Noble Marathon Space Attempt

[Anysense]

Usually, events do not do much - not many really big ones. There are not many negative events, most of then do not hurt much, anyway. But there are three events/quests with free GA as a reward. There are other really good ones, I have once got free cover + CR1 promotions on Praetorians, quite game-changing. Better coal processing is also great for Space (+4 to coal plant), it is like having 4 stronger Mining. This is first game where events were net negative. In particular, I've never had that many slave revolts, and super early ones rather hurt when you have just a few cities and one or two of them either remain in revolt indefinitely or lose 1 pop.

 

[pigswill]

Tx ZPV.
Disclaimer: figures are guesstimates for illustration not hard data.
If inflation starts at T100 and increases 1% every 10 turns then its 20% by T300 (marathon); if you've got 20 cities by that time av pop 5 no courthouses you could be paying eg 150gpt city maintenance +eg 50 gpt civics and unit costs (may be higher) gives you 200gpt expenses + 40gpt inflation (20%) which is not game-breaking but not trivial either. Courthouses everywhere halve city maintenance to 75gpt, half price civics are 25gpt so 100gpt expenses and 20gpt inflation adds up to 120gpt for a saving of 120gpt which is not game breaking but not trivial either. Naturally expenses will go up as you expand and inflation creeps up with time (30% by t400, 40% by t500). If by t500 costs had increased to 400gpt+160gpt (40% inflation) it might start to become noticeable.iI you're always on strike these figures may not apply but I know nothing about strike mechanics and only heard about them a few days ago. More food for thought..

Regarding events there's a nasty event with a barbarian horde on your borders which could seriously mess your early game.

 

[Anysense]

I prefer hard data, showing that inflation is not much of a problem, may be in Time games. My only concern was inflation affecting corp spread cost. You know, make 510 for 10 spreads but then inflation becomes 4% and you need 520 instead.

Spoiler :

 

[pigswill]

Fair to say that strike does affect city maintenance. You're losing 40,000 gpt and worry about 10g for corporation spread.

 

[SittinDown]

You're losing 40,000 gpt and worry about 10g for corporation spread.

It's because you have to pay for the corporation spread after your money is reset to 0 after the deficit is spent, and there are not many ways to generate gold AFTER the balance sheet is reduced to 0.

WT goes over it in very good detail here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-10-year-veteran.574724/page-35#post-14835470

 

[pigswill]

Not forgotten about this. I'm playing Nobles Club with Mansa just to get more of a feel for noble marathon. Barbarians really are a pain in the neck, Gwall or Fogbusters? I went Gwall bcause once its done you can forget barbs completely and get back to expansion, not only do you save on fogbusters but your cities only need warrior MPs. You save hammers overall but divert them from expansion at an early stage and get a smaller snowball. No doubt better players than me fogbust efficiently with warriors and might argue that the fogbusters become MPs once you've settled a city in their spot and so there's no extra cost. Probably true, the price of incompetence . Obviously a complete irrelevance if you tick No Barbs in settings but perhaps relevant if you're playing a 'normal' game.

I also went for early Stonehenge, similar argument, save hammers later but divert hammers/chops from early expansion. The other bit I went for was Oracle>CoL and founding Confu. There's no doubt that you can probably delay Oracle and get a more expensive tech for free, though I've had noble AI completing Oracle 1800bc so my experience is delaying Oracle is not 100% foolproof. 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', may be a cliche but doesn't mean its not true. If SH and Oracle are in the same city your first GP will be a Prophet for early shrine (gold boost plus enhanced religion spread).

More relevant to the recent discussion re Organised and expenses is that even though I've only got 7 cities at 1100bc (shortage of early targets + wonderspam) they're costing 33gpt (22 city maintenance and 11 civic costs) and inflation is showing up already. Gross Commerce 115, Net Commerce 82.

 

[pigswill]

Another day, another start.

Spoiler the start :

picture to be added

Moved away from the starting location to get a plains hill.

picture to be added

Pretty durned good I say: no river, dry wheat, grassland deer, one hill and only 7 tundra.

After that awesome start things only get better:

Spoiler :

Installed buffy for Hof. Lots of spiffing options.

