G-Major 37

[pigswill]

Lurking here. Getting HoF set up is too complicated for me I fear.

If speed is the main problem then why not try something like archipelago (small islands), high sea level, no barbs. Play as Ragnar, go for optics/astro beeline. Ragnar gets +1 move for Trading Post, +1 move for circumnavigation. A number of the AIs will be stuck on their starting islands pre-astronomy. You should be able to colonise lots of islands peacefully. It doesn't matter how much land there is on the map as long as you get 60-65% of it. Getting Glight would of course help your economy a lot.

 

[Salomo]

How come only two games have been submitted for this gauntlet so far?

If nobody else submits i'll get to the podium with my lousy 1845 finish

 

[Harbourboy]

Because it's really hard!! I can't get anywhere near domination on huge in the number of turns you get on Quick.

 

[cabert]

I'm still #2 with a 20th century win

 

[Salomo]

I'm still #2 with a 20th century win

Not anymore

 

[cabert]

Not anymore

,and I'm not going to try again

 

[Mr. Bill]

I just finished my first attempt at this one, giving up around 1200 with 20% land. I tried using Genghis... I made a ton of mistakes:

-Never did a warrior rush before, so I tried one. I destroyed 2 civs and captured their cities w/ warriors, then w/ warriors and archers, but I (stupidly) used a great general on one of those stacks. It would have been better to save him for keshiks.

-Forgot to change civics a few times. I shouldn't drink and play this game.

-Didn't check to see if certain opponents had ivory or not. Not a good idea to start a war with only mounted units when the other civ has elephants!

Spamming units seems easy to do, and it seems ok to just lose a bunch at each city cause there will be a bunch coming up to reinforce. Economy wasn't a problem except for a couple of turns after the warrior rush, where i had a lot of cities and no workers to maintain them.

Quick speed does go very fast though, I had upgraded to knights and hardly used them when I was about to get cuav's (dunno how to spell it). God forbid I wound up with nothing left to upgrade to than helicopters, cause they can't take cities.

Keeping ahead in techs was easy. And trading random resources for 4 or 5 gold from a bunch of different civs helps keep the tech rate up. Also, I made sure I started on a plains hill, cause that extra hammer seems to make a big difference on quick speed in the early going.

Basically I just built barracks, then when I could, a ger, and then spammed keshiks and knights with no regard to economy. My tech rate was a steady 60% the whole game (lots of cottages, plus the trading). Then again, I didn't expand past 20% land area, so who knows if it would have held up. This one's fun and very different from my usual playing style, so I'll be trying a few more times.

 

[Salomo]

,and I'm not going to try again

Heh, i can totally understand that.

I wonder whether one more attempt would be enough for #1 for me... If I could just get myself to play thoughtfully by the end of the game instead of just clicking through the masses of units and cities, 100 years less should be easily possible.

 

[Salomo]

I just finished my first attempt at this one, giving up around 1200 with 20% land. I tried using Genghis... I made a ton of mistakes:

-Never did a warrior rush before, so I tried one. I destroyed 2 civs and captured their cities w/ warriors, then w/ warriors and archers, but I (stupidly) used a great general on one of those stacks. It would have been better to save him for keshiks.

-Forgot to change civics a few times. I shouldn't drink and play this game.

-Didn't check to see if certain opponents had ivory or not. Not a good idea to start a war with only mounted units when the other civ has elephants!

Spamming units seems easy to do, and it seems ok to just lose a bunch at each city cause there will be a bunch coming up to reinforce. Economy wasn't a problem except for a couple of turns after the warrior rush, where i had a lot of cities and no workers to maintain them.

Quick speed does go very fast though, I had upgraded to knights and hardly used them when I was about to get cuav's (dunno how to spell it). God forbid I wound up with nothing left to upgrade to than helicopters, cause they can't take cities.

Keeping ahead in techs was easy. And trading random resources for 4 or 5 gold from a bunch of different civs helps keep the tech rate up. Also, I made sure I started on a plains hill, cause that extra hammer seems to make a big difference on quick speed in the early going.

Basically I just built barracks, then when I could, a ger, and then spammed keshiks and knights with no regard to economy. My tech rate was a steady 60% the whole game (lots of cottages, plus the trading). Then again, I didn't expand past 20% land area, so who knows if it would have held up. This one's fun and very different from my usual playing style, so I'll be trying a few more times.

Why did you give up in 1200? Doesn't sound like a bad start....

I found the gauntlet quite fun in the beginning, but somehow the idea of again having to click through all the cities and armies by the end scares me off from trying again. By the end i just had so many cities and cavalries that it was more work than fun :-(

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Micro logistics! My final submission before I got tired of this was my 3rd attempt (bad strategy first, bad execution 2nd). 2 hour game . Stack move and waypointing ftw.

Hmmm...I've been screwing around starting to run some EQM games. Apparently tiny is allowed, so I turned in 2 immortal wins today:

One was a conquest with hatty on a Tiny terra map...stupid Inca HoF submissions all beat me, but I DO have the fastest non-inca finish for tiny immortal conquest now pending acceptance (considering I don't use mapfinder, and just played the entire thing in one segment, I'm probably good).

Second one was a bit more interesting. I wanted quick out of the way, and culture too. I ran a OCC pangaea challenge with Roosevelt and permanently allied Gandhi, instantly winning culture when I did so. Inexplicably, I won liberalism in that one.

