G-Major 134

[Pollina]

then one must connect Iron

You don't need iron for GW. They can be built with copper, too.

 

[WastinTime]

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.

Pollina is correct, Copper works just fine.

RE: G II and G III. I think you might be wrong, but you've played this one and I haven't. Have you tested this?
According to the help files, as long as you have Guerilla I, then melee units can take II and III. (and I tested that the Dun will not give GI to an Axe..agreeing with whats been posted here.) An upgrade mace, however, should be able to take GIII.

 

[Pollina]

RE: G II and G III. I think you might be wrong, but you've played this one and I haven't. Have you tested this?
According to the help files, as long as you have Guerilla I, then melee units can take II and III. (and I tested that the Dun will not give GI to an Axe..agreeing with whats been posted here.) An upgrade mace, however, should be able to take GIII.

Just ran a quick test. You can't promote a GI mace to GII (or a GII mace to GIII), unfortunately.

 

[Seraiel]

You don't need iron for GW. They can be built with copper, too.

Pollina is correct, Copper works just fine.

This is neat-picking ^2.

I know Copper works too, it's just that Iron is the more common resource on highlands ^^ .

Iron is actually only needed for XBows, Pikes, Knights, Cuirrassiers and Cannons.

 

[FiveRings]

I have run 5 starts with Boudica and quit as the Barbs are like Raging and Spears take out my warriors and improvemets and cities like weed. So, let me ask: are you, guys, playing it w/o Barbs or are you getting archers early on, or are you just so much better than I am to withstand with warriors?

 

[Seraiel]

I play without barbs. It's the only way of being competetive, especially on Marathon. One can skip all early units but 1 Warrior for the capital, one can skip BW / Archery / AH... The only advantage of playing with barbs, is that AI also expands slower, but that advantage is morely minor, because AI defends it's cities usually with or without barbs.
If an AI builds the GW next to you and you play with Barbs on Marathon, you can basically quit the game already.

The game is btw. making me suffer too. I don't know why, but maintenance costs are like crazy. I rexed to 7 cities, took over De Gaulle and settled 2 more on the land that was still left, bringing me up to 20 cities. Some are costing 15 GPT without a Courthouse, I have a deficit of 200+ GPT and could not even afford 10% of research without running a deficit.
'til now, I could fuel that deficit by selling techs to the AIs, but that time is over, because I wanna take over the AIs, so I have to stop trading to them, or they'll have better units than I want them to have. 2 AIs are also researching like crazy, with doing 500+ GNP at 300 BC, one has the GLH and the other one a shrine from a 50% world religion. Also bribing is almost impossible with the buddhist love-fiest that's going on and because of the last, the AIs are trading like crazy, creating an insane overall tech-pace, at least for some. Best AI will probably reach Cuirrassiers 'til 1 AD, while the few AIs that got left behind don't even have Longbows yet.
Fortunately, one of those sits next to me .

Still, I have to go to war with Trebs + Maces, because I see no way of reaching Rifling or Steel with Liberalism, and standard research would take ages. At least I'm probably soon gonna have my first Golden Age thx to the Taj Mahal, which I currently chop with running Serfdom.
Brennus was definately a good choice, loving SPI because of AP-Temples and the possibility to even run Civics like that, but also because it allows me to easily switch between OR, Theocracy and Caste and Pacifism.

Hoping you'll post some ingame reports too . I'm especially interested in the one of WastinTime . He probably got Oracle, which in my game went at 2300 BC, and he probably got a lot of Workers from abusing an AI.

Of course, I'm very interested in the reports of all others too.

 

[WastinTime]

Every time I think of starting this game, I look at the gigantic map, and I don't want to start. It is huger than any huge map I've ever played and it's only 'large'

Here are my thoughts on the start.

The far south is always the jungle/banana belt. I want forests, so no good.
The far north is the tundra/deer belt. Pass.
I wanna start somewhere in the Pig belt.
The entire North half of the map makes up a sheep belt while the south half of the map is Rice.