I wonder what ctrl M does? . Click ctrl M: ooh, reminders, how cool.

I wonder what ctrl Q does? Click ctrl Q.

Spoiler :

"You have been defeated". "Wait..just one more turn". Continue. Not sure its valid for Hof anymore

 

[SittinDown]

Spoiler :

I wonder what ctrl Q does? Click ctrl Q.

Easy come, easy go.

...I hate that hot-key combo - why would I want to auto-lose!? I guess it's good for grinding maps....

 

[pigswill]

Carried on with this run, up to 2000bc.

Spoiler Early days :

Had a seriously non-hof capital but I built a warrior and waltzed into undefended Berlin T15, then built 4 warriors and lost three of them attacking a solitary warrior in Istanbul. By T33 I had three cities, no workers, one warrior and a scout who'd done some sterling work collecting 500g from huts . AH first, discovered horses in Berlin's first ring so next tech was the Wheel and building workers to get Immortal production started.

Spoiler First rush :

Researched mining, BW, Myst (for SH), Potts, Fishing. Went for mysticism before pottery because cities were building workers, warriors and immortals at the time. Chopped SH (6*60h) while Immortals overran England, America and Spain, I even found time to steal a worker from Joao. By 2200 I had seven cities but capture gold and hut gold were running out fast. I'd finished exploring and located home territories of remaining AIs. Sury got early writing which helped me locate Rome.

Spoiler A setback :

Julius had got BW early (2700bc) and I had a bout of Praetorian Paranoia so decided to go for him next. The economy was getting a bit precarious so I decided to pillage and maybe gift Rome to another AI. Got a stackette of 7 immortals and things were going ok, Rome settled Antium 2150bc, easily captured that and gifted it to Sury. Then RNG decided to hate me. 7 immortals v 4 archers, I lost five immortals and Jules didn't lose a single archer. . Bit of a problem there. As well as gold, pigs and 2 clams Jules also has a suspicious looking mined hill., land improvements pillaged but Rome is very much intact.
I decided that I needed to address the impending economic collapse, started on granaries instead of units, building roads, a few cottages. Techwise just completed Priesthood and started chopping out Oracle for (hopefully) CoL, Confu and CH. Writing in ten turns.

Plan: more cottages, grow cities, granaries and courthouses, more immortals to get ready for the next rush. Techwise probably sailing, maths, currency, calendar. Be nice to get some feedback and maybe some thoughts on where I should be going next. Save attached, still having problems with pictures, hopefully I'll figure it out eventually.

 

[Anysense]

1. Do not build off-river cottages. They should be considered useless until proved otherwise by math.
2. Speaking about Math, why haven't you got it yet? Of all early techs it is the most important one.
3. How much failgold you are planning to get from the Oracle?
4. Why in such hurry to CoL? You already have Buddhist holy city. Anyway, you need a good economical tech. The most straightforward is Currency - you can never go seriously wrong with it, unless you expect it from AI. Metal Casting would be interesting with Industrious. Or it could be Calendar for extra happiness and several high commerce, food neutral or even positive tiles.
5. You have severely underexpanded. There is green riverside and forests in abundance near your capital. It all should have been settled and chopped already.
6. You are still using 1 traderoutes! Get an island city soon. Or two, if you change your mind about CoL.
7. What is it about Arthemis?
8. Barracks? Just build more immortals. You could also wait for better units, seeing as there is not much to conquer. Joao's capital is amazing, why have you ingnored it?
9. I'm still unconvinced about building Stonehenge. Since you conquer very little, you could just use first ring. BTW, what was the reasoning behind Pasargadae's placement and why it needs a granary? There is a nice riverside PH with wet wheat and 2 riverside grasslands in the first ring, why not settle there?
10. Seriously, get a better capital next time. The only good thing about this one is large amounts of forest, which you ignored, so its plain worthless.

 

[pigswill]

Maybe I should be less obsessed with immortals and start with mining>BW and use workers to chop more workers to chop settlers and workers. I should remind myself that I'm not playing ALC..
A couple of high commerce tiles in capital would speed things up at the beginning..
If thinking about wonderbread with a non industrious leader then need to think about accessing marble and stone and researching masonry.
Starting by warrior rushing nearby capitals is a lot faster than building your own settlers but you don't get to pick where they're settled.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.(maybe I should put that in Capitals).

