65 turns pass. The first turn the GA will do just 12c. In the last turn you will have Sistine's and FS and 3 catedrals, so it will do 14*3.5=49c. As an average, let's say it will be doing some 35cpt. 65 turns at 35cpt == 2275c. Far, very far from the 4000c it could have given as a GA bomb. Just forget it. Don't talk me about the coins the GA provides, I'm not losing some 2000c just to get some 200g.
There are rare situations, with really early GA, really late victory date, huge number of GAs to be nurtured, lots of religions... in which you'll want to settle the GA in the city with the most multipliers and you'll get more than 4000c out of it. But remember, they are rare.

- Building culture: As explained previously, it is an irrelevant source of culture.

- The game ends, you know? I am under the impression that many people here think the game is going to last forever. No. Set your victory date goal. Act as if you were going to reach your goal. Take your decisions according to your intended final date. For example, if you intend to win by 1200AD, 1AD is the limit: don't settle new cities after 1AD; don't build new cottages after 1AD; don't build non-essential WW after 1AD, their culture output won't get doubled. When you get to 1AD, just wrap up the game, put yourself into an endgame mindset.




Now let's talk about me a bit. What would I do differently?

1.- Take Gandhi out of my game. He was beelining Music from the very beginning.
2.- Cottages in 1 city (Legendary). It will help with research and I had too many GA in the end.
3.- 11 or more cities, the limit being +7 food excess.
4.- Abandon game as soon as I don't have CS sling or 3 religions by 1000BC.
5.- GA purity

 

[shulec]

Let's not talk about me, but about thing s that had got too much focus in this thread:

- Traveling North. If this was emperor it probably would still make no sense. Nothing is worth losing a dozen of turns int he beginning of the game. Now, this is Prince and cities stay defended by warriors forever. A WarChariot rush is overdoing things. A warrior rush or an archer rush is more than enough. And you don't need to go anywhere for doing so.

I played three and a half games heading north and one game staying south. My worst effort was when I stayed in the south. This is due to my difficulties in rexing rapidly. I was better at building War Chariots to steal workers and cities. I was not as good at building the settlers and workers myself. Most of all, it was just really fun taking capitols!

- WW: Imagine you've got Sistine's and Liberalism, it's 500AD and your hammer city has 5 PlainHills. You should not try to build GLib now. Nor any other WW. First of all you will pollute your GPFarm. It's not so bad, I know, bad it is not a good thing. More importantly, you are losing culture. Every minemy lr you hire as an artist now is giving you 6 base culture, as much as many WW. Not to speak of the additional GPP you will get if you get artists now.

This is a great point that I did not know to be true.


I made my last attempt, again by heading north. (I didn't have time to generate a good start southern start.) I finished at 1450 AD.

Here are my legendary cities and Great People stats:

Spoiler :

Unfortunately, this stupid map only had one Stone, and it was three tiles from the far west, and I started on the far east side. This helped me realized one of my short-comings from my attempts. I was waiting to get stone to start the Pyramids. If I was close to getting stone hooked up, then this is a decent strategy. But if not, I would be better off building before getting stone.

Thanks for the tips Jesusin. It will certainly help next time.

 

[AgedOne]

I feel as though I am engaged in a different competition from the rest of you now - one where I am trying to beat my own challenges, but in a different league from the main competition.
Anyway, I have finally got the 1800AD bugbear off of my back
1755AD.

After my impressive start (by my standards) the later stages were horrbile (again, by my standards. Jesusin must never look at my game, or he would suffer awful internal injuries )
The GP Pool was horribly polluted, which led to me popping as many Gt Prophets as Gt Artists. My culture was horribly lop-sided, and at one point I was due to get Legendary in Thebes in 40 turns, Barcelona in 80, and Amsterdam in 150 ! Also, since GAs were so hard to come by, I was struggling to even out the balance.
What went better was my spreading of religions to all of my 10-city empire, allowing my cathedrals to be built earlier.

I may try again before the close. There is just sooooo much improvement I can still make.

 

[AgedOne]

I made my last attempt, again by heading north. (I didn't have time to generate a good start southern start.) I finished at 1450 AD.

Congratulations on beating the 1500AD barrier! I know jesusin has beaten 1400AD, but we're talking about mortals, here .

I played three and a half games heading north and one game staying south. My worst effort was when I stayed in the south. This is due to my difficulties in rexing rapidly. I was better at building War Chariots to steal workers and cities. I was not as good at building the settlers and workers myself. Most of all, it was just really fun taking capitols!

I'm right with you here! The WC rush is great fun, and I am just so poor at building a useful empire on this map through REX alone.

Incidentally, I'm not sure how well a warrior or archer rush would work here. Normally, my WCs meet archers defending - it was only the latest game where I was surprised to see only warriors. Just how many archers would you need to build to take out one or two capitals? How many turns would you have spent building this force?

I could envisage a completely peaceful game, settling mostly FP sites in the desert, but would still have the problem of getting access to Marble.

