G-Minor 71

[Kuningas]

1515AD with Mansa Musa. Oracled Education in 1050BC. Biology in 175AD. Went for State Property. At top my empire was making 3000bpt. In the end lost 6 turn due bad space parts prechopping and forgot to switch to Free Religion made me lost one turn

 

[Obormot]

Some stats from my 13xx win with Lizzy:

1000AD:
20 cities
211 population
3287bpt sustained (in golden age)
779 GPPs
3 AI dead
Working 1 cottage, 1 hamlet, 13 villages, 37 towns
Top techs: Rocketry, Industrialism, Railroad (w/ Liberalism), Refrigeration
Additional Wonders: Notre Dame, Sankore, Ankor, Liberty, NatPark, Ironworks, Colossus, Moai, GWall, Cereal Mills, Mining Inc.
Civics: Representation, Free Speech, Caste, Free Market, Pacifism

I decided to make a second attempt too. At 1000AD I am slightly ahead in tech compared to your game (Rocketry/Plastics/Radio), but my bpt rate is lower (2700). The game is not finished yet, but I am aiming at a 1360-1380AD win.

 

[ShannonCT]

I decided to make a second attempt too. At 1000AD I am slightly ahead in tech compared to your game (Rocketry/Plastics/Radio), but my bpt rate is lower (2700). The game is not finished yet, but I am aiming at a 1360-1380AD win.

It will be a close race for first place if you submit in time. Good luck.

 

[Denniz]

Results:

G-Minor 71 - Space Colony, Warlord, Small, Boreal, Epic
1^st Obormot 1310 AD
2^nd ShannonCT 1380 AD
3^rd ssjos 1445 AD

Congratulations!

 

[madmenno]

Bah just to late , well it was just a 1884 win with rooseveldt.

 

[Obormot]

It was a fun gauntlet. Very interesting how it is possible to get close results with very different strategies. I will try to post a writeup of my game today.

 

[Dynamic]

Congrats, Obormot!

 

[ShannonCT]

Well done Yuri Gagarin, errr, Obormot. I'm not worthy.

 

[Lexad]

Congrats, Ubermot

 

[Obormot]

Well done Yuri Gagarin, errr, Obormot. I'm not worthy.

Thanks, but your game was also strong. I think that your plan to get to railroad quickly (even before assembly plant) and use Mining Inc was very good, much better then ignoring corporations like I did.

 

[Ozbenno]

Well done to everyone especially the winners, well participated gauntlet again.

 

[Zubbus]

Oh noes!
My submission (16529) did not count for this gauntlet!!
Why is that?
------------
Wrong map type. Nevermind.

 

[Obormot]

Here is the promised writeup/analysis.

* Unlike other top games, I used the maximum number of opponents allowed to make warrior-rushing and stealing workers easier. (The disadvantage was less goody huts to pop.)

* My capital this time was perfect: 6 deers, gems, rivers, stone.

* I got a free GH settler and captured two AI capitals with warriors (built warriors first for rushing in both initial cities, then whipped workers at size 2). At 3000BC I had 4 cities & 3 workers. I also stole workers from two more civs.

* My capital got the early library (went pottery->writing after BW because I had no agriculture or AH resources). Other cities concentrated on REXing. My empire was very spread out because I captured cities far away from the capital, so I built lots of workers in the beginning (2 or even 3 per city) to build roads connecting cities. Getting marble connected was very tricky, I had to settle a city 20 tiles away and build a long road. Most of my gold went into maintenance, but the research rate was still OK, because my capital got early academy, a couple of settled super-specialists, GL wonder (built in 1275BC), and I was running representation.

* In my first game I went Currency->CoL->CS. This time I went for Literature before the CS. I didn't build any cottages near my capital, so CS was unimportant for me. This made a great difference, I had a faster science rate then in my first game even though I REXed more quickly and the map had fewer gem mines then in my first game.

* I oracled Education in 775BC and completed Oxford 3 turns after that by whipping the university and mass chopping 3rd ring forests. I already had 11 cities at this stage.

* After Education I beelined biology for the NP. In my first game I settled all the GSs on this stage. This time I settled the early ones but used two latest ones to bulb my way to bio getting it in 50BC. I think it was a better decision.

* I built the NP in my capital this time. This option is not as strong in the long term as cottaging the capital/Oxford city and having NP/NE in another city, but takes much less time to set up. I don't know which is better.

* I built an army of chariots in the late BCs after I runned out of space for peacefull expansion (had no copper) and attacked the two civs I kept backwards by worker-stealing. A dozen chariots was enough to kill them both adding 5 cities to my empire.

* In my first game I switched to castes early, this time I stayed in slavery longer whipping more infrastructure in my cities. A typical city gota granary, library, forge, and an aqueduct. Some cities also got courts (to enable FP in Delhi) and universities. The capital could still run 7 scientists because of Oxford, other cities had two scientists or two scientists + engineer. After NP I went for philosophy and banking to make a tripple revolt to castes/pacifism/mercantilism during a Tadj-triggered golden age (190AD).

* I then discovered rifling and conquered one more civ slaughtering their archers and axemen with redcoats. I vassalised them to get +1 happiness (and so that I could still have fur after plastics).

* I made a detour to democracy to build SoL (I did the numbers, and it did pay off).

* Next was, of course, assembly line (490AD), railroad (625AD) and the transition to hammer economy. I saved the forests this time and built lumbermills everywhere (better then workshops even with state property because of the health bonus). This allowed my to stay in mercantilism and save liberalism for fusion. I think that ShannonCT handled this part of the game better than I did going for railroad first and founding Mining Inc. I ignored corporations in my game, which was a mistake.