As for G Major 37, I never got or used a better unit than knights . No complex bulbing of guilds like oyzar for me, just spam n go. A careful understanding of vassal mechanics per DanF helps a lot too.

 

[oyzar]

I didn't actually bulb anything in my game... I still got guilds 300 AD with 13 cities..

 

[Mr. Bill]

Why did you give up in 1200? Doesn't sound like a bad start....

I found the gauntlet quite fun in the beginning, but somehow the idea of again having to click through all the cities and armies by the end scares me off from trying again. By the end i just had so many cities and cavalries that it was more work than fun :-(

It was a decent start, but then I declared war on Cyrus, I think it was, and he had a huge stack of war elephants that wiped out pretty much all my knights before I even got to his first city. Next attempt I'm definitely making sure opponents don't have ivory before I invade.

Yeah, by the end of the game it's probably going to be a hassle moving all the war units. I'll probably get lazy and automate workers to speed things along, and try to keep just a few huge stacks of cavalry.

 

[oyzar]

With capratches you don't have to worry that much about phants. Eventually the AI's might get construction + hbr ofc but even so capratches beat phants on the attack... 14.4 vs 13.6 for C2 vs C2 for example. On the defense it would be 9.6(phant) vs 9.23(cap) though...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Keshiks should be fine vs elephants in #'s. The AI takes a while to get them, and they seldom MASS them, so just move quick so they don't build too many new ones. A flanking II keshiks has a first strike, and ignores first strikes. It's reasonable with a high combat promoted one that after the flanking one attacks (and has a 50% chance to survive) that the elephant has taken enough damage that you can kill it with good combat promos. Sometimes you might need a 2nd keshik.

I was using them against cities with longbows and their culture D, and elephants don't hold better than longbows on defense (actually, a CG II longbow in a city is stronger IIRC)!

I do recall seeing some wellies in my game, but I just swatted them out of the way. Screw cataphracts.

 

[Salomo]

Keshiks should be fine vs elephants in #'s. The AI takes a while to get them, and they seldom MASS them, so just move quick so they don't build too many new ones. A flanking II keshiks has a first strike, and ignores first strikes. It's reasonable with a high combat promoted one that after the flanking one attacks (and has a 50% chance to survive) that the elephant has taken enough damage that you can kill it with good combat promos. Sometimes you might need a 2nd keshik.

I was using them against cities with longbows and their culture D, and elephants don't hold better than longbows on defense (actually, a CG II longbow in a city is stronger IIRC)!

I do recall seeing some wellies in my game, but I just swatted them out of the way. Screw cataphracts.

I made a completely different experience with Elephants. In my game roosevelt had two or three of them, stacked with a knight and maceman, that kept moving out of the city to torment my troops and then hid in the city behind a screen of longbows again.

Elephants wont stop you if you destroy the ivory supplies fast enough, but they can be really annoying even after getting knights.

 

[ryzax]

How come only two games have been submitted for this gauntlet so far?

If nobody else submits i'll get to the podium with my lousy 1845 finish

it's enjoyable at the start but gets so so annoying towards the end.

adopted my usual domination strategy. like as always, I can eliminate two civs before 1000ish BC. consistent on being first on guilds but I can't build enough knights fast enough before I see longbows popping on A.I. cities.... and they always have ivory! got frustrated when it's already 1500s and yet i am far from winning domination.

tried settler spamming on terra as recommended by cabert. first on optics and astronomy. Looks good in terms of date, i think; but my PC can't take terra anymore and things move so slow, my head starts to ache and I call it quits.

 

[Tatran]

Quick speed -> no quick city resistance ending?
12 turns is too long at this game speed.

Altough I've achieved a victory, only 4 turns left , tiny islands + vassal states wasn't such a good idea.

 

[unclethrill]

I just submitted an 1858 finish. Justin really is a good choice for this one. The Capharact was able to dominate against everything up to rifleman and by the time anyone had them I was rolling deep in Cavalry. I don't usually play on quick so I'm sure there were lots of mistakes that could have shaved off turns starting with ending unit production earlier. In the end I had 70+ cavalry and was warring with 3 different people. I took the vassal route and was able capitulate about 8 and killed off 3 before I hit the dom. limit.

This was a fun one but I need to move away from these huge maps. My computer does not like them!!

 

[Mr. Bill]

Ok, second attempt finished in 1740.

Man, it really gets to be unwieldy late in the game. So many cities and workers that all finish everything so quickly.

I played as Genghis again, pangea w/ high seas, no barbs, and 16 civs. I warrior rushed one civ (tried to do two but he got axemen). Had a stroke of luck and got horseback riding from a hut. I lucked out with the quests too, my first one was to build 11 gers (stables) and I had already been building them first in all cities anyway, when I finished I got 11 free Keshiks which I used to invade DeGaulle. I built a few settlers and workers, and when the economy got rough I built markets, but for the most part I just built a ger, then a barracks, then just mounted units. Upgrading from cuivassiers to cavalry only costs 59 gold, so I did a lot of that. I captured the city that had the pyramids early and ran police state the whole game. Other civics were vassalage, caste system, then free market/state property and pacifism/free religion once I could get them.

My other quest was to build a bunch of castles and the result was +3 from all leaders, which may explain why noone declared war on me.

So, yeah, overall I ignored everything (even the oracle which was weird for me) and just focused on building lots of mounted units.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

All this talk of Justinian being the best has given me an idea (not with Justinian though), so I'll see what I can do tonight I think.