DW's Large Regent Histo game

[DWetzel]

So, having recently completed all the other requirements for Quartermaster, I decided to get a Histographic win in, which I've never done before.

Looking at the tables, I decided on a Large Regent map--that way I couldn't do worse than third!

I decided that Sumeria would be a good choice--Agri = growth, Scientific for those nifty SGLs and quick research. Don't know what settings are best for these sorts of games, but I assumed lots of land was a must, so I went with 60% continents. Chosen opponents were England, France, America, Byzantines, Greeks, and Russia--on a Large map with only 6 opponents, I wanted some expansionist civs to come meet me, and a couple scientific ones to trade techs with as the game went along.

Mapfinder is quirky (to say the least) for me for whatever reason, so I hand-roll starts, looking for the usual spiffy starts with cows and rivers and stuff. Eventually, I come across this.

Wanting to get on the river, I move the settler north, and I'm in love:

Well, this looks like a pretty useful start.

Founding Ur in 3950BC, I get a fairly pleasant surprise:

Two cows, three game, and lots of fresh water. Yeah, that'll do.

Ur became an absurdly low-maintenance settler factory at size 3-5--one mined BG and the game made things run hands-free. A second factory in Sumer filled most of the rest of my settler needs. The surrounding land proved, well, absurdly useful for me, with FIVE luxes within fairly easy reach. By 1200 BC, I had three of them hooked up, England had temporarily snagged the wines, and I'd met an American scout along with the English. Research was CB, Myst (SGL fishing), Writing, Code of Laws, and Philo. Code of Laws yielded a SGL, which of course rushed the Pyramids in 1275BC.

In 1200 BC, with Philosophy about to complete, the empire looked like this:

Spices near Der, silks near Akshak, dyes at Erech. An incense would soon come into view just east of the Kutha/Kua area, and the wines you can perhaps make out inside Coventry's borders. With five luxes on the island, it was obvious that I'd drawn a pretty good size landmass, which was a plus.

 

[Spoonwood]

What? No 4 turn enkidu-settler combo factory?

 

[DWetzel]

Meh. I don't THINK I had the shields for it--maybe if I'd let it grow some I would have. I let another Kish use one of the game for a while.

 

[DWetzel]

I'll tell more later, but for now, this should provide an amusing picture to mull over. This is wrong on many levels, I think. I'm getting ready to drive the Greeks back to the stone age, and then it's on to Russia. I'll eventually have all three of them cooped up on roughly a 10-tile island, which I will surround with battleships for my own amusement. But for now...

 

[TheOverseer714]

Economics in the Modern Ages... I presume that Smiths hasn't been built?

 

[Spoonwood]

I don't milk myself, but a few things pop out from the pictures... especially since it's Regent. You can't really grow via forests, so chop. Mines can't help you grow either, so water. It also looks like you have some spots (the hill outside Sumer, the grassland outside Ur) where you could work more squares... not sure how much this matters for milking, but nowadays I try to play such that I use absolutely every tile that I can at *some* point in the game (even if I don't plan on warring)... I get more population this way (more commerce for a fast research game). Lately, I've consider maximizing the use of sea and ocean squares, as well as not leaving any unworkable (emphasis on the -able, I think of using the squares *eventually* i.e. post-sanitation) squares at cultural borders either... but that might not work with a milk game since that might put you over the domination limit. You might want to disband some cities outside your core... you might get more population that way eventually (I don't know, just a guess, from some of the milk threads I've read). Props for forgetting Smith's for a while and going for Longevity and Cure for Cancer earlier.

 

[DWetzel]

Economics in the Modern Ages... I presume that Smiths hasn't been built?

That would require the other AI to have, oh, you know, Banking. I was fairly amused with the Economics in 4 at 0% science. I'm cleaning up the back-end techs with my scientists--Advanced Flight would be in 5 right now, but I think I can get that down to 4. Right now I'm settling for taking care of Amphibious War, which would have been in 3 if that was allowable.

