GIII Gamma

[Dianthus]

We haven't had a 100K Gauntlet for quite a while. The last one wasn't very successful as there were 0 submissions during the Gauntlet period, so we thought we would try again with an easier difficulty level:

Here are the settings for this Gauntlet:
Difficulty: Regent
Mapsize: Small
Victory: Cultural 100k
Date Due: June 15th

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I have no 100K games, so I will give go for it. Regent is as good as anything else. Kind of a combination of taking over the world and making a lot of culture.

There are a couple of good strategies I can think of:

Fast research and build all the wonders while taking over the world, sort of like a 20K game - the wonders should be able to give you maybe 10-20K depending on how fast you build, then the rest is buildings.

Just enough research to get you education and build a lot of cities and a lot of buildings in each city.

Religious is good, if you go for a lot of research, cause you can switch governments a couple of time, and temples/caths are cheap.

agri is good - expansion.

Science is good, too.

 

[sanabas]

spam, spam, spam, spam. Lots of cities*some culture is far more efficient than some cities*lots of culture. The decision is whether to go for Feudalism, ToA, and turn off research pre-education, or research education and hope that the unis you can build outweigh the culture lost through rebuilding free temples.

 

[Bartleby]

Just checking...small 100k is 80k in C3C right?

 

[Dianthus]

Just checking...small 100k is 80k in C3C right?

Yes, thats right.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

well, I understand that is the normal way of working.

And no matter what, you need a lot of cities. Heavy use of wonders might work better on tiny maps, where wonders can provide closer to 25-30% of the culture, if you get them fast.

I'll try both methods, just to see. Will get a better date from the "spam endless cities" method, of course. Wonder if I can get a Feudalism slingshot from philosophy?

 

[Dianthus]

Heavy use of wonders might work better on tiny maps, where wonders can provide closer to 25-30% of the culture, if you get them fast.

I wouldn't bet on it when you can build 100 cities on a tiny map. Note that this is small, so I would expect a good game to have even more than that!

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Any bets as to the final finish time? am guessing 800 AD or so.

 

[Karl_t_great]

spam, spam, spam, spam. Lots of cities*some culture is far more efficient than some cities*lots of culture. The decision is whether to go for Feudalism, ToA, and turn off research pre-education, or research education and hope that the unis you can build outweigh the culture lost through rebuilding free temples.

I used to go the ToA way, but noticed Moonsigner comment:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3873124&postcount=8

This made me wonder whether the point is relevant for record attempt with the pariticular setup.
We should be able to work out some figures on the matter:
- on my best small map game (#2 in chieftan) I was able to squeese 168 cities on 1010 tiles.
- If I did not have ToA I loose average 10 turns (whipped at pop 2) to temple, and the delay propagates for all the consecutive culture buildings (the X2 factor takes also a delay). This way culture for a specifig turn would step 10 turns back, in my example a loss of 14300 culture@1000AD.
- OTOH I gain 2X culture for each 1000 years, now we have to make some assumptions: I had 14 cities 1000BC,45 in 10BC, the game ends 1030 AD so cities founded after 10 BC don't gain a thing. Droppin the timeline to exel,calculating some key points, assuming linear in between -- and summing up gave me high estimate of 8300 culture due to 1st and 2nd level temple culture duplication@1000AD.

My dubious math seems to favor the ToA on this particular game, dunno what happens if U expand more rapidly. Anyone to verify my cold fusion theory by experiment ?

I still think that Moonsinger's advise hold's for general case since the double culture advantage increases by time.

Educatinon is another matter, if You're close to domination allready U should have the pop to rebuild temples in no time.

Karl (trying to resist attending)

Ps. I bet on 800 AD gauntlet victory ---It will require 2 AA SGL's.

 

[The 777 Hoax]

Does this have to be C3C?

 

[Dianthus]

Does this have to be C3C?

No, you can use or , just make sure you're at the latest patch. The players will have the advantage of only needing 80K rather than 100K though.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I'm going to try as celts - I've generated 200 or so maps.

Strategy will be REX, then ICS. Build a bunch of Gallics for kicking off a GA and taking AI cities.

I will need pyramids, so I will keep restarting until I get one for Alpha. Should take 30-50 tries.

