G-Major 134

[Seraiel]

Thanks for the insights, Sera!
BTW, pity you didn't take part in the latest SGotM. I do think you're one of the best.
I'll give this one a try, although I doubt I'll even come close to a win (I've been unsuccessfully trying to win a Deity with Asoka for an year already, I guess). What's your take on getting random AIs?

Thx for the compliment. I took part in 2 SGOTMs, but just couldn't stand the lengthy discussions. Even with liking everybody in my team, it was just too much for me to read 3 pages of posts every day, posts that really have to be understood, and making a pre-play-plan was pure horror. Micro in CIV is so easy, it's the gambles and the decisions one has to make without knowing the best outcome that are hard, I just couldn't believe I'd have to post every , and in single.
I understand that this is necessary, especially because of players that aren't such micro-maniacs that check every city every turn like me, but all the insecurity of some others just scared me off. I wanted to find players that are so much more experienced like me, that they don't have those insecurities, but seems everybody playing CIV has them.

Regarding random AIs: You should definately choose your opponents, it's something that makes a map easier by at least 30%. Choose some high peaceweight and low peaceweight AIs, so the AIs hate each other and go to war frequently. Take AIs, with which you possibly can share the favourite civic, so you have an easy time diplomacy wise. I personally have good experience with Frederick, Lincoln and Roosevelt as high peaceweight AIs, they also build very few units, and good low peaceweight AIs are De Gaulle, Brennus, Peter and Pacal. Just be aware that Peter can get very strong and also builds quite a lot units, but as he trades easily and likes to run Bureacracy, it's usually easy to make friends with him. De Gaulle usually is plain weak because he techs so slow and Pacal likes Hereditary Rule, so is perfect for any games without Mids, and this game could be one of those, because with 8-14 civs, Mids can go very early and are a large investment anyhow.
Just stay away from the unit spammers (Ragnar, Mehmed, Monte...) and you'll be good.

And don't forget that this game is Marathon, so units are cheaper. AI is usually bad at warfare, so this game is maximum random Immortal niveau, only that the tech-rate will be faster.

 

[WastinTime]

Seas creates more water, so there's less territory to conquer. This is the easy choice setting.

I would think Seas are a problem for movement.

 

[Seraiel]

I would think Seas are a problem for movement.

Seas are a problem for movement, but 200 more land-tiles are also a problem. i'm guessing the setting is just not such a great advantage like I thought, though coastal cities and seafood is nice, because what I underestimated, it's not the happy-cap that is low on Highlands, it's the health cap.
In my last game where I started with Stonehenge, I had a happy-cap of 18 without anything, so 20+ with Forges and 23+ with Markets. I abandoned that game btw. because instead of Libbing Rifling, I accidentally researched Liberalism and had to take Astronomy from it ( ) . In the new game, I didn't even bother with Stonehenge, but rexed to 4 cities early.

I think this game is about a) the start, b) how religiongs are distributed and if one can avoid early daggers and c) good warmonger capabilities and if one can conquer the Mids in the first war.

 

[FiveRings]

Thx for the compliment. I took part in 2 SGOTMs, but just couldn't stand the lengthy discussions. Even with liking everybody in my team, it was just too much for me to read 3 pages of posts every day, posts that really have to be understood, and making a pre-play-plan was pure horror. Micro in CIV is so easy, it's the gambles and the decisions one has to make without knowing the best outcome that are hard, I just couldn't believe I'd have to post every , and in single.
I understand that this is necessary, especially because of players that aren't such micro-maniacs that check every city every turn like me, but all the insecurity of some others just scared me off. I wanted to find players that are so much more experienced like me, that they don't have those insecurities, but seems everybody playing CIV has them.

Regarding random AIs: You should definately choose your opponents, it's something that makes a map easier by at least 30%. Choose some high peaceweight and low peaceweight AIs, so the AIs hate each other and go to war frequently. Take AIs, with which you possibly can share the favourite civic, so you have an easy time diplomacy wise. I personally have good experience with Frederick, Lincoln and Roosevelt as high peaceweight AIs, they also build very few units, and good low peaceweight AIs are De Gaulle, Brennus, Peter and Pacal. Just be aware that Peter can get very strong and also builds quite a lot units, but as he trades easily and likes to run Bureacracy, it's usually easy to make friends with him. De Gaulle usually is plain weak because he techs so slow and Pacal likes Hereditary Rule, so is perfect for any games without Mids, and this game could be one of those, because with 8-14 civs, Mids can go very early and are a large investment anyhow.
Just stay away from the unit spammers (Ragnar, Mehmed, Monte...) and you'll be good.

