Challenge #7: Wonder Woman

[ShannonCT]

I'm working a good specialist economy, and I won all my 12 wonder races finishing on Notre Dame. No need for me to research monarchy to get that tricky Divine Right. Metal Casting from the Oracle. Light-bulbed Theology and researched CoL and happen to get a GP light-bulb to CS the next turn. So took it for the irrigation as much as anything. Even got one GE (finally), but still ended on 1190AD. Which is way off target.

Some advice Raiser:

Spoiler :

You should be able to get at least two GEs. My first GE came in my Pyramids city after I built a forge and ran an engineer specialist. I was 97% for the first one. Add Hanging Gardens to that same city and you have a good chance of popping another one later even when the pool starts getting polluted. I actually got three GEs in my 800AD game but couldn't get the necessary techs fast enough to use the last one. It looks from your screenshot that you didn't shut off research after getting the tech you needed for 12 wonders. Why not use your spare cash with Universal Suffrage to rush the last wonder? And you're right about marble. It's a must have. Just delay settling on top of the marble until you are ready to start building the Great Library.

 

[Raiser]

Thanks for the suggestions ShannonCT:

Spoiler :

I was 97% for the first GE.

- Looking closer I see that you started Pyramids in your first city, and Henge and Oracle in your second. That certainly helps with getting the first GE and raising the chance of a second.

The problem I was finding was that I was loosing the Oracle to the AI's. In the end I had to skip the Henge to focus on settlers and getting the Oracle by 1500BC. But I guess that I shouldn't have given up on leaving the Oracle until later as you got it twice at about 1000BC.

It looks from your screenshot that you didn't shut off research after getting the tech you needed for 12 wonders. Why not use your spare cash with Universal Suffrage to rush the last wonder?

- I looked at US to finish fast, but it didn't add up. I needed to speed to my last wonder-tech and at that point I used my one GE to complete one wonder and slavery worked out quicker on the other as I was pop 11 by then.

So no need to switch off the research. (I pessimistically put the research into Monarch to allow Divine Right in case I lost the last wonder to an AI.)

And you're right about marble. It's a must have. Just delay settling on top of the marble until you are ready to start building the Great Library.

- Thinking about it I'm not sure how much Marble is really going to help lower my end-date. You just used it on Grt Lib (for a saving of 175 hammers) and Sistine (for 300). Which is good but if I had 2 GE's, which is my aim, I would save them both for the final expensive wonders and expect to use one of them on the Sistine. So the cost of the settler for Marble would only get me the 175 hammers.


- Research Speed: Where I, and I think a lot of people here, are having the biggest problem is in maintaining fast research for the last 5 techs. I'm sure it's this lack of research that is pushing the date for 800AD to 1100AD, not the lack of production, as I have too many fallow periods where I don't have a wonder to build. (Therefore I don't feel that your lucky popping of 2 GE's is "the key" that makes your 740AD result so impressive.)

Between wonders I am throwing my citizens into a specialist economy. (I tried a 14-cottage economy attempt and as Uberfish and lilnev say it just doesn't work.)

You seem to have your tech-rate sorted. But it's difficult for me too see where you are getting it from?

In your 740AD save you have max of +9 excess food in Thebes for 4 scientists and +5 excess food in Memphis for a couple more. Assuming you had the population (can't see cos you whipped hard at the end) you could have worked a maximum of 9 triple-coin water titles in addition. And you had no real luxuries (I'm excluding your lucky Gems pop in Memphis as you did just as well in your similar 800AD attempt without getting the Gems.)

Your total research rate seems less than I was getting out my three cities even with my early third city expenses (which were balance by a gold mine), but you might have been getting up to speed much sooner. Which must make the difference.

When I went Masonry (for Rep) first I was getting CoL (for Caste) late. You had the Pyramids at 1560BC and Chicken 'Ickle by 125AD which was much better than me and suggests you got the key specialist economy components set up much sooner than me. Maybe that is your key.

