Blackbetsy HOF Attempts

I can confirm that war happiness does not expire. Check any of the Sid histographic games I've submitted, and you can make peace with someone and see that you will lose war happiness.
Oh, that's good. Saves me the trouble of having to hook / unhook the incense. I can't remember where I read (here somewhere) that war happiness was a 20 turn phenomenon.

Now if only the Greeks will make peace with me after I put them in their prison.

I guess I have to pick off any settlers that show up to enlarge the Greeks territorial boundaries.

In this thread it's stated that you get +1 ww point for having units in enemy territory at the start of your turn. I think so long as you avoid gaining ww points, war happiness will be indefinite, no reason to engineer declarations. But, I still dunno if you can get WH back by getting a re-declaration.

I dunno about that one. I had a lot of units in Greek territory for many turns and I didn't experience WW? @Spoonwood does this seem right to you?
 
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I stand corrected. I just had a huge burst of WW after I had 8 tanks in Greek territory for a bunch of turns.

Greeks won't even talk to me. Sigh.
 
1856 AD...147 turns to go. It's taking me about 12-15 minutes per turn even though I'm in a nearly pure "milking" phase. (1) handle inter-turn builds (becoming fewer, thankfully); (2) clean up the new pollution (although it's down to only 3-4 instances per turn); (3) re-place all the citizens on the polluted tiles; (4) switch all the scientists who seemed to pop up interturn (every city growth means 2 new scientists b/c of Longevity, and 2-3 cities randomly switch all tax men to scientists it seems); (5) check CivAssist2 to see if there are any unhappy citizens and re-assign tax men to entertainers or take citizens off tiles if necessary.

I've probably got 30 hours to go by my math. If I can get in 3-4 hours per night. 2 weeks? My score isn't certain at all. SirPleb's calculator has me safely above 40k now, but I'm not sure what its going to be when my added points per turn slowly trends down (right now its about 154 points per turn, down from 160 points per turn 10-15 turns ago.

I re-read @Drazek's post on his 93k game. It's just so amusing to me that he casually talks about doing all of his conquests (on Sid!) in 20 turns through ROP abuse after he literally railroaded all of the AI's tiles once he had Replaceable Parts. Or the fact that he was "disappointed" in his 90k game. If I hit 40k on DG...the Sid adjustment is only up to about 53k. Mind boggling what he, @Spoonwood, @Kuningas, @Moonsinger have all done at the Sid level.
 
11 turns more since yesterday at the snail's pace. Up to 1878, 136 turns from 2050. I am now willing to allow myself to believe I will hit 42k points or more, as SirPleb has me higher than that.

I am within 1% of my max population at this point. 6402 population, with 1415 taxmen and 1 scientist and an unknown number of entertainers (can't see where that is counted, but likely 300-500).

I have been at 100% happiness in all my cities for a while. I find it odd that ever turn, without pollution or growth, 1-3 cities just flip all their taxmen to scientists. @Spoonwood, do you know the cause of this?

At some point, I won't care. I'm down to buying the last few Mass Transit Systems and Courthouses. I am going to do one last scrub for any sea squares I could possibly get w/out getting new domination tiles.
 
I stopped last night at about 1930, with about 110 turns to go. Turns are slightly faster because there are fewer builds, slightly less pollution, and fewer units to manage. With 100% luxuries, war happiness is really hard to detect, but I got it after we re-negotiated peace with Greece + incense, which then immediately couldn't be delivered because of a mysterious road cut.

I have decided that I've got good enough control of my borders to go to 1 tile away from the Dom limit to generate another few happy citizens. I am pretty much done squeezing the use of sea tiles out of my empire. To be worth it, I need to be able to have 2 free "new" tiles. If you plant over a railroaded irrigated grassland, you are -4 food, with -1 happy citizen (2 points) and -1 specialist (1 point). If you are able to claim only 1 tile, you will have 1 happy citizen (2 points) and eventually 1 specialist (1 point) and you break even. I've founded a couple of new cities where I've gotten 3-4 new tiles on the sea, but I wouldn't bother below that.

I am willing to say Sir Pleb's calculator now puts me above 44k, and I believe with an (essentially) full population, it should be pretty accurate going forward. I believe that I will achieve my 40k goal. I should crack the Quartermaster top 10 if accepted and when published.
 
For the life of me, I can't remember how I kept my sanity during milk phases before having a second screen with streaming services to distract me.
 
1970....30 more turns of drudgery in the books and SirPleb pretty consistently has me around 44,500. I hate pollution and understand the appeal of not building hospitals....I hate cities with +1 food.....I hate the mechanism that switches all specialists to scientists...
 
I seem to remember there was something about the slider settings that affects the specialists; something like if you have zero science it makes all scientists, or you have to have >0 science to get all taxmen? I remember sometimes as well if you click again on the city square it toggles between all taxmen/all scientists, but I also don't remember the conditon necessary for that. Not much help, sorry.
 
In general, I am coming to the conclusion that it re-sets specialists when you have a population change. So if a citizen is pulled off a tile for pollution = 1 scientist. If a city loses a citizen due to starvation = all specialists are re-set. If a city grows by 2 (Longevity), you get 2 scientists.

So cities that are 24 pop that have 49 food (+1) will grow to 26 pop with -3 food, add 2 specialists, and then decline by 1 pop to 25 and re-set specialists. And then the next turn, they lose 1 pop to 24 and re-set specialists. 60 turns later (without a granary), rinse and repeat. Over 300+ cities, probably 40% of which have odd food numbers, that probably explains the 2-4 I'm getting per turn.
 
