• Civ7 is already available! Happy playing :).

Histo Games - How does one do this?

BlackBetsy

Emperor
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
1,005
Currently running a quasi-test Histo game with the Maya on Huge Demigod 60% Archipelago. Some quandaries have popped up that I don't know if I have the right answers to.

(1) No native luxes. I will have to trade for or conquer luxes. Would you abandon if this were the case? Do you want to have at least 2 native luxes to help growth early?

(2) Is Republic always the right answer? Can Monarchy be the right answer where science is not an issue?

(3) What is a "good" completion of the conquest phase? Do you want to start building an army before you stop building settlers for "natural" expansion - i.e., conquest over natural expansion? I mean, ideally a 520 AD conquest (i.e., Darkness' #1 conquest on Huge Demigod) is obviously the best, but do you play Histo at higher levels as a conquest game first and leave the expansion for later?
 
I've also been thinking about these things, I'm planning to start a milkrun in the new year.

(1) I'll probably not continue with a start that doesn't have 2-3 settlable luxuries visible by 1000 BC
(2) If you can keep wars short, Republic is "better" but I know I've used Monarchy in my previous DG & D attempts; I want to go with Republic this time
(3) I'd guess Darkness used a low-DL pangaea map for conquest, archipelago conquest takes longer, I want to try to get there around 1000-1200 AD
 
1) You want at minimum 1 luxury and at least one more close by to take or for trade.

2) This depends first on what you are comfortable usually playing with, and then I would answer Republic if you do end up having access to several luxuries. You also want to get to certain techs as quickly as possible especially during those periods where you are doing self-research and this would require Republic.

3) That Darkness game is most likely an 80% water and pangaea was probably chosen during setup. To get a better score you want an archipelago. A conquest finish date should be no later than 1200 and preferably before 1000.
 
Would you abandon if this were the case?

Maybe I would. One has to trade for or conquer most of the luxuries anyways. It's best to trade for every single luxury that you can during every war.

Is Republic always the right answer? Can Monarchy be the right answer where science is not an issue?

Monarchy could mean more content citizens early due to less war weariness. However, once the conquering phase is over, as many happy citizens as possible and specialists will do the most for score. The luxury slider will have more of an effect in a Republic after the conquering phase. If your empire remains a Monarchy, then you don't have as much scoring potential. If you revolt a 2nd time, then you have a food loss from the standard tile penalty ("the despotism penalty").

As Bartleby suggests, 60% (maximum land, minimum water) archipelago takes longer. I tried to load Darkness's final save using CrPViewer and it tells me something about a multiplayer setting. What is the best conquest on some 80% pangea map is not the same for some 60% archipelago map.

Do you want to start building an army before you stop building settlers for "natural" expansion - i.e., conquest over natural expansion?

I haven't personally when playing without roaming barbarians or higher. I've more looked at trying to do something to increase score. For core cities, I've highly preferred building marketplaces over training soldiers. I think only when I did Conquest games with the Iroquois on Deity did I actually train an army of fighting units to conquer aggressively over building marketplaces. Marketplaces increase score as soon as built and have a lasting effect towards happiness (unlike temples, cathedrals, and colosseums which only give content citizens). They also delay any rioting from happening and thus help with the war weariness issue for Huge maps.

but do you play Histo at higher levels as a conquest game first and leave the expansion for later?

No, no, no, no. Whoever told you it more resembles a conquest game first I don't trust on this point, unless we're just talking about preventing a loss of the game. Given that you want the most score you can get from that map, it's more like a domination game first when thinking about war. Score increases from conquering of cities come from more tiles in one's empire cultural borders or from new happy/content citizens. Or from having settlers replace cities. But the later can easily be slower for population growth at high levels than quelling resistance of captured cities. Fortunately, native nationalities of some citizens can still exist in 2050 AD.

My advice goes that when you have decent enough happy and content citizens to handle war in a Republic, then you push for going up near to the domination limit (above 60%, close to 66%, but never over 66%) through conquering. Captured cities can put out workers or settlers in a reasonable amount of time, and help with getting more territory. I have the settings set to "always build previous unit", and that helps once I change captured cities to workers/settlers.


You also want to get to certain techs as quickly as possible especially during those periods where you are doing self-research and this would require Republic.

You have a good point here. Map Making and Navigation (for luxury trading if you don't have The Great Lighthouse or have to traverse an ocean for enough luxuries), and Steam Power (for more production in the core from rails, faster troop and worker movement, and growth in captured cities). Maybe I didn't need to say that, and of course, I don't think I need to mention others.
 
Really great replies!