So i think i'd like to start where the Pig/Sheep belts overlap (just north of center), but still close enough to snag some rice. That way I won't be tempted to conquer the jungle belt until last.
There's plenty of corn and wheat scattered in that start area too.

I think I'll skip mapfinder and just march around several turns looking for gold (pig/sheep, etc.) and so I can start nearer to an AI for worker steal/early conquer with an axe rush.

I'm going minimum opponents which seems logical for conquest games. It also gives me more huts.

I think I've decided on thin, scattered mountains so I can move around easier.

I was originally against Seas. However, it does make for less land, and it could allow for some rapid movement via galley chaining and forts/canals.

 

[Seraiel]

Every time I think of starting this game, I look at the gigantic map, and I don't want to start. It is huger than any huge map I've ever played and it's only 'large'

Good if you don't play. More points for me .

Here are my thoughts on the start.

The far south is always the jungle/banana belt. I want forests, so no good.
The far north is the tundra/deer belt. Pass.
I wanna start somewhere in the Pig belt.
The entire North half of the map makes up a sheep belt while the south half of the map is Rice.

So i think i'd like to start where the Pig/Sheep belts overlap (just north of center), but still close enough to snag some rice. That way I won't be tempted to conquer the jungle belt until last.
There's plenty of corn and wheat scattered in that start area too.

I think I'll skip mapfinder and just march around several turns looking for gold (pig/sheep, etc.) and so I can start nearer to an AI for worker steal/early conquer with an axe rush.

I'm going minimum opponents which seems logical for conquest games. It also gives me more huts.

I think I've decided on thin, scattered mountains so I can move around easier.

I was originally against Seas. However, it does make for less land, and it could allow for some rapid movement via galley chaining and forts/canals.

Axes vs. Archers in Hills cities = 20% or less chance

Also good if you go minimum opponents, that'll give you some crazy 30 cities AIs

Rest of the setup sounds fine. However, I doubt you'll have the resources to build Galleys or even Galley-chains.

-----------

Wanted to share this screen with you:

Spoiler :

Almost had won a diplomatic victory. Didn't know, that AI could also vote for diplomatic victory, if it isn't even nominated. Glad I'm gonna get AP-resident next vote because Asoka, went Free Religion. The Mayan city with the Greed-resource has 27% of my culture, maybe I can get it without war?

 

[WastinTime]

Also good if you go minimum opponents, that'll give you some crazy 30 cities AIs

I intend to win the game before turn 250, so I don't expect any AI to have even 10 cities.

 

[Seraiel]

I intend to win the game before turn 250, so I don't expect any AI to have even 10 cities.

Never. This is Deity, not Chieftain.

 

[Seraiel]

In my game, AI had 17 cities at T250.

 

[Seraiel]

Noone will win this game in the BCs.

You're .

 

[WastinTime]

Noone will win this game in the BCs.

You're .

This is marathon, not normal

 

[Seraiel]

This is marathon, not normal

Doesn't matter. As you see, it's T350 on my screenshot, and I'm a very good Domination / Conquest player, just remember my 990 AD Standard Epic Conquest with Willem from the 2nd last HoF update. You may be better, you may have become amazingly good through the SGOTMs, but you greatly underestimate this map.

When you said you wanted to Axe-rush one of the opponents, I already thought you were nuts, because Axe-rush and Hills cities and Deity = not good, but conquering a 2400 populations map before Cavalries is basically impossible. I'm thinking if my game will go until Nukes, but you're thinking about Axes, Swords and maybe Elephants and Catapults, that doesn't work against AIs which will have at least Longbows, if not Castles by the turn you estimated.
Only other way would be that you take the slow teching unit-spamming AIs and you won't conquer them more easily in particular.

Seriously, if you play that map, record a video, because this game won in only 250 turns, everybody wants to see that.

 

[WastinTime]

This map does seem to get larger every time I try to start a game. I'm sticking to my T250 prediction, but I'm thinking about changing my start plan. The AI is just too far away to exploit it properly, so I'm thinking max opponents might be better. I'm also considering Dense, clustered mountains and Seas to make the AI as small as possible. I'm concerned this will reduce the huts I get greatly.

