Have you played it on the most resent patch? I have tried this three times and the Chinese always beat me by maybe 10-15 turns. They gun strait for mathematics.
New challenge: earliest possible UHVs
- Thread starter blizzrd
- Start date
Have you played it on the most resent patch? I have tried this three times and the Chinese always beat me by maybe 10-15 turns. They gun strait for mathematics.
Well I just failed beating a previous quickest UHV. I tried to beat your Greece 20 C.E. victory Blizzrd. I basically used your strategy, in fact I was depending on getting at least one or two free techs from the large amount of huts at the Greeks disposal. Even though I did in fact get two free techs, I was only able to achieve the UHV year 110 C.E. I am guessing this is due to poor improvements on my part, both plot improvements and buildings. I was wondering if you had any general advice for plot improvements? Obviously I do not want to you tell me what you did Verbatim, but some advice would be greatly appreciated.
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blizzrd
Micromanager
Cottages on the floodplains around Egypt and Babylon. This one is a fairly obvious way to improve your commerce and therefore your rate of research. Also build a Winery on the island of Crete.
Mine the copper in Egypt and at least some of the hills around Chalcedon and Babylon. This will give you more
to turn into 
once your cities switch to building Research. Prior to getting some extra happiness resources online (after Calendar), i.e. when Babylon's growth is restricted by happiness, Mining the hills to the north of Babylon is very important to allow you to quickly build some of those wonders.
Raze independent (or Babylonian) Shush before Persia spawns to give Babylon access to more floodplains tiles.
EDIT: To cirvumnavigate, you don't have to connect the visible squares as you have done in your screenshot. You just have to have explored at least one map tile in every longtitudinal column on the map. To connect with the uber-Caravel (with Great General attached) which heads east from New Zealand, sailing straight across from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean would be faster than going down and around the east coast of South America as you did. You'll meet the Mayans this way, and if you're especially lucky they will have both built a canal city for you and be willing to grant you Open Borders. Gift them a lot of stuff and they should Open Borders.
BurnEmDown
Emperor
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Zagoroth, I ran a couple of test games, the Chinese get Math too soon indeed. They seem to get it at turn 60 and I could only manage to pop my GS at turn 61. Also I lost Buddhaism to the Greeks in both runs by 6-7 turns.
Lucky me I got the UHV before the update
.
Lucky me I got the UHV before the update
.Zagoroth, I ran a couple of test games, the Chinese get Math too soon indeed. They seem to get it at turn 60 and I could only manage to pop my GS at turn 61. Also I lost Buddhaism to the Greeks in both runs by 6-7 turns.
Lucky me I got the UHV before the update
I think the best chance the player has now, short of hoping the AI will not research their techs, is to get Meditation, followed by Priesthood, and try to get a Great Prophet to bulb Monotheism. Even though it is a waste of a good Prophet, it will get rid of the hard technologies. The only issue after that would be to somehow come up with enough Great Prophets for Divine Right.
Blizzrd, I was able to improve your time by two turns by getting both Aesthetics and Monarchy from huts. So technically, you might have played a better game than I did since researching or bulbing those techs would have taken time, or Great People. Anyway, just so everybody knows, I used Blizzrd's strategy that he has posted up here on pages six and nine of this thread. So it is up to you Blizzrd if you will post my time. Well I guess it is always up to you, but you know what I mean. Initially when I was playing this, try two for the earliest UHV, I had completely forgotten about getting a Great General for the trireme. So when I started the Caravel circumnavigation I won by 5 C.E. I repeated this a few tims before I realized I needed to extra movement from upgrades provided by the Great General. So I tried again this time bringing a Great General along for the ride to New Zealand.
The only other differences between my game and Blizzrd's was that I used two Great Scientists, one from the free scientists in Athens due to the Great Library, and one from Babylon, due to two scientists from regular library, to bulb Optics. Thus on the same turn I research Guilds, I also researched Optics.
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It is still possible to win with the Chinese religions + Christianity. Although, to achieve it, I had to reload a few times, because competing with the Chinese is a matter of one or two turns.
I settled Lahore NE of the marble and started building Stonehenge right away, while I sent my warrior to Europe to get huts and eventually meet Greece, Rome and Carthage. I went for Writing with Meditation and Priesthood. The tricky part was to balance production to finish Stonehenge as soon as possible and growth to hire the most scientists possible after. The Chinese decided to found Confucianism on turn 56, but I found out that they got there only on turn 58 if I declared war on them (though it cost me a scout
). Starving Lahore to death by forcing everyone as scholars, I got a GS and bulbed Math on turn 57. After that I discovered Masonry, Poly, Mono, Fishing and Sailing (and some others), by myself or by trade with the Mediterranean. I built a worker to quarry the marble then built the Oracle, which got me Calendar one turn before the Chinese (again). Then I researched Theology and bulbed half of it with a GP I got from my numerous temples.
