G-Major 144

[WastinTime]

Am I the only player that likes Willem van Oranje as an opponent? He will trade techs when only one other AI has the tech. It is good to not be dependent on Mansa Musa for tech trading or to need to improve relations to friendly for other AIs for the Sam purpose as that can take a while.

that is a good reason. I took him out for being CREative. He's back in consideration.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I'm thinking I'd scratch:
Brennus : might build too many units
Boudica : same
Maybe Hamm

Add:
Joao : I like his usual tech choices.

Considering:
Cyrus: I used to love him in Vanilla Civ. Why not him?
Suleiman
Ramesses
Pacal
Justinian
Augustus

Got any problems with those 6? I like the AIs with IMP (more settlers)

Agree with dropping Brennus and Boudica; you definitely do not want Brennus with Iron near him. Not that they won't die as easily versus early Quechua rush as most other Leaders. They can be a thorn in your side if they survive the early Quechua rush with most of their cities intact.

I would try to avoid Opponents with the Industrious trait, so that would eliminate Ramesses and Augustus.

I don't like Pacal II's unique unit, so he's out too, maybe. Maybe, he can't get his unique unit out in time to matter versus a Quechua rush, so he may be good to use after all.

Suleiman and Justinian I are definitely good Imperialistic opponents.

 

[WastinTime]

I'm so excited! I already have my start. I'm going to play this out, however, I'm pacing myself for a 6 month finish. If I'm going to do it, I'm not going to rush it, and I'm not going to burn myself out. If the gauntlet ends in 3 months, then I missed the deadline, but my game will still be completed in less than 6 months. If I miss the Oracle, it's not the end of the world. I'm playing on. I'm also not going to stress about a crash. It doesn't happen to me much, but on Huge who knows? I'm going to finish anyway, official game or not.

Plus, if GMajor-137 is any indication, my friend Seraiel will likely spend 1 month just trying to find a start save and I'd rather not be the only one playing this monster.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I might play this gauntlet too. My goal may be far more modest like 1m; I don't feel like putting a lot of effort into it. This is similar to the Time games I've played, except for Score games you want to maximize Score ASAP rather then at 2050 AD. I won't start until g-minor 208 is over.

Good luck, WastinTime!

 

[Seraiel]

If you ask me Wastin:

Suleiman = horrible. That guy is IMP + PHI + he has a build-unit-ratio of 6/10
Cyrus = even more horrible, that guy is dangerous, he wrecked whole games of me. He has military flavour, you could compare him to Bismarck, in theory Bismarck also is a good opponent but in the reality of the game he isn't
Ramesses = ok
Pacal = no choice because of unique Spearman, you noticed that. Apart from that he's one of my favourite opponents because he's bad but can easily be gotten to friendly and can be bribed well.
Justinian = I only have very little experience with him. What I saw he's a very strong AI a little similar to Zara
Augustus = builds all World Wonders and has Praets.
Brennus = great AI because he has the lowest peaceweight of all AIs, he's the #1 hate-target of all good AIs, he gets 0 trades and remains so underdeveloped that conquering him is pieace of cake because he will have Axes when you have Cuirrassiers ^^
Boudica = 1st time I play with her, I think she's ok because she's loyal so cannot declare at pleased. She also trades when only 30% of an AI know a certain tech, but yes, I'm not sure if she's the best choice either.

 

[WastinTime]

Thinking back to GMajor-134 on Large Highlands
I remember everyone talking about how big that map was. Then, when I played, I was like, damn, this map is gigantic!

Now we're on Huge, so I was expecting the same reaction when I started to play, but it's not at all like that. I'm surrounded by at least 3 capitals within 10 tiles of mine.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

So how many AI opponents did you select?

Which AIs did you finally select?

 

[WastinTime]

So how many AI opponents did you select?

Which AIs did you finally select?

I like to discuss the merits of choosing the various AI and sharing all knowledge on them. However, I'll leave the final decision to the player. I don't want everyone to just copy what I do. It will be interesting to hear how all of the 'optional' AI behave.

 

[WastinTime]

Same goes for map options. Discuss them, but final choices remain secret for now.

 

[Seraiel]

Plus, if GMajor-137 is any indication, my friend Seraiel will likely spend 1 month just trying to find a start save and I'd rather not be the only one playing this monster.

You will laugh, but the players in S&T want me to shadow them in an AW game. I have 0 experience with AW and I need weeks for a normal game already normally. I agreed and tried to get some of them to play this Gauntlet because I'd be delighted if the competition would be as great as possible, so it could be that I really will have 1 month to create a lot of maps .

