Monarch HOF Try

[Svar]

Turns are really getting slow with all the micromanagement and planning for both the Zulu war and city placement for the milking stage.

I'm at 52% land occupation and there is more good land in this world than I can possibily use under the 66% domination limit so I'm getting very selective where I put permanent cities.

Since last update I finished Bach's Cathedral and hooked-up gems for my last luxury. I also started the war with the Zulu but on the second war turn Zulu cavalry showed up. That was a suprise as I thought that they still needed Military Tradition. I took their only horse resource on the first war turn and cut their iron on the second. Only the Indians have horses besides me and I'm allied with them along with the Spanish against the Zulu. The Zulu must have gotten Military Tradition on the turn just before the war turn and started or converted a number of cavalry. I'll just have to go slow until I eliminate the Zulu cavalry. They have tons of lessor units that I have been slaughtering in droves giving me multiple MGLs.

I rushed the Pentagon, a hospital, and a factory with them in the same city. That city will attempt to beat the Spanish and Indians to Shakespear's Theater. They have been building it for 2 or 3 turns but when the population 20 city finishes its factory next turn it will be producing 75 shields per turn and can build Shakespear's Theater in 6 turns. If there is any pollution it will take 7 turns because 6 times 75 is 450 exactly which is what is needed for Shakespear's Theater.

I'm building Smiths's Trading Co. (4 Turns) and Theory of Evolution (6 turns) as well but the Spanish and Indians can't build ToE because they are researching the first tier IA techs still. I'm reaserching Refining (5 turns) and will use ToE to get to Electronics and Hoover Dam.

The war with the Zulu will probably drag on until 1500 AD, my next big update, and I'm not sure who my next victim will be.

My projected 1500 AD score is now 6506. I can't remember what my exact large world try 1500 AD score was but it was between 3000 and 3100 so using the higher number for my ratio, I get a multiplier of 2.099. Using that multiplier against my large world final score would give me a new score of 29,235. I'm getting really excited about the potential of this game.

 

[Svar]

The war is going better than I thought. The Zulu will be down to 2 cities by the end of this turn, I have only lost about 5 cavalry but am still in the first level of war weariness due to spending the whole war inside Zulu territory. The Indians have a huge force of War Elephants taking Zulu cities and will take one of the two remaining Zulu cities.

I finished Smiths's Trading Co. and Theory of Evolution but lost to the Spanish on Shakespear's Theater. They switched the city building Smith's when I completed it. For some reason I thought that if a civ was building 2 wonders and one got completed by some other civ they just lost production on that wonder because they wouldn't switch to the city with the most completed shields. In Conquests they definately switch.

I'm building Hoover Dam (10 turns) and Universal Suffrage (8 turns). Spain and India are still researching their first level 1 IA tech. I have hospitals in almost all my core cities and factories in many of them. By 1500 AD almost all of my core cities will have factories and many of them will also have stock markets. I haven't been building very many military units because I haven't really needed them. The main force is about 115 cavalry, 80 infantry, and 40 artillery. By 1500 AD most of the core cities will be building military units, mostly infantry and artillery. I'm researching Steel (4 turns) so am only 16 to 20 turns away from tanks.

My next victim will be either Portugal or Rome only to get the Indians back beyond a very convenient choke point behind which reside the Indians, Romans, and Portuguese. There are odd cities on my side of the choke point but if I get a war started on the other side I should be able limit the fighting to that side. If I control the choke point I should be able to decimate the horde of Indian War Elephants with artillery and cavalry without the need for tanks. The timing may be such that I will have tanks before I can engineer all that anyway.

My next serious target will be the Indians followed by the Spanish. The Romans and Portuguese are hopelessly behind and the Mongol settler just made landfall in former Zulu land.

My score is 6138 and I control 60% of the land tiles. Playing will get real slow as I decide which enemy cities to keep and which to raze. I have already razed a couple of very marginal Zulu cities. It is possible that when all the empty space in former Zulu land fills in I could be over the 66% domination limit.

 

[Svar]

This will be a brief summary of my 1500 AD position as I will do a complete update with screenshots tomorrow when I have a day off and I can post from home where all the screenshots actually reside.

