G-Minor XI

[vexing]

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.

my approach was definitely not streamlined; i took my time before starting to spam cities / conquer, cleared most of the tree with RAs, and i just ran with the first map i got (4 maritimes - ouch).

starting piety / switching to rationalism is an interesting idea, though the two happiness/city hit could cause problems. i guess an option there is to time sydney opera house with the switch.

i'm curious what the optimal amount of time before ICSing is. presumably there's some balance between social policy acquisition and starting the ICS madness, but maybe i'm just wrong.

if i were going to retry i'd go with just the first two in piety, some in freedom and the right three in commerce. considering that almost all gold is going into rush buying buildings later in the game, the third policy could read "increase your gold output by 38%"

fortunately i'm only doing this one attempt, even if i skipped work and social engagements for the next two days i don't think i could finish my game and get in another full attempt.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I've been chipping away at this game for some time now. Turn 303 IIRC, and I'll be surprised if I go much past 375. I seem to have timed settling the garbage ocean "filler" cities (big sinks - which means sinks) about right with when most "real" cities on the mainland will fill in the growth buildings.

I went ICS right off the bat, running down to Representation immediately and slapping up Monuments everywhere. Once I hit the wall I went vertical for a while building Unis to clear the tech tree, then fired off a wave of RAs to get me up to the very few buildings I cared about. Then I filled in the rest of the continent as quickly as I could.

With the errors in management due to poor SP ordering, I think that I could have filled the continent a lot earlier. I really didn't need to go vertical, or bother with RAs with near neighbors; raw will get you to Penicillin in ample time.

The Commerce idea is interesting. I do wish I'd prioritized Big Ben a bit earlier. I didn't really need to fill in the left side of Liberty.

 

[Tinknade]

I went down commerce for the rush buying ability. Being able to rush by medical labs in all the cities definitely helped.

I probably could have expanded more aggressively in my game, but I pretty much just rush bought settlers in all my border cities to push a new layer of cities.

I went down Liberty -> Piety -> Just the +gold for patronage (definitely not necessary retrospectively) -> Tradition (should have done this one earlier) -> Commerce (to rush buy) -> Freedom (right two side - should have good the food one earlier as well) -> Honor (for the hilarious happiness).

Pretty much the math told me to stop when around 10% of my cities had less than 10 food surplus or less and all cities would producing specialists. Until I finished tradition, I kept it on production focus for all cities and then once tradition finished I food focused all of them. I'm probably should have switched to food and just relied on rush buying for production earlier.

Happiness seemed a bit hilarious. I was usually rocking 200+ happy from buildings / SP and over 1000 happy at the end when I went down the right side of honor because I had no other social policies that seemed interesting. I pretty much was always in a golden age.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I probably could have expanded more aggressively in my game, but I pretty much just rush bought settlers in all my border cities to push a new layer of cities.

That's not feasible early on, but it eventually becomes the clear choice for your until starts becoming a severe problem.

 

[Tinknade]

Yeah, totally. I didn't build settlers aggressively at the start in favor of finishing wonders, monuments, temples, and growing my cities. I traded lux's and used any gold surplus to rush buy workers and settlers (not in mass quantity) and didn't sign any RAs. I probably didn't need most of the wonders early on and could have used those hammers more efficiently. I was more referring to waiting until I had a econ surplus to expand.

 

[vexing]

I've been chipping away at this game for some time now. Turn 303 IIRC, and I'll be surprised if I go much past 375.

if that's truly the point you should end at it should be quite an impressive score. i'm at turn 440 and over the past 40ish turns at least my score is still pretty linear, and it's over 2x the score/turn gain needed to be a final gain.

 

[Sporaticus]

Well, I got my 20K, but it was only because i had a ginormous map to offset my cool climate experiment. Cool climate produces tundra. Lots of tundra. I should have gone with hot/wet. At least I could have farmed the desert tiles (eventually).

 

[Martin Alvito]

Cool climate produces tundra. Lots of tundra. I should have gone with hot/wet. At least I could have farmed the desert tiles (eventually).

Hot/wet/old/low sea level. Reroll until you land in Forest rather than Jungle.

 

[vexing]

phew. finally done.
the micro for this challenge is ridiculous.

 

[Tinknade]

Hot/wet/old/low sea level. Reroll until you land in Forest rather than Jungle.

Granted I'm new to all of this, I was under the assumption HoF submissions were meant to be using default map settings. How much does the map customization affect everything (personally haven't messed around with those settings)?

 

[vexing]

you pretty much needed to have low sea level for this one - more land area gives a higher score. the age changes the amount of hills and mountains, so older is better for more flat farmable area.

 

[Sporaticus]

Hot/wet/old/low sea level. Reroll until you land in Forest rather than Jungle.

Thanks!!! I'll store that away for the next high-score challenge!

phew. finally done.
the micro for this challenge is ridiculous.

I'll never be a good micromanagement player. I'm a good "bulldoze the map" player, which is why I can play fast and produce a large number of games.

Granted I'm new to all of this, I was under the assumption HoF submissions were meant to be using default map settings. How much does the map customization affect everything (personally haven't messed around with those settings)?

