G-Major 16

[Mr. Bill]

I need to ask a really stupid question.

I never understood how to use Incas and Quechas right... I know that they're good against archers and all, and I see that a lot of top games for the HOF used them, and people almost always say they're the best choice for a gauntlet, but that early strategy is something I never caught on to. I have 2 quick questions...

1. When building early, do you build a barracks, or anything else, aside from quechas? And is the basic strategy just to crank out a ton of them and win by numbers?

2. Do you use the CS slingshot to help with the tech lead? I've become so accustomed to using it that games where I don't are kinda weird to me. I've started to change that, though, because it's almost impossible to do it on the harder levels in Warlords.

I've tried to use quechas in a few games before but I couldn't quite get it to work. My problem might be that I overdo it with my army before wartime, because I always tend to end up with a lot of leftover units. So maybe I'm not taking enough risk, like, building way too many quechas before going to war, to get a good enough boost?

 

[Andrei_V]

1. When building early, do you build a barracks, or anything else, aside from quechas? And is the basic strategy just to crank out a ton of them and win by numbers?

No barracks in the beginning. If you build barracks, you lose time, the AIs hook up metals, build walls, found religions, etc.

A typical start is to move your initial Settler like 3 tiles close to an AI capital, settle on plains/hill with a 3H tile within the fat cross, then start building them, working that 3H tile (the city does not grow, but build Quechua fast.)

Once you have 3 Quechuas (including the initial one), you can attack the AI capital, most likely it will be defended by a single Archer. Now you have 2 cities, close to each other, so you don't pay distance maintenance costs.

Now build more of them, like 6, and go capture another capital nearby. Meanwhile build some more, and capture yet another capital. And so on, until you can support them.

If you surprise them, most likely their cities will be defended only by 2 Archers, while your Quechuas now have experience, promotions, etc. Even if the city in on a hill with 40% defenses and CD1 Archers, a stack of 8 units (including a couple of veteran CRII-III Quechuas) can do the trick.

Soften up the defenders with your green units, then kill them with your vets. Easy.

Keep going until you can maintain your new cities. In my 304K game I had 5 capitals in 2350 BC.

Tech path in the beginning is something like Mining -> Fishing -> The Wheel -> Pottery -> Bronze Working

Now max commerce in all your cities, and start improving land around them, focus on food and commerce. If you were smart enough as to research Fishing early, you get a strong source of water tile commerce, which is really helpful to keep your economy afloat until you build enough cottages. Gold/Gems mines, of course.

2. Do you use the CS slingshot to help with the tech lead? I've become so accustomed to using it that games where I don't are kinda weird to me. I've started to change that, though, because it's almost impossible to do it on the harder levels in Warlords.

Yes, I did it in my game in 1255 BC. Just think of it: you have like 6 cities in prime locations before 2000BC, all kinds of resources -- Marble, Stone, etc., and you're Industrious. Not building quite a few wonders is like a crime against humanity under these circumstances. Oracle, Pyramids, GLib, Colossus, whatever.

A tip about GLib: try to build it in a coastal city with high food surplus, so you can run 2-3 specialists (from Library and Forge) in addition to the 2 free specialists. Even if this city does not have enough production, with Marble and Industrious you can simply chop a couple of forests around, then whip the rest.

I've tried to use quechas in a few games before but I couldn't quite get it to work. My problem might be that I overdo it with my army before wartime, because I always tend to end up with a lot of leftover units. So maybe I'm not taking enough risk, like, building way too many quechas before going to war, to get a good enough boost?

The only risk when you declare war, your opponent has Chariots or Speatrs/Axes already. Even so you can probably sue for peace after 10 turns. Other than that, 8-10 Quechuas is probably more than you need to kill a civ, if you do it fast.

 

[Casper84]

A typical start is to move your initial Settler like 3 tiles close to an AI capital, settle on plains/hill with a 3H tile within the fat cross, then start building them, working that 3H tile (the city does not grow, but build Quechua fast.)

Don't tell me you actually have to explore for 5 or more turns to find a 'nearby' capital. On tiny/small, ok, maybe standard, but anything larger isn't a waste of time? I bet you reload a lot.

 

[berserks01]

I keep getting this error, any idea why?

Warlords patched to 2.13 and using the HOF mod 2.13.001.

Thanks.

 

[Andrei_V]

Don't tell me you actually have to explore for 5 or more turns to find a 'nearby' capital. On tiny/small, ok, maybe standard, but anything larger isn't a waste of time? I bet you reload a lot.