And yeah, I plan to eventually disband a few of the cities. 329 is no doubt a few too many. Basically, anything that is on grassland needs to go away (as that could be 4 food instead of 3), and relocate quite a few onto hills (1 food) instead of plains (3 food). Right now I'm just jamming them in everywhere, I figure I'll sort it out in a little while; without doing too much math the double growth in more cities seems like a good idea. What I'm really dreading is figuring out just how much nicer the Greek/Byzantine lands are than about half of my secondary island--then I'll be relocating quite a few cities over there. That'll be fun.

I'm STILL clearing the obscene amounts of jungle on my main continent--I probably have another 15-20 turns of that, there was a LOT of jungle and marsh there! I've been at that for about 250 years now in earnest. The north end of the continent was quite nice with lots of grasslands, so I focused there first.

I'm about 60 tiles under the domination limit, and I am working on getting the appropriate sea tiles in where I can, mainly at home. Returning the Greek lands to their natural state is surprisingly easy when you have tank armies versus hoplites.

1260 AD, population 2817, 2523 domination tiles (2632 total tiles) with a domination limit of 2579. (I have no idea if that is a "good" domination limit for a large map or not, nor do I deeply care at this point.)

 

[Bartleby]

Good luck with the game (although it's patience you need now ).

Just to comment, even if you don't care deeply, a good domination limit for Large Continents is >2700; a good Archipelago will be upwards of 3050. It depends on the player whether you can get the benefit of the extra tiles for an archi, since you might be able to hit the domination limit a lot quicker on a pang (that's certainly the case for me). A good limit for a Large Pangaea would be about the same as the limit you have now.

 

[Calis]

I just finished a Tiny histograph game and already that demanded some patience from me...

 

[DWetzel]

I just finished a Tiny histograph game and already that demanded some patience from me...

That's going to be my biggest obstacle. Once I've obliterated Russia and cleared the rest of the swamps and jungles, I think things will speed up considerably. Only 800 years to go!

 

[DWetzel]

An update: I'm up to 1330 AD (hey, it's been a slow bunch of turns). I've made quite a bit of progress against the Russians , and have parked things two tiles shy of the domination limit. I just spent a while making sure that I had sold any relevant culture buildings that might cause any issues; I don't see the need for any more culture for the rest of the game. I could probably optimize my population a bit, but I hope to soon set everything to wealth for a while and press Enter a bunch of times.

I'm currently running 100% luxuries (because, well, I can) and getting either 4 or 5 turn research in the modern age, while making about 300 gpt profit. Yay, specialists.

Not much to tell really, and a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's my 8,000 word essay:

 

[Marsden]

At this point, I like to make about 15 to 20 privateers and park in their territorial waters to starve them, but I'm just mean. Because the privateers are considered always at war it takes the tile away from them. If they declare on you though, move them out because they count as units in enemy territory and can ruin your war happiness.

 

[DWetzel]

At this point, I like to make about 15 to 20 privateers and park in their territorial waters to starve them, but I'm just mean. Because the privateers are considered always at war it takes the tile away from them. If they declare on you though, move them out because they count as units in enemy territory and can ruin your war happiness.

Hehe... you and me think semi-alike.

I'm not actually bothering to starve them. I'm in the process of simply encircling the island where all three AI are based with ships, except for one gap which will of course run them into a privateer attack, should they so choose. Sort of a naval funnel of doom.

 

[DWetzel]

Less than 200 turns to go... or twenty more "no, I don't want to call the UN vote" messages. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered to build it, considering the AI is still in the middle ages.

One more screen shot for your viewing pleasure.

 

[Elear]

Great job! It is always satisfying to have that monstrous looking graph at the end of Histographic games.

 

[DWetzel]

Jinkies. I've played two more turns (1800 AD), and score is now 12206. That's an increase of 201 points in two turns. With 175 turns to go.

According to SirPleb's calculator, that would put my final score at 24,120.

That'd be a wee improvement over Svar's current record of 16,969.

Jinkies.

