Emperor Challenge XXX: Man vs Food

[Magma_Dragoon]

Demographic population value for a city size 1-40 from the thread I linked:

Spoiler :

1. 1,000
2. 6,000
3. 21,000
4. 48,000
5. 90,000
6. 150,000
7. 232,000
8. 337,000
9. 469,000
10. 630,000
11. 823,000
12. 1,051,000
13. 1,315,000
14. 1,618,000
15. 1,963,000
16. 2,352,000
17. 2,787,000
18. 3,271,000
19. 3,806,000
20. 4,394,000
21. 5,037,000
22. 5,738,000
23. 6,498,000
24. 7,321,000
25. 8,207,000
26. 9,160,000
27. 10,181,000
28. 11,273,000
29. 12,436,000
30. 13,675,000
31. 14,990,000
32. 16,383,000
33. 17,858,000
34. 19,415,000
35. 21,056,000
36. 22,784,000
37. 24,601,000
38. 26,509,000
39. 28,508,000
40. 30,603,000

 

[Browd]

Honestly, I can't believe I'm doing this again, but I guess I am. Took Magma_Dragoon's turn 356 save, converted everything in sight to farms, annexed every puppet to buy food buildings, put everything on food focus, and ran all 10 trade routes to Warsaw. Just hit half a billion after 50 turns (turn 406), with Warsaw up to 67 pop (177 food surplus per turn).

 

[YourHarry]

Interesting challenge. Didn't bother to try to understand the discussion in above mentioned french forum.

I want to try this. Based on the discussion above, it seems suffice to have a small number of very large cities, even just 1. But I would probably need to plant at least a few to improve science and deliver food to the "capital". It probably should be on the coast, to get extra food from cargo ships. And I'm thinking that Order policy for extra food is probably better than 50% reduction in specialists' unhappiness. I don't know. I don't foresee happiness being a big issue on Emperor, especially with Forbidden palace and so forth. 10% and 15% growth rate from pantheon and religion are probably important.

Possible civs that could be viable would be Spain+Lake Victoria combo (with reloads of course) - though the starting location should be on the coast. Dutch as mentioned above could work, and maybe India to reduce the resources being expended on lowering unhappiness. Poland, although, late social policies help immensely with happiness, is probably not one of my top choices atm. One interesting choice may be Byzantium, to adopt Sun God as pantheon, and Fertility rights and 15% population growth as beliefs. Maybe a peaceful game either way, to allow other civs to gain population. Final stretch of the game capturing large cities (would be nice to have good tourism at that point).

Edit: Nah, I don't think capturing enemy cities would be important at all. THey will be too small to matter.

 

[budweiser]

I'm playing Egypt. I have 137 million plus on t317. I might make it.

Since I never play Order, I didn't realize what Iron Curtain does. Its pretty awesome.

 

[Browd]

Finally finished off Magma_Dragoon's save. Got 1 billion pop on turn 490. Screenie attached.

Would have been 10-12 turns earlier if I had remembered Honor's happiness policies a bit more quickly.

Order would have been better, IMO, from a happiness standpoint, although Freedom's 1/2 food for specialists was helpful.

But any way you cut it, this is tedious stuff. I am never going to do this again ... and this time I mean it.

 

[YourHarry]

I'm playing Egypt. I have 137 million plus on t317. I might make it.

Since I never play Order, I didn't realize what Iron Curtain does. Its pretty awesome.

Hmm. Why Egypt?

Bowd, which religious beliefs did you inherit? How many cities did you have, toward the last third of the game?

More I think about it, maybe India maybe the choice afterall.

 

[Browd]

M_D's religious beliefs were mainstream -- Tears of the Gods pantheon, Tithe, Pagodas, Feed the World, and Religious Texts. I later took a Reformation belief - Underground Sects -- which was the least bad of those left. Only had 29 cities (M_D had dispatched a few settlers to settle some empty spots, and I went ahead and settled those, but otherwise just inherited cities). Only real brain farts were overlooking Military Caste (until I was desperate for happiness) and forgetting to farm a bunch of tiles around Warsaw until near the end.

Just to see what Warsaw's 88 pop represented, I gave every city, other than Warsaw, to the AI. Warsaw alone accounted for 287 million pop. And the AI is blithely burning every non-capital city I gave them.

 

[budweiser]

I'm at turn 350 with 291 million. I need a break. I made a big mistake and stayed at war for about 100 turns and lost out on Swords to Plowshares during that time.

Here is what my progression looked like this session.

turn 326 = 177 million
turn 330 = 193 million
turn 340 = 238 million
turn 350 = 291 million
-------------------------
turn 360 = 372 million
turn 370 = 436 million
turn 380 = 496 million

I chose Egypt for a fast start, role play Pyramids. I would do Egypt again and take tithes, of course, and also +2 happiness per temple and invest 2 or 3 in Piety.

 

[ravenmagus]

Long time lurker here, finally signed up to try this challenge.

I'm probably a little behind at the moment - 300 million at 400 turns, but I have a ton of cities now and growing pretty fast. Happiness was pretty close for a long time, even as India - the onset of ideologies killed my citizen's moods for a long time. I knocked over the capitals of the wonder builders (namely Paris) and now I'm swimming in happiness; even with almost -60 happiness from dissidents, I'm still up by +70.

I don't think I'm going to make it in time. Delhi's not coastal, and the loss of those sea routes are pretty huge - growing Delhi is probably more important now than raising new cities (though a ship route to a newly formed city does get it to 20 pop pretty quick).

I chose Egypt for a fast start, role play Pyramids. I would do Egypt again and take tithes, of course, and also +2 happiness per temple and invest 2 or 3 in Piety.

Try going for Temple of Artemis instead? The growth boost from that seems pretty major. Though maybe you can get both...

 

[YourHarry]

Long time lurker here, finally signed up to try this challenge.

I'm probably a little behind at the moment - 300 million at 400 turns, but I have a ton of cities now and growing pretty fast. Happiness was pretty close for a long time, even as India - the onset of ideologies killed my citizen's moods for a long time. I knocked over the capitals of the wonder builders (namely Paris) and now I'm swimming in happiness; even with almost -60 happiness from dissidents, I'm still up by +70.

I don't think I'm going to make it in time. Delhi's not coastal, and the loss of those sea routes are pretty huge - growing Delhi is probably more important now than raising new cities (though a ship route to a newly formed city does get it to 20 pop pretty quick).



Try going for Temple of Artemis instead? The growth boost from that seems pretty major. Though maybe you can get both...

Which DLC is required to build Temple of Artemis? I don't have this ability.

Also haven't started this challenge yet. Do you think Venice could be an option? With its TR advantages?

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Korea+WotAW pack. Also, since it provides no immediate benefit, its better to just conquer it in the medieval era once civil service and tradition are in effect.

 

[ravenmagus]

Korea+WotAW pack. Also, since it provides no immediate benefit, its better to just conquer it in the medieval era once civil service and tradition are in effect.

Annoying when it's built on the other side of the world, though - especially since it's a Continents game.

edit: It's also pretty decent early, still; ToA is special in that its bonus is to total food, not just the excess growth.

edit2: Incidentally, it turned out that there are actually zero maritime city states on my entire map. Not very favorable for a heavy growth play..

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Huge map, one other player, max city states?

 

[ravenmagus]

I failed. Final population 825 million. I blame the complete lack of maritime CS - even one or two would have easily made the difference (what with having 30+ cities by the end). Alternatively having a coastal capital would have been huge too.

India's a great way to do it. They can sustain basically infinite cities; even with all that population I had +200 happiness.

 

[budweiser]

I failed. Final population 825 million. I blame the complete lack of maritime CS - even one or two would have easily made the difference (what with having 30+ cities by the end). Alternatively having a coastal capital would have been huge too.

India's a great way to do it. They can sustain basically infinite cities; even with all that population I had +200 happiness.

Welcome to the forums and good try!

Feel free to give it another shot. Its a taxing game to be sure. I'm afraid that I just ran out of happiness on my game and need to attack the other continent to win. I will put in another session and see if it works out.

What I like is that in my game I gained 300 million people in 50 turns.

 

[ravenmagus]

Welcome to the forums and good try!

Feel free to give it another shot. Its a taxing game to be sure. I'm afraid that I just ran out of happiness on my game and need to attack the other continent to win. I will put in another session and see if it works out.

What I like is that in my game I gained 300 million people in 50 turns.

I did attack the other continent once I had good science.

Well, actually, they attacked me first - I'd just gone into lategame ICS mode, and the other nations were really upset that I'd just placed 5 new cities. Denmark in particular thought he would be cute and sail around to launch a sneak attack against one of my new cities. He soon discovered that frigates are not very good against stealth bombers.

I then blew up France, the major power in the game, with stealth bombers/XCOM to keep his science and culture in check. I also took another capital that had a bunch of wonders in it (including Prora, yay). I left the other two people still alive alone.

I think attacking the other continent was pretty much necessary - not just to cripple the science and culture leaders and keep them from winning, but also to get room for cities, which was extra important as India can actually generate happiness with more cities.

 

[budweiser]

I'm curious if it can be done with just one continent, IE half the world. I think it can if you are good enough and fast enough.

I'm at 390 with 565 million, haven't attacked yet. Carthage is in sole possession of the other continent in my game. But she does have a juicy river valley that would make a nice addition to my lands...

 

[SirPepsi]

Attacks should be short and swift to maximize Swords into Plowshares, I assume?

 

[budweiser]

Attacks should be short and swift to maximize Swords into Plowshares, I assume?

If you take that belief.

You could conquer your continent before you enhance, then choose it.

Alas, my game will end by cultural victory on turn 440, unless I sell some tourist cities (cant bring myself to do that). I will be at 900,000,000 people, about another 12 turns away. Sucks. I just realized I screwed myself by running an airport in my 3 biggest cities.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

sell the airport/tourism buildings. trade the great works to get rid of any theme bonuses. you surely have to be able to do something about the pressure.