G-Minor XI

[vexing]

I'm just theorizing that it arrives before 750 turns.

i'd guess so as well. it seems like score will follow an S curve over the entire game, starting to trend downward sometime after you've filled the map with cities. it's hard to say how long after though.

 

[Martin Alvito]

i'd guess so as well. it seems like score will follow an S curve over the entire game, starting to trend downward sometime after you've filled the map with cities. it's hard to say how long after though.

Yeah, score should be a more or less curvilinear, concave function of time. The location of the apex is probably an empirical problem specific to any given game.

 

[Tinknade]

It's painfully slow and I hope that I can find the equilibrium point on the time vs raw score before turn 750. I'm actually keeping track of my score each turn after I built my last possible city location (and it feels like there are no bounds), granted I'm at turn 350.

Additionally, I wonder if it's optimal to conquer maritime city states. The effective population from food is nearly the same amount of points as growing an annexed city state.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I'm reasonably certain that Maritimes are one of the conditions you have to reroll for on this one. At the end of the day, the bulk of the portion of your score that you can reasonably affect through your actions is population.

The score maximization problem is a bit deeper than it appears at first glance due to all the weird conditions of Settler. There isn't much that will knock me off of my standard Pottery opening, but this does.

 

[vexing]

I'm reasonably certain that Maritimes are one of the conditions you have to reroll for on this one.

obviously to get maximum score you'd prefer having more maritimes, but i doubt anyone is going to wait until they've found all city states and then decide to reroll. land area available is similar; a snakey pangea with a lot of little islands will yield a higher score.

i'm nearly positive i've taken a suboptimal approach (delayed expansion for the purpose of getting more social policies) however i highly doubt i'll try again... i might not even play this to the point of submission. it gets tedious very quickly =/

 

[Martin Alvito]

You don't need to find each and every city-state before making that call, but if your Scouts are finding nothing but Culturals and Militaristics you have a problem.

It seems pretty clear that you need to go old-school ICS here. The question is how to achieve that efficiently on Epic. After 100 turns what I'm doing looks like a Yang game in SMAC, but I'm not 100% sold that it's maximum efficiency. I need way more Workers than it's possible to pump out to stay ahead of the tiles the cities work and still feed the expansion beast.

 

[Sporaticus]

I don't know if this will be of any help, but here are the three games I have submitted for G-minor XI:

Game 1317, Ingame Score 4742, Turn 472, HOF Score 7648
HOF Score is 1.61*Raw Score

Game 1321, Ingame Score 6099, Turn 456, HOF Score 10615
HOF Score is 1.74*Raw Score

Game 1342, Ingame Score 12777, Turn 600, HOF Score 15971
HOF Score is 1.25*Raw Score

According to the HOF Score Claculator I would need 16K ingame at Turn 600 to get a 20K HOF score, which is also a 1.25 multiplier.
At turn 456, I would need roughly 12k ingame to achieve my 20K HOF goal.
The only way to dramatically increase the score that I can think of is to expand/conquer much earlier in the game to get the last possible city in place much sooner than I did in my previous games. Therefore, I guess I'll *groan* try one more time.

 

[Tinknade]

Three attempts. Impressive. I was about to quit due to having ~100 cities and 100+ workers. Turns took forever. Thankfully, once the entire map is settled and worked, you can delete everything and just spam next turn. I don't intend to replay that one - took 15 hours according to the end of game log.

I appreciate my game, it seemed my population growth wasn't keeping up with the modifier loss around turn 420-450. My criteria to end the game was that I was final score flat for 10 turns.

 

[Martin Alvito]

At turn 456, I would need roughly 12k ingame to achieve my 20K HOF goal.
The only way to dramatically increase the score that I can think of is to expand/conquer much earlier in the game to get the last possible city in place much sooner than I did in my previous games. Therefore, I guess I'll *groan* try one more time.

Your goal looks doable; I've got a 4000 raw in the 240s going. It seems like you have to get the points quickly. This is a pretty poor map for a variety of reasons (though I had an insanely fast start), and I'd be pretty surprised if I can get to 12k in another 200 turns. That won't stop me from trying.

Early science focus looks like a bad idea on Epic, also. Learned that the hard way.

 

[Sporaticus]

Your goal looks doable; I've got a 4000 raw in the 240s going. It seems like you have to get the points quickly. This is a pretty poor map for a variety of reasons (though I had an insanely fast start), and I'd be pretty surprised if I can get to 12k in another 200 turns. That won't stop me from trying.

Early science focus looks like a bad idea on Epic, also. Learned that the hard way.

I started farm-spamming and expanding early, and it looked real good until around Turn 500. In retrospect, I should have conquered at least some of those 8 Maritime CSs instead of leaving them all as allies.

Here's something I learned the hard way, else I might have gotten 18K-18.5K instead of 17.9K:

Never, ever, use Modern Armor to "soften up" the last AI city in preparation for a quick take-down in case the score flat-lines. It tends to end the game prematurely.

I did a few things right, though:
1) I put a farm on every single tile that I could.
2) I completed the Patronage tree as early as I could.
3) I researched Fertilizer as quick as I could.
4) I conquered all the non-maritime CS (often using the very military units that I was gifted).
5) I put a work boat on every daggone fish tile.
6) I purchased granarys, aqueducts, hospitals, and medical labs whenever I could afford to.
7) I made extra settlers to be real sure that I had all available city locations covered. I even used 2 GAs to take strategic tiles from the last AI that allowed for the placement of the final two cities.
8) I kept a few Legions throughout the game to build roads so the workers could build farms.

