G-Major 144

[Pangaea]

Thanks for the comments WastinTime. If you say it's looking good, then I'll pretend I haven't wasted 20 hours on that map

Unfortunately Pericles got capital BFC copper, so no realistic chance to stop him. But glad I saw Roosevelt had desert iron (desert with 1 ), and I managed to take him out on the way back to Lincoln. Kind of regret gifting away a city to Hatty now, but the economy was in dire straits, so I figured it was a decent idea.

Very much agree Mids is unneeded so early. As long as you get a few happies, primarily from gold and gems, you'll have a decent happy cap early on, and you won't be running many specialists anyway. Mids can wait. The issue with not self-building it is that it can pop up anywhere. I'm more concerned about GLH, though, as having that for e.g. 50-100 more turns would be a lot of commerce.

fyi, you realize that 700 bpt was not at -0 gpt. That was just my max science output (not building research and not running scientists) burning major cash.

On this point, however, I naturally realise you're not breaking even with 700 , but it's still jaw dropping to me how it's possible to have such a (max) research rate so early in the game, when I'm struggling to get 250, or roughly a third of your rate. I suppose it means early Colossus, GLH, island cities and CS, with focus on cottages, maybe even a pre-T200 academy, but also conquering a staggering amount of cities. I've not been able to pull off that, but 15 cites well before T200 is better than the last game at least, and in this one almost all cities were on flatland, which makes things more manageable.

Bit of a kick in the shins that Mansa is so weak, but kinda glad Willem got the Mids before Mansa could, so I didn't have to kill off Mansa early-ish. Maybe he will get his REX in order at some point. He has focused too much on (trying to build) wonders, and too little on getting cities. But Mansa is Mansa, and he seems able to research well almost no matter how seemingly puny his base is.

You're probably right that I should stop working 2 golds in the capital. Didn't always work all golds in the previous map, but there were more to take from then, while here I "only" have 3, so felt I needed to work them all the time, especially pre-Currency as I was breaking even at 0-10%. It's time to grow it a bit faster now, and I need to cottage the rest of those FPs.

Thanks for the encouragement It's easy to get a little "down" when thinking about what has gone wrong, and how wildly far ahead of the curve you are, and probably Seraiel once he gets a good map.

Are anybody but us three playing this beast btw? Don't be shy

 

[WastinTime]

I hope others decide to play this. As they can see if reading along, the first 200 turns are quick. It's actually a very fulfilling game of Civ since you have to play the 'whole' game. Planning wars and maintaining reasonable diplo, building wonders, etc.

Then it's only 100+ turns to sushi and around 100 turns of sushi spread and expansion. The last 100 being the most tedious. But if you can do 5 turns/day, you're done in ~3 weeks.

I can't decide if I should just finish my first game, or start a 2nd. Might be nice to get one done even tho I'd feel like I could beat that by 500,000 pts--which is probably harder to do than it seems in my head.

 

[yyeah]

Iam thinking of it but this game is so huge and i dont rly like such a long games, in othear hand finishing this would have a huge impact on my skill like gm137 has.
Problem is its hard to play such a monster game with only left hand preety frustrating.

I c allso that you have a lot of fun here 9 pages allrdy ... hmm lets make 1st step and start reading.

I can't decide if I should just finish my first game, or start a 2nd. Might be nice to get one done even tho I'd feel like I could beat that by 500,000 pts--which is probably harder to do than it seems in my head.

Its impossible to play perfect game in civ4 i assume that you want to do it, i know this felling , but simply one cant win vs rng.
What i meen is...
If in your "perfect" game 10M its score witch you can get, loosing 500k is nothing, and probably best what you can get ... realistic.

 

[Pangaea]

Despite what I wrote yesterday, I'm having yet another go, playing truly quickly this time, to see where I may be in T100-150. Capital not great (no real food, but I got a 3rd lucky gold by moving NW), but the land around isn't... bad.