I'm trying to de-construct my existing game and I really think that the lack of luxuries is a reason to re-start. Particularly motivating is @Spoonwood's point:

I haven't personally when playing without roaming barbarians or higher. I've more looked at trying to do something to increase score. For core cities, I've highly preferred building marketplaces over training soldiers. I think only when I did Conquest games with the Iroquois on Deity did I actually train an army of fighting units to conquer aggressively over building marketplaces. Marketplaces increase score as soon as built and have a lasting effect towards happiness (unlike temples, cathedrals, and colosseums which only give content citizens). They also delay any rioting from happening and thus help with the war weariness issue for Huge maps.

With no native luxuries, I realized that I was starting marketplaces when they would have no benefit on happiness. And, in fact, marketplaces dont have any happiness benefit until the 3rd luxury. Since I had zero, I needed to acquire 3 luxes before I could even start building marketplaces! So I switched market builds to military.

My first two conquer victims would only increase my luxury count to 2 before Navigation. I think now that I need to start with 2 and probably conquer 1 more before Navigation.

Monarchy could mean more content citizens early due to less war weariness. However, once the conquering phase is over, as many happy citizens as possible and specialists will do the most for score. The luxury slider will have more of an effect in a Republic after the conquering phase. If your empire remains a Monarchy, then you don't have as much scoring potential. If you revolt a 2nd time, then you have a food loss from the standard tile penalty ("the despotism penalty").

I guess the key calculus is how much you hurt yourself on score during the anarchy? Marketplace happiness still works on Anarchy though? So I would take it that if you have 8 luxes hooked up by the time conquest phase is over, you are pretty good to run happiness during even an 8 turn anarchy?

The wars of annihilation I'm running are just killing me on war weariness - 30 turn wars are bad. Until I have cavalry armies and rails, the wars are really going to be long.
 
With no native luxuries, I realized that I was starting marketplaces when they would have no benefit on happiness. And, in fact, marketplaces dont have any happiness benefit until the 3rd luxury. Since I had zero, I needed to acquire 3 luxes before I could even start building marketplaces! So I switched market builds to military.

I more think along the following lines, though maybe it's because of the benefits of experience...

Do the AIs have Map Making? Could roading up to the borders and possibly even roading some AI territory make sense? Especially since it's a 60% archipelago map and you'll need to transport units around (probably with galleons) later, do you have a curragh or boat out not only to get a contact, but so you have a trading route with AIs? A few of them? 60% archipelago maps fairly frequently have multiple coastal trading routes.

Yes, the military approach will do something. But, later on, I know I've run into the issue of not having enough boats to transport troops. If you can find some balance between land military and getting out some boats early, both phases might go better (or maybe I just think about optimizing for many things... perhaps too many).


My first two conquer victims would only increase my luxury count to 2 before Navigation. I think now that I need to start with 2 and probably conquer 1 more before Navigation.

What I learned from my first Sid histographic game was that wars before Navigation can easily kill off trading routes for luxuries, especially once AIs have 100 culture in coastal cities. There's still relevant evidence in the 10 AD save as I have some deal for a luxury with Korea, but I don't have the luxury for my cities from Korea, since I forced Carthage to declare war and that resulted in the trade route with Korea no longer having the ability to supply silks before the war declaration computation. Of course though, maybe some map doesn't have that issue.

I guess the key calculus is how much you hurt yourself on score during the anarchy? Marketplace happiness still works on Anarchy though? So I would take it that if you have 8 luxes hooked up by the time conquest phase is over, you are pretty good to run happiness during even an 8 turn anarchy?

If you go the Monarchy route again, then I advise revolting before you build hospitals. A city with a marketplace can have all happy citizens up to size 13:

14 Content.png


It looks the same happiness wise in Anarchy (growth shrunk to 4 turns).

Without a marketplace, a city can only get to size 6 with all happy citizens. I would predict that some cities will not have marketplaces up during any early revolution.

I don't have any idea of an estimate on the ratio of cities with marketplaces vs. those without if revolting near the domination limit and at the end of the conquering phase.

The wars of annihilation I'm running are just killing me on war weariness - 30 turn wars are bad.

How many luxuries do you control? Can you control one or two more? I suspect you don't have many luxuries during these wars?
 
Do the AIs have Map Making? Could roading up to the borders and possibly even roading some AI territory make sense? Especially since it's a 60% archipelago map and you'll need to transport units around (probably with galleons) later, do you have a curragh or boat out not only to get a contact, but so you have a trading route with AIs? A few of them? 60% archipelago maps fairly frequently have multiple coastal trading routes.
Yes. And your point about pre-Navigation wars is a good one. As soon as I declared war against Persia, I lost the 2 luxes I did have through coastal tiles with the Aztecs (yikes).