On Terra map vs. 10 opponents you normally can find an opponent and settle within 6-10 turns. In fact, you regenerate the map a lot less, since you don't need an exceptional starting location. Anything that gives you 5 hammers would do. Once you capture like 5 AI capitals, you have a good choice where to move your capital.

It is definitely not a waste of time, since your Settler moves faster than Quechua.

 

[Methos]

Or is that how it's supposed to be? If that's how it's supposed to be then it's working fine

As was already stated, that is the correct way it should look. Once the gauntlet is complete, than all submissions will be viewable. During the gauntlet, we hide the other dates/scores.

I keep getting this error, any idea why?

Warlords patched to 2.13 and using the HOF mod 2.13.001.

Thanks.

Okay, there's a link to our assets checker around here somewhere that you need to run and send up a copy of the text file. Hopefully I'll be able to locate it shortly.

 

[Denniz]

I keep getting this error, any idea why?

Warlords patched to 2.13 and using the HOF mod 2.13.001.

Thanks.

Did you by any chance install the 3.13 patch? (It puts a new the CvGameCoreDLL.dll file in the Vanilla and Warlords assets folders. You will need to do a dual install if you want to have both old a new versions.)

The asset checker >> here <<. Click "Check", then "Save Results" and then zip up the .csv and post it here

 

[berserks01]

Yeah, I did install the 3.13 patch.

So I'll need a dual install to play? Dang, and this is a G-Major I can actually handle too.

Here's my assets.zip. Didn't say anything wrong with my Warlords install tho.

 

[Mad Professor]

Just think of it: you have like 6 cities in prime locations before 2000BC, all kinds of resources -- Marble, Stone, etc., and you're Industrious. Not building quite a few wonders is like a crime against humanity under these circumstances. Oracle, Pyramids, GLib, Colossus, whatever.

Industrious? Not in vanilla yo're not. Capac is Financial/Aggressive. I don't have Warlords. You're telling me he's industrious in Warlords? That would make him awesome for a big score game...

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Still going in my game, 875AD now. Saladin is willing to capitulate but I think I will take his remaining large cities first. I'll leave him with 1 or 2 small cities and then destroy Washington, then get down to some score milking. Thinking of going for biology instead of astronomy from liberalism.

Score for winning this turn is 168000 odd, but I still have 20% more land to get so that should go up quite a lot.

 

[Andrei_V]

Industrious? Not in vanilla yo're not. Capac is Financial/Aggressive. I don't have Warlords. You're telling me he's industrious in Warlords? That would make him awesome for a big score game...

Yes, he is Industrious in Warlords. Quechua still have free Combat I, though. Besides, the Incan UB is Granary generating 2 culture -- no more Stonehenge/Obelisks. Reason #1 the people keep complaining about not excluding him from the Gauntlets. It does create a disbalance between two versions.

 

[Alan_of_Dale]

Industrious? Not in vanilla yo're not. Capac is Financial/Aggressive. I don't have Warlords. You're telling me he's industrious in Warlords? That would make him awesome for a big score game...

OMG, go get Warlords, mate! It's cheap and you need it as it is integrated into the Civ4 HoF completely.

Catherine has also been changed and can even be used to win completely peaceful domination games in impressive times.

Yes instead of nerfing Inca like they needed to, the play balance people stuffed it up really badly. Not only did they give Inca Industrious, but they gave them +2 culture from their unique building, the Terrace (replaces granary)! And if I am not mistaken the Quechua still get the combat 1 bonus which they should only get with the aggressive trait (has got to be a mistake in coding which they were too embarrassed to fix). So in effect, the Inca get the lion's share of 4 traits!!! So even though Mathematics has been added as a prerequisite for CS, the Industrious trait can still get you the Oracle slingshot at higher difficulty levels with the Incas, while other civs suffer a lot from this prerequisite. I can't recall ever seeing a play balancing get it so wrong as this. Perhaps they have never been to the HoF website to see what this very large community of gamers has to say.

This is why many people question when Inca is allowed in a Gauntlet. IMO the advantage is more for domination and conquest games where Warlords appears stronger with several civs loosing their Creative trait and therefore making for weaker opponents. Certain peaceful game civs like Saladin and Elizabeth in vanilla can still beat Inca in peace victory games though.