It would mean running mapfinder instead of marching around looking for gold and an AI. Settling quickly means you can pop free tech instead of just $$$ and maps.

 

[Seraiel]

This map does seem to get larger every time I try to start a game. I'm sticking to my T250 prediction, but I'm thinking about changing my start plan. The AI is just too far away to exploit it properly, so I'm thinking max opponents might be better. I'm also considering Dense, clustered mountains and Seas to make the AI as small as possible. I'm concerned this will reduce the huts I get greatly.

It would mean running mapfinder instead of marching around looking for gold and an AI. Settling quickly means you can pop free tech instead of just $$$ and maps.

This will not only reduce the huts greatly, it'll also reduce the Food greatly.

I went with scattered, light and large lakes because I sometimes could not find 6 cities that had Food.

I will probably play a 2nd game though with Ridgelines, Dense and seas, because the difference between 1600 and 2200 landtiles is definately enough to try again. I'll probably gonna have a really good start again, because I'm running Mapfinder every night, and it's gonna take at least 5 days from now on 'til I can finish my current game, if not 2 weeks.

Believe me, this map is huge. I built not much more then Granaries, Barracks, Forges and half-price AP-temples, and my game has advanced 'til Grenadiers and Cannons, and only 2 AI are dead! The AIs have such large militaries, that only 1 AI wanted to peacefully vassal 'til now, and I missed the chance for the moment because a bribe of me caused a world-war and I don't wanna go against another AI, while I'm already at war with one.

Asoka had a shrine giving over 100g .

 

[Firmlife]

I finally got a start I felt was worth playing (2 elephant, corn, rice, in first city, second city had gold) and got through the army-less phase without a war. (I had two better starts which I abandoned because of crazy early wars.)

Started my first offensive war in 660BC (had two defensive wars before that). The game seems roughly similar but a little better than your "Stonehenge" game, Seraiel, I'm at ten cities around 400BC. My problem, as always, is vassalage. There's been a lot of war in my game, the civs are evenly split Buddhist/Hindu, and there have been a couple dogpile wars. It seemed nice for a while, kept everyone weak and teching slow. I was on the slightly larger (8 vs 7), more advanced side, so I thought I might pick off the Hindus one at a time and take this one all the way. But two civs have vassaled when they were on the short end of a dogpile war, and my first war target just vassaled to a fellow Buddhist. Its hard to see a route forward at this point. I'm hemmed in, a vassaled state on one side, his master on another, and the strongest fellow Buddhist on my third side.

I'm a bit frustrated. I pretty much never play with vassals on higher levels, except for Dom/Con because it makes things way too hard to control. It seems you're sticking to it, but I think I am going to give it up, even though it likely means I won't compete for the top spots in this gauntlet. I can't see spending another week finding a good map, spending a good chunk of time on the game, and then being forced to give it up. This game seemed like a definite win for me without vassalage, although it likely wouldn't have been too close to winning this gauntlet.

I'm going to take what lessons I can from this game. For instance, my economy was in better shape than in your two 20 city/300BC games, but obviously my military was too small due to not enough whips and a worse start. I have a good feel for how health and happiness will go, I know I can't leave vassals on, and I'm going to make some small adjustments in my opponents to make for a bit less war.

Guess I'll leave mapfinder running while I'm at work tomorrow. But first, time to go poke my powerful neighbor in the ribs and see if there's any way to salvage this game.

P.S. Don't disabuse WastedTime of his notion to win this game in 250 turns. Let him spend a week or three thinking he can do it. Maybe drop a hint about how you went HA in one game and it went really well for a while . . .

 

[Seraiel]

You should definately poke your buddhist buddy. Nothing better then wars against friendly targets that one can first bribe against others and then backstab.

Vassals make the game a lot easier. The first CIV should be conquered competely, but today, I vassaled 5 Civs in less then 50 turns. With complete conquest, I would have needed at least 5 times that time. I have 50 cities, so I don't have any use for further ones, my military has twice the size of the best Civilization after me, so why not vassal them, and capture cities faster and end the game with 5 vassals?