One interesting thing that I've seen is when I allied with the Aztecs a *second time* against the Persians, I wound up adding Incense as a lux but since the Persians were in between, the lux failed to show up after a couple of turns. But the alliance was still in my "Active" trade box. It didn't make sense to me (I thought the alliance would be cancelled)
How many luxuries do you control? Can you control one or two more? I suspect you don't have many luxuries during these wars?

One, after I took it from the Persians. Lux slider is at 50% after 2 bouts of war weariness.
 
One interesting thing that I've seen is when I allied with the Aztecs a *second time* against the Persians, I wound up adding Incense as a lux but since the Persians were in between, the lux failed to show up after a couple of turns. But the alliance was still in my "Active" trade box.

I don't understand it for sure. When there still exists a trade route, they supply the luxury through the trade route or do not supply the luxury through the trade route. When a trade route disappears because of a war, it's like they are still trying to supply it because of the military alliance. Well, I guess it sounds like they still pay for traders to send the luxuries, but get killed by the enemy in between.

Maybe on Demigod it's reasonable to gift all AIs Astronomy as soon as you learn it, and research something else, and trade for Navigation soon after.
 
I keep running into maps where I am sharing an semi-continent and have 1 or 0 luxes, and/or my continent mate builds the Great Wall.

I am likely going to do Monarchy rather than Republic at this point because of War Weariness. I would likely flip back to Republic later.
 
Running Huge 60% land archipelago maps with 12 opponents. I am not using MapFinder, so I don't know dom limits. I am just trying to run a test game and I really have only played one game deeply - 400 AD or so.

I would think that 12 opponents would be enough to have relatively plentiful luxuries and resources. I am finding that a very large portion of the maps I am playing contain zero settleable resources.
 
I have to say, I am not used to playing at the Demigod level and I'm really struggling to get a Histo game going. The 60% maps seem problematic, and I was just deep into a game where my "island" was actually a huge continent with the Mongols, Russians, Greeks, Ottomans, Germans, and Americans. No good choke points. They all have culture well in advance of mine so my border cities (often with resources) are flipping way too often. And I'd only conquered the Russians and had 10% of the territory in 880 AD. I need to do some deep study on the 10 AD saves of some Demigod Histo games.

I used Monarchy to avoid WW and I had a pretty good war chest from shutting down research but I was many techs behind and couldn't research a monopoly tech to get back into the game.
 
Playing off and on again through the holidays with the Maya on Huge. It's 1090 and I've only got 16% of the world (22% pop), so this game isn't great (but better than the 18 attempts before). I've got a big enough cavalry / cannon force with some galleons that should be able to wipe out the smaller AI in 10 turn wars - I have 2 armies in the field and counting. Slowness is largely due to the turns it takes to move around a pre-railroaded army around.

War weariness has been miserable for the most part - I spent a lot of the game at 50% lux rate. Really need to consider Monarchy until Sanitation. My enemies have consistently embargoed me, so I haven't been able to trade for lux. The Zulus were good traders but the Iroquois really took a hammer to them.
 
My enemies have consistently embargoed me, so I haven't been able to trade for lux.

Do you use MapStat?

MapStat usually prompts for trading opportunities for luxuries or resources, when routes end up available.

I don't know how you got embargoes before AIs had their luxuries and resources hooked up. Once Navigation ... or Magentism... come around, trading for most of the luxuries and/or resources should come as possible. Once you have Navigation, check the trade tab and see if anyone exports something to someone else. With map trading, it comes as possible to figure out who has surplus resources and luxuries. Since you're on an island, starting wars to liberate trade routes if necessary comes as possible.

For example, let's say we lack spices. Korea has them. Persia lies on some island other than others (or on the other side of some potential ally). Korea trade something to Persia (we could use a city investigation with Persia to see what they have in their cities... though this isn't always necessary). So, then we decalre war on Persia. We follow that up by signing a miltary alliance with Korea against Persia. And then Korea can no longer export anything to Persia, so we ring them up and see if we can trade for anything.

Then we can maybe get all of Korea's gold and gpt also with the help of trade route pillaging.

I'm highly guessing you missed a few possible trade deals for luxuries or resources before those embargoes happened.
 
I don't know how you got embargoes before AIs had their luxuries and resources hooked up.
One AI has Navigation & Nationalism and creates embargoes with the other countries before I get Navigation. The Iroquois were tech leaders, and got pretty far out front of me while I was at war with them. Before I could trade with the other AI's, they had embargoes in place. Once war with the Iroquois ended, I was caught up in tech in a few turns, but the embargoes had to expire before I could trade for new luxes.
 
