My Deity Histo Attempt(s)

[killercane]

Ive decided to milk a game or two. Having never done so I ran some test runs, starting on Emperor and working up. Emp was a bit monotonous, and deity is relatively wide open on the HOF tables so Im going with deity.

Settings: huge of course, now continents (arch was very boring logistically, though much easier), max land, old wet and warm.

The civ: I tried the Maya, who werent too bad. The early supercharged Pyramids golden age where I shoot out two turn settlers from Chichen Itza is nice, but once expansion is over horsemen really couldnt get me to domination too quickly. Sumeria was average, but I decided I didnt need the scientific trait. Ive settled on the Iroquois to dominate my continent as quickly as possible (roughly by 1000 AD) before I turn to the next continent.

Games so far and benchmarks Ive developed: I have decided at least 20 cities by 1000 bc are necessary. Points wise, Im shooting for 1500 by 10 AD and 7000+ by 1000 AD. I had over 7500 in my second game, but that was using ROP rape, which destroyed my rep, and in the long run I found that really hurts. Starting wars on other continents, luxes, techs, all were hurt, making the ROP rape not really worth it.

Culture is killing me, even with raising and replacing. My own cities start flipping after a while, even with a captured ToA! Frustrating to no end. Also frustrating is my slow computer, which will make the last couple hundred turns long long long.

I'll post a start as soon as I find one. I dont really want to run mapfinder for this, as my comp is so slow and I usually just pick play new game anyway. Feel free to throw out some tips/discussion if you've tried a similar game.

 

[superslug]

Feel free to throw out some tips/discussion if you've tried a similar game.

The most successful HOF milk games have had four primary phases:

1) Expansion is the first order of business. You'll need Settler factories:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_settler_factory.shtml
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_deity_settlers.shtml
Keep in mind when reading those, that a C3C Ag civ can be a four turn Settler factory in Despotism with a single cow, a river and three bonus grasslands. This is the de facto start position for many HOF games, especially milk.

2) Combat. Before the introduction of Ag civs, China, Egypt and the Ottomans were quite popular for their UU as a continent sweeper. Since C3C, it's primarily been Horsemen->Leonardo's for cheap upgrade->Cavalry. I would highly recommend Artillery as well:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_Artillery_effective.shtml

3) Milking.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_maxscore.shtml

For overall milk game strategies, just dig through the pages of the HOF. Any threads by SirPleb and Moonsinger talking about milk runs are well worth reading every post. Even if the games were Civ or PTW, you'll pick up on stuff that's still valid. You may also want to download their game.sav's from the HOF tables and watch the replays.

Also note, I'm just hitting the milk-specific highlights.

 

[killercane]

Thanks Slug. I guess Ive read most of the stuff, but how do you balance worker builds with military builds? I put corrupt cities on workers, but it seems like I never have enough (between 100 and 150 by 1000 AD). I think I should have more than that right? Say a 2:1 ratio workers to cities?

 

[Svar]

killer,

I just looked at two Deity Huge games that I submitted as practice for my own Deity Huge milk game that has been sidetracked by the Quartermaster Challange. In the Domination game I had 228 workers at 1000 AD and in the Conquest game I had 238 at the same time. This was without the benefit of the Pyramids though. In my Huge Emperor milk game where I did have the Pyramids I had 453 workers by 1000 AD because the growth factor is twice as fast. All these games are with the Maya BTW so if you aren't using an industrial Civ you would need more.

I run a Monarchy government until the conquest phase of the game is over and in the Emperor game those 453 workers were free as I had more support than units. If you can get Pyramids you can have 400 workers by 1000 AD easy if you maximize your corrupt grassland cities with irrigation and railroads. I don't build military units in highly corrupt cities just workers unless I get 2 shields than I build settlers. Also don't waste citizens in highly corrupt cities, set them to scientists once you have enough to feed all the people.

Good luck with your game.

 

[killercane]

Svar,

Ah valuable info, very much appreciated. What kind of score are you looking at at 1000 AD? Ive found a map, and thankfully the neighboring egyptians have built the pyramids. Heres my 1000 BC screenie.

 

[Svar]

In the Conquest game I had 7015 with 43% of the land tiles. In the Domination game I had 7816 with 38% of the land tiles but in both cases I wasn't watching score very closely by that time. A big factor is the number of luxuries you have and I had 7 in the Domination game versus 6 in the Conquest game. Also the Conquest game was the first practice game so I learned a lot before I played the Domination game. When I finish my current fastest finish game (Large Monarch 100K) I plan to go back to my Deity attempt but have 3 or 4 more practice games to submit before I settle on the final milk game.

I have 13 saves at 10 AD including the two submitted games. I also have 33 1000 BC saves and another 15 4000 BC starts that are extremely promising which will probably yield the final Huge milk game. Many of the 33 1000 BC saves will not be played to 10 AD but about a third of them will. My average number of cities by 1000 BC is 22 with two that had 26 but will never be played past 1000 BC. All of these worlds are Pangaea because they are easier to play but don't yield as high a domination limit as Continents or Archipelago worlds.

 

[Sandman2003]

deity is relatively wide open on the HOF tables so Im going with deity.

I don't think deity is going to remain 'wide-open' that much longer, as I am trying to fumble my way through a huge deity milk as well, though I don't have Svar's devotion to so many initial starts. Once I start a game unless it really doesn't look good, I get emotionally attached and want to finish it even if I could have done better, or if there may be better maps out there just around the corner...

Good luck with your game!

 

[killercane]

Yeah I think Im going with this one for better or for worse. Good food, at least 4 luxes on my continent that Ive found, with ToA and Pyramids close by all sound good to me. Now I just need to get a couple hundred MWs built and run amuck.

 

[killercane]

While the milk game gets slowly played over the next month or two, I submitted one game this period to try and get a #1 spot for conquest.

I chose the Aztecs on a standard pangea 80% map, Monarch, 4 rivals (english, french, america, and arabs) and played in PTW for those 10 shield jags. I remembered to closely check preserve random seed and all the other settings this time. The goal was a conquest win by 1000 BC.

Several maps did not pan out; rivals were too far, jungle terrain hurt my advance, I went the wrong way initially with my army, etc. Finally I found a decent map and chose the civs to eliminate in the right order.

I went east and then north with my first 3 jags and found America quickly and eliminated them. I then founded Teotihuacan East of the capital as a troop and later worker factory. After wading through the jungle I found the French, and received some favorable RNG vs. their spears. I reduced them to one city and left them alone for a while.

The English were looking like a tough challenge. They were the farthest civ away, had built several spears, I didnt know where their core was, and they had popped a city or two from goody huts (I dont know why I left those on). In my first war with them I destroyed a popped city far from their homeland, another a bit closer, and they gave me a city for peace. I was able to then move my army closer to their newly found core, heal up a bit, and plan out a good attack. I left the city I got for peace wide open when I attacked and they ran a lot of units out of their capital to go after it. Because of this the second war with them lasted one turn. I wouldnt have been able to take them if they hadnt been dumb enough to move all those units out of the capital. The French and their one city was next as I swung my troops back down south.

I had found the very nearby arabs while at war with the english, and jags just werent doing the job anymore so I switched to building archers to send over there. Teotihuacan began building workers to add to a captured arab town so I could pop rush archers and get them out to the front quickly. They went down in 1175 leading to a win at 1150.

Final map:

 

[BlackBetsy]

The most successful HOF milk games have had four primary phases:

1) Expansion is the first order of business. You'll need Settler factories:

...
2) Combat. Before the introduction of Ag civs, China,
...
3) Milking.

Is the fourth phase super-milking? Is it sheer boredom?

 

[superslug]

Is the fourth phase super-milking? Is it sheer boredom?

Good catch, I'm not entirely sure what I was going to list as the fourth phase. Let me break it down further and see if it makes any sense (this being my usual list, I'm sure it varies by player):
Expand
Get out of despotism
Expand until I can't peacefully expand anymore
Prepare for war (get to Communism, railroads while building units to upgrade to Cavalry and Artillery)
War
Relocate cities
Irrigate the entire planet while building critical improvements as quickly as possible (Aqueducts, Marketplaces, Hospitals minimum)
And then maybe you die of boredom.

