Noble Marathon Space Attempt

[NothingBesideRemains]

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.

If you are doing warrior rushes, or their slightly improved cousin archer rushes, I really think the opening warrior is your friend. Double production from getting the first capital, and either a free 2nd capital or a quicker one.

Agreed as well with the comment that NH/NE is probably the way to go unless you really lean into it; use your scout and maybe even your settler to try to nab some extra units before you settle. For me, when trying out silly slingshot craziness for fun, having huts on ends up being too different from 'regular' Civ just because of how overpowered the luck can be.

 

[SittinDown]

I'm pretty sure that I'm not civ fanatical enough to be a Hoffer.

There are plenty of soft records up there still. I am not very good by most accounts, and I have two #1 entries. There's a LOT of room for improvement in the mid-range difficulty levels.

 

[ZPV]

On the subject of new stuff I'm now thinking about warrior rush.
...
Having a scout makes it more likely you'll find a suitable target early enough (before T10).

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.

There are a couple of timing windows to note - and seafood capitals can be a bit different so I'll ignore those, and also plains-hill capitals.
If there's no 30 tile, the AI will build one warrior finishing on turn 9 or 10 (turn zero tile assignments can be messy; they sometimes lose a turn of production this way), and then a worker finishing on turn 40.
If there is a 3 tile, they will grow to size 2 as fast as possible - so the warrior comes out on tun 19, and they'll start another warrior. However, they will abandon the warrior as soon as they hit either size 2 (if they don't have a second 31 tile) or size 3, and build a worker. The worker will be complete on turn 46 or turn 60, respectively (a little faster if they are EXP), and any hammers in the warrior will have started to decay, so you don't need to worry that they can pop out a second defender quickly.

I might suggest Pacal/Maya (EXP/FIN/Mysticism/Mining) or Mehmed (EXP/ORG/Wheel/Agriculture) for this. Cheap workers and granaries are good for early growth; everything else can be solved by more workers and more chopping. The starting warrior is just a free AI capital without having to compromise your own capital's growth.
If I were grinding maps for the HOF on these settings, I'd probably look to keep one where I

• Popped a relevant tech from a hut
• Walked into one decent undefended capital
• Rushed another good capital with 3-4 warriors and captured its worker just as it comes out (on normal speed you can't really afford more than 2 warriors; marathon makes this safer).
• After that you probably have copper or horses and it's a long time before the AI can do anything about axemen, but additionally then it's time to fan out and start worker-stealing.

This isn't all that outlandish - you could probably try for something more extreme if you really wanted.
The other thing is, you just don't need immortals. Regular ancient-era units are more than good enough if you start early enough.

 

[SittinDown]

For instance....

Spoiler Current Records :

• Huge Nolble Marathon looks pretty beatable. 1400 AD win - Maxed out at 24 cities in 900 AD, and only have 15 cities at 1000 BC
• Huge Warlord Marathon looks pretty hard. 580 AD win - got to 34 cities in 1100 BC.

 

[SittinDown]

Something else to note is that Iggymnrr is currently having a lot of success in this types of victories using Highlands maps. He is going State Property, and not Corps.


Lol - talk about Grinding though.

Spoiler Turn log from 100 BC win :

0 4000 BC The villagers have provided you with a Worker!
1 3985 BC Persepolis has been founded.
3 3955 BC The villagers have provided you with a Settler!
4 3940 BC The villagers have provided you with a map!
6 3910 BC The villagers have provided you with a Settler!
7 3895 BC The villagers have provided you with a Settler!
10 3850 BC The villagers have provided you with a Settler!
12 3820 BC The villagers have provided you with a Settler!


and many more huts later...
88 2680 BC The villagers have given you the secrets of a new Technology!
You have discovered Currency!

grabbed
Masonry, Iron Working, Calendar, Monarchy, Currency, Horseback Riding, Aesthetics, Literature.... from huts.

 

[pigswill]

SittinDown. Thanks for the reassurance. I need to get a firmer grasp of the tricks and strategies relevant to noble marathon before thinking about HoF records.

ZPV. Thanks for the information. Food for thought. I have just started another map (still Darius) and did indeed manage to capture first AI capital T18 and the second AI capital T52. I built 7 warriors just in case there was a second warrior, now I know that was overkill. On the other hand I'm pretty sure he'd only just completed his worker so I don't think I lost that many turns . Lost the hammers I invested in the warriors which could have gone to speed up a worker (not lost as such, I still have the warriors, more accurate to say I lost worker turns and a bit of growth).
On the subject of best leader I'm still worried about overexpanding and going broke hence Darius. I agree that Immortals aren't really necessary but leader traits are the cake, UU and UB are the marzipan and icing. Maybe if I can get my head around exploiting failgold that would solve my financial worries (in Civ anyway) but its not something I've tried before except in a very piecemeal manner. Because I can't rely on noble AIs to do anything quickly failgold will probably be based on wonders I build myself (world and national).

Edit: A few hours later and I played this particular game up to 2100bc. Got 6 cities; 4 captured from AI, had to build a city to get horses (1 copper tile in the arctic wastes). Popped c 300g and mysticism from huts. Did some exploring with WBs. In some ways 6 cities and SH by 2100bc is a decent start. However after capturing last city in 2100bc I discovered that there was sea beyond! Trapped on a small continent/large island with the rest of the AIs overseas. Very annoying having spent some turns building immortals to keep rampaging. Not a huge problem with a couple of galleys, except for colonial expenses .Rage quit ..
PS. I'm getting the impression that Big and Small is considerably more fractal than Fractal making for very unpredictable games.
PPS the extra warriors I built at the beginning weren't wasted after all, I used them to worker steal and as prebuilt mp units.

 

[SittinDown]

hence Darius.

Referencing the very best records on the HOF table for Space wins on large / Huge, they're all financial leaders. Mostly Darius, but also Victoria, and HC.

 

[konata_LS]

Wow this looks like an interesting thread! I'm not an expert on Space and rarely play on Marathon, but the attempts and discussion are indeed informative.

Apart from Pacal and Mehmed, maybe Hammi is also worth considering? He starts with Agri/TW like Mehmed, but Hammi's Combat I warrior might get a better combat odds of warrior rush. But I'm not familiar with Marathon speed. Cheap barracks are a significant advantage for a Axe rush under Normal speed; Marathon may be different.

Good luck for your games

 

[pigswill]

konata L S: thanks for the kind words. I'm still just looking at the early game and it may be that other leaders with different traits will be more powerful in the middle and later game.

I'm slowly beginning to find some conditions for a successful start: Looking for three cities by T45 with land access to more civs and territory. Early access to horses, (ideally within Capital's BFC), is important to speed up the next phase of expansion. In terms of the capital its good to have a 2h city tile to speed up early warrior production (and everything else) and decent food tile(s) which is fairly common.

Having a super powerful capital is nice but not essential because the aim is to have a large empire asap, the more cities you have (several of which would be AI capitals) the less important your starting city becomes. This is perhaps one of the significant differences between noble and immortal/deity where a powerful capital is essential to support the initial catch up phase.

That doesn't mean that you can just ignore the capital completely because commerce is still important to fund your initial research, hut gold and capture gold only last so long. The obvious commerce tile is a gold mine or two (silver tends to come with crap surrounding terrain), but gems are probably better if they come with some food. Ivory is ok, less commerce but more hammers. Fur like silver tends to come with crap terrain. Obviously calendar resources need calendar so they're not an early game consideration. Maybe with a financial leader coastal seafood becomes a useful resource and worth an early diversion to fishing: (4/5f+3c is a good early tile), workboats cost hammers but save worker turns (unless you chop them). Assuming you've captured your two early capitals these may also provide some of the commerce tiles you're looking for.

The other significant consideration is happiness, happy cities are easy prey for ruthless slavers (or you can just let them grow bigger and in Civ, unlike real life, size matters).

 

[Snowbird]

General thoughts:
I think one would need max AI opponents --18 for standard size?.. More AI cities to conquer, also higher density for warrior attack abuse.

It has been years since I played B&S, but IIRC, islands mixed in + low sea level was advertised as GLH friendly Pangea. Or maybe it was M&S?..

In general, I would pick AI's who do something useful (for you obviously) -- so Mansa is auto-include, some wonder spammers like Ramsess would be nice too. I thought why Cre is not hot for HoF... well, of course, you take Stonehenge from dead cold hands of poor AI.

About golden ages - length might not scale or scale poorly, but they always scale very well with being stupidly large...

 

[pigswill]

I'm also debating mapscript. As I understand it Big n Small is attractive to the serious record breakers (such as Wasting Time and Anysense) because it provides more resources for Sushi and Sid's Sushi in the right hands can turn a snowball into an avalanche. On the other hand I'm discovering that BignSmall is really quite unpredictable leading to a lot of false starts. I'm also wondering whether BignSmall would be the best mapscript for running a State Property economy which is less resource dependent.

