G-Major 137

[Pangaea]

I'd tech BW with Darius if I wanted to Immortal rush. Mining before AH is better than AH directly probably, so rest looks ok. When you Immortal rush, you don't build a 2nd city btw but let your first one grow.

Hmm, so you'd go BW before AH then? Wouldn't have crossed my mind, as I'm now a bit used to "tech AH or BW, but not both".

@Pangaea: With one dry corn that'd be a bit low on food for my taste, especially when having to work two gold mines. Since you have to go for early AH anyway, pigs or something would be great. All those forests look great though.

Yes, this wasn't the best map I got last night, as I didn't want to waste those on most likely poor play as I have never tried marathon before. Will probably need to have a few false starts first, just to get used with how slow everything is, and maybe tech different things in a different order. I'm also still thinking about Liz instead of Darius. The issue is whether Immortals early is better than PHI throughout. But with Liz I guess you'd need to use Axes, and that is slow.

 

[Seraiel]

Hmm, so you'd go BW before AH then? Wouldn't have crossed my mind, as I'm now a bit used to "tech AH or BW, but not both".



Yes, this wasn't the best map I got last night, as I didn't want to waste those on most likely poor play as I have never tried marathon before. Will probably need to have a few false starts first, just to get used with how slow everything is, and maybe tech different things in a different order. I'm also still thinking about Liz instead of Darius. The issue is whether Immortals early is better than PHI throughout. But with Liz I guess you'd need to use Axes, and that is slow.

No, I'd tech BW after I could build Immortals, to get out more to rush a 2nd civ hopefully. The capital can be unhappy, as long as it can work the Food and the Gold it'd be ok for me.

 

[WastinTime]

You should get at least one free tech (AH or Mining with Darius)
Liz can get BW free!
If not, probably start another map...unless you have a really amazing start location.

You should not build a settler. Way too slow.

Liz can use chariots too, not just axe.

 

[Pangaea]

You should get at least one free tech (AH or Mining with Darius)
Liz can get BW free!
If not, probably start another map...unless you have a really amazing start location.

You should not build a settler. Way too slow.

Liz can use chariots too, not just axe.

Good point on the free tech. I just got a lousy map here. The Deity AIs suck them all up really quickly.

Will skip on the settler then, and wait until I get a BFC-horse map. But will probably set up a mapfinder run with Lizzie too, so I can try her out as well. Probably on Terra though.

Does the AI opposition look okay?

In case it's a bit rough on the eyes in the reduced screenshot:

• Catherine
• Asoka
• Gandhi
• Frederick
• De Gaulle
• Victoria
• Mansa Musa
• Washington
• Ramesses
• Roosevelt
• Lincoln
• Kublai Khan
• Stalin
• Peter

Too many tree huggers?

 

[Seraiel]

I'd definitely exchange Cathy, she's too easy ro be bribed npt mattering what diplo one has with her. Gandhi is good if conquered early, but of not, he's a big risk for Oracle. I'd also exchange Ramesses against Hatty. Better to have a CRE Civ than an IND one. At last, I wouldn't take Stalin and Kublai because that's too many bad guys for my taste. If possible, you want the AI to be at peace, so it techs faster.

Look at WTs and my Marathon Space Races for better opponents.

 

[WastinTime]

Here are some other things to help you gauge your pace.
It's not that hard of a pace to keep up with:

Captured 6 cities by T100
Settled first new city T113
Captured only 2 more cities by T150
Settled 2 more ~T140 and T160

12 cities

With Darius, I'd focus on ~12 total cities by T150 and forget about having 7 cities by T100. Darius starts slower but conquers faster.

Once you've got this, the Inca have no more advantages on you! Their UU is obsolete. There is no reason you can't finish as fast as Capac from here.

 

[Seraiel]

Hehe Wastin ^^

I think 12 cities at T150 is prett much impossible with non-Incans. Having 8 already would be very great. The rate at which one gets the techs almost doesn't change if one has 10 or 20 cities in the beginning, production does though. Remember I was able to reach all your technological benchmarks with Darius while only having conquered a handful of cities? It takes quite long until the mass of cities really explodes.