One AI has Navigation & Nationalism and creates embargoes with the other countries before I get Navigation. The Iroquois were tech leaders, and got pretty far out front of me while I was at war with them. Before I could trade with the other AI's, they had embargoes in place. Once war with the Iroquois ended, I was caught up in tech in a few turns, but the embargoes had to expire before I could trade for new luxes.
You weren't able to contact the other AIs with curraghs or galleys?

No one researched Printing Press before Nationalism?
 
OK....having taken my own advice and looked at various governments, now that I've got 300 cities spread out everywhere, CivAssist2 says that I generate more entertainment and commerce overall in Communism (and especially with a SPHQ). With SPHQ, it's almost double the entertainment @50% lux tax.

(1) Does anyone use Communism as a late stage government for more happiness? (this is ironic, I know, given the history of Communism, but we are talking about Civ3)
(2) What happens to score during the (assumed) 8 turns of Anarchy? Does score stop like culture? If so, it might be too high of a price to pay.
 
Does anyone use Communism as a late stage government for more happiness?

Anarchy has the standard tile penalty. You would lose food and almost surely citizens with another anarchy. Oh, you're in Monarchy instead of Republic though. I think I've seen some histographic entry with Communism late game.

Scoring calculations should work the same, you just end up with the standard tile penalty, so like each of your irrigated and railroad tiles will have one less food. I don't know how the potential benefits of Communism over Monarchy compare with the loss of population from an anarchy.

Content citizens are still good for score. Making more specialists until you have all the infrastructure for maximum happiness still produces points.
 
Anarchy has the standard tile penalty. You would lose food and almost surely citizens with another anarchy. Oh, you're in Monarchy instead of Republic though. I think I've seen some histographic entry with Communism late game.

Scoring calculations should work the same, you just end up with the standard tile penalty, so like each of your irrigated and railroad tiles will have one less food. I don't know how the potential benefits of Communism over Monarchy compare with the loss of population from an anarchy.

Content citizens are still good for score. Making more specialists until you have all the infrastructure for maximum happiness still produces points.
I'm in Republic, not Monarchy. At a Huge level, with a non-commercial civ and even with a Forbidden Palace, my OCN is pretty small compared to my overall number of cities and I have some *huge* cities outside my core (the former Chinese lands are absolutely rich with rivers, wheat, and grasslands). Instead of ICS, I am choosing fewer cities that can max citizenship and tile usage, and I can get 15+ happy citizens in a city with markets and 8 luxes and a good lux rate. I am doing this based on the theory that using tiles for city centers reduces the number of happy citizens you can potentially have.

Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe I'm better with more size 12 cities that are 100% happy?
 
I'm in Republic, not Monarchy.

In Republic it's possible to have all citizens working tiles happy, or have them as specialists eventually. Note that fools have their uses! An entertainer can change some citizen from unhappy to content, or from content to happy. Drazek's saves from his highest scoring games have a fair amount of entertainers, and even one in his capital.

Here's one of Drazek's big cities in 1000 AD:

Drazek's entertainers.png


Once it has a police station, it can use more scientists while producing the same number of points. When it gets a commercial dock, it might not use any entertainers. Also, AI sources of war happiness might mean fewer entertainers as useful.

My approach I think more has run along the lines of not having the city grow as big, and instead using civil engineers to put in courthouses, police stations, and commercial docks.
At a Huge level, with a non-commercial civ and even with a Forbidden Palace, my OCN is pretty small compared to my overall number of cities and I have some *huge* cities outside my core

Anything beyond the 21st citizen becomes a specialist. So, it could become an entertainer for more immediate happiness or civil engineer to build infrastructure. Courthouses and police stations still work in a republic, and work even better for cities with a commercial dock.

Maybe I'm better with more size 12 cities that are 100% happy?

How many sources of war happiness do you have? More size 12 cities with 100% happy citizens sounds better to me than bigger sized cities with less happy citizens total for the empire, because each happy citizen working a tile is 2 points. While an unhappy citizen working a tile is no points. Bigger cities ends up better assuming the same amount of happiness and contentedness.

More +12 size cities sounds better once you can put in the infrastructure to keep citizens happy.

As another example, from a save that has only one source of war happiness, here's a city called Hin:

Hin.png


If it used another tile, then one of those scientists would be gone, and two could get used as entertainers to keep all citizens happy.

In the final save with a police station, commercial dock, 40% luxury rate, and Cure for Cancer, Hin has all scientists.
 
Top Bottom