Spoiler :

The one thing I want to improve upon most is to get the GLH, and I've put the sights on Thebes for that. Attacked Gandhi and stole two workers there before he could improve the stone, but already have both stone and marble (when Agra grows to 2 and I can take it). More cities on hills here (both Bibracte and Chicago) and Mansa is in the tundra again (NW edge), but I'll play this for maybe another 100 turns and see where I stand then. 11 golds in the near vicinity is kind of decent Although I may have to backfill most of those myself.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Panagaea:

Mansa in Tundra is np, Mansa only needs an acceptable amount of land so he i. e. must not be blocked in with 3 cities but the quality of the land is not so much important for a Deity-AI, the number of cities is though.

Regarding the map I think or have a feeling that it's a good map, there seems to be food almost everywhere so there isn't a huge chunk of land that you cannot settle because there is no food, if I were in your position I'd search for a map with even more golds but 3 golds + Oracle Currency is definitely a good approach and if your battles go well and you can get many cities that can counterbalance i. e. not Oracling CS. Being slower in research in the beginning but getting more cities may even be stronger in the end because it allows to trade longer with the AIs.
What's also good on that map is the closeness towards the coast and the city in the NE has tons of Furs but also a few Forests with which you could build the GLH.

So that you understand this right: I only count the golds that AIs found cities near so that I can work. 11 golds is a lot, yes, so I didn't want to say that a map needs even more golds and that that map is poor or whatever, CIV is very much about how fast one can get something though and with no cities being there you'll probably need to self-build some Settlers so after Checker-wars. Getting those golds is a huge gain though, so prioritize that Settlers for that.
Silver and Gems being available is great too.

Be careful with the Hills-cities, it's possible to need 3-4 Checkers against 1 hills-Archer. If you have the possibility, lure out defenders from those cities by leaving a neighbouring city empty, if a city only has 2-3 Archers then 10 Checkers should fail ofc. if (careful) the city doesn't has Walls + the Archers are promoted, then needing 4-5 Checkers is realistic imo.

Good luck to you.

 

[Pangaea]

Thanks for the comments Seraiel. I've played that map today, but in the end it didn't work out

Took out Gandhi and Hatty, and then declared on Washington because he had horse. Unfortunately he got out one chariot before I could bust it, and that one guy caused quite a stir. Eventually managed to kill him by sacrificing a worker and 2 checkers. Took his capital and a few other cities, leaving the hills for last. Then Asoka Oracled CoL out of the blue, in T142, which meant game over. Didn't even get Math until after that, because the economy was so hosed. Throwing in the towel shortly before T150, with 9 cities, because there is no point when I can't get Currency.

The map hunt continues, or I can move back to the one I posted about yesterday, where I have 15 cities. That should be an okay base I think, although not spectacular.

Kind of wonder if I'm doing things right in terms of builds. I'm building checkers everywhere in this early phase, nothing else. Can lead to high unit maintenance with 20+ checkers, but I've found I need them too. However, do you guys do it differently, like starting on terraces earlier?

 

[Pangaea]

OMG. I loaded the saves from WT's and Seraiel's old games. I'm scared now

Do I really want to play a game like that, with 200+ cities?


edit: Playing this as a SGOTM would be more manageable. Less than 3 months for something like that... not sure it's possible. The lag alone will be bru-tal.

 

[Pangaea]

Sometimes it's not meant to last very long.

Spoiler :

 

[Seraiel]

My story continues, I just lost 8 Checkers against 2 Archers in a 40% hills-city. There is just nothing I can do, I play all maps that even remotely have a chance eat being competetive and in the mentioned case I even waited 'til Brennus expanded, what am I supposed to do in such a situation? Give up a map because one AI has one city on a hill? Attack 2 Archers with 15 Checkers and then lose all 15?

Don't know what to say anymore, it's becoming more and more ridiculous, first I lose 8 Checkers against 3 Archers, the 10 against 3 and now 8 (2 CR2) against 2... I had the opposite situation today aswell like winning 3* 20%...

When you noticed the lag btw. Pangaea, do yourself a favour, press Space once and look how long the game needs .