Your Grt Lib at 375AD must have helped. Mine was too late and my light bulbs pushed me towards CS but I was already well behind the curve for an 800AD result by then.


Research Route: I'd love to know your tech route. Particularly to the early key techs - B/W, Masonary, Priesthood and Writing.

I assume in your strat you can skip Monarchy, Calendar and Iron-working. (Although as I needed Ironworking it also turned out to be helpful in avoiding researching Hunting/Archery, and going for axe to defeat barbie archers. I notice that you coped with just 8 warriors in defence. They killed 3 archers and you didn't encounter axe. I had real trouble with barbie archers.)

Can you remember the order in which you took the key mid-techs - Metal Casting, Alphabet, CoL? I'm assuming that the order for the last five is less critical - Lit, Maths, Theo, Philo, Music.



Obviously you don't have to offer any advice if you want to set the next challenge (which I'll pass on). But I'd be interested to see if changing my tech route and wonder order, but using my original city placement, does shave 200 years off my score. I think it might.

Thanks,
Raiser

---

 

[lilnev]

After 3 or 4 more attempts, I've reached an important conclusion: Oracle->MC->forge->engineer->GE as my 1st great person doesn't work. Both Stonehenge and Pyramids have to be postponed too long.

Raiser: If you want ShannonCT's tech and Wonder orders, just load his saved game and look in the Event Log. It won't tell you what was lightbulbed/Oracled, or subtleties like queue-swapping, but it'll give you dates.

peace,
lilnev

 

[Serdoa]

On my last attempt I now got 880 AD as finish date. But I think even if I could get a better date, this would only be due to the good advice here and not due to own ideas.

Spoiler :

If someone is interested:

I put my first city one tile SW from starting, the second one on the silks in the northwest and the third in the northeast were I could grab gold, copper and pig.

I also created a fourth city, but it was always only size 1. Created to grab the marble. I know for sure that this is the reason I couldn't get a better date (probably in the 700) because I lost two workers due to a barb attack when an archer killed my axe which stood in the woods to save my workers... great luck I think I still had 3 trees in my capital and I probably would have gotten the last techs some turns faster without worrying about the fourth city. The really move was still to build the fourth city after I finished the Great Library and connect the marble around 6 turns before the finish of Sistine.

One thing I noticed is that the biggest problem is the research. In this game now I was lucky in founding Hinduism (wanted an early religion for Org. Rel) but then needed so much other stuff which took so much time to research that I think half of the wonders were build before I could crab Mono. This probably is also because of my try to get Stonehenge in the first city, Forge (+Pyramids later) in second city and Oracle in third. Which worked out good and leaded to my first (and only one) GE. Unfortunately I had to use him on the Colossus because I feared that Kyrus is about to build it. This wouldn't be of so much trouble if I hadn't also know that Togu tries to grab the Great Lighthouse which therefore had also to be finished in some turns. I think I would probably be better off going for early Library and Pyramids for 6 Beaker-Scientists.

However, maybe somebody is interested in the first few techs I researched:

1. Mysticism (from Goody Hut)
2. Animal Husbandry
3. Poly
4.+5. Mining, Fishing (don't know which was first one, but I think Fishing would be better as this is close to the time when I builded the second city)
6. Priesthood
7. Bronzeworking

I really don't know which were the techs after this but I think I've gone for Writing (after Pottery for Metal Casting with the Oracle), Maths, Alpha. Somewhere inbetween has to be Sailing I think.

Some minor things I noted in all my attempts:

Oracle and Stonehenge should be finished before 1000 BC (as this seems to be the date when the AI builds it), Toku goes for the Great Lighthouse, so this should also be build sooner rather than later. I'm not sure if any AI goes for the Colossus. In all my attempts it was never build from any AI. Also the late wonders shouldn't be much of a problem.

btw: I had in most (if not any) of my attempts at least one AI which declared on me. Don't know if I did something wrong here, but the always demand Wonder techs from me (which I only give when I have finished it) and want me to don't trade with their worst enemy, what I don't like to give in, because the AI I stopped trading won't speak the whole game with me after that.

