Quintillus's Quartermaster Quest

[Quintillus]

Interesting, it's actually refreshing to know that even today, the "optimal start" can vary a fair amount. The comment about cows being required was somewhat tongue in cheek - given how many games are in the list, odds are a cow-free 20K city would be there - but I didn't expect a recent one to be so readily found, either.

I sometimes get an error message similar to this when trying to load some saves:

After running it through my BIQ compressor, and looking at the headers in a hex editor, I can see that its version indicates it's a Play the World save. Not sure why that mismatches with what the HOF reports; the write-up mentions a PTW 20K Deity (C3C Demigod) attempt, but I don't see the writeup saying either way for this one.

 

[Spoonwood]

I think the Chieftain writeup more specifically lies here.

 

[Takeo]

My hazy recollection is that archphoenix's top Tiny Chieftain save had multiple plains wheat, and I felt surprised. I'm unsure that I saw a cow, though maybe my surprise arose from expecting a grassland cow and not seeing one.

I sometimes get an error message similar to this when trying to load some saves:

View attachment 688793

even though the save also appears in the save folder.

It is because the name of the save file is too long. If you change the name of the save file by removing the numbers at the beginning, and even the person's name if necessary, then the save should load.

 

[Spoonwood]

Thank you Takeo.

Archphoenix's 1260 save after moving workers (and Instanbul has 20,000 culture) has a deer as it's food bonus:

Archphoenix's 1130 AD save has 2 plains wheat as the strongest food tiles for Instanbul. There exists only one bonus grassland in the capital's fat X also:

Ignoring difficulty level, and checking the 'any' tables the only higher ranked finishes than the 1130 AD game for 20k are ignas's 1130 AD Persia game submitted 2012-04-26 and Kuningas's Warlord 1080 AD game submitted 2010-09-06. Both Archphoenix's games got submitted 2006-08-23. Thus, his game stood as the fastest 20k game for years, even though to my eyes it looked like a weak start. Instanbul did make 28 shields per turn though before Shakespeare's Theater and once in Republic:

Sun Tzu's I will guess a prebuild on Shakespeare's Theater.

 

[Spoonwood]

27 SPT isn't amazing, but it reached much of its potential early.

27 shields per turn at size 13 implies 26 shields per turn at size 12. With 13 tiles worked, that ends up as 39 shields per turn. One shield off for the 40 shield threshold for a single turn library from just the city's production, or for wonder builds on 400 or 600 shield wonders.

But, I think, 26 shields per turn at size 12 before rails is still above the maximum shield number for most spots on the map possible.