Mali UHV in 1.184: First Condition is Broken

[Mazzini]

The condition says to have the most gold in 1300... Well it's 1300, and I have about 1200 gold and nobody else has more than 150 or so... At first I assumed someone I hadn't met randomly had a lot of gold so I restarted and tried again, same result. This time, I used world builder to put scouts in every civ's territory to give me contact with them so I could see their gold. Sure enough, I definitely had the most gold. I figured maybe the Byzantines' gold counted and maybe they had more gold so I tried erasing them and it still didn't work.

Attached is a save of the above game... I used world builder to place scouts everywhere so it's apparent that I have the most gold by far on the diplomacy screen, but the UHV still won't register. I really hope this gets fixed as I've really enjoyed doing all the previous UHVs...

 

[Lone Wolf]

so it's apparent that I have the most gold by far on the diplomacy screen,

The gold AI shows on the diplo screen isn't the total gold they have, it's only the gold they are willing to trade.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

France has (routinely) 1300-1500 gold by this time. It's a sad fact of life.

 

[ThurinEthir]

The Incans might have a lot too. They start with a good deal, though their economy might be failing.
If you really want to be sure that you have the most, open worldbuilder, and use the "Edit City" button, looking at cities from each civ. On the pop-up should be the total amount of gold that civ has at the time.

 

[Wessel V1]

I fear they have much more gold in 1300 AD. I tried to do the Mali again some times, and never got the first goal, despite having ~1700-1800 gold. France will probably beat that, but in 10 games, they would probably fail once, at least in 1.181. In 1.184, this isn't true anymore, so I checked out how much gold France had in the very next turn after I spawned. Results:

4/4: more than 1200, sometimes over 1800 gold (I put a spy and a GS in Paris)
3/4: generating more than 20 gold / turn (although that can be beaten easily, the problem is that it's cumulative).
4/4: A GM will soon be born (4 or 5 merchants assigned in Paris), and by 1300 they could easily generate 2 of them.

So, to beat France, you must have ~3500 gold. Yep, that's hard. Maybe the AI should be tweaked to hire scientists, or even artists. That would actually be nice to see, since France can even get a chance to get close to an UHV.

 

[TDK]

It's possible to have 4500 gold by 1300AD if you use merchants. That should be enough for emperor difficulty games.

 

[Mazzini]

I don't see how 4500 gold is close to possible on the 600 AD start. You only have 37 turns from the start to the first UHV goal, the only way to get even one merchant in time for him to go on a trade mission is caste system. Using better micromanagement I've gotten up to around 2200 and it's still too little.

I have bigger problems now anyway... the game crashes to desktop as soon as I meet the arabs every time... It's weird, I've done every other UHV and met the Arabs plenty and never had problems. Anyond have any idea how I could get to the bottom of this crashing problem?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

If I remember right, TDK has shown that it's possible to send not 1, but 2 great merchants to either a Spanish or Portuguese city or Constantinople. And yes, castes is the answer.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7979211&postcount=58

 

[civ_king]

clever scheming bastards

 

[Tigranes]

France has (routinely) 1300-1500 gold by this time. It's a sad fact of life.

Just tested 5 games on Monarch (600 AD). Only once France had less then 3K
Last time I had 3.1 K but France had 3.9 K, and this is after 5 turns of Plague! Anyone knows why France AI loves gold so much? Tuned by Rhye to compete with Mali ?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Maybe one needs to "steal" their gold by sending a great spy there...

 

[TDK]

If France is trying to build a lot of wonders, that would get him a lot of gold when he fails, especially if he uses stone/marble, he would get a good rate of return for his hammers(I use it all the time to raise cash).

 

[Wessel V1]

The problem (although this picture is the other way round, so actually this situation is winnable for Mali) is that Paris has lots of food but no hills. So, to keep the city happy and fully use his resources, Louis decides to hire lots of specialists. Often, he hires merchants, and he uses his Great Merchants for trade missions, so, the goal becomes next to impossible. Only in a few rare games, he decides wisely to get some scientists, although he has already rushed a Great Merchant (he has more than 2000 gold).

A few solutions: - The AI could be tweaked to consider merchants worse than artists (after all, it's a UHV-goal) or scientists.
- The AI could rather use Slavery or Serfdom to build up a decent economy as soon as possible. This might also solve the problem of the Dutch conquering Paris whenever they like with only their starting units.
- The Malinese goal could be changed or the dates could be switched.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I had previously suggested a more "reasonable" goal of
1. x gold in 1300 (x can be anywhere from 1200 to 1600)
2. Having most gold in 1500
3. 16000 gold in 1700

The AI likes to hoard gold, but as soon as an upgrade path is available, it'll use it, i.e. it's impossible for them to hoard more than 5000.

 

[Wessel V1]

I totally agree. What would be enough gold then? I think the player should decide whether he wants to assign merchants or not, so 1800 would be fair I think.