 

[uberfish]

A couple more runs modifying my strategy a bit to focus more on hammer production resulted in a 540 AD finish with 3 cities and the same 12 wonder list. I'm not sure there's much room for improvement on this. This feels like a Medieval space race and it's pretty fun.

Rather than ShannonCT's approach of taking metal casting from Oracle, I went with early Monotheism to get the production bonus from Organized Religion instead. I also stayed with the Oracle-CoL plan for caste system so as not to waste time building unnecessary libraries.

Thanks to Scherbchen for the AH-from-hut trick and Patagonia for the marble location, but imo founding on that marble loses as much as it gains since your 3rd city is terrible.

 

[Serdoa]

If you don't care going the "pop a hut"-strategy a bit longer: I found, but only because of the advice from scherbchen, a way to get three techs from them.

Spoiler :

Go N with warrior, SW with settler. Build your city and start a warrior. Change tile so it will be finished in 5 turns. Wait a turn with the warrior then pop AH (as Scherbchen suggested). Go with your warrior 4 NW and 2 N and pop the hut for Mining. The finished warrior in the city goes two NE and pops fishing.

Though I'm not sure if getting one tech for free is worth "losing" 5 turns at the start before the city starts the worker.

 

[Urederra]

I managed to get 5 techs by hut popping yesterday, Animal husbandry, Bronze and iron working, writting and sailing. I was doing wonderfully, but I neglected my defense and montezuma attacked me, stealing my third city

I only remember the steps to pop up AH, BW and Writting. I can give the directions if anybody wants to try that route. It involves popping two scouts, so there is a lot of room for improvement.

One question. WHen you say the closing date is sunday 5th at midnight. Is that GTM midnight time or midnight in NY or Los Angeles?

 

[ShannonCT]

To answer Raiser's question:

Spoiler :

- Looking closer I see that you started Pyramids in your first city, and Henge and Oracle in your second. That certainly helps with getting the first GE and raising the chance of a second.

The problem I was finding was that I was loosing the Oracle to the AI's. In the end I had to skip the Henge to focus on settlers and getting the Oracle by 1500BC. But I guess that I shouldn't have given up on leaving the Oracle until later as you got it twice at about 1000BC.

Yes, I went with this strategy every time. I wanted to guarantee that my first Great Person would be a GE and second would probably be a GP for Theology. Plus I wanted early Representation for my specialist economy and for some crucial happiness in the capital. Getting the Henge and Oracle in my second city puts the second city on pace to get the first Great Person but I finished a forge (for the engineer) and Parthenon in the capital and just barely got the GE in the capital before second city got a GP.

As far as the race to the Oracle, I scrapped a couple games where Ghandi beat me to it. There's some random element there. Other games, I won the race because Ghandi was slower. The Oracle is obviously a must have. But getting it too early (before the Henge) would have meant delaying Masonry and BW, and therefore the Henge and Mids.

- I looked at US to finish fast, but it didn't add up. I needed to speed to my last wonder-tech and at that point I used my one GE to complete one wonder and slavery worked out quicker on the other as I was pop 11 by then.

So no need to switch off the research. (I pessimistically put the research into Monarch to allow Divine Right in case I lost the last wonder to an AI.)

You can actually use Slavery AND US to speed the last wonder(s). If you have something else in the build queue, whip it and let the overflow go into the wonder. With unmodded vanilla CIV4, there's no 50% penalty for the overflow. Then use US to use up your money. If you're teching at a reasonable rate, there's no way the AI is going to beat you to the later wonders.

- Research Speed: Where I, and I think a lot of people here, are having the biggest problem is in maintaining fast research for the last 5 techs. I'm sure it's this lack of research that is pushing the date for 800AD to 1100AD, not the lack of production, as I have too many fallow periods where I don't have a wonder to build. (Therefore I don't feel that your lucky popping of 2 GE's is "the key" that makes your 740AD result so impressive.)

You seem to have your tech-rate sorted. But it's difficult for me too see where you are getting it from?

