G-Major 144

[Pangaea]

For my case, Willem had 4 cities when I gifted/liberated him one, and that city is 10.5 (so 10) tiles from his capital. Other cities are closer, though.

But I could have liberated him a city that was 13 tiles away too, the one I mentioned in the screenshot a few posts up.

 

[Pangaea]

Man, Buro really is surprisingly weak on these settings / with so many cities. Would give me +6 in the capital, and +6% empire wide . Hardly the groundbreaking stuff it is in normal games.

 

[WastinTime]

For my case, Willem had 4 cities when I gifted/liberated him one, and that city is 10.5 (so 10) tiles from his capital. Other cities are closer, though.

But I could have liberated him a city that was 13 tiles away too, the one I mentioned in the screenshot a few posts up.

i'm used to thinking it is 9.5 tiles, but maybe that is only on standard size.

 

[Pangaea]

MoM is mine, come to daddy, and I've also chopped out Hagia. No sight of Philo yet, however, so I'm thinking to postpone the GA for a while longer. Parthenon almost done, and think I'll just complete it, although originally it was for failgold.

All that will enable me to research for a smashing...

Spoiler :

7 turns

But I do have 45 cities, which I figured was impossible back when WT and Pollina talked about 50-60 cities by T250. Could have easily got over 50 if I had kept REXing, but I've basically settled no cities the last 15-20 turns. The economy is still crashed, but I keep hoping we'll locate a ladder out of this hole.



This was not amusing.

Losing is one thing, it's bad enough given the winning odds, but not even scratching a half-dead spear? That's bad.

 

[Seraiel]

Yesterday I lost a CR3 Checker in a 95% fight against an Archer and he scored exactly 1 hit on the Archer... More combat rounds would really be a good thing but we need to start accepting the RNG somehow. With so many battles fought basically every possible result will happen one or more times. Assuming one gets average odds losing at 80% could also be seen as an advantage as it could also mean winning 80 times at 99% ^^ .

 

[Pangaea]

Certainly. Losing that one fight was of no consequence at all, except a dead unit I rather would have kept. It's in the early part of the game losing fights like that can have a massive impact.

But I've had luck too. First three times I attacked with catas, they all survived. 26%, 47%, 26%.

And in another sense I had some luck as well. Put two chops into Paya, next turn Asoka finish it, so I got a load of failgold. Then Asoka, who was annoyed at me, go Free Religion, and becomes cautious. Until I piss him off some more, and he gets annoyed again

 

[WastinTime]

got plans later today, so I won't make it to T250. I've also spent some quality time planning my GP farms for the upcoming golden ages. Now I'm taking a break to see if I want to start a world war. @Pangaea: I also have a Friendly Willy (insert joke here) I just noticed that he will DoW just about anyone and has 2 vassals which will both be forced to DoW. I can also tell Roosevelt to attack someone. Do you have any wars you can start?

Anyone else cause a lot of trouble in their game like this?

Any warnings for me before I do it?

 

[Pangaea]

There has more or less been a world war in my game for a time, though it's not been something I've pushed for. Peter did peace out with Washington recently, but other than that only Asoka and Gandhi are at peace iirc, and Asoka hates me. Gandhi still won't talk after I had to cut off ties on Willem's demand.

Mansa can easily be bribed as well, and Peter is a pretty loose cannon too. Then there is Brennus, who is usually more than happy to swing his axe at any protruding heads. As long as you have Friendly status or cease fires with the more questionable characters, the counter bribes will hopefully fly in other directions than yours.

In my game Brennus has just taken a city from Hatty, putting her down to two in her pathetic peninsula, and could actually go on to wipe her out entirely. I should perhaps bribe him off her now, but with one city down there, far from his core, I figured he'd park some units there, which could come in handy later when I need to declare on him to capture his holy city. Hope I can clear the entire east side of the continent first, but naturally I need to get that holy city before Sushi, so I can found the corporation there. Buddhism is at 48%. With a crashed economy I'm not sure how the timing will turn out.

However, the bigger worry right now is to get my hands on Philo somehow (nobody have it yet), so I can launch a GA, finally get some research done, at least get Edu, and pump out some GPs.

Asoka is not at all pleased with me, but I hope he doesn't suddenly declare. No fist at least, and I have got some half-decent defence in the border cities. He has settled in my face, though. But for now I'm content at him developing those cities first, clearing some jungle, and building infrastructure. His time will come.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Any warnings for me before I do it?

