G-Minor LXVI

[dinanipedro]

desert+petra since i've been playing civ v has always been able to give a slight advantage, especially in hof. not a particulary great desert start in tommy's game, had a better desert potential in one of my attempts and no so hard to reroll. a few times.

it will be interesting to see how to get to research labs so fast though!

 

[Peets]

A potentially stupid question:
I decided to try to play this one - first time I've actually played one of the gauntlets. I don't have this map type. I do not have G&K, only BNW. Is that the reason?

Yeah, it seems the following maps are in HoF which need G&K:

Arborea
Rainforrest
Shuffle
Boreal
Frontier
Large Islands
Tilted Axis

 

[pkf]

@Cromagnus: The rules for tribute were (it's not what I see for me):
+100 for leading the demographics Soldiers scoreboard, then 2nd gets 100*#players-1/#players and so on
+100 for having 3x "the military" of the CS in the vicinity (which is within 5 tiles)
You can look it up somewhere, dont remember where I found that.
I got only +75 from being 1st in demographics Soldiers

As tommy said its 8 tiles... overall military strength has been patched so being #1 only grants you +75 now. CS gain resilience for being hostile (+10), militaristic (+10) and pledge to protect (+20). Note that your own pledge to protect does not affect this, so pledge right away.

One warrior within 8 tiles in the early game will grant you +25. Thus to overcome basic resilience (110) consistently you will need two units. Occasionally, you will be able to bully with just a single unit (eg upgrade ruin spear). Scouts don't count (unless upgraded by ruin).

Hence demanding tribute has been weakened significantly. It is a bit inconvenient to have two warriors within 8 tiles of a CS instead of having them scout. Also CS with one of the resilience buffs will sometimes require 3 units or more, which is usually not an option since you wanna bully before they get quests (unless they are useless like great musician or a crappy wonder). For some reason which I haven't figured out sometimes a military unit will not count even though you're within 8 tiles.

And in reply to Cromagnus: If you don't wanna blindly follow better player's advice, maybe you should start by simply asking for reasoning instead of questioning the better player and his advice? Note the only reason tommy said "just believe me" is because your previous post was something like "is this really true? i dont think it is yada yada". Trying to devalue tommys time by pointing out he had a good start is not helpful either - adding "just sayin" does not weaken a statement..

 

[Cromagnus]

I did ask for his reasoning, specifically regarding Hanging Gardens. His response was in fact, "just believe me". And I wasn't devaluing his finish time. If I started at that location I wouldn't have come close to t190.

It is however, a very valid point that a start like that will lead to a much better finish time, and yes, I was/am bitter that I played out my crappy forest start. Just sayin'...

 

[Cromagnus]

1. well capital need many good tiles to use - there d not have been 30 good tiles at coast - I do think one could allready expect that tile lack of the coastal spot in turn 0.
2. My plan was in like turn 0 to get gl for philo - so I can get other nice techs without having to worry about NC tech.
I like bronze fast a lot - it should come before building settler and a 6 tile sells for more gold overall as a lux

the distance unit for tribute demande is 8 tiles not 5.

8, 5, whatever it is, the rules are WEIRD. Check this out:

I brought a spearmen, 2 scouts and an archer over to a CS and had them hang out for like 6 turns. It still said I only had a fraction of my military near the CS. (+25pts)

I've had other games where one archer and one scout equated to 50 pts.. What gives??

Spoiler :

 

[tommynt]

proly the CS had a unit ..

and about HG:
1. Its allmost impossible to build GL+NC+HG in 1 city before ai grabs either wonder - even on settler difficulty
2. since the nerf of HG and introduction of food caravans its really not THAT great anymore, a food caravan does same .. a ship is even better
3. I dont care only for cap pop but want my other cities grow too so I dont see at all why it d be better to have hg in cap and food caravans to other cities.
4. Why dont take a bonus like gardens in anonriver city when it comes "for free"?
5. Petra is soooooooo much stronger as HG, soobviously I focused on it instead of HG in cap in this game

--> HG is one of weakest early wonders and at same time (together with gl) one of the hardest to get, I only MIGHT care for HG if nonrivered cap

 

[phroggie]

Hi guys - new to these Gauntlet games (played a bit of HoF with Civ IV years ago, had to start a new profile).

Is there a map to download or we just randomly start one? Is the standard rule of no re-loads/re-plays permitted?

Thanks!

 

[Cromagnus]

proly the CS had a unit ..

and about HG:
1. Its allmost impossible to build GL+NC+HG in 1 city before ai grabs either wonder - even on settler difficulty
2. since the nerf of HG and introduction of food caravans its really not THAT great anymore, a food caravan does same .. a ship is even better
3. I dont care only for cap pop but want my other cities grow too so I dont see at all why it d be better to have hg in cap and food caravans to other cities.
4. Why dont take a bonus like gardens in anonriver city when it comes "for free"?
5. Petra is soooooooo much stronger as HG, soobviously I focused on it instead of HG in cap in this game

--> HG is one of weakest early wonders and at same time (together with gl) one of the hardest to get, I only MIGHT care for HG if nonrivered cap

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I can see your point about HG. It's certainly not worth prioritizing over caravans, and maybe not over any other wonder, but +6 food is still nice and a free garden is useful for SV.

Also, that must be it: a CS having a unit must change the equation... Like maybe it looks at its own military strength and subtracts that from your "nearby strength" secretly?