Maybe Terra where all the AIs are crammed into one continent and thus more accessible for earlier annihilation (except for one poor sap you keep alive to avoid conquest victory). You can't settle the whole world yourself without getting domination victory first so the spare continent isn't such a big deal apart maybe for some unique resources.

edit: crosspost with Snowbird. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

You are quite right about increasing the number of AI targets. not only more cities to steal but more capital mapscript cities to steal. Protective archers are certainly tougher but that only means adding another couple of immortals and slightly heavier losses. early spears are bad news however so no Pacal or Shaka.

I suspect your perspective of AIs is coloured by your experience of high level games: no noble level AI is that useful, not even Mansa, (that's why noble vassals are also pointless because they're not as useful as the land they're occupying).

Letting someone else build SH is tempting but there's no predicting when they'll build it or how far away they are (and thus time taken to capture it). Certainly your cities greatly benefit from culture to access outer ring resources (and forests) and the sooner the better. Creative certainly gives you that but apart from cheap libraries and theatres it doesn't give much else and other traits will give you more.

For GLH traderoutes you only need four island cities (post currency) and therefore two to four islands accesible pre-astronomy. Obviously only coastal cities get the trade route bonus so that's another consideration. Having said that I tend to find that GLH leads me to putting off researching corporation which obviously delays AL. If you have 20 coastal/island cities then corporation means -20 TR (-40 from GLH, +20 from corporation), if you have 10 coastal and 10 inland then its net 0 (-20 GLH, +20 corporation).

 

[SittinDown]

Anysense & KaitZilla used Terra in their big wins. Only WT used Big n Small.

 

[pigswill]

Maybe I should read threads more carefully and not jump to conclusions.

I was actually thinking about leaders (again). If UUs and UBs are relatively unimportant (which seems to be the consensus) then its a choice of traits and perhaps a choice between financial, organised and industrious. If organised and industrious are the most beneficial, which is certainly possible, then the surprise super leader is Roosevelt.

 

[Anysense]

Anysense & KaitZilla used Terra in their big wins. Only WT used Big n Small.

And he was quite right - B&S is better for corporations. The difference may not be particularly big, only about 10 turns on Marathon.

 

[pigswill]

Separate question: Is there a guide anywhere on inflation? I couldn't find one in the War Academy. What brought this to mind is that there's always attention being paid to beakers and gold per turn. It occurred to me that bpt/gpt are actually net income which is gross income minus expenses.There's not so much emphasis put into expenses: unit maintenance, civics cost, city upkeep and inflation (the silent killer). Obviously reducing expenses increases net income giving you more bpt and gpt for the same gross income. How do you reduce inflation? How is inflation calculated? Is it based on gross income (and date/turns played) or expenses? Or both?

 

[krikav]

I think inflation is civic and city upkeep combined, multipled by some factor depening on difficulty, then depending on what turn it is.
So if you run cheap civics, inflation will be lowered. But exacly how it works... Not sure.
It's a reason why organized becomes kind of good endgame.

 

[SittinDown]

And he was quite right - B&S is better for corporations.

Makes sense. The point I failed to make earlier is that if you want a GOOD date (sub-1000 AD), you can use a variety of maps, and can use either State Property or Corporations, and any financial leader.

But the best possible known strategy seems to be Big & Small + Corporations + Financial Leader. HC is mandatory on very high levels because of Quechua cheese, but possibly not the best leader on low levels, because the AI's are slow to archery.

 

[Anysense]

Inflation appears to depend solely on turn number. It becomes 1% on turn 280 and goes up 1% every 10 turns. That's on Deity, no idea what it is like on Noble.

I don't think that the Inca are overpowered in Space games, not on Marathon at any rate. My game is 10 turns behind Wastintime's but I made a few serious mistakes and I had several slave revolts and looters instead of a free Golden Age.

 

[pigswill]

Is that 1% of gross production or 1% of total expenses?

I was kind of wondering why you went for events, always seem to be more bad events than good events.

 

[ZPV]

Is that 1% of gross production or 1% of total expenses?

I was kind of wondering why you went for events, always seem to be more bad events than good events.

It's a percentage of total expenses - i.e. city maintenance (including corporation fees), unit maintenance and civic maintenance.
So if you're trying to pay for corporations (i.e. not in strike) it adds up to quite a lot.

As for events, although slave revolts feel pretty bad, they aren't that punishing if one of your 50 cities goes into revolt for a couple of turns - and the "do nothing" option is much more appealing than it is on faster speeds.
Additionally, there are a couple of really strong ones - free golden age, reduced inflation, etc.