Milking a Game

[Ansar]

Well, I wanted to start a milking game (not HOF or anything) but just to get a histographic victory with points. So, I had some questions:

• Should I use a 60% Pangaea map with Wet, Warm, 5 Billion settings?
• What about Barbarians? I prefer No Barbarians, but will Barbarians be better?
• Should it be a huge game to maximize score?
• I know I need 65% land, but should I have the 65% by the Industrial Age?
• Should I build wonders or just expand, expand, expand?
• I assume Maya is a easy, beginner civ for this?
• In the Middle Ages, there are two paths - Do I go the bottom path or the top path?
• Is there a lot of micromanaging included or is it mostly clicking Enter?

More questions may come up as I think of them, so...this may not be all of them.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

It kind of depends on what you want to do.

The easiest way is probably 60% pangea with a temperate/temperate/5B map. Wet and warm both add jungle to a map, and when you clear jungle, you always get grass underneath it - but clearing jungle is a pain. So if you don't care too much about maximizing score, I wouldn't do wet and warm.

On a low level, barbs are almost always good - chance at at free town, free techs. As maya, you get a chance at slaves, too!!!

huge games will take a while - if all you want is to practice, I wouldn't.

65% - when you get that will depend a lot on what level you are on. On cheiftain/warlord, you might well get to that by the middle of MA. On Deity or Sid, probably not.

Wonders: There are wonders you should build. Pyramids, for instance, are very helpful. HG is useful - Bach's and cure for cancer are good, too. On high levels, the GLib is helpful for survival. None of the others are all that much worth it. Beyond that, expand. Don't forget to build some military, though.

Maya is not only a good civ for a beginner, it is good for any milk run!! The highest scoring games are Maya

Micromanaging - if you never build a hospital, then there isn't a lot of micromanaging once you get rid of your opponents and are at the dom limit. Once you are at max pop/land, all you have to do is make sure that the AI properly subjugated and you don't win by culture. I've spent as much as the last 150 turns just hitting enter.

 

[Ansar]

It kind of depends on what you want to do.

I just plan on getting a Histographic win with a nice score (AFAIK, Milking is the only way to achieve this - plus, I wanna see what milking is like [you know, pressing enter for about 100 turns]).

The easiest way is probably 60% pangea with a temperate/temperate/5B map. Wet and warm both add jungle to a map, and when you clear jungle, you always get grass underneath it - but clearing jungle is a pain. So if you don't care too much about maximizing score, I wouldn't do wet and warm.

Temperate - Temperate - 5 Billion? Ok, being the Maya, Desert doesen't affect me.

On a low level, barbs are almost always good - chance at at free town, free techs. As maya, you get a chance at slaves, too!!!

I play at Emperor level. I think No Barbarians would be best...

huge games will take a while - if all you want is to practice, I wouldn't.

Ok, standard will do, then.

65% - when you get that will depend a lot on what level you are on. On cheiftain/warlord, you might well get to that by the middle of MA. On Deity or Sid, probably not.

I play Emperor, so probably by the end of the Industrial Age I'll have em' all.

Wonders: There are wonders you should build. Pyramids, for instance, are very helpful. HG is useful - Bach's and cure for cancer are good, too. On high levels, the GLib is helpful for survival. None of the others are all that much worth it. Beyond that, expand. Don't forget to build some military, though.

So it's not all about capturing the wonders? I should build some too?

Guess pre-builds are in order

Maya is not only a good civ for a beginner, it is good for any milk run!! The highest scoring games are Maya

Interesting. I thought the Iroquois would have the highest.

Micromanaging - if you never build a hospital, then there isn't a lot of micromanaging once you get rid of your opponents and are at the dom limit. Once you are at max pop/land, all you have to do is make sure that the AI properly subjugated and you don't win by culture. I've spent as much as the last 150 turns just hitting enter.

Nah. I'll stick with no hospitals.

While my Scientist cities are growing, each time they grow, do I have to reassing the citizens again? Also, in a size 12 city, how many scientists are there?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

ahh... on emperor I don't think I would build early wonders. You can beat the AI to it, but it's probably better to let them build it and go take it from them!!

Iroquois is another very good choice, and actually might be better for an emperor pangea game - the MW are a much better conquering UU than the spearthrower, and you should be able to keep most of the cities you conquer, too.

 

[Tone]

This is the thread that I wished I had read thoroughly before starting my Deity game. Well, to be more precise I had read it before but I wish that I had re-read it just before starting out.

Oh,and don't dismiss entering your game for the HOF. Some tables are not too full-it depends what you go for.

The only thing that I will add to AT's post is that it might be worth trying out a Huge map. With my game I went with Huge because I wanted to get used to the corruption level. And of course the bigger the map, the more land you can own so the bigger the final score.