 

[Tigranes]

I found that 3.5K is an average safe amount on Monarch. One time I had 4.1 K and France had 5.4 K But it was just an outlier. If you focus on 2 Merchants you can always get 3.5+ and the history report like this :

 

[Mazzini]

Finally got it with around 3.2k gold, 2 previous tries with roughly the same amount failed. Even after that the UHV was mercilessly hard with the trillion barbs spawning everywhere and me having to build wealth constantly so I could baaaaaarely squeak out the insane 16k requirement... I dunno why they bother requiring 4k in 1500 when that's basically required in 1300 and then having positively enormous req for 1700, relatively speaking. Definitely the hardest UHV (i've done all but turkey and USA)

 

[Tigranes]

3.2k is approximately 1 standard deviation away for the France's gold amount distribution at 1300 AD. I take back that 3.5k is a safe amount to have. The mean is somewhere 3.8k I believe (last 2 attempts France had 4.2k). So if you passed with 3.2 you can feel really lucky. I routinely amass 3.7k without using castes, with 1 merchant only. Early castes is a killer for the 3rd goal, one needs to have 6 cities by 1300 AD to amass 16000 at 1700 AD. With castes you can't even get a Market in your capital by 1300!

Mali really frustrates me, even more than Maya, because you can win Maya on Monarch with minimal luck (Emperor requires a city in Aztecs land though). But Mali looks like Lois (or Rhye's programming) knows how much gold are you making per turn and adjusts his merchants to beat you. Seriously, I decline to believe that France AI goes for 4K+ gold just because random numbers tell her to chose merchants over the scientists. Failed Wonders aside, why would any intelligent French ruler hire 4-5 merchants instead of scientist (not to mention artists?). Who needs Paris without an Academy even?

I have 3 questions therefore

1) Whoever made 4.5k on Monarch -- please come forward and share some tips, 2 Merchants and Castes do not make 4.5k. You will make 3.8/3.9 maximum, since you never make more than 1100 per mission at 1300 AD, even if you reach Japan! It's either 900 or 1100 gold without regard of distance, size or continents.

2) If Rhye reads this please tell us -- have you told France AI to amass gold on purpose?

3) If #2 is "NO" -- any explanation about why gold and not research preferred by France Great Person generator? Upgrade costs explanation would not work -- AI gets very big discounts even on Nobel in normal BTS. Maybe for AI buying techs costs less than researching them and France chooses that role?

 

[Wessel V1]

I'd still rather have the goals changed, or the AI changed. I understand that it is possible to get more than 3K by 1300 AD, but to be honest, I don't like to play like that at all. I'd rather go back to the old days where 1500 gold would often be enough to continue, since I find it very frustrating to waste my entire economy only to build a road across the Sahara, and then hope that no Camel Archer will destroy it, since nothing except Elephants that you often don't have can protect it.

 

[TDK]

3.2k is approximately 1 standard deviation away for the France's gold amount distribution at 1300 AD. I take back that 3.5k is a safe amount to have. The mean is somewhere 3.8k I believe (last 2 attempts France had 4.2k). So if you passed with 3.2 you can feel really lucky. I routinely amass 3.7k without using castes, with 1 merchant only. Early castes is a killer for the 3rd goal, one needs to have 6 cities by 1300 AD to amass 16000 at 1700 AD. With castes you can't even get a Market in your capital by 1300!

Mali really frustrates me, even more than Maya, because you can win Maya on Monarch with minimal luck (Emperor requires a city in Aztecs land though). But Mali looks like Lois (or Rhye's programming) knows how much gold are you making per turn and adjusts his merchants to beat you. Seriously, I decline to believe that France AI goes for 4K+ gold just because random numbers tell her to chose merchants over the scientists. Failed Wonders aside, why would any intelligent French ruler hire 4-5 merchants instead of scientist (not to mention artists?). Who needs Paris without an Academy even?

I have 3 questions therefore

1) Whoever made 4.5k on Monarch -- please come forward and share some tips, 2 Merchants and Castes do not make 4.5k. You will make 3.8/3.9 maximum, since you never make more than 1100 per mission at 1300 AD, even if you reach Japan! It's either 900 or 1100 gold without regard of distance, size or continents.

2) If Rhye reads this please tell us -- have you told France AI to amass gold on purpose?

3) If #2 is "NO" -- any explanation about why gold and not research preferred by France Great Person generator? Upgrade costs explanation would not work -- AI gets very big discounts even on Nobel in normal BTS. Maybe for AI buying techs costs less than researching them and France chooses that role?

4.5K is the amount I get in 1300AD. I only tech fishing, and then 100% wealth.

I would really like to see someone try hiring out mercenaries. It would give a much better return on your hammers than building wealth.
Maybe one could also try a more pro-active stance vis-a-vis France. Send a pillage party?