Let's Play: Marathon/Huge Diety

[MarigoldRan]

Setting: 14 civs. Fractal. Marathon/Huge. Start as Darius. I'm not going to play Marathon unless I choose my civs.

There are some technical issues. For example, I don't know how to post pictures on the msg screen. But the save is provided. As is the map in attachments.

You start with: Hunting, Agri.

Awesome start. Too much food though. Your thoughts? (Mining first? Split the food? Warrior or worker first?)

EDIT: I'm not going to start with a random leader at Marathon/Huge.

 

[shyuhe]

Reroll.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Reroll.

Nooooooooooo. Fine.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Re-rolled. Same settings. A few notes:

1. Low sea level.
2. No huts.
3. Events ON.
4. This looks like a warrior-first-/worker-steal start.

You can tell by the name about how I felt about re-rolling the start above.

 

[yatta77]

I don't know how to post pictures on the msg screen.

I do this way (WinXP):
1) select your images from the Screen Shot folder, copy them to a folder on desktop.
2) go to: http://imageshack.us/
3) click on "browse", select the folder with the images you just created on the desktop.
4) select (drawing a rectangle with the mouse around the files names) all the images.
5) click on "upload" and wait
6) copy all the images url (http://....) and past it in the Windows note pad
7) add IMG and /IMG (each in square brackets: [ and ] ) at the beginning and the end of all the images url
8) copy all from the notepad and past in you post message editor.
9) add the text between your images urls, writing/formatting/editing your post normally
10) submit your post/reply.
That's it!

 

[MarigoldRan]

Played the save. First checkpoint: 3535 BC. AH up (Thank you, Oasis!). Glitched-cow start.

Let city grow to size 2 to work second oasis.

What should I do?

Archery-first or spam warriors and pray I can hook up the horse in time?

There is no horse in my capital city. It's 3580 BC. To get BW, I need mining. So no go there. Do you think I can hook up that horse in time? Spam warriors and hopefully survive the first wave.

Thoughts?

 

[Zechnophobe]

Hmm, you grew on warrior to double up on Oasis? Interesting choice. Your 'glitch' start does have Pigs, so I wouldn't really get too angry about it.

Your overview pic is rather blurry, hard to see the nearby land. And no bubbles, so I have no idea what land you have there! Also, you didn't explicitly say, is this on Deity?

 

[MarigoldRan]

Yes. The theme: I like early commerce.

Why is there no ivory? I hate you, random map generator.

EDIT: Look at my awesomely fast tech-rate and be amazed. Wheel in ONLY 22 turns!

 

[shyuhe]

Ugh. Marathon is sooooooo slow. Took it for a short spin. ~500 BC ish

Spoiler :

Settled on the marble. Then promptly forgot that I had marble Just realized that now... anyways, didn't have any barb issues as there wasn't much land for them to spawn (because of the high AI count?).

Anyways, my current empire:

And demo:

Note that there is at least one AI that is almost dead. Should be interesting when I make foreign contact.

Short term-plan (now that I remembered that I have marble) is probably going to be literature--music followed by a dash to trebs for war against Justin I think. He doesn't have iron so he'll be easy pickings.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Also, immortal rush or not? And who?

Both Charlie and Musa have strong archers. But Justi likes to build Wonders, which is a good thing.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Shyuhe, what did you do at the beginning? Build order? Tech order?

Thanks.

 

[yatta77]

Your thoughts? (Mining first? Split the food? Warrior or worker first?)

My computer cannot handle a huge map save, but my rough idea from your screen shots is:


Techs:

Animal Husbandry >> Mining >> Masonry >> Bronze Working >> Writing.


Production:

SIP, worker first: pastures (cows, pigs) >> quarry (marble) >> chop forest on hills _in mines_.

Then: 2 warriors to grow up the city, then 1 settler.

Then Pyramids, stagnant at happy cap working the mines (getting hammers from chopping).

Then a library, to run 2 scientists under representation, for an early academy.


Just my silly 2, it might very well be a weak strategy.
(and I didn't even check shyuhe spoiler yet).


Now, wondering about what your strategy will be playing this game, I'm going back on lurking mode...


By the way, my previous post in this thread wasn't understandable?

I see you still use attachments for the images. If something isn't clear, ask.

Cheers.

---

And yes, post number 600!

 

[shyuhe]

Shyuhe, what did you do at the beginning? Build order? Tech order?

Thanks.

I didn't immortal rush. It would make the settings too easy (marathon immortals).

Techs went:
3505 AH
3175 mining
2830 wheel
2360 BW
2160 pottery
1970 myst (border popping)
1660 writing
1020 aesthetics
920 alpha (trade)
910 IW (trade)
800 meditation (I needed culture to fight Mansa)
770 priesthood (for monarchy)
750 monarch (trade)
730 math (trade I think)
550 currency
540 MC (trade)

I'm still working on an academy. Although I may skip it and just go for an engineering bulb.

I don't really remember my tech order. It was worker first and I think I built a settler at size 3. All other initial builds were warriors (lots a couple).

 

[obsolete]

Thought I'd give this a quick spin.

Jesssssus Christ... this is unbearably slow. By the time my worker finally was out the door I was falling asleep.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Your thoughts?

Turn on the @$%!$% resource bubbles?

 

[Um the Muse]

Yeah, Marathon can be painfully slow, especially before you've built anything, but it's great for learning the game--you really have to think twice before starting wonders, since they take forever even compared to other builds; it gives you a better idea of what the map looks like, which important for tyros; and it gives you more time to fix mistakes. I feel it's really valuable for learning the basics of the beginning of the game.

 

[MarigoldRan]

It was weird.

Comments: Ok, this is the first time I've self-teched archery. Barbs were annoying until the IMP HRE rexed to my borders.

I didn't get my second city until 2200 BC or somewhere then.

Build was:

Get city to pop 2
Get 1 warrior
Pump 3-4 archers (to protect tiles and city)
Once city hit pop 5, rex like crazy and build workers.
Rely on oasis to get commerce.
Skip ALL worker techs except wheel and AH. Straight line to Alphabet. Relying on Oasis to keep research up.

Next plan: Finish Alphabet. Get Math. Get HBR. Get Currency.

HA rush.

Have four cities. About to get two more. (one settler built, other in production).

Have two workers.

Forests completely unchopped. Once Alpha kicks in, will use math + Forests +lots of workers = Lots of HAs very quickly.

EDIT: Every city except horse city is next to an oasis.
EDIT 2: Your thoughts?
EDIT 3: I'm really really surprised and upset that my neighbors FAILED to get any early religion. This is awful.

 

[shyuhe]

I'm starting to think that for marathon, because of the unit scaling, it might be stronger to just chop out 4-6 workers at the start to get your cities up and running faster...

 

[MarigoldRan]

Thought I'd give this a quick spin.

Jesssssus Christ... this is unbearably slow. By the time my worker finally was out the door I was falling asleep.

Warrior-first is a lot more exciting. Psycholgy-wise, it is better.

 

[MarigoldRan]

I'm starting to think that for marathon, because of the unit scaling, it might be stronger to just chop out 4-6 workers at the start to get your cities up and running faster...

I don't know. Maybe. I can't say since I have no experience with this. My worker-counts tend to be low.