G-Major 45

[PaulisKhan]

I play a lot of space colony games and more often than not I'll be driven out of caste system into emancipation (I do CS for the extra hammer from workshops) due to mounting unhappiness.
A lot will depend on how the happiness resources are distributed across the map and how many you can secure.

Oh, and this reminds me why I don't like space race... play a long game only to find you have no coal or aluminum.

To be competitive in this I think you're going to need to be pushing the domination limit on territory owned, which means you're pretty much guaranteed of securing multiple copies of both.

 

[oyzar]

Philo is good at seizing monumental advantage but it won't actually bring you all that faster to the end of the tech tree. This is marathon so there really isn't any reason to not abuse UU's to the fullest. Either romans, egyptians or persians are going to be rather good. Darius have two relevant traits and seems like the default choice. There might be better strategies out there(with praets maybe?), but is no way the UU less leaders like liz/fred are going to match up. Darius starts with hunting which is a big drawback of course, you could probably steal 1-2 extra workers just by starting with worker(going worker first and stealing one worker is another possiblity), workers are cheap too on marathon after all. Techning AH/wheel and maybe mining(if you have some mining resources) and just taking out AI's with immortals seems like a good plan. Org is also rather good at keeping you going longer on plunder money when you've expanded too much(though julius also have that), but fin will obviously also help a lot in getting to the end very fast(even though borrow/beg/steal/trade is still going to be a large part of your economy)...

Having no coal or aliminium when you control 30%+ of the world should be though...

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Heh, I've got no coal

Everyone who has previously DoW'd m is in a defensive pact as well now (Giggles, Louis and Justinian). Giggles has coal so i'll try and wind him up into declaring war I think.

Washington (Pacal's colony) just founded mining inc. and creative constructions looks poor by comparison so I may stay in state property.

I've got 6 emancipation unhappiness in my largest cities but I trade for spices, sugar and fur so I can stay in caste for now.

Joao has a big tech lead he has plastics and I'm still 3 turns from assembly line.

Score leaders Joao and Pacal are both pleased with me so I should be safe from surprise backstabs from the superpowers.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Just as I was about to commit to a state property workshop economy I popped a GE at low odds so I'm back on track to pick up mining inc.
Finally getting a commerce city up and running (busy converting floodplains from farms to cottages) and am building curiassers to upgrade to Cav for a blitz against a couple of targets to pick up more land.

615 AD
20 cities
723 bpt@100%, -178gpt

-edit- the lucky streak continues, Roosevelt somehow ends up with 4000g and is quite happy to give it all to me for Nationalism which pretty much everyone else already knows.
Deficit teching here I come!!!

 

[The-Hawk]

Urgh... I had a three gold, pig, corn start. Decided to try for CS slingshot. An AI built Oracle in 2020 BC. Waste of a good start.

Actually, given I am playing Liz, maybe mids would be a better early wonder. I almost never build mids, might give that a try. Seems less risky than Oracle.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Finished the game, made lots of mistakes and only popped enough GP for two golden ages before my ship launched (and no mausolleum to extend them), far below optimum micro, workers mostly automated due to computer running slow in the mid AD's.
Don't recall building any wonders until I snuck UoS in.
Vassalised the spanish and then for some reason Isa got huffy with me and declared war when I demaned she give me all her iron and copper, so I had to wipe her off the mainland and then she wouldn't re-vassalise. Slowed me down and prevented me from using those troops to capture statue of liberty, which would have been a huge boost. Very frustrating.

Finish date: 1542
Score: 330k

 

[Dynamic]

Finish date: 1542
Score: 330k

It's new record for Immortal as I predicted.

I just finish my Small Monarch Colony in 970AD with score 684K and haven't enough power to start this Major immediately... I'm playing very slow so it looks like I'll skip this gauntlet. And, I have never played Immortal...

 

[PaulisKhan]

Very impressive finish date for your monarch game!
You will not find Immortal very difficult, in fact I am very surprised that you do not play it regularly. Winning on Immortal is much easier than finishing a monarch space colony in 970AD

I fully expected to beat my previous best Immortal date, since I learn something new every time I play, but mostly I think the larger mapsizes are easier just because there is more territory to utilise. Only problem is it slows my computer down so much that optimising turns is a headache so I end up automating a lot of stuff and just hitting enter so I can at least finish the game.
I was generating almost 10,000 beakers per turn towards the end. I'll be surprised if someone doesn't beat my date though, many good gauntlet players don't focus much attention on space colony for their own games, but now that it is a set challenge I think we will see some very good dates.

 

[Dynamic]

I was generating almost 10,000 beakers per turn towards the end.

How many cities did you have? In my Monarch game I got just 8.5K with 38(+9) cities. But, I don't use Cottage Economy (only Capital has enough Cottages) so my science output is balanced but not very strong.

It looks like Immortal level requires more Cottages...

