Thanks for the vote of confidence and praise Stoertebeker, but I will say that I place more on finishing a Sid histographic game, or any histographic game than having the highest scoring one. A lower scoring standard Sid histographic, for example, could have a better map and have gotten played better than a Huge one, but still score a lot less than a Huge one.
Of course. It would even be more satisfying to play the XOTM's, because there real skill comes to shine. And not those lucky maps and dirty tricks, that are used for the HoF.
But unfortunately, even if I know that those games promise more fun, more insights and that they are more challenging, I always think about how one could ever beat those 88K. Sad but true. It's kind of a dark fascination.
With the disconnect-reconnect, which I prefer over the term "Emsworth agreement", which I always think of referring to
this thread, you also really want Leo's.
Yes, I can imagine that: It gives you a huge amount of money by a time where money really matters.
Thing comes as if you have Leo's early (maybe try and build it yourself?)... if you short-rush to spears/explorers for horse-knights or horse-calvary every turn in 10 shield cities, you can spend 120 gold for the horse part, and then 60 or 75 more gold for the upgrade to a knight or calvary if you want one of those every single turn.
I believe it would be a better idea to completely rush those units in some distant 1-shield-cities (although you'd need barracks there) and just shortrush in the 10-shield-towns every second turn. One would have to calculate that properly at some point. But saving 40 Gold every turn seems well worth buying a barrack here and there.
Until a near optimal plan gets figured out for spending your cash with the disconnect-reconnect, I don't really have a feel for how well things could go, and what you want to do to really play this thing out extremely well.
Yes. But it's good to know that an optimal solution exists - we just have to figure it out.
Also, the number of opponents desired also needs figured out... and no doubt there exists some difference in terms of how much money you'll get from the AIs if you have 8 opponents vs. 12 vs. 15, since the AIs will have different sized empires (8 might work out better in this regard since the AIs have larger empires... but with scarcer resources and luxuries, that might mean fewer AIs to get gold from in the first place).
Yes, I think you're right. I had a look at 2 Maps (your and Tones huge deity finishs) and counted ressources: It seems, that available ressources increase proportionally to the number of tribes. (I counted 33 luxuries and 47 strategic ressources in Tones game with 8 Opponents, compared to 60 and 97 in yours (with 15)- won't guarantee for exact numbers, but the direction is clear).
Until now, I always thought that 8 opponents would be the "right" number. You made me rethink and coming to the following picture:
+ higher propability of trades (as with fewer opponents, chances for some having a lot and some lacking any trading possibilities are higher)
+ trades will be possible earlier (as ressources will be connected earlier and connections will be made earlier)
(+) the world will be populated earlier (I lack the experience here: Maybe you'll see at least size 12 cities all around the world anyway, when starting to go to war?)
+ more possibilities to send AI's in wars against each other
+ tighter empires to conquer - worth a lot when using disconnections with peace and RoP tied together, as one can hope to destroy an opponent in a few turns without worrying too much about flips, discontent citizens and their stack of doom (which is hopefully tied up in foreign territory ... .
(-) those positive effects might be countered by lower AI cash and slower techpace - as AI cities will be more productive and produce much more units they'd have to upkeep. Again, I lack the experience to verify this. But your current game looks quite impressive in both terms - so hopefully I'm wrong.
- the chance that important AI's lack a key ressource, are lower
- one will lack the room for expansion and might get killed very early.
So it seems to me like a gamble: If the start succeeds and one is able to get enough GPT to get the first deals running, more opponents should serve one well. Yet another point where one could hope to benefit in comparison to Moonsinger.
The war happiness issue that you mentioned earlier, doesn't seem too important in regard of how many opponents to choose: You need 4 AI dows to get everyone happy, don't you? If you let live 4 out of 8 or 4 out of 15 ... that doesn't seem to make a big difference, does it?
But, if you really want to maximize what an RoP can do for you, you need a little more force than you might need to take the city *if* you can figure out how many units they have defending the city, but you don't want too many units in one spot, since that takes units away from other spots. It doesn't seem hard to attack only with "overwhelming force" if you play carefully enough. But, to stack your units with "just overwhelming force" in multiple places,
Yes, but that's something one could figure out quite easily, can't we?
I don't know the potential gains of relocating. Moonsinger said of her game that she could have had 90k in her game actually, but she messed things up (I don't know how)... and I'm not even sure that wasn't just a way to motivate others to try and beat her game. EMan would probably have a better gauge on the potential gains or relocating than I would.
I have to rely on theory. That tells me that every city, that uses all of it's tiles and is all happy - will get all the points for territory and all the points for happy people. That's 3 points per tile - regardless if it's a mountain or a cow an a grassland. If you pick another grassland instead of a mountain, that's 2 additional points.
Let's suppose that you've got a good feeling for sea locations and are already using most of the grasslands.
If you can gain, in avarage 3 FPT in - let's say - 100 cities by relocating with the help of a spreadsheet, that's 150 points per turn. *8 for Sid = 1200 Points. As you'll only profit by this for roughly 2/3 of the game, that's 800 points in the end. If it's more, it would be worth the effort. If it's less, it's not.
What do you think, EMan? How many cities did you relocate? What was the avarage gain in points?
Oh... and will we see you sumbit a game to the HoF of some sort, any sort here by you soon here Stoertebeker?
No. It's only the absolute highscore that thrills me. But I know myself - I'm not the guy who's patient enough to cycle through hundreds of cities every few turns - and also too forgetful. So maybe, if I find a nice map, I'll try, but you can be sure I'd abandon the game soon.