And don't forget that this game is Marathon, so units are cheaper. AI is usually bad at warfare, so this game is maximum random Immortal niveau, only that the tech-rate will be faster.

Thank you so much for the comment and especially for those about convenient AIs, Serael!
I guess the detail and lengthy discussions are part of why I don't go into Sgotms. Plus, I am not good in helping with the team-made simul game, which coupled with my lower level makes me more of a burden than an asset. Besides, I do think that calucating and refining the game plan ups the result, but, never mind how much I still want to win, this deprives me of the adventure- and intuition-side and turns the whole thing into a project, not a game.

 

[Seraiel]

Deity-AIs amaze me again everytime. So much to Frederick doesn't build a lot of units:

Spoiler :

Of course this is already after I have already taken 2 cities of him and after he has conquered one of Pacal's cities with his stack:



If that would have been a hills city and if I wouldn't have built 15 Catapults, I'd have had no chance.

 

[Seraiel]

As you know I played another game. Got a dream start, double Corn, Clams, double Gold + Stone + Ivory + riverside + coastal + Plains-Hill for the Settler.

Noticed I was boxed in quite harsh, so I expanded harshly, so even with non-Math-chops. Got 7 cities. Unfortunately, half of the World was Hinduism and Gandhi built the Kashi Vishvanath early, so had an enormous economy.
In the meanwhile, I was lucky that I got Iron and Frederick, my neighbour, build the GW and the Mids. Unfortunately, he had a lot of room to expand, so when it came to war, it were my 7 cities against his 13.
This was after I got Confucianism as the last Religion that would be of any interest everyhow, but with converting Lizzy and Peter being Confucianist also, at least some trade opportunities. As said, 50%+ of the world was Hindu.

Then came the war.
And then came the losses:
4 War Elephants + 3 Maces + 3 Catapults at the first 2 cities, all 70%+ fights.
Got the third city also, 5 Catapults losses, otherwise I would have had no chance of taking it.
And then came Berlin: Open field and no hills around, my Maces who were stripped of their Elephant guardians got demolished by Elephants from Frederick, alsways 70% fights, not a single win for me.
Had 2 Guerrilla III Maces withdraw with 98% chances.
Lost CGII Longbow in a city to an Elephant.
Lost 4 further Catapults at Berlin, taking the total losses to 15 Catapults.

You cannot imagine how many troops I built, but in the end, 15/30 Maces and 15/25 Catapults + 2 LBs + 1 XBs + 6 WEs + 1 HA were lost to a meager kill-quote of maybe 50 units.

Could have 20 cities 200 AD, could have Liberalism at 200 AD, but no use. In my old game, without the Mids, I had 20 cities + Liberalism at 10 BC and I could have libbed Rifling if I wouldn't have been too dumb to accidentally trigger Liberalism by a random event, size 14 to 8 capital, size 12 to 6 GP-Farm, size 6 in average to size 2-4 in the other game, Forges + AP-temples in all cities instead of 180+ turns of whipping Anger for building so many units, twice the military...

So I'll start over. This definately has to get better. Seldomly got funked so hard by RNG, I made screenshots, I'm sure that if I'd count the chances together, that I lost at least 1000% more than as when it would have been "fair" .

Nonetheless, Frederick was way harder then I expected him to be. In the other round, I warred against Lincoln, and even though Lincoln had the money + the techs for Longbows and XBows, I fought Archers most of the time, giving my Guerrilla III Maces basically free wins.
Also destroyed 3 20+ unit SoDs from Bismarck in the defense after Lincoln vassalled. Wiped him out completely and was short before vassaling Bismarck.

In the Dreamstart round with Frederick, Peter vassaled Hatty and was a crazy superpower with 30+ cities and Bismarck vassaled peacefully to Lincoln, also a 30+ city superpower.

No use in continuing. Good round got scraped by RNG.

Here are some screens from you that I made, just in case you're interested:

Spoiler :

My army in the first, the Stonehenge round:



The start of the 2nd round:



Not all, but most of my army of the 2nd round:

 

[WastinTime]

max opponents on a Conquest game?

If I had to choose that many, I'd take advantage by going to war very early and never stopping. Horse Archer rush...until you start seeing LB's on hills.

I think you should try 8 opponents.