I was afraid to experiment at first after that embarrassing...incident....with my first submission. I wasn't paying attention to the rules and changed the number of City States. After this challenge, I'll be much more inclined to experiment with the map settings.

When I first joined the HOF, I had a "bad attitude" moment regarding the Diety-level players beating the crap out of us poor noobs in the G-Minor competition. In retrospect, I was wrong about that. Both Marvin Alvito and Vexing have shown themselves to be true class acts by imparting their knowledge to myself and others. If/when I reach their level of play, I only hope that I can prove as helpful to the new HOF players.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Well, it's in. 14480 on turn 375, should yield 28960.

Since the map was heavy on water, I was pretty much going sideways on staying ahead of the decline. I needed about 550 points every seven and a half turns, or just over 73 a turn, to stay level. That was more or less what I was getting. I only had 120 cities, and I needed sixteen to grow each turn to stay ahead (after accounting for the future tech on most turns). That was asking a bit much.

Best guess is that somebody with a map that can support an extra fifty cities could beat that. If I'd been a bit more precise in my play, such that I'd gotten the last fifty cities online much earlier, I probably could have ended the game a whole lot earlier and landed in the high 30's or possibly over 40 with some more dirt on the map.

I think that you can ignore buildings except for a few Universities for GS points and just repeatedly spam Settlers and Workers. You should still be able to get up to Hospitals by the time you're ready to build them, and Penicillin is an easy bulb. That, Plastics and Ecology should sort out pretty thoroughly. If I had it to do over, that's what I'd do.

I'm guessing that vexing was shuffling worked tiles around from city to city to grow cities more rapidly. I don't think you're giving all that much away if you just set as proportionally (relative to boxes) as you can across cities and then check back every so often. Overgrowing cities, then starving them might squeeze out a few more citizens, but I'm thinking that you should be ending it by the time you're trying that.

One more thing: I believe that optimal SP ordering is: Tradition -> Liberty -> Citizenship -> Representation -> Legalism (getting four Temples) -> Piety -> Organized Religion -> finish Tradition -> right side of Freedom. You don't really need anything else; finishing Liberty for a GE on Sydney would be nice. Switching to Rationalism later is helpful, but it's also overkill. By the time you need that kind of , Democracy is happy to provide it.

I didn't take Piety and opened Freedom first, and that was a mistake. Freedom doesn't do you a lot of good until your cities start getting large.

 

[vexing]

I'm guessing that vexing was shuffling worked tiles around from city to city to grow cities more rapidly...

One more thing: I believe that optimal SP ordering is: Tradition -> Liberty -> Citizenship -> Representation -> Legalism (getting four Temples) -> Piety -> Organized Religion -> finish Tradition -> right side of Freedom. You don't really need anything else; finishing Liberty for a GE on Sydney would be nice.

i only shuffled for the last 7 turns, so about 90% of cities would grow for the final turn.

my final score was only 26323 - i took too long before starting ics, and only had the four maritimes. finished 494.

it seems like you might as well finish off liberty. that +1 / +5% for buildings seems like it'll add up enough to be worthwhile. i also still think commerce should be a win.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I'm actually not so sure about Commerce. I built the vast majority of my Med Labs with . Assuming you settle rapidly enough, the only sites you have to buy Hospitals/Med Labs on are the island outposts. Cities in arctic wastelands generally don't need them.

I did take Republic (fairly early, actually), and it's an excellent policy for this type of game. I think that an early Tradition finisher is probably more important, though.

 

[vexing]

i guess it depends on how quickly you can get three deep into commerce. i think it might be worth doing before the two in freedom, 38% more gold is really significant.

i'm sorely tempted to try again, except for the micro pain... if there were "intelligent" worker automation i'd be willing. my plan would be a cultured ics - get tradition, representation, piety and then start settling in waves upon each policy completion, starting with monument in each city

 

[Martin Alvito]

I'm not sure. Three deep into Freedom solves all your late problems. That means you aren't stuck rushing Theatres, which also cuts down on the bill.

Your basic plan is exactly what I'd do if I got a mulligan. I'd also throw up the Pyramids first thing in the capital; it'll more than pay for itself in speed. I forgot about Meritocracy, which I'd probably pick up immediately after Organized Religion.

Whether or not I got three deep into Commerce would probably depend on exactly how the game goes against the ICS. It would be nice late, no doubt.

 

[Tinknade]

i'm sorely tempted to try again, except for the micro pain... if there were "intelligent" worker automation i'd be willing.

Same exact feeling. If I could program the workers to follow a specific plan, I'd consider it possible. Improving every single tile on the map was dreadfully painful. It was so cathartic to delete every single worker once the map was improved.

 

[Khrax]

I got 25k. I settled pretty fast, but now I see that I could have done even faster, was too worried about Finished turn 467. My policies were tradition/liberty/rationalism/freedom, which I consider best here. Should have filled out tradition earlier. Didn't know that I could change settings, low sea level would have been really nice here, had only about 100 cities. I agree with the post above, very inspiring to read the tips from Vexing and Martin Alvito, thank you both for sharing your knowledge. Really a lot of things still to learn in this game. I hope there will be more score gauntlets!

 

[vexing]

I hope there will be more score gauntlets!

*shudder*