G-Major 144

[Pangaea]

Less feedback on my big update than I hoped for, but I'll answer the points raised.

@Pangaea: What is Mansa researching?

Mansa is researching Meditation. There is one turn left. He has got Alpha now, and I sold him Mono earlier. Hope he picks something good next. If I revolt to OR+Hindu (3 turn anarchy), I should know what it is by the time I can start researching again.

Spoiler :

I personally think you build too much military Pangaea but maybe I build too little, I only have 12 active Checkers in my current game and morely try to have reinforcements in place when I lose some of them, 22 active Checkers seems very much for me.

Asoka building the Mids (if he does that) is an advantage because he can build them faster than you and you can capture them cheaper than self-building would cost.

22 Qs sounds like a lot, but it doesn't feel that way. Especially after losing at least 10 against those two wall cities, including a Cover CR2 guy at winning odds. 22 aren't "active", though, in the sense that I can use them for warfare. 2-3 are exploring, and maybe 5 others are on MP duty, or trying to lure out archers close to empty cities.

Very sorry to hear that you lost 8 guys in a single attack. That hurts. But it sounds like you have an absolutely amazing game going. That capital is better than I could dream of. I started to think about Oracling CS, but like WT, I needed Currency badly, so had to do that, even before finishing Math. Doing CoL too would have taken way too long, although the Oracle would have been safe for a long time, as nobody had Priesthood and only 3 guys had Meditation and one Poly.

It's understandable that WT and Seraiel don't want to share a lot from their games, it's going to be you two up against each other unless other big guns join, but I still hope this thread will develop a bit more like in the GM 137 case, so that the less experienced of us can learn a bit along the way.

20 cities by T150 was impossible for me, and I'm already miiiiiiiles behind CS at roughly the same time, so naturally my game won't be competitive with yours at all, but I'm somewhat encouraged by comparing with Replay 5, where I'm not horribly far off the pace. If I could score 2, maybe 3, million, that would be pretty cool

So what say you on strategy next, Swords and try to Hatty and her company of Axes? One of her cities are on hills, but not the main ones from what I can tell. She happens to have settled on top of iron, but doesn't have IW yet.

Overview map (big):

Spoiler :

Hattystan:

Spoiler :

 

[WastinTime]

After seeing the slow AI tech in my game and now seeing your screenshot showing no AI has priesthood either (t156), and then Seraiel's Oracle/CS. Makes me think the strategy on Huge should be Oracle/CS instead of Currency. I may have to start over or maybe finish this one as practice and play one more. My game is going quite well, but I know how much better it could have been if I had known how differently this plays on Huge. It's a shame cus there are a lot of things I really like about my map and my start. But then again, I didn't get any commerce after my 3 gold start.
I'd rather have a 2 gold start (so the capital can grow) and then get 1 gold in several captured cities. So many what-ifs.

 

[WastinTime]

@pangaea. How about attacking West of your capital? The cities will be less distance maint.

However, if you have a reasonable size, partial army already down near hatty then take her out too. Check first to see if she will build you the GLH or Mids or something.

Assuming you will have GLH, then you should take the northern coastline over to Brennus. You want to have water access to the West ocean anyway.

Maybe let Pericles live to chop the jungle even tho the cities are low maint.

 

[elitetroops]

I wouldn't give up that game. 8 quechua = 240h. That's not even 1 settler. Losing the promoted ones hurts, but just work with your golds and move on to the next unit (sword? elephant? HorseArcher?) maybe Maces for you.

Thanks for putting things into perspective! Now your warrior rush from that earlier GMajor makes more sense. You can get 10 warriors for the price of a settler, and 10 warriors can be enough to grab you a city.