* I see that many people went Refrigereation->Superconductors early. I don't think it is a good idea, Refrigeration is an expensive tech and is not required to win, the research bonus from labs is minor and the Cereal Mills corporations doesn't have enough time to pay back the cost of Refrigeration+merchant+spreading. I reached Superconductor via Plastics->Computers path.

* The spaceship was built mostly of wood. I prechopped all forest near my industrial cities. I didn't actually build the spaceship parts so that I could invest hammers into research. This was a hell of civ3-style micromanagement and the endgame was ugly as my beatyfull cities lost all their lumbermill improvements and became really unhealthy. But it must have shaved some 10 turns off my victory date. I attached my 1000AD save to show how my empire looked like before the chopping.

 

[Obormot]

BTW, there appears to be a minor bug with selecting climate for boreal maps. The sea level option is grayed out, but the value selected is actually used when drawing a map. High sea level boreal maps have inland seas with fish, crabs and whales, while low sea level maps usualy only have lakes and no sea resources. As the map has very few health & happiness bonuses (and coast tiles are not that bad compared to tundra, especially if you are financial), it is best to use a high sea level map. (To do so you need to select a map type other then boreal, then select high sea level, then switch map type back to boreal.) I didn't know about this bug and played on a low-sea level map that didn't have the extra health/happiness bonuses. The health situation was terrible after factories & coal plants.

 

[ShannonCT]

Obormot,

You say no cottages in your capital. Did you have any cottage cities? Did you use Emancipation or Free Speech at all?

These 2 games I submitted were only my 2nd and 3rd space colony games, so I still have a lot to learn. I realize now that it's not so important to rush any particular spaceship part. The target in the end game should be getting to Fusion as quickly as possible, to start on the engines sooner. So even though it's possible to build a particular part, it's better to keep building research and chop the thrusters and other cheap parts after getting Fusion. I probably had 50-60 forests prechopped near the end but I ended up not using quite a few due to bad planning. I think I could have improved my game by 3-5 turns by delaying SS part building and managing part allocation and chopping better.

It seems that besides your faster expansion (more opponents was a good idea) and better endgame management, our games were pretty equal. With Liz being financial and philosophical, different degrees of cottages spam and specialist hiring could be equally productive. The lumbermill economy transition was a must in either case because of all the tundra terrain under the forests limiting cottage and workshop building.

 

[Mesix]

Actually, what has slowed me down in the past was skipping Composites and having to build all the Casings at the end. Now when I go for space colony I make sure to get COmposites early on since there are 5 Casings to build. Then I bee line Fusion.

 

[Obormot]

In my first game I didn't build any cottages at all. Before playing I was thinking about cottaging the capital for the bureau bonus, but my capital was too low on food, so I had to build farms instead of cottages.

In the second game I had the same plan of cottaging the capital pre-game. And the capital was much better suited for that this time (6 deer). But when I thought of all the happiness & health I needed to make the capital grow big enough to work all the cottages... I decided I will be much better off going for the NP in capital, because it is so much easier to set up. It was enough to grow the city to size 13 to work 6 deers, gems and 6 scientists. Then after NP I got 18 free scientists. Very easy.

I did build several cottages in the second game to pay maintenance for my cities during the REX stage. My research slider was close to 0% with most beakers coming from specialists, so not having those cottages would have made my empire go on strike. Six of those cottage actually made it to towns, other were not worked that much and I buldozed them later to build farms.

I never used Emancipation or Free Speech. In my first game I didn't even research Democracy. In the second I researched Democracy to build the Statue of Liberty, which as I calculated payed back the cost of the tech and the wonder.

On a more standard map with lots of grasslands I would have used cottages more of course, and most probably switched to cottage civics at some point.

In my first game I made the same mistake: prechopped a lot of forests, but ended up not using most of them, but building the parts by normal means. The main idea is that forsts cannot be converted to gold, but normal hammer can => we need to use as many forests in spaceship production as we can. But forests give health and allow lumbermills, so we can only chop them on the very last turns.

I assigned each spaceship part a certain city and calculated how many hammers I would get from chopping all the nearby forests. I started actually building the parts at the right time to get the rest of the hammers by normal production.

On this map the space-race was quite different from standard because of all the forests. I don't have much experience with space too, but it looks like the optimal sequence is something like

1. Superconductors (via computers, not refrigereation) - to get labs
2. Fusion - to start expensive engines earlier, also allows to use the GE for the last GA (but several turns will be left unused)
3. Satellites, composites - to start the casings earlier
4. Medicine->Genetics - two techs, only one part - gives time to build engines & casings
5. Ecology - the cheapest part last, build in 1 turn with chopping.

In this game the order didn't matter that much, because the forests allowed to complete even the most expensize parts quickly. I built the two engines in Constantinople and Adrianople, each chopped with 15 forests, whcih Justinian left intact for me to use.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I never bother with computers these days, most of the time I go refridgeration->superconductors (for labs)
then onto industrialism for aluminium
then rocketry, then composites, then straight to fusion via laser.
Then backfill the remaining space techs.

 

[Dynamic]

On this map the space-race was quite different from standard because of all the forests. I don't have much experience with space too, but it looks like the optimal sequence is something like

1. Superconductors (via computers, not refrigereation) - to get labs
2. Fusion - to start expensive engines earlier, also allows to use the GE for the last GA (but several turns will be left unused)
3. Satellites, composites - to start the casings earlier
4. Medicine->Genetics - two techs, only one part - gives time to build engines & casings
5. Ecology - the cheapest part last, build in 1 turn with chopping.

I agree, I'm using exactly the same way in the most of SS games.