 

[pigswill]

Current thoughts on AIs

Spoiler :

I've been unimpressed and slightly disparaging about noble AI research rate , with reason I may add. How to make better use of them? I had the idea of farming the AI for workers and cities; therefore imperialistic or expansive. After omitting psychos, protective and nasty spears I came up with this list: Bismark, Isabella (religion), Joao, Julius, Justinian , Peter, Sulemain, Sury, Vicky and Washington. Not perhaps the most obvious list but there it is.
In terms of number of AI obviously the more you have the easier it is to crush them, unfortunately HOF imposes a max of ten AIs so I'll have to get used to it

Yet another playthrough on yet another map, up to 1990bc (not a rounded number)

Spoiler Early days :

Start got me a nice river with half a dozen grassland riverside tiles, plains cow, grassland cow and a couple of riverside elephants, settled on one of the elephants (2h capital) and started cranking out warriors. As usual early scouting and hut-busting (popped mining T2, got another scout and c 500g). Ottomans and Russians were both nearby so checked them out: Ottomans had corn,pigs and seven forest in first ring,Moscow on the other hand was rubbish. Scouted a bit more and found the Americans down on the south coast, they had marble and clams inner ring and a mystery tile so that was a bit more promising. Waltzed a warrior into Istanbul T18 and then sent 4 warriors down to Washington. In theory the Americans would complete a worker T40 so I waited (and waited). Finally it got to T40 and a worker magically appeared. Attack! Only lost two warriors and got a city and a free worker, pretty good use of 60 hammers in my opinion, even better the mystery tile was silver . While waiting for America's worker to appear I finished researching AH, horses in the Capital . I stoically resisted the temptation to go for wheel and Immortal glory and pursued boring ordinary BW instead.

Spoiler Darius Rex :

Lots of chopping and whipping of workers and a few immortals, Buffy introduced me to the idea of whipping a warrior for +30 hammers and 54gold. Can't decide if this is basic gameplay, a cheap trick or borderline exploit, everyone will have their own opinions but I did it anyway.

At T43 my scout found a hut that had been overlooked by everyone else, popped Horseback Riding . probably the highlight of this round. One other interesting feature is that Joao founded Buddhism, Justinian founded Hinduism and Judaism, Isabella did not found a single religion.

To summarise: tech order went BW>Fishing(for Washington)>Wheel>Pottery>(HbR)>Archery (for HAs)>Sailing(river traderoutes)>Masonry (improve marble)>Myst>Poly>PH>writing(incomplete). Once I'd got marble and poly started to try dumping overflow from chops and whips into ToA (and then Oracle).

Workers were kept busy improving tiles, chopping, connecting cities, few cottages, There never seemed to be enough despite pinching a couple from the AI.

More Cities: Pasargadae (settled 2490), Lisbon (capt 2430), London (capt 2300), York (capt 2300), Moscow (capt 2200), St Pete (capt 2180), Susa (settled 2030), Madrid (capt 2030), Barcelona (capt 2020). I've found myself with a dozen cities and even though they're all pretty small my economy is going down the drain (losing gold at 0% research).

At 2200bc no-one had built Stonehenge, I'd recently discovered mysticism, Lisbon was the Buddhist Holy City with two food resources and fifteen forests. I thought why not and got three workers together to chop away. This explains end date of this round, 1990bc when Stonehenge was actually completed.

The economy is still going south and I'm still a long way from maths>currency (and won't be trading techs any time soon). I'll chop out Oracle in Lisbon asap, should pick up some failgold, maybe start on Courthouses. At some point I'll get a Great Prophet to create a shrine. More cottages of course. Its fair to say I'm slightly out of my comfort zone at the moment.

Only other thing is that I've got a couple of Immortals scouting out Julius for any spare workers. They haven't found any yet but they have found a 6H plainshill mine, and it ain't copper. Good news is that it ain't riverside and doesn't have a road, yet. I've got 4 HAs so maybe they'll pay Jules a visit in the near future.

