G-Major 144

[Pangaea]

@ 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.

I see. So a (potentially) better Sushi won't counter balance the fact the 'base' is set higher due to Arid having a lower population score.

Don't think I'll play this, I'd go jumping mad from all the city micro and settler movement (tip: coastal HE site with easy 7 Galleons might be nice). But it will be interesting to follow, and I hope you guys write a bit once your games get off the ground. I understand if you don't, because the competition is bound to be rife, but it would be more interesting for us "lurkers"

 

[WastinTime]

I'll likely do a nice writeup with pictures if it goes well. Here are some teasers:

double food, triple gold, triple wine coastal start. (all gold is not on rivers, all wine/food are) Marble is 3 tiles away, but will not be in 3rd ring.

NO plainshill, etc. for my city site

Close neighbors: Justinian, Asoka, Vicky, Joao, Elizabeth, and someone light-blue (america or persia). That should be the entire Northern Hemisphere, above the jungle. Sadly all the bad guys are far south and could be a big problem conquering later.

First conquest: Justinian... Who happens to also have (had) the Budda holy city! . His capital also has stone. (so does Asoka's)

Copper will be in my 3rd ring. No one else seems to have copper in the North, but I can't see everything. I can only assume that if there is copper just outside Liz's and Joao's land, that they won't have a 2nd one nearby. I know Asoka and Vicky can't have any.

Goal: 20 cities by turn 150!! -- 2000 BC
Trying something new. This goes against my past preachings which say to limit the first expansion to ~8 cities on standard/small. I've had to adapt a lot for Huge. I'm hoping I can survive the inevitable economy crash.

 

[elitetroops]

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.

If you can raise the domination limit to >70% with colonies (76% is the maximum possible), then quite a large chunk of the continental land will come into play as well, right?

I probably won't play this, and if I do, I wouldn't be competing with those aiming for 10M points anyway. I'd be happy to just finish any huge/deity domination game, bonus if I have sushi spread all around. If any civ was allowed, I'd be much more inclined to play.

 

[Pangaea]

Wow, that's a capital and a half Sounds like an excellent start, WastinTime Always nice to know you will have both stone and marble nearby-ish, makes getting those wonders easier, although HC is kinda easy anyway.

Having tried Immortal stomping with Persia in the GM 137 game, it will be interesting to see how much better HC's Qs are. Don't think I've ever tried that actually. Only time I recall playing with HC was when I was practically a newb, in a Nobles Club game aaaaaages ago, where I eventually won Culture.

 

[WastinTime]

If you can raise the domination limit to >70% with colonies (76% is the maximum possible), then quite a large chunk of the continental land will come into play as well, right?

I probably won't play this, and if I do, I wouldn't be competing with those aiming for 10M points anyway. I'd be happy to just finish any huge/deity domination game, bonus if I have sushi spread all around. If any civ was allowed, I'd be much more inclined to play.

Right, that was my secret I let out recently which is why I knew I could make the jump from 5-million to 7 million (large map) years ago. That trick really only works well on large/huge. I didn't use it on the Standard/5 million game.

 

[Seraiel]

That is some motivation there from WastinTime...

Now I only need to decide if I'm motivated or if I'm "too much motivated" ...

 

[WastinTime]

Seraiel always seems interested in how the first battle went...

Against 2 archers...
lost at 20%
lost at 20%
lost at 40%
Fortunately, that's only 90h in units spent on a size 3 city.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Did I say that? I'm sure I did, but when did I say that? Cus I have learned a lot in the last 18 months and now I'm considering BW. It is torture waiting for an AI to get Alpha and BW.

With all your gold plus food, why not? Especially if your goal is 20 cities by 2000BC.

If I play, my goal would be 10 Million.

10 Million? 10 Million might not be the best CIV player but it's indisputably better than the best.

Go WT go!

 

[Seraiel]

There's some progress there Wastin, first you lose at 20% and then at 40%. Try losing the next battles at 60% and then advance to losing battles at 80 and 100%, there are few people that tried that intentionally, you can be very unique Wastin! Don't you wanna be very unique and try to lose at the highest possible odds?

Your exceptional start doesn't scare me. What I find a little dubious is that you wrote that you will try to get 20 cities 'til 2000BC. Generally I'm thankful for that information, because it's like a personal checkpoint at which a player can judge how much sense continuing his round makes. I'm a little dubious about that number though, 20 sounds a little too much for me, but after GM-134 I doubt that you're trolling us but think that you really believe that that is possible. It'll be interesting to see how many of those cities you actually got in the end .

 

[WastinTime]

What I find a little dubious is that you wrote that you will try to get 20 cities 'til 2000BC.

Don't use 20 as a pace number. I only looked at the surrounding AI and counted the number of cities I could get plus about 3-4 settlers of my own for my map.

I don't have to tell you that getting 20 cities can be done easily by just cranking out the Q's. But what is optimal? and what is optimal for the map you rolled?
When I said it was my goal to get 20 by T150, I should have said : "It'd nice to get a map that can maintain 20 cities at T150." In my case, I have not found a single other gold/gems/silver yet in the northern hemisphere I'm finding it hard to justify gathering cities too early when they have zero coins.

