Early spaceship

[cliff]

720BC?

OK, that's the new target!

I think I'll have to change my strategy if I am going to land this early. The colossal city approach with 20 undeveloped small helper cities is not good enough. I think you need to modernize earlier and have more large cities.

Interesting choice of wonders also. I usually don't build HG or MC, in civ1 that is.

Do you want to tell us how you delt with trade? Did you establish trade routes as early as possible and did you have an ai trading partner?

Anyway, I will start a new early landing game soon. It's good to play some civ1 games where you push the limit and try out new strategies to perfect the game. It seems that all this work has gone into civ2 while civ1 is still rather undeveloped.

By the way, have you tried OCC? My record is 1705AD. I would like to hear your ideas on that.

I play winciv and you play the dos version. In my game the years start to run at one year per turn once you launch your spaceship. That means I launched in 340bc in that game mentioned. If the years had run normally, it would have landed in 40bc instead of 325bc. I just think it would be good to sort this out so that we can make fair comparisons.

 

[Cruise]

Wow!!, i used to play civ1 loads i thought having the Hoover Dam at 1AD was already awesome. Now i see this...gee!!

Carniflex, how did you do this?

 

[carniflex]

Greetings from he who makes mortals tremble: Carniflex of the Egyptians...

To Cliff:
Yes, it is good to find better and better strategies.
I never traded with other civs because I think the time the caravans reach their cities is too long.
I only build caravans when my cities are 16-sized and have all roads between them.
You said "By the way, have you tried OCC? My record is 1705AD." I'm afraid I don't understant OCC. What does it mean ?
About the "launch and land", Let's just compare the launch date.
I chose those wonders because they are The wonders profitable with a civilisation of 14 big cities. About the HG and MC, just dont discover communism, and discover invention only when it is necessary.

To EEKthedog:
"How I did this":
In spite of the cost of unhappiness, make the cities enlarge is the most profitable strategy. The main question must always be: How can I make my cities enlarge ?
1. Form democratic and have "We love president" in all cities. Then, if you have food excess, your city size will be incremented each turn.
2. But You won't be able to enlarge your cities each turn (unhappiness, aqueduct limit etc.) "We love president" requires luxury rate about 40%. In order not to "loose" too much luxury, you must plan period of about 6 turns with "We love president" in all cities, and enlargement of about 5 people in ALL your cities. Between theses periods, a 50% approbation in all cities will be sufficient.
3. If all your cities reach the same size at one turn, you can plan which improvement (and what science required) will be profitable for all at which turn. And your cities will build the same impovement at the same time. Then, you will plan period of 100% science (to discover The tech required for The improvement needed), then, 100% tax to buy this improvement (temple, marketplace, aqueduct etc.) in all your cities, then about 40% luxury) to enlarge all cities, then buy library in all cities and fix science rate at 100%, and repeat all this 3 or 4 times.
I think that planning coincidence between tax/sc/lux rate and improvemnts of all cities allows to maximize your investment.
I think I said the most important. I would enjoy answering more precise questions. Just ask !
My cities in 1000BC:

 

[cliff]

OCC is one city challenge, build only one city and land on AC as fast as possible.

In fact, I made an attempt to beat your record today but I ended up playing occ instead since there was another civ close to me so that I could not expand like I wanted to. This game turned out to be successful indeed and I launched a small spaceship in 1100AD, landing in 1115/1250. That's a new occ record for me!

Now you have something to beat too!

By the way, do you have a screenshot of the map? Did you start on a large continent with room for all your cities or did you colonize some nearby islands?

 

[carniflex]

Greetings from the most exalted strategus: Carniflex of the Athenians...

I've tried an early spaceship one city (Athens) challenge.
Edoxe te boule kai to demos to build Appolo Program in 520AD and launch a Spaceship of 3 modules, 8 components, flight time 10.2 years, Prob of success 100%, in 1080AD.

About the Egyptian 720BC spaceship,
The Eygptians started on a large continent. Their chariots captured the 2 indian cities, then the 3 babylonian cities. They never built trirems, over sea cities wouldn't hear JS BACH.

 

[KoRnXe@n]

hmmm... i now realise that i have much to learn - i have never launched a space ship, although ive allways known that that was the objective. i usually get to about the gun powder stage and just completely eliminate all the other civ's.

i have never got democratic b4, and most of what u said i dont understand.
is Bach's thingy an oracle?
can i trade with other cities of my own? or do i need to trade with other civ's?

@EEKthedog - do u play Tac-Ops??? just wondering if its the same person.

 

[Irish Caesar]

JS Bach's Cathedral is a wonder available after the discovery of "Religion." I guess if you destroy everyone relatively soon, you would not really use this. You can send caravans to your own cities or to other civs, but you get more trade from farther away cities.

 

[KoRnXe@n]

i have tried sending my caravans to my own cities, but they dont trade, i dont really know how to trade with my own towns, so how would i do this? is there a button u need to push?

 

[cliff]

You can only trade with your own cities if they are at least 8 squares apart or something like that.

I tried an early landing game the other day but I failed. I got democracy and bach the same years as you did but I couldn't get a lot of cities in good city sites fast enough. You mentioned that you captured several ai cities and I think that is the key to a fast game. To start with two settlers or to get an advanced tribe early would surely be helpful too. In my game there where two enemy cities available but they where well defended and they were destroyed when I attacked them. Perhaps I should wait a couple of turns before attacking the enemy so that I will capture size 2-3 cities.