In terms of the AI five are already dead, got Justinian north west on a biggish peninsula with Jules (Seizer) ) the other side of him, Bismark is to the north east, Sury is to the south east and Joao is in the middle with one city and going nowhere slowly.

Even though the start been HOF approved and I've been running this as a HOF game I have a lot still to learn before I'm ready to attempt any records. I think I'll probably continue from this save but I might end up reloading coz I don't know what I'm doing. So here's the save:

 

[pigswill]

Trying to think long term strategy. If I have an idea of what I'm aiming for then maybe I can avoid some dead ends.

Going for a State Property economy rather than corporations. I'm not familiar with corporations for one thing and I'm not sure about using the permastrike economy to offset the otherwise crippling maintenance costs associated with huge corporations. My thoughts are to start State Property asap, pretty much by beelining it. I'm wondering whether I should use liberalism to slingshot it. A few GS for bulbing stuff like education, chemistry, PP and scimeth wouldn't go amiss but its unlikely I'll be generating all four of them quickly enough. If I'm beeling scimeth how much will I benefit from building Glib?

One more immediate aim is to think about identifying specialist cities: namely HE City, NE City, Ironwork City and Cash City and start to develop them accordingly. These all have separate functions and I shouldn't really try to combine these functions in one city. Cash City will be based on a Shrine. I need to decide which religion to spread and build market, apothecary and bank (when I get the requisite techs) in its shrine city but that's pretty straighforwards. As I won't be running corporations I don't have to worry about Wall Street (and pre-req banks) for Corporate HQ.Non specialist cities at this stage should probably focus on cottages and I'll settle food/production cities a bit later. The other consideration is adding resources, I'm still lacking gems, clams and stone so must think about claiming those pretty soon.

I am thinking about the costs and benefits of cash rushing as an adjunct/alternative to slavery for post Kremlin production rush. I won't be running specialists except for NE City so representation isn't going to be an important civic, on the other hand to run US I need either to build the Pyramids or research democracy later on (which is otherwise a dead end tech).

All of these ruminations do have short term implications particularly for research priorities. First its maths>currency and Oracle CoL but after that its harder to say. Calendar for resources is obviously nice, more health/happy and calendar tiles have decent yields. Monarchy for more happy is another consideration. Aesthetics>Lit has its attractions. I shouldn't neglect military completely so construction is a possibilty (though I already have HAs). I'll certainly need IW soonish for clearing jungles. Shouldn't forget MC for forges (maybe Colossus for coastal cities). Might even think about alphabet for tech trading but there won't be much to trade and I'm worst enemy to almost everyone. Decisions

 

[Snowbird]

Cash city is I think a rather novel approach... as is not running specs in other cities during GA (+pacifism).

 

[ZPV]

Sorry to be a downer, but you seem to be roleplaying a bit rather than solely trying to go fast - a bunch of the things you've talked about are fun and thematic, but not particularly good. Edit: Maybe you have to try them and see them to know that, so :shrug:

The basic strategy is to get say 50 cities ASAP, and target techs which a) let you do that (Bronze Working, Maths), and b) give you per-city or per-citizen bonuses (Sailing, Currency, Banking/Mercantilism, Great Lighthouse (if lots of coast), Pyramids, Colossus etc). Calendar for MoM is also necessary.
Having real food and commerce tiles in your first two capitals makes such a difference to achieving this that it feels like an entirely different game - I'd suggest you try for this in your next game, even if you worldbuilder it in rather than trying to roll it naturally.
You do need some economy on top of that - whether it's a traditional economy (cottages/specialists/whatever) or failgold/capturegold/pillage-powered doesn't matter quite so much - and that can be tweaked later. You'll stop building cottages and start building more workshops/watermills later on, regardless.
The key is just getting to the landmark techs - general growth across your empire will take care of the rest for the most part.

Shrine? If you can persuade an AI to build one for you (Ramesses and Gandhi are good candidates), and ideally spread the religion a bit, great. Otherwise you're spending a great person (who should probably go on a golden age) and 4000 hammers on something that needs to pay for itself before the industrial era to be effective.
Oracle->CoL? Unfortunately, CoL just doesn't do anything. Even with Organised, Courthouses are barely worth the cost - especially on the State Property route. You could either aim for a super-early Currency or a bigger tech - having a better capital will let you do that.