Edit: I was wrong... max opponents is needed to keep the AI small.

 

[Seraiel]

max opponents on a Conquest game?

If I had to choose that many, I'd take advantage by going to war very early and never stopping. Horse Archer rush...until you start seeing LB's on hills.

I think you should try 8 opponents.

Thx for the advice, but if I'd choose 8 opponents, there'd be land to rex to for 12+ cities, then I would not have to even think about Horse-Archer rushing.

I chose max-opponents because I expect the single opponents to be weaker, and with less land to rex to, I also need to rex less and can go earlier to war.

Horse-Archer rush in general is btw. a bad idea on Highlands, because 80% of the cities are Hills cities, one needs at least Catapults to have decent invest / return ratios. Problem is, Catapults come almost at the same time as Longbows if not oracled, and all wonders tend to go superearly with so many AIs.

I'll try if I can HA rush someone though, but I think it's impossible. Celts are very slow starters and finding a Civ without Hills and without several metals is almost impossible, as Iron and Copper are the most common resources on the map.

I think you misjudge on the map, HA are only good against non-Hills and few Spears cities, and 1600-1700 landtiles is really huge.

 

[WastinTime]

What if you march your settler towards another opponent (say 10 turns?). Marathon makes this not too painful. It would allow lots of worker stealing and several early city captures with chariot or Axe. Possibly even a warrior rush if the cities are not on hills?

Think of all the extra huts you can pop! (but you can't get free tech before you settle )

Can't use mapfinder with this strategy tho.

 

[Seraiel]

I'm morely thinking about trying out a Gallic-Warrior-Rush (Sword-Rush) . From Barracks, those can get Guerrilla II which makes them more mobile then Horse Archers, and I trust in Swords generally more then in those Horse-weaklings.

I'm btw. trying to get a start since 3h now. It's incredible, how "bad" Highlands as a map-script is. Almost no Food, almost no Gold, Gems only when starting in the southern Jungle, then lots of Floodplains (often too much) and Desert Hills and especially no trees.
30% of the starts are in the tundra, 30% coastal, 20% Jungle, leaves 20% of the starts in general that are aplicable to be played if one gets good resources.

 

[WastinTime]

Well, the start you posted last was one of the best I've ever seen. Especially if you want a stone start. That has to be the best stone start ever.

Gallic rush would be very 'flavorful'. I would want to do that just because it fits so well on this map. The only huge drawback is getting Iron Working. Fortunately, you have huts. I would probably try to pop Mining and BW free, then get IW. This works best if you go with 8 opponents-- more huts for you.

 

[Seraiel]

Well, the start you posted last was one of the best I've ever seen. Especially if you want a stone start. That has to be the best stone start ever.

Gallic rush would be very 'flavorful'. I would want to do that just because it fits so well on this map. The only huge drawback is getting Iron Working. Fortunately, you have huts. I would probably try to pop Mining and BW free, then get IW. This works best if you go with 8 opponents-- more huts for you.

Probably best to still go for Aesthetics and trade for IW early. AI gets Alpha very reliably at 2400 - 2200 BC on large maps and with so many opponents, so Alpha beeline makes no sense, even with 2 gold.

The start I posted was the best start I could ever have imagined on Highlands. The map is so freaking poor, that one must be happy if one already gets strong sources of Food when generating maps.

Yesterday I tried out something interesting. Got a 2 wet Corn + 3 hills-Pigs start with lots of riverside tiles and tons of green hills. Shared the Food between the next 2 cities and founded another city which got Gold with the 2nd Borderpop of the capital, and believe what, the game went really well until Tokugawa showed up with his stack of 3 Archers + 1 Spearman and my city was only defended by 1 Archer and 1 Warrior.
With so much Food, getting out Settlers and getting up Libraries is absolutely no problem, and with all those Libraries in my cities, I made 60 / turn!
No idea what the S&T people always have about my Gold starts, running Scientists may be even stronger, because one gets early GPs, and Aesthetic is just so perfect to get Alpha and sometimes even more for, that I find the only disadvantage in contrary to starting with Gold is, that the start takes a long time to be set up.

Will try out some more high Food starts today, unless I get another start of the kind of which I have posted.

 

[WastinTime]

I've never gone for Aes. I've always done Math in this type of game. Gives me big chops and the option to Oracle->Currency.

But we agree. Never self-tech Alpha on large/huge Deity. Especially with Huts on.

