G-Major 2

[The-Hawk]

Maybe all my odd strategies are really no good and the only reason I did so well is because I played on Marathon. I think most of you are trying on Epic, true? Anyone else play Marathon?
1550 AD is turn 700 of 1200 on Marathon (way past halfway)
1550 AD is turn 320 of 660 on Epic (not even half)
I wish this weren't true. It seems like every time we get a "choice" to play any speed, Marathon is always better. Even in this game where I didn't travel across the map.

Looks like we crossed posts... but you answered my question.

Congrats on a great game ... one nice thing about these gauntlets is they provide a chance to challenge everyone's paradigm about which strategies work best.

 

[jesusin]

I tried godotnut's strategy on normal speed.
With Catherine on the game I would always receive a dow.
With Gandhi on the game, I had to build pyramids before building my first settler or I would be beaten to it.

Finally got pyramids and 4 cities in a peninsula (natural coastline). I had too much good luck keeping my GEng chances, so I never got a GSci for the Academy in the capital. That hurt. By the time the first GSci appeared, I used it for Education, cause the teching time was about over then.

4 cities and space for only one crappy more, 3 religions, means only 3 cathedrals. I put Hermitage in the capital (best multiplier for the best city) even if first estimation gave 100, 250 and 350 turns. At the end it really was 94, 104 and 105 turns.

Deity AI is so rich that I didn't have to resort to 0%science-0% culture, selling resources was enough.

By the time a city flipped, I rushed-buy more Cathedrals. I get to avoid anyone winning in the UN. I was set to win in 1750AD, but 8 turns before Asoka launched.

No Academy was a real setback. But I could have pulled a win (not a great time) if I hadn't:
1.- Waited for some tech trading ("they won't give me what I want for this, I'll wait for the next discovery and trade both my techs for it"... and then they trade among themselves).
2.- Missed Liberalism first for 4 turns. If only I hadn´t started the hopeless race to Music...

I would like to give a try to another strategy (Marble start, REX at first, no other wonder than Partenon, GPfarming 100% artist probabilities). But I'll be away from Civ for a month... I hope to see some nice write-ups here when I am back.

 

[The-Hawk]

After a couple of months focused on GOTM and SGOTM (and holiday), I've decided to spend some time on HOF. Even though it is over half over, I decided to join this gauntlet. Better late than never.

After a couple of aborted attempts, I've got a decent game going. Playing Huayna, got six cities up (three from Mao, who is no longer with us ). Two pieces of bad news, I only had three religions spread to me, and I do not have a great GP city. My whole map is too health poor, at its peak, I am only generating 57 GPP per turn.

I finished all six cathedral (whatever you call the 50% culture buildings) sometime in the early 1300's, before all of my cottages had fully matured. Maybe my culture per turn will climb enough once they are all towns, but at this point, it seems impossible for me to reach 150K before a launch.

Well, turns out I was right. After I made this post, a fourth religion spread to my cities, so I was able to build a couple of more cathedrals. Later two more religions came, but it seemed too late to spend the time spreading them so I left them alone.

By my calculation, I was gonna reach culture victory in 1630 (maybe 1631). However, Asoka launched in 1579. Kind of bad luck, seemed like a pretty fast launch. Obviously 1630 is slow compared to the HOF, but it would have been nice to get a Deity culture win under my belt. Oh well, all-in-all, nothing to be ashamed of for a first real attempt.

Couple of thoughts:

- I think I should have packed three more cities into my space. This would have allowed more cathedrals, more important, I could have overlapped some cottage tiles with my three culture cities allowing me to develop towns sooner.
- In this game, an AI built UN pretty early. This meant a periodic holding of my breath as they voted for a potential diplo winner. The bigger impact was civics. The AI's kept voting for civic changes, the ones that hurt were Free Religion (lost the 100% GP bonus) and Emancipation (lost unlimited GA's). I ended up with only 7 GAs (would have finished an 8th if Asoka hadn't ended the game). Add to that one early GE and one GS, not a great GP farm.
- I tended to ignore culture generating buildings (e.g. monastaries). I'm wondering if it would be better to build these... get some more science and get a couple more culture to be multiplied at the end.
- I never flipped one city! Main reason was there was a stretch of poor land between and my neighbors to the east. Our border cities were not too close. So, even though my borders infringed on them pretty heavily, they never flipped. (Once I overran Mao, I had nobody to my west.)
- I never used any GA's as super specialists... didn't really think about it. Early GA's may have been worth more this way.
- I was so fixated on GA's that I only built one Academy. I'm wondering if an Academy in each culture city would have been smarter. Faster teching, plus the extra culture from the Academy...

I put Hermitage in the capital (best multiplier for the best city)

Doh!

An AI gifted me Nationalism, so I built Hermitage. However, I built it in my worst culture city. My thought was it could use the most help. In hindsight, I think your approach is WAY more logical. Put it in the city that gets the most extra culture from it. You can always use an extra GA in the weaker city to catch it up.

Come to think of it, since I only could build two cathedrals per religion, the same logic might apply. Build the Hermitage in the best city, build all cathedrals in the two best cities. Use all GA's as bombs in the weak city. I wonder how this would work? Probably not, I'm guessing the two strong cities would finish before you had enough GA's. I suppose you need some balance...

 

[jesusin]

Quote:
Originally Posted by jesusin
I put Hermitage in the capital (best multiplier for the best city)

Doh!


In fact, I only thought about this recently. This was the first game I put the best multiplier in the best city, I used to put it in the worst city "to compensate". I ended up with a 11 turns difference between the best city and the other two, not very well fine tuned. I was trying to talk gotdotnut into calculating the necessary balance for me in the thread in his signature.

My current understanding is that you should first estimate the number of Artist you are going to bombard with. Plan to use all of them in the worst city. Then plan to distribute the Cathedrals and Hermitage in such a way that all 3 cities reach legendary status in the same turn. If the third city falls behind, give it one more Cathedral. If it runs ahead, asign a culture bomb to another city...

It doesn't sound like very easy to predict, does it? You can change an GP bomb assignement at the last turn, but you can not change a Cathedral once it is built, so maybe the estimation should be biased a bit towards the worst city, to be on the safe side.
Mmmm... still thinking.

 

[WastinTime]

Build the Hermitage in the best city, build all cathedrals in the two best cities. Use all GA's as bombs in the weak city. I wonder how this would work? Probably not, I'm guessing the two strong cities would finish before you had enough GA's. I suppose you need some balance...

This works well. I do it all the time. Especially on Diety/Standard where it is hard to get 9 cities. Don't completely ignore the 3rd city. Get it some cottages and maybe one cathedral. Your capitol (with Hermitage) can spare one or it will probably finish too early.

 

[WastinTime]

My current understanding is that you should first estimate the number of Artist you are going to bombard with. Plan to use all of them in the worst city. Then plan to distribute the Cathedrals and Hermitage in such a way that all 3 cities reach legendary status in the same turn. If the third city falls behind, give it one more Cathedral. If it runs ahead, asign a culture bomb to another city...

It doesn't sound like very easy to predict, does it?

In my experience, you can't make these calculations until you've laid out your empire. With about 150 turns to go (on Marathon). You should be able to figure out approximately how many GA's you'll get before the end. This should allow you to pick the locations of the last few cathedrals. With 100 turns to go, you should carefully order your GA farms. Try to get the ones producing 40+ points to make a GA first while they still have time to come around again and make a 2nd one. If a city is only doing around 30 birth rate, you should slow it down, let a few other cities pass it, so it makes a GA closer to the end of the game.

 

[Lexad]

Just one stupid question as this is the first time I pay attention to AI on Deity (i.e. not Duel/Tiny/Small Quechua or Immortal rush):

AI workers are improving land twice as fast as my. Is it supposed to be so o Deity or am I just extremely lucky?

 

[godotnut]

Just got back from a road trip--sounds like a lot of interesting happenings here that I'll need to think about in my next game.

I'm not at all surprised at your great game Wastin. Nice job! Like I said earlier, a good game with Liz will beat Quecha. But I had no idea that one could get away with skipping Pyramids. That part indeed was a surprise. So you built--not bought--all those cathedrals? That would mean no "buying phase" at all, right, allowing you to turn the culture slider up as soon as you hit liberalism?

@Lexad:

AI workers are improving land twice as fast as my. Is it supposed to be so o Deity or am I just extremely lucky?

Hmmm... you are aware that the AI starts the game with two workers, right?

 

[Lexad]

@Lexad:

Hmmm... you are aware that the AI starts the game with two workers, right?

Yep, pretty much aware. I'm checking 1 worker who's building improvement and it shows half number of turns required from my worker; moreover, it really takes them only half number of turns to complete, so this is not just a representation bug. Is it what is supposed to be?

 

[Denniz]

Yep, pretty much aware. I'm checking 1 worker who's building improvement and it shows half number of turns required from my worker; moreover, it really takes them only half number of turns to complete, so this is not just a representation bug. Is it what is supposed to be?

What about civics, wonders, and techs that alter worker speed?

 

[The-Hawk]

Just made my second serious run at this gauntlet (not counting early abandons). Much better game this time, I had a better map, got to nine cities in time for my religion spam. Only had three religions, but a fourth came along pretty quickly after I was in 100% culture slider mode.

In 1532, I had two cities within GA bomb range of 150K.

In 1532, my third city was at 124,825, gaining 856 CPT. It needed to reach 126,000 (two GA's waiting). So, I was gonna finish in two turns... 1534.

In 1532, Frederick launched!

Actually had quite a bit of bad luck... I missed CoL, Liberalism, and Hanging Gardens by less than 5 turns each. Parthenon and Glib by less than 15. However, I wasn't really expecting to be first to any of them, so it didn't bother me too much. More damaging... four AI's, including my two next door neighbors were Hindu, but for many centuries, Hindu would not spread into my cities. Hence, I couldn't take a state religion for fear they would be angry at me and attack. So, no OR for many, many years.

Some questions:

- I decided to build 3 GS's so I could have Academies in all three culture cities. Seemed like a nice boost to Science with all the cottages, plus 5 CPT. However, given how early I turned off research, I'm wondering if artist super specialists would have been better.

- I ultimately spammed 4 cathedrals into each culture city. A couple of more religions came into my borders (one via a city flip) later in the game. I decided not to spam them out... didn't want to turn off my culture slider to build up the cash. Anyone have any ideas on how late in the game it is worthwhile to build the extra cathedrals?

- Is there any way to slow down the AI's launch? E.g. try to get them into a war? I didn't see any way to do this, everyone was friendly. I could see Freddie was close by the parts he had built, but I couldn't think of anything to do about it. Can't do spies, not worth the time/money to research them...

- Any way to encourage religion spread? I had open borders with everyone, built as many roads to their cities as I could, and for a long time, had no state religion. At that point, is it just luck?

Thanks in advance... trying to decide if I'll give this another go. Marathon culture games take forever, and I must admit, this last one was a little demoralizing!

 

[Lexad]

What about civics, wonders, and techs that alter worker speed?

~3800BC

Checked again at 3985 BC - same skejt both for Gandhi and Monty.

 

[godotnut]

@The-Hawk:

Ouch! That's frustrating.

- I decided to build 3 GS's so I could have Academies in all three culture cities. Seemed like a nice boost to Science with all the cottages, plus 5 CPT. However, given how early I turned off research, I'm wondering if artist super specialists would have been better.

I think you made the right call there. The culture bonus for academies makes them better than super scientists, imho.

 

[Misotu]

I couldn't even break 1350 AD on the Settler yet.

It is possible to break 1350 on Settler without too much effort

OK, maybe moderate effort

 

[jesusin]

@The-Hawk: Anyone have any ideas on how late in the game it is worthwhile to build the extra cathedrals?

I'm afraid you have to do the maths for your own situation. In my case, when the nineth city flipped, it was 30 turns before the end. I did the maths anyway and I was surprised to find that it was worth building one cathedral. I would lose a few turns in every city, lowering the culture bar. I would lose an artist specialist who had to go to the mines in the cathedral's city. But I would win a lot for 20 turns of +50% culture in that city... so a GA could be assigned to the second best city. In all, it saved 4 turns (out of 30) in normal speed. But that was just my case.

 

[The-Hawk]

OK, after my disasterous 2-turn loss to a 1532 launch, I decided to try a third time. I had an excellent start, three solid city locations for cottage spam and another OK spot for GA farm. Roosevelt started very close to my first city, so I Quechua rushed him and took all three cities from him. Only issue was the map was a bit health challenged, so growth was slow. Everything looked excellent....

Then I was beaten to Pyramids by 4-5 turns . I thought about abandoning, but it was such a good start that I decided to play longer. By the time I researched all the way to Democracy I had nine cities and five religions. I had started to spam religious buildings when another bit of bad news happened...

One of my nine cities (one of my original aquisitions from Roosevelt which had pretty good culture) was sitting close to Ghandi (a.k.a. the wonder spammer). He flipped it over, leaving my religious builds in a shambles . As an example, I had 9 Hindu temples, and my third Hindu Mandir underway, but had to stop. Other religions had 7 or 8 temples, etc. However, as I was starting to push Cyrus' culture borders back, I decided to continue with the hopes of getting a ninth city from him.

I built as many cathedrals as I could and built a few extra missionaries with the hopes a new city would come my way. I needed to build spare missionaries so I could switch from OR to Pacifism for GA points (in many cases I didn't have a Monastary, and I had screwed up and accepted Sci Method as a gift!). Meanwhile, a sixth religion showed up.

I finally went to 100% culture, but with the odd mix of cathedrals it didn't look good. However,it wasn't too terribly long before Cyrus donated a city to my society. With a ninth city, I could fill in all of the Temple gaps. My sixth religion (Taoism) had spread to three cities on its own. So I ended up with 6 cathedrals in one city, five in a second, and 4 in the third (could have built a 5th, but with Hermitage, I didn't need it). This last city made it all the way to 150K without one GA bomb!

At my peak, my cities were cranking 1055 CPT, 1025 CPT, and 886 CPT. I finished in 1556 AD. Not as fast as some of the other times that have been posted, but certainly nothing to be ashamed about . It is a Deity culture win after all!

Of course, now I wonder how it could have gone if I had gotten Pyramids . It certainly would have been faster, I burned a TON of time researching to Democracy. However it is hard to tell how much time it cost, because my cottages were still growing to towns during this period.

Maybe I'll have one more go to see if I can post a faster time...

 

[godotnut]

@The-Hawk:

Nice job! Sounds like an exciting recovery.

 

[Moonsinger]

After many luckless nights, I finally got a decent date. It was my best date so far....and it probably will go down hill from here.

 

[godotnut]

Great game Moonsinger. And you took out all the opposition too. Can you tell us more about that? How did you make that kind of military investment and still finish so fast?

Looks like I'm going to have to give it another go.

 

[WastinTime]

But I had no idea that one could get away with skipping Pyramids. That part indeed was a surprise. So you built--not bought--all those cathedrals? That would mean no "buying phase" at all, right, allowing you to turn the culture slider up as soon as you hit liberalism?

Right, I built "all" those cathedrals. Recall that "all" was just 5 cathedrals total and Hermitage. I didn't go immediately into culture mode after Liberalism though. Since I had no culture multipliers, it seems wise to build up cash so I could run 100% culture later. I stayed in Bureaucracy during this time for the 50% bonuses in the capitol. I probably over did that a bit. I think I was up to 5000 or 6000 gold. Then finally switched to Free Speech and 100% culture.