My score is 6629 and is increasing by 87 points per turn. When I was making projections from my large world try I was beginning to think they may be very optimistic based on Darkness's recent Monarch completion. He was much further advanced than I was at comparable time marks. However given the recent acceleration in score increase it might not be that far off. There are 250 turns left and 87 times 250 yields 21,750 which added to 6629 gives 28,379. I'm 63 tiles from the domination limit but only my core cities are over population 12 and most of them have all mined tiles to work. There is still much improvement to go to finish this world and I still don't know where the upper limit of score per turn increase is.

My war with Portugal to draw the Indians back accross the choke point was a bust. The Indians eliminated the Portuguese in about 3 turns. I have declared war on the Romans and enlisted the Indians help. Hopefully the Romans can last longer than the Portuguese and most of the Indian army will make it past the choke point. There will be lots of interesting screenshots to illustrate this. Some of them will actually be after 1500 AD but will be a distant memory before the 1750 AD update.

 

[Svar]

This update will cover the important events from 1000 AD to 1500 AD.

In 1090 AD the first Hittite war was ended because of war weariness leaving the Hittites with 11 cities.

In 1170 AD the first Mongol war was started with the Zulu as allies. In 1260 AD the Zulu made a seperate peace with the Mongols. I followed suit the same turn leaving the Mongols with 12 cities. Again it was war weariness that prompted me to halt the advance.

In 1295 AD the second Hittite war was started where 7 cities fell the first turn. In 1315 AD the hittites were eliminated .

In 1365 AD the second Mongol war was started and 9 cities were captured the first turn. By 1380 AD the last Mongol city fell and the Mongols were left with a wandering settler.

By this time I was just becomming aware how lucky I had been with strategic resources. Except for horses I had only one of the important ones and never had any exhausted.

In 1425 AD the Zulu war was started with India and Spain as allies. This war went faster than I anticipated and the Indians showed up with more force than I thought. Clearly something was going to have to be done about the Indians. In 1475 AD the Zulu were eliminated by the Indians. With all that Indian force on my side of a very convenient choke-point I decided to start a war with the Portuguese in 1485 AD just to force the Indians back to their side. The Indians made short work of the Portuguese . OK, I tried this again with the Romans in 1500 AD with this result. I was hoping this choke-point would slow down the Indians to at least move most of their forces past this ambush.

At the 1500 AD save my main force consisted of 113 cavalry, 97 infantry, and 41 artillery with 6 armies fielded. I had 64% of the available land and was razing cities rather than capturing them unless they were on prime land. My land was being improved by 345 workers and 145 slaves. There are lots of temporary cities building workers and many of them have been added to core cities to work all available tiles. Some of the temporary cities in the core area have been removed. Below is the screenshot of the 1500 AD save.

Finally I have included this screen shot to illustrate one of the many advantages of C3C over earlier versions of this game. Here a republic is paying 178 GPT upkeep for 718 military units for a savings of 540 GPT versus the earlier versions.

 

[Svar]

By 1750 AD only 1 Mongol city still exists. It is on a remote stretch of tundra and surrounded by Mayan MI. My score is 11491 and increasing by 101 PPT. I'm suprised that it is above 100 since it hit the century mark and started to retreat before I got Longevity. It turned around when it got down to 96 and has been climbing slowly ever since. All the core cities have had the mines removed and are growing so that is why the PPT is increasing again. That wont last very much longer though. I still have work to do in repositioning cities but the turns are going much faster now.

 

[Svar]

Following the Roman war, I waited until the bulk of the Indian forces went north of the fortified choke point. However the turn just before the war started Lisbon flipped to my side. I didn't want any cities north of the fortified line but here is the situation at the start of the war. The war was over in 1625 AD and this is the same area at that time. I guess I'm a neat freak.

In 1660 AD the final war with the Spanish started. I used bombers to bomb the Spanish garrison to oblivion . Then used cavalry armies to deep peneration capture of Spanish cities. Finally Javelin Throwers were used for mop up. This was a redlined longbowman. The Spanish war only lasted 2 turns.

