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

[Pangaea]

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.

I kinda like it when I'm playing the game, because it's exciting if you happen to win the lottery and get a settler or worker. But for competitive purposes it just promotes trying starts until all the planets line up. I simply don't have the patience for it, so it's then frustrating to see what others pull off.

Well, the current game got absolutely nothing from huts, not even gold, but it has turned out okay after all I think. Not sure yet how it compares with the first game. Doubt I can get Lib by 1AD this time, but maybe the bigger empire earlier can compensate. The first game Oracled CS in 1600BC or something like that, while here I didn't get it until 1000BC. But this time both the capital and the second legendary city (non-captured) has double or triple food, so I hope that helps (bananas are late, but still). GP Farm is nowhere near as surreal as last time, but it does have triple food so it should still turn out okay I think (clam, fish, rice).

Submitted a 1300 AD game.

Wow, with that start I thought you'd utterly crush my date. Maybe it was too many cities, or too many too soon?

Sad that Mansa isn't on my side, but there is Pericles, who also trades quite easily (10% known). Maybe I can get him to Friendly. They don't have much, but something is better than nothing. Also, Ramesses got a fairly early GProphet (he built Stonehenge + Artemis). At that point I gifted him Mono, Meditation and Writing, which enabled him to bulb Theo. Glad he did. Hopefully he either sends missionaries to me, or it autospreads

This has me terribly confused though. Any idea what on Earth is going on?

Spoiler :

Look at that grassland cottage, with a on it. Took a picture earlier, before anybody had IW yet, and got very confused, because he never put a mine on it. This is post-IW as you can see from Corinth. I play with random events, but if something got added to that tile, there should be an annotation about it. Not sure if a hammer can be added like that either (it's usually commerce). What am I missing here?

 

[iggymnrr]

^Culture doubles after 1000 years. Some things need to get done in the BCs so that the slower turn pace post 500 AD counts much more.

My game got excluded from the restart. No big deal.

 

[elitetroops]

I kinda like it when I'm playing the game, because it's exciting if you happen to win the lottery and get a settler or worker. But for competitive purposes it just promotes trying starts until all the planets line up. I simply don't have the patience for it, so it's then frustrating to see what others pull off.

Yeah, I usually end up manually rolling starts to try a lot. Using map finder becomes even more painful when I see lots of good starts go to waste. Spending 23 turns building a worker for some super strong triple luxury start falls too far behind compared to any half decent start that builds warriors and grabs a couple more capitals before t30. Then again building a worker only after several warriors is way too late, so my goal here was to grab a couple of early capitals and get a worker from a hut within a reasonable amount of time. It's not that hard to accomplish since getting the capitals is easy. Had a couple attempts before this where the goal succeeded but both had the wrong AI distribution putting the early religions in the other hemisphere, which happens maybe 20-30% of attempts. There's also a chance your hemisphere is split into two continents, possibly separated by ocean, another RNG factor that can ruin otherwise perfect maps.

Current attempt went far beyond the goal with extra worker+settler and a couple of very helpful techs. Getting first worker immediately when settling capital was another huge bonus. Didn't play on yet, had to stop and think hard about how to proceed.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

My game got excluded from the restart.

That wasn't the issue, check your email to avoid repeating the error in future.

 

[iggymnrr]

No email yet. Kind of figure if settings in game don’t flag anything I won’t figure it out. Except maybe the game not running for 30 minutes.

 

[iggymnrr]

I’m thinking of reverse engineering things. Grab religions and wonder whore while sending missionaries to AI. Maintenance free temples in vitro. Once base culture is established conquer the temples in waiting.

 

[iggymnrr]

Turns out I didn't lock modified assets. That didn't get verified before running maps. So I tested some things on the final turn(s).

For hoots here's the long distance 3 warrior rush and marble acquisition:

 

[Pangaea]

Turns out I didn't lock modified assets.

There should be a warning about that. Or did you turn off those in Buffy settings?

Unless it was created now when testing stuff, that blotch of land in the blackness kinda gives away that something is off

With such a trek for a warrior rush, I assume you are using normal amount of AIs to try to catch more huts? Great if you happen to get a bunch of free settlers or workers, but looks like it can be painful to get capitals. Awesome to get free Agri + worker really early, though, like @elitetroops did. Or the T3 settler in my first game. It's almost like starting with two cities, which definitely helps. Otherwise I think warrior rushing is the way to go here.

