Emperor Challenge (?) #13 - Shoshone Pangaea
- Thread starter Tinker
- Start date
BroOfTheSun
Warlord
I think Freedom works well with Secularism, which is why it's better for Science victory. You can keep adding flat +2 beakers with each specialists, and at reduced food and happiness costs with Freedom tenets. Order gives the +25% bonus with factories, but having to work all the specialist slots with Order will stop growth. Freedom allows you to keep growing while working the specialist slots, and probably work more specialist slots.
Trogdor561
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2012
- Messages
- 10
For some reason, even though I beeline for it, I'm never getting the 500 gold from El Dorado.... is anyone else having the same problem? I get there in 3 turns and it doesn't give me the 500 gold, and I'm meeting Valetta first, so I can't imagine anyone is getting it before me....
ABigCivFan
Emperor
First time playing Shoshone, looking at its ability and ruins setting, it felt like a quick domination.
I had no idea the AIs were so weak, planed on finishing the game with Xbow, but it turned out all I needed was CBs+Pathfinders+Horseman. All one needs is 2 groups of city takers comprises of 5 CBs + 2 survivalism Pathfinders + 1 horseman + 1 GG.
First group going counterclockwise starting with Venice, and sweep through Portugal, Inca, Germany, Assyria
Second later group going clockwise starting with Egypt and then Brazil.
[Opening]
Built and bought (with Eldorado gold) 4 more pathfinders and max the ruin explore, 3 out of 5 got upgraded to Composites from ruins. it seems that after one upgrade, you will not be able to do another immediate upgrade from another ruin... 3 super CBs with ignore terrain cost and choose ruin promotions...
Bought a worker very early to farm the wheat and mine the salt. Stole the rest of the workers from a CS and AIs.
Pathfinder quickly find all AIs, traded embassies to see the locations of all capitals for attack planning.
Pathfinders with Survivalism 2 promotions are cute cannon fodders, you can park them on a hill next to enemy city centers and they can take several turns of city attack while healing 20 hp per turn
. But in this game, AIs were actually smart enough to go after my CBs, so I had to give them March promotions asap.
These 3 CBs and 2 pathfinders will become the core of the first city-taking task force. It took out Venice easily, with help of 2 more CBs, it took out Portugal and swept 3 other civs.
[Cities]
Only founded the 2nd city near the end when I thought i had enough units, so pop out a settler to help with unit support. Did not really need to found a 2nd city in this game
[Wonders]
Only built 3 wonders so I could focus on building units.
1. GL no brainer here help to get through the earlier techs
2. TOA to help with Archer building
3. SOZ after building enough units and give them 15% city attack bonus
4. Build NC toward the end, but not needed.
[Techs]
Delayed construction so I could prebuild archers and mass upgrade to CBs. Bullied CS for additional gold. Got XBow tech near the end but never needed it. You dont need any tech after Construction and Horseman tech.
[Social policies]
Opened Tradition, got wonder boosting sp, monarchy and then moved on to Honor. Honor opener helped to get good amount of killing barb culture to get 2 more SPs, ended with +50% experience sp. Killed many barb camps to get several CS to friendly, allied with 2.
[Conclusion]
In this game, the AIs were so weak you could simply steamroll them, you dont need much infrustrcture or wonders, just focus on building archers/pathfinders/horse until you have the 2 task forces. The last AI I killed (Brazil) was still fighting with archers and warriors.
I think a DV can be accomplished under T100 here if it were optimized.
I had no idea the AIs were so weak, planed on finishing the game with Xbow, but it turned out all I needed was CBs+Pathfinders+Horseman. All one needs is 2 groups of city takers comprises of 5 CBs + 2 survivalism Pathfinders + 1 horseman + 1 GG.
First group going counterclockwise starting with Venice, and sweep through Portugal, Inca, Germany, Assyria
Second later group going clockwise starting with Egypt and then Brazil.
[Opening]
Built and bought (with Eldorado gold) 4 more pathfinders and max the ruin explore, 3 out of 5 got upgraded to Composites from ruins. it seems that after one upgrade, you will not be able to do another immediate upgrade from another ruin... 3 super CBs with ignore terrain cost and choose ruin promotions...
Bought a worker very early to farm the wheat and mine the salt. Stole the rest of the workers from a CS and AIs.
Pathfinder quickly find all AIs, traded embassies to see the locations of all capitals for attack planning.
