Beta Gauntlet VI

[Methos]

That game is the first time I can remember of being able to out research a space launch in an OCC game. Typically it's been the other way around for me. I think I went a little overboard in my cottage spam.

Trying to keep commerce even with production will be the tough part of this game. Need to figure out how to even them out during the endgame while still maintaining a fast pace.

Looking forward to trying this again. Still not for sure who the best leader is, or landmass. That last game was on a Balanced map.

 

[WastinTime]

Warlord huh? It's kinda like playing all by yourself. I doubt you will have to worry about any attacks. If you play islands, you can build zero military and just keep the free warrior you start with. No one will find you before you launch.

Islands is great way to win on Diety level, but I don't think it's right for this gauntlet. You won't get to trade with anyone for a long time, if ever. You'll probably have to do 99% of the tech yourself. Constructing parts should be quick and easy, so the fastest person up the tech tree will win...let's say around 1750 AD. 1600 seems unattainable, but let's find out....

 

[Fragment]

Hah! I managed to pull this off - without any of the "neccessary" resources! I managed to trade for iron and coal later on, though.

2044 - and I'm rather proud of myself

OK I'm gonna sit back and watch, now. This is much more interesting than the previous gauntlet.

Regards.

 

[godotnut]

Well, my first game was a crappy 1958 finish. I tried Bismark on Team Battlegrounds Top vs Bottom. Two Khans and a Lizzy. I was attacked three times but easily beat them back with superior military tech.

I had stone close. Late game I started two land wars to destroy some border towns that were keeping me from first marble and then aluminum. That worked pretty slick because I had great artists on the back burner and culture bombed myself to legendary culture at just the right moment to expand into both resources by but a single square. That was the coolest part of my strat, unfortunately.

Had some help trading until around astronomy, and then I was on my own. I tried gifting techs to let them help more in trades, but they couldn't seem to research squat.

I experimented with an all farm/no cottage strat for maximum great people -- won't do that again. A better strat would have been to wait for a start with some floodplains and go ahead and use cottages.

Lessons learned: team battleground is the smallest map, so it squezzes the most resources into the smallest space. However, it's so small that you may have to go to war to enjoy the benefits of your full border potential. What kinds of maps are others using? Pang? Balanced? Great Plains might be a nice choice, for all the food.

Also, I was ticked off to discover that my city was not within the 30 degree latitude limit for the Space Elevator. That, after I had saved up two great engineers. This is an easy-to-make mistake, since in a non-OCC game, if your capital is too high in latitude, you can just build it in another city. Not so in the OCC.

So be warned OCC Civvers, if you want to build the Space Elevator, move that settler toward the equator. The Elevator isn't essential to all strats, but my all-food improvement strat precluded mines, so production was a bit of an issue.

 

[n0xie]

Played my first game of HOF and ended around 1950. Played all farm, no town with 4 hills in my begin cross, and that worked just fine. (acadamy + 2 scientists + representation makes up for a whole lot of cottaging) Had a bit of bad luck with my Great People tho, since I managed to get around 50% artists, eventhough the chances for anything else were far higher and artists are the ones who don't produce hammers at all

Then again it's fun to see AI cities explode as your cultural bounderies grow.

I started off real good, building 5 wonders in a row (partheon, oracle, great librabry, pyramids, hanging gardens) with the little help of my chopper friend. (lots of forests really do help ) but somewhere in the middle I started slacking and marveling at my city with all the great wonders I build I really didnt need and not beelining straight for space ship parts. Was good fun playing though, and I'm ashamed to admit I forgot to make an opening save, so I can't submit it. Got about a zilion screenshots as I was planning on making a large posts about my first game. But since I was rather disappointed by the late arrival of my spaceship (I think I could easily do <1900) I'm going to try again and if it's an interesting game I'll post it here.

 

[Methos]

@n0xie: Try to stay away from any wonders that provide artist GP points. I only build wonders with that type of GP point if they are really beneficial to my city.

