Challenge #8: Super Size Me!

[carl corey]

Welcome to the Super Size Me challenge where SIZE DOES MATTER!



In this challenge you are King Size of the Malinese Empire and your job is to get the largest possible 5 cities by 1200AD. So watch that whip or you can forget about the winner's virtual triple-burger! Being in shape is overrated. Grow, grow, GROW!

Settings
Leader: Mansa Musa
Difficulty: Prince
Build: Civ IV vanilla
Map: Pangaea
Size: Standard
Speed: Normal
Barbarians: On and normal (not raging).

Special conditions
All huts have been removed. I hope...

Victory
Achieve the largest total size for your 5 biggest cities by 1200AD. In case of a tie the 6th city will be taken into account, then the 7th, etc. In case of absolute tie until the last one the highest score wins.

Finish date
Sunday, November 26th

How to play
Download the 4000BC save, play until 1200AD, then post the 1200AD save. You can replay the map any number of times, just be sure to load from the beginning. If you post suggestions and strategies (which is very encouraged) please include them in spoiler tags.

Below is the starting position and the 4000BC save. Good luck and have fun everybody!

 

[carl corey]

Final official scoreboard

DaveMcW.....................151
oyzar...........................135
patagonia.....................118
ShannonCT...................116
carl corey......................81

The scoreboard includes only posts with saves. Let me know if I missed any.

 

[cabert]

I'm in, although I think 1200 AD is too late and 5 cities are too many.
See you next week, after I try the whipping growth

 

[patagonia]

Nice - a challenge all about the farm with a financial civ!

 

[cabert]

Nice - a challenge all about the farm with a financial civ!

we did culture with toku, nothing is going to scare us

 

[carl corey]

Well, the start position has some synergies with being financial, but the overall goal does seem a bit against the usual use of a financial civ, doesn't it? But since from the beginning of the challenges we tried to use general skills rather than (ab)use a particular trait, I decided against either expansive or philosophical (farms + specialists) leaders.

cabert, I went with 5 cities because I think given enough time the sites of the 3 largest cities will be pretty much the same for everyone, thus leaving little room for making a difference. 5 cities ought to make it more interesting. I'm not sure why you think that 1200AD is too late though...

 

[cabert]

cabert, I went with 5 cities because I think given enough time the sites of the 3 largest cities will be pretty much the same for everyone, thus leaving little room for making a difference. 5 cities ought to make it more interesting. I'm not sure why you think that 1200AD is too late though...

- To be able to replay more
- to point fast growth vs slow growth
- to make it viable to have only 3 cities...

But nevermind we'll play it as it is.

 

[carl corey]

Gotcha. I didn't think there was a relation between the two, now it seems pretty obvious. But hey, we usually had 1600AD challenges and people still managed to replay them a lot, I hope this one will be just as "replayable" and fun as those.

 

[patagonia]

A few preliminary thoughts on this one:

*Warning: sizeable spoilers enclosed...*

Spoiler :

1. I think it might be possible to tech to biology if you go for a serious beeline and use GS effectively. Not sure if it'd come online sufficiently early, but as popping CS with the Oracle is doable with this start, lightbulbing and researching that deep into the tech tree seems feasible. Just not sure if it'll come in early enough to make an appreciable difference to the final populations reached.
2. London makes a great city location for decent population growth.
3. So does Kyoto if you raze it and relocate 2W of the original location.
4. It seemed like there were at least 3 other food-heavy sites that could give decent numbers without having to stray too far from home.
5. Vanilla 1.61 AI really is woeful compared to post-patch Warlords.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

My intuition is that health will be the most critical factor for the winner. If you have adequate health, it should be fairly easy to just pick a time as the game draws to a close where you farm everything and run the culture slider up to 100% for happiness.

Guilds will be a critical technology for grocers. Biology will be the game winner if anyone can get there soon enough.

The ideal cities will be on the coast (to enable harbors) but with as few actual water tiles as possible. The harbor can get you +3 health, so if your city has more than 3 water tiles, you'd be just as well off building on land where 3 farms could offset the -3 health.

Don't forget that Great Merchants add +1 food when settled as a super specialist.

 

[carl corey]

Great Merchant... Hmm, that + coastal cities makes me think of having a Great Lighthouse & Colossus city. I wonder if this will be "the" Caste System game... Maybe running multiple merchants in all cities. Then again, with Guilds and grocers a priority we might not even need Caste System. Not sure what exactly we'll run instead. Slavery seems to really lack in use later on... Maybe Serfdom?! That would be weird, I almost never use it...

I also wonder if setting some commerce cities beside the "large" ones will come in handy, or if we can keep up with the gold from the merchants. I guess there's only one way to find out.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

I wonder if this will be "the" Caste System game... Maybe running multiple merchants in all cities.

Interesting idea. I had been thinking that this might be the one game where running a specialist economy with a Financial leader makes sense.

On the other hand, if you really want to completely optimize health, you won't build a forge in any of the top 5 cities. That would make Slavery even more necessary in order to get everything built. Also, in the few specialist economy games I've tried, I've found Slavery to be so extremely powerful (with so much food available) that Caste System isn't worth it.

I also wonder if setting some commerce cities beside the "large" ones will come in handy, or if we can keep up with the gold from the merchants. I guess there's only one way to find out.

