G-Minor 27

[Alan_of_Dale]

EGJ wrote: At least in Vanilla, you definitely don't need Mathematics to get Civil Service.

I am so used to getting Mathematics first now that I always do it by habit.

ParadigmShifter wrote: You need maths for civil service in Warlords. So it's going to be tricky to get from Oracle at Monarch level (done it at prince level a couple of times).

Right, I was in Warlords since I like how Frederick and Cyrus don't get land gobbling Creative, and Washington looses his uber Org/Fin. But, as I was using England's Liz, whose Phil/Fin stays the same, it would have been easier to get Oracle with her in Vanilla. Or perhaps I should have had Bismark instead of Hatty like I sometimes do since Hatty can be annoying, although Bismark has a 10% chance of DoW when pleased and Hatty has 0%, and Bismark has Industrial as well.

So far I'm third of seven in the Gauntlet table. Looks like an Incan rush is called for. May try that instead since peace has not won the day.

 

[Dracandross]

I tried how well OCC could do in this one. Apparently not too good, last position with 1941 ad. Was fun though! It was just so easy to find decent map and not worry about losing great start location while rushing with quecha and getting bad rolls.

I'll hit quecha if I have time still but I doubt that because game takes 5 hours or so.

-Dracandross

 

[Alan_of_Dale]

I tried how well OCC could do in this one. Apparently not too good, last position with 1941 ad. Was fun though! It was just so easy to find decent map and not worry about losing great start location while rushing with quecha and getting bad rolls.

I'll hit quecha if I have time still but I doubt that because game takes 5 hours or so.

Still 1941 AD OCC is equal or better than two out of three of the existing entries in the HoF table!

And yes, I was thinking the same thing about the speculative nature of the quechua rush as I was contemplating doing one of those here, too.

 

[shyuhe]

it's more about an efficient land grab than about rushing. You just want to make sure you get lots of good land, and you will definitely want at least one holy city + shrine to keep research at 100%. If you can do all of this without rushing, then I see the no reason to. It's just a lot easier to pull it off by rushing a Buddhist Gandhi who's next to you since you'll have double the early production to churn out more settlers and workers.

 

[Alan_of_Dale]

shyuhe wrote: it's more about an efficient land grab than about rushing. You just want to make sure you get lots of good land, and you will definitely want at least one holy city + shrine to keep research at 100%. If you can do all of this without rushing, then I see the no reason to. It's just a lot easier to pull it off by rushing a Buddhist Gandhi who's next to you since you'll have double the early production to churn out more settlers and workers.

I'm not so sure about that. The OP Quechua UU is so powerful early on against difficulty levels which have the AIs start with archers that it can cause every entry in a HoF table to be Inca. Of course, at normal speed the Quechua fades quicker, but that hasn't seemed to matter here.

We are up to eight entries in the Gauntlet table now. Wish people would post their times and some game info for some interesting reading. Haven't played Civ in a few days now. Taking a rest. Trying to build up interest in playing this one a second time.

 

[jesusin]

I have never really understood why people think the Incas has a significant advantage over other civilizations for games that would typically end after 1500AD.

Hi. I have done a half successful Quechua rush. At 2000BC I have 3 cities, 200g in the treasury and I am running Bureaucracy. I only play Vanilla, so I don't know what the russian UB does for your Civ, but I doubt it can outperform such a good start.

Anyway, don't think I am going to get a good result out of this. I have dowed 2 AI, the second one I have been unable to cause serious damage to. I now know that there were only 3 AI on the continent and Musa is not here. And I am playing the Gauntlet just to get some experience on space endgame.

At least I have learned something about rushes, this is my 5th attempt, the first 4 ended in disaster before 1000BC.

 

[Alan_of_Dale]

jesusin wrote: Hi. I have done a half successful Quechua rush. At 2000BC I have 3 cities, 200g in the treasury and I am running Bureaucracy. I only play Vanilla, so I don't know what the russian UB does for your Civ, but I doubt it can outperform such a good start.
>

The Russion UB in Warlords is amazing. It is the Research Institute, replacing Laboratory, with +25% research and +50% spaceship production as usual, but with 2 free scientist specialists! Only thing is it comes quite late in the game and beelining to it obsoletes the Great Library sooner.

>
Anyway, don't think I am going to get a good result out of this. I have dowed 2 AI, the second one I have been unable to cause serious damage to. I now know that there were only 3 AI on the continent and Musa is not here. And I am playing the Gauntlet just to get some experience on space endgame.
>

Probably not a problem about Musa since when I played (peacefully) the second wide continent civs were extreemly backward, not even having CoL around 700 AD when I got to them. As for not having done much damage to the second AI just make sure you have pillaged their copper and/or iron and horses! Then get one or more of those resources up and finish him. You can use the trick where you back off a bit and position quechuas in forest/hills and wait for them to venture out with archer/settlers into plains tiles. Also, get construction for cats.