 

[Methos]

@regorarr: First off, I mean no offense, just curious and wanting to offer suggestions and learn from your experience. Anyway&#8230;

• I&#8217;m surprised you didn&#8217;t mine all the hills tiles, even those outside your city radius. It doesn&#8217;t happen often, but occaisionally I do have resources pop up on those tiles. If they are not mined it won&#8217;t happen.
• Why did you go with Free Religion rather than Pacificism? The +100% would have put you at +120 GPP rather than at +90. IME and opinion the gains from super specialist make up for the +10%.
• One thing I&#8217;ve learned is island, archipelago, small continents, etc. maps seem to be bad for an OCC game. At least IME. I suggest going with balanced, Pangaea, or something with more land. It seems IMO that having all the extra water tiles is of less value than having a lot of land tiles that could possibly have resources.

Again, I apologize if any offense is taken; I&#8217;m just trying to help both you and me. Finding out why you did what you did helps me learn. Figured to help more if I&#8217;d attach my save file as well. I apologize if I insulted you. My opinions are just that, the only foundation they have is my limited experience.

 

[godotnut]

@n0xie:

You don't need to make an opening save. The computer does it for you. Just look in the Saves>Auto folder.

 

[Dianthus]

@n0xie:

You don't need to make an opening save. The computer does it for you. Just look in the Saves>Auto folder.

Except if you use Regenerate, then you *do* need to make an opening save as the autosave doesn't get saved when you regenerate.

 

[regoarrarr]

@regorarr: First off, I mean no offense, just curious and wanting to offer suggestions and learn from your experience. Anyway…

• I’m surprised you didn’t mine all the hills tiles, even those outside your city radius. It doesn’t happen often, but occaisionally I do have resources pop up on those tiles. If they are not mined it won’t happen.
• Why did you go with Free Religion rather than Pacificism? The +100% would have put you at +120 GPP rather than at +90. IME and opinion the gains from super specialist make up for the +10%.
• One thing I’ve learned is island, archipelago, small continents, etc. maps seem to be bad for an OCC game. At least IME. I suggest going with balanced, Pangaea, or something with more land. It seems IMO that having all the extra water tiles is of less value than having a lot of land tiles that could possibly have resources.

No offense taken. The answers to most of those questions can be summed up in the phrase "I'm an idiot" ?

1. You're right - I should have done that. I did do that in some of my other games. I get bored and occasionally automate my worker. Which is another point - 1 worker or 2 (or more?)

2. My reasoning for Free Religion was to not be in a religion to avoid wars. After my military dominance was assured I probably should have swapped to Pacifism, especially since I was spiritual

3. Yeah - for some reason I was reading that you had to choose an islands map for this gauntlet. I think I must have confused myself from the Apolyton OCC thread where islands is the way to go (to avoid wars), but that's on much higher levels. I think I'll go for panagea next.

 

[WastinTime]

My 2 cents on your questions...

1. I don't think you need mines already built. The resources will pop up and then you can go mine them...true?

2. I use Free Religion to avoid wars too...and the 10% science.

3. Islands really slow down the AI on Diety. Don't use them for this gauntlet.

 

[WastinTime]

1866 AD for my first attempt on Balanced using Liz (as always).

Sub-1800 could happen. That'd be 34 turns faster. I had no stone or marble, so I chopped almost all my forests for the Pyramids. I kept 4 forests in my "fat cross" for health and lumbermills. Since I was out of forests I wanted to chop, I decided to research CS and paper myself and use the oracle for the Education slingshot.

With 1 rice and and 2 flood plains, my city reached size 18. I should have pushed the beakers a little harder. I got to about 800 per turn before dialing it back and focusing on hammers.

I had no iron and could not trade for it.

I built one Musketman and one Redcoat, but never got attacked...as expected.

I played with the Khan's, Mansa and Cyrus. Mansa was nice (as usual) with the tech trading, but the Khan's don't like him, so that made diplomacy tougher. Maybe it was a good thing. The Khan's both attacked him instead of me.

 

[WastinTime]

Hey Methos, Nice BIG city. You must have gotten close to 1000 beakers before you changed the towns to watermills (good strategy). Any idea what your max was?

Your screenshot shows you were not running Universal Sufferage. Once your tech is no longer the problem and you need to build parts, switch for the +hammer in towns. You can even buy a power plant or something too.

