Marathon/Huge Guide (?)

[MarigoldRan]

Ok, so obviously this is imperfect, but it's a beginning. This will for the most part be a summary, combined with some of the things I've learned recently. Whenever I say "Marathon", I mean "Marathon/Huge."

As of now, there's nothing to be said about Marathon/Huge/Water maps since almost no one has played them. So we'll stick to Marathon/Huge/Land maps. Like Continents, or Pangea.

Lessons:

1. Unit maintenance costs do not scale properly from standard to Marathon. This means that even though you need a lot more units on Marathon, you get effectively the same amount of free units as standard in the ancient-classical-medieval stages of the game. This means that unit maintenance costs are killer.

2. Barbs are much bigger threat on Marathon due to the existence of more "fog areas."

3. The combinations of 1 & 2 imply that in the early game, finding the right balance of units is critical. Get too little and the barbs kill you. Get too many and your econ crashes. Hence:

4. IND civilizations are very strong on Marathon because of their ability to get Wonders, in particular the GW. The GW eliminates the Catch-22 described above.

5. For IND civs, fail money is a big part of early game. If you hook up stone, a good strategy would be to build the Pyramids.... with TWO cities. With Build Queue management, it's possible to get both the Pyramids and 1499 fail gold, which is absolutely essential for your early econ.

6. Xbows are a much more critical unit on Marathon than standard. The reason is because of the large map size, most wars begin in the medieval ages, and Xbows are the earliest medieval age unit. Furthermore, Xbows are good against pretty much anything in that time period.

7. This means the Chinese are surprisingly a good civ on Marathon due to their UU and the IND trait. Furthermore, PRO sees a lot of use too in buffing up the Xbows.

8. Worker-stealing becomes a much more viable tactic on Marathon. Hence, warrior-first IS a good strategy, though still a gamble.

9. Medieval era UUs are much better on Marathon due to the fact that the most important wars are fought in the Medieval era. This means the Byzantines are potentially devastating.

10. If unrestricted leaders is available, probably the most devastating combination is Huyana Capac of the Byzantines.

 

[Farm Boy]

1. You have made this assertion several times, but I am still unconvinced this is true. Unit maintenance costs do scale pretty spot on with game speed. 3x the turns to pay the maintenance, 3x the turns to pull commerce off your sources. Marathon workers are more efficient, thus possibly leading to the opposite of your assertion if you can skate by with a couple less of them. If coupling Marathon with Huge on a map that is going to spawn crazy amounts of barbs possibly you will need a larger spawn-busting force, which could be expensive.

2. I can roll with this point. They will spawn more, yes. I think Huge and empty land mass is always going to be the truly pivotal factor here but it can be exacerbated by Marathon.

3. This seems true regardless of settings and not terribly much influenced by them. This is more of a caveat to your previous points.

4. IND leaders are always strong. Knowing(or guessing) when to grab the GW and when it is useless is more of a "play the map" sort of deal. If you are using map generator settings that result in lots of empty land this would be a strong play regardless of setting.

5. Fail gold is powerful. Getting more of it from IND is also always nice. I am not seeing the direct link to settings here either but I'll keep listening.

6. Possibly partially true. I see no particular reason why classical wars will be nerfed by map/speed settings resulting in an increased emphasis on medieval war over classical. Since warfare on Marathon will always be a bit more effective than on faster speeds, I suppose the argument could be made that XBows will gain more effective lifespan from a beeline and will be more effective in general. I think a more accurate assertion would be that all medieval aggression is more viable on Marathon than otherwise and may be a profitable option more frequently. I am not rolling with XBows as being a particularly critical unit compared to others in this situation. I would need more players backing you up on this before would seriously reconsider my own play experience.

7. Linked to above.

8. Worker stealing is more efficient here, yes. The warrior moves faster and the worker moves faster. You get your ill-gotten unit back to your lands and employed more quickly. (+)

9. All useful early UUs are better on Marathon with the exception of the Fast Worker, which is worse relatively. This is not unique to medieval units even if it applies to them as well. Same disagreement as above with Medieval war being the hot spot for aggression on these settings even if it is more profitable here than elsewhere. I would still rather have War Chariots than Cataphracts.

10. Uncertain. No opinion.

 

[coanda]

Besides the GW (which I'd agree will be stronger on Marathon/Huge), is there anything else about IND that is uniquely useful on Marathon/Huge? Or is it as simple as "the right strategy on Marathon/Huge is almost always to build the Great Wall if you can, so IND is a good trait"?

 

[Farm Boy]

Theoretically unless you wind up with a map that requires far more investment in military hammers above and beyond the discounted price, you might wind up with a greater proportion of your early production available for civilian builds. The would relatively decrease the opportunity cost for pumping production into wonders.

