Marathon Huge Diety Classical Start Easy Game Right?

[MarigoldRan]

Try this start: It's great! You start with forests, gold, AND you're the Sumerians. Build a bunch of vultures and crush your enemies! Isn't this like the perfect start?

Heck, since it's Marathon, you have all the time to kill your enemies! After all, Marathon is great for war!

What could possibly go wrong?

P.S. Don't be a <censored> and build the Great Wall.

Spoiler :

Uh, without the GW, and with continental extra landmass and 11-13 civs, how do you stop the Barbs from buggering you, your mom, and everything that you love?

And even if you stop the barbs, what next? How do you catch up to the AI?

 

[BornInCantaloup]

T80: second city is lost.

Spoiler :

Went worker first (1 chop, 1 tile improved), which delayed growth a little.
Grew on archer then granary (mistake!) while stopping growth to chop into settler.
Got the health even, that shrinked our capital to size 1. Bad, bad growth.
Completed settler at size 3 (further delaying growth! Mistake: chop came in the same turn the settler was completed).

Charlie resisted the horde:

Spoiler :

We didn't:

Spoiler :

Events on, 80 turns in, Marathon... I may try it again.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Thank you for your efforts!

Anyone else? [I'll turn events off in the future if people complain too much]

 

[BornInCantaloup]

I don't mind any of those Thank you for posting the map.

Spoiler :

Classical start, huge map, low sea level and barb infestation with open land is a rare sight. Very fun early game, even though unstable... Events don't seem out of place.
Pretty sure I'll replay. Huge is too much to handle for me but it seems like a good map to try and stabilize.

Heck, since it's Marathon, you have all the time to kill your enemies! After all, Marathon is great for war!

Only applies when player is winning, right?

 

[Merovech]

I intend to play this next week. I haven't played Marathon in forever, and I didn't deal well with the barbs back then. Let's see how this goes, and hope for copper and horses. Edit: Oooh, didn't even notice that it's classical start. This should be interesting.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Yeah. The barbs. Don't skimp on the archers and vultures. You've been warned.

The problem is that if all your army is devoted to killing barbs, you won't have anything left to kill the AI.

I'm not sure this map is winnable. Despite the gold, and the pigs, and the forests, your position is actually TERRIBLE.

If someone manages to beat it or get into a winnable position, let me know. I couldn't do it. I suspect HBR as your first tech is the right idea. Get as many gold mines up as possible, build 6-8 vultures for defense, and then go Horse Archer on your enemies.

The problem is hitting them before they get Feudalism and not having your economy crash (because you have to support both your horse archers AND your barb defense units). The gold will help.

 

[MarigoldRan]

A worker steal from Tokugawa with HBR as your first tech seems like best possible strategy.

You seriously need the extra workers. You don't have time to build them due to the barbs and the general need to expand your capital.

In the meantime: spam as many vultures and archers as possible. Forget about granaries in your secondary cities or barracks. If you can survive the barbs, you have an excellent shot of winning this. The golds are amazing.

Spoiler :

And protect that bronze up in the north. That should be your second city.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Yeah. The barbs.

Enter borders from T70. This is no spoiler: format.
Also a base chop is 60H and a whip 90H. Of course you do know this but some of us are lost in Marathon numbers Also, pre-chop rules when it takes 15 turns to farm something, 12 to mine, 6 to road and 9 to chop. Need more workers! The road... the road seems bad for a long time.

This is tough. Tried again and died again.

@: the tech. Honestly I'm not sure how to handle this kind of map.
I see little downside to banking gold (several hundreds) at the start.
Depending on the religious situation, CoL might be a worthy choice: helps fixing the religious blocks. It also has good trade value. Metal Casting is a strong albeit dangerous pick (advances the AIs a lot but guarantees good trades). HBR, as you say... why not? Maths is also good, if only for unlocking stuff.
HBR incites to part-research Monarchy, Alpha and maybe a few other techs. Might be a better trading policy than getting a big tech.

@warring against the AIs: not my concern at the moment...

@worker steal: I wouldn't try it but... as proven many times, this is a busted move if successful.

 

[pepe26]

yo, BiC, have you looked at any SGOTM threads from season 17, yet? (If you haven't don't do it yet, please, or you will become tainted and ineligible to participate in this season)

We are looking for members since some of our guys have gone inactive... I'd love to have someone like you on board. If you are interested, please send Gumbolt or me a PM for more info on the format or anything else that we need to talk about

It'd be great to have you.