>
At least I have learned something about rushes, this is my 5th attempt, the first 4 ended in disaster before 1000BC.
>

That's the thing with rushes, they can be a gamble, but the rewards are great.

 

[shyuhe]

The russian UB is good, but it's comes too late to speed up a space victory. By the time you get computers, you're generally more production limited rather than research limited.

I still think the key to this gauntlet is getting the maximum number of grassland tiles (hopefully a river) playing a financial civ. It's very hard to get tons of commerce without the grasslands in the mid-late game, until biology.

I'm going to (foolishly) try the major for the time being. I may take another run at the minor if I get too frustrated

 

[Alan_of_Dale]

I have dowed 2 AI, the second one I have been unable to cause serious damage to. I now know that there were only 3 AI on the continent and Musa is not here. And I am playing the Gauntlet just to get some experience on space endgame.

If you really like to have Mansa help you in research you can gift him up a bit.

As for the space endgame, if I have the Great Library I like to first research Steel (to get the Ironworks (requires 6 forges) built before I research Apollo) and Replaceable Parts (to build loads of lumbermills), before getting Scientific Method which obsoletes the Great Library. You can also get Rifling first if you dare. I don't like to do too much early chopping for space games as every two forests gives +1 health for bigger cities and uber lumbermills/railroads. You can chop the final parts or if you have an odd number of trees. After Scientific Method, Physics for the free scientist, then beeline Apollo. Once you start Apollo, you will want to go directly to Industrialism to reveal Aluminum to double production speed of Apollo. You can run some engineer specialists to get a GE or two so that you can speed the Space Elivator which requires Satellites and then Robotics. Then you beeline Genetics, Fusion, Ecology. With five good production cities (lumbermills/railroads), you can time your various builds. The most important build is the Engine. You should definitely leave the uber Ironworks city idle a few turns building research beakers near the end and ready to build the Engine. Your second biggest production city can build SS Life Support. Third biggest may be building the Stasis Chamber if you didn't have the timing to have the Ironworks do it, but typically the Ironworks will work. If you time it all right the Engine and Life Support finish at almost the same time.

 

[Alan_of_Dale]

The russian UB is good, but it's comes too late to speed up a space victory. By the time you get computers, you're generally more production limited rather than research limited.

I still think the key to this gauntlet is getting the maximum number of grassland tiles (hopefully a river) playing a financial civ. It's very hard to get tons of commerce without the grasslands in the mid-late game, until biology.

Actually, the Russian UB is possibly more suited for a Time victory for loads of future tech.

I would agree that Financial is essential. I had four or five cottaged FP in my capital and gold. Also, watermills, water tiles, etc get the +1 Gold so it works in many ways.

 

[jesusin]

As for the space endgame, if I have the Great Library I like to first research Steel (to get the Ironworks (requires 6 forges) built before I research Apollo) and Replaceable Parts (to build loads of lumbermills), before getting Scientific Method which obsoletes the Great Library. You can also get Rifling first if you dare. I don't like to do too much early chopping for space games as every two forests gives +1 health for bigger cities and uber lumbermills/railroads. You can chop the final parts or if you have an odd number of trees. After Scientific Method, Physics for the free scientist, then beeline Apollo. Once you start Apollo, you will want to go directly to Industrialism to reveal Aluminum to double production speed of Apollo. You can run some engineer specialists to get a GE or two so that you can speed the Space Elivator which requires Satellites and then Robotics. Then you beeline Genetics, Fusion, Ecology. With five good production cities (lumbermills/railroads), you can time your various builds. The most important build is the Engine. You should definitely leave the uber Ironworks city idle a few turns building research beakers near the end and ready to build the Engine. Your second biggest production city can build SS Life Support. Third biggest may be building the Stasis Chamber if you didn't have the timing to have the Ironworks do it, but typically the Ironworks will work. If you time it all right the Engine and Life Support finish at almost the same time.

Thank you, that's the kind of analysis I was looking for.

When do you research computers? I think I will beeline to them to get the labs.

And, what about factories?

 

[Conquistador 63]

I'm close to finishing my game. It's 1800AD now and I think there are only 4-5 spacerace techs left to research.
The reason for this post is that I have signed a PA with Mansa just a couple turns ago and I'm astonished with its effects on research. I have had some phony wars by his side to enable the PA but did not get Communism until a few turns as Gandhi had it for a while, and I was expecting to get it from trade but since it never happened...