As a test, I opened up a random 2000BC emperor level save and worldbuildered in 10 aggressive warriors outside every AI city. Cities were defended by 1-2 archers, some on hills, some with 40% cultural defenses. 66% of the attacks succeeded, those that failed mostly left one archer at < 0.5 strength. Only one city had 2 archers still standing (both at < 0.5 strength). 12 warriors was enough to capture any city at that point of the game. A couple of cities (flatland, 0% cultural defenses, one archer) fell to only 3 warriors. In other words, if you can manage to attack the AI when they have at most 2 archers in the target city, warrior rushing can be an efficient strategy on marathon, regardless of difficulty. But if you mess up and bump into 3-4 archers (more likely the higher the difficulty), then there is no hope for your rush...

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Idk. what kind of protective shield you have WastinTime, but in my game I oracled Civil Service and I had 8 Golds, GLH almost safe, 10 cities and the opponent I was fighting had no strategics and all of that before 2000BC and then I lose 8 Checkers of which 2 had CR3 and 1 CR2 + a GG against a non-Hills-city with 4 defenders.

I'm not gonna write 1 more thing in this thread anymore until the HoF staff has answered and I'm not gonna give a single info about my game anymore. If you win this WastinTime because you played better, then I will respect you acknoledge your effort, but if I don't get a fair chance in this game and if the RNG continues to funk me, which it has done for 5y, then this game is gonna be the last game of CIV that I've ever played and then CFC won't see me again.

It's years since I complained about one thing, but playing competetively is not possible if playing safe is already a great risk and then playing CIV doesn't make any sense for me anymore.

Seraiel, you have a gauntlet winning game going. Please don't be discouraged by your brief run of bad luck. Overall, it sounds like you have had great luck so far. Win this game and please stick with CFC. I left for 18 months and now regret that.

Have a spectacular day!

 

[WastinTime]

I know what I might do (especially if we get the 3 month extension)...

The first 200 turns are the most fun. Maybe I'll play 2 games up to t200 and then finish the best one. Why go thru all that sushi spread if you think the start could have been better?

 

[Pangaea]

@pangaea. How about attacking West of your capital? The cities will be less distance maint.

However, if you have a reasonable size, partial army already down near hatty then take her out too. Check first to see if she will build you the GLH or Mids or something.

Assuming you will have GLH, then you should take the northern coastline over to Brennus. You want to have water access to the West ocean anyway.

Maybe let Pericles live to chop the jungle even tho the cities are low maint.

Been away all day and only managed to play a few turns this morning. Revolted to Hindu+OR and chopped out the GLH. Mansa was frustrating. First started on Currency. I gave him that. Then started on Math, the only tech he could research that I already had. I then gave him that, and he started on CoL. So I'll continue with MC. Then try to chop out the HG somewhere. Mids will go to Asoka. It can't be anything else. 1200.

It will take some time before I can conquer more, I fear, because Quechuas won't do any more. Need Swords first, and preferably some Barracks too (none so far). But with that done, I'm still thinking about Hatty next. Pericles has good land that I definitely want, despite it being inland, but it has to wait a bit, which will also give him time to chop some jungle. Same with Victoria really. Good land, but it would be nice if she chopped down some of the jungle. I need to get towards the west though, sooner or later.

I'll play this a bit further and see how the Quechua -> (probably) Sword transition goes. But seeing that it would have been possible to Oracle CS, that would obviously have been stronger play. It's tough though, because the economy is in a bad state without early-ish Currency. But maybe ignore early Alpha, do Math, chop out GLH sooner, and then do CoL and Oracle CS. The AIs will get to Alpha at some point, although perhaps not until T140-150. Backfilling was nice in my game, and selling so many cheap techs for decent amounts of gold, but getting to CS well before T200 would be extremely strong too. Probably worth trying if I were to attempt another start.

I do have a question though: what would be best to do with "useless" cities that I capture, instead of razing them? There is city gift, yes, but for what purpose? Diplo? Spying? Allow later gifting of cities to prevent domination?

At this point it's quite limited anyway, because most/all AIs have 3+ cities.

 

[WastinTime]

I do have a question though: what would be best to do with "useless" cities that I capture, instead of razing them? There is city gift, yes, but for what purpose? Diplo? Spying? Allow later gifting of cities to prevent domination?