My initial reaction would be this might increase the value of IND somewhat do to it being able to amp a larger proportion of your production either for completion or for failgold. Then again, if chasing a wonder on Standard really is a larger gambit due to a larger opportunity cost, the ability of IND to help actually land the wonder might prove a more pivotal difference.

 

[Kid R]

Point 1 could be made clearer to say it's particularly referring to the number of free units not scaling with map size, rather than the formula for the total maintance cost.

For example on Monarch you get 8 free units with 4 allowed outside home lands, and that applies both on a tiny map a huge map. Obviously you need more fogbusters and so on on huge maps and it goes over the free limits much more easily.

This issue may also apply to the AIs as well, in which case below prince it might penalize them more than it does the human, thus making huge maps easier. That should be checked if the guide is to apply to all difficulties.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Ok, so obviously this is imperfect, but it's a beginning.

Yup, it's a start.

Broad general comment - I'm more interested in guides that provide evidence than those which are limited to opinions. So I hope that future revisions start to include more data.

2. Barbs are much bigger threat on Marathon due to the existence of more "fog areas."

Case in point. I think there are three different points tucked in here. One is that, since barb spawns don't scale with speed, the map saturates more quickly. Second is whether, because of the map size, the human players "fair share" of barbs goes up - are barbs actually denser on a huge map, in addition to filling more quickly? In addition, there's the question of whether the various time checks that change the barbs behavior scales with speed?

8. Worker-stealing becomes a much more viable tactic on Marathon. Hence, warrior-first IS a good strategy, though still a gamble.

It would be good to have a better understanding of the median distance between capitals on a huge map.

9. Medieval era UUs are much better on Marathon due to the fact that the most important wars are fought in the Medieval era. This means the Byzantines are potentially devastating.

Might be useful to math out whether the clock speed boosts 2 move units relative to one move units.

 

[Abegweit]

Might be useful to math out whether the clock speed boosts 2 move units relative to one move units.

The opposite is certainly true. As it is much harder to whip out defenders in Marathon, much of the advantage of two-movers is lost. The element of surprise is not nearly as important.

This is one of the main reasons why war is so much easier in Marathon, the other being that your units retain usefulness for a much longer period of time. I haven't played much Marathon but it seems to me that artillery, especially the trebuchet, would be huge in this game. A game-breaker, precisely because of these considerations.

 

[Farm Boy]

Population regrowth and anger decay are normalized linearly with game speed and aside from the 1/3 price discount to military will subsequently suffer the same relative speed penalty that comes from Marathon's 3x faster troops if you are targeting sustainable whip production.

Emergency whipping, one unit every two turns while population holds out will still suffer from decreased sustainability due to slower regrowth/decay(plus a larger portion of the production will come from the whip instead of base production), but should be as "relatively" fast as Marathon-mobile troops since smaller turn slices also increase relative capitalization(unitalization?) speed.

Desperation whipping, one unit every turn if capable, should be the same as emergency whip. Poke holes in this if I am missing anything please. The whip is a weak point in my game.

That said, the slower relative rudder speed of corrections compared to invasion march speed does almost certainly shrink the advantage of faster troops. 1 tile movers may still be more than fast enough to inflict damage before the target can muster defenses. If so, 1 tile mobile stacks tend to be far more durable including stack defenders and siege. If durable enough, it very well may continue steamrolling at triple speed past where losses would force a faster invasion to bog down.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Besides the GW (which I'd agree will be stronger on Marathon/Huge), is there anything else about IND that is uniquely useful on Marathon/Huge? Or is it as simple as "the right strategy on Marathon/Huge is almost always to build the Great Wall if you can, so IND is a good trait"?

One very good strategy on Marathon/Huge is to build the GW if you can. Might be others, but we know one!

IND provides easy fail gold.

IND means early forges is good. Metal Casting is one tech away from Machinery, which is very important for the Xbows.

I'm going to play a few more games. Here's another game, as China, at immortal settings. I did it with an early GW, followed by a lot of fail gold, which allowed a quick tech to Alphabet for tech trades. Then the Cho-Ko-Nus killed everything on my continent. I think China is a strong civ on Marathon/Huge.

The location was a lot better on this one than the previous Incan game. The people on your continent are a lot nicer. The setting is easier. Etc. etc.

EDIT: Unfortunately at Marathon, it's harder to get in more games to test theories. The sample sizes will be smaller. But we'll try.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Point 1 could be made clearer to say it's particularly referring to the number of free units not scaling with map size, rather than the formula for the total maintance cost.