As I come from GOTM games where PA is almost never an option, at first I thought I'd just get some cash from him to allow me run 100% science without a deficit, and get some 50% boost from joint research.

I was producing less than 2000 bpt at 100%, after getting some 170 gpt from Mansa, and the most expensive techs would cost me 6~7 turns of research. But after I ask him "why don't you research XXX" the techs take just ONE turn to be researched!

I could understand this if he were generating more commerce than me prior to the PA but it was not the case, I had a lot more techs and commerce in the graphs/demographics screen.

Is this the usual effect of PAs in HoF games? Or is it some kind of bug? If this is expected and I had time for another go (I don't) I would beeline to MT/Communism above all other stuff.

 

[shyuhe]

@conquistador: Mansa may have just set up a hybrid economy so it doesn't register as well on the demographics screen. On vanilla (and to some extent warlords), the GNP graph doesn't reflect specialists.

@jesusin
I think I do a totally different tech route from Alan. I will finish assembly line then go to scientific method. I will then build factories + coal plants in all of my cities. After that, if my cities aren't health limited, I'll go ahead and push on to computers. In this game, I built all of my space parts in 13 turns. I had a very large empire with lots of production so for once, I was more worried about teching rather than production (I had 3 very good production cities, especially my ironworks capitol).

Here's my endgame tech order (please feel free to analyze):

SM --> biology --> communism --> steel (trade for MT) --> railroad --> physics --> electricity --> refrigeration --> radio --> computers --> genetics --> industrialism --> artillery --> rocketry --> satellites (trade for medicine) --> plastics --> robotics --> fiber optics --> fission (trade for fascism) --> fusion --> ecology

I put refrigeration and genetics into the research queue because my cities were health limited. Otherwise, it was computers --> industrialism --> rocketry --> satellites+robotics to do labs, then aluminum, then apollo and space elevator. I'm not certain if this is the optimal path but it definitely works if you have tons of production (i.e., you can turn out apollo in under 10 turns with aluminum).

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I'd go computers after industrialism and rocketry, you don't need labs to build Apollo.

Make sure you have observatories in cities you are going to build labs, they are a requirement.

 

[shyuhe]

I puit the labs ahead because I want the extra beakers. I wasn't production limited in the end so it worked out ok. I guess if you're short on production, you may want to hold off on labs to get apollo up faster.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

It depends how many production vs. science cities you have I guess. I find tech pace is normally fine at that point, and tend to build labs in production cities only unless my commerce cities have nothing much to build (and have health to spare). I change to the cottage civics anyway so I get extra production from towns and can buy labs if needed at that point.
You can always build research in your production cities as well.

I've not tried this Ice Age map much though, I should have a go, I'm finding the major a bit hard. My only attempt so far I made a noob mistake settling my 2nd city (not enough food, and there was a much better site for it 1 tile away) so didn't play the 2nd session.

 

[shyuhe]

I was at 100% research for about half of the game. I didn't need to build any markets/grocers/banks (except for healthy/happiness reasons). Next time, I will try skipping computers first to see if that speeds things up. I still think the extra 25% research is useful though...

 

[BLubmuz]

This gauntlet is cursed for me, i can't generate a decent map.

My perhaps best attempt at SR was with Frederick, if you play as Peter you want go straight to the russian variant of labs, and you lost some os the GLB effetcs.
I wish to tray a financial civ (Lizzy), just to see.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I think the map is always going to be a bit dodgy in Ice Age, only the capitals seem to have good food resources.

I'm in 2 minds now about whether computers before industrialism/rocketry is best.

I'm definitely going to have another go at this then. Liz is great for space race but I did a minor with her (the easy peasy settler/duel/space victory one), so I'm going to try a civ I haven't got a HOF entry for yet, so that means Mr. Spiritual Mansa Musa. No redcoats though .

 

[shyuhe]

You shouldn't need redcoats in this game. If you're warring with rifles vs. LB, it doesn't matter whether they're rifles or redcoats. If you're going to war, you definitely want to war early so that you have time to build the infrastructure up.

Mansa is a good choice for this, but lack of industrial makes it harder to build your wonders. Hence my choice of Huayna (more for the traits than for the UU). However, spiritual lets you save turns on anarchy, and I definitely lost about 5 turns on anarchy so it's not necessarily a bad trait to have.

Ice age maps are VERY food poor. I would regenerate until you have a good capitol since you won't come across a lot of grassland on this map.