[BTS] GLH Challenge

[Hesha]

I'm far from an expert at this game, but I think I've found an impossible task and I would like to know if one of you can accomplish it.

I played this game, IMM, Hammurabi, Small Fractal, 6 AI.

From the map layout it's blatantly obviously (at least to silly old me) that the GLH is a damn good idea. It's also a map well suited for Fippy's "Bad maps" thread, because you start out with pigs and wet corn as well as loads of forests, then discover a 2-fish-city spot just E of your cap only to then realise you are on a godforsaken jungle island with no relevant resources for additional cities. But there are loads of small sugar islands around, well, two, and a big island to the north with two AI on it.

At my first attempt, AI built the GLH in turn 74, beating me by many turns. I tried again, beelined to the required techs, pretty sure I did about everything right, too, yet no luck. The second time around the AI built the damned thing in turn 57, beating me by maybe 3-4 turns.

So here's my challenge: Build the GLH by turn 56 and please tell me how you did it. I have attached a save of the turn the AI finished the GLH and also the initial save. Enjoy!

Oh... and my apologies in advance, this was played with BUG as a mod, as I hadn't inteded to use it on the forum.

 

[krikav]

Can you make a worldbuilder save from T0?

 

[Hesha]

Can you make a worldbuilder save from T0?

How do I do that? Never tried that before, but I'll try it.

 

[lymond]

I created one myself.

For future reference, hesh, you can create wb saves by opening the t0 save in worldbuilder. Click the Save button at the top right. A wb save will be generated in the Saves/Worldbuilder folder.

Folks can copy that save into their own Wb folder and play the game as a scenario using whatever mod they choose.

 

[Snowbird]

From the map layout it's blatantly obviously (at least to silly old me) that the GLH is a damn good idea. It's also a map well suited for Fippy's "Bad maps" thread

Spoiler :

triple gems and AI's reachable with workboat is a bad map? (there is also like 2 more food sources also...)

From the setup (map size vs AI number) I would say the best wonder is a healthy stack of units.

 

[Hesha]

Spoiler :

triple gems and AI's reachable with workboat is a bad map? (there is also like 2 more food sources also...)

From the setup (map size vs AI number) I would say the best wonder is a healthy stack of units.

Waging war is so tedious... but I am considering to take at least corinth off Pericles. I'm wondering... should I raze the city and build two cities of my own instead? there is enought room and as far as I can tell, every overseas city will pay for itself.

 

[krikav]

Sounds lika a micro challenge.
Just throwing out a quick first attempt here.

T57

Spoiler :

Mining->BW first, then just pre-chopping while teching fishing->sailing, first whip of a 29/60 worker turn before sailing finishes.
Then masonry while trying to grow capital again, and the two workers continue to pre-chop.

I'm now, at T57 sitting with a 39/100 settler that is ready to be whipped so there is absolutely room for alot of improvement here. I would say that T45 might be close to theoretical optimum.
One silly optimization that would fit into a micro challenge, but is out of the question in real play, is to settle on the pigs ofcourse.

 

[krikav]

I agree that the map is crap, but this is clearly not one of the worst.

 

[krikav]

Second attempt, with a more normal playstyle.
Also T57!

Spoiler :

Settler at size 3, with the aid of chops. Pre-roaded to Akkad to get traderoutes right away.
In total normal play, capital would have had to provide Akkad with a workboat, but here it whipped it's own after working unimproved fish to T2.

 

[krikav]

Does @Swordnboard still frequent the forums? He had a taste for fun micro challenges.

 

[krikav]

Ok, I think this is the best I can do without doing anything crazy funky.
T54.

If SiP, going for a size4 settler doesn't feel intuitive, I would have gone for a size3 one.
And holding the worker at 29/60 for many turns is likewise something I would do, unless I was absolutely desperate.

A T62-T64 GLH seem natural in this map.

Spoiler :

SiP, worker first, techpath mining->bw->fish->sail->masonry->ah (didn't finish AH)
Worker improved corn, roaded corn, then went up on the grassland hill and started mining it.
Then one more chop 1S of that hill which completed the settler.

City didn't start settler until size4, which was good because growing later on was highly problematic.
While building the settler, the city worked the lake, losing abit of overflow but hastened the arrival of sailing.

@Sailing, the first (still lone) worker finished the second grassland mine, and that chop finished the org lighthouse in two turns.
In the period between sailing and masonry, city grew some more while securing 18/50 hammers in a galley, and ensured there was 29/60 hammers in the worker.
1 turn prior to masonry, the worker was whipped.

T54 GLH is finished.
I think T45 as a theoretical optimum is too optimistic... Two things that could speed this approach up more is:
1. Settle on pigs (for the +1F in the city all turns)
2. Settle second city 1 tile west, as that would save 2 workerturns roading the corn, and it would provide some extra commerce in the period before sailing, as the two cities would be insta-connected. The city could work unimproved coast anyway so would lose "nothing" in a speedbuilding of GLH.

I think that both 1. and 2. are deviations from optimal play though.

With these two changes, I think it might be possible to squeeze out a T50 GLH, but I'm not sure.

 

[krikav]

How to play this opening...?
Now, this is always tricky, given that it's so hard to ignore map knowledge, but I think this is how I would tend to think here:

Spoiler :

First in the opening position, we note that we have two incredibly strong food resources.
Splitting these is of high priority.
Capital should have both sources in BFC ofcourse. I see capital 1NW of starting position as the natural move, but moving settler 2E or 2E1S also leaves room for two more cities.