 

[Sandman2003]

Nice Monarchy conquest, Killercane. I was wondering if a boogaboo-esque strategy would work at this level and size. Guess I don't have to worry anymore, just look for another slot...

 

[killercane]

I think PTW is a bit better for such a game with those cheap jags. I tried the PTW iroquois as well and tried to pop all the huts to HBR quickly but it didnt work as well on standard. Maybe on large it would be better? No civ you meet would stand up to ten horses on monarch.

 

[killercane]

I started two games for fun, the first a Sid archipelago with the Dutch on standard, and the second a huge demigod continental game with the iro.

In the Sid game I pulled off a republic slingshot at 1400 BC when CoL was researched before philo by the Babylonians. That allowed me to stay at tech parity til the babs got mono as their free tech. I'm medieval but no iron to be easily connected for my UU. I share my continent with the Zulus, and put everyone at war w/ Babylon so we'll see how this turns out. I'm going to experiment with no Great Library.

The demi game was just started and I had decent expansion but no horses in my territory @ 1000 BC. I might milk this one for practice.

 

[killercane]

Well my windows crashed a couple of weeks ago, so I lost all my saves including GOTM 43, so I went back to the drawing board and found a new milk map after going through a bunch of starts (no mapfinder). This one was great and allowed me to expand all the way until 10 AD and had 4 (count em, 4!) luxes. My QSC kind of sucked because I sent several settlers long to get said luxuries; I only had 15 cities at 1000 BC but 9 settlers en route to somewhere.

The opponents were:

Germany, Babs, Russia, Byz, Ottomans, Arabia, Russia, and Korea.

Basically until 10 AD I built nothing but workers and settlers and warriors when my settler factories would get out of whack. I had a score of 2107 and 81 cities at the time. My military consisted of 84 workers, 8 settlers, 6 warriors, and 3 curraghs.

Around 500 AD I was building up forces to go take on the Babylonians, who were on an island to my south. The only problem being they jumped the gun and attacked ME taking two cities before I could get everyone down there. They were pretty weak overall, I landed 20 muskets to weed out their bowmen and such (they had no iron), built a city on their horses and started my golden age. This gave me Military tradition in 5 turns rather than 8 or so. Once I had cavalry, the Babs were nearly done, and their 5 dyes were mine. The last bab city was located on the edge of Russian territory, and my allies the russians took 20 bloody turns to destroy it. WW was killing me at that time, and I had sent a galleon of cavs down there finally to end them myself.

Next up were the Koreans, owners of the chokepoint to the other civs. They declared on me around 800, and sans saltpeter they were quickly dealt with, giving me access to the rest of the victims. But lo and behold the Byz snuck in and took my spice city with a sneak attack through Russian territory so I allied the world against them. I wanted to wait and attack arabia when my alliance ran out but hey Im going for a better score here and their troops are on the other side of the world. From 930 til 1000 I laid waste to the majority of Arab territory and captured Bachs. Another update soon. The score at 1000 AD is 7716. The dom limit is only 4117 I found out but still I hope it will yield a pretty decent milk.

Heres the 1000 AD minimap:

 

[killercane]

Well despite feverish playing theres no chance I'll make the update. The milking portion takes longer than I expected.

 

[killercane]

Well I have all 8 luxes connected and am at about 60 something % land. Im adding citizens at about 70/turn. The only world power left is the Russians, who lack tanks, and could really be taken out in 10-15 turns despite what my silly military advisor says.

The question is, should I keep buying markets and other improvements or head full steam ahead through miniaturization to genetics and longevity? I have a SGL ready and willing to rush longevity. Full out research will probably take 7 turns for mini and about that for genetics without putting out a bunch of scientists. Theres probably no chance that the other civs will research either for me in a reasonable time.

 

[superslug]

If you go for Longevity just remember to abandon it once your cities are capped.

 

[Denniz]

If you go for Longevity just remember to abandon it once your cities are capped.

Are you talking about minimizing MM or something else?

 

[superslug]

Longevity can boost your score by increasing the speed at which your cities grow, but once they hit they're caps, keeping Longevity hurts your score.

It's counterintuitive, so came as a shock to me, but SirPleb did very convincing math. Now that search is up, I might look it up again sometime. The post is here in the HOF forum in one of my threads.