Guide to 500k+ scores through Huge map domination on Immortal difficulty

[killercane]

I've looked up his saves The max possible population is something like 2800, and at victory date he had 2700 score on population He fought his way to control more than half of the main continent and settled almost all of the New World. He could have finished the game much earlier, but milked like mad. Actually, the turn he won, his score was still going up like 2-3k per turn.

Sushi was giving +14 Not as ideal as a water-rich +25-35 map, but still good.

His starting position and early game is far from ideal, but he stick to it. Early Academy near 1500BC. He had both Stone and Marble early on which helped him build some nice wonders. He did not build the Oracle in the 2000-1500BC period, but there was no Isabella this game, so he still managed to finish it between 1300-1000BC.

I've looked at this 1390BC save. He controls 12 cities with a total of 30 population. Research has almost halted, but the Oracle and cottages will speed things up soon. And the problem of AI massing archers to guard their capital is also hurting him when capturing London.

Really nice game actually, but I think you need a very good PC to survive late game He had like 140 cities in the late game, and I had major delays opening the city advisor screen

Killercane again for being the first person to cross 1M score!

Im still working on the writeup. RE: early game-my research sucked balls and Mansa had priesthood. Luckily he didnt build it in time and I could take Currency to solve all my research problems. This also shows how a few extra commerce tiles would really help; the start really wasnt good. About the only good thing on this map was that India was a pushover early on and built Stonehenge. Delhi then became my wonder city which produced GP for golden ages.

The slow pc and making too many mistakes was pretty much why I stopped when I did.

 

[VirusMonster]

After seeing your sucky early game, I thought that even a 1.5M+ game is possible. You recovered really nice. If you need help with html formatting on your writeup, let me know. Otakijubski taught me nice table of contents tricks ;-)

 

[killercane]

Well I'll probably do well even getting enough screenshots in . Can you plug 3200/2800 population and winning about 50 turns earlier in Matlab (assume other numbers are the same as that game) and see what you get? Im thinking of trying to eliminate most AIs and stay at war with the last few to prevent them from building Hanging Gardens until the last turn. Its hard to do so far but possible.

 

[VirusMonster]

What is your PC configuration Killercane? Mine is 1.8Ghz Athlon with 1GB RAM.

 

[VirusMonster]

Well I'll probably do well even getting enough screenshots in . Can you plug 3200/2800 population and winning about 50 turns earlier in Matlab (assume other numbers are the same as that game) and see what you get? Im thinking of trying to eliminate most AIs and stay at war with the last few to prevent them from building Hanging Gardens until the last turn. Its hard to do so far but possible.

Alright, I plugged in the numbers First, I plugged in your game data to the formula just to see whether it is displaying a correct score. Yep, you had 1,085k, formula shows roughly 1,100k; so, I assume it works correctly neglecting rounding errors.

Next, I plugged in 3200 for population. Remember in your 1M+ game maximum population accoring to the scoring system was 2800.

Then, I made a mistake You have asked me to give you an approximate score for this game if it were finished 50 turns earlier. Well, you finished on turn 603. So, if I were to do what you said, I should have plugged in 553. But I was careless and plugged 503

Then, I saw the 2M+ score and realized something must be wrong So fixed it back to turn 553 as victory date, and 1,64M appeared.

Looking at your not ideal start, I am convinced that 1,5M+ scores are possible with a good PC

 

[WastinTime]

There is the A_Turkish_Guy's submission, but it is on beta and on Warlords difficulty with cheesy tribal hut abuse =)

What is the hut abuse you speak of? Is it just the 5% chance to get a free settler or worker?

 

[VirusMonster]

That is a pretty old post of me. You don't get free settlers on Immortal difficulty. Nor do you get free workers from huts. He was using Asoka for that game, because workers can travel 3 squares. Then, he was hitting like 30-40 huts early game. He delays settling first city and searches for huts with the inital settler as well. I am not sure about the probability of worker&settler appearance. But almost always he would get 3-4 Settlers, like %10 of the time maybe. And many workers of course.

 

[WastinTime]

At Warlord level, it's only 5% settler, 5% worker, so that's not really very abusive. I was hoping for something more powerful to make it possible for lower difficulties to score 1 million. They still might make 1 mill, but can't get the ultimate high score (probably.)

P.S. Cheiftain/Settler level gets 10% settler, 10% worker.

 

[VirusMonster]

Well, I know for sure that he tries many starts until he gets sufficient settlers and workers. Even if it is as low as 5%, since to replay any start for 30 turns does not take much time, he'll have a good start within several attempts. He also does not have to waste time on map regeneration, anything goes. Then he settles 4 cities after 30 turns. 4 cities in 30 turns is slightly abusive to me Remember this is marathon speed, so 30 turns during very early game under normal conditions should only be enough to produce a single worker. It is like you are playing two times stronger version of the AI deity bonus of 2 settlers.