That your tech-rate was better then mine seems normal for me, because I went Hammer-economy and build tons of units. The only Cottages I built in the Buro-capital, and that were 4 Cottages, other then that, only Mines and Farms and later Windmills.

I also went for early past war recovery with getting up Forges and AP-Temples in almost all of my cities while being still at war with the first one. My GNP were always underaverage, but I was top of production from AP-Temples onwards, and that by far, even with whipping the cities as harsh as possible.

Finding of the day in my game is, that I can end it with Cuirrassiers. If I only had known before, I teched until Cannons and Grenadiers, but 150 Cuirrassiers simply roll over the map. Losses are severe, over 30%, but what does it matter, if one can conquer complete Civs that also have Cuirrs + Cannons in less then 10 turns and during that time whip the army for the next target out of the cities of the last.

I'll probably go for a good old fashioned Cuirrassier rush in my 2nd game, not ignoring early Gallic Warrior and Mace-treb warfare. If I get the mids again, I can then basically shut off research and only keep rushing Cuirrs 'til the game is won. Units last just so long on Marathon, it's hillarious, especially with the AIs teching Constitution, Economics, Corporations, Chemistry, Scientific Method, Replaceable Parts, but not Rifling.

Maybe I also only was fast enough because my early game went really well and my empire is set up extremely good and with well developed cities.

I wonder if the 3 MoM-fueled GAs I started did anything, all production came basically from AP-Temples and Forge-fueled whips, and most cities are size 1-4, so the hammer-boost is negliable while the Commerce-boost is not even needed because I have a unit with which I can win.

 

[Firmlife]

All right, you've talked me down from the ledge, I'll leave vassals on for this next set of maps.

In doing some analysis and reading everything in this thread, I see quite clearly certain mistakes. I have two very bad tendencies that hold me back when it comes to the HoF. First, I tend to postpone decisions about which improvements to build on city squares until (often) I've built the wrong ones. Second, I like to have nice cities with everything just so, according to me own standards of what looks nice. The ultimate example of this is I never start my GP farm early enough, because I can't commit to going all food in a city early enough. This is all right when playing a time game, but I think these tendencies combined to a bad effect in this game. Looking back at my game, I saw that I had decided too late which cities should be production cities, and had built cottages where they shouldn't be. I had focused too much at keeping the turns of cruel oppression under control and building my cities up a bit, and not enough on pumping out units.

All this led to my truly deadly sin. I should have rolled over my first opponent and bribed my Buddhist buddy off of him, rather than let him linger on the ropes. I need to control the vassal game as much as I can rather than let it control me.

I need to do some more analysis. Before the last culture gauntlet, I was a horrible culture player and struggled to get a number one at any level. I sat down afterwards and looked at some model games, ran some analysis of things that I was doing and things that others were doing in those model games, and then I finished a deity culture game a couple decades off the best time. I need to do the same thing here, take a good hard look at the decisions I've been making and ensure I understand what works and what doesn't work. Then hold my toes to the fire and force myself to follow through on my analysis when I play again. I'm going to keep going with this game a little bit, if only to put my post-analysis findings into practice.

Thanks for the update Seraiel.

 

[Seraiel]

A tip for GP-Farms and GPs in general:

Take the ones you can get. That includes creating the first GS in the Capital, because the Capital usually has the Food to support 2 early Scientists and usually gets a Library before the other cities get one.

Then build up your GP-Farm, and try to take more and more over from the Capital, but you can also run 2, 3, 4 or 5 GP-Farms. Only because a city is specialized on Food and has the NE, that doesn't mean that other cities are not able to create at least 1 or 2 GPs during the game!

In my current game, I created 3 GPs from the Capital, 3 from the GP-Farm and 2 from the Globe city. I used GAs in which I switched to Pacifism and ran tons of Specialists while starving the cities. Usually, every city that is size 7 or 8+ can create a GP with Pacifism and maybe Caste during a Golden Age, the NE is mostly only good outside of Pacifism + Golden Age phases, because then, one city has 100% and not all cities +200% while one has +300%.