G Major 51

[Sun Tzu Wu]

This is a key tip for me. I´ve tried both ways. Taking the time out to build the library (and using citizens for research) obviously slows the creation of the praet stack. However, without this it can take an eternity to get to construction/cats, which is a factor as to why my attacks are running out of steam. I shall certainly focus on the library route from now on.

I wouldn't say that a Library is always a good idea, but Library + Academy can really get the Research going fast (+25% B + +50% B = +75% B) in the Capital.

However, this does give rise to a couple more questions regarding the research path.

Presumably the path should be:-

Ag/AH as necessary to hook up food resources.
Roads
Bronze Working for chopping
Pot/Writing to get library
Iron Working for praets
Math/Constr for cats
COL for Courthouses
Mon/Fued

RRRaskolnikov said it very well:

first techs should be BW -> The wheel -> IW. you want your citizens to eat fish the first 3000 years

Ideally, your food sources should be Seafood, since Julius (Rome) starts with Fishing. It is a waste of time to research other Technologies that allow Farm, Pasture, Camp, etc. improvements. Your Technology priorities from highest to lowest should be Iron Working, The Wheel, Construction, Code of Laws and Feudalism. Here's a better Technology Path for Julius:

Bronze Working for Chopping
Iron Working for Praetorians
The Wheel to connect Iron
Pottery + Writing to Build Library
Mathematics + Constructions for Catapults and possibly also 2-3 War Elephants
Trade for Alphabet to build Spies ASAP
Code of Laws for Courthouses
Monarchy + Feudalism to adopt Vassalage (primarily for the extra free unit maintenance)
Trade for Worker Technologies and any others that seem useful as the situation changes

I presume that you want library before praets since the sooner you get the library going in this strategy the better.

No Technologies have priority over those needed to start building Praetorians. The Library should be your priority after Iron Working and The Wheel are completed.

I´m not sure about the Construction/COL order. I presume that the sooner you get cats the better and that COL/Courthouses doesn´t really start coming into play until you are capturing significant numbers of enemy cities.

Completing Construction before Code of Laws would be ideal, but you may need to adjust based on increasing maintenance costs.

Also, I´ve skipped Alphabet because I´m assuming that I don´t really want to be trading with the opponents I am about to attack, but I´m not sure about this.

Mesix has pointed out earlier in this thread that he trades Iron Working to AI Civ that already have a working Copper Mine. Hopefully, this AI Civ will build primarily Swordsmen rather than Axemen as a result. Remember that Praetorians can kill Swordsmen much easier than Axemen.

The point of getting Alphabet is to build Spies. (by the time you get Alphabet, you won't need it for trading). If you capture The Great Wall early enough, you could generate a Great Spy about the time one AI is left. Use him to infiltrate the last AI, getting about 3000 Espionage points. This will allow your Spies to steal Technologies and more importantly support City Revolts when your Stack is ready to attack.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

OK. Useful calculation. But do you really have stacks of 15 cats?

No, but I definitely want 15 Catapults and more! Any number of Catapults is better than None, though.

Perhaps a more pertinent question is: do you always ensure that you have enough cats in the stack when attacking a city to reduce the cultural defence to 0% in one go?

No. Reducing the Cultural defence down to 20-40 may be sufficient depending on the type and promotions of the defenders versus those of your Praetorians. You may want all Catapults to Bombard the first turn and attack with them on the second turn, depending on your estimate of how many defenders can rush in while the attack is delayed a turn.

Presumably this means that when you get to Construction, for a while you stop building praets while you build up a large stack of cats.

After completing Construction, it makes sense to switch over to Catapult building as the final Praetorians are completed. Continue building Praetorians primarily as replacements for those Killed in Action.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Sometimes, you want to stop teching completely after IW and just accumulate gold and build praets. (I have done it in immortal, ask SunTzu for deity ).

This worked fine for me at Marathon speed and Map Sizes Tiny through Standard.

This also worked fine for me at Normal speed and Tiny Pangaea Map, but a Small Pangaea Map has about twice as many Tiles and I don't think it is a viable strategy, since capturing twice as many Cities probably takes too long. As Lexad has already mentioned:

And no, I don't think praets only will be enough - at arbalest-macemen-walls/60% culture level the efficiency of a suicide praet drops too low, you need a cat for collateral. And 15 cats will give you an edge even against castles.

