G-Major 45

[ShannonCT]

1478 finish
396k points

....

There's still another 100 years that can come off that finish date without much trouble.

That's funny. I just submitted a 1378 victory. I hope it will be accepted. I had to replay a couple turns due to a crash.

Settings were Darius on Terra map with 10 AI

I almost gave up on this game after I researched AH and found no horses near my capital. The only reason I pressed on was that I had gems in my BFC, another gems nearby, and 3 gold nearby. Plus I had stone in my BFC. With Mids and two happiness resources, I knew I could get some big cities early.

I researched BW and found copper nearby, so I decided to try axe rushing a few AI. This succeeded in taking down one AI and part of another, and gave me a good place to chop the Mids. A quick beeline to cats gave me the firepower to take out several more AI.

Mids was the only early wonder I built. Gandhi got marble and started hogging all of the marble wonders (Oracle, Artemis, Parthenon, Great Library, MoM). I think I should have kept Gandhi out of my game. He's too big of a wonderwhore, and he gets angry faster for declaring war on his friends. Later, I missed the Taj by one stinking turn to Elizabeth.

The midgame was rough because of all of the negative diplo modifiers I got for declaring so many wars. I stole a good handful of workers from several different AI in the begining and redeclared on some of those same AI to rush them. I had a lot of enemies and they started backstabbing me while I was at war with others. I lost and retook several marginal cities from the backstabbers. It's a good thing I chose AI that don't train many units (Lincoln, Roosevelt, Frederick, Elizabeth, Victoria, Mansa, Hatty, Ramses, Gandhi, Asoka).

My endgame was a mess. I've never played a Space Race or Space Colony game so I really didn't know the best tech order. Please don't laugh when you see my game log.

The last 30 turns were also kinda frustrating. Since I was near domination when I launched, I had to give away a lot of nice cities in the last 30 turns. I watched my score drop from a high of 551K down to 432K.

What went well?

Lots of happiness for big powerful cities, especially capital with lots of cottages worked early.

I was the dominant force in the new world. I was the only one with Astro for a long time and was able to settle about 12 cities there to claim a lot of metal and seafood. I was in State Property during this settling spree, and liberated them into two colonies when I switched to Free Market for Mining Inc and Sushi. At their heights, Mining Inc was pulling in 51 hammers and Sushi 27 food. Every city got Mining Inc, but I had to be judicious about Sushi, because of the culture it generates. Sushi only went in cities that really needed it (GP farm, Ironworks city, etc) or cities whose border expansion wouldn't gobble up many more tiles. During my final golden age, I did get up over 10,000 beakers per turn (unsustainable).

It was an exhausting game, and I'm glad its over. I stayed up late for too many nights in a row, and I can finally get a good night's sleep.

 

[PaulisKhan]

That's what I'm talking about! Nice work =D

I don't think I can beat your date, but I'm going to try. I think I'm going to have to get over my quecha v skirmisher induced Mansaphobia. Very interesting that you used a slower conquest strategy, I blitzed everything very very early on and then never took another city, I might try and pace myself better this time.

Hopefully your save goes through in the next update so I have two weeks to read through the logs and then try to improve it.
How many golden ages did you manage? (doesn't losing Taj by one turn just suck the most!)
I managed to grab railroad from Lib in my game which is something I want to keep trying, but of course it means that things like Nationalism suffer. Maybe Mansa would trade it to me though.

What I'm most curious about though the AP religion, and UoS, did you target them and build monastary+temple in most of your cities, or did you just ignore them completely?
The math shows that they more than pay for themselves by the end of the game, but I guess it might come at the cost of a slightly later Mining Inc, which we know is what really drives these games to such absurd teching speeds.

51 hammers from mining inc is very impressive, I think I only had 38 hammers worth on my map in total, of which I secured around 34.
I still have a few ideas to try out so hopefully I can post a new game before the gauntlet is over to put the challenge back to you

 

[ShannonCT]

I had 4 golden ages - I free from the marathon event and 3 from GPs.

I didn't put any effort into getting the AP, but it was built under the religion I adopted. I had a couple monasteries but no temples at that point, and since I didn't need temples for happiness, I never built any. There were just other things I thought were more important. Sankore has a pretty limited window IMHO. By the time I could have built it, I would be getting close to the techs that make workshops and watermills so strong. Two or four beakers from Sankore quickly becomes pretty small.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Am I right in thinking that the sub list of possible events/quests for the game are generated before the map, and that regenerating the map won't change that list of possible quests?