Meanwhile I founded Dilli, got the iron to defend against those Barb elephants and quickly settled all the subcontinent so that my cities have time to grow. Serfdom helped to work the land faster as I didn't need castes anymore. I think I somehow avoided every plague
. By 990 I beat the Chinese for the population and didn't stop growing.Attachments
blizzrd
Micromanager
It is still possible to win with the Chinese religions + Christianity. Although, to achieve it, I had to reload a few times, because competing with the Chinese is a matter of one or two turns.
I settled Lahore NE of the marble and started building Stonehenge right away, while I sent my warrior to Europe to get huts and eventually meet Greece, Rome and Carthage. I went for Writing with Meditation and Priesthood. The tricky part was to balance production to finish Stonehenge as soon as possible and growth to hire the most scientists possible after. The Chinese decided to found Confucianism on turn 56, but I found out that they got there only on turn 58 if I declared war on them (though it cost me a scout
After that I discovered Masonry, Poly, Mono, Fishing and Sailing (and some others), by myself or by trade with the Mediterranean. I built a worker to quarry the marble then built the Oracle, which got me Calendar one turn before the Chinese (again). Then I researched Theology and bulbed half of it with a GP I got from my numerous temples.
Meanwhile I founded Dilli, got the iron to defend against those Barb elephants and quickly settled all the subcontinent so that my cities have time to grow. Serfdom helped to work the land faster as I didn't need castes anymore. I think I somehow avoided every plague
Is this with 1.184 or 1.185?
Just finished the Indian UHV again. Steb, your strategy for the beginning of the game is definitely superior. It allows the player to focus on their population for at least thirty extra turns, possibly forty, since Islam is not needed. As you can probably guess I used this strategy. However there are a couple of differences. For one I captured Pagan in my game, which can grow very well once the bananas are improved and a harbor is built. This is very easy extra population. If I had remembered about Hanoi's spawn I would have captured that as well. Also instead of building a city on the Eastern shore of India, I built one North West of the cow in South India. I can not tell if you did this as well though. I was considering conquering Persian land, for some reason there was an abnormally large amount of barbarians going unheeded in Persian territory. However the Arabs would have been a real threat, and I would have risked being destroyed just for a few extra low population cities.
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PiMan
Deity
Do you have an autosave you could look at?
blizzrd
Micromanager
Spoiler :
Spoiler :
Same general strategy as before, but this time I also took on Rome. Capture Rome, and razed their other cities as my economy (even with a Great Merchant to Delhi for 1100g) couldn't keep at 100% science with any more than 5 cities.
Popped a range of fairly unhelpful techs from goody huts this time: Archery, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and much later Currency. None of this particularly sped up my UHV though. Missed Taoism this time but instaed I managed to get the Hanging Gardens (and Mausolleum of course) before China.
That high score is certainly my best UHV Greek score.
I am going to be obsessing over how to beat your Greek UHV now Blizzrd...
Anyways I just completed a Roman VV of 55 B.C.E. I restarted the game a few times because there is one start up scenario which is the perfect setup for the Roman game. This is that Greece decided to build a city on the Italian Peninsula. With this set up you will one, get all three Italian cities with using only one settler, two get extra praetorians and archers due to Greece declaring war on you, and three steal workers that were improving the Greek city's land. Basically on turn three you have Medialonum, Rome, for me I had Paestum North of the sheep, and eight Praetorians to conquer the Greeks, Babylonians, and Carthaginians.
I started off immediately by researching Mathematics, followed by Construction, followed by Monarchy. After that I could not, or need, to research any more techs for the UHV. I also traded for some basic techs such as agriculture.
For the buildings I immediately constructed barracks in my five best cities. These should be the three Italian cities, Athens, and Babylon. After that I had enough time to get in a few harbors and the Moai Statues in Rome before building aqueducts in the same cities. Then I constructed amphithiaters in all those cities, minus Rome who was building the Great Wall, plus Hattusas which is a remarkably good city.
I conquered Greece first as Athens is past one population. Carthage I came after right after Babylon. Since by that time Carthage's two cities, Carthago and Hippo Regius, had reached sizes three and two respectively. Thus I did not have to build any African cities either. The three French cities I decided to let the Celts build. Sadly they oly got around to building two by the time my other UHV requirement was almost done so I quickly whipped out a settler from Carthago to build in a really bad France spot. The two initial settlers that I started off with, who I did not need to use, stayed in Spain until I settled them at the last possible moment. The same is true for Britannia I settled a last minute Londinium between the two cows on the South coast.
As of now I am just going to try and build as many wonders in my Italian cities and Athens. Note: I did not research Calendar yet. I gave it to myself so I could show the date and the VV in one screen shot. I am going to take it away when I play for the UHV.