 

[shulec]

I feel as though I am engaged in a different competition from the rest of you now - one where I am trying to beat my own challenges, but in a different league from the main competition.
Anyway, I have finally got the 1800AD bugbear off of my back
1755AD.

Nice job! Keep pluggin' away!

Incidentally, I'm not sure how well a warrior or archer rush would work here. Normally, my WCs meet archers defending - it was only the latest game where I was surprised to see only warriors. Just how many archers would you need to build to take out one or two capitals? How many turns would you have spent building this force?

Keep in mind that you lose 12-13 turns by heading north and that can allow for some earlier unit production too.

 

[AgedOne]

Keep in mind that you lose 12-13 turns by heading north and that can allow for some earlier unit production too.

Yes. I was trying to keep that in mind.
Looking back, I realise my comment may have looked a little impolite towards jesusin. Apologies, if that's how it seemed. I actually meant that I would find that strategy difficult, rather than it being a poor strategy!

I tried a 'settle in place' approach earlier today, just to see how it went. Nice start location, on edge of desert with gold, food and hills. Built a few warriors very quickly and sent them north to see if they could attack the first civ I found. By the time they got there, Lincoln had archers and I would have needed a lot more warriors to knock him over.
However, I can see how a good game could be had from a peaceful 'settle in place' approach. My game was going OK, the main failing being lack of cities. I was way short of the number of cities I have had at the same date by using my normal strategy - struggling to get 6 cities down by 1AD. I really would have to concentrate on pumping out settlers and workers to build a 10-city empire that spanned North and South. A big task!

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

- ... Now, this is Prince and cities stay defended by warriors forever. A WarChariot rush is overdoing things. A warrior rush or an archer rush is more than enough. ...

I agree with your other points, but I can't agree that a War Chariot rush is overdoing things. A Warrior rush is probably good enough to get a few cities, but you would have to build too many Warriors to capture an adequate no. of cities (around 9). To a lesser degree, the same can be said of an Archer rush, especially when the AI starts building Archer defenders. The worse part of the Archer rush is researching Archery is a waste of beakers.

The proper rush unit for this Gauntlet is clearly the War Chariot. Animal Husbandry is the only additional Technology needed. It can also be used to access Writing, though early Pottery should be researched as well. The War Chariot only costs twice the Hammers of a Warrior, but it is worth far more than 3-4 Warriors as long as defenders do not have Spearmen. The War Chariot costs only 20% more than an Archer and have Strength 5 versus Strength 3! An Archer rush will always be more costly and can only be justified by lack of Horse. War Chariots are especially effective when attacking Axemen. The key to success with War Chariots is keeping one's opponents from ever accessing Copper or Iron (opponent Iron access shouldn't be an issue at Noble level), thus preventing their construction of Spearmen.

The loss of a few turns to move a Settler to an are with more Horse resources is quite justifiable, since the cost in lost turns and lower cost of a few War Chariots is far less than the alternative cost in larger Warrior or Archer stacks for achieving similar conquest goals.

To be fair, I suggest that players try both moving the initial Settler to areas where Horse can be found and also settle in place and try both Warrior and Archer rushes. Warrior and Archer rushes can be effective against Prince level Warrior defenders, but ineffective against Archer defenders (so rush before the opponent has Archers).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Manco Capac]

Finally, I managed to finish my second true attempt, unfortunately in way too fast to my usual speed. I didn't have much access to my computer the two past days, thus I had to rush like mad to finish before deadline. Pfft! I'm quite surprised of my progress even though this game after 75 BC was tremedously sketchy. I made blunders after blunders (including the ones because I didn't know like settling a Great Artist!).
My biggest mistake was to put the National Epic in my capital wherein there were a melting pot of wonders generating different kind of great people except great artist (without appointed artists, it was 5 % of probability for a GArtist at first.)

Sweet thing to reach Liberalism at 350 AD,almost everyone agrees. But waiting two turns before switching to Free Speech because of a recent civics switch.

Anyways, pray RNG gods didn't mess up with my brain so as to put wrongs settings and therefore disqualifying me from this G-Minor. Seriously, I've never made so much progress. 1570 AD to 1390 AD is quite a leap I've never expected.
If I was more aware of all the tricks of Jesusin and less distracted, because of northern war chariots effectiveness, I prone to be at the side of Sun Tzu (last post).
Think of it, with some luck, one settles on a plain hill very early, make in three turns a warrior (or better pop one from a goody hut next to a northern civ), then steal a worker around the 20th turn. Be Lucky with tribal huts and pop AH...Then we simply lose five turns of teching and worker toiling. I know, too much luck factors, but this is a gauntlet, not a XOTM. Nonetheless, I don't have the status to push such assertion, so better take it as a simple opinion.

EDIT: Correction to myself...if Jesusin's performance wasn't the best...perhaps south start isn't bad after all......count on me to study minutely Jesusin game after the gauntlet...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes. Please do let us know how it went. And economy tips just for me, please.

