Planning and MapFinder
After analyzing my first finished Sid milk game for 90216 points I wasn't happy about the result. My strategy was a failure, and the map had much more potential. I came to conclusion that I wanted fast tech pace to reach the key techs ASAP. This key tech seemed to be Steam Power.
However, after my first new attempt I noticed that when I got Steam Power and started wars, the tech pace halted, and the attempt was a failure because I would have needed Hospitals earlier, and I couldn't research it fast enough. I had massive amount of workers, who could not do anything, as the land was improved already and I was drowning in unit support.
So, for the next attempt, I decided the key techs would be Sanitation and Replaceable Parts. I would wait for these before first war. Replaceable Parts is bad due to high defense unit Infantry, but faster workers, civil engineers and artillery counter that.
Initially, I had MapFinder running for over 4550 domination limit. Unfortunately these maps are rare, and many are totally unplayable. For example, you can be alone on an island.
I lowered the limit to 4500 and there were much more maps. One had plenty of food and rivers at the starting location, and it was the best start I had found for these runs. Domination limit was 4555 so it was actually over my initial 4550.
Expansion
With lots of cows I had very fast inital expansion phase. However, Babylonians were approaching fast from the north and south had a large jungle area. AI will attack early on this level despite Least Aggressive AI setting, so I had to do bribing to keep Babylonians always with positive attitude. This should prevent their early attack.
After setting up the resource disconnect trick, AI attitude is easy to keep good, so I wasn't worried anymore at that point. I used the resource disconnect trick always when I had something to gain from the AI. So, I quickly got thousands of spare gold.
I think the resource disconnect is easiest to do if you pillage roads to your capital, as you don't need to worry about Harbors and you can build them freely. But this is dependent also on the map, and early I had roads pillaged to my only Harbor city.
Also, I found Germans in the south after the jungle area, so I could ally Babylonians against them, which would make the game much easier. I planned to road the jungle to Germany, make Right of Passage with Babylonians and ally them against Germany. Babylon would throw all their troops to Germany and they would be both massacred, and I would have easy way to conquer both with railroads, artillery and calvalries.
Science
As I could get all techs for free using the resource disconnect trick, I didn't bother with research until milking phase. There was one exception to this, as I wanted Literature for fast research pace, and sometimes AI doesn't research it until very late. So, I started to research it myself just to be sure. However, in this game Babylonians managed to research it before me, and they were the absolute power house having most of the wonders.
Production
I wanted a very productive core to produce my army fast. With the spare gold (gained hundreds per turn from the AI using resource disconnect trick) I rushed the following buildings: Courthouse, Aqueduct, Marketplace. Later I rushed Factories.
Key for productive core is to have enough workers to improve the tiles, and join the workers to core towns to maximize the population ASAP. In this game I ended with 1500 manually controlled workers. I did all tile improvements and planted/chopped forests for shields on every tile before 1000 CE.
Pollution is a nuisance, and when I started playing Civ3, the global warming really kills the game if you have lots of Hospitals and Factories. I wasn't sure if this still was an issue, so I made a scenario file with Modern Age starting techs, gold, and nuclear weapons. I nuked a lot to start global warming and played until 3000 AD to test if it had any effect. Turned out that only forests were wiped in the newest C3C version, so I was ready to build those Factories, and Hospitals without fears.
From previous games I learned that I don't want to build a huge army until I am ready to use them, as it wastes lots of gold due to unit support with a small Republic empire.
Instead, the plan was to optimize the core for producing 30 shield horsemen and trebuchets, and use the Golden Age and mobilization to produce the army fast. Eventually this turned out to be over 25 cavalries per turn, and I stopped producing them after I got over 40 armies, over 300 cavalries, and over 100 artilleries.
With the first war against Germany I only attacked their incoming troops to fish for leaders. I also had a prebuild for Military Academy, as armies are the key to win wars fast. I rushed lots of armies with the spare gold.
Wars
I started the first war when I was ready, and the plan went as expected. I backstabbed Babylon when all their troops were fighting Germany, and those troops would be stuck in the jungle if they wanted to come back.
I pre-railroaded the Babylonian lands, and put troops to strategic positions to take as much as I could in the first turn. There were some cavalry counter attacks, but my production was huge due to strong core with factories, Golden Age running, and mobilization helping with production.