I usually use a "seed map" to find new games for myself, just to avoid all the reassigning of leaders but that may be limiting me to only a few uninspiring quests that came with that particular seed map.
It's all sounding a little bit voodoo hoodoo and I normally try to avoid that, but I do love me some SoZ inspired GA's so I want to maximise my chances, not minimise them.

I'm keen to get home from work so I can start in on a new game with some new tactics I want to try out.
Hope to have an update in the next couple of days.

 

[ShannonCT]

Unfortunately, my game was rejected because of the replayed turns. I guess I'll have another go at it.

I'll post some saves for anyone interested.

 

[PaulisKhan]

That's unfortunate, I also struggle with games on standard sized maps and sympathise with your problems.
For the purposes of this contest I'm still going to use your date as the one to beat (I had planned on taking a break from HoF games for a while, but your superb game drew me back in)

Thank you very much for posting the saves. Mine should go up tomorrow or the next day, not that there will be much of interest to you there
Hopefully we can both improve on your 1378 finish and feel good about ourselves for a month or so, until Dynamic submits a 500AD finish and makes us both feel dumb >.<

 

[Dynamic]

Hopefully we can both improve on your 1378 finish and feel good about ourselves for a month or so, until Dynamic submits a 500AD finish and makes us both feel dumb >.<

Really not. I think it's possible to win in 1100AD or may be 1000AD with Inca (but very hard and with tons of map are filtered). I don't know advantage/disadvantage of Darius vs Capac but it looks like Darius will be a little bit later. For this gauntlet the good goal is 1300AD as I wrote before. But 1400AD is very good game also.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Hi ,

@Shannon: could you post an earlier save if you have one? say 1000 bc or 500 bc... there are so many turns till 1 AD...
tx in advance...

Also a more general question:
Do you guys always go mining corp? When all the costs are taken into account (spreading the corp, maintenance...), is there a scenario where SP could be better?

Cheers

 

[PaulisKhan]

is there a scenario where SP could be better?

Cheers

SP can be better if you don't have complete domination of all mining resources, but in that case you probably dont have enough land to be teching competitively for HoF.

For a normal game where the settings are more difficult (ie non rushable map, aggressive civs etc etc) I will usually choose SP instead because in that circumstance it is usually better, but for HoF, when you stop just under Dom limit in order to tech the rest of the game for Space - corps will always beat SP.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Tx for answering Paulis, but in this case what is better, go max opponents for easier early land grab, or min opponents to increase the domination limit (thus have more resources)?

Cheers

PS: sorry to ask noob questions, but it's my first time in gauntlet, and if I remember to make a 4000 bc save, I might try to post a game

 

[PaulisKhan]

Tx for answering Paulis, but in this case what is better, go max opponents for easier early land grab, or min opponents to increase the domination limit (thus have more resources)?

The answer to this question is one I am still trying to figure out =)

I have been trying games with both 6 and 10 opponents and I stil can't decide. I find few AI's makes for easy conquering early on but fewer tech trading partners after.
Lots of AI means more capital super cities to grab and more AI's to trade with (and also means more being backstabbed).

I hadn't even considered the different Dom limits which is definitely a factor in favour of fewer AI.
I think I'll stick with the minimum, and let Shannon work with the maximum, and then we can compare notes at the end.
Hopefully more people try similar strategies so that we have even more games to compare with (terra map)

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

I am playing a pangea with Roosy with 10 opponents... I choosed pangea for early contacts (and tech modifiers), and early access to all resources... Why do you use terra? for the trade routes?

edit: tx Paulis for the tips, I will perhaps play my next game with this script to compare with your games (hum even if I honestly never approached that kind of dates, this gauntlet is an excellent occasion to improve!)

 

[PaulisKhan]

terra means earlier conquering of AI, larger total land area to conquer before having to worry about Dom limit, also means plenty of chances to pop techs from huts in the new world, can claim the new world mining resources by using liberated colonies.

-edit- I dont want to discourage new map strategies either though, for a long time Great Plains was thought to be the best for space, and maybe it will be again but for now Terra is on top. I look forward to seeing the next evolution.

 

[Dynamic]

Great Plains is better for low levels because it has higher concentration of resource and science speed is so high that the real limit for space is city growth. But big amount of cities requires time to settle and grow.
But, I didn't try Terra on Settler yet...

