[C3C] how long does it take to complete a game

[tjs282]

I don't understand this, why it could be done one way but not the other?

Pop-rushing is like cash-rushing in the sense that it's "all or nothing": to complete the current build, you must whip as many citizens as needed (1 citizen = 20 shields). But unlike cash-rushing (where you can empty your entire Treasury if you choose to), it is not possible to whip more than half a town's population in one go (speculation: hardcoded to prevent the AI-Civs from killing themselves).

This 'half-pop-point' restriction can be circumvented by the human, by using "short-whipping" over >1 step, first to a cheaper building/unit(s), then again to the final target. But this can only be done if there are convenient intermediate-builds left for that town — ideally with shield-costs in multiples of 20 — at the player's current tech-level (e.g. 20s = Spears, Archers, mil-Barracks, Explorers; 40s = non-Mil Barracks, Maces, LBMS, Cannon, Sci-Libs; 60s = Grans, non-Rel Temples, etc.).

If not (e.g. Pyramids, ToA, and SunTzu are all under the player's control, and/or they haven't got Iron, or Invention/Astro, and/or have progressed to/beyond gunpowder-based weapons already), then the build must be whipped to completion in one step.

If @CKS could whip a Col directly (120 shields = 1 shield + 6 citizens), there must therefore be at least 12 citizens in that town, and the whip-rush would leave her with 6 citizens. That would not be enough for a Lib (80s = 1s + 4 citizens), unless her Civ is Scientific (40s = 1s + 2 citizens). But even if she is Scientific, whipping the Lib to completion first (12 - 2 = 10 citizens) would still leave insufficient citizens for a direct Col-whip.

The Mongols, then the jerk, so I suppose this particular jerk is Xerxes.

Yes. Always

The Persians never really got going on this map, though: squeezed between the Mongols, Iros and the Ottos, and without Iron, The Jerk never had much of a chance. That said, the last 2 towns I took from him had originally been Iroquois — Hiawatha also having been hamstrung by having no Horses (I got to them first!).

 

[Lanzelot]

Histographic games also makes for another good use of temples... to grab sea squares, for example.

I know that sea tiles don't count towards the domination limit, so I always assumed they also do not count for the score. Or do they? In any case, you are right: sometimes there are coast tiles that cannot be reached with a settler (e.g. a mountain blocks the spot where you would have to settle, etc.) Then it may make sense to rush a temple 5 turns before the expected finish date to get those tiles under your control as well.

it is not possible to whip more than half a town's population in one go (speculation: hardcoded to prevent the AI-Civs from killing themselves).

You may be right here...!

In any case, what CKS meant with the intermediate targets:

• Assume you have 1 shield in the box and want to rush a Colosseum. You would need 6 citizens for the remaining 119 shields, so because of the "not more than 50% of citizens can be whipped"-rule, you city would have to be size 12. But growing from size 7 to size 12 takes a lot more food than growing from 1 to 6. So ideally you want to rush at size 7 and then regrow to 7 for the next rush.
• So with the trick of "intermediary" rush targets, you can rush the Colosseum at size 7 instead of size 12:
• First rush an archer (one pop, 20s are now in the box)
• Switch to maze and rush again (another pop, now 40s in the box)
• Switch to granary and rush again (third pop gone, now 60s in the box)
• Switch to library and rush again (pop no. 4 dead and 80s in the box)
• By now you get the picture: rush the 5th citizen into a marketplace
• and the 6th citizen into the Colosseum... Voila! You have whipped 6 of your 7 citizens and completed the Colosseum, circumventing the rule that only 50% of the population (in this case 3.5, rounded down to 3) is allowed to be killed in one rush...
• Let the city regrow to at least size 5, and you can now do the same with the library
• If you would do it the other way around (library first and then Colosseum), then you would not have a rush target for 80s in the process above, and the Colosseum cannot be completed! (Assuming you don't have for example Cavalry or Riflemen available.) So this is the reason why sometimes it may be better to do Colosseum before Library, even though the Library has a much better culture yield per shield: because otherwise the "rush-chain" up to Colosseum may be broken.

PS: sometimes the early rush-targets can be skipped. E.g. in the above example at size 7, you can skip the archer and maze and immediately start at the granary, because 3 pos (60s) can be whipped at size 7. However, the closer you get to the desired final shield number (in this case 120) the more likely you will need all intermediate intervals.
These considerations become even more complicated, if you found fresh towns and then want to whip up temple (60s), lib (80s), colosseum (120s), cathedral (160s) and university (200s) as fast as possible. In this case it is often best to do it in the "opposite order": university first, temple last, as otherwise you destroy your intermediate intervals and will never reach the university, especially in towns that are not on a river, so have a max population of 6.

Another point to consider in this process: when going for 100K via whipping, I usually want my towns to regrow as fast as possible. So I nver whip them down to size 1, because with only +3 food, it would take them 7 turns to grow back another citizen. At size 3 they can have +5 food (three ordinary grasslands suffice) and can grow back another 20s in only 4 turns!
So I usually whip between sizes 3 and 6, letting them grow back before switching to the next intermediate whip target. (That wastes, 4 shields, that are collected in those 4 turns it takes to regrow, but is still better than wasting lots of turns because the town takes forever to regrow...)

 

[CKS]

Yes, exactly. Although usually when I'm pop-rushing conquered towns I have both pyramids and ToA, so there is also no 60 shield build until muskets. If the AI has built a market, I don't really want to sell it (since I'll need it to keep the town happy as it regrows), so there may also be no 100 shield build to use. This makes the 80 shield step more important. Plus, removing 6 citizens the first time drops the flip risk pretty dramatically.

I'm pretty sure that sea tiles don't count for score, in that you don't get points for the tile. However, if a citizen works one, you get points for having a happy citizen there (rather than a specialist), and the food might support somebody. Sea tiles outside of the BFC don't help, though.

 

[Spoonwood]

I know that sea tiles don't count towards the domination limit, so I always assumed they also do not count for the score. Or do they?

I think that the tiles don't count for score, but the citizens do.

 

[vmxa]

Territory is 1 point for every tile within your cultural borders. This score is multiplied by Difficulty. I do not know about coastal tiles, except they count toward your having enough land for domination. So I would expect they count in score, but not certain.

 

[Takhisis]

Another thing about how fast one ends games, not in terms of hours but of turns, is that I always lose ground on techs (and therefore in military power) if I don't research the upper half of the middle-ages tech tree at least as far as Education. Universities are just so it.

 

[Captain_Jack]

warfare is the primary means for human success at Emperor or higher

I took this advice and the other suggestions mentioned above to heart and it has worked. Previously I could win most of the time at Regent, often at Monarch, but was persistently stomped at Emperor. Now I have two old GOTM Emperor level contests running, one on PTW and one on C3C. In both I am the #1 Civ at 1,000 A.D. The difference is that I built many, many more offensive units than I used to and I have shed my reluctance to throw them into battle. I can't say I necessarily enjoy warfare more than building, but I do enjoy winning more than losing.
Thanks for the great advice everyone.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

Another thing about how fast one ends games, not in terms of hours but of turns, is that I always lose ground on techs (and therefore in military power) if I don't research the upper half of the middle-ages tech tree at least as far as Education. Universities are just so it.

That's what happened to me in my most recent Monarch game (Ottomans/Small/Pangaea). Not enough early warfare against the Chinese, and by the time I had Sipahi I was so far behind in tech that my Siphai were getting creamed by Riflemen & finished off by Cavalry brought in over rails. I'm considering trying again with the same opponents (Aztecs/Chinese/Iroquois/Maya/Rome) just to see if I can better strategize tech advancement.

 

[Takhisis]

Try the QuickStart or Play Last World features, or, more simply, loading the 4000 BC save in the Autosaves folder.

 

[Jivilov]

Another thing about how fast one ends games, not in terms of hours but of turns, is that I always lose ground on techs (and therefore in military power) if I don't research the upper half of the middle-ages tech tree at least as far as Education. Universities are just so it.

Yeah, I like Universities too. Trouble is--and at the risk of getting egg on my face once again--the AIs also take that path so there are fewer chances of beating any of them to Education. Which is why it's better to take the lower path (Invention to Military Tradition) while practicing "pointy-stick research" at appropriate moments along the way. Even if you don't have a tech advantage after MT at least you've got defenders (Muskets) and better bombards (Cannon) to discourage aggressive Civs. Then you can research bypassed techs for less Beakers and then beeline for Scientific Method plus Theory of Evolution.