I calculated that with pre-railroaded AI lands, I could take almost all AIs in 20 turns before the RoPs expired. So I signed RoPs with everyone, and started railroading. With hundreds of workers this was very fast. I sent stacks of workers to AI lands to railroad path to all cities. Then stacked artilleries to be able to hit as many cities as possible and cavalries and cavalry armies to take as many cities possible in the first turn of RoP rape.
After Babylon and Germany, the next target was Russia. I signed MA with them against Greece so Russian troops started moving out. I repeated this with other AIs when it was possible.
The whole conquest phase took about 30 turns. This is very fast, but possible with railroads, RoP rapes and enough artilleries and cavalries.
My first plan was to keep at least 4 AIs alive for war happines, but the AIs had built metropolises and razing them would be a waste. I decided it is better for the score to keep the metropolises and eliminate the AI ASAP to minimize flips. So I ended with only 1 AI left. Those metropolises I razed as there would be too many flips.
Milking
Key for high score is reaching domination limit and maximizing population ASAP. For population, regular growth would be way too slow, so I ICS'd the home continent with Babylonian Pyramids. I calculated I would need thousands of workers to join to cities. I managed to produce about 50 workers per turn for tens of turns. This was achieved by planting and chopping all available tiles for free workers, and buying the rest with maximum tax gold.
However, it turned out that this wasn't enough. I coulnd't pump enough workers due to hard maximum city limit of 512. This was my greatest revelation in this game. I got quite depressed, and stopped playing for months.
When I resumed, I had a new crazy idea about gifting towns to the remaining AI. Idea was that I could squeeze out some extra sea squares by planting AI towns near those cities so their culture would eat out coast, tundra etc bad tiles.
I had some experiments how the culture works before implementing it as there was a risk about accidentally reaching domination limit. This was a bit tricky, and I have forgotten the rules, and unfortunately I didn't make notes.
Eventually it worked fine, but I underestimated how many troops those towns would build. I had to build a huge bomber and tank force to keep them down. This also meant the milking phase took much longer as I had to babysit AI troops.
After finishing the game I calculated the end score result, and was quite disappointed as it wasn't much better than Future Tech points. I can't remember the exact number, but this approach is not worth the time invested.
Future
With the things I have learned about my Huge Sid milking attempts I'm confident I can reach higher score. I am planning to play one more this type of a game.
In the end, the result is totally depending on the map. So I won't bother if I won't find a very high domination map with enough food at the starting location.
After analyzing my first finished Sid milk game for 90216 points I wasn't happy about the result. My strategy was a failure, and the map had much more potential. I came to conclusion that I wanted fast tech pace to reach the key techs ASAP. This key tech seemed to be Steam Power.
However, after my first new attempt I noticed that when I got Steam Power and started wars, the tech pace halted, and the attempt was a failure because I would have needed Hospitals earlier, and I couldn't research it fast enough. I had massive amount of workers, who could not do anything, as the land was improved already and I was drowning in unit support.
So, for the next attempt, I decided the key techs would be Sanitation and Replaceable Parts. I would wait for these before first war. Replaceable Parts is bad due to high defense unit Infantry, but faster workers, civil engineers and artillery counter that.
Initially, I had MapFinder running for over 4550 domination limit. Unfortunately these maps are rare, and many are totally unplayable. For example, you can be alone on an island.
I lowered the limit to 4500 and there were much more maps. One had plenty of food and rivers at the starting location, and it was the best start I had found for these runs. Domination limit was 4555 so it was actually over my initial 4550.
Expansion
With lots of cows I had very fast inital expansion phase. However, Babylonians were approaching fast from the north and south had a large jungle area. AI will attack early on this level despite Least Aggressive AI setting, so I had to do bribing to keep Babylonians always with positive attitude. This should prevent their early attack.
After setting up the resource disconnect trick, AI attitude is easy to keep good, so I wasn't worried anymore at that point. I used the resource disconnect trick always when I had something to gain from the AI. So, I quickly got thousands of spare gold.
I think the resource disconnect is easiest to do if you pillage roads to your capital, as you don't need to worry about Harbors and you can build them freely. But this is dependent also on the map, and early I had roads pillaged to my only Harbor city.
Also, I found Germans in the south after the jungle area, so I could ally Babylonians against them, which would make the game much easier. I planned to road the jungle to Germany, make Right of Passage with Babylonians and ally them against Germany. Babylon would throw all their troops to Germany and they would be both massacred, and I would have easy way to conquer both with railroads, artillery and calvalries.