Peace

 

[BornInCantaloup]

No, thank you. See PM

 

[Jester Fool]

LOL! 630 BC and only have 3 cities. Could only build one additional worker (too busy building units). 55 barb units killed so far (and I did have spawn busters at first before being forced to pull back). Looks like an AI will settle up on me so probably won't get a fourth city (worth settling) although might need to head out into barb territory. Haven't played much marathon speed but imo, this is a pretty tough start. Would rather have had Sitting Bull for this start.

Don't think I'll continue playing but still found the game interesting so thanks for posting the map. Never seen so many barbs. Good grief.

 

[MarigoldRan]

LOL! 630 BC and only have 3 cities. Could only build one additional worker (too busy building units). 55 barb units killed so far (and I did have spawn busters at first before being forced to pull back). Looks like an AI will settle up on me so probably won't get a fourth city (worth settling) although might need to head out into barb territory. Haven't played much marathon speed but imo, this is a pretty tough start. Would rather have had Sitting Bull for this start.

Don't think I'll continue playing but still found the game interesting so thanks for posting the map. Never seen so many barbs. Good grief.

Glad that you enjoyed it. Spawn-busters don't work here. Playing on that map requires a certain level of masochism.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not sure this map is winnable. Despite the gold, and the pigs, and the forests, your position is actually TERRIBLE.

Of course it's "winnable", especially if you're a <censored> and build the great wall...and the apostolic palace .

Keeping up with the AI will be no joke on deity though. Winning this without resorting to utter cheese is no joke, but that's true of any deity game where you deliberately leave a ton of land for them to spam their bonus'd cities onto.

Slower speeds are tailor made for bigger maps anyway of course. Could you imagine trying to beat this on deity/quick or deity/normal? The barbs might be somewhat easier, but I bet you'd find it significantly harder to win!

Spawn-busters don't work here

You're confusing "don't work" with "cost prohibitive". They're clearly the latter. Spawn rules are the same, but there is GOBS of land and thanks to marathon, far more barbs than you can allocate to handle even if you win 90% of battles (which is hard with metal-unit based barbarians). It wouldn't be as bad if they didn't pillage also, but they do that and it costs so much time. I haven't played this map in particular, but let's just say I have SOME experience with this .

Gwall + no spawnbusting at all is obviously the dominant tactic on this map. Fast feudalism might be well worth exploring also; longbows with drill are the only unit I can think of that will hold off all of the barbs easily enough in both forests/hills and in cities (drill IV + defensive bonuses = lots of kills w/o dying).

You could always pull an Iranon and get into an AI-AI war where you just chase + capture cities they weaken ^_^.

 

[barbertje]

Gwall + no spawnbusting at all is obviously the dominant tactic on this map.

Unfortunately, you can't build the great wall with a classical start.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Unfortunately, you can't build the great wall with a classical start.

For some reason...

Well never mind. I'm 29 but I still got shingles somehow. I blame that.

 

[Izuul]

LOL

I didn't take this quite seriously enough the first time. I knew from reading a few posts here that the barbs were gonna be bad, but holy smokes! I managed to get 2 Vultures before my copper got pillaged and it was pretty move over after that.

I'm not sure i have enough patience to try this again on Marathon.

 

[Fippy]

Of course it's "winnable", especially if you're a <censored> and build the great wall...and the apostolic palace .

Great plan, but you cannot build tgw in classical starts
Had to look, but yep it's not there like the Oracle (knew that)..
and now i see someone already wrote that too, oh well

 

[MarigoldRan]

Yup. Realized this after my post. No GW AT ALL. Haha. Try again.

@ TMIT

Marathon is designed for huge maps. Marathon and Huge goes together like a horse and carriage. Comparing Marathon/Huge to Marathon/Standard or Standard Speed/Huge Map is kind of silly. It's like trying to marry two men... oh wait.

So, has anyone beaten it yet? Or gotten to a winning position?

 

[Fippy]

Are Vultures actually usful for this, or are prot. archers better...
would rather have some chariots against Axes and for hit and run

 

[MarigoldRan]

I'm not sure. I definitely know that dog soldiers would be better, if only because you can start getting them immediately.

But I found the vultures useful for killing archers or warriors when they're about to pillage your gold mines. You can also fortify a vulture on a hill (like, for example, copper hill or gold hill), and the bonuses help them more than it helps your archers because they have more strength.

Finally, the medic upgrade is very important. That way your units heal quickly after a battle, enough time for them to engage the second enemy 1-2 rounds later.

EDIT: I think to win this you have to worker-steal.