Noble sub-300 turn space attempt

[pigswill]

If you want an early date on noble then play marathon speed, Victoria might be good because you'll be building a lot of your own settlers and financial should help you stave off economic collapse. On the other hand no early UU. Another option would be Darius, settlers will be slower but organised shines in massive empires, financial still helps and you can conquer most of the world with Immortals before the AIs have spears.

The main thing to remember is that the brake on expansion isn't building settlers or conquering neightbours , the brake is running out of money and being in deficit on 0% research.

You can of course forget bulbing, tech trading, failgold and the other staples of higher difficulties because even if you leave the AIs alone they'll still be pitifully slow

 

[Qactus]

Out of curiosity, I peeked at the player log of the current HoF #1 for that slot (Noble Standard Normal Space), which finished T183:
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?show=playerlog&dsply=0&entryID=30500
Some insights:
1. Super-early conquest, conquering the first civ with warriors (of course, Noble AI don't have archers yet)
2. Maximum number of opponents, so you have more capital cities to conquer. Despite being IMP (Joao), @ZPV didn't settle his own second city before T54, having already two AI capitals at that point. Horse Archers are more than enough against noble AI, no need for fancy UUs.
3. Boy, that is some next level planning ahead there. Just look at the turn difference for certain crucial moments
- from State Property to Kremlin (1T)
- from Plastics to Three Gorges Dam (4T)
- from Ecology to Genetics (1T) to finishing all the spaceship parts (1T)

 

[ZPV]

I'll be following along with interest, @jnebbe

You're coming up to an era that can make or break a fast space attempt: Medieval + Renaissance. My suggestions would be:
1) Don't stop expanding. There's a point around 20 cities, where your "Number of Cities Maintenance" maxes out, and then each city after that is profitable from around size 2 or so. The only point when you want to stop is because the end of the game is too close, or you have other priorities than building more settlers/military units.
2) You've got some great river systems - particularly just to the northwest of Paris. Those will be your best production cities in the late game, so they probably need to be settled sooner rather than later.
3) Think about what your economic engine is going to be in this era - there are several possibilities:

• It could be a large (say, size 15) Bureaucracy capital running lots of cottages, and then build Oxford there. This is tough to do in a capital with only one real food source.
• It could be cottage-spamming all those rivers you can settle.
• It could be the Great Lighthouse + Colossus combo, and settling lots of coastal cities and working coast tiles.
• It could be building the Pyramids (sorry, the AI isn't going to do it for you!) and some farms, and running Caste + Representation and lots of specialists.

You'll probably want to do at least one of these (maybe more!) What you've been doing with failgold will help a little bit, in that it can fund deficit research, but all the gold in the world won't help if you don't also have enough raw beakers in your empire when you turn the slider up.

 

[floydmcw]

Out of curiosity, I peeked at the player log of the current HoF #1 for that slot (Noble Standard Normal Space), which finished T183:
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?show=playerlog&dsply=0&entryID=30500
Some insights:
1. Super-early conquest, conquering the first civ with warriors (of course, Noble AI don't have archers yet)
2. Maximum number of opponents, so you have more capital cities to conquer. Despite being IMP (Joao), @ZPV didn't settle his own second city before T54, having already two AI capitals at that point. Horse Archers are more than enough against noble AI, no need for fancy UUs.
3. Boy, that is some next level planning ahead there. Just look at the turn difference for certain crucial moments
- from State Property to Kremlin (1T)
- from Plastics to Three Gorges Dam (4T)
- from Ecology to Genetics (1T) to finishing all the spaceship parts (1T)

T183 ... my mind is blown! I have to retract my reply to @Fish Man upthread, it was obviously ill-informed.

 

[Anysense]

T183 ... my mind is blown! I have to retract my reply to @Fish Man upthread, it was obviously ill-informed.

And Kaitzilla did t190 (1300AD) on Deity and then 1210AD on Epic speed, breaking my records into pieces along the way, of course.

BTW, you might find this thread interesting https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/another-hof-spacerace-start.490952/
Something from good old times when horrible game-breaking stuff like strike economy or rasing domination limit was unheard of.

 

[Fish Man]

T183 ... my mind is blown! I have to retract my reply to @Fish Man upthread, it was obviously ill-informed.

Oh I've done sub-t200 twice. Once as the Dutch, once as the Egyptians. Just to show it's possible without fin.

Deity is trickier but B&S with a ridiculous Inca start...not impossible, if you ask me.

 

[jnebbe]

Lots of very good advice here that really made me rethink how this should be played out

Spoiler :

Music GA

Originally the plan was to settle all cities and have them work 13 workshops and build research (which is why I didn't really want to build many cottages, I wanted to work the workshops with the immediate hammer yields) but caste+rep is so much better. Results in more beakers+great scientists and if I go the workshop route, I'll still need graneries+libraries+forges before building research. I think it's much better to do caste+rep early game and don't switch back to workshops until at least chemistry.