Science
As I could get all techs for free using the resource disconnect trick, I didn't bother with research until milking phase. There was one exception to this, as I wanted Literature for fast research pace, and sometimes AI doesn't research it until very late. So, I started to research it myself just to be sure. However, in this game Babylonians managed to research it before me, and they were the absolute power house having most of the wonders.
Production
I wanted a very productive core to produce my army fast. With the spare gold (gained hundreds per turn from the AI using resource disconnect trick) I rushed the following buildings: Courthouse, Aqueduct, Marketplace. Later I rushed Factories.
Key for productive core is to have enough workers to improve the tiles, and join the workers to core towns to maximize the population ASAP. In this game I ended with 1500 manually controlled workers. I did all tile improvements and planted/chopped forests for shields on every tile before 1000 CE.
Pollution is a nuisance, and when I started playing Civ3, the global warming really kills the game if you have lots of Hospitals and Factories. I wasn't sure if this still was an issue, so I made a scenario file with Modern Age starting techs, gold, and nuclear weapons. I nuked a lot to start global warming and played until 3000 AD to test if it had any effect. Turned out that only forests were wiped in the newest C3C version, so I was ready to build those Factories, and Hospitals without fears.
From previous games I learned that I don't want to build a huge army until I am ready to use them, as it wastes lots of gold due to unit support with a small Republic empire.
Instead, the plan was to optimize the core for producing 30 shield horsemen and trebuchets, and use the Golden Age and mobilization to produce the army fast. Eventually this turned out to be over 25 cavalries per turn, and I stopped producing them after I got over 40 armies, over 300 cavalries, and over 100 artilleries.
With the first war against Germany I only attacked their incoming troops to fish for leaders. I also had a prebuild for Military Academy, as armies are the key to win wars fast. I rushed lots of armies with the spare gold.
Wars
I started the first war when I was ready, and the plan went as expected. I backstabbed Babylon when all their troops were fighting Germany, and those troops would be stuck in the jungle if they wanted to come back.
I pre-railroaded the Babylonian lands, and put troops to strategic positions to take as much as I could in the first turn. There were some cavalry counter attacks, but my production was huge due to strong core with factories, Golden Age running, and mobilization helping with production.
I calculated that with pre-railroaded AI lands, I could take almost all AIs in 20 turns before the RoPs expired. So I signed RoPs with everyone, and started railroading. With hundreds of workers this was very fast. I sent stacks of workers to AI lands to railroad path to all cities. Then stacked artilleries to be able to hit as many cities as possible and cavalries and cavalry armies to take as many cities possible in the first turn of RoP rape.
After Babylon and Germany, the next target was Russia. I signed MA with them against Greece so Russian troops started moving out. I repeated this with other AIs when it was possible.
The whole conquest phase took about 30 turns. This is very fast, but possible with railroads, RoP rapes and enough artilleries and cavalries.
My first plan was to keep at least 4 AIs alive for war happines, but the AIs had built metropolises and razing them would be a waste. I decided it is better for the score to keep the metropolises and eliminate the AI ASAP to minimize flips. So I ended with only 1 AI left. Those metropolises I razed as there would be too many flips.
Milking
Key for high score is reaching domination limit and maximizing population ASAP. For population, regular growth would be way too slow, so I ICS'd the home continent with Babylonian Pyramids. I calculated I would need thousands of workers to join to cities. I managed to produce about 50 workers per turn for tens of turns. This was achieved by planting and chopping all available tiles for free workers, and buying the rest with maximum tax gold.
However, it turned out that this wasn't enough. I coulnd't pump enough workers due to hard maximum city limit of 512. This was my greatest revelation in this game. I got quite depressed, and stopped playing for months.
When I resumed, I had a new crazy idea about gifting towns to the remaining AI. Idea was that I could squeeze out some extra sea squares by planting AI towns near those cities so their culture would eat out coast, tundra etc bad tiles.
I had some experiments how the culture works before implementing it as there was a risk about accidentally reaching domination limit. This was a bit tricky, and I have forgotten the rules, and unfortunately I didn't make notes.
Eventually it worked fine, but I underestimated how many troops those towns would build. I had to build a huge bomber and tank force to keep them down. This also meant the milking phase took much longer as I had to babysit AI troops.
After finishing the game I calculated the end score result, and was quite disappointed as it wasn't much better than Future Tech points. I can't remember the exact number, but this approach is not worth the time invested.
Future
With the things I have learned about my Huge Sid milking attempts I'm confident I can reach higher score. I am planning to play one more this type of a game.
In the end, the result is totally depending on the map. So I won't bother if I won't find a very high domination map with enough food at the starting location.
