[BTS] G-Major 173 - Aztecs, Warlord, Cultural - Deadline October 27th 2020

[iggymnrr]

Did a quick test. 4 warrior rush did get an AI city at turn 42 with a worker. AI had built a 2nd warrior but it was set to explore ... Capitol got a religion ~turn 12 and 2nd city got one at ~turn 26. It doesn't seem difficult to get religions to play around with. With enough units teching can be done by exploration until it becomes clear what to tech. Religions don't pop from huts so no frustration from getting a tech 1 turn away from completion.

 

[Pangaea]

Played pretty quickly towards the end, and got it over the line. Saved a few turns from finally getting a Great Artist from the capital, from a 65-ish percent chance. Capital ended up with over 100,000 points, so that was enough

From comments and feedback, it's clear the game could have been improved, perhaps quite a lot, but I did get off to a good start, and the date is still okay.

Spoiler :

The experts will probably smash it and win in 700AD or something, but I'm overall fairly pleased with the game. Despite all those GProphets, we ended up with 12 GAs, which isn't great, but not awful either. Fortunate to capture such a great GP Farm from de Gaulle early on, it was a blind attack after all with no view of the city centre nor those sea tiles.

The capital became Legendary in 1080AD btw. Would have been a really good date had the others been able to keep up.

 

[elitetroops]

Nice date! Did the AI you left alive help you in any way?

I only ever played one game on this difficulty for hof, certainly not an expert, but in the logs from that game I see I was fighting warriors still in 950 BC. I'm pretty sure I couldn't resist the temptation to kill everyone on my continent if attempting this...

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I'm pretty sure I couldn't resist the temptation to kill everyone on my continent if attempting this...

I'd killed them all by 200BC in my game but I was very slow - been a long time since I played a traditional culture game without any espionage shenanigans!

 

[elitetroops]

I'm thinking max opponents (add AI that don't start with hunting), probably high sea level (because I'm lazy and can't bother managing a ton of cities), send out a few quick chariots to pick up as many capitals as possible. Maybe add some axes for the last few if needed. With max AI and high sea level the start normalizer should make sure the continent is very rich on resources and low on jungle/desert. 8 capitals should give us quite a few good GP farms and some nice cottageable locations for legendary cities. Spam helper cities around those to grow cottages while they whip stuff into cathedrals.

No idea how well this would work in reality.. I just think we should be able to get so much more value out of any land by owning it ourselves than we can get from a warlord AI owning it.

 

[Pangaea]

Nice date! Did the AI you left alive help you in any way?

I only ever played one game on this difficulty for hof, certainly not an expert, but in the logs from that game I see I was fighting warriors still in 950 BC. I'm pretty sure I couldn't resist the temptation to kill everyone on my continent if attempting this...

Thanks. Looking at the profile in the HoF, this is only the second culture game recorded. But I've done one or possibly two in BOTM too. However, this must be the fastest one, think the others were 14-1500s (or later).

AIs gave me plenty of gold, and you also have the slightly better trade routes. Gandhi spread Hinduism to a few cities as well (but less than I hoped for). Later in the game I got a fair few trades too, like MC, Machinery, Engineering, Feudalism, Compass and Optics (so I found the other hemisphere, which was without any religions and hilariously backwards). I didn't think it was worth it to wipe out a bunch of AIs here. We only need 9 cities anyway, or probably less than that tbh. Perhaps more ideal with a different setup than I did, though. Some AIs got archers sooner than I expected, including Gandhi.

 

[iggymnrr]

I've started a game which may have a map that is too big. Stalin went down on a 3 warrior rush 175 tiles away ... Great Lighthouse? He was boxed in and if he had a 2nd warrior it would have been seen soon. (Maybe he's building a workboat ... Maybe. But there was a road behind his capitol ...)

Meanwhile marble is 175 tiles the other way and needs a fort to hook up. But I have horse to get to Bismarck 175 tiles in another direction.

I got 3 settlers but got 1 turned on polytheism otherwise I'd have Stonehenge by now. Building a monument. Argh.

Turn 50.

 

[Pangaea]

I'm thinking max opponents (add AI that don't start with hunting), probably high sea level (because I'm lazy and can't bother managing a ton of cities), send out a few quick chariots to pick up as many capitals as possible. Maybe add some axes for the last few if needed. With max AI and high sea level the start normalizer should make sure the continent is very rich on resources and low on jungle/desert. 8 capitals should give us quite a few good GP farms and some nice cottageable locations for legendary cities. Spam helper cities around those to grow cottages while they whip stuff into cathedrals.

No idea how well this would work in reality.. I just think we should be able to get so much more value out of any land by owning it ourselves than we can get from a warlord AI owning it.

Another approach, based on that hut discussion earlier, is to use normal amount of AIs and try to pick up as many huts as possible, and probably some workers or settlers along the way. Unlikely to easily grab another close-by capital then, but maybe it's still worth it.

I happened to go with max AIs and high sea level, and added some creampuffs. Lucky that several of them ended up on 'my' side. Is it possible to game the system there? Maybe it's random. Didn't think about choosing AIs without Hunting (or Mysticism), and went for peaceful ones instead. Only planned to try to warrior rush one city anyway.

Don't think I can be bothered to set up MapFinder with different settings and let it run again (Large maps take a while), but I do have a bunch of other starts, so may have another go at this. Or BOTM 200. We'll see, haha.