 

[PaulisKhan]

hmmm, not sure. I'll check tomorrow evening when I get a chance to play again. I built around 20 of my own (or captured in the early rushes) and then captured another 20 or so towards the end with cavalry (no siege or spies, just flanking promotions for everything, very very fast wars).
If I was feeling more aggressive I'd have picked up another 10-15 but I didn't want to mess around too much with my first attempt.
If I have another go I'll definitely go after more cities. I had around 10% more land I could safely capture without hitting the Dom limit.
This was mostly a test game but I'll see how other people do before deciding whether I have another go (and would make sure to have a proper GP farm and grab the Pyramids and hopefully GLib)

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Well you finished before I built apollo

1794AD in my game, just built the internet but Joao beat me to fusion. Picked up robotics and satellites from tinternet and have 2 great engineers so I could rush the space elevator in 4 turns. But then I think I wont have a late golden age because I'm unlikely to get 2 more GPs. 1 is due in 5 turns, probably a scientist from Oxford capital.

No corps for me, only wonders were TGL, Great Lib, Taj and the internet. Unless I build the space elevator of course, thinking of doing that just to slow Joao down.

No-one has built any parts yet and Pacal built apollo in 1604 so I don't know what he is doing.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Well you finished before I built apollo

1794AD in my game, just built the internet but Joao beat me to fusion. Picked up robotics and satellites from tinternet and have 2 great engineers so I could rush the space elevator in 4 turns. But then I think I wont have a late golden age because I'm unlikely to get 2 more GPs. 1 is due in 5 turns, probably a scientist from Oxford capital.

At this stage I'd say go for it and start the space elevator, I'd definitely sink one GE into it, and possibly the second, how close do you think the AI is to completing it?
It's almost worth more to you than a golden age in terms of component hammer production and will certainly favour you in a tight race with the AI for the last component to be researched (btw have some trees prechopped for that last part, the AI isn't smart enough for this so you can beat them to it even if they have a couple of turns headstart).

Good luck with the last part of your game!

Don't get discouraged by the dates either, the key is to play more games!!!

 

[PaulisKhan]

It looks like Immortal level requires more Cottages...

I run a hammer economy similar to yours, the only difference is that due to massive maintainance costs after the early rush (probably the biggest challenge you have to deal with on Immortal/Deity) you have to work quite a few cottages (or coastal tiles) in multiple cities just to dig yourself out of the hole (like I mentioned earlier -38gpt at 0% research can be tough to recover from).

Of course after having worked all these cottages and developed them through the entire early game, I'm always reluctant to just workshop over them later, so for this reason I'm usually left with one super cottaged capital and 2-3 semi cottaged cities at the end (plus whatever I capture from the AI).

Also I'm still a sucker for cottages on floodplains, I just can't resist. Full cottage+half a specialist/plainshill mine? YES PLEASE!!!!

-edit- If you're keen on giving Deity/Immortal a go, let me know so we can discuss tactics, it's probably the only place I feel like I can make a useful contribution >.<

 

[Ozbenno]

I run a hammer economy

I saw this mentioned in a SGOTM thread but have no idea what is meant by this. Please illuminate me

 

[PaulisKhan]

Dynamic is the master of it, but without doing him a disservice I'll try to explain.

Instead of cottages/specialists, you focus on mines/workshops and however much irrigation is required to work them.
This nets you fewer raw hammers than a cottage economy would net you in raw commerce but it has two primary advantages.

1) You only need to build forge+factory+minimum required health/happiness buildings. That means fewer hammers sunk into infrastructure and more hammers sunk directly into research/wealth.

2) versatility, you can build wealth/research/units/WW's/SS components in pretty much any one of your villages. Decide to go to war? Build 10 cavalry per turn for 10 turns and enslave the world (on marathon speed no less).
Need cash? build wealth instead of lowering the research slider and losing all of your lovely Oxford+Academey multipliers.
Need components built without interfering with current builds? Any town will do!

The key techs are CoL for caste system (+1 hammer to workshops), guilds (+1 hammer to workshops), chemistry (+1 hammer to workshops)
At this point there is a decision to be made. For a game like this where the objective is to win by a specific victory condition (space) you're going to want to take over the world (without hitting Dom limit) to secure as many mining resources as possible for mining inc. In this situation you want railroad+corps.
In a more normal game where you might be struggling to win at all and your territory is relatively small, you'll want to grab state property from communism so you can turn more farms into workshops.

Early game, 90% of my cities are being whipped mercilessly to get forge+courthouse+lib+(X*buildings required for the various national wonders. ie libraries->universites->Oxford)
If there is any chance of me getting the AP religion spread to me I will almost always whip the temple+monastary double for the +4 hammers total and the extra happiness in all of my cities. They pay for themselves very quickly once the food->hammers conversion rate is considered and compared to the return of hammers from the buildings themselves.
About the time I hit chemistry I'm ready to start letting my cities grow and work their improvements.

It's called a hammer economy because (with the exception of a cottage spammed bureau capital with academy+oxford) almost all of your research in the end game is coming from "building research and wealth".