The AI Civs build Walls and lots of World Wonders resulting in 60 or high Cultural Defense by the end game. Your Land Domination may be just over 40% by now, but you need at least Catapults to capture additional Cities.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I've never played above Monarch before. I tried a quick test run of this one last night, and: Wow! The number of units they generate is downright insane. I went with Hattie on Warlords and kind of a bad start location just to try it out. No gold/gems, no horses in BFC. Popped second city for horses, conquered two of Asoka's quite easily by 1700 BC, but I'm already out of steam at this point. There's no way I can take his cap since my army's stretched thin, and my research is in the gutter. I figure I can do quite a bit better with gold/gems and/or horses in the BFC. Still, I seriously doubt it's gonna happen.

I'm wondering about Hattie for this... Seems to make sense to me, because of normal speed / fast unit / easy research path, plus creative. No?

Hatshepsut is a good choice. I tried it once, but didn't find Horse anywhere that wasn't already taken.

Complete Animal Husbandry, connect Horse and start building War Chariots. Next, beeline Construction, Code of Laws and maybe Feudalism. Need a counter to Spearmen though and that means the slow Axeman as well as Bronze Working and a connected Copper Mine. This is starting to get a bit too complicated, but it should still work, assuming the Win comes before AI macemen, crossbowmen and longbowmen (they could be tough to defeat with just War Chariots and Catapults).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

The initial AI expansion is much slower without the second settler.

At Deity level, the AI Civ always starts with two Settlers. This is the case for Vanilla, Warlords and Beyond the Sword.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[RobertTheBruce]

At Deity level, the AI Civ always starts with two Settlers. This is the case for Vanilla, Warlords and Beyond the Sword.

Sun Tzu Wu

Oops, I thought the starting units were different in BtS.

 

[babybluepants]

Hatshepsut is a good choice. I tried it once, but didn't find Horse anywhere that wasn't already taken.

Complete Animal Husbandry, connect Horse and start building War Chariots. Next, beeline Construction, Code of Laws and maybe Feudalism. Need a counter to Spearmen though and that means the slow Axeman as well as Bronze Working and a connected Copper Mine. This is starting to get a bit too complicated, but it should still work, assuming the Win comes before AI macemen, crossbowmen and longbowmen (they could be tough to defeat with just War Chariots and Catapults).

Sun Tzu Wu

Thanks for the reply. I'm having trouble finding gold/gems with a horse in BFC, and I think this is critical. Horses nearby aren't good enough I think, as I can conquer a city or two with WC's faster than I'd build one. Doesn't seem like I can possibly win before mace, crossbow and longbow, maybe take one out and begin crippling another at best. I have a game going right now with horses in BFC, and gold and gems in the first two conquered cities. Plus, I'm on a narrow mid-continent, and the two I'm warring with are blocked off on a large peninsula. I think it's just going a bit too slow at this point, however, and I think I'll need to go after a third late in the game, which is a real problem with research stalling.

 

[babybluepants]

I would definitely recommend BtS as well. The initial AI expansion is much slower without the second settler. I didn't find AI whipping to be a large problem with Rome. An additional unfortified, unpromoted archer is just target practice for praetorians. Also, AIs discover CoL and switch to Caste System very quickly at Deity. I saw maybe 3 or 4 whipped units in my game. There are also a few more early wonders for the AIs to build in BtS.

Egypt is an interesting choice. I don't know if its possible to grab enough territory early - before longbows and walls make war chariot attacks suicidal - but I wish you the best of luck.

They don't start with two settlers?! I didn't know that. Thanks.

EDIT: scratch that, i didn't notice Sun Tzu Wu's response.

I think a much better player than me might just grab enough territory early, but don't take my word for it. The conquest is smooth sailing at first, but the maintenance costs are brutal.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

They don't start with two settlers?! I didn't know that. Thanks.

EDIT: scratch that, i didn't notice Sun Tzu Wu's response.

The AIs start with two settlers, 4 archers and 2 scouts in each version. In BtS, the AI gets 1 worker while the Warlords and Vanilla AI get 2 workers. I knew there was a difference that slowed early development but I misremembered.