 

[Takhisis]

Let's see, the initials ‘A.I.’ might as well stand for ‘artillery idiot’ as well as ‘aircraft idiot’. Recently I had to play a couple of games in which (post-)industrial warfare degenerated into a bad mixture of WWI trench warfare and Iraq's in-depth defence against Iran's human wave attacks. At least a triple layer of barricades, hills and -wherever possible- forests to just bog them down and render the AI's stacks-of-doom helpless fodder for a mixture of Artillery (80+), Bombers (a couple dozen) and even the dozen battleships that had been stacked into my coastal cities to assist the Mobile SAMs and (jet) fighters. Between that and actual occasional combat they had heavy losses and I actually managed to advance my border and replicate the same scheme of fortification. Which, being industrious Egypt and in a democracy, with Spare Parts already researched, was quite fast -also a bold attack of mine had resulted in 15 of their workers being taken by a freaking lone cavalry sneaking through their stacks of Mech Infantry and Modern Armor) and still the AI kept invading me even when they once lost over 30 Modern Armours in one turn. They also insisted on bombing a city with 8 Mobile SAMS, 5 Jet fighters, 5 Battleships and 3 destroyers stacked in for AA defence and quickly lost almost their entire air force - 12 planes, about half their initial contingent, shot down in the first turn of bombardment. The only thing that saved them from my actually invading them in full force was war weariness.

That is simply because they officially counted themselves as being far stronger than I in spite of all of the above. In between wars against the demented Iroquois my back-door neighbours the Maya (with whom I had a similarly fortified border) decided to make a peace with the Iroquois and separately use their troops in my territory to attack me… the effect of which was, of course, a couple tiles of irrigation temporarily pillaged in exchange for a few dozen cavalry, infantry and guerillas shredded by massed artillery and bombers (they couldn't even shoot the planes because they were 12 tiles deep into my territory) and a city taken from them in a couple of turns. Had the Iroquois not attacked me again I would have reduced the Maya to reservation status in a far-off one-tile island city-state called Calakmul.

But in pre-modern times, when one does not have the productive capacity to just plant forests and/or erect barricades everywhere, and worse still, to spare the 60 shields per unit, I sometimes think it more cost-effective to stack pikemen which cost half as much as the musketmen. Cannon and musketmen just cost too much and the shields would be better spent on a mixture of cathedrals and universities.
French Musketeers are another thing entirely. A defence rating of 5 with the added bonus of bombardment means that they can even hold off Crusaders, Berserkers and the occasional Cavalry. But that's a special case, like the Dutch Swiss Pikemen or the Viking Berserkers.
tl;dr since artillery is not a deterrent for the AI then I don't build it before the time when it's really effective as well as affordable.

btw this is all my experience: this is how I play and get more wins than defeats. There's people who prefer pointy-stick research and the ideal traits for them are any combination of militaristic/seafaring/expansionist, so they'll give you completely different advice.

Edit: researching Printing Press means you have a tech which you can just sell around to all those scumbag AIs who've researched Engineering and other techs down that branch of the tree. Remember, after you've sold it once for the biggest pot you can find you can sell it for any amoung of money, workers or luxuries the other AIs have, which is better than having them trade it amongst themselves. More gold for you and less for them.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

Try the QuickStart or Play Last World features, or, more simply, loading the 4000 BC save in the Autosaves folder.

Thanks ... I hadn't thought of that, but I've already decided my next game will be Sumerians going for a Space Race. I will eventually return to the Ottomans, though.

 

[tjs282]

They also insisted on bombing a city with 8 Mobile SAMS, 5 Jet fighters, 5 Battleships and 3 destroyers stacked in for AA defence and quickly lost almost their entire air force - 12 planes, about half their initial contingent, shot down in the first turn of bombardment.

Ships (in port) seem to be a fairly reliable attractor for AI Air-attacks. Just play the WWII Pacific Conquest for a demonstration.

 

[justanick]

8 Mobile SAMS, 5 Jet fighters, 5 Battleships and 3 destroyers stacked in for AA defence

Apart from the the jet fighters this stacking does not make sense. There is the upper limit of 4. Once you have 4 Mobile SAMS it does not make sense to add further units for AA defence. Everything above 4 units is redundant and does not contribute to AA defence. For jet fighters there is no upper limit.

Ships (in port) seem to be a fairly reliable attractor for AI Air-attacks. Just play the WWII Pacific Conquest for a demonstration.

This may be why it may make sense despite the upper limit of 4.

 

[vmxa]

True 4 flaks or any AA unit is the cap, but one extra is nice, in case you lose a unit.

 

[Takhisis]

Well, I didn't know that particular limit, actually.
I didn't have anywhere else to place them where they wouldn't be bombardable and I needed to have them on hand to readily cover sorties. As long as my artillery is on its own the AI won't bombard it because it has 0 HP, but sometimes it is useful to send in a column of Modern Armor of my own to destroy bogged-down columns of TOW infantry before they just pillage everything (hence why I also plant forests wherever possible in such situations) and some of them are stuck there.

Also the battleships and destroyers are there really to stop incursions by transport fleets, but everything adds up and if the city has a harbour+barracks they're far more defensible.