On a typical map (because it scales with size) you'll be able to secure 30-40 hammers per turn worth of mining inc resources, so for HoF games you'll almost always see the best games take the corp route instead of state property.
When I'm playing a single player game for fun though I'll usually adopt SP for the workshops and +10% prod bonus because I'm unlikely to control 90% of the worlds resources, and if I did I'd just push on for the Dom win.
-----

Of course it gets a little bit muddied by the odd hybrid city and captured cities with the usual AI mishmash, but hammers is always the focus.
I think that it's typically a safer strategy for higher difficulty levels because of the ease with which the economy can be switched between wartime and peacetime economies.
It's also slightly more conducive to drafting, due to the extra irrigation usually in place which allows for faster regrowth, and there's no turns of "cottage growth" lost in the process.
There is very little buildup time required to take advantage of opportunities, whether it be a race to a particular tech, or a mobilisation of troops against a weakened empire.

-edit- The Bureau research capital and a good GP farm are important, but not game breaking, as I learned in this particular challenge.

 

[Ozbenno]

Hmmm, I never build workshops but I can see the point. I haven't started this one yet so might try a hybrid game to wean myself off cottages.

 

[The-Hawk]

PaulisKhan, that was one heck of a good post. Really challenges my view on how to do space race. I hope I can find enough time to really apply myself to this gauntlet to see the tradeoffs.

 

[bhavv]

I just tried my first immortal game after reading this thread, but I sucked by choosing Rameses and trying for my usual religious economy ...

I had marble and built the stonehenge, but missed both Temple of Artemis and Oracle, didnt get a single religion, beaten like crazy to Glib, and I just sat there thinking 'danm, I suck at this'.

.

I read pauls hints just now and realise how badly I went wrong for this setting. I think I will try some Dutch archipelago maps with only building ships and wonders in my capital if it is even possible - GLH, Colosus, Glib, <move capital> Versailes, Statue of Lib, Wall Street and Oxford ... Then try running every other city with workshops and coastal squares. The main challenge is finding a map with enough expansion space plus a good commerce site for the capital.

My last game on monarch gave me a great map with space for 8 cities, 7 of which were up by 80 BC on a 70% research slider (GLH, COL and Financial is hax on archipelago maps), but the drawback would be that the cultural trait isnt as good as Org for this tactic.

Now if we could do unrestricted leaders, Darius of Netherlands, archipelago map, every city coastal with the commerce wonders and Dykes, plus a nice map with space for 15+ cities ...

=D

It would likely be a lot slower then Pauls win, and impossible to make that commerce capital on Immortal, but it will be fun getting frustrated from trying.

Are we allowed to use no random events, espionage, barbarians and permanent peace?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Thanks for the advice about my game, I used both my GEs for the space elevator and still managed to have a late second golden age.

Too late though, as I was finishing off the stasis chamber and casings (already had an engine), Joao launched his ship with all thrusters and 1 engine, so I needed to build 2 engines to have any chance.

Built it and launched, but you only have a 7 turn window to build 2nd engine (37 turns vs. 30 turnns for 1 or 2 engines and all thrusters on marathon), end result: Joao beat me by 9 turns

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I just tried my first immortal game after reading this thread, but I sucked by choosing Rameses and trying for my usual religious economy ...

I had marble and built the stonehenge, but missed both Temple of Artemis and Oracle, didnt get a single religion, beaten like crazy to Glib, and I just sat there thinking 'danm, I suck at this'.

.

I read pauls hints just now and realise how badly I went wrong for this setting. I think I will try some Dutch archipelago maps with only building ships and wonders in my capital if it is even possible - GLH, Colosus, Glib, <move capital> Versailes, Statue of Lib, Wall Street and Oxford ... Then try running every other city with workshops and coastal squares. The main challenge is finding a map with enough expansion space plus a good commerce site for the capital.

My last game on monarch gave me a great map with space for 8 cities, 7 of which were up by 80 BC on a 70% research slider (GLH, COL and Financial is hax on archipelago maps), but the drawback would be that the cultural trait isnt as good as Org for this tactic.

Now if we could do unrestricted leaders, Darius of Netherlands, archipelago map, every city coastal with the commerce wonders and Dykes, plus a nice map with space for 15+ cities ...

=D

It would likely be a lot slower then Pauls win, and impossible to make that commerce capital on Immortal, but it will be fun getting frustrated from trying.

Are we allowed to use no random events, espionage, barbarians and permanent peace?

My game was an archipelago map (with Hannibal), production was my main problem so Dutch probably better although dikes will take a long time to build.

It's not worth going for an early religion on Immortal. You really need to focus your tech path to beeline wonder techs to beat the AI to them as well.

Statue of Lib isn't a good plan on archipelago since it only affects the continent it was built on. Can't see Versailles being a goer either you will likely be beaten to Divine Right, it's very expensive, and state property would be better.

You can turn barbs on or off for this game, random events can be off I thiink, always peace is definitely banned as is no espionage. Check the HoF rules link from the gauntlet main page on the HoF site.