Build ToA, tech to Republic for research and expansion and build a bunch of libraries - then switch to Feudalism and run minimum research. Poprush more libraries and build whatever wonders I can.

Will see what happens, maybe try another.

 

[Tone]

Wait a minute, I currently hold the #1 slot in this catagory. I guess I'd better make an attempt at defending it as it is my only 100K top slot.

I'm no expert on this type of game but I'l think that I'll not bother with the ToA route and look for Pyramids-supported pop-rushing. Babs is what I've used in my two previous 100K attempts and I see no reason to change. IIRC last time I carried onto rails for the extra food but I think I'll do min reasearch after Education as I think that I had problems with building upkeep towards the end of the game.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

well, I've got one going - 15 towns at 1000 BC, with pyramids - that may be slower than I want, so I dunno how well I will end up doing. We will see...

It's actually more like a regular game than anything else - rapid expansion, now build up a military force, cause I'm on a little peninsula and the american's gotta go...

I didn't think about the golden age that pyramids gives the Celts, though... that was a surprise...

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I'll have a game, but I dunno how good a game it will be. It's cranking along - I think I'm at 11K at 410AD, and my win date is 1752 right now. am trying the ToA gambit, which may end up messing me up - but the free temple is really helpful.

 

[Karl_t_great]

I'll have a game, but I dunno how good a game it will be. It's cranking along - I think I'm at 11K at 410AD, and my win date is 1752 right now. am trying the ToA gambit, which may end up messing me up - but the free temple is really helpful.

Use CPR Viewer to compare Your culture against any of the medal games. Tone's #1 game had only 6,6K@410AD, but allready 58% of terratory.
I am running a "practice" game @Chieftan (while waiting for mapfinder), prior to 500 AD I was 1K ahead, but now 690 AD only even, and lagging in CPT (compared to my #2 chief game).

 

[Tone]

I've made a start but I keep getting sidetracked. I use any suitable saves for a 20K game-much more fun IMO!

On the territory vs early culture issue, I tried to learn from the 100K SGOTM that I played in. For the vanilla team section, my team (tao) were in a winning position but X-team had all but ignored culture until they got to the domination limit. They then used their advantage in towns to devastating effect. Look at that blue line soar once they get going on culture builds!

 

[AutomatedTeller]

yeah - I think I will stall out using the way I have gone. I mean, I'll still have a decent game - in 700 AD, I'm at 23,778, on pace for a 1450 end date... but I only have about 40% of the land and not going for education means I'm running out of culture builds in a lot of my towns. I think I need to spam out more towns...

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Looks like I'll have a game, unless China decides to attack - I got 1/2 the continent - no horses, and they are fairly close to the IA.

Wont' finish until 1300 or so, though, and I dunno that I will try another... these take a long time to cycle through the cities...

 

[AutomatedTeller]

ok - first game for the gauntlet!!

is a not very exciting 1315...

The building wonders thing is clearly not the way to go. I got Colossus, Pyramids, SoZ and ToA - between them, I got 4165 CP, or 5% of my total. As a culture, those helped me by about 4 turns - which is good, but on the other hand:

I stayed away from Education to keep ToA useful, so I had no Unis.
It turns out that while ToA is active, NO temples double in culture, even ones that were already built. So ToA probably cost me in culture, except for the the free temples - and, since most of my towns were building wealth at the end, I probably could have built more.

That said, I *did* have less maintenance costs, because not worrying about temples.

I dunno if I will go again... I didn't much enjoy the 100K.

If I do go again, it will be as Babylon. Big problem will be in expanding fast, more than anything. And, probably, having much war - it's really helpful to have all the luxes to keep your people happy...

There are still wonders that are good: Pyramids is vital, SoZ can help, cause it's probably useful to have the ancient cavs, if just for the MP - hanging gardens, Oracle (for awhile), Bach's and Sistine will be useful, too.

I learned a lot about pop-rushing - I ran into something wierd. If you have a size 6 town and 99 shields remaining on, say, a colloseum...

you can't poprush it. However, you *can* short rush other improvements and end up getting the colloseum.

anyway. Was a learning event, if nothing else.