Anyways I just completed a Roman VV of 55 B.C.E. I restarted the game a few times because there is one start up scenario which is the perfect setup for the Roman game. This is that Greece decided to build a city on the Italian Peninsula. With this set up you will one, get all three Italian cities with using only one settler, two get extra praetorians and archers due to Greece declaring war on you, and three steal workers that were improving the Greek city's land. Basically on turn three you have Medialonum, Rome, for me I had Paestum North of the sheep, and eight Praetorians to conquer the Greeks, Babylonians, and Carthaginians.
I started off immediately by researching Mathematics, followed by Construction, followed by Monarchy. After that I could not, or need, to research any more techs for the UHV. I also traded for some basic techs such as agriculture.
For the buildings I immediately constructed barracks in my five best cities. These should be the three Italian cities, Athens, and Babylon. After that I had enough time to get in a few harbors and the Moai Statues in Rome before building aqueducts in the same cities. Then I constructed amphithiaters in all those cities, minus Rome who was building the Great Wall, plus Hattusas which is a remarkably good city.
I conquered Greece first as Athens is past one population. Carthage I came after right after Babylon. Since by that time Carthage's two cities, Carthago and Hippo Regius, had reached sizes three and two respectively. Thus I did not have to build any African cities either. The three French cities I decided to let the Celts build. Sadly they oly got around to building two by the time my other UHV requirement was almost done so I quickly whipped out a settler from Carthago to build in a really bad France spot. The two initial settlers that I started off with, who I did not need to use, stayed in Spain until I settled them at the last possible moment. The same is true for Britannia I settled a last minute Londinium between the two cows on the South coast.
As of now I am just going to try and build as many wonders in my Italian cities and Athens. Note: I did not research Calendar yet. I gave it to myself so I could show the date and the VV in one screen shot. I am going to take it away when I play for the UHV.
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Wessel V1
Emperor
Please take a look at the Whole Empire Challenge (it should be around page 7 in the subforum). People have tried and failed to complete the Roman Empire by 117 AD or even 450 AD since the very beginning of the mod. You'd be the first one to get it.
BurnEmDown
Emperor
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Still needs a conquered or vassal Egypt
BTW there is no need for a 3rd city in Italy, actually you don't need any cities in Italy for the UHV! Only 2 in Spain and Carthage, 3 in France, and 1 in Britain. BTW you know Inverness spawns before the UHV as well without any defenders at size 2 which makes it a good target for Rome, tho I don't know if it spawns in time for that VV.
BTW there is no need for a 3rd city in Italy, actually you don't need any cities in Italy for the UHV! Only 2 in Spain and Carthage, 3 in France, and 1 in Britain. BTW you know Inverness spawns before the UHV as well without any defenders at size 2 which makes it a good target for Rome, tho I don't know if it spawns in time for that VV.
ThurinEthir
Warlord
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- Dec 28, 2008
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Conquering Babylon? That's a new one. How was your economy before founding all those "useless" cities in Spain/France/England?
I managed to conquer Egypt and vassalize Babylon (and India too, somehow) once (and of course had my western empire intact), but it was way past 117 AD, and 450 AD too I'm pretty sure. And it was on Viceroy if I remember correctly.
Nicely done.
I managed to conquer Egypt and vassalize Babylon (and India too, somehow) once (and of course had my western empire intact), but it was way past 117 AD, and 450 AD too I'm pretty sure. And it was on Viceroy if I remember correctly.
Nicely done.
My economy was really good prior to extending my empire. I am pretty sure the easiest way to the VV is to construct all of your important UHV buildings in your five most productive cities. That is why I conquered Babylon. The Western European cities would only slow everything down. In fact the only thing I made with them were barrack's and Praetorians. I had about an army of twenty three when my European friends arrived...Conquering Babylon? That's a new one. How was your economy before founding all those "useless" cities in Spain/France/England?
I managed to conquer Egypt and vassalize Babylon (and India too, somehow) once (and of course had my western empire intact), but it was way past 117 AD, and 450 AD too I'm pretty sure. And it was on Viceroy if I remember correctly.
Nicely done.
BurnEmDown: Do not worry, Egypt was taken care of... First it vassalized shortly after the VV. Then it collapsed. When 1000 C.E. was rolling around the corner I decided to conquer as much land as possible, and I could not resist Egypt. Well, for some reason I thought I needed the Italian cities. I do not regret having the third city though, as it had pretty good production for the UHV.
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AnotherPacifist
Deity
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Nice job with Rome, although I thought the VV should be counted when the Great Wall was actually built (at least that's how I did mine) and when the buildings are actually shown to be done (not clear from your 55BC pic).
If there is a way to show I built the buildings please tell me. Also no barbarians were able to get inside my borders in the last three turns before the Great Wall. If I need to build the Great Wall then I will just whip it out on the turn before the VV, which I did not since there was no immediate barbarian threat.