This a look at the world in 1750 AD

My remaining updates will be rather brief since all there is left to do is city repositioning.

 

[Svar]

My score stands at 12,906 and is rising between 100-102 points per turn depending on how close I am the 3724 domination limit and how many happy citizens are working the land. I'm moving about 1/3 of my old permanent cities and it is going slower that I thought.

 

[A_Turkish_Guy]

try harder man.try to finish taking world before 1350 AD

 

[Svar]

I finally reached 1850 AD.

It has been slow going because I have been moving population from the mass of cities south of this screenshot to the more productive areas to the east. Hopefully by 1950 AD I'll be finished. I develop cities and have them all ready to expand before I abandon any old areas. The screenshot below shows a city ready to expand so I'll have to make room for it in the territory domination limit.

Then all I have to do is drop in population up to the food carryng capability of the city.

My score is 16424 and increasing by 94 points per turn. It peaked at 102 during this reporting update and has been slowly falling ever since. Hopefully it wont drop very much further once I finish the city repositioning. The population density in the area being abandoned isn't as high as the stable areas.

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by A_Turkish_Guy
try harder man.try to finish taking world before 1350 AD

I'm not trying for the quickest victory, I,m trying for the highest score and that is best accomplished by milking out to 2050 AD. My final score should be somewhere between 24,000 and 30,000.

Had I ended the game in 1750 AD my Firaxis final score would have been 12,691 while an end in 1850 AD would have given me a Firaxis final score of 17,224. At the rate that the score is increasing I get a much higher score by waiting.

 

[fret]

Originally posted by Svar


I'm not trying for the quickest victory, I,m trying for the highest score and that is best accomplished by milking out to 2050 AD.

Cant speak for him, but I think what Turkish guy meant was to be entering the Milking phase by 1350AD, i.e. have reached the domination limit by then and have eliminated all the AI except for the locked-down city.

 

[Svar]

Originally posted by fret

Cant speak for him, but I think what Turkish guy meant was to be entering the Milking phase by 1350AD, i.e. have reached the domination limit by then and have eliminated all the AI except for the locked-down city.

In that case I'm way behind. In Darkness's Monarch 33K game he was at the domination limit by about 1100 AD with all his cities already repositioned. I hope to get all my cities repositioned by 1950 AD.

My next game will be much quicker than this one. I make multiple mistakes in this one including not setting up a second settler factory. There was an early city that had 2 cows in its borders but I never took advantage of it.

My early wars were poorly executed as well and had to be stopped due to WW. This game was a valuable learning experience. Two or three more of these and I might be in a position to challange one of the difficulty levels for first place.

 

[fret]

Originally posted by Svar

My early wars were poorly executed as well and had to be stopped due to WW.

This is exactly the reason why I stick with Monarchy and give Republic a miss.

I make a beeline or Monarchy, get it ASAP and then war war war until ive either cleaned up the map, or almost cleaned up the map, then switch to Democracy when the last few wars a short and swift. Sure I lose out on quite a lot of gold, less effective workers, etc etc, but I find it worth it because in HoF games I feel once youve started warring, you shouldnt stop until everthing but the last city is dead.

I'm of the thinking that much of the benefit gained from Republic will be wiped out when playing an all-out warmonger strat due to the WW. Although I'm sure there are many here who will disagree with me. Monarchy is certainly a more stress free government for 1000 year long wars.

 

[superslug]

Agreed! SirPleb, Moonsinger and Darkness (just to name a few) are players that seem (correct me if I'm wrong!) to be able to start and finish wars fast enough where war weariness isn't an issue for them.

For the rest of us, I think Monarchy is an excellent way to go. I guess part of my personal problem is that I don't wait until I have enough units to kill an AI to declare war. I usually go at them as soon as I hit Military Tradition...

 

[Svar]

I was attacked in this game long before I got MT so I had no choice but prior planning in the early wars is still one of my weak points. Maybe I will look at getting Monarchy and fighting all my early wars under that government. In my large world Monarch try I did that but stayed in Monarchy too long.