Settler move doesn't reveal anything of interest. But I would start to worry too much about ruining seafood in the west here, so I wouldn't dare settle. I would continue NE, considering settling either 1N or NW of the lake, keeping the corn and claiming much more land.

T1 Demographics show something really interesting when we look at land area. At least one AI is completely landlocked (9000 square km = 9 land tiles under culture control), and even the AI with most water only has 2 water tiles, which would be inland lakes. We could be the only civ with a capital near water, this should indicate that GLH is well within our grasp.

Warrior continues to scout, and settler moves 1N then SW, if warrior reveals any seafoo now, likely best capital is NE of the lake.

But there is nothing there, capital settles here T2 and now I would be set to do a GLH attempt.
I'm also decently sure I will be able to put a city SE of the corn, that can share both corn and pigs. And another city 3N of that, which can take the corn.

What do you think? Over-theoretizising? Working with hindsight?

 

[Fippy]

I would def. SIP after warrior move shows not much, and AH first (chance for horsies given with 2 empty tiles).
BW first would also be an option, but pigs are really strong (and fast improved).
Hammi can afford AH with his good starting techs imo.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I'm now, at T57 sitting with a 39/100 settler that is ready to be whipped so there is absolutely room for alot of improvement here. I would say that T45 might be close to theoretical optimum.
One silly optimization that would fit into a micro challenge, but is out of the question in real play, is to settle on the pigs ofcourse.

Micro challenge attempt
I tried Fishing->Sailing->Mining->Bronze Working->Masonry.
Grew to Size 3 and finished Lighthouse fast due to them being 1/2 price.

Spoiler :

Then grew to Size 5 on coastal tiles for max. commerce and tried to get 3 Workers.
There are so many forests to chop that the 2nd Worker can be chopped complete before revolting to Slavery.

If this was a micro challenge, then settling on pigs would be better ya.
Trying to get The Great Lighthouse before T55 is probably a bad idea in a real game.
T49 TGL

Spoiler :

Pottery can also be researched at any time.
Would be interesting to see granary used to help make a 2nd city quickly and how much that slows TGL down.

 

[krikav]

Thats really nice @Kaitzilla !

 

[drewisfat]

1st attempt, t51... but feels like t50 should be possible if stuff at least synced up.
2nd attempt, t51
3rd attempt completely different, t51
4th attempt, t52 wutwoh
5th attempt also different, t51
6th attempt, also different.... t51...... ok well that's good enough to be the time to beat. Time to post and declare victory.
WAIT WTH KAIT! AGKJSDFLSADKFASDSKLdSALKASDLFSAKL

There were some t51 variants that weren't that bad (like only using 2 chops or 1 chop and a whip) and you get like an extra warrior or even a galley, but only one worker. I mostly tried settling 1NW to be able to improve a mine. I'm not sure GLH is really the way to go here for the record. The only thing really going for it is ORG. No IND, no starting fishing tech, no starting mining or even myst, and no seafood to justify a lighthouse. And it screams AH first. And if you're not lucky with AI fishing boats you could be building it blind not knowing if you're isolated.

 

[Hesha]

Thanks guys, glad to see it's possible. I guess, however, you only managed to do it so early, because you absolutely beelined for it, right? I saw in kaits post, that he didn't settle any other cities, which should normally have happened by t48, right? By the time you have scouted enough to realise you're on an island and meet someone else, it's too late to beat them to it in turn 57. In hindsight, I'd say it's a really solit strategy for the map. I've played my third attempt now, finished the GLH in t60ish and managed to more or less keep up with the AI. I have a completely insane Inca here who is warmongering after me because I refused his civic (still on Pleased, though), who is ahead of me in tech (but 3rd or 4th out of 7 by score). So I'll have to defend Cav and Inf with Grenadiers and Machine guns (don't have rifling yet). I feel my start was pretty good, when the GLH droppen, then compass/harbours I was pretty much skyrocketting. Was the first to discover the empty central continent (discovered it because there was a tile with yield 2 tiles diagonal from land (see @lymond I remember some of your tipps )) and managed to settle if by founding a city down there, expanding culture and then crossing over even before Optics/Astronomy. If I had found it sooner, I could have been way ahead with settling it, but this way it more or less coincided with having astronomy anyways. I find that failing the colossus is quite liberating, because you don't try to postpone Astronomy.

Here's my current save, too...

One little trick I discovered is to exploit the fact that you get double production on LH, which you can use to generate a tonne of overflow. I did this chopping and whipping into an already completed LH and I didn't lose any hammers, got them all as OF.

 

[elmurcis]

No idea what I was doing (just few hrs into Civ after months away and Normal speed is outside of my usual waters anyway), but got to T55, T54 and T53 finish on 3 attempts with "regular GLH tech-path" (Fishing->Sailing->Mining->BW->Masonry->AH; with changing BW after Fishing on 3rd attempt). All times capital still was at size 5, ready to get settler (and workboat) out quickly. 4th time went "regular" approach (AH 1st before GLH techs), it felt more natural even if GLH was done few turns later. Won't continue as I tend to screw up everything on Normal speed (back to my origins where I belong - Huge-Mara-noob stuff - feels good )
Happy New Year!