I don't have a problem with the title of the thread, the posts being made here, or with anyone, including WastinTime, trying to best my dates. In fact, I would welcome attempts, especially against my three stronger games (the epics and the 45 turn Quick) because I am curious to see just how resilient the dates I'm posting are.
While I never like losing a slot, I appreciate that the atmosphere here is one that favors challenge and competition, and I think doing anything to jeopardize that is very dangerous and counterproductive.
As I constantly have to remind people, huts are not as good as you think they are. They often have little to no effect on the big picture. Free Masonry does not cut 6-8 turns off your final date. At some point the 'long pole' is workers/hammers. That's why it doesn't matter that much that techs are cheaper on Emperor. And a free tech--when tech is not the critical path--doesn't do much. It all comes down to how fast you can chop Oracle/AP.
A couple thoughts on huts.
You'll notice I didn't try to handicap popping mining. While on the surface, it may seem like popping mining on marathon saves you the ~17 turns it takes to research it, the reality is that this is not so. What advantages do you gain from popping mining on the 2nd turn? You can't use it until you get a worker which, even under the best conditions, is probably about eight turns in. You do save ~90 beakers, but by the end of the research phase you should be getting ~18-20 beakers a turn, so it only save you ~5 turns of tech.
Masonry I think is easier to handicap. Religious games are three phases. A research and pre-chop phase that last until the simultaneous completion of Monotheism and the Oracle, a build phase during which the AP is constructed, and a wait phase after the AP is constructed but before the first non-election vote takes place. If you've done the pre-chop phase well, the build phase only takes a handful of turns as workers complete the last chop on all the pre-chops. Both the build phase and the wait phase, then, are more or less fixed in length. In these optimized games, it's only the research phase that makes any significant impact on the end time.
Popping Masonry does make it unlikely that doing something like chopping a library is going to quicken the game, and it does add to the potential that your pre-chops are not done in time (especially for non-Inca). But it is one of the last techs you need, and popping it pretty directly quickens the research phase of the game. Any claim that it doesn't speed up a victory by approximately the number of turns it would have taken to research it minus one or two requires evidence.
That said, I do think some of the claims being made about huts are blown out of proportion.
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Further, I think abandoning any games that don't give you a desirable tech pop is not only a good idea, but close to a logical imperative. Let's do a thought exercise to see why.
Map finder is a necessity for religious games. Any starting position without two commerce resources is a waste of time. We could, obviously, play all those maps we discard, and we might even win a bunch of them, but we know for HoF purposes that it would simply be a waste of time.
So we use map finder. I personally play about ten to twenty maps for every game I submit, and of those maps, I might play three to completion. So what about the other dozen or so? In some, I lose my first Quecha at 75-90% odds. In some, I can't steal a worker quickly enough, so I abandon them. In some, all the AI cities are on hills and I know building extra Quecha will kill my time. And, of course, in some I screw up and forget Open Borders, or skip writing, or finish the Oracle without getting Monotheism, or who knows what other inventive ways I have of wasting my own time.
But the point is, the moment I know that a game is not better than the last one I played to completion, I abandon it. Just like the maps we never play because of map finder, to continue playing is a waste of time, a sure way to generate a game I won't submit to the HoF.
I submit to you that, like it or not, playing a religious game without popping Mining or Masonry falls into the same category.
. Barriers to compete at this stage of HoF are worse than ever!
.) It's not necessary for most games and would have little effect on the outcome. Religious games are so short and have only two critical needs: a brief, but fast tech surge, and workers.