I hope the Egypt games go well. An organized leader helps with the maintenance costs. Other than getting lucky with resources and captured shrines, its hard to keep up with maintenance. I tried a couple of fractal maps (more resource clustering, hopefully AIs without metal and one AI isolated on a small landmass) but a long thin world means killer maintenance even with a organized leader.

 

[Pious_Pete]

I'd say two different Food Resources, at least two different Mines (Gems and Gold), and up to four Grassland Hills and up to two Plains Hills. When these different Resources are connected, you will be able to support 1 more Population.
You need the two Commerce Mines to boost Research initially and Wealth later on.

Well I ran Mapfinder with Food=2+,Mine=2+,Hills=6+. I left it running for 25 hours and got 9 candidates. Of these, 5 were not valid in the sense that there was no position in which is was possible to settle and get all the food and mine resources. Of the four that were left, none of them were really great positions - and none of them had any fish!

I think I´ll try again specifically just looking for fish, and see if anything playable comes up.

 

[Pious_Pete]

You're not likely to make the top three using a Tropical setting.

However, Tropical really slows down AI expansion and that would probably make a Win easier to achieve:

I shall be playing tropical .

 

[unclethrill]

Wow. I haven't submitted a single game for this one. In fact not a single game this update. I may be taking school just a bit too seriously. Hope I can get at least something before the update.

How is that tropical setting working out?

 

[Mesix]

Wow...it's the 10th already. I rolled some map finder files for this over the weekend and decided to try it out.

I have a good start. I built 2 cities. Took 6 more from Roosevelt by 575 BC. He didn't have any metal so my Praets chewed through his arvhers/chariots with ease. I plan to target Ghandi next. I can see longbowmen and swordsmen in Ghandi's territory, so he will not be such a push over.

I am getting ready for work now. Hopefully I have time to finish this game before the update. We've been busier than normal at work the past couple of weeks, so all bets are off.

 

[Denniz]

Gauntlet results:

G-Major 51 - Domination, Deity, Small, Normal
1^st Lexad 840 AD
2^nd Sgtpeppers 1010 AD
3^rd RobertTheBruce 1130 AD

Congratulations!

 

[unclethrill]

Congrats to all. This was a tough one. Too bad work and school got in the way this update. Not a single submission by me or Mesix to the HOF this update. I hate it when that happens!!

 

[Mesix]

Congrats to all of you who got a win with these settings.

I thought I had a pretty good start tonight before work. The boss kept me busy for the first part of the night, but I did get a chance to continue. I had eliminated Roosevelt by about 500 BC and got through about 1/2 of Ghandi by about 500 AD with about 35% land area and 12 or so cities cranking out units. Asoka was elected to a Religious VC by the AP in about 700 AD just as my war truned from offensive to defensive. I had just finished Gunpowder though, and was on my way to Rifling to renew my push...but oh well...the story of my lone failed attempt is just a bore.

Congrats again to all the finishers, and especially the top contenders.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Congratulations to all who even attempted this Gauntlet. I concur with unclethrill and Mesix. It was extremely tough. When you're nearly half way to Land Domination (31-34%) around AD 500 and all the AIs suddenly have Pikemen, Knights, Macemen, Crossbowmen, Longbowmen, Castles, and you have just Praetorians and Catapults, you know its going to be a very long game.

A special Congratulations to the top three:

G-Major 51 - Domination, Deity, Small, Normal
1st Lexad 840 AD
2nd Sgtpeppers 1010 AD
3rd RobertTheBruce 1130 AD

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Ozbenno]

Well done to everyone who submitted in this gauntlet (especially the place getters), really difficult settings for this one.

 

[Lexad]

Just a short note on my game - built loads of praets, even to suicide against axes. At 100BC I had ~40 praets, was through 1,5 civs and just researched cats. Never saw a castle. Attacked score leader Isabella with huge stacks of praets and cats vs maces, xbows, lbows, few cats and elephants - tore though due to sheer mass.

 

[WilliamOfOrange]

Wow, Great scores and great times. I tried a few with Gilgamesh, but the Ziggurats didn't help much. I had bad luck with metal resources. Thanks to everyone for the help and information. I hope to be able to win one of these type of gauntlets some day.