He he, I promised a write-up, but no one came up. Sorry, I barely have time to finish my game. I'm not sure if it worths to make one after pondering all the blunders I've made, blunders that would make Jesusin pull a bullet into his head.

 

[shulec]

Nice game!!! Only two turns behind the "Master"

 

[Manco Capac]

Thanks Shulec!

Nice game!!! Only two turns behind the Master

Corrected.
Tell me who is stronger in CV, frankly.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

... 1570 AD to 1390 AD is quite a leap I've never expected.

Congratulations, Tachywaxon!

That's a huge improvement, especially considering some mistakes and the rush to finish before the deadline.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[jesusin]

Incidentally, I'm not sure how well a warrior or archer rush would work here. Normally, my WCs meet archers defending - it was only the latest game where I was surprised to see only warriors. Just how many archers would you need to build to take out one or two capitals? How many turns would you have spent building this force?

I agree with your other points, but I can't agree that a War Chariot rush is overdoing things. A Warrior rush is probably good enough to get a few cities, but you would have to build too many Warriors to capture an adequate no. of cities (around 9). To a lesser degree, the same can be said of an Archer rush, especially when the AI starts building Archer defenders. The worse part of the Archer rush is researching Archery is a waste of beakers.

The proper rush unit for this Gauntlet is clearly the War Chariot. Animal Husbandry is the only additional Technology needed. It can also be used to access Writing, though early Pottery should be researched as well. The War Chariot only costs twice the Hammers of a Warrior, but it is worth far more than 3-4 Warriors as long as defenders do not have Spearmen. The War Chariot costs only 20% more than an Archer and have Strength 5 versus Strength 3! An Archer rush will always be more costly and can only be justified by lack of Horse. War Chariots are especially effective when attacking Axemen. The key to success with War Chariots is keeping one's opponents from ever accessing Copper or Iron (opponent Iron access shouldn't be an issue at Noble level), thus preventing their construction of Spearmen.

The loss of a few turns to move a Settler to an are with more Horse resources is quite justifiable, since the cost in lost turns and lower cost of a few War Chariots is far less than the alternative cost in larger Warrior or Archer stacks for achieving similar conquest goals.

To be fair, I suggest that players try both moving the initial Settler to areas where Horse can be found and also settle in place and try both Warrior and Archer rushes. Warrior and Archer rushes can be effective against Prince level Warrior defenders, but ineffective against Archer defenders (so rush before the opponent has Archers).

Sun Tzu Wu

Beforehand disclaimer: don't pay a lot of attention to this post. I am not a warmonger and I probably don't know what I am saying.


I think our differences here come from different views on the goal of a rush. Or maybe even the definition of a rush.

For me a rush ends when you have reached your goals or when the enemy reaches the next deffensive unit (in this case, archers). In this game, if you find archers, then you are not doing a rush, but a slug.

For me the goal of a rush is to get one or two easy enemy cities.
The strategic goal is to accelerate REXing withour getting too much distracted out of your own REX. For example, building 10 WC in this game sounds to me like a waste. It's culture the way you want to win, not conquest!

When I talked about warrior rush I was thinking about a grand total of 3 warriors to take the closest AI capital, defended just by a warrior. When that first city is taken, you call it a day and you continue in a peaceful mindset all the rest of the game.



Now, I am not sure that taking 1 or 2 cities instead of 8 is a good idea. On the one hand, a WC is cheaper than a settler... but on the other hand AIs don't know where to settle their cities and you have to be satisfied with whatever you get. Considering how slow Prince AI expands and how many good city sites ther eare in the map, I think I prefer the mostly-peaceful approach. (I could be just trying to justify my natural tendency to stay peaceful, though).

 

[AgedOne]

Congratulations Tachywaxon!!
I believe you must get the 'Most Improved Player' award for this one.
(What? They haven't got one? Must put that right.)





[by the way, I think the deadline normally comes up about 23:00 GMT on the final day. We still have a few more hours. ]

 

[Denniz]

Gauntlet Results:

G-Minor 118 - Cultural, Prince, Large, Normal on Oasis with Hatshepsut
1^st jesusin 1370 AD
2^nd shulec 1505 AD
3^rd kovacsflo 1555 AD

Congratulations!

 

[Manco Capac]

Gauntlet Results:

G-Minor 118 - Cultural, Prince, Large, Normal on Oasis with Hatshepsut
1^st jesusin 1370 AD
2^nd shulec 1505 AD
3^rd kovacsflo 1555 AD

Congratulations!

uh?! Where's my last submission!!!

Here's the aforementioned submission:
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?dsply=&entryID=23116

EDIT: Just looked; it is published and accepted and methinks the settings are right.
EDIT2: Come to think, where's Shulec's 1450 AD CV?

 

[shulec]

Complete G-Minor 118 Results:



The latest submissions from Tachywaxon, shulec, AgedOne and ric hard did not make the cut for some reason.

 

[Manco Capac]

The submission date!!! It seems every submission submitted on 24th or 25th are rejected...