 

[jOe chOOch]

1884 launch with Saladin.
First time i got it off without getting atacked. I added mansa to the mix and i also gifted all my techs. They didnt attack me. I'll have to try it again to see if theres any consistency to that.

I dont see how any military solution can save time. even if it means building a single unit. theres always something better to do.

I used all farms and mines. not a single cottage. I got my beakers up to about 850. I tend to switch back and forth between production and adding scientists during the game. is this a mistake? is it better to just tech as fast as you can and then switch?

Ususally ill get as many religeons a s i can for the monastaries. This game, which was by far my best i didnt "go for any". i didnt build any monastaries either.

So basically, im using Saladin for no anarchy. Is this a good anough trait for this gauntlet?

As for the civs i use rep,bur,caste,merc or enviro,pac

Can someone briefly explain how cottages produce more beakers than a scientist under rep?

i would greatly appreciate any thoughts on my general strat. im thinking about goin with liz and trying finance. i dunno phi goes well with farms.

 

[Methos]

Any idea what your max was?

Your screenshot shows you were not running Universal Sufferage. Once your tech is no longer the problem and you need to build parts, switch for the +hammer in towns. You can even buy a power plant or something too.

Not for sure what my max was, but I don’t believe it was over 1000.

You’re right about US. I realized my mistake after I had swapped to Environmentalism. I should have swapped to US at the same time. I didn’t feel going through another turn of anarchy would benefit be enough, so instead I started switching tiles.

As for the civs i use rep,bur,caste,merc or enviro,pac

Mercantilsm? Do you mean Free Market?

 

[Methos]

I don't think you need mines already built. The resources will pop up and then you can go mine them...true?

When you mine a hill, even those outside your city radius, there is a small percentage chance that either gold, silver, a few others, appear. The only way they have a random chance of appearing is if that hill tile has been mined.

 

[WastinTime]

Aluminum

I had a great game going, but no aluminum showed up. I thought Balanced guaranteed it would be within 4 tiles. Not so. If I had it, I think I'da been 1700's. As it is I launched in...

1820AD

This time I used Qin. Only the first few GP seem to matter in my strategy, so I tried playing with no Phi trait (I usually play Liz). I figured I would build/chop the Great Lib instead of using an engineer on it like I usually do.

I had only. -->1 Gems<-- and 1 Corn. I had 1 Dye, but I put a cottage on that. Stone was not too far away. No flood plains. No hills! I also never traded for any health resources! I wanted to of course, but no one had any. I played all game with just my Corn. I had so many happy resources that I didn't even build the Theatre. Size 16 -17 city.

I was teching like mad with cottages. I got Apollo around 1300 AD.

Again, no attacks. I built one Cho-Ko-Nu and then a couple riflemen when there was nothing else to build.

 

[fluffyflyingpig]

Only warlord? Oh well, the settings look fun. Off to give it a shot.


For those new to OCC, I strongly recomend this thread: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=146231&perpage=30&pagenumber=1

and this one: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=144365

Much better, IMO, than anything here on Civ Fanatics.

 

[Methos]

Aluminum

I had a great game going, but no aluminum showed up. I thought Balanced guaranteed it would be within 4 tiles. Not so.

I don't understand this either. If you take a look at Sirian's article, specifically his sample balanced map, the resources don't look to be within four tiles. It does appear that there is no more than four tiles between your starting location and the resource. At least that's what I'm guessing.

I'm still not sure if a balanced map is the best route, but so far that's all I've tried. I'm only on my second game though...

 

[WastinTime]

I used all farms and mines. not a single cottage. I got my beakers up to about 850. I tend to switch back and forth between production and adding scientists during the game.

Can someone briefly explain how cottages produce more beakers than a scientist under rep?

Hey jOe,

I'm impressed with this farm/mine strategy. 850 beakers is huge. I didn't not break 750 in my last game. Tell me more. How big is your city? I can't see where 850 comes from with no cottages.

Here's how a cottage is better than a scientist:

Scientist : 6
with let's say 200% = 18

Town + PrintingPress + Financial : 6
Bureaucracy : +3 = 9
with let's say 200% = 27

And that's a town that's not on a river.
Then don't forget the +hammer for Universal Sufferage.