Noble Marathon Space Attempt

[pigswill]

CarpoolKaraoke, Darius starts with scout not warrior or that would be a (cheap but cheerful) trick. Not sure I could build a warrior and move it before AI has time to build theirs. edit. Bit more thought: if AI goes warrior>worker then I'd probably have time to build and move 4 warriors before the AI completed their worker and declare the turn I saw the worker. I'd lose 2-3 warriors but get a city and a worker. On the other hand if they go warrior>warrior I'm screwed.

Anysense: Is that T100 on normal or marathon speed? You only get 6gpt/citizen while starving your cities and that's not sustainable. Scientists are +6bpt/-2fpt (food per turn) and I'm not sure how you get round that. Starving your cities means that you spent turns beforehand growing them working food tiles and not producing much commerce.

Quactus. Thanks for the link, informative indeed. I wondered why it took so long to generate GGs. I suspect that the author may have overlooked the implications of cheaper workers. If its cheaper to build you complete it sooner which means it gets to work sooner. For example you start farming corn 3 turns earlier you finish farming corn 3 turns earlier and get the benefits of the improved tile 3 turns earlier. You can build three workers on Marathon in the same calendar time (slightly less given earlier tile improvements) than it takes to build two workers on Normal. Essentially every Civ on Marathon gets half of the expansive trait for free. On top of that every worker on Marathon is a turbocharged Fast Worker racing from tile to tile (and city to city) in the blink of an eye.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

CarpoolKaraoke, Darius starts with scout not warrior or that would be a (cheap but cheerful) trick. Not sure I could build a warrior and move it before AI has time to build theirs. edit. Bit more thought: if AI goes warrior>worker then I'd probably have time to build and move 4 warriors before the AI completed their worker and declare the turn I saw the worker. I'd lose 2-3 warriors but get a city and a worker. On the other hand if they go warrior>warrior I'm screwed.
.

Well, the AI will maximize food, whereas you can work a 2 or possibly a 3 hammer. Since the warrior will take 30 hammers, this can give you a 10-15 turn window to take the city. Source: I tried it on your first save and razed Moscow.

 

[Anysense]

Anysense: Is that T100 on normal or marathon speed? You only get 6gpt/citizen while starving your cities and that's not sustainable. Scientists are +6bpt/-2fpt (food per turn) and I'm not sure how you get round that. Starving your cities means that you spent turns beforehand growing them working food tiles and not producing much commerce.

Marathon. I haven't played Normal for quite a while, forgot how it works.

You will have half of the bin after growing and that is a lot of food to burn. At size 10 there will be about 60. I would not mind to turn it into beakers at a 3/1 ratio.

Surely, you want to grow, there is nothing wrong with working food and food positive/neutral tiles most of the time. Balancing growth, expansion and research is not a trivial problem, though. But when nearing a pivotal point in the game, calculating whether growing 1 size more is better than maximizing research right now is simple enough.

 

[pigswill]

Let's park the theoretical discussions for a short while and play some turns. First rule after all is Play The Map and can't do that without a map. The scout I popped had movement on T0 so headed east then east again., Northern scout (maybe I should name them) headed north. Already slightly interesting. There's deer and fur north of a lake both of which could be worked with hunting (starting tech) but also tundra and ice so won't be expanding much in that direction. More rewarding is that to the east I have floodplains and gold (gleaming shiny gold).

I thought I would follow CK's suggestion of capturing an unprotected city early so started warrior, working plains forest to build it in 10 turns. Techwise it was a choice between mining (for gold) and AH for cows and discovering horses. Decided to go AH first (27 turns) because I'm building warrior before worker and I won't be improving anything until I have a worker ( no early worker stealing on noble) and of course I'd like to find horses ( the closer the better).

 

[pigswill]

A few more turns of exploration mainly southwards. Met Russian scout to the south T4 and English scout southwest also T4. Two turns later I met an English warrior (who must have popped the scout from a hut). T7 I found a hut, another scout . Where's the gold and free techs? T9 discover England itself.

Hmmm. Warrior completes next turn, nine turns to reach London T19. If Liz is working seafood her warrior completes T30 and that's fine, if she's working hilltop pig (see thumbnail) then that's warrior T15 and her exploring warrior is near my capital at the moment so potentially game over.

 

[pigswill]

The story continues.
T10 complete warrior, start worker, working FP for+1C, takes one turn off AH.
T15. Borders pop
T16 Cross border, we're at war .
T17. One tile from London, Undefended!

Spoiler :

IBT. London completes warrior .
T18 Attack at 3.5%. .Our warrior dies

Spoiler :

Well, that was unexpected. What now? At war, undefended capital, roaming English warrior and we've lost ten worker turns.