Plan for -1 Diplo for You didn't join the war on our side, for both sides of the war, unless you:
a) are prepared to join in on one of the sides or are already in on one of the sides before bribing
OR
b) are able to ask for 10 turns of enforced Peace via begging/demanding tribute from any side that you don't want to be asked to go to war against


Also, plan for all AIs involved in wars to build more Military Units that may end up sitting around their empires, making it harder for you to conquest their empires later, making them build less Wonders for you to capture, and slowing down the tech rates of those AIs with whom you might have wanted to otherwise trade techs.


Further, expect the possibility of other AIs being dragged in on one side or the other. It's then those AIs who you may need to worry more about in terms of -1 Diplo for not joining in on their war.

 

[WastinTime]

Sushi date:

As you all know, you are more successful if you know your target date. For example, when Seraiel knew he had to beat 705 AD space in GM-137, he knew when to start his final golden age, etc. For a culture game it's very important to know when to starve down your GreatArtist cities. In this game, once you reach sushi, you don't really need any libraries/unis, etc. So if you know the sushi date, you know when it's too late to invest in a library, etc. and have it pay off.

So what are everyone's predictions for sushi corp?

Data from past games:
- 700AD space game (standard size) : T315 sushi (would have been T310 on a score game, but I was simultaneously going for mining inc)

- 5 million game (standard size): T322 sushi (could've probably been ~T318)

- 695AD space (large size): T323 sushi

Note: research cost is 15% higher on Huge (over standard). How will that effect the date?

 

[WastinTime]

Plan for -1 Diplo for You didn't join the war on our side, for both sides of the war, unless you:
a) are prepared to join in on one of the sides or are already in on one of the sides before bribing
OR
b) are able to ask for 10 turns of enforced Peace via begging/demanding tribute from any side that you don't want to be asked to go to war against


Also, plan for all AIs involved in wars to build more Military Units that may end up sitting around their empires, making it harder for you to conquest their empires later, making them build less Wonders for you to capture, and slowing down the tech rates of those AIs should have wanted to otherwise trade techs with them.


Further, expect the possibility of other AIs being dragged in on one side or the other. It's then those AIs who you may need to worry more about in terms of -1 Diplo for not joining in on their war.

Those are a good start on warnings. Thx. I appreciate that since I'm mostly only seeing the advantages of wars since I'm pretty much convinced I'm going to start them anyway.

wonders: ouch, I'd really like them to keep building them. I think they will as long the big cities are not threatened.

military: Most, probably all, of the AI have been in a war already and have a stack. I was thinking I'm better off if they crash their stacks on each other. And any captured city starts over at 0% culture.

Begging is probably very smart. I'm worried that I did that too recently, but it's worth a shot. I definitely don't want to join those wars yet.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Don't AIs sometimes stop building units and start building other stuff after 10t?

 

[Seraiel]

I had luck yesterday. Pericles (you still remember how he went from pleased towards annoyed in 10T because he first begged, then demanded two times, then wanted me to join the war etc. etc. etc. for -8 diplo in 10T and still not being in WHEOOHRN suddenly went WHEOOHRN, so without a demand. I checked all of his relations, I was the only one that he's annoyed to and Pericles is a warmonger if he's annoyed, almost as bad as Shaka. Converted Frederick to Islam and then he could be bribed but didn't want to bribe him against Pericles because I still hoped that diplo would recover and he has several resources that I need.

Then suddenly: Pericles liberates his oversea's cities, Justinian joins the game and has all resources I need . Bribed Frederick, Diplo with Pericles is now not really repairable anymore but Justinian loves me for the 20 I gifted to him ^^ . Also got Pericles Worldmap from Justinian which almost got me circumnavigation.

Still not sure how far I'm behind Wastin without an update.

 

[WastinTime]

I've reached T250. I've got several big things coming in about 4-6 turns, so I'm thinking I'll post t256 numbers for maximum shock value.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Don't AIs sometimes stop building units and start building other stuff after 10t?

I haven't heard of such a hard-coded rule. Do you know of a code-diving effort that was done to support this number 10 or is it more of a gut feeling?

It is possible that if an AI who builds a greater percentage of defensive Military Units ends up with several Military Units inside of a City (say, 6 of them), then that AI may be programmed to switch to a different build item if it rolls a "build a defensive Military Unit" dice roll, but that's purely conjecture.