I'm not sure that the "large" cities can't be commerce cities for most of their lifetime. Timing everything right will be an issue, but theoretically you could play the game normally up to a point and then convert everything to farms at the last minute for a final growth push. The problems will be making sure you have enough workers available and when to start that push.

 

[Melon Head]

Also, there will be choices to be made between when to switch to/from h. rule and representation. Rep/caste system has clear synergy, particularly for a primarily specialist economy running with a high culture slider for happiness, (theaters/coliseums) but it's also important not to overlook that h. rule can get you an incredibly large amount of happiness with cheap units (like, say, skirmishers) which would also artificially boost your power rating and hold off potential AI attacks which might otherwise occur when you're pushing pop. With h. rule all your citizens remain productive and you don't have to manipulate the slider as much. Remember that the later levels of pop take significantly more food to generate and your food surplus will be down to +1 for the last pop (usually).

Mansa is also spiritual, too, which could be very useful for this game. Early pyramids (it's Prince diff, with the old AI) and switches between rep, h. rule, and choices of slavery, caste system and maybe serfdom. Why serfdom? For the last minute farm/windmill push. There's little opportunity cost near the end, as you'll be wanting your citizens alive (no slavery) and working tiles for food (so no caste system).

Of course, I am indebted to the Realms Beyond Epic challenge for many of my ideas regarding pop explosion. I believe Sulla's write-up made use of h. rule, though it may have been Sirian's. I forget these things.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

but it's also important not to overlook that h. rule can get you an incredibly large amount of happiness

Good point. Yet another reason why happiness won't matter but health will be critical.

Why serfdom? For the last minute farm/windmill push.

Another good point. It might even be worth building Hagia Sophia for the same reason if you have nothing better to do in a city for a while.

In addition to Biology, let's not forget Communism (for State Property) as another longshot technology that could be a game changer if someone makes it that far. I'm not convinced that it's possible to get anywhere near Communism or Biology by 1200AD, but if someone manages it, that could really make a huge difference.

 

[carl corey]

Well, a couple of tries made me either miss the Oracle-pop of Bureaucracy or the Pyramids. I really must be more careful with the starts... This should prove quite an interesting exercise, since there are many options of tiles to be worked and lots of forests to be chopped. If well played the maximum hammer & commerce output in the beginning should be huge.

 

[oyzar]

Getting to biology seems realy hard You need so much to get chemestry which is a prequisite for it...

 

[Cabledawg]

MY Populations were:
Berlin ........18
Timbuktu ...13
Munich.......11
Cologne......9
York...........9

Spoiler :

I didnt build any settlers. I went right to war with Germany and then England. I wiped out Germany and left England with 1 city. 1200AD came up so fast that I didnt start the farm over project till it was too late. I was 3 turns from Guilds as well. There are alot of things I could have done differently. The war cost me alot of research as well. I could easily have gotten Timbuktu up to 18 if I hadnt of whipped a few things.

 

[patagonia]

I'm not convinced that it's possible to get anywhere near Communism or Biology by 1200AD, but if someone manages it, that could really make a huge difference.

Ironically, it's actually the stangant tech-rate of the old Prince AI that poses the biggest problem here, as the chances are they won't have teched far enough to be much use to you.

Spoiler :

Being able to trade Machinery/Engineering would be a bonus to make quick Chemistry a realistic option, but they're unlikely to have teched far enough early enough unfortunately.

With caste system, pacifism and maybe the Great Library, there should be time to generate 6 GS to bulb Education, Printing Press and Scientific Method practically "free" which makes the tech tree a whole lot shorter than it'd otherwise be.

This, of course, is assuming I haven't got the GS tech preferences mixed up, but I'm pretty sure those 3 are top priority when they're available.

If the cutoff was 1500 or even 1400AD, I'm fairly confident biology would be game-breaking here, but as it is, I can't see you getting more than 5-10 turns use from it at the very most, which won't radically change things.

Not too sure how/why State Property would help. It essentially gives a production boost without sacrificing food, but won't give you any extra compared to basic farming.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Ironically, it's actually the stangant tech-rate of the old Prince AI that poses the biggest problem here, as the chances are they won't have teched far enough to be much use to you.

One of the Civ3 tricks I used in one city challenges was to immediately trade every technology to every civilization as soon as I completed research. Even if it was a gift or a trade for 1 gold, you traded it. The idea was that keeping the global technology pace up was much more important than bleeding out every last piece of gold. I wonder if something like that would be effective here.

You would obviously need to adapt it somewhat. You can't necessarily trade to everyone, since you run the risk of "You have traded with our worst enemies." But in principle, keeping everyone happy and sharing the research would be a good thing if you can pull it off.

Not too sure how/why State Property would help. It essentially gives a production boost without sacrificing food, but won't give you any extra compared to basic farming.

Yeah, you're right. I think of it as a food thing, because my production cities (which often have watermills and sometimes the occasional workshop) gain food when I switch, but it's really a production booster.

 

[ShannonCT]

First attempt. I got nowhere near Biology.

Berlin 28
York 26
London 24
Timbuktu 21
Djenne 17

Total 116

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/King_Size_AD-1200.Civ4SavedGame