Oh so many benefits. The three you mentioned barely make the top 10.

Let's see. Off the top of my head ...
1) cripple an AI's research (careful this can be a bad thing)
2) The AI will build roads to you which you can use to conquer them
3) AI sends a bunch of workers to your doorstep.
4) AI sends defenders out into the wide open plains.
5) Even if defenders do arrive, they are in a 0% defense city
6) The AI can grow the city faster than you can (use Deity handicap to your advantage). You will like get the city back at > 1 pop.
7) AI can build a granary (terrace) faster than you can (^^ ditto). You have a decent chance of keeping it when captured.
8) AI builds workboats too
9) Early in the game, (after writing-before sailing) you can get +trade route
10) free land improvements

 

[LowtherCastle]

Why go thru all that sushi spread

No kidding. Sushi.

 

[Seraiel]

No kidding. Sushi.

Sushi

 

[LowtherCastle]

Sushi

Oh, you mean Sushi ?

Spoiler :

Yes, Sushi spread.

 

[Seraiel]

Hey, Wastin!

Think of this picture when you play your game:

Or this!

Still knowing what your plans for the next 20T were?

When I reach endgame, I'm gonna repeat this sentence to me over and over "the internet says spreading Sushi makes fun, it must be true, I'm just having fun"

 

[Pangaea]

Mmmm. That's the kind of Sushi I'd gladly eat

Oh so many benefits. The three you mentioned barely make the top 10.

Let's see. Off the top of my head ...
1) cripple an AI's research (careful this can be a bad thing)
2) The AI will build roads to you which you can use to conquer them
3) AI sends a bunch of workers to your doorstep.
4) AI sends defenders out into the wide open plains.
5) Even if defenders do arrive, they are in a 0% defense city
6) The AI can grow the city faster than you can (use Deity handicap to your advantage). You will like get the city back at > 1 pop.
7) AI can build a granary (terrace) faster than you can (^^ ditto). You have a decent chance of keeping it when captured.
8) AI builds workboats too
9) Early in the game, (after writing-before sailing) you can get +trade route
10) free land improvements

Thanks, this is very useful Particularly the road network would be very useful in my case (to the west) if it's still possible to gift away a city to somebody way over that way.

Edit: Here's hoping this works out. Gifted away a city to Roosevelt, who is quite literally on the other side of the world. Only AI with 3 cities, and I didn't want to gift a hill city to the close AIs, like Mansa or Hatty.

Spoiler :

Also, here's a tough guy

 

[Pangaea]

Disappointing input in this thread this time round. Are you all/both playing, and too worried about giving the other clues about your progress?

Whatever is up, I'm plugging along with my puny attempt, and close to T200 I'm finally ready to attack Hatty (I hope). Swords usually underwhelm me, but I have to try.

Mansa is being a good boy, finally, and teching CS, so I'm going up to Music instead.

Wish me luck!

 

[WastinTime]

I'm not concerned about sharing info/progress for competitive reasons.
a) I'm busy playing, so I don't feel like reporting much
b) I don't want anyone to quit their game because they perceive they're behind my pace. Just like I'm considering scrapping my game because I didin't go for Oracle/CS. I feel I'm off the best I could do. Sometimes you can't tell what is better: Seraiel's CS or my expansion.
c) Seraiel said he wouldn't post til we get official word on the 3 month extension. I won't complain either way, but we do need a decision sooner rather than later. If anyone completes their game in 3 months, then it's not fair to them to have a last minute extension. It's now or never....please decide.

I also just passed t200. Considering playing a 2nd game to t200 before choosing my favorite. Kinda depends on the extension.
I can do 700 bpt! without building any research.
I captured the hindu shrine a few turns after Gandhi built it. It's at 32 I may go for the budda shrine too, not sure.

 

[Pangaea]

Yeaah... Swords still suck worse than a 1-dollar whore.

Spoiler :

Game over? Might as well have attacked with Quechuas. Useless shits.