 

[vexing]

In retrospect, I should have conquered at least some of those 8 Maritime CSs instead of leaving them all as allies.

no, just on final turn as was mentioned earlier. 1 food * 200 cities or whatever > 1 city

and wow, do i wish i had 8 maritimes in my game =(

 

[Martin Alvito]

no, just on final turn as was mentioned earlier. 1 food * 200 cities or whatever > 1 city

and wow, do i wish i had 8 maritimes in my game =(

Right, Maritimes stay until the last turn. I've got seven Maritimes, but that and the start (quad Deer, straight Forest, river, El Dorado for the Granary) are about the only good things about this map. Not enough land tiles, too many worthless (desert, tundra, snow, mountain) tiles, AI capital/CS locations are screwing me out of a ton of possible cities. If I get more than 130 cities I'll be stunned.

That and the fact that I went vertical a bit too hard from 100-150 are the big issues with my game. Unfortunately, with as long as turns take I can't see taking another crack at it.

Oh, and Patronage is a bad idea. All that SP line does is effectively generate cash, which you should be rolling in, and great people, which don't really contribute to your score. Optimal SPs are pretty obvious IMO, though I think the ordering is a bit tricky.

 

[vexing]

quad Deer, straight Forest, river, El Dorado for the Granary

that is quite a start. i'm really interested in seeing what ends up winning this one - if it'll be purely map luck or not.

for social policies i went tradition, liberty, freedom, rationalism, some of honor. i wonder if going down into commerce for the reduced rush buying costs would have been worthwhile.

 

[Martin Alvito]

that is quite a start. i'm really interested in seeing what ends up winning this one - if it'll be purely map luck or not.

I don't think there's all that much other than map luck to it. There isn't a lot of strategy other than maximizing settlement speed for a max multiplier, which I really didn't do all that well.

for social policies i went tradition, liberty, freedom, rationalism, some of honor. i wonder if going down into commerce for the reduced rush buying costs would have been worthwhile.

I think going two deep into Piety is better than Rationalism. I popped off a wave of RAs to get me up to the key buildings and then quit wasting my time. You don't get points for . At least, not enough to trump the points you get from offing your enemies and growing their cities. Science buildings are a pretty low priority build; Monuments are a pretty high priority one.

Order would be hot if it could coexist with Freedom. Dumb update IMO.

I don't build enough defensive buildings or units to make the right side of Honor worthwhile.

 

[vexing]

i took the opener of honor early, and spent some time pegging off camps for 75 gold. i went two deeper very late as it was the largest +happiness booster available to increase my buffer, and set a few cities to building units to fill garrisons. i'm thinking going directly to commerce to speed up medical lab acquisition in all cities may have been a better choice.

you're probably right that piety is a better choice than rationalism. i'll hopefully at least get to the point of a future tech / turn faster.

 

[Sporaticus]

Oh, and Patronage is a bad idea. All that SP line does is effectively generate cash, which you should be rolling in, and great people, which don't really contribute to your score. Optimal SPs are pretty obvious IMO, though I think the ordering is a bit tricky.

The in-game mouseover implies that Cultural Diplomacy increases the gifted resources by 100%, so I was assuming that it would double the food from the maritime CSs. If that is not the case, then Patronage is nowhere near as useful as I thought.

I certainly appreciate your and Vexing's feedback. I guess I'll have to learn to pick and choose specific policies instead of going straight for the "finishers".

Do either of you tinker with the production focus? I play around with the specialist assignments in some cities, but have not messed with the focus settings.

 

[vexing]

The in-game mouseover implies that Cultural Diplomacy increases the gifted resources by 100%

it's strategic resources (eg horses), not their normal bonuses - that'd be really overpowered.

i'll mess with focus settings in a normal game, but for this particular challenge just leaving everything on default with manually assigned specialists should work well

 

[Martin Alvito]

I did the full micro (production focus, micro each city's tiles as it grows) early on, but it got to be way too much to keep up with once I started cloning cities with Settler builds after going vertical.

Since then I've just run the defaults, although focus might be smarter.

 

[Sporaticus]

it's strategic resources (eg horses), not their normal bonuses - that'd be really overpowered.

i'll mess with focus settings in a normal game, but for this particular challenge just leaving everything on default with manually assigned specialists should work well

Thanks!!! I believe that there is just enough time to take one more shot at this. Not that I have a Civ "problem" or anything....I can stop anytime I want.....really........

 

[Martin Alvito]

i'm thinking going directly to commerce to speed up medical lab acquisition in all cities may have been a better choice.

I'm not so sure. I find that the limiters are and . The right SP mix is critical to keeping you from having to dump into the problem like I've been forced to on most turns.

I tried Rationalism out (the other policy options later are superior) and it's not bad in the later game. I still think that you need to go early Piety, though. It's the only way to keep the Huge/Yang CP spam approach moving along.

I honestly don't think that you're going to accumulate meaningful future tech before the modifier incentive provokes ending the game if the approach is properly streamlined. I'm going to play this one out until the math says to stop, then see if I can get a start that will let me undo all of my mistakes. A map that isn't half water ("low" sea levels...HA!) would be helpful.