Also, while reading one of the many threads by jesusin, I came over this very handy spreadsheet by @ori :
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ4-culture-calculator-1-5a.7385/
It was actually quite useful, as I could play around with picking different amounts of GAs and see the rough end date without doing the math myself. Perhaps particularly useful in my case, since the two 'other' cities lagged so faaaaar behind the capital.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Lucky that several of them ended up on 'my' side. Is it possible to game the system there? Maybe it's random.

On Oasis you can set where the AIs end up, everything else is random as far as I know.

 

[elitetroops]

Medium and Small you can also pick with quite high accuracy where everyone starts and seems it works on hemispheres as well. Large map with 14 opponents A-N selected in alphabetic order puts B, E, G, I, K and M on my continent most of the time. Usually if it's not that group it means I've been moved to the other continent, so you'd know immediately when meeting the first one if the start is an exception to the rule.

With this knowledge I'd make sure nobody on my continent has hunting and nobody on the other continent has mysticism.

 

[iggymnrr]

Almost to the end of the BCs. No great start here. No civil service yet but 2 religions nearly spread with a 3rd one going. It may be worth playing out. 15th city will go down soon as I have the Great Lighthouse. Bismarck had granaries everywhere and 4 cities. Empire looks like one giant coastal horseshoe.

 

[Pangaea]

Yuck!!! Had another go, but got rng-screwed from my bottom to my left ear. Not fun. Nice start with triple gems, but 6 warriors couldn't take down 2 (one without fortification) and that despite having some promos of my own from a previous capture. But maybe for the best. The cities were nowhere near as good as in my first attempt. Interestingly enough, it was the exact same guys on my continent though. Stole two workers too.

15 cities, isn't that a bit much?

 

[iggymnrr]

15 may be too many. Trying to remember if cathedrals need a temple in the city. They can be built later as all units/temples can be outsourced.

1st GP was an artist against the odds. Shrine income went poof.

 

[Pangaea]

Trying to remember if cathedrals need a temple in the city.

They don't actually. Thought so and played like it in my first game, then noticed that it was possible to build the cathedral without the requisite temple. That may be useful when you have that many cities.

GArtist first is lucky, I'd much rather have too many of those than too few. Getting one that early, I suppose it's better to settle him?

 

[iggymnrr]

It could be good to settle the artist but music is coming late for Sistine to multiply it.

 

[Pangaea]

Sounds like you have an awesome game going at least, with 15 cities before 1AD. Did you settle most of them?

Got a new one going now that seems okay for now. Map isn't fantastic and Mansa + Gandhi is on the wrong side, but I've killed 3 AIs by turn 60. Suspect Louis has archers now, so that's probably not possible, but it's tempting anyway. Just the way it is, hah. Hard to decide between AH, BW, Fishing, and where to put the two other legendaries, since the cities I captured aren't fantastic. Think I may have to settle a new city along a jungled river, as that one can at least get 8 cottages (plus 2 dyes). Hard to develop, but maybe it's worth over cow-fed 3/4-river former capitals.

 

[iggymnrr]

@Pangaea Thx. Thinking about sleep now. Maybe. 655 AD and beginning the final run. 1st golden age just started via Taj via engineer. Kept getting artists against the odds then a prophet and engineer. ADs had me still going for calendar/CS/aesthetics. Tech rate had climbed from 10% to 20% then. Motoring now in free speech. Gotta play one more turn ...

Cities: 5 captured, 3 from huts, starting settler + the rest. Two are off shore since I have GLH.

 

[Pangaea]

Cities: 5 captured, 3 from huts, starting settler + the rest. Two are off shore since I have GLH.

Impossible to compete against that then. Got three huts in my current game (scout, map, map), and even with that extra scout, I couldn't get anything worthwhile. However, I'll continue this one and see if I can beat my own date. Since it's a different approach, maybe I'll learn something at least. And hopefully you won't beat me with 500 years

Please make a write-up afterwards, so we noobs can learn too

 

[elitetroops]

I've played some random starts to see how warlord plays out. Reminded me why I hate these low level games with huts enabled. So much RNG involved.

Now I have a pretty funky game going. I got the perfect early hut results. Settling capital popped a worker, same turn scout pops another hut for agriculture. Of course with a triple seafood+pigs start. Not sure why I even played this start. Anyway, went on to build a couple of warriors while teching fishing and farming pig, in the meantime scout managed to pop settler+worker on opposite side of continent. Settled far away close to Justinian and built a couple of warriors there as well. T29 warriors from cap have killed Asoka and warriors from second city killed Justinian, both of them had founded religions. 4 cities, 2 religions, 2 workers so far. Also popped AH from hut, BW coming in in a couple of turns. Capital is very bad for a culture game, but maybe it could somehow work out.

 

[iggymnrr]

Submitted a 1300 AD game. I'm not sure if it will be accepted as I restarted my computer after an update, forgetting to exit the game. But as the next load had only one unit to move I must have saved the game prior to shutdown. I'll try again so no problem if the game gets scotched.

I had a 4th golden age ...

I set mapfinder to save starts with a camp resource and a hut. It was millennia before I farmed a tile. AH came from a hut but I simply didn't care whether fishing/agriculture/AH came from a hut or not. With hunting, deer works just fine. (And then I settled away from the deer next to crabs and pigs. Go figure.)

And hopefully you won't beat me with 500 years

That other game was with Gandhi on tiny settler. I think I skipped whipping altogether and went straight to caste.

Anyway here's a shot of the horseshoe empire: