G-Major 29

[Pious_Pete]

Lost to Gandhi, space race 1675.

Key milestones:-

Alpha 1920 BC
CS 400 BC
Lib 500 AD (Losing out to Gandhi c 300 AD)
2 Cats + Hermitage built by 1030 AD.
Only 1 religion until 1230 when, like #7 buses, three turned up at once. I built no further religious buildings.
No world wonders.

At the end I was probably c30 turns of a victory.

On the face of it, this is not very promising; but it is quite encouraging to me.

Basically, I couldn´t sleep last night (planning my next assault on GM29), so I thought I´d get up and play a test game with no world wonders, which I did.

The start wasn´t very good (1 pig, 1 gem, 1 FP), since I didn´t have time to run mapfinder, so the game probably was doomed from the outset; but I think I learnt quite a lot.

With a better start, I think I could pull back 7 turns or so to win the lib race, and this would save another 10 turns or so on Nat. Plus hopefully I´d be able to trade for PP or Econ (which I didn´t get in this game). Also, if I could pop Philo first to get another religion, I think all this might make the difference.

Hopefully I can have another go tonight.

 

[ssjos]

I start out with worker, then I build about 2 warriors and grow to size 4 or 5 depending on start. Then 3x settler and most likly 1x worker in capital.
First city will build a worker

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

In my most recent game (of which more later), I finished building my 2 cats by 1030. I only had one religion until 1250 when a couple more spread.

I decided to sit on my hands at this point, because it seemed a bit late to be building cats. I guess it´s a matter of judgement as to when its not worth it.

I agree with FiveAces, never stop building Cathedrals unless you have something better to do with your hammers. Build with or without Bureaucracy and/or Organized Religion, but focus on those Cathedrals whose corresponding strategic resource (Marble, Stone or Copper) you have.

Hermitage should be built even if you lack all hammer multipliers, probably in the Culture city with the highest hammer value, so it gets built somewhat quickly.

BTW, a Forge like all non-Culture buildings (with the possible exception of Aqueduct and Grocer for Health) is almost certainly a waste of hammers, since it provides only a 1.25x multiplier. If you have 3-4 Cathedrals, 3-4 Monasteries and 3-4 Temples to build in the same Cultural city, building a Forge first could be a net gain, even considering the delayed early culture lost while building it. On the other hand, with only 1-2 Cathedrals, 1-2 Monasteries and 1-2 Temples per Culture city, building a Forge first will delay the Culture multiplying effect of the Cathedrals without a net benefit.

On the other hand, building non-Culture buildings in the non-Culture cities can be good. For example a Courthouse can be built when there's nothing better to do or it could build Wealth. When a Culture city has no Culture buildings left to build, it should build culture, unless it is the only source for a needed Missionary (that will allow additional Culture building in another Culture city).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Until fairly recently, my build queue was worker-settler-worker-pyramids with warriors thrown in so that settler build was at size 2, and the second worker at size 3.

A player owning The Pyramids seems to be a target for at least one the AIs at deity level. Every time I've gone for a cultural win and included building The Pyramids as part of my strategy, an AI would later eventually attack me. jesusin has had the same experience when building The Pyramids as well, 6 of 6 times as I recall. The only effective method for avoiding this is great diplomacy, since building up a military is a waste of hammers for a cultural victory goal. Building The Pyramids may still be a viable option, but extreme care with diplomacy may be required.

However, I am now trying for wins without any world wonders, and my queue has been worker-settler-settler (with the second city building a settler straight away as well). I´ve been throwing warriors in as appropriate.

But what is appropriate? I grow to size 2 before starting on the 1st settler. Should I grow to size 3 before starting on the second?

A worker on turn 0 should be a given in any Settler building strategy, unless you're doing a Quechua rush which can't be used in gauntlets anymore. Trying to grow the capital to size 2 or 3, before building the first Worker, just delays the completion of that first Worker. Without that first Worker, there will be no improvements or pre-chopped forests, so why delay it longer than necessary?

ssjos may have the best city building strategy, start a Worker on turn 0, build up to Population 4-5 and build 3 Settlers in a row and possibly a 2nd Worker. With enough food resources improved by the first Worker, pre-chopping forests may not even be needed to get the Settlers out quickly. This should also maximize research, since you will have only one city for a longer period of time with zero overhead.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[FiveAces]

Until fairly recently, my build queue was worker-settler-worker-pyramids with warriors thrown in so that settler build was at size 2, and the second worker at size 3.

However, I am now trying for wins without any world wonders, and my queue has been worker-settler-settler (with the second city building a settler straight away as well). I´ve been throwing warriors in as appropriate.

But what is appropriate? I grow to size 2 before starting on the 1st settler. Should I grow to size 3 before starting on the second?

You should grow to at least size 3 before the first (working 2 commerce and 1 food during the build) and size 4 if you have a second food.

 

[jesusin]

I am rusty. A very important bit of early strategy is this:
Your first Worker must travel with your first built settler.
I'll try not to forget again.

 

[FiveAces]

I am rusty. A very important bit of early strategy is this:
Your first Worker must travel with your first built settler.
I'll try not to forget again.

Curious - Would you still do that if he could only build a grassland cottage? Or do you make sure there is an ag resource or FP in the initial culture box?

Anyone trying the BTS PA route - why OCC? Wouldn't you want 2 cities? That way you could have a GP farm and build cathedrals in the capital and your partner only needs to get his first city legendary.

 

[jesusin]

I am hating oracling CoL. It's a nice boost to research, but I find it delays the library in the capital too much. Also, being so soon, the second city doesn't have time enough to pop a GS before the capital's GPro.

Curious - Would you still do that if he could only build a grassland cottage? Or do you make sure there is an ag resource or FP in the initial culture box?

Well, of course the Worker has to have a couple of improvements to do. Tipically farm food resource and mine grassland hill. That way the second city can colaborate towards Workers and Settlers.

 

[FiveAces]

I am hating oracling CoL. It's a nice boost to research, but I find it delays the library in the capital too much. Also, being so soon, the second city doesn't have time enough to pop a GS before the capital's GPro.

Well if you founded confu in the 2nd cottage city, which will get hermitage+caths, that Gpro for a shrine is definitely not a waste. You will never pop a gp from there, working mines and cottages, so pool pollution is not an issue.

 

[ssjos]

A player owning The Pyramids seems to be a target for at least one the AIs at deity level. Every time I've gone for a cultural win and included building The Pyramids as part of my strategy, an AI would later eventually attack me. jesusin has had the same experience when building The Pyramids as well, 6 of 6 times as I recall. The only effective method for avoiding this is great diplomacy, since building up a military is a waste of hammers for a cultural victory goal. Building The Pyramids may still be a viable option, but extreme care with diplomacy may be required.

OMFG, yesterday I had the best game as of yet and I was looking to build a late wonder in my capital to put some idle hammers to use.

I was like, I have stone, noone has pyramids lets do it. I built pyramids, and about 5 turns after that just as I reached liberalism, Isabella declared war from the other side of the map.
She had about 5 maces, 5 catapults and 5 horsearchers moved over my border...

I had at least +3 relations and cautios I may even have been pleased

 

[FiveAces]

Bummer ssjos. That sounds like a MaxWar delcaration where Izzy would have decided to go to war with you many turns before because of the RNG. It probably just coincided with your finishing the mids. That is one reason why it is good idea to use only the leaders that will not DOW you at Pleased (I don't think Izzy is in this category) as opponents. Since your power will be well below everyone else, if a civ gets the RNG to DOW on any particular turn, they will pick you unless your diplo relation prevents it. That's also a reason to beeline alpha - once there you should be able to keep everyone pleased throughout.

IIRC, Cautious does not prevent a RNG DOW with anybody on vanilla.

 

[ZPV]

Anyone trying the BTS PA route - why OCC? Wouldn't you want 2 cities? That way you could have a GP farm and build cathedrals in the capital and your partner only needs to get his first city legendary.

Two reasons:
1) I want Globe + Nat. Park + Nat Epic (+ Hermitage) in one city with lots of biology farms.
2) I had kind of assumed that the AI is better at getting its 2nd and 3rd cities to Legendary than an ordinary non turbo-charged GP Farm. (If you gift any GAs, it will culture bomb them all in the city with the third highest culture rate - even if it is already Legendary. This is something I am taking advantage of)

One more thing - playing OCC means more space for my ally to expand into.

I have been teching up to Scientific Method (by lightbulbing) and then gifting it all to Mansa (my PA target) as the fastest way to get to Communism, for a 15xx finish.

There is a lot more randomness with the map than in a normal game, as I need Mansa to be next to me (ideally far away with lots of room for cities) and the common war target not next to me.

 

[FiveAces]

Two reasons:
1) I want Globe + Nat. Park + Nat Epic (+ Hermitage) in one city with lots of biology farms.
2) I had kind of assumed that the AI is better at getting its 2nd and 3rd cities to Legendary than an ordinary non turbo-charged GP Farm. (If you gift any GAs, it will culture bomb them all in the city with the third highest culture rate - even if it is already Legendary. This is something I am taking advantage of)

One more thing - playing OCC means more space for my ally to expand into.

I have been teching up to Scientific Method (by lightbulbing) and then gifting it all to Mansa (my PA target) as the fastest way to get to Communism, for a 15xx finish.

There is a lot more randomness with the map than in a normal game, as I need Mansa to be next to me (ideally far away with lots of room for cities) and the common war target not next to me.

That's interesting - sounds like you're building just a GP farm and not using it as one of the three legendary cities? It's a different strategy than I would use if I had BTS. I wouldn't bother with Globe or NP or anything in the capital - Just hermitage. NE I would build in the GP farm as usual. I would tech to MilTrad for DP, then drop research to whatever % I felt would get me to communism the same date as the capital went legendary. And I wouldn't want them to super expand - better to have fewer cities to focus the culture buildings and wonders.

But why be satisfied with 15xx? Your capital can go legendary well before that with cottages and cathedrals, so the critical path should be the AI's second city. If they can't get that before 1400 there's not much point in the PA route for best time - you can get 15xx on your own.

 

[ZPV]

@Fiveaces:

I am using the capital as a Legendary city; with 20+ Artists it goes mighty fast.
The limiting factor is how fast the AI's capital can get to legendary, I need to settle 2-3 artists (maybe more) to get it to catch up.

I had wanted a super expanding ally because I want them to tech fast. Half the time they need to get to the modern age before they will push the slider. Maybe this is wrong, and I should just wait for an Industrial culture push (~25 turns earlier, but no Electricity/Radio wonders).

I will try out the ordinary strategy and PA without OCC for comparison; so far my aim has just been to show that OCC + PA can compete.
I messed up my best start by wasting 2GPs with misclicks and missing Liberalism. If I were to play that map again I think I could finish pre-1500, although 1400 would really be pushing it.

 

[Pious_Pete]

Lost space race to Gandhi, 1675 (again)

Start: Gems, Wheat, 2FP (no plains hill)
Alpha 1600 BC
CS 400 BC
Lib 350 AD (winning the race)
No world wonders
3GS (Philo,Edu,Edu) 7 GA
3 Spread Early Religions
6 Cats built + Hermitage (No cat had access to reqd resource)

Following the comments in the forum, I built as many cats as possible for as long as possible.

Despite having a better start and winning the race to lib, I still fell short by around 30 turns again. This is getting frustrating.

In my next game, I´m going to try a different approach to settler building, c.f the comments in the posts above.

 

[Pious_Pete]

I start out with worker, then I build about 2 warriors and grow to size 4 or 5 depending on start. Then 3x settler and most likly 1x worker in capital.
First city will build a worker

Thats interesting. I can see why this would work in theory; but in practice I´ve always found that this approach seems to be a bit slow in getting city 2 in situ (in comparison to Godonuts approach which I have been using up to now).

However, I´ll definitely give this a bash in my next game. I definitely need to try something different.

 

[Pious_Pete]

I agree with FiveAces, never stop building Cathedrals unless you have something better to do with your hammers. Sun Tzu Wu

O.K. I tried that in my last game. I can´t say that it seemed to make any appreciable difference, but that may be because I had access to none of the cat resources. I will perservere with this advice though in my next game.

 

[Pious_Pete]

A player owning The Pyramids seems to be a target for at least one the AIs at deity level. Every time I've gone for a cultural win and included building The Pyramids as part of my strategy, an AI would later eventually attack me.
Sun Tzu Wu

I find this surprising. Prior to this gauntlet I have played a lot of cultural diety games (usually on tiny maps) always building pyramids, and only rarely did I experience DOWs. In fact, I´ve had as many out-of-the blue DOWs in this gauntlet without pyramids, as in my previous games with pyramids.

 

[Pious_Pete]

A worker on turn 0 should be a given in any Settler building strategy, unless you're doing a Quechua rush which can't be used in gauntlets.
Sun Tzu Wu

I agree about the worker. I was in fact seeking confirmation that growing to size 2 is best before building a settler, but everyone seems to be suggesting that it should be size 3, 4 (or maybe even 5!). I´ll definitely be trying this in my next game.

 

[Pious_Pete]

You should grow to at least size 3 before the first (working 2 commerce and 1 food during the build) and size 4 if you have a second food.

Ah! A rule that I can follow to decide on whether size 3 or 4 is best.