The other thing about State Property is, by the time you can get there, you'll be able to afford to pay for your cities. -200 in maintenance doesn't do all that much in comparison to losing 50 free specialists. It's the +1 on workshops and watermills that's the powerful part of its effect, so unless you have these improvements and are ready to use them, I'd suggest delaying SP for a bit.

 

[krikav]

Sorry to derail abit... but since @ZPV mentioned +1 food on workshops/watermills...
I have recently started to play a few more long games (trying to increase score and doing alternative victories rather than conquest/dom).
And in those games, I have quite often found myself regretting quite abit of workshops, and instead just farming over almost everything.

There is just so much time available to grow, and working workshops instead of biology farms make me feel I'm losing out.
Ofcourse some cities need to be assigned to factories and complete hammer, but most of them seem to contibuting nicely just with biology farms and caste/rep specialists.

Am I being too greedy with population so I miss some pivot point where one should go all in on hammers?

 

[pigswill]

Really? I would have thought that cash city would be fairly standard preparation for Corporation HQ.

I was thinking of saving GAs for later in the game but there could be an argument for an earlier GA (after MoM) to try to get a couple of GS, obviously need philosophy and some religion spread.. It would speed up Lib>Comm. On the other hand a GA when you're working two hundred tiles is twice as good as a GA when you're working one hundred tiles. Earlyish caste/pac GA to spam Great Scientists is an effective (therefore common) stratagem on higher difficulties when you can bulb and trade your bulbed techs for other useful stuff. Without the tech trades would it still be a powerful stratagem?

 

[ZPV]

Sorry to derail abit... but since @ZPV mentioned +1 food on workshops/watermills...
I have recently started to play a few more long games (trying to increase score and doing alternative victories rather than conquest/dom).
And in those games, I have quite often found myself regretting quite abit of workshops, and instead just farming over almost everything.

There is just so much time available to grow, and working workshops instead of biology farms make me feel I'm losing out.
Ofcourse some cities need to be assigned to factories and complete hammer, but most of them seem to contibuting nicely just with biology farms and caste/rep specialists.

Am I being too greedy with population so I miss some pivot point where one should go all in on hammers?

I definitely want some Biology farms too. Thinking back on Normal speed terms for a moment (Marathon is a little different), my rule of thumb is to target +6 surplus pre-Biology and +9 or +10 afterwards.
I haven't gone all-in on farms like that though - will have to try it sometime. I do worry that at/close to the happy cap, the net research power isn't quite as strong as the workshopped/watermilled version of that city.

 

[ZPV]

Really? I would have thought that cash city would be fairly standard preparation for Corporation HQ.

I was thinking of saving GAs for later in the game but there could be an argument for an earlier GA (after MoM) to try to get a couple of GS, obviously need philosophy and some religion spread.. It would speed up Lib>Comm. On the other hand a GA when you're working two hundred tiles is twice as good as a GA when you're working one hundred tiles. Earlyish caste/pac GA to spam Great Scientists is an effective (therefore common) stratagem on higher difficulties when you can bulb and trade your bulbed techs for other useful stuff. Without the tech trades would it still be a powerful stratagem?

For me the idea isn't so much that early Golden Ages are good (though they certainly are - if I go to Music I'll usually burn the Great Artist soon after), it's that Great People are much scarcer on Marathon than Normal. So the number I'm willing to devote to off-beeline bulbs or other general uses is very small.
On Normal speed, a large city can run all scientists and knock out the 10th or 15th great person in just a few turns, for the low cost of starving a few citizens away. On Marathon you just can't do that

 

[krikav]

Wasn't it @Seraiel who constantly founded an early religion for a super shrine?
I'm not sure it's the most common or go-to strategy for HOF-players these days, but founding an early religion and making a shrine is certainly a strategy that has seen some use.

From a purely theoretical standpoint, I like the idea too, an early shrine before massive REx/Conquest of a large number of cities that are not saturated with religion does sound very nice. Every autospread is 40 free hammers.