Obviously the one warrior rush is not a guaranteed strategem. Using a 3f tile for early growth ain't a bad plan; with +3 food, you grow in 22 turns with 22 hammers to warrior and at t23 you're working a second tile to complete warrior and speed up worker. However 3f tile must be in first ring because border doesn't pop for 15 turns, London didn't have a 3f tile and its possible that AIs value hammers more than commerce. Too late for this game but useful learning nonetheless. It would still work if you start with a warrior and can attack in the first fifteen (edit: actually ten) turns.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

A few more turns of exploration mainly southwards. Met Russian scout to the south T4 and English scout southwest also T4. Two turns later I met an English warrior (who must have popped the scout from a hut). T7 I found a hut, another scout . Where's the gold and free techs? T9 discover England itself.

Hmmm. Warrior completes next turn, nine turns to reach London T19. If Liz is working seafood her warrior completes T30 and that's fine, if she's working hilltop pig (see thumbnail) then that's warrior T15 and her exploring warrior is near my capital at the moment so potentially game over.

There's a first build bonus for the AI I think. Here's the WB visualization from the other Darius game.

Spoiler :

Arrival:

WB peek:

My guess is walking two tiles after DOW allowed adjustment for London.

 

[pigswill]

I've actually done a few quick tests and it does seem to be related to 3f first ring. With 3f in first ring AI completes warrior T19, with 2f1h in first ring AI completes warrior T10. In both cases that's faster than the player can manage it but there's a nine turn difference in build times between 3f and 2f1h. In the game you posted Moscow had a first ring 3f tile and 19 turns to build warrior.
You're right about the first build bonus, I would guess its 10-12 bonus hammers on noble which put my initial calculations out.
Looking at the current game if Liz had 10 bonus hammers, maybe 1h/t for 15 turns working clams until I declared for 25h, in the two turns after I declared she switched to a 2h tile for 3h/t and thus 31h ibt T17-18. If that's right then if you'd attacked Moscow one turn later it would have been defended. Tight margins.
As you said attacking from the diagonal of BFC means AI has one turn of war prep instead of two which was the difference between undefended and defended. With Liz it was impossible to do so as the diagonals were underwater.

edit: Tried this out on Earth 18 (noble marathon no city razing) playing as Louis. By T10 (3800bc) I 'd captured Rome T5 (T10 warrior) and Berlin T10 (T19? warrior). Going Berlin first would mean Rome had a warrior when you get there T10.

 

[pigswill]

I think I'll restart rather than start yet another game, its only 18 marathon turns, exploration and hut results may be slightly different but that's not huge (I did pop Mining while my warrior was on the way to London but that's not a huge deal). This time forget warrior shenanigans and just go for standard worker build.

 

[Anysense]

Regular Golden Ages are 8 turns on Normal and 16 turns on Marathon speed and thus scale very badly compared to other things.
If you have the MoM (which you should) then yes, you'll get 24 turns, but then you'd have to compare it with 12 on normal, which is the same unfavorable scale.

I used to think so, but now I know that they scale okay because Marathon games last about 2 twice as many turns as Normal ones. But yes, you've got a point - it is only so because several things shift the balance in favour of Marathon.

@pigswill, its fine to reaload for learning purposes. The alternative to embarking upon an adventure with a single warrior is to read up on the subject, do some analysis, work out your strategy, set up a test game (or games), correct you strategy if necessary. Repeat until you are sure you that you know what you are doing. Not everybody has the taste for it or has the time to commit.

 

[Gumbolt]

Hey Pigswill good to see you are still about.

So is the idea to abuse system with an early warrior to capture Ai cites? Bit hit and miss. Maybe better to just warrior rush? As warrior vs warrior often fails. You tend to need 3-1 for it to work. Main issue is AI will be super slow to any workers.

Main advantage of Noble is you tech much quicker. You can quickly reach techs like HBR and take out 2-3 AI quickly.You have much bigger windows to use the units. Plus Ai will be much slower to BW and IW. For warrior defences even chariot/early axes will work well. Just make sure you do build a worker or you will be waiting a long time to steal one.Do not rely on the AI to tech for you. You would need to feed them a lot of techs to help you reach space. Better just to expand super quick to 20+ cities and use currency and alphabet to sort out economy. Fail gold can also help.You need a lot of land for a late game hammer economy.

I think you need to pick a start and stick with it. Darius start looked food poor. There must be a starting formula on thsi game as I keep rolling starts with very little food resources at all.

Earth map Europe could be good. If you play China you can spam coastal cities and over run 3-4 AI. Just don't waste too much time on Japan. Europe allows you to roll over 4-5 AI pretty quickly with some decent land.

People would follow this more if you posted pictures.

 

[NothingBesideRemains]

I think picking a non-hunting civ just for the starting warrior alone probably nets you an extra 1-3 cities from the get-go; kind of blows the imp /early UU bonuses for Darius out of the water.

 

[pigswill]

Anysense: the idea for me is to learn, trying things out to discover they don't work either as well as I thought or in the way I thought they should is a useful learning technique. If I had the dedicated mind-set to research, analyse and run test-games I'd have been playing Deity years ago. I suspect I'm not alone in this particular deficit..

Gumbolt: its been a while. This particular idea was not solo warrior v warrior battles (coz the odds are really lousy) but warrior v unprotected city. As you said its hit and miss so not one I'll rely on in the future. You're right about pictures but I lost my photobucket account due to a few years of inactivity, I probably should find something else, ideally free and not too complex for a computer idiot like me.