 

[Seraiel]

Maths might be actually really good. I always went for Aesthetics because many AIs research Math directly after Alpha, like also Monarchy, but for Maths, one should get all the small techs + Monotheism and for some small techs + Maths + Monotheism one can probably get Alpha.
At least one will get IW for it, so I'll try it in the next game.

Why is it btw. so quiet in this thread? Could everybody that is currently playing or planning to play this Gauntlet give a sign from him? That would be very nice.

 

[Seraiel]

I'm just testing a new setting: Thin Peaks, Scattered and Large Lakes. This should give aproximately 400 more land-tiles, the seafood should remain and what goes away are all those mountains for hopefully more Food.

Had problems in my previous games with not finding any Food for my cities, and my capital often also having too many unusable tiles, so I hope, the better land will make up for the extra cities that have to be conquered.

 

[WastinTime]

I'm starting to think I might play this one. I'm working on my strategy in my head.

 

[Seraiel]

I'm starting to think I might play this one. I'm working on my strategy in my head.

No, not you again.

But promise me, this time you'll submit your game not 1 day before the Gauntlet ends and you'll keep me informed about how your game goes, so that I know when I have to start and play a second game .

I btw. got a new game, with Plains Hill Settler, double Gold and tripple wet Corn!

The map is huge, almost 2300, and I started in an area without rivers, so I had to build a road network between all my cities to get traderoutes!
Currently I'm struggling with having Alpha but 7 cities at 1700 BC and +0 GPT.
Tried to steal some Workers, but just didn't get the chance.
There's also a Buddhist love-fiest going on with 8/11 Civs being buddhist, but Religion didn't want to spread to me 'til now .
At least I got tons of Forrests, Iron and Mansa is going for Currency, so should I be able to reach the next tech in any way (probably via building Research) , I'll be good.

Sword-rush before anything btw. doesn't work with settling so many cities, and as long as there's land and good spots to claim, I wouldn't know why I should not settle them.

Hoping you don't have to wait as long as me to get a start. With running Mapfinder every time I don't play, I get about 1 start every 2 days!

 

[Firmlife]

Just reporting in since you wanted to know who was playing.

At this point I'm still fooling around trying to figure out what a good start looks like before I commit serious hours to a game, so I don't have much to report.

It seems I'm playing a wider range of starts that you are, which may be in part to my aversion to running mapfinder ceaselessly, especially when I'm not even sure what kind of start I'm looking for. I've tried a couple with stone, but Stonehenge goes so fast I don't think I will bother anymore. I'm not as inclined to share my ideas during a gauntlet as you, but I will say that I've found judging maps based on starting city alone to not be a good idea.

I know there are players who might have a better go at this than me, but I think with these settings, between Celts and the odd map, just winning Conquest will be a challenge. I do agree that max opponents and no HA is the way to go, but then again, I may be wrong.

 

[Sgtpeppers]

I will give this a go, but I am not that confident I can come away with a victory at all.

Seraiel, your continued discussion is very helpful to me, keep it up . I check regularly and read all new posts in here.
I'll set mapfinder on this and play through a couple of starts to see what i'm up against.

My thoughts of now are simply; max opponents, leverage the UU, and see where that gets me.
I'll be using your tips on map settings and opponents also.
I also plan to risk the coin flip of domination/conquest on the last AI if I get that far

 

[Seraiel]

I will give this a go, but I am not that confident I can come away with a victory at all.

Seraiel, your continued discussion is very helpful to me, keep it up . I check regularly and read all new posts in here.
I'll set mapfinder on this and play through a couple of starts to see what i'm up against.

My thoughts of now are simply; max opponents, leverage the UU, and see where that gets me.
I'll be using your tips on map settings and opponents also.
I also plan to risk the coin flip of domination/conquest on the last AI if I get that far

Think about that again. This game will take so many hours, that you don't wanna maybe have to throw it away only because you couldn't wait for a few turns.

I'm btw. currently playing with my new setup which I posted above, and I already feel the power of the better land, but also for me, the discussion with WastinTime was very helpful. "Rushed" at 800 BC, which was 200y earlier then in my first game and 500y earlier then in the 2nd.

The use of the UU is only there for a very short period of time btw.. First one must reach something to trade against IW, then one must connect Iron, maybe up to 20 units, then Macemen are usually available already.

Just 1 tip: If you still got Gallic Warriors that are not Guerilla III, level them and promote them first. Once you upgrade them, the whole possibility to upgrade via the Guerilla line becomes unavailable.