 

[Bartleby]

Here's my €0.02:
1) You will get a higher score from an Archipelago map, because the Domination Limit is higher, but you have to invest more time and effort into one of these games. Warm/Wet/5 Bil is the setup of choice; lots of jungle means eventually more grasslands.
2) My personal pref. is no barbarians.
3) Score is largely determined by the number of tiles (and how many are worked by happy citizens) so yes, Huge map gives a bigger score, but takes longer
4) 66% land and pop. On Emp. Pangaea, I'd aim to be at 66% land somewhere between 1000 AD and 1200 AD, and a bit later on an Archipelago. Beware accidental domination! (not really a problem if you don't want to submit, but I'd encourage you to submit anything that charts)
5) Pyramids are really nice, if you get an SGL soon enough.
6) The Maya do have the highest scores. Any Agricultural civ has potential, though. Iroquois and Sumeria are next-best in terms of traits, imo.
7) On a Pangaea, I'd beeline Military Tradition. On an Archipelago, Astronomy.
8) You can micromanage if you like; in my Sumerian Chieftain game I micromanaged scientists to maintain 4-turn research on Future techs (must've added about 10 points to my score )

 

[ThinkTank]

I recently read SirPleb's original post (as linked by Tone) and this struck me:

citizens working on sea tiles count as happy citizens and produce food. But sea tiles do not count toward your territory score nor toward the domination limit.

(my emphasis)

Given this I'd expect the Dutch to do very well on archipelago maps, but they aren't in the HOF charts. Any ideas why not?

 

[Bartleby]

I plan on using the Dutch for a Deity Milkrun soon (largely because I like to be a bit different).

But for pure scoring potential, Seafaring doesn't really match Industrious. The extra boat movement isn't that useful because most archipelago maps will have short enough crossings that a non-Seafaring civ can expand at a similar rate. The extra commerce for coastal cities mostly goes to corruption.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

My first milk run was a Dutch chieftain game.

When I do a Sid run, I will try the dutch - in that case, it will be because the super pikes allow me to invade an opponent a lot earlier - and for some variety on the higher levels

doing a huge map does have another advantage - research rates are longer on larger maps, so the game plays considerably differently.

 

[Scratcher]

Originally posted by Tone

Oh,and don't dismiss entering your game for the HOF. Some tables are not too full-it depends what you go for.

I can second this statement. I have only ever submitted one Milk Run and this was on a standard map as I could not face the boredom of a Huge map. This submission was enough to get me a good score on the tables and my HoF ranking.

 

[Ansar]

How many cities should I build before going for Scientist Farms?

I was thinking 12 cities (Standard Map). Should they be CxxxC?

 

[Chamnix]

I'm no expert on milking, but from what I've learned, follow your normal game plan until you reach the domination limit.

Once you are in the milking phase, it's not about scientist farms, it's about food. On grassland, space your cities as wide as possible - a city center tile only yields 3 food, but a railroaded irrigated grass tile yields 4, so you want as few citites as possible while still working all tiles.

If you have to use hilly terrain for some of your tiles, plant cities on as many hills as possible even if it is CxC.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

On emperor, you will want a productive core. Once you get the "want to build the FP message, count the number of cities you have and double it - once you are past that, then you will start running into catastrophic corruption. Do build the FP, too.

I think you get the message at 10-12 cities and can get pretty decent production up till about 20, but I dont' remember exactly.

The reason science farms makes sense is that, especially once you get to rails, you will have a huge surplus of food, which means specialists. if you keep citysize to 12 or less, you wont' need entertainers.

On a smaller map, you can do this - on a huge map, I think you run out of cities (max of 512), if you space them close enough to keep them all 12 or less, so you might need to make some metros in your core.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

btw - sea tiles DO count towards your territory, but not towards the dom limit - this is one reason why arch maps are often better - more sea tiles that don't . .. .. .. . towards your dom limits. Also, fewer big lakes which tend to have a lot of 2 food tiles but no sea tiles.

I think SirPleb corrects his statement later in the thread, as well.

 

[Ansar]

btw - sea tiles DO count towards your territory, but not towards the dom limit - this is one reason why arch maps are often better - more sea tiles that don't . .. .. .. . towards your dom limits. Also, fewer big lakes which tend to have a lot of 2 food tiles but no sea tiles.

I think SirPleb corrects his statement later in the thread, as well.

I think I'll just stick to what F8 tells me (it tells you how much of the world you control.)

Remember, I'm not going for some killer game.

 

[Tone]

Remember, I'm not going for some killer game.

Ah, you say that now but just wait 'til you get hooked.

 

[Ansar]

Ah, you say that now but just wait 'til you get hooked.

On the rush of trying to get the highest score?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

88K by moonsinger...

Only took her 240 hours or so... so nice, she tried it twice

 

[Bartleby]

Use temporary towns during the conquest phase of the game; packing science farms tightly gives you more unit support and more research potential. When you get to the milking phase, rush settlers out of the temp. towns then abandon them. Obviously the settlers can be used for resettling or maxing out the populations in towns that have just build aquaducts and/or hospitals (On my last standard map milkrun [failed Gauntlet attempt ], I did build a lot of hospitals).

 

[rysingsun]

While my Scientist cities are growing, each time they grow, do I have to reassing the citizens again?

it depends, but i'll give you something to think about. while you are on the endgame milk phase ... you will want your cities growing at the max rate, at the same time keeping as many civil engineers in action as possible so that you can get aquaducts and hospitals done before you cap out in population. this can lead to you spending every single turn going through every one of your 511 cities to make sure your food surplus is the max possible without an overrun and then assigning the balance to engineers. then when city grows not only do you have to check where your citizens are working but typically you get to convert some engineer or other back to working the land for a turn or two. it all takes at least an hour per turn on a huge map. you have to do it for about 50 turns or so.

one advantage of the standard map is that you build no hospitals, so you peak out sooner and you have less need for the civil engineers too. you may cut the micromanaging in the milk phase in half.