Pathfinders with Survivalism 2 promotions are cute cannon fodders, you can park them on a hill next to enemy city centers and they can take several turns of city attack while healing 20 hp per turn
. But in this game, AIs were actually smart enough to go after my CBs, so I had to give them March promotions asap.These 3 CBs and 2 pathfinders will become the core of the first city-taking task force. It took out Venice easily, with help of 2 more CBs, it took out Portugal and swept 3 other civs.
[Cities]
Only founded the 2nd city near the end when I thought i had enough units, so pop out a settler to help with unit support. Did not really need to found a 2nd city in this game
[Wonders]
Only built 3 wonders so I could focus on building units.
1. GL no brainer here help to get through the earlier techs
2. TOA to help with Archer building
3. SOZ after building enough units and give them 15% city attack bonus
4. Build NC toward the end, but not needed.
[Techs]
Delayed construction so I could prebuild archers and mass upgrade to CBs. Bullied CS for additional gold. Got XBow tech near the end but never needed it. You dont need any tech after Construction and Horseman tech.
[Social policies]
Opened Tradition, got wonder boosting sp, monarchy and then moved on to Honor. Honor opener helped to get good amount of killing barb culture to get 2 more SPs, ended with +50% experience sp. Killed many barb camps to get several CS to friendly, allied with 2.
[Conclusion]
In this game, the AIs were so weak you could simply steamroll them, you dont need much infrustrcture or wonders, just focus on building archers/pathfinders/horse until you have the 2 task forces. The last AI I killed (Brazil) was still fighting with archers and warriors.
I think a DV can be accomplished under T100 here if it were optimized.
LemurLepke
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2007
- Messages
- 9
Whoa, impressive.
I'm pretty sure you can finish below 80. Make 2 more pathfinders and find yourself ruins to upgrade everyone. With 3 CBs below the turn 30 and a warrior/scout plus another army around 55(better, get a first civ with archers only from el dorado) you can surely do very fast finish times.
This map is op for any VC!
This map is op for any VC!
Martin Alvito
Real men play SMAC
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2010
- Messages
- 2,332
Sub-200 is indeed possible. Finished on 195. It ain't easy.
I settled in the common places but did quite a lot of things differently. The big thing about this game was that the AIs had decent GPT. If that's the case and the player also has GPT, it's possible to manage the AIs' finances by borrowing. The idea is to repeatedly borrow from AIs that reach 200
before they can spend it, then lend back anything they need to cover the costs of an RA. This permitted me to finance no fewer than 12 RAs, at the cost of having to hard build almost everything until the very late game.
The correct opening purchase is indeed glory's Worker/Pathfinder buy. That permits getting three upgraded Composite Bowmen very quickly. One stays home to guard improvements, pick off easy barb camps and intimidate local city-states. The other two run around the map meeting, extorting, and playing Team America: World Police on the barb camp quests.
My start was a little unusual: Pathfinder -> Worker -> Pyramids -> Great Library -> National College, then going for Settlers and infrastructure. Mining -> Masonry were the initial techs, and I went Tradition -> Liberty -> fill Tradition tree. I used the from tribute to buy a Settler around turn 20, and settled it on the south Desert city site. It's the better of the two Desert sites due to all the river Hills, you can chop a Library for a two-city NC start, and getting the city planted early sets it up well to get Petra done before any AI can around turn 80.
Team America was a little too successful at befriending Culturals, so I accidentally ended up with an extra policy before Rationalism. I spent that on Citizenship, as double speed Workers aren't a bad problem to have. I considered Patronage and Commerce, but discarded both options. Big Ben would have been nice for labs, but 15% is a pretty weak bonus. Patronage would have saved some, but not enough to compete with speedy Workers.
I was a touch slower than glory's times; I hit Education on 86 and Scientific Theory on 135. I saved Oxford for Nanotech and used the Rationalism finisher on Radio, so I was in the late 140s by the time Modern popped. Plastics hit on 160 IIRC, with the Labs more or less in by 170. I bulbed somewhat aggressively to open Rocketry, hard built Apollo and Hubble in the capital (which permitted popping an extra GS the turn before Hubble finished) and produced parts elsewhere. I was able to GE the last part and even had enough
to throw a GE at the slowest remaining part.
The biggest issue was that I was frantically trying to stay ahead of
throughout the middle of the game. I had to go Acoustics immediately after Education to avoid another wasted policy, and I ended up with a gigantic city-state vacuum which forced aggressive borrowing just to stay above water. Then Notre Dame finally hit and I was able to save up for RAs between 115 and 130. The only other thing that really went 'wrong' was that one of the AIs screwed me out of Temple of Artemis around turn 40.