New try next week I think.

 

[cliff]

I need to do some thinking and calculating on the very first part of the game. Once you have all the cities you need and they are size 3 things are pretty straight forward. Build a temple or a market, celebrate to size 5-7, build 1-3 settlers to improve the land. I calculated that an ordinary city would need about 90 settler turns to get to size 15-20. If you build 3 settlers, the land improving will be done in 30 turns. After that, or when you are well underway, start celebrating again. Meanwhile, max taxes for some turns so that you can build a temple, market, cathedral & aqueduct. When you are finished you need a library and maybe a university.

Now, let's say you have 14 size 15 cities with library and university. With a 60% science rate you get about 20 base light bulbs per city. Actually I don't know if lib's and uni's are cumulative, but if so you get 40 lightbulbs from every city and 560 lightbulbs in total. You probably have about 20 techs at this point and you need 30 more to get to robotics. That requires about 15000 lightbulbs, which will take 27 turns with that science rate.

Let's see... You discovered spaceflight in 940bc. You need 27 turns for discoveries = 540 years, 30 turns for settler work = 600 years and 10 turns for celebration = 200 years. You will need to start this in 2280bc. At that time you must have 14 size 5-7 cities and that's where I fail. The tricky thing is that settlers require 2 food in democracy so it can be difficult for a small city to support a settler and some small cities need to build some roads and irrigate a square or two to be able to grow.

You could build seti or newton to speed up research and you can also start celebrating before the settlers are finished so it's possible to speed up this process. Maybe 2000bc would be enough to start the process. In my game I started in 1700bc or so which meant that I could not make it.

How did you play early on? Did you let size 2-3 cities support settlers?

 

[carniflex]

Greetings form our most wise Emperor: Carniflex of the Egyptians...

You have to get 14 size 3 cities the earliest. Your first cities could reach 3 or 4 earlier than the last. But it is mostly useless to let a city reach size 4 by food accumulation. Build settlers in the cities that can support them, and as many settlers as they can. The settlers, that cost 1 food in despotism can irrigate to prepare the outcome of democracy. Build the Nabuchodonozor's schrubbery in the same turn the cities reach size 3, and fewer luxuries will be nefeded for them to love the president !
You said 60% science rate ? 60% ? My science rate is either 0% (after I bought Tax/lux improvement in all cities), either 80-100% (just after I bought science improvement in all cities) (with 0-20% lux). It is not fun to discover less than two or three discoveries per turn.

 

[Zwelgje]

OK, a new record for me!
Landing at 720 AD.
I was stuck on a less then perfect island, fitted 10 cities on it and just produced caravans and build the science wonders. I'll keep you informed if I manage to launch earlier.

 

[tSlater]

GOO GAWD!!

lol, the earliest I've done so far is like in the late 2000s =P Yeah, I'm a still a newbie at it.. =\ 'course I hsaven't yet played a game where I had "early launch date" as my target either, right now I'm just trying to go up through the difficulty levels and survive. =P

 

[Zwelgje]

Don't worry slater, it took me a few months to find out how to actually win the game (at chieftan....) so being able to launch the spaceship is actually quite good. If you like the game and play a lot more you will be able to launch the spaceship early!
Don't switch to harder difficulty levels too soon though because it requires another style of playing. At higher difficulty the AI will be more aggressive and will often attack immediately. So learn to play the game at chieftan and then switch to harder levels. (just my advise.....)

 

[tSlater]

Yeah, I'm just waiting until I finish a game and I'm the number 1 civilization in the world, then I try the next hardest level. I just finished a game on Prince level.. but I'm not sure if I was st or not.. very iffy. Probably more of a tie with America.. although my empire was twice as big as America's =P I continued playing after the score stops being counted.. launched nukes at Paris and took the capitol. Then I launched nukes at Washington DC and took the American capitol.. recalled their spaceship. I only need a few more things to complete my spaceship and then it will be launched, and now America is in a space race with France. (lol!! with France!! I really kicked America's but..) So as soon as I get it launched, I'm building SDI Defense and then am going to start a campaign to take over the worl.. but leave at least a few cities for each civilization just to keep it interesting. =]

 

[Zwelgje]

Well if you are able to control the game in such a way you are doing quite a good job really!
Just fooling around with other civs is nice, just kill some defensive units of one civ so that another civ can take over some cities of the opponent. By doing that you can determine who will become powerfull and who will not. Or another fun thing, just kill many defensive units of other civs and basically let them kill eachother. There are just so many fun things to do in this game.

 

[tSlater]

lol.. although usually when I've done that (whether intentionally or not) they usually end up making peace the next turn and all declare war against me.. =P oh well =P

 

[The Overlord]

Launching a ship in BC???

You guys must be great civ-players. Most of the time I'm able to launch it around 1800 AD and always thought I was great.

*Going into the corner and shame about my performance*

 

[cliff]

725BC!

But if I translate this into years not running at one year per turn it is only a 440BC landing and 14 turns off Carniflex.

But it is a personal record for me!

 

[Hackcraft]

i've never launched a space ship (not really tried) but i think i'll try it. WHAT SCIENCE WONDERS HELP THE MOST