However, I'm not backpedalng (yet) on my goal. I will just have to act quickly after fishing, currency, and GreatLighthouse are online. Fishing is really important on some maps. When you don't have it, you really miss it.

 

[WastinTime]

10 Million? 10 Million might not be the best CIV player but it's indisputably better than the best.

I also don't want to backpedal on this goal (yet), but I did kinda forget that Huge maps have an increased tech cost. It's slower in the critical beginning phase, but I"m hoping that the extra cities and lower distance maintenance will snowball and allow Sushi to come in at the same time or ideally we'd see a new sushi-speed record. Anything before T315 I would consider record-breaking.

update 8/20/16: Got sushi T282! I'll aim for T275 next time.

 

[WastinTime]

. Oracle + Mids + GLH is almost impossible normally, but from my current perspective I'd think that I'd not even continue a game in which I don't get that three..

I'm wondering why we should even bother building mids. Extra happy is maybe more important than the specialist boost...til about t225.

 

[Seraiel]

I'm wondering why we should even bother building mids. Extra happy is maybe more important than the specialist boost...til about t225.

I learned from you that all the little things count, so to get Sushi 500BC it's not enough to simply get the GLH and build Cottages. One needs to try to get the GLH, the Mids, the Oracle, early Maths, Mansa going Philosophy, Education-bulb, spam Cottages, hire Scientists and all other things that help to get a better date. Mids is not the super-wonder that some players want to make it, Oracle is also not the ultimate wonder that wins a game on its own...

I also think that the extra is more important thatn the extra but in an Incan-game the rules are differently towards a normal game. It's basically very game-specific, but it's possible that one i. e. may not capture enough Workers to improve all tiles in the speed that is needed and then it's great if one can hire Specialists, or all the Specialists one hires in all the GP-Farms, if those all give 3 additional then 30 Specialists are still 90 / turn and over i. e. 200T 90 additional BPT are 18000 ... 18000 could be a whole tech = 3-4T or whatever, 3-4T could decide the game, I don't understand why you're writing this because you are normally the one that favours the mids... I don't see the mids as very strong, but think that they're stronger in this specific scenario...

 

[Pangaea]

Of course this is far from a guarantee, but I like to capture the Mids. It's so terribly expensive to build (especially without stone, but even with it). The extra happy early on is certainly nice, but you can't really take proper advantage of the boosted specialists until the empire is big and well developed.

Wonders are x3 on Marathon right? So even with stone, it costs 750 . Those hammers can go into quite a few other things early on. But I'll let the experts dish out this one, and retreat to lurk and learn mode

 

[WastinTime]

I learned from you that all the little things count,

if those all give 3 additional then 30 Specialists are still 90 / turn and over i. e. 200T 90 additional BPT are 18000 ... 18000 could be a whole tech = 3-4T or whatever, 3-4T could decide the game, I don't understand why you're writing this because you are normally the one that favours the mids... I don't see the mids as very strong, but think that they're stronger in this specific scenario...

Yep, little things count, and I'm hypothesizing that in this game, the investment in Mids is not the correct move for me on my map/my game. I'm even thinking it should be always left for the AI to build. Skipping the mids this time is one of the 'little things' that is going to help my game. I'm keeping an open mind and adapting. With my small-ish mainland, I expect to be able to grab the mids with a surgical strike team in less than 10 turns after it's built. (update: captured 1 turn after it was built) If I figure out Mansa is building it then, I might finish it myself. More adapting

A quick check in the HoF shows the mids might go between t180 and t200. Owning them by t210 is plenty early. Close your eyes and picture your empire at t150. How many specialists are you running? zero? maybe two? You should be whipping stuff at this point, not running specialists.

I've got several other outside-the-box ideas that this game might use. It should be a surprising writeup in the end if I haven't given away all my secrets by then.

 

[Folket]

I'm confused as to some of the comments here. Is not score victory when you you play all 1500 turns and have highest score? How do you plan to win a by score when triggering domination?

 

[Pangaea]

No, that is Time victory. Score is simply trying to get as high score as possible, independent of victory condition. But given the nature of the beast, domination is the way to go.

 

[Folket]

Victory Condition: Score (though all victory conditions must be enabled)

I see. Then the quote seems very misleading since the "victory condition" is unrelated to the "victory conditions". Next time I suggest
Victory Condition: any (though all victory conditions must be enabled), ranked by score

 

[Pangaea]

Actually tried to generate some maps for this, but after about 200, there wasn't one map that looked worthy of playing. These huge beasts take time to generate too, so not as fast as normal to actually find a few maps that may be HoF ready. But it's probably for the best that I don't get sucked into this.

 

[elitetroops]

Next time I suggest
Victory Condition: any (though all victory conditions must be enabled), ranked by score

I think that would be much more clear as well, and I think I've seen it sometime in previous highscore games. Victory Condition: any (though all victory conditions must be enabled) The highest score wins.

Btw. staff didn't answer my question yet. Being Inca, does this count as a gauntlet for EQM or not? I don't see any reason why it couldn't count, as the score you get is only compared to other gauntlet entries, so no unfair advantage from playing Inca.