Another thing I did that no one has yet suggested was to take Divine Inspiration, which seems like a no-brainer on a lower difficulty where we wonder whore. It would have been even more fantastic if Egypt hadn't nailed my Petra city with a Prophet around turn 130, costing me at least 15 per turn between DF and the Wonders. I probably should have dropped an Inquisitor, but it didn't occur to me until too late. It didn't really matter, though; I couldn't have bought another Scientist or Engineer with the lost .
I think I built Wonders in three different places. I took GL, HG, Oracle, Borobodur, PT, Notre Dame and Hubble in the capital. The second city built Petra, Hagia and Pisa. My third city built Taj. Caravans stayed internal for
until parts time, when I switched to 
. I had more or less full map coverage of religion due to Boro and the Hagia GP until Egypt had a couple of Prophets start working overtime.
Last trick: getting to Printing Press and queuing up World's Fair is fantastic for getting DoFs. I think I went from one to six within ten turns. It's worth delaying Astronomy for if you are forced up through Acoustics due to SPs.
Long story short: map is OP, RAs are still OP even on lower difficulties, and the totally random AI cash lotto coupled with the new random willingness to DoF completely determines how fast you can finish.
I settled in the common places but did quite a lot of things differently. The big thing about this game was that the AIs had decent GPT. If that's the case and the player also has GPT, it's possible to manage the AIs' finances by borrowing. The idea is to repeatedly borrow from AIs that reach 200
before they can spend it, then lend back anything they need to cover the costs of an RA. This permitted me to finance no fewer than 12 RAs, at the cost of having to hard build almost everything until the very late game.The correct opening purchase is indeed glory's Worker/Pathfinder buy. That permits getting three upgraded Composite Bowmen very quickly. One stays home to guard improvements, pick off easy barb camps and intimidate local city-states. The other two run around the map meeting, extorting, and playing Team America: World Police on the barb camp quests.
My start was a little unusual: Pathfinder -> Worker -> Pyramids -> Great Library -> National College, then going for Settlers and infrastructure. Mining -> Masonry were the initial techs, and I went Tradition -> Liberty -> fill Tradition tree. I used the
from tribute to buy a Settler around turn 20, and settled it on the south Desert city site. It's the better of the two Desert sites due to all the river Hills, you can chop a Library for a two-city NC start, and getting the city planted early sets it up well to get Petra done before any AI can around turn 80.Team America was a little too successful at befriending Culturals, so I accidentally ended up with an extra policy before Rationalism. I spent that on Citizenship, as double speed Workers aren't a bad problem to have. I considered Patronage and Commerce, but discarded both options. Big Ben would have been nice for labs, but 15% is a pretty weak bonus. Patronage would have saved some
, but not enough to compete with speedy Workers.I was a touch slower than glory's times; I hit Education on 86 and Scientific Theory on 135. I saved Oxford for Nanotech and used the Rationalism finisher on Radio, so I was in the late 140s by the time Modern popped. Plastics hit on 160 IIRC, with the Labs more or less in by 170. I bulbed somewhat aggressively to open Rocketry, hard built Apollo and Hubble in the capital (which permitted popping an extra GS the turn before Hubble finished) and produced parts elsewhere. I was able to GE the last part and even had enough
to throw a GE at the slowest remaining part.The biggest issue was that I was frantically trying to stay ahead of
throughout the middle of the game. I had to go Acoustics immediately after Education to avoid another wasted policy, and I ended up with a gigantic city-state vacuum which forced aggressive borrowing just to stay above water. Then Notre Dame finally hit and I was able to save up for RAs between 115 and 130. The only other thing that really went 'wrong' was that one of the AIs screwed me out of Temple of Artemis around turn 40.Another thing I did that no one has yet suggested was to take Divine Inspiration, which seems like a no-brainer on a lower difficulty where we wonder whore. It would have been even more fantastic if Egypt hadn't nailed my Petra city with a Prophet around turn 130, costing me at least 15
per turn between DF and the Wonders. I probably should have dropped an Inquisitor, but it didn't occur to me until too late. It didn't really matter, though; I couldn't have bought another Scientist or Engineer with the lost .I think I built Wonders in three different places. I took GL, HG, Oracle, Borobodur, PT, Notre Dame and Hubble in the capital. The second city built Petra, Hagia and Pisa. My third city built Taj. Caravans stayed internal for
until parts time, when I switched to . I had more or less full map coverage of religion due to Boro and the Hagia GP until Egypt had a couple of Prophets start working overtime.Last trick: getting to Printing Press and queuing up World's Fair is fantastic for getting DoFs. I think I went from one to six within ten turns. It's worth delaying Astronomy for if you are forced up through Acoustics due to SPs.