In your 740AD save you have max of +9 excess food in Thebes for 4 scientists and +5 excess food in Memphis for a couple more. Assuming you had the population (can't see cos you whipped hard at the end) you could have worked a maximum of 9 triple-coin water titles in addition. And you had no real luxuries (I'm excluding your lucky Gems pop in Memphis as you did just as well in your similar 800AD attempt without getting the Gems.)

Your total research rate seems less than I was getting out my three cities even with my early third city expenses (which were balance by a gold mine), but you might have been getting up to speed much sooner. Which must make the difference.

Right, it's not all about getting GE's. Teching fast is just as important. In my 740AD game, I used a GP for Theology and a GS for Philosophy. Two big techs there. I went for Writing/Alphabet/Literature quickly to get a library and two scientists in my capital, and later the GL for two more scientists. Four early scientists is huge, and makes for a good chance to get a GS for Philosophy. You dont need to wait for Caste System to start running scientists. I don't know how your budget looked but I ran at 100% research practically the whole game until I got my needed techs. I made sure that I disbanded any units that I had to pay for, and my orginal hut gold was enough to pay my small city maintenance costs until I could start selling techs to the AIs who had Currency.

It seems like your three good cities could in time outtech my two good cities and one crappy marble city. But I think my capital became a powerhouse faster with the Pyramids, forge, library, Parthenon, and GL. 5 specialists under Representation with the library bonus = a lot of beakers. Building two settlers early seems to be hurting you.

Research Route: I'd love to know your tech route. Particularly to the early key techs - B/W, Masonary, Priesthood and Writing.

I assume in your strat you can skip Monarchy, Calendar and Iron-working. (Although as I needed Ironworking it also turned out to be helpful in avoiding researching Hunting/Archery, and going for axe to defeat barbie archers. I notice that you coped with just 8 warriors in defence. They killed 3 archers and you didn't encounter axe. I had real trouble with barbie archers.)

Can you remember the order in which you took the key mid-techs - Metal Casting, Alphabet, CoL? I'm assuming that the order for the last five is less critical - Lit, Maths, Theo, Philo, Music.

Tech route started with AH, Mining, BW, Masonry, Myst, Poly, Preisthood. When the Oracle was close to completion, I went for Pottery so I could take MC with the Oracle. I threw in Fishing and Sailing somewhere. Then Writing, CoL, Alpha, Lit. I didn't want to risk someone beating me to CoL because I needed a religion for the happiness and Organized Religion bonus. But Literature is quite nice to get early. The GL is a powerful wonder, and cheap with marble.

I got Meditation and Math, along with some other dead end techs, in trades with the AI. Last techs I researched were Music and Currency (to take all of the AIs money and rush the last wonder).

The barbs were pretty insiginificant in my games. I built only warriors in my 740AD game. I put up some fogbusters on forested hills and let the barbs kill themselves. I saw a couple axemen but I lured them over to Ghandi, who killed them for me. Ghandi, Caesar, and Toku all started hemming me in and took care of the barb problem.

 

[Raiser]

Responses to strat comments by ShannonCt, lilnev, Serdoa and uberfish in the spoiler:

Spoiler :

Thanks for the reply ShannonCT. (In answer to lilnev I haven't tended to wade through the event logs on these challenges because I like hearing peoples reasoning behind their choices. I like to encourage a more expanded report on their strats. )

What I've learned on this challenge so far is that I’m very reliant on a cottage economy in my general MP and SP game. There are many discussions on this forum about the strength of The Cottage over a specialist economy and I tend to subscribe to them. Although a hybrid strategy is very robust.

Anyway I put a lot of stock in getting 'good' land early (plenty of 2F tiles and a couple of food sources) for my swaths of cottages, and so I agree with you that here I loose out while rushing two settlers.

Plus I need to supplement my scientists with earlier free Great Library scientists.


---


Serdoa did well (880AD) with the same 3 city locations as my recent attempt, including the Gold, Pig, Bronze city. So I'm glad it was a valid choice, even though I didn't make the most of it.