 

[Mad Professor]

This is why many people question when Inca is allowed in a Gauntlet. IMO the advantage is more for domination and conquest games where Warlords appears stronger with several civs loosing their Creative trait and therefore making for weaker opponents. Certain peaceful game civs like Saladin and Elizabeth in vanilla can still beat Inca in peace victory games though.

Ahhh.... Indeed. I did wonder why people reacted so strongly to that. He's only a small advantage on vanilla. Hmm. Perahps I can take heart that my 201K score is worth a little bit more played in warlords then...

 

[Denniz]

Yeah, I did install the 3.13 patch.

So I'll need a dual install to play? Dang, and this is a G-Major I can actually handle too.

Here's my assets.zip. Didn't say anything wrong with my Warlords install tho.

The checker is only made to check for certain things. We have to manually compare some things to see what's going on sometimes. In this case, I don't really need to check since we know you installed 3.13.

I don't really know what was changed with the Core DLL in Vanilla and Warlords. I think they changed it to solve some of the assets issues players with Gold Edition, etc. were having.

We'll put out new versions of the HOF Mod for all 3 versions as soon as we can. Until then, use dual installs, if you must patch to 3.13

 

[Ozbenno]

Yeah, I did install the 3.13 patch.

So I'll need a dual install to play? Dang, and this is a G-Major I can actually handle too.

Here's my assets.zip. Didn't say anything wrong with my Warlords install tho.

I think you should be able to run the latest Warlords patch (2.13) and it will fix the problem. The BtS patch installs a new version of one of the Warlords files.

 

[Casper84]

On Terra map vs. 10 opponents you normally can find an opponent and settle within 6-10 turns. In fact, you regenerate the map a lot less, since you don't need an exceptional starting location. Anything that gives you 5 hammers would do. Once you capture like 5 AI capitals, you have a good choice where to move your capital.

It is definitely not a waste of time, since your Settler moves faster than Quechua.

Ok, I'll try it sometime. Not for this gauntlet, I don't have very much time for it now, but in general.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Nearly finished now. Everyone who is still alive is now my vassal except Saladin who has a 1 tile island. 1090AD. I have settlers ready on an island but I need to fight a few barbarians there as well. 3 turns till scientific method, then finish the last turn of liberalism and take biology.

Building all the wonders that I am allowed as well. Score for winning this turn is 206000 odd and I have no idea how bilogy will affect that. I have a big gang of workers going round making farms everywhere. I've got another 11% of the land to claim but am waiting for American cities to come out of revolt.

I'm really not liking marathon speed very much.

EDIT: Finished at last. 1205AD domination win, 214094 points. My best score by miles. Only my third monarch win and my first (and probably last) finished marathon game. I'll go back to trying to win at Emperor level after a bit of a civ-break I think.

 

[Alan_of_Dale]

Ended up with 164,968 points (Sid score 4233) with a 1386 AD domination victory, currently 4th of 8th in the Gauntlet. Took the last 4 main continent cities each from Roosevelt and Frederick in about 25 turns combined total including healing, then gave them peace. Then did a two turn war to take the last main continent city of Gandhi (2nd war with Gandhi), founded five more cities, and ended next turn 3% beyond the land limit at 60.92% with still three cities in anarchy. Population was 90.82% with 60 cities total, 16 of which I settled myself, 9 of which were in the new world. Was over four techs ahead of everybody, and no civ went untouched.

By way of comparison, the current HoF 1st place score 278,250 point 1055 AD Inca Warlords v2.08.004 marathon domination game by AAA also had around a 4200 point Sid score. So for a 331 year difference I lost 113,282 points! Wow, that's a huge penalty and not obvious when looking at turn to turn "net" decay (which includes city growth, etc, as well).

I guess that gives weight to the earlier comments that this was going to be an Inca marathon game for the win. My use of Julius in vanilla just took too long to get going, although the final Sid score was competitive. And I didn't have time for the Oracle, so vanilla was a waste. Not sure I have time to play another large marathon at the moment unfortunately.

 

[Dracandross]

Sad this gauntlet was messed up with few things, score sounds interesting. Definitely large map that has to be played actively for 500+Ad is criplling for my comp. Also now only way is domination with Inca. Difficulty is fine though for more submits.

I'll hang on if next BTS isn't must to go. This settler/duel was pain in the neck as it's so fast to run few games and try to improve.

-Dracandross

 

[Gosha190]

my game crashed in 390(380)AD... there was no problem in the game only with my PC. Instead of playing I am waiting for Dianthus or Denniz decision.