I'll probably also not stop playing if I'd miss Oracle, though missing Oracle is a big hit imo. . I've played so many Space Races with normal leaders and if one doesn't gets Oracle that's such a massive difference, and in this game it's even worse because the techs needed are fewer so less time to compensate for the loss of Oracle. I also thought about leavng Asoka out of the game just because of Oracle and I now think if I should reconsider it, I hope that I'll get a map like the one about which you wrote to me in that PM 1 year ago Wastin when you already aimed at getting 7M on Large. I hope to get a map with Hammu far away and Asoka near, 2-3 Golds, if possible by any means 2 (!) farming resources because I don't want to be forced to tech AH and I am not sure if having a PH as the centre tile is not just too much of an advantage to play without one, because of BOTM-100 in which we had that Marble-centre-tile, if I'll find a Marble or Stone hill start with 2 Golds I'm willing to resign from Freshwater and something else like i. e. a few Floodplains or not more than 2-3 Plains tiles.

We need to be really grateful that we have mapfinder, playing for the HoF without it .

 

[Seraiel]

Sry, but this is just too lol :

I started directly besides Asoka and directly stole a Worker. Then I moved the Checker in the wrong direction and thought "ok, I'm gonna move the Worker the shortest way, Asoka won't take 1 of his 2 Archers to leave the capital to re-capture that Worker" . He did . This was the result 1T later with 1 Checker:

 

[Pangaea]

With so much deserts and FPs, is that an Arid map?

The AIs can be pretty silly at times

 

[Seraiel]

With so much deserts and FPs, is that an Arid map?

The AIs can be pretty silly at times

Yes . I'm not yet sure if I won't (also?) switch to Temperate so I consider it like WastinTime also considered it, because there really are quite many deserts. If one could conquer / have only the land where there aren't the big deserts, then Arid would be a noticeable advantage, Idk. yet if all the FPs aren't a good advantage aswell, because what is more important, a size 10 city in the mid-game that can work 5 FPs and 5 other decent tiles or a size 20 city without any deserts?

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I like to discuss the merits of choosing the various AI and sharing all knowledge on them. However, I'll leave the final decision to the player. I don't want everyone to just copy what I do. It will be interesting to hear how all of the 'optional' AI behave.

Trust me, players will not just copy what you do. They will want sound reasoning for it. Perhaps you don't want to discuss such details because your scared of the competition?

I will assume that Big and Small is the favored map script with High Sea Levels, Arid Climate, and Small Islands Mixed In.

I like how toroidal world wrap affects Archipelago for Score/Time games. Would toroidal
worldwrap also be desirable for Big & Small as used in this gauntlet? How does the worldwrap affect maintenance again? Flat is cheapest (not valid for HOF B&S), Cylindrical is moderately expensive, and Toroidal is very expensive.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

In the Arid vs Temperate Climate question, what counts the most is the total number of food sources, since your food corporation and the number of its resources are really what will determine population at the end. The big question though, is will a Temperate climate allow one to finish the game earlier enough to offset the Arid Climate advantage. My guess is it will not, because Arid Climate will have more Floodplains and we will favor settling on Floocplains over Grassland. On the other hand, not all our cities will have Floodplains and that favors the Temperate Climate. Of course the majority of our Empire will be one tile islands and we will always get at least 2F from that regardless of Climate.

 

[Seraiel]

Cylindrical is 1.5 times of Flat and Tororidal would be 2* Flat, that's really not advantegous. I also wrote that you need to take low sea-level. You need to have the maximum possible continent with minimalistic islands to (ideal case) have 200-300 island-cities in the end. You can gift away land on the continent at that time in the game, you only need the land on the continent to produce all of the Settlers + the Galleons.

Thx for making the point about the endgame empire being 1-tile island cities . I wrote that myself but didn't realize that gifting away the continent land in the end to get more island cities ofc. means that the continental land doesn't play a major role in the end. Iirc. though the main advantage of Arid was the lower population-count, because I believe that a lower population-count ment that a higher gain is possible and I think that it was the relative gain that gave the points and not the absolute score.

I played several maps just to get a feeling for the round btw. . One of the greatest difficulties seems to be to find AIs that have cities that also have Gold(s) , because even with having 2 starting Golds, paying the maintenance for a 10 city wide-spread empire at 2000BC is not easy. In one game I had troubles reaching Writing. In one game Gandhi btw. built Oracle 2560BC . I love to be motivated to play a round with Incans again though, they make a lot of fun .

 

[WastinTime]

A huge map makes larger 'tiny islands'. Not as many one tile islands as a smaller map. Lots more ocean. Galley-circumnav is not likely.
It doesn't seem like there are many more islands than standard or large.

 

[Pangaea]

Here is something I made a while back, perhaps when GM 137 was going on. I think it was for B&S (if not, Terra). As you can see, very similar amount of forests, but naturally a great deal more jungle on tropical.

Spoiler :

For some of the resources, particularly fish, there is a big swing, so much depends on the individual map too. But in general Temperate yields better Mining, while Tropical yields better Sushi. For a score game, I would therefore think Tropical is a better choice.

Of course this isn't statistically significant, with a sample of only 10 maps each, so take it for what it is.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Pangaea:

Tropical allows for a larger population but score is calculated on relative population increase, so the score is i. e. higher if the map has a lower population count = disadvantage for tropical.

 

[yyeah]

what a monster Gauntlet ... wow