 

[Pangaea]

Sorry to hear that. Hill cities are horrible, especially 40% ones, but when waging extermination war against AIs, you kinda have to take them on in the end. This is where it really hurts when the suiciders don't scratch the defenders. Especially three times in a row... grrr.

I've now spent all 2-gold starts, without getting another good go at it. No point with 1-golds in this league. Can always go back to the game from yesterday, as it wasn't bad at all.

I have one query though, about map settings. I've looked at quite a few Huge B&S with Low vs High sea level, and darned if I can see any obvious difference. Both have about 2900 land tiles and similar population. Both are difficult/impossible to circumnavigate pre-caravels. Both have loads of islands (obviously), and with both settings they look pretty similar in size and composition. Not a lot of 1-tilers, and sometimes fairly big islands, but most of them are small and spread all over the oceans.

I hoped High sea level would result in more small islands, but it doesn't look that way.

Could be High sea level has a higher chance of creating separate big land masses, but I'm not sure, because low sea level can do that too.

 

[Seraiel]

That question was asked in GM-137 iirc. . I somehow remember that high sealevel created smaller continents and bigger islands and I think that low sealevel creates a bigger continent while the islands are smaller = same population and land but low sealevel being the better choice... Logically this makes no sense to me but from the perspective of map-design I can understand it. For me low sealevel is the obvious choice, because more land in total also means that one can have more land without triggering domination.

Regarding circumnaviation I believe the same but Noble Zarkon demonstrated that it is possible and even on Huge sometimes. Circumnavigating the world with Workboats is imo. again the logical choice because Workboats gain the ability to sail over ocean tiles when having the tech of Astronomy. I assume that Workboats gain more distance than Caravelles could catch up in between Optics and Astronomy because Astronomy has a very high priority in this game as settling the islands with Galleys would need more boats because of the transport capabilities and Galleys also are slower and on Huge many islands cannot even be reached by them.

 

[Pangaea]

Had another attempt yesterday, despite it being only 1 gold

Had Gems too, though, and Marble.

Economy was in such a state, but eventually managed to limp to Priesthood, after extorting Meditation from Boudica, and Oracled Currency. That took us from +5 at 0% to +25, which is a slight improvement. But the big thing with Currency is all the gold you can trade for. BOOM, and suddenly we have 800.

Surprised I got so far away from the capital when conquering, but you kinda have to go after who is weak, and where your army is, and Boudica didn't have slavery yet, so off we went.

Spoiler :

Can you spot the missing AI though?

Now debating whether to go after Peter or Elizabeth. Elizabeth would be easier and cheaper on maintenance (though I'd first need to move the remains of the army back there), but Peter would be coastal, and I don't have a single coastal city yet. GLH not gone yet, but it probably will soon enough. The one thing I wanted to improve upon isn't going so well

Capital doesn't have food, but lots of FPs. Here it may actually not be such a bad thing to have the Gems, because it's food neutral and gives high commerce. May need to stop working the gold soon, and grow it a bit faster.

Spoiler :

Both Novgorod and St Petersburg are hills. London is walled, but on flatland, and not very different from 40% anyway. Don't have full view of Peter's land yet, but he doesn't have a strategic resource yet. Elizabeth doesn't either, but will get copper when Warwick expands borders.

Spoiler :

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Pangaea]

Thanks for the comments above on map settings, Seraiel. If that is correct, then it sounds like Low sea level is the best choice here. But I honestly couldn't see any clear difference between them. Both sets of maps looked very similar. I found that odd, because usually there is a big difference between low and high sea level.

 

[Seraiel]

Peter is imo. logical choice. Lizzy's territory looks better because it has Forests but having coastal cities is more important imo. .

Try to pay more attention in which direction you conquer the land, you need to expand towards the coast but it seems you expanded through the Jungle towards the other side of the map. When you see Jungle than you know that you need to change the direction so conquering southwards would imo. have been the logical choice.

 

[WastinTime]

IMO Peter is too far away (and on hills). Take the lower maintenance cities. I suspect your capital is the city pumping out the Q's. Why march them so far?