 

[Pangaea]

Here is my second attempt. Building Wealth now to get to Lib a little faster, so should get there by around 1AD. Pretty outstretched empire here too, with 12 cities. Could have settled a few more, but 12 is probably already a bit much. Maintenance is higher after all. Have tried to focus more on spreading the religions this time, and on academies. Have 4 now, almost 5. Despite setting up Ramesses so nicely before for the Theo bulb, he hasn't spread Christianity to any cities, but 4 religions is probably enough anyway. One of them is barely spread, because the initial Confu missionary failed (91% chance I think) and the NE city has been too busy with other stuff afterwards for missionaries.

Spoiler :

 

[elitetroops]

@iggymnrr I'm seeing some pretty odd choices in your screenshots, like 2nd city settled with only tundra copper in inner ring. Meanwhile the floodplains to the north of it that seem like a far superior location for a legendary city, far superior for any city in general, were never settled at all. I'd recommend focusing less on buildings for culture and instead aiming to get the majority of it from commerce and GA bombs. Since it's so easy to game the settings to make sure the AI founds first two religions on your continent it would always be much slower to found those yourself. Worker techs first will come out ahead, as always.

I'm at 2075 BC with 9 cities and economy still in decent shape. Doesn't seem like there is such a thing as expanding too fast with this low maintenance costs. I self teched IW to get started on a triple gems jungle location that will become my third legendary city. Gems needed for happiness also. I might skip alpha completely until I eventually want it for PP. Having a hard time thinking of any techs these AI could tech for me fast enough. I think it's soon time to wipe out the rest of them anyway.

Looks like a strong game there @Pangaea! I'm curious, at what date did the AI complete SH, TGW and ToA? I'm still undecided if I want to finish SH myself or let the AI do it. Have a couple hundred hammers invested into it in different cities already, wouldn't want to wait too long for the failgold.

 

[iggymnrr]

1 AD is a good time for lib.

@elitetroops That odd city was on a 2-hammer hill and would have border-popped via polytheism but that got 1-turned.

 

[Pangaea]

Damnit.

Spoiler :

Despite building Wealth, can only run 70% culture slider. Nobody has money and no wonders are going either (but then I haven't done the failgold thing either). Then Stalin does what Stalin does. One turn plot. Fist appeared this turn, and two units already in place. Fairly sure shock Swords will be able to deal with Warriors. Narrowly

He has 10 so I will try to beg. Didn't dare to now. Just saved and closed down the game. Need food. Things have gone well I thought, just got a 12-pop HG, but this could be a huge problem. He kinda hates Ramesses and I am pleased/friendly with everybody, but Ramesses is in the other corner so yeah....

Maybe I can bribe Pericles or Ramesses on him, forgot to check that. Wanted to keep diplo as good as possible.

 

[iggymnrr]

@Pangaea Ouch. There are other ways of dealing with Stalin:

Spoiler Moscow :

I added a few opponents. T60, 2500 BC: 6 cities, 8 workers, 3 religions; popped 2 settlers, captured 3 cities via 4-warrior rushes. I lost only 3 so now I'm going to try a 7-warrior on the 7th city. That may turn into a 7-warrior worker steal if things don't look good. No stone on the continent and 3 AIs still left. At least there are horses.

 

[Pangaea]

I'm at 2075 BC with 9 cities and economy still in decent shape. Doesn't seem like there is such a thing as expanding too fast with this low maintenance costs. I self teched IW to get started on a triple gems jungle location that will become my third legendary city. Gems needed for happiness also. I might skip alpha completely until I eventually want it for PP. Having a hard time thinking of any techs these AI could tech for me fast enough. I think it's soon time to wipe out the rest of them anyway.

Looks like a strong game there @Pangaea! I'm curious, at what date did the AI complete SH, TGW and ToA? I'm still undecided if I want to finish SH myself or let the AI do it. Have a couple hundred hammers invested into it in different cities already, wouldn't want to wait too long for the failgold.

Sounds like a great start with 9 cities that soon, and same with iggy with 6 cities in 2500BC already. I'm now starting to regret not going for worker techs first. It is nice to get a religion or two as well, they tend to autospread fast, but the start is slow without workers or improvements.

Also, OMG... What a city to capture in Moscow. 4 gems plus wet corn. Incredible. Better than the vast majority of what MapFinder can find.