---


Congrats to uberfish for 540AD and for completing it in only 54 minutes!

I'm surprised that you went for your second city on the salt water to the north near the Pigs and Iron rather than the salt water city on the Silk, but I guess that the fact none of it’s 5 hills and Iron were under jungle paid off.

And obviously skipping the run to Marble and taking the mine-heavy Gem city as a third was the way to go.

Plus not separating out the early GE wonders from the early GP wonders didn't seem to hurt. Did you use many Great Engineers?

You mentioned your early Mono for OrgRel, as well as getting CoL to by-pass the need for Libraries, but I think getting Alpha at 650BC and obtaining Pottery and B/W in trade after Alpha contributed the most to your 200 year jump to a 540AD finish. Kudos!

I've become very reliant on chop/whipping settlers but obviously it is not necessary here.

When you say the closing date is sunday 5th at midnight. Is that GTM midnight time or midnight in NY or Los Angeles?

In previous challenges we have said the posted saves are valid as long as it is before midnight Sunday "somewhere in the world".

Not sure where the last place to get midnight is, but you don't have to live there for your post to count. It's an informal challenge. As long as we all get two full weekends that’s fine by me. Let's say the winner is crowned Monday morning-ish and leave it at that.



Yeah, so I've still got time to have one more crack at this Medieval Space Race (as long as my Neverwinter Nights 2 still hasn't turned up in the post ) and now I've got plenty of ideas for inspiration. Thanks.



---

 

[Bindamel]

This challenge is a cool idea, I've been lurking the forums and playing GOTM, but hadn't seen these until this one.

I just played it once through, ending date 1430, so not spectacular. My two main problems were a war with Monty, and a period where I was without wonders to build.

I ended up with 4 cities:

Thebes, with the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Great Library, Sistene Chapel, and Spiral Minaret.

Memphis, with Colossus (built very late, wasn't even planning to get it, but worked out because I lost on Angkor Wat), Parthenon, and Chichen Itza.

Heliopolis, with Oracle and Notre Dame

Elephantine, with Versailles and Hanging Gardens.

Versailles completed last, I was at full cash and UniSuff, but a GE popped before I could afford to buy it anyway

Without really trying, I founded Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam.

I probably won't get a chance to play it again, but I'm sure I could shave some time off, by builidng up my anti-Monty defenses better earlier, and changing my tech path around to not get caught short on Wonders.

 

[carl corey]

Well, my second* try ended in 1200. I missed the Great Lighthouse and had to research Divine Right to get the Spiral Minaret. Then forgot I had the Pyramids and I could rush buy. So I used US only for Spiral Minaret right at the end.

I had three cities but they were quite small (low on food). There are certainly other better placements among the other saves, I'll take a look at them later.

Oddities:
- had a war with Monty: brought all my axes where the invasion took place, traded for horses with Cyrus then built a few War Chariots. No problem.
- phony war with Toku, killed an archer or two, and just as I finished the challenge a War Elephant entered my territory. Started building Spears in all three cities, but it wasn't my problem anymore.
- got only one GE, used it to build Sistine Chapel.

All in all, a pretty cool challenge. Many thanks to Garath for setting this up.

-----

* I lost the Oracle in the first try due to a bad research path... Decided to restart.

 

[Raiser]

Well Wonder Woman and her wily ways has defeated me.

Thought I try a few more times before the challenge ended. When I pushed hard I got beaten up by the barbies or by a sulky Monty. If didn't push hard I ended up loosing wonder races and ended with a best score of 1130AD. Not impressive.

Felt good about this attempt took Uberfish's idea for the second city on the water to the north, but I then took a different place for the 3rd. This last city I put in a slightly better location than south-east of the Gems. By going 2 tiles east you get Gems, Dye and the Rice, plus 4 mines and some fresh water farms. Felt stronger even with the overlap and the loss of the Cows.

Spoiler :

My best guess at 'ideal' city locations (even if I couldn't get the winning result from it ):

3rd city:

But I ran out of time to make it work. My 1130AD attempt with these 3 cities got all pooed-up as I missed Parthenon and the Great Lighthouse and ended up having to finish with Divine Right. Boo!



Solid, if some-what frustrating, challenge. With hindsight I think 7 Wonders at Monarch might have been better.

Still too late now, so roll on the next one!



---

 

[Serdoa]

I'm really impressed on Uberfish date. One of the reasons: I found a way to pop 6 techs (Fishing, Sailing, AH, Pottery, Bronzeworking, Mining) and still couldn't compete with his time. Only 1 attempt of a few I tried today (after knowing how to get 6 techs) was near the date and maybe could have beaten it. But then Togu declared. He only had archers so no problem at around 300 AD with Axe... Arc... Warriors 3 to say the truth. Thinking about it, I was really impressed at how I managed it to not get beaten up earlier

Anyway a real nice game. Though that I found out the way for 6 techs I would really like to have challenges without huts because in the end it felt like cheating somehow. Imagine having the following techs at 3000 BC (so after 25 turns if I didn't miscalculate):

Fishing
The Wheel
Agri
Mysticism
Mining
Sailing
Pottery
AH
Polytheism
Bronzeworking
only some turns to go for Masonry

I'm sure somebody with more skill then me could have probably get a even more impressive date then Uberfish.

 

[uberfish]

Raiser - At Heliopolis, ignoring the overlapped hills which could also be used by Memphis, you gained one jungled grassland hill and the dyes (tiles which can't be worked until late) and lost the cow which is +3 production right from the city's founding and fresh water access. I don't think it's a good trade. After the first run I did I realised that calendar resources weren't important because they came too late, and the happiness from them wasn't needed as size 8 is enough to work all mines and specials anyway. This led me to the Northeast location for my second city which had stronger production instead. As far as commerce goes, apart from the gem mine and a few turns of working lake tiles at Heliopolis to build population pre-IW all my research was done by specialists too (just assigning scientists instead of mines at cities #2 and #3 when I needed the research more than production)

Serdoa - wow, you got every hut to pop a tech? I do agree that it can lead to really artificial situations under the rules of these challenge which allow replays, so it would probably be better without huts.

 

[Garath]

Well, I guess I should declare this vaguely closed at some point, since it was meant to run until Sunday.

So Congratulations to Uberfish for his runaway victory in this challenge.

I'll update the leaderboard and stuff when it's not 3am. Sorry for not having done that more regularly, but my 'net access has been a tad spotty this week.

So, who's got ideas to suggest to uberfish for the next challenge?

Garath, ex-First Citizen

 

[Serdoa]

@uberfish

First: Congratulations

On to your question:

Yes, every hut I popped was a tech. And this really led to a point were the fun was gone. I tried to see if it is possible to beat your date with that but everytime lost my focus because of thinking what sense it would make to compare your and my attempt. Maybe I will give it a try now, knowing that it won't be compared any longer and so I won't take a unfair advantage in this challenge. I mean I have now a free week (getting 30 days of vacation per year is great) what else should I do?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

So, who's got ideas to suggest to uberfish for the next challenge?

GP Score by fixed date ( 1600 AD, or there abouts ).

GP Score is the number of GP points accumulated in all cities, as shown in the domestic advisor, plus the number of points required for the next GP.

 

[mice]

So, who's got ideas to suggest to uberfish for the next challenge?

Garath, ex-First Citizen

Just throwing ideas around, how about a teching one where the winner is the first to tech eg. Astronomy,Nationalism and Rep parts. It would require good use of GPP, but be easier to see when you won. Even make it earlier, first to tech Guilds,Music,Engineering.
Maybe the first to found Islam, spread it to all your cities and build the spiral Minaret.

 

[ShannonCT]

Earliest date to have access to at least one each of all health and luxury resources (except hits) on a Terra map.

 

[cabert]

I'd like a growth challenge :
"big fat one" : biggest city in 1000 AD
or
"mine is bigger than yours" : most total population in 1000 AD.

It's something I'm not too good at (happy whipper ), and it would be a eye opener...