 

[WastinTime]

Hehe Wastin ^^

I think 12 cities at T150 is prett much impossible with non-Incans. Having 8 already would be very great. The rate at which one gets the techs almost doesn't change if one has 10 or 20 cities in the beginning, production does though. Remember I was able to reach all your technological benchmarks with Darius while only having conquered a handful of cities? It takes quite long until the mass of cities really explodes.

In the past, I've held my army back so I don't break my economy, but if you just keep the conquest gold coming in, there's no reason to hold back.

Darius has the power to get 20+ cities! :eek" by T150. I'm not saying 20-25 cities is optimal, but 12 "good ones" should be fairly easy.

 

[Pangaea]

Here are some other things to help you gauge your pace.
It's not that hard of a pace to keep up with:

Captured 6 cities by T100
Settled first new city T113
Captured only 2 more cities by T150
Settled 2 more ~T140 and T160

12 cities

With Darius, I'd focus on ~12 total cities by T150 and forget about having 7 cities by T100. Darius starts slower but conquers faster.

Once you've got this, the Inca have no more advantages on you! Their UU is obsolete. There is no reason you can't finish as fast as Capac from here.

Like Seraiel says, this does sound impossible. I looked at your Writeup too, and you mention 18 cities by turn 200 and then ~50 cities by turn 300. But even 5-6 cities by turn 100 sounds untouchable when it takes probably at least 50 turns just to hook up BFC horses.

It would be awesome to compete with your (and Seraiel's) timelines, but it's a rather unrealistic target for me. I'm not sure what would be more realistic, but I'm nowhere near as good or knowledgeable so 700-1000AD space is surely way out of reach.

But just to take one of the first few lines in that Writeup. Capture three workers by turn 24. Surely that can't be possible with any other civ?

Anyway, I was supposed to on a pub round right now, pished out of my mind about this time, so hopefully staying at home instead will be fun too

 

[Pangaea]

I'd definitely exchange Cathy, she's too easy ro be bribed npt mattering what diplo one has with her. Gandhi is good if conquered early, but of not, he's a big risk for Oracle. I'd also exchange Ramesses against Hatty. Better to have a CRE Civ than an IND one. At last, I wouldn't take Stalin and Kublai because that's too many bad guys for my taste. If possible, you want the AI to be at peace, so it techs faster.

Look at WTs and my Marathon Space Races for better opponents.

Not too keen on doing another mapfinder run to change AIs, so would it be a big problem to run with the ones I have? Isn't it a good thing to have some bad guys, so the tech pace isn't through the roof, and the AIs are busy hating each other and warring? It's Deity, so I imagine the tech pace is pretty fast nonetheless.

 

[Seraiel]

I'll run Mafinder probably for whole week, so don't care about the few maps you lose now.

 

[Pangaea]

I'll run Mafinder probably for whole week, so don't care about the few maps you lose now.

 

[WastinTime]

Ignore the 5-6 cities by T100.

In Major 134, I had 6 cities by T135. That was Brennus on Highlands, with no horses in BFC, so that surely is beatable.

Again, Darius will catch up to Inca, so 20+ cities at T200 is a good target. The 18 I suggested as a pace number is actually low.

Finishing before 1000AD probably sounds impossible, but I think you will be surprised when you beat 1000 AD easily. That would be 60 turns slower than 700 AD.

 

[Pollina]

Generated a few maps to count resources. Intended to do more, but it became a huge pain in the neck to count-delete so many icons. But I did 3 maps each of Terra and B&S. Hardly statistically significant, but anywho...

         Mining     Sushi
Terra      55         88
B&S        47        161

Unsurprisingly there were a great deal more Sushi resources on Big and Small. It varied a fair bit on Terra, because sometimes there was a map with some islands too, and those naturally got more seafood. Pretty similar in Mining resources, but a little bit more on Terra, probably due to the bigger 'normal' landmass. All 6 maps I generated (3 for each), had about 10 gold+silver tiles.