 

[Pangaea]

Peter is imo. logical choice. Lizzy's territory looks better because it has Forests but having coastal cities is more important imo. .

Try to pay more attention in which direction you conquer the land, you need to expand towards the coast but it seems you expanded through the Jungle towards the other side of the map. When you see Jungle than you know that you need to change the direction so conquering southwards would imo. have been the logical choice.

At that point I didn't even know where the coast was to be honest, as it was early in the game, and I was waging war on who looked weak. When Boudica didn't even have slavery, and several golds, it felt like a natural choice. In hindsight it would be nice to know Peter was on the coast, or even Darius. But it is what it is. Many of the continents I've seen in World Builder are quite wide, but this one looks stretched out in the north-south direction instead. Maybe it means more islands? That would be cool.

IMO Peter is too far away (and on hills). Take the lower maintenance cities. I suspect your capital is the city pumping out the Q's. Why march them so far?

Hmm, so two different suggestions then. A couple of other cities can pump out Qs at least as fast as the capital (and it would be nice to get some infra there, and grow it more), but I was thinking Elizabeth. The land looks pretty good, maybe too many FPs actually, and less distance maintenance may be useful at this stage, with an economy more or less in tatters. However, doing that won't give me any coastal cities, so maybe that is a bad thing?

How is the game going for you WT? And Seraiel if you have a new map going?

 

[WastinTime]

been a busy week, so not much progress on my game.
I do have my sights on Philo now. I've 'persuaded' the AI to get it, now I just need to figure out how I want to extract it. I probably don't need it for another 30-40 turns, but it'd be nice to have it over with.

RE: your map.
You can see now how I don't value GLH as highly as I do in Standard size games. It's pretty useless for you rt now Pangaea. Seems logical to just capture it.

 

[Pangaea]

As a little aside, what on earth is with AIs settling cities like this?

At least the gold is riverside so the city tile gets 3 , so not a complete waste, but that's still a very bad position given the alternatives.

 

[Pangaea]

been a busy week, so not much progress on my game.
I do have my sights on Philo now. I've 'persuaded' the AI to get it, now I just need to figure out how I want to extract it. I probably don't need it for another 30-40 turns, but it'd be nice to have it over with.

RE: your map.
You can see now how I don't value GLH as highly as I do in Standard size games. It's pretty useless for you rt now Pangaea. Seems logical to just capture it.

That's true. Suppose it's more valuable on smaller maps, where you may go to the islands faster. But that was my aim when trying out new starts, to get the GLH and expands faster to islands. But while playing, you kind of get busy with land wars, so getting early island cities, at least many, probably isn't all that realistic anyway. As long as GLH and Mids are built in easily reachable places, it's better if others put the hammers into them.

 

[Seraiel]

Loast 6 Checkers against 3 Archers. 2 of my Checkers were lvl 4, one was lvl 3, 2 were unpromoted and the last one was the healer. Chances were 60% for the first fight, loss. 60% for the 2nd one, lost. 70% for the one after, lost again. I'm not good stochastic but I think WastinTime could tell me if the chances are seriously 30% for losing those 3 fights in row, because if they are then I again made an error but without knowing better. 6 vs 3 and then even highly promoted Checker against a non-hills 20% cultural city that's usually cakewalk.

Not so serious because the map was only good enough for Oracle Currency anyhow but it's been 2 weeks now and I haven't even gotten one game past T150 and it is always the RNG when I attack a city. I've already severely reduced my expectations but I'm not willing to take games that are below a certain quality and what the RNG does is not funny anymore as this is a 5y long story already. Therefore the answer towards my question is really important, but everybody not knowing the answer could also tell me with how many Checkers he / she usually plans. I usually attack with 2:1 and 3-4:1 for hills-cities but don't have any success with that anymore which I can't explain because this worked like a charm 5y ago. Would anybody of you really have not attacked that city? Forces like described, the defending Archers were 2* CG1 and 1* unpromoted.