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Tx Shannon! Will look at it later (working now )...

 

[ShannonCT]

For the SP vs. corps discussion, here's a screenshot from my game to consider:

Spoiler :

Hieraconpolis was my Ironworks city. Mining Inc and Sushi are bringing in 52 hammers and 25 food respectively. The corporation maintenance plus distance maintenance is 200.52*0.5 = 100.26. I would be saving this in maintenance cost if I was in State Property. But I am getting 24 gpt in my corporate HQ for these two corps in Hier, so the real savings would only be 76.26.

The benefits of the corps are:

1) Mining Inc's 52 hammers are being converted into 156 beakers (could also be 156 gold). If I was building a spaceship part with a resource bonus, 52 hammers would be converted into 234 hammers. In State Property, my 102 other base hammers would get a 10% bonus (=10 hammers). So the real gain is 146 beakers or 224 hammers for spaceship parts.

2) Sushi is giving me 25 food. That 25 food is supporting 3 engineers (cost: 6 food) and also allowing me to work more workshops. Notice I have 15 workshops in my BFC. State Property would add 15 food, so I'd still be 4 food short. I would have to convert 4 workshops into 4 watermills to be food neutral. If I'm building research, watermills would be preferable anyway, but for spaceship parts, watermills are 2 base hammers less than workshops. So Sushi is giving me 6 base hammers from the engineers, and 8 from workshops. That's worth 63 hammers per turn towards a spaceship part.

So clearly Hieraconpolis is better off with corps than with SP. Now there are also investment expenditures that had to be paid to get to this point. Spreading each corp cost 60 gold plus 200 hammers. The resources spent on spreading Sushi and Mining Inc into Hieraconpolis is probably equivalent to ~1000 beakers. So it will take some time for the extra beakers from those corps to repay that investment (maybe 10-20 turns). For a city that doesn't have Ironworks, it may take twice as long. There is also the investment of settling the new world in Terra. I built ~12 settlers, ~20 workboats, and 3 galleons for that purpose, and sent a few workers as well. On a Pangaea map, you wouldn't have this investment expense, but then you wouldn't get as many resources either (Terra maps should have more seafood and metal). Lastly, there is the Great Engineer and Great Merchant I spent to found the corps. In my game, they couldn't have given me another golden age (needed 4 GPs for another), but in some games, they might.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Tx for the data Shannon, that's exactly what I was looking for...

Final question: I see you are using a 50% slider... Do you build science multipliers or do you stick with the hammer multipliers only (I assume you have Oxford, but past those 6 cities...)?

 

[ShannonCT]

Tx for the data Shannon, that's exactly what I was looking for...

Final question: I see you are using a 50% slider... Do you build science multipliers or do you stick with the hammer multipliers only (I assume you have Oxford, but past those 6 cities...)?

Don't pay any attention to the slider at that point. It was taken after I launched the SS. For the great majority of the game, I was running the science slider at 100%. Firstly, since I was way ahead of the nearest AI in GNP, I was selling techs left and right. Whatever gold I lacked beyond that I got by building wealth.

Note that it's usually better to build enough wealth in your cities so that you can stay at 100% science, rather than build research and stay below 100% science. Case in point is the 810AD save I posted. I am at -43 gpt and 2364 bpt. If I turn science down to 0%, I am at +1543 gpt and 389 bpt. I gain 1975 beakers by giving up 1586 gold. So each 1 gpt is worth 1.246 bpt. To maximize my tech speed, I should keep little gold on hand and build enough wealth to stay near 0 gpt while running the science slider at 100%.

I built science multiplier buildings in cities with cottages and gold mines. So most of my early cities had libraries, and some had universities. Most of my late cities didn't, because I watermill/workshop spammed them. As you say, the hammers you convert into wealth or beakers are affected by hammer multipier buildings, not science or wealth multipliers.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Well I'm headed for a win in my game unless Brennus sneaks a cultural victory, but the date will be so uncompetitive I feel ashamed to say what it will be

Spoiler :

Sometime in the 1900s

 

[Dynamic]

Spreading each corp cost 60 gold plus 200 hammers. The resources spent on spreading Sushi and Mining Inc into Hieraconpolis is probably equivalent to ~1000 beakers.

At this point hammers for executives, welth and science are almost equal. So you spent ~600 beakers per 2 corps.