 

[pkf]

yes, apparently what i sometimes thought to be a glitch is simply the CS having units.. in your screen the two scouts dont count (see above), the CS warrior neutralizes either the archer or spear which both grant +25..getting tribute is not what it used to be

phroggie: you roll your own map, you dont replay any turns in a playthrough, but you have infinite attempts.

 

[Cromagnus]

Well that's really useful info. I used to think it just took a few turns for the strength to update, so I'd have units hang out... But I'm guessing I coincidentally moved another unit within 8 tiles. If scouts don't count then it's probably not worth sending a pair of warriors all over an arboreal map for tribute early. They just move too slow. I've gotten lucky in a few games where a lot of CS were close to my start and my scout upgraded, so I got tribute from all of them and my rep recovered in time to get quests. But apparently that was a lot of luck.

 

[joshua43214]

Unit health also counts. A wounded unit will not count until its health gets up to some thresh hold.
I noticed this on that goofy Settler challenge, I would have a bunch of wound units around a CS and get no tribute until I healed them up a bit

 

[phroggie]

Thanks pkf!

Knowing that time is of the essence, I got a bit impatient and started a game before reading all the posts... the map setup is a fun challenge, such a slow start on default (I thought "yes, jungles, science, wicked" but the start was agonisingly slow - tried Tradition & Liberty, but I really see why so many people are against both now). So went for 5 Bill years, Arid, Low water and it's made a big difference on the start mostly being forests, I've got good plots but not amazing, probably should have persisted longer in an ideal start - Education still feels like it's coming late (can't remember the ideal timeframe for standard, got it ~125t) and I did attempt to go NC+HG+GL but missed GL... feeling bit stupid now! Currently beelining the science techs and attempting to pick up missed early techs from wars, should be close to my 4th and final city (just getting to a good/safe location has been tricky, does feel like it could be too late for it though).

Not sure if I'll get the game finished in time!

 

[Peets]

If you can't finish in time you can still submit it for the HoF and VVV

 

[phroggie]

Ooohh - I'll have to look into HoF more, do they have lots of mods for V ... I remember it took a bit of fiddling with previous versions.

I definitely ballsed this game up, especially after watching Tommy's video. Will give it another go later though, see how much more I can improve.

But this game now has this song in my head:
They Might Be Giants - Mesopotamians
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAMRTGv82Zo
"We're the Mesopotamians Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Gilgamesh"

 

[Peets]

It is not allowed to use any mods in the HoF

 

[Cromagnus]

I think I missed the cutoff by 3 hours, but I did submit a "peaceful" run. (IE one that didn't start by conquering my neighbors for their tech) Still only managed t226, but that's about 20 turns faster than I managed when I conquered my two closest neighbors on t70 in a previous run.

I think I actually had too *many* desert hills. I got ridiculous Petra yield... I think it was like 12 tiles, but you can only grow so fast with 1-food desert hill tiles, and in the end that really hurt.

In my previous warlike game I had much higher population. I'm not actually convinced that playing nice helped me. No one has any cash on Chieftain, and siege towers are cheaper than settlers. The only thing that ultimately slowed me down with early capture was that I couldn't control placement of those cities, and the AI picks crappy spots.

 

[Cromagnus]

1. well capital need many good tiles to use - there d not have been 30 good tiles at coast - I do think one could allready expect that tile lack of the coastal spot in turn 0.
2. My plan was in like turn 0 to get gl for philo - so I can get other nice techs without having to worry about NC tech.
I like bronze fast a lot - it should come before building settler and a 6 tile sells for more gold overall as a lux

the distance unit for tribute demande is 8 tiles not 5.

I agree, early bronzeworking is really useful. The AI rarely has more than 60g or 3gpt on Chieftain.

I think in the long run, though, for me on Arborea the limiting factor was the dirt for my cities and tile improvement time. I was-growth limited in my best attempt due to all the hills, and I could barely keep up with tile improvement until I completed the pyramids. I'd almost prioritize pyramids over GL for the snowball benefit of being able to build tile improvements faster than your city grows... did anyone else notice this?

This is also why coastal turns me off. 2 4-food farms = 4 food surplus, the equivalent of a caravan... 2 coastal tiles = zero food surplus, so is is the cargo ship really saving you anything if you're having to work all those crappy coastal tiles? The best thing about having a coastal city is Colossus for the extra trade route and gold IMHO.

 

[Airny]

In my 4th try I was able to get a t234 finish.
The cap position was quite funny, it combined desert hill with fresh water and one mountain like I've never seen before.
I was a bit unlucky with the CS, there was only one maritime CS, which sucked.
Combined with the relatively poor food cap it was not a perfect food game.
This time I was able to quickly build 5 other cities which could feed my cap though.
In screen 2 I've just finished CS int101.
In screen3 it's just a screen from around 200 for comparison.

@Cromagnus: turn 226 should secure you second place, that's a great time!

 

[Cromagnus]

In my 4th try I was able to get a t234 finish.
The cap position was quite funny, it combined desert hill with fresh water and one mountain like I've never seen before.
I was a bit unlucky with the CS, there was only one maritime CS, which sucked.
Combined with the relatively poor food cap it was not a perfect food game.
This time I was able to quickly build 5 other cities which could feed my cap though.
In screen 2 I've just finished CS int101.
In screen3 it's just a screen from around 200 for comparison.

@Cromagnus: turn 226 should secure you second place, that's a great time!

Um, it would have but I didn't submit until after midnight. ;-)

 

[sanabas]

Um, it would have but I didn't submit until after midnight. ;-)

What if we're checking from a different timezone?

Cutoff is basically when the update is published, rather than a fixed time.