Long story short: map is OP, RAs are still OP even on lower difficulties, and the totally random AI cash lotto coupled with the new random willingness to DoF completely determines how fast you can finish.
Attachments
Maltese
Chieftain
Congrats Martin Alvito. I've been using a similar approach (liberty opener + citizenship, worker/pathfinder buy then later settler buy from bullying, although only at turn 28 IIRC) but got nowhere near your result (i'm at 193 right now and still building Apollo and Hubble).
Biggest problem I've had is exactly what you describe at the end of your post : the complete randomness of DOF and AI gold. Although I did trade early with everybody - I even gave GPT to some AI for free (as DutchEngineer did) - did commit proposals that pleased the majority and of course did stay peaceful, I've only got two DOFs with broke AIs, so 2 RAs the whole game (probably could have signed 3 if I had pushed it a little bit more through borrowing/lending, but that's all). I really have no idea what more I could have done to get friends. Proposing World's Fair had absolutely no effect for me in that respect.
Anyway, pretty impressive win - the map might be OP but BNW sub-200 is a great achievement regardless.
Biggest problem I've had is exactly what you describe at the end of your post : the complete randomness of DOF and AI gold. Although I did trade early with everybody - I even gave GPT to some AI for free (as DutchEngineer did) - did commit proposals that pleased the majority and of course did stay peaceful, I've only got two DOFs with broke AIs, so 2 RAs the whole game (probably could have signed 3 if I had pushed it a little bit more through borrowing/lending, but that's all). I really have no idea what more I could have done to get friends. Proposing World's Fair had absolutely no effect for me in that respect.
Anyway, pretty impressive win - the map might be OP but BNW sub-200 is a great achievement regardless.
This! I wanted to do this after playing the game. Yeah you confirm that was the best way. Seeing these RAs coming...
Alright then...RAs next time.
Congrats!
casualplayer
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2012
- Messages
- 208
If you give AI your Embassy for free you usually get Traded Recently along with Embassy in Cap. It helps land those DoFs IME. Cheaper than giving 1GPT (25 vs. 30.)
neilkaz
King
Nice job, Martin but why did you build Washake? With only 5 citizens, it couldn't have been much help with science and probably hurt your 
?
?
Martin Alvito
Real men play SMAC
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2010
- Messages
- 2,332
Nice job, Martin but why did you build Washake? With only 5 citizens, it couldn't have been much help with science and probably hurt your
Coal. 25%
from Factories > 5% overall tech costs, so I bit the bullet and settled the only nearby spot with Coal.The implication is that dutchengineer's city locations probably make more sense, given map knowledge. Certainly I'd rather have his
per turn than mine. Part of the differential is ToA, and the other part is that the struggles forced me to trade with the AIs for their luxuries, leaving me needing Crab (the unavailable luxury) everywhere for WLTKD by turn 130 or so. Having 4 cities instead of 5 probably would have helped with that proposition.
Martin Alvito
Real men play SMAC
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2010
- Messages
- 2,332
I settled zero Academies. Freedom will only slow you down.
There isn't an argument for Freedom even if you plant. It's pretty straightforward mathematics. 25% is going to trump a modest bonus any day of the week. By the late game, boxes have gotten large and the effects of a buff are pretty minimal. There aren't enough turns left to reap a reward that will outpace Workers' Faculties.
Both Order and Freedom have the same GPP bonus, so there's literally no advantage to be gained from going Freedom.
There isn't an argument for Freedom even if you plant. It's pretty straightforward mathematics. 25%
is going to trump a modest bonus any day of the week. By the late game, boxes have gotten large and the effects of a buff are pretty minimal. There aren't enough turns left to reap a reward that will outpace Workers' Faculties.Both Order and Freedom have the same GPP bonus, so there's literally no advantage to be gained from going Freedom.
I settled zero Academies. Freedom will only slow you down.
There isn't an argument for Freedom even if you plant. It's pretty straightforward mathematics. 25%
Both Order and Freedom have the same GPP bonus, so there's literally no advantage to be gained from going Freedom.
I prefer Order in general, but going order is risky if you enter modern asap with radio - in many cases, I cannot find any coal source and have to wait till AIs get the tech...
Also, Statue of libery is much much better than order free policy crap (don't even remember the name). And you can rush buy spaceship parts and in particular the last part to save like 3-4 turns at least.
However, as I said above, I prefer order in general - I love skyscraper (33% less building rush-buy cost), factory policy (100% hammer bonus when building factory, 25% more sci), and monument +2 happy one.
You can also burn the last part with a ge from Order(3rd level tenet)
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