Wonders: Suspect it was a little early in this game, because Pericles had stone and Ramesses didn't expand for some reason. Getting several hundred gold from Stonehenge that early would be awesome!
2050BC Stonehenge (Ramesses)
1625BC Great Wall (Pericles)
1025BC Artemis (Ramesses)

Begged Stalin and the fist didn't go away. Couldn't bribe anybody either. But since the beg worked, I have 10 turns to build some axes -- unless he makes the weird decision to march all the way over to Egypt, or turn around and DOW his (other) neighbour Pericles.

Phew (for now).

 

[elitetroops]

I ran some tests with the same bunch of AI and same settings to test wonder dates. SH went between 1400BC and 2050BC, TGW between 500BC and 1500BC, ToA once went before 1000BC but in two other attempts it wasn't built by 1AD.

What really worries me is that Oracle date on the three maps was 400BC, 1150BC and 1250BC. Is this a statistical anomaly or is it normal for Warlord AI to build it before 1000BC? I thought I'd have a lot of time and was considering Oracle -> Education. Could probably do it before 400BC but certainly not by 1250BC.

In one game someone built GLH around 800BC and in one game Pyras went about 200BC. Other than that I didn't see any other wonders built by 1 AD.

 

[iggymnrr]

Submitted an 1130 AD game. Conquered my entire hemisphere. 18 cities. Very brown capitol. I'm not sure when I got a worker to the capitol for the ivory. Too busy warrior rushing. And no workers from huts. While I did get all 3 early religions the other hemisphere got to Code of Laws first. Oracle->Aesthetics. Most cathedrals were finished in the BCs. All GPs were artists except the one for a shrine and an engineer for the Taj.

Legendary cities were pretty even. All were pop 15.

Spoiler Pop 15 :

And all three went legendary pretty evenly too.

Spoiler 75000 culture :

 

[elitetroops]

Nice date! Did you ever find stone? The Choose Religions option is good to always select in culture games so that you can avoid picking religions you haven't found the resource for yet.

That Moscow was quite a catch! I wish at least some AI would have had a nice jungle start converting a lot of it to forests, but unfortunately all of them started outside the jungle belt in my game. There's so many nice city spots in there but they are too slow to develop. My continent is very wide so there is a ton of jungle:

Spoiler :

 

[elitetroops]

So this went south quickly. I was about to snipe Gandhi's capital with two chariots while it was only defended by one warrior but right before I declared an archer appeared. I had been tracking his research the last couple of techs and didn't see him tech archery. I built a couple more chariots before declaring, every single one died to that one archer. He's not even on a hill. There's no way I get peace now and it'll take a while before I can attack again. He's about to get BW, then probably whip more archers if we are still at war. At least I got his worker and I should be able to pillage the mine on his copper before he reaches BW, but this situation will become a major pain in the bum. Also had to one pop a chariot to defend against his wandering warrior in a city where I very much would not have wanted to do that. Luckily I at least put that one hammer into it last turn as a precaution.

Looks like I might have to go for some Jaguars. It was a big mistake to delay taking out the rest of these AI so much. Have been focusing too much on infra and should have built more units sooner. On the plus side I am doing 100bpt in 1650BC and am about to complete SH for enough failgold to keep slider up until CoL and Oracle->CS.

 

[Pangaea]

Submitted an 1130 AD game. Conquered my entire hemisphere. 18 cities.

Fantastic date! (apart from the usual misspelling of capital). Do you think it was worth it to kill off everybody? Did you use three cottage cities?

When killing off that many, and probably for elite too, what units do you use? Chariots are iffy when the AIs get archers (can happen pretty early), and Axes aren't fantastic either (and slower). My approach has just been to warrior rush a few cities, and then REX, leaving the rest alone.

My current game seems to have gone off the track a bit. Not sure what is wrong, but maybe it's the slower cottages. Have a really nice spot, but it was basically covered in jungle, so took time to develop. Kinda the same with the capital actually, because it was covered in forests. Lots of hammers ofc, but you need to clear it first. Even with loads of workers, it always felt like I had too few. Not having gold anywhere is problematic too, but for now we've kept our head (just) above water.

 

[iggymnrr]

Did you use three cottage cities?

Some cottages but basically exploit the turn ratio. Culture double in 1000 years. If 1000 years go by in 20 turns a 10 culture building doubles to 20 culture. That 2x becomes the new base so free speech makes that 4x and each pair of cathedrals makes it 6x then 8x etc. This also applies to the Sistine: +5 culture goes to +10 as the new base then 4x/6x/8x etc.

When the turn count slows to the point where 1000 years goes by in like 100 turns things will never double. The culture seed stays small.

Up around 18 cities I had to go for wonder bread. It rather suggests itself when whipping missionaries.