2005 AD, heading towards a 44,500 - 44,600 score at this point. I've built granaries to delay population shrinkage in the cities with odd-numbered food (they get 6 extra turns at the higher population levels before starving back). Also delays my need to re-set scientists. With 45 turns to go, it would be really pushing it to finish today so I'll probably finish and submit tomorrow. Grateful to be done with it. I need a palate cleanser now; likely a tiny map. Maybe I will try to launch the first Sid Viking Spaceship for giggles (although I have no hope of even touching Tone's 4th place with that).
 
Just finished. 44,606. Would be currently #16 on Histographic list. Should be like 2.56 score for Histographic.
 
"Palate cleansing" Small Regent Domination finished in just a couple of hours @50 AD....an 8th place on that table. I mean, not great, but haven't played Domination for speed in a while. Love the Gallic Swordsman! Probably could have stopped building them and shut off research once I had Iron Working and Polytheism. Possibly could have switched to Monarchy. Won when I got the expansions from ToA. I have another 30 small maps, wonder how early I could go.

It is plausible that I could take another run at Large Sid Domination since I only missed #1 by 7 turns. Somehow I have to get a #1 or #2 spot on Cultural 20k, not sure how I pull that off.
 
Submitted another "quickie" Regent Small Domination game @ 10 BC with the Celts. That's going to be the #8 if accepted (bumping the other one down to #9). I'm actually just getting more of a feel for this game than anything and it's interesting. The Gallic Swordsman is pretty powerful, and at the lower levels, it's generally 1-2 spears defending, and sometimes just warriors.

What I'm curious about and will make me probably do a series of these games is the purity of the sprint, as well as the balance and transitions of the game. You want research to get Iron Working and Polytheism. But usually, you can let the AI get Iron Working while you pursue Polytheism. You can turn off the research at that point and raise cash to convert warriors into GS.

Then the question is how do you flip the switch and stop producing GS in favor of the final settlers to get to 66%. It could be that I was way overbuilding GS too deep into the game when I should have been producing "combat settlers" that quickly settle razed towns.

There is also the question of the ToA. It could be that in really fast games it's never built. At least for now, I'm building it as a critical part of the strategy. But it's such a huge build and you essentially need your 2nd city to start on a pre-build right away and almost treat it like a 20k city.

Obviously an SGL on Masonry or Mysticism (just a 3% chance) means you can concentrate on GS and Settlers and have one more productive town. And of course if the AI builds the Pyramids through their own SGL....all the better.

#1 date on Regent Small Domination is 900 BC, which is turn 84...which is 43 turns (34%) faster. Or, stated another way, I took 51% more turns to finish @ 10 BC.

Aigburth did @1275 BC on a Small Warlord map, better than the 925 BC on the Small Chieftain map, which is really something. On the Chieftain map, I'm assuming its more about settler pumps than actual fighting since the AI really won't take up much space with towns. I could see how Agricultural / Industrious (Maya) is a good play there and the Javelin Thrower is a pretty decent conquest option. You might not even get many spears if you avoid civs with Bronze Working.

I'll probably take a couple of runs at Chieftain to see if I can even get on that board. I remember the strategy of starting with long walking settlers rather than ones close to the cap. We'll see.

My best ever Dom submission was in 2005 with a 550 BC on Tiny Warlord with Persia (likely to play the SGL), which is only 9th on that table now. I think it was #1 at the time since the tables were mostly fresh. I'd like to beat that on Small Chieftain, which is still only a #6 on the board.
 
Correcting prior post - my best ever domination game was actually an 1100 BC Sumerian Tiny Chieftain, which doesn't even come to 10th on the table now - the Domination Win Condition really has been mastered.
 
Maybe the best thing to do would be just to keep ditching starts until you get the SGL?

Do you have Respawn on?
I probably could dump non-SGL starts. I don't have respawn on, but that's a good idea! Capitals always have culture, and thus are never autorazed.
 
I'm playing around w/ Small Warlord Domination. Have a game where I was at around 24% at 650 BC, which isn't even 10th place. I tried to see what is going on in higher slots, and Ozymandias' game that is 4th place - 1075 BC. His 1400 BC save only had him at 21% with only 13 turns to go and 4 settlers. ToA was about to complete, and I'm sure he was about to conquer the Chinese and get 2 cities, but I am really shocked that he got to 66% in 13 turns. I am not sure how it happened - his existing cities even have overlapping borders, meaning he wasn't going to claim a bunch of territory with ToA expansion.

He added 22 new cities between 1400 BC and 1075 BC with only 4 settlers active and only 6 settlers in production that would finish in the next 13 turns. Even with the 2 cities he conquered, that's a pretty strong gap, especially with the walks needed. Kind of scratching my head. He must have rushed the final few settlers
 
I've played through 16-17 Small Warlord domination games with the Celts and I have to say, I am no closer to cracking the code on this type of game! I haven't had a game where I've been within 10 turns of getting 10th place....only my game where I got an SGL for ToA did I feel like I was even in the neighborhood.

I have tried to focus on taking out close AI's with early warriors (mostly you lose and have to abandon), but while that helps when you succeed, it's not nearly enough.

Here's my strategy. Celts, Pangaea 80% water. Opponents English, Netherlands, Carthage, Byzantines, Vikings. Build warrior, warrior, settler, granary (with chop), settlers.... Research Mysticism / Polytheism / Writing / Philosophy / Monarchy (free), trade for all others including Iron Working. Build warriors to upgrade to Gallic Swordsman. Turn off research after Monarchy to upgrade warriors to GS.

I am wondering whether archer rushes are better, and potentially picking Germany for warrior code (archer immediately) + scientific trait for better chance at SGL for ToA? But there aren't any German dominations on the table. Iroquois, yes, but the Mounted Warrior isn't superior to the GS.

Need to read some theory from the archives.
 
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