For example on Monarch you get 8 free units with 4 allowed outside home lands, and that applies both on a tiny map a huge map. Obviously you need more fogbusters and so on on huge maps and it goes over the free limits much more easily.

This issue may also apply to the AIs as well, in which case below prince it might penalize them more than it does the human, thus making huge maps easier. That should be checked if the guide is to apply to all difficulties.

Yes. This is clearer. You tech very, very slowly early-on if you get a lot of units to fight barbs.

 

[MarigoldRan]

1. You have made this assertion several times, but I am still unconvinced this is true. Unit maintenance costs do scale pretty spot on with game speed. 3x the turns to pay the maintenance, 3x the turns to pull commerce off your sources. Marathon workers are more efficient, thus possibly leading to the opposite of your assertion if you can skate by with a couple less of them. If coupling Marathon with Huge on a map that is going to spawn crazy amounts of barbs possibly you will need a larger spawn-busting force, which could be expensive.

2. I can roll with this point. They will spawn more, yes. I think Huge and empty land mass is always going to be the truly pivotal factor here but it can be exacerbated by Marathon.

3. This seems true regardless of settings and not terribly much influenced by them. This is more of a caveat to your previous points.

4. IND leaders are always strong. Knowing(or guessing) when to grab the GW and when it is useless is more of a "play the map" sort of deal. If you are using map generator settings that result in lots of empty land this would be a strong play regardless of setting.

5. Fail gold is powerful. Getting more of it from IND is also always nice. I am not seeing the direct link to settings here either but I'll keep listening.

6. Possibly partially true. I see no particular reason why classical wars will be nerfed by map/speed settings resulting in an increased emphasis on medieval war over classical. Since warfare on Marathon will always be a bit more effective than on faster speeds, I suppose the argument could be made that XBows will gain more effective lifespan from a beeline and will be more effective in general. I think a more accurate assertion would be that all medieval aggression is more viable on Marathon than otherwise and may be a profitable option more frequently. I am not rolling with XBows as being a particularly critical unit compared to others in this situation. I would need more players backing you up on this before would seriously reconsider my own play experience.

7. Linked to above.

8. Worker stealing is more efficient here, yes. The warrior moves faster and the worker moves faster. You get your ill-gotten unit back to your lands and employed more quickly. (+)

9. All useful early UUs are better on Marathon with the exception of the Fast Worker, which is worse relatively. This is not unique to medieval units even if it applies to them as well. Same disagreement as above with Medieval war being the hot spot for aggression on these settings even if it is more profitable here than elsewhere. I would still rather have War Chariots than Cataphracts.

10. Uncertain. No opinion.

On point 6, classical war on Marathon/Huge becomes a lot more difficult because your econ crashes. You don't have a lot of free units, because your population is small, and you start paying a heavy maintenance if you get enough for a war. It's only by the early medieval ages that your econ can support your wars. This is why I tend to choke the neighbors that I intend to kill when my economy can support it.

Furthermore, due to the importance of the Pyramids and the GW, you simply won't have time to be getting a lot of units. Granted, you can try to do it without those wonders, but especially without the GW you'll find that sending out your early army on conquest is a risky proposition at higher difficulties, due to barbs.

Point 5 is synergistic to IND. If the GW and Pyramids are stronger at Marathon, this means IND is more powerful, which means fail gold is more powerful.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Point 5 is synergistic to IND. If the GW and Pyramids are stronger at Marathon, this means IND is more powerful, which means fail gold is more powerful.

I don't understand why IND more powerful implies fail gold is more powerful; surely causation runs the other way?

 

[MarigoldRan]

IND means faster production of fail gold. Hence the opportunity cost of getting fail gold is lower. Hence more powerful fail gold.

GW is more powerful. Hence IND is more powerful. Hence, it's easier to get more fail gold. Hence fail gold is more powerful.

 

[Celebithil]

I get confused by the abbreviation of marathon/huge to marathon. Even if the preamble is clear that marathon means marathon/huge it still reads to me a bit like:

"Whenever I say a round wheel, I actually mean a square wheel. Cars with round wheels can't drive very well due to the shape of their wheels not being circularly symmetric."

Which is rather confusing if technically correct. Moreover the reasons for your points would become clearer if you were to say why something holds, which would immediately indicate if the root cause is the different landsize or the different gamespeed.

I always thought that industrious was worse on large maps, or more precisely, maps with lots of opponents, since, more opponents means less wonders per player, which probably means less wonder-building for you too, which means less use out of industrious. Now the Great Wall is indeed much better on huge and (due to the reasons described above) you need a boost to have a shot at actually getting it, but relying on this only seems like basing your strategy on a crap shot. So you need a strategy without the Great Wall as well, and if you fail the GW the industrious trait seems to me to be a bad choice.