I've heard that the MISSION for an AI unit gets assigned at the time of completing the build item, so the game may not have a concept of which types of units would be "defensive" ones or not, at least in terms of build-item selection. Still, there may be something to this line of thinking, as some AIs do seem to build more infrastructure once they have about 6 Military Units (not counting one of their roaming stacks) inside of a City, but that's purely my gut feeling and is not supported by code-diving.


From my understanding, an AI has a higher chance of randomly choosing to build a unit during wartime (I seem to recall the number "5" being mentioned by a code-diver, and while an increase of 5% doesn't sound like a lot, iBuildUnitProb is already only between 15 and 40 for AI Leaders, so going from 15 to 20 is a relatively big jump in percentage--how do you write that kind of a percentage, by the way? Is it 25% higher (5/20) or 33% higher (5/15)?).

I have seen AIs stop building World Wonders when a war was started. At the same time, if an AI is 3 turns away from completing a build item, including a World Wonder, that AI won't switch away from that build item, although that AI might whip that build item in order to complete it in less than 3 turns.

I have also seen AIs start building World Wonders a turn or two into a war, so it's not like an AI will have a 100% chance of building units.


Also, if one AI's Military Unit gets close to a war enemy's City (and some AIs love making roaming Pillaging parties), that enemy AI's City is likely to switch build items to a Military Unit or a City Walls build item if their current build item will take more than 3 turns to complete. So, there is the chance of one AI causing another AI to build more troops or defences.

Sometimes, a Pillaging party can make it pretty deep into another AI's territory, which could theoretically mean Walls, Castles, and City defenders going up in multiple Cities due to another AI's Pillaging party threatening nearby Cities and thereby affecting the build items.


EDIT: With Espionage giving me full view of Hatty's Cities in a different Deity game that I'm playing, she was spamming Cavalry and Riflemen from all of her Cities when at war with another AI, even though she wasn't sending the troops out anywhere and was creating large stacks of Military Units (8, 9, or more) in most of her Cities. That was until about turn 18 into the war, after which point the war ended. As soon as the war ended, she started spamming Buildings non-stop, with the only Military Units still being produced being the ones that were 3 or less turns to completion. So, maybe in BtS, particularly on Deity, all bets are off and AIs really will spam a ton of Military Units when at war. Be warned.

 

[Pangaea]

I'm thinking I'll post t256 numbers for maximum shock value.

Nice Sushi date

how do you write that kind of a percentage, by the way? Is it 25% higher (5/20) or 33% higher (5/15)?).

If it's from 15 to 20, it would be +33%. Or, as with circumnavigation, +50% on galleys and workboats. Quite nice.

 

[WastinTime]

Here it is. T256
I only managed 43 cities + 1 settler. About 45 workers.
Hard to say if more cities would have been better than Unis/Oxford.

Spoiler :

I'm putting over 2400 beakers into Constitution this turn (2018 raw beakers if you can't read the tiny image).
Not building research!

I'm going up the tech tree in an entirely new way (for me), so it's not really useful to compare this, but...
In my 5 million game, I got Corporation T315. This game I'm scheduled to have Corporation T265! 50 turns earlier

Turns out I have 22 coastal cities (of 43), so an obsolete GLH doesn't matter much.

 

[cseanny]

Nice job .

Shame we have to wait till the gauntlet is over before you share you're new game breaking technique.

 

[Pangaea]

Damn well done, congratulations with another gauntlet win. More details would be good, and it would be far less confusing when talking about research rate, if you mentioned the actual reported beakers. I suppose the 700 was more like 550 too then, and 700-ish into whatever tech you were researching at the time?

I've played new starts today, hoping to get an even better start, but it has just drained me of energy and enthusiasm. It's borderline absurd how much must go right to get a good HoF map, and replaying 80-100 turns over and over and over again, only to throw it away because one of the 1000 things that must go perfect doesn't, is boring as sin. There are a few things I would like to improve upon, but if I need to play thousand maps to get a perfect storm again, I'd rather just continue the map I have and see how that goes. If that attempt goes to hell, it's probably better to just pull out. Not because of WT's surreally good game, but because of playing 10,000 turns in 100 turn increments is awfully boring. Groundhog Day, Civ4 style.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Nice job .

Shame we have to wait till the gauntlet is over before you share you're new game breaking technique.

WT should just say what it is because otherwise people might stop playing their own and watch. It's not like anyone else is going to do it better the WT anyway. To me it's more fun to share and compete, especially if the deadline is dragged out to six months.