 

[A_Turkish_Guy]

Originally posted by superslug
Agreed! SirPleb, Moonsinger and Darkness (just to name a few) are players that seem (correct me if I'm wrong!) to be able to start and finish wars fast enough where war weariness isn't an issue for them.

For the rest of us, I think Monarchy is an excellent way to go. I guess part of my personal problem is that I don't wait until I have enough units to kill an AI to declare war. I usually go at them as soon as I hit Military Tradition...

i was thinking like that using monarchy is the best way for war.i used to do that but once i try without monarchy i saw that the money you get is enough for luxury.(i am not talking about big cities.all of my cities are below 12.and few of them is 12.this will not work for Svar, because he is too too late to get the whole world and his cities developed.you must use this before building hospital. i use place jump ofcourse.
i am now playing a game emperor level and year is 1040AD.idiscover railroad 5 turns ago and i use it to destroy the AI in a few turns.(maximum 5 Turns).while attacking i use luxury for balance.i get no money but it is not important.and if i dont use that my point per turn drops 85 to 61 .it is a big loss.
i suggest that if you are fast enough to get the world before 1250 it is not usefull to use monarchy.
and i think it is waste of time building except market ,aquad., hospital and mass transit.Svar builds everything.and it takes too much time

 

[Svar]

A_Turkish_Guy:

I use 20 tile city placement because I get 3.90 points per tile in railed irrigated grassland. If I drop down to 6 tile city placement which would support 11 citizens and not require hospitals, mass transit, or buildings to reduce unhappiness, I would only get 3.67 points per tile. At 3700 tiles for the domination limit that difference would equal 851 points per turn.

I only use that spacing at the end anyway. Most of the time there are many more cities since that spacing only works after hospitals are discovered. You just need to plan on a 20 tile city spacing so only those cities are fully developed during the expanding and conquest phases of the game.

 

[Darkness]

Superslug has mentioned me as one of the people who are capable of going to war while being a democracy or a republic and not having a problem with WW. This is correct, but there are some conditions to this (most have already been mentioned):

- I need to have researched MT, 'cause I can't (effectively) pull this off without cavalry. 2 move units simply take too long in democracy, where WW kicks in earlier. When I'm a republic knights will also do for the smaller AI's.

- I need to have Steam Power (and coal), to make RR to the front for faster advance towards the AI cities. I just conquer one city and then use my workers to follow the AI's pre-existing roads to his cultural borders, while building RR with stacks of workers in one turn.

- I need loads of workers (less if I'm an industrious civ), for the RR tasks.

- I also need a stong, fast army, which's size varies based on difficulty level.


If I can get this (and I can in most games), WW won't be a problem. I've actually never even researched monarchy in a HoF game....

 

[A_Turkish_Guy]

Svar,
maybe you are right!! i dont know about that scoring about per tile but you are making a mistake.if you use 20 tile city placement , your cities grow very slowly(maybe you rush workers but i dont think you have enough workers).you will reach maximum population limit very late.
there is a picture and there is a city Chicken Itza.ýf i play that game i place 4 more cities around it(maybe you destroy these cities i dont know.).they will grow faster and my scor per turn is much more better and better.
you say you will lose 800 points for not using 20 tile city placement .my opion is if your cities grow faster than this your point is much better.and you just need 4 point per turn to get 800 points.(1750-2050)if you this earlier that will be more. try it once and you will compare game for scores.


i agree Darkness.

 

[Svar]

A_Turkish_Guy,
You are right about early city placement and that was another of my mistakes in this game. The early city placement was twice the density of the later city placement but it needs to be at least three times as dense. In my next game I plan to have at least twice as many temporary cities as permanent cities. If there is still more food capacity I will increase the number of temporary cities even more.

In the early game most grassland tiles are mined for the shields and later irrigated when I don't need the production. That is most effective in the core area. In the unproductive areas my city density can easily be 3 temporary cities for every permanant city.

Only after hospitals will I increase the population of the permanent cities and remove the temporary cities only when the permanent city can no longer grow.

I'm still learning, this is only my second HOF try and my first on a huge map.