You counted those resources manually? Ouch! I admire your patience!

Here's a neat litte trick I like to use to test out how many resources, land tiles, forests, etc. are created for given map settings:

Build a mapfinder rule with 999 tiles test range. (Rule can be anything really. I use # farm resources between 0 and 999.) Then set up a game with your settings, but use future era start (free Satellites!). Start a mapfinder run and create as many maps as you want for statistics.

Results look like this:

Spoiler :

 

[Seraiel]

Great tip Pollina!

I just saw the post from pangaea for the first time. I knew B&S has more Sushi resources, but twice as many?

Now I need to test if B&S really has too much maintenance. Give me back m PC .

 

[Pangaea]

You counted those resources manually? Ouch! I admire your patience!

Here's a neat litte trick I like to use to test out how many resources, land tiles, forests, etc. are created for given map settings:

Build a mapfinder rule with 999 tiles test range. (Rule can be anything really. I use # farm resources between 0 and 999.) Then set up a game with your settings, but use future era start (free Satellites!). Start a mapfinder run and create as many maps as you want for statistics.

Results look like this:

Spoiler :

Very clever Pollina! I did count them manually, by using the resource tool and right clicking each icon to delete them, and then count up as I went through the map. Time consuming and tiring. Clicking a button and sipping to a cup of tea would be easier

Have had another (6-7) goes at the maps I generated, and finally got BFC horse. Settled 2S here, for a 3 capital. However, I'm really puzzled at how I'm supposed to be able to grab for example 6 cities by t135, or 20 by t200. Do you have superpowers WastinTime?

Stole a worker from Asoka and have built two myself, which meant the horse was hooked up and connected quicker than otherwise. Even so, it's turn 92 and I'm nowhere near close to wage (proper) war on anybody. Deity AIs aren't too keen on peacing out after workersteals either. So I parked two warriors on a wooded hill after busting his pig.

Spoiler :

In another map I was much luckier with huts, and first got a scout, and then nicked four more huts and got Mining, Masonry and the Wheel. This time I just got some money and Mining. Hard to pick up many huts with so many AI scouts around.

 

[Seraiel]

I also don't know how WastinTime conquers so many cities with units that have mostly failed for me in the past. I know luring out units by letting a city undefended is helpful, but apart from that, it's only number of troops + luck. What I often thought about you Pangaea, is, that you don't aggressively enough produce units. For an Immortal rush, you need no buildings. Maybe you can build a Barracks in the time 'til Horses and TW, but thats it. Whip and chop your capital down with stolen Workers, and you can have more than 20 Immortals at 2000 BC. If conquering cities, even more are possible.

 

[Pangaea]

Not sure what turn 2000BC would be, but it's probably not too far off, and I've only just begun making Immortals and it's already turn 92/2620BC. Have built a Barracks as there wasn't much point in spamming warriors, but other than that I've only built a few warriors plus two workers. Gonna spam some immortals now since I finally got BFC horse and see where that leads me. But it may take until turn 120 until I'm even ready to attack somebody. Hard to get used to everything taking 3 times as long :| Except military units for some reason.

Getting Math will take another half eternity, so suppose you need to do pre-math chops?

 

[Seraiel]

2000BC is T150.

Maybe producing 2 Workers will backfire, don't know as I still cannot play. If you built so many warriors, I'd have tried to steal Workers from 2 different Civs.

Military units are cheaper on Marathon by 1/3 of the normal / epic cost, so war in Marathon is really is a lot easier.
And yes, I will definitely chop pre Maths.

 

[Seraiel]

I'll probably 1. Try a Warrior rush, 2. choke 2 opponents simultaneously with Warriors and then 3. maybe let them live with 1 city. If an AI is at 1 city, it always builds a Settler afaik. Maybe it will also build another Worker afterwards which I can steal too then.