 

[WastinTime]

Then he settles 4 cities after 30 turns. 4 cities in 30 turns is slightly abusive to me Remember this is marathon speed, so 30 turns during very early game under normal conditions should only be enough to produce a single worker.

That's not even as abusive as the old Inca rush on Diety. In 25 turns (or less) you can wipe out 2 other AI civs, and of those 4-5 cities 3 of them are prime capitol city locations. And you get 4 workers too! Of course that rush only works that well on vanilla civ.

 

[VirusMonster]

well, I wrote the Quechua rush article on Deity if you remember, and no, in 25 turns (on marathon speed) you can only produce 4-5 Quechuas under best odds. Add 10 turns until your quechuas travel to first city location. Capturing the 2nd city, ie possibly capital, would again require waiting another 25+10 turns until the second set of 5 quechuas appear on enemy borders.

The extra good thing about Warlords hut rush is that he would collect 600 gold from the huts allowing him to run 100% science for a long time.

I respect his tactic tough, don't think because I called it abusive, it is in any way less smart than other strategy out there. It is just that when majority of the players in the forum play regular games with their inital city building the first settler, scoring high due to hut settlers is not as appreciated.

 

[Shoot the Moon]

Don't forget that with the hut popping exploit you also get a lot of free techs from huts. I'm not saying it is enough to overcome the score penalty, but it is still incredibly overpowering.

 

[VirusMonster]

True, that is just as strong as the extra 600 gold. You'll need to have the first city settled for huts to give techs. He was also searching for huts with the initial settler, but yea after he settles the first city, he can also pophut some early game techs. If lucky, he could even discover expensive ones.

 

[killercane]

I have been getting animal husbandry and the wheel a lot from huts on Immortal. And of course Astronomy is almost always free on Terra maps. My thinking now is to conquer everyone prior to their ability to build HG and this would allow you to get free music from a hut on the new continent as well and not worry about losing it to an AI by having to research it.

You will never get a million points on lower levels due to the score multiplier. You will research faster and have more $$ to buy settlers and improvements but it really still boils down to the population, early win bonus, and the multiplier.

 

[VirusMonster]

How Astronomy free on Terra maps? You use huts from the New World?

 

[killercane]

How Astronomy free on Terra maps? You use huts from the New World?

Send over caravels with explorers/scouts once you get Optics or whatever the caravel tech is. There are so many huts there that you are bound to luck up and get Astro.

 

[WastinTime]

well, I wrote the Quechua rush article on Deity if you remember, and no, in 25 turns (on marathon speed) you can only produce 4-5 Quechuas under best odds. Add 10 turns until your quechuas travel to first city location. Capturing the 2nd city, ie possibly capital, would again require waiting another 25+10 turns until the second set of 5 quechuas appear on enemy borders.

I didn't know you wrote a quechua rush article. 4-5 Quechuas...sounds like your strategy was to help people do a lengthy, safe rush with 99% chance of success. Fine advice for that case, but I'm talking about an aggressive risky rush (10% success.) I hate quechua and only play Inca or Marathon if I'm forced to for a certain victory. So I spent very little time/effort, but still easily captured the #1 Tiny Diety Conquest spot at one time. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying it doesn't take that many tries or that much experience with "the rush" to make it happen. That game had 4 cities in 22 turns. Of course Moonsinger wouldn't allow that record to stand, so she did it in 19 turns. I was being generous saying 25 turns!

 

[VirusMonster]

KillerCane what is the probability of getting a different tech than Astro? How can you be so sure the tech you get will be Astro?

WastinTime, I've just looked at Moonsigner's Tiny Conquest game log. As you said, it is different from my article in that it takes the ultimate risky path My article still has a risky quechua rush section, but not as risky as the one you explained. Moonsinger wiped the first civilization out before they settled their 2nd city. The capital only had a single archer defending. I don't know how that is possible on deity.

Secondly, he kills two more archers in the open field with the same quechua that wiped out the first civilization. And his capital I assume must have blocked the 2nd civilization's path to settle their 2nd city as well. Then, he lures enemy archers out two times with worker sacrifice. Finally, he captured the remaining capital with a freshly build Quechua.

Well, that is some risky strategy for sure I wasn't away of it, thanks for pointing it out, but it will only work on tiny maps unfortunately :-/ so not much use for the highest score discussion.

 

[r_rolo1]

Virus, you can only get techs from the Classical and Ancient age from huts, except Music and Astro... if you have Drama and all the classical and below techs, if you pop a tech, it has to be Astro

 

[tycoonist]

KillerCane what is the probability of getting a different tech than Astro? How can you be so sure the tech you get will be Astro?

he can't be sure but on huge there are tons of huts out there. the chance of popping a tech is 10% i think (???) and the astro is the last tech huts will give. so pop enough huts and you are bound to be given a tech. and that tech will normally be astro (assuming you've discovered the others)