 

[Pangaea]

I'm not concerned about sharing info/progress for competitive reasons.
a) I'm busy playing, so I don't feel like reporting much
b) I don't want anyone to quit their game because they perceive they're behind my pace. Just like I'm considering scrapping my game because I didin't go for Oracle/CS. I feel I'm off the best I could do. Sometimes you can't tell what is better: Seraiel's CS or my expansion.
c) Seraiel said he wouldn't post til we get official word on the 3 month extension. I won't complain either way, but we do need a decision sooner rather than later. If anyone completes their game in 3 months, then it's not fair to them to have a last minute extension. It's now or never....please decide.

I also just passed t200. Considering playing a 2nd game to t200 before choosing my favorite. Kinda depends on the extension.
I can do 700 bpt! without building any research.
I captured the hindu shrine a few turns after Gandhi built it. It's at 32 I may go for the budda shrine too, not sure.

That's a bit more than my ~250 at close to the same time then. No idea how that is supposed to be possible, but hope you post a write-up of sorts when this endurance race is over, so us newbs can learn too

Would have been nice to capture a shrine, especially one that good. I have 3 holy cities as they happened to be close, but nobody had time to build a shrine in them

Sounds like you're doing really well so far, and good luck with the continuation.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Give the holy cities back to the AI, so they can build shrines for you and then capture them back.

 

[WastinTime]

Yeaah... Swords still suck

yikes. with CR1? or no promo?

With no promo, I would expect to lose 7-8 on that city. It's just too many tough units on a hill w/ 40% (that's 90%+) and 150% for the Ax.

Your chariots should have made it enough for cleanup, but you really had some bad luck there. Sorry. I hope you won't quit the gauntlet: either play it out or start a new one.

You got a lot of hill cities. IIRC, you also had a nearby AI settle ON metal. I think a new map is in order. Next time, send out Q's and park them on the metals (or pillage nearby). Capture 1-2 cities first to get some cash and those critical first cities. Then fan out.

 

[Pangaea]

Give the holy cities back to the AI, so they can build shrines for you and then capture them back.

I've killed everybody on that side of the world, so I can't really give them away (maybe to Hatty), and the cities are good.

yikes. with CR1? or no promo?

With no promo, I would expect to lose 7-8 on that city. It's just too many tough units on a hill w/ 40% (that's 90%+) and 150% for the Ax.

Your chariots should have made it enough for cleanup, but you really had some bad luck there. Sorry. I hope you won't quit the gauntlet: either play it out or start a new one.

You got a lot of hill cities. IIRC, you also had a nearby AI settle ON metal. I think a new map is in order. Next time, send out Q's and park them on the metals (or pillage nearby). Capture 1-2 cities first to get some cash and those critical first cities. Then fan out.

All Swords were CR1, one of the Axes had a promotion too, and I picked CR1. Most Chariots as well (Combat1). Sickening bad luck. It's stuff like this that ruin the game for me, too often. Getting arse-raped in this stage of the game (or even earlier) is pretty much a "Game Over" screen in a competitive game. But if you lose a couple cannons at 95%, it doesn't matter too much, because you'll have 10 more behind them.

Would take a long time to get a new army after that crap, so probably pointless to continue, which sucks because things had gone well up to now (at least until I think about you have 3x my research rate lol). Lots of cities were on hills though, so that was a pain. Especially Washington had a huge hard-on for those things, and seemed to hunt out every hill on the map to found cities there, even a gold hill ffs!

What should I have done here though? I only had 13 cities approaching T200, so had to get more sooner rather than later. AIs always tech Construction, but should I have done that instead? Would at least have lost fewer units that way, but it also feels like "lost" beakers when I can get it for free later. But needing Maces before transitioning from Quechua warfare would take a long time.

Back to the horrid wait of Mapfinder then

As an aside, I've checked out a few maps with Low and High sea level, and damned if I can see much difference. Land (in score chart) is similar too, which I found odd.