 

[Spoonwood]

Quite a bit of difference. Especially considering that you've played continents, didn't irrigate as early as you might have, and ICSed outside of your core (nor did you have industrious workers).

 

[DWetzel]

I don't disagree with much of that. I'm sure there has been a point at which my level of patience hasn't matched the level of perfection needed.

Continents--especially one such as this, where I've got about 50% of the land on the main continent, give or take--did have the advantage of allowing technology and growth to expand at roughly the same pace, if that makes sense. By the time I was ready to settle other islands en masse, I had the capability to do so quickly.

One nice advantage to the continents as opposed to the archipelago is luxuries. Along with the redonkulous starting position with two cows and three game, I had FIVE basically native luxuries. That, plus the low level of course, solves all the happiness problems one would ever have in the early and middle game. That was absolutely huge, I think.

The early Pyramids SGL was of course a very Good Thing. That plus everything else meant basically explosive growth (and, of course, crappy opponents helped!).

Finally, I think Longevity was for THIS game a Very Very Very Good Thing. Regardless of the very long term effects, it was huge for me in that I still had a lot of developing areas when I got it. My 1230 AD save shows me 91 tiles under the domination limit, with a population of 2513. My current (1800 AD) population is 3984.

In that respect, Longevity sort of compensated for the non-industrious workers--I was able to grow plenty fast without having huge surpluses in many areas. Curiously, if I did have industrious workers, implying pre-developed land for settling, Longevity would be somewhat less useful I think. If it proves demonstrably true that having Longevity around past the growth phase is harmful, then to me it seems clearly useful to build it via an SGL in a city that can be abandoned easily at a later date. That fast growth is just too good to pass up.

I have un-settled a few cities to make it less ICS-like. Basically, that was necessary when a city was on grassland. Removing a city from plains and giving it to another city only creates 1 net food, which might take a city from 24 food to 25, or from 23 to 24 (this is better, of course)... I could probably do a little of that in old America, but it's probably not worth the effort for 1 population point per city out of just under 4000.

Not irrigating the core until fairly late was a tough decision. Well, it would have been a tough decision if I had the workers to do everything at once. I "only" had 438 workers in my 1230 AD save (CAII reports), and about half of those are slaves I think. And I was still clearing jungle. And I still had some conquering to do (though I suppose this could have been done in a more leisurely fashion, as they were clearly no threat).

 

[DWetzel]

One thing I said I thought I'd do differently was slow my research rate. With not much else left to buy, hence no particular reason for taxmen since I'm running positive income with the ones I do have, and a zillion specialists laying around, I'm doing 4-turn research on future techs in 1800. (Whee!). That will change at some point, I THINK. But with, currently, 1174 scientists--capable of about another 200 more from taxmen if need be to remain at break-even with zero tax income--I should be okay for a while.

Then again, slower research implies later Longevity, which is as discussed a bad thing, at least for this game. And by the time I got to Longevity everything else was basically 4-turners without any science slider anyway. Dunno.

Do future techs increase in cost as you go along? I haven't noticed.

 

[Spoonwood]

Along with the redonkulous starting position with two cows and three game, I had FIVE basically native luxuries.

Um... 60% archipelago often ends up like a pangea with oceans in the middle. Or something kind of close to it. So it's possible everything ends up connected by coastal squares. Maybe as an overpowered example, in Moonsinger's 88k game (I think 60% archipelago) she had all the luxuries (most traded for, of course) by 10 AD and she hadn't learned Astronomy yet. Luxury potential on continents I think would thus work out as lower on average compared to both 60% pangea and 60% archipelago... because no doubt about half of the luxuries you simply can't get at by any means until Navigation or Magnetism, right?

That, plus the low level of course, solves all the happiness problems one would ever have in the early and middle game.

Well I certainly think it helps. But, I feel something fishy about the word "all" there as it only gives you content citizens. And yes, I'm picky like that

I didn't think of Longevity as more useful without industrious workers. Thanks!

I didn't notice any increase cost of future techs in my demi-god game, but I don't know.