Another thing about huge maps you may include is that GPP are worth less on big maps, due to the fact that the number of GP you can get does not scale very well with empire size. (If you get an empire twice the size by getting an exact copy of all your cities, you'd get almost everything twice (production/commerce etc.), but not GPs, even if the amount of GPP is doubled). This seems to make sources of GPP less good, and thus the philosophy trait is worth less.

 

[MarigoldRan]

I get confused by the abbreviation of marathon/huge to marathon. Even if the preamble is clear that marathon means marathon/huge it still reads to me a bit like:

"Whenever I say a round wheel, I actually mean a square wheel. Cars with round wheels can't drive very well due to the shape of their wheels not being circularly symmetric."

Which is rather confusing if technically correct. Moreover the reasons for your points would become clearer if you were to say why something holds, which would immediately indicate if the root cause is the different landsize or the different gamespeed.

I always thought that industrious was worse on large maps, or more precisely, maps with lots of opponents, since, more opponents means less wonders per player, which probably means less wonder-building for you too, which means less use out of industrious. Now the Great Wall is indeed much better on huge and (due to the reasons described above) you need a boost to have a shot at actually getting it, but relying on this only seems like basing your strategy on a crap shot. So you need a strategy without the Great Wall as well, and if you fail the GW the industrious trait seems to me to be a bad choice.

Another thing about huge maps you may include is that GPP are worth less on big maps, due to the fact that the number of GP you can get does not scale very well with empire size. (If you get an empire twice the size by getting an exact copy of all your cities, you'd get almost everything twice (production/commerce etc.), but not GPs, even if the amount of GPP is doubled). This seems to make sources of GPP less good, and thus the philosophy trait is worth less.

Fail the GW and you get fail money! Which means you can support more early units to fight off the barbs.

Creative is also weaker. I can definitely see why some people insist Creative is very important on smaller, crowded maps. But due to the larger size of Huge maps, and more city locations, and further away AI, creative is inconsequential except for the fast libraries.

 

[coanda]

My vote would actually go to SPI as the "most-buffed" trait on slower game speeds. A 5-turn minimum cooldown between civic changes is crippling to SPI on Quick speed; painful on Normal, inconvenient on Epic, and negligible on Marathon.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Oh, Spi is wonderful. Serfdom on Marathon? Yes! Panic switches to slavery? Also, yes!

BTW, I just rolled an Emperor/Marathon/Huge/Continents/14 civs game at Random. To see how barbs are. I kind of not wanted to build the GW to test it, but it seems like it's essential on this map.

I'll post it later, but the map is WEIRD. You'll see what I mean.

 

[MarigoldRan]

I went ahead and did a Random/Huge/Marathon/Emperor/Continents game. Here is what I tried. Obviously, it would work better with the Incans (Fin Ind) but it worked reasonably well for a leader that lacks the qualities to make this style of play better:

The almost-no-worker weird-style of play:

I.e. a caste-system economy without caste system.

Save provided below.

The logic:

Instead of running caste system, I run slavery to whip infrastructure, like libraries, forges and what-not.

I get the Pyramids early. Run representation.

Then I spam cottages and cities and Wonders. Most of my cities are about pop 7-9, which is optimal for both slavery and the happy cap.

I get very, very few workers, since I'm running very, very few tiles due to a combo of specialists and whips. My worker-city ratio has consistently been lower than 1-1, but the number of unworked tiles is almost zero. I whip infrastructure on a regular basis to keep the cities in the single digits range.

Combine this with bueracracy for a super science capital, along with a beeline to banking for mercantilism, and my economy and civ is doing great. My science rate is low (20-30% most of the time), but that works perfectly for my guilds, marketplaces, and banks. I use my capital as the primary research center.

Once the cottages mature, and I get Printing Press, the infrastructure is already there to take full advantage of it. Combine this with Mausallos, the Taj Mahal, and Golden Ages, and I will accelerate rapidly in the early renaissance.

Furthermore, it's a very flexible economy that's perfect for Renaissance War. Once I hit Renaissance, I can destroy people, keep the research slider near zero to pay for upkeep, and still research adequately. Finally, the workers I capture from the comps will be very useful for the endgame.

Check it out!

(Of course I do realize the map worked out really, really well for me).

 

[MarigoldRan]

Wouldn't this mean that cottage spam is a stronger option relatively. You certainly build more cities. More cities can work more cottages. As you state a larger empire cannot generate significantly more GP's than a smaller one.

I would thus assume that a financial leader would be a strong choice. Also I would argue that an organized leader would be strong due to cheaper courthouses. More room to expand means larger empire. Larger empire means higher maintenance. Then again any old idiot can make a courthouse so it may not be worth a whole trait.

Although financial cottage spam lends well to rush buy. So kremlin becomes a strong consideration. Thus industrious could still be better due to higher chance of building kremlin. I assume the faster you can build a wonder the greater chances of getting it.

Some civopedia research informs me that we have two options

Inca Capa Fin/ind. Unique is the +2 culture granary. Cheap forges. Quecha is decent rush unit from what I saw.

Persia Darius Fin/org. +2 health grocer. Immortals are also decent early units. Cheap factory, courthouse, lighthouse.

So any thoughts on optimal trait combos? Optimal leader?

I'd take Capac and the Incans. Everything meshes. Super-granaries, IND and FIN for cottage spam and wonder spam, a good UU for worker-stealing, choking, and early barbs. Mysticism for fail money. And Agriculture, which is a very strong first tech.

I generally don't like classical-era UUs for Marathon/Huge. They're not very useful for me since classical wars are tough to pull off without an econ crash. The exceptions are the Quechua, Dog Soldiers, Skirmishers, and Jaguar Warriors, because they're excellent CHOKE/worker-steal units.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

For something different... (I wasn't to post, but you not quoting the praets in the good classical units was too much, Obsolete has brainwashed too many people in fact. this unit is great!)

I get the Pyramids early. Run representation.
(...)
Then I spam cottages and cities and Wonders. Most of my cities are about pop 7-9, which is optimal for both slavery and the happy cap.

I get very, very few workers, since I'm running very, very few tiles due to a combo of specialists and whips.

Honnestly, it looks like you are doing everything and the opposite at the same time . You can improve your game by being focused. Marathon tends to favor military so I would focus less on commerce and more on production mean (what I mean is that you should realize that a good marathon game should be over before cottages reach town status).

I think JC is much better than Capac on marathon eek: noob alert). Praets are way more forgiving than quechuas (i assume no reloads) and can be your main force till end game (yeah, even on huge, provided you have phants and can finish the job before other get rifling). Cheap courts is all you need in a military game, cheap factories are awesome for competitive space race.

My guide would be (before switching to more speedy speeds, I played marathon two years):
1) rush your neighbors hard. Axe then praets if you are a lucky roman. (and start with a worker steal so the AIs quickly get what kind of mood you are in - a woody warrior and some training should do the trick)
2) farm riverside tiles, don't work the rest (well before CS). Connect all your cities for TRs and good logistic. Cottages are an option, but never kill your growth potential for a cottage. Only if you fear you will go bankrupt (and I didn't said negative gpt, negative gpt is fine if you have stockpilled gold).
3) Beeline Currency/COL (COL first if org) then construction. (cash from razed cities helps)
4) Go crazy. Grow exponantially. Getting alphabet is usefull to get some more techs in peace deals.

The trick is to stop whipping inner cities as you get new ones.

5) If you are in for a space trip, stop when you have 40% of the total land. grow cities.

Also, as Abegweit said, 2 moves units aren't as great as in normal speed, and there is even less point in building wonders in marathon (as Farmboy said)

edit2: more comments on your OP:

1) I would say it's harder to leave the bankrupt state since you still loose units every turns while at negative gpt (and loosing a worker a turn is scary).
2) level influences barbs way more than speed. non issue imo. Furthermore you are more able to use the speed bonus provided by marathon than AIs. Barbs can be dealt with easly.
3) meh, eco crash is more about not linking cities, absence of vertical growth, wrong worker management, bad diplo management (trade resource, gold, OBs, everything as usual). I would say that not using your additional units is a killer yes.
4) meh again. wonders cost even more, industrious still isn't great (what I mean is that you shouldn't be building wonders in the first place). Furthermore marble/stone modifier are greater than the one of industrious.
5) see 4.
6) Someone should stop playing the Chinese Xbows are still unlocked by a crappy tech (well one researched by virtually any AI before you and one which unlocks a crappy civic). THe fact you can't wage classical war is a myth. And tell me how Xbows are better than maces against LBs (which is the main city defender)? Xbow are for stack defense. Xbows aren't exactly cheap also (and do the same damage than swords against cities, less with promotions)
7) Chinese best asset is their starting techs... really Roman or any civ with a classical UU is best.
8) yeap
9)medieval units, like all units, are better in marathon (well you get to use them) yes.
10) no. Useless traits, and the knight UU come wayt too late and isn't on a good tech path. THeir UB is awesome , I agree.