Nothingbesideremains: starting with a warrior you have a good chance of finding and capturing an AI city before T10 (marathon). T10-T19 is a gamble. T20+ its suicide so 1 city is possible, 2 is unlikely, 3 is impossible.. Whether the snowball effect of a super-early second city would compensate for losing immortals and fin/org combination is debatable and would need some serious research and analysis.

 

[pigswill]

]

Spoiler :

Replayed up to T26 (3610bc) when AH came in. Mining is next tech (18 turns).

Started building worker using FP for the extra beaker, 30 turns, due in 4 turns 3550bc (compared to 3400bc standard speed).

Two scouts scouted the area, popped 2 huts for 128g and Archery (a singularly useless tech). Found England's borders T10, Peter's borders T12 and Bismark T19.

I've basically got a chunk of land with ice to the north, lots of sea to the south and the AIs creating bottlenecks to the rest of the world. The good news is that I've got horses nearby. None of the AIs are close enough to be attractive targets for any kind of warrior rush. So time to settle and think about building some Immortals.

In terms of exploration Peter and Liz are blocking two routes for sure, there might be space to sneak past Bismark so one scout will check that out while the other completes arctic exploration.

Once worker is complete she'll start by farming the corn then move to cows to pasture them before mining the gold. Its tempting in a way to build the mine before the pasture but that will slow growth and delay pop3, it would be nice to have the extra commerce turns but I think that growth is more important. I'll have a go at crunching the numbers to be sure to be sure.

 

[Gumbolt]

How to settle for the horse and not lose the fish? 2E of fish seems only option but takes so long to grow border. Delaying horse kills any early attack unless you spam warriors.

Don't get too distracted by the 3x gold area. Cities and expansion is key here. Working a zero food tile won't get you growth. Might get you HBR sooner.

Actually keeping 1-2 Ai alive is useful for trade routes. 2c trade routes vs 4-5 late game. GLH could also be good here. Capture or build. Sadly the Ai could take ages here.

Not sure you needed huts on. On Noble that could mean quite a lot of free gold or units. Not sure you need that advantage. You should romp this.

I mainly upload to the forum site for pics. Not sure what the limit is now.

 

[pigswill]

Gumbolt: the idea is not simply to romp this, the idea is to try to get early Space victory. The current HoF date for standard marathon is 1450ad, I think that should be beatable. I'm just trying to work out how.

Is there an idiot's guide to uploading pics to forum site? (Am I being a nuisance? Probably)

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Gumbolt: the idea is not simply to romp this, the idea is to try to get early Space victory. The current HoF date for standard marathon is 1450ad, I think that should be beatable. I'm just trying to work out how.

Is there an idiot's guide to uploading pics to forum site? (Am I being a nuisance? Probably)

I had been going the circuitous route of loading to media and then using the Media Gallery Embed, but it looks like "Upload a File" followed by Insert: "Full Image" seems to do the trick. Not sure if there are long term repercussions to loading this way.

 

[Anysense]

Is there an idiot's guide to uploading pics to forum site? (Am I being a nuisance? Probably)

Just put full size pictures under a spoiler, that will prevent them from loading until spoiler is opened. Much more convenient for readers than attachments.

Edit: I would probably have settled on horses just to save worker turns. Does not hurt to have 2 centre either; and I could not care less for 2nd ring fish, especially as there is plenty of food around, most of it available 1st ring.

 

[Snowbird]

Anysense: the idea for me is to learn, trying things out to discover they don't work either as well as I thought or in the way I thought they should is a useful learning technique. If I had the dedicated mind-set to research, analyse and run test-games I'd have been playing Deity years ago. I suspect I'm not alone in this particular deficit..

I am not so sure HoF level play is easier than Deity. Just enjoy stuff you are doing.

 

[pigswill]

I'm pretty sure that I'm not civ fanatical enough to be a Hoffer.(maybe I'm in the wrong forum ). I know bits and pieces of stuff but rarely manage to apply all the stuff I know to any of the games I play. Doesn't mean I don't want to try new stuff even with the awareness that I'm not a serious competitor (note double entendre).

On the subject of new stuff I'm now thinking about warrior rush. There's Carpool Karaoke's solo warrior stunt which is doable in the right conditions even with Darius i.e.:AI has 3 food tile in first ring and you can build and move a warrior to capture city before T19. If you make warrior first build you can complete it T10, just need the right AI capital within 8 tiles. Having a scout makes it more likely you'll find a suitable target early enough (before T10).

Even when that doesn't apply you can still warrior rush easily enough with 6-7 warriors before 3000bc and get at least one AI capital, maybe two. Obviously easier on marathon with cheap units and favourable move/build ratio.

In an ideal world you'd capture an AI city with horses in first ring to get started on the second expansion phase: immortal rush.

If you're going for warrior rush then obviously you won't have a worker in your capital so maybe grow cap to pop2 during warrior builds ready to whip worker once you've got BW. If you go AH>mining>BW that will be about 3000bc which coincides with the end of the warrior rush.