Here I do all the rest of my planned failgold whips and then double-down into whipping settlers+workers. I want to run a golden age to build the pyramids a bit faster since theres no way I can get peter's stone.

Finally get around to settling an island city, net positive of 15

Hi Wilhelm! Somehow he's even more backwards than peter who lost 2 cities.

Let the mass-settle begin
All cities will have an obelisk and can work culture to pop borders fast
Hilariously this is the one time I think I've ever switched into serfdom, I'll need to grow all these cities to a decent size before running scientists

Roosevelt finally finishes ToA and I get ~1800 which is nice and all but I still don't know what tech to go for next. And as was mentioned expansion is more important here anyway.

Just a few turns later... 13 cities founded, I've doubled my worker number to 30ish in the past 25 turns
Pyramids are finished, Great library is 1 turn away, banking just finished and I think it's worth going merc immediately.


I don't know what tech I should go for, the big question mark is liberalism, there's definitely value in grabbing a late tech with it but I'd also like to run free religion for +10%.
Naturally this is leading towards sushi+mining but I have no idea which I should prioritize first and how best to get there.
I was also just thinking construction+engineering->elepult the rest of my continent->chemistry while I'm at war

 

[floydmcw]

Oh I've done sub-t200 twice. Once as the Dutch, once as the Egyptians. Just to show it's possible without fin.

Deity is trickier but B&S with a ridiculous Inca start...not impossible, if you ask me.

What makes B&S superior for superfast space victories? Is it better for Sushi?

Can State Property work for a fast space race or do you need the extra pop/hammers from corp?

 

[krikav]

Let me jump in again with my ignorance.

@floydmcw Sushi and Superfast space doesn't go hand in hand at all I think.
But from what I have understod, B&S with the specific island settings that people use, are favourable just because it yields a ton of Sushi resources.
But for highest score, not for fastest finish.

State property workshop spam is probably the fastest way to space in almost all circumstances, but maybe these special HOF situation can alter that balance?

 

[pigswill]

I'll reiterate Fish Man's request for a starting save (maybe available as autosave start) as it looks a fun map.

 

[Fish Man]

What makes B&S superior for superfast space victories? Is it better for Sushi?

Can State Property work for a fast space race or do you need the extra pop/hammers from corp?

@krikav

B&S is good because more land tiles. Even on standard size maps with regular sea level you can get 1200, 1300+. Lategame, the main bottleneck is how many workshops you can spam, and being able to put down 25%-50% more just means that much more hammers to turn into research, etc.

 

[Anysense]

I don't know what tech I should go for, the big question mark is liberalism, there's definitely value in grabbing a late tech with it but I'd also like to run free religion for +10%.
Naturally this is leading towards sushi+mining but I have no idea which I should prioritize first and how best to get there.
I was also just thinking construction+engineering->elepult the rest of my continent->chemistry while I'm at war

[/spoiler]

I'd be more inclined to run Caste and Pacifism. FR becomes more interesting later.

Sushi first means that you have to start strike much sooner. Otherwise Sushi takes too long to kick in. Actually, I doubt that in strikeless game Sushi does much for you. It becomes a great deal better if you just ignore insane Sushi expenses plus increased costs of Mining.

Sure, get Construction if you need it for war, but why eraly Engineering? It is nice for faster movement and can be useful in warfare too, but I tend to go for Banking as soon as I can - huge boost to research. You are planning to build Mids, right?

 

[pigswill]

I shall demonstrate my ignorance by asking how Banking provides a huge boost to research.

 

[krikav]

@pigswill That has to be the combo representation/caste/mercantalism for a free scientist/merchant in each city. +6 beakers per city.
Probably very huge when you have 20 size 1-2 cities.

 

[Anysense]

@pigswill That has to be the combo representation/caste/mercantalism for a free scientist/merchant in each city. +6 beakers per city.
Probably very huge when you have 20 size 1-2 cities.

Or 50 cities, bleeding heavily even at 0% research. And then suddenly you can tech at a decent pace even with slider still at 0.

I'm not sure about Sushi on Noble. Corporation payments depend on difficulty level, making corporations more profitable on lower ones. Come to think about it, Deity was supposed to be impossible and everything was balanced for Noble. That's probably why corps have unreasonable expenses on Deity and are competitive with SP only in certain circumstances.

 

[jnebbe]

I'd be more inclined to run Caste and Pacifism. FR becomes more interesting later.

Sushi first means that you have to start strike much sooner. Otherwise Sushi takes too long to kick in. Actually, I doubt that in strikeless game Sushi does much for you. It becomes a great deal better if you just ignore insane Sushi expenses plus increased costs of Mining.

Sure, get Construction if you need it for war, but why eraly Engineering? It is nice for faster movement and can be useful in warfare too, but I tend to go for Banking as soon as I can - huge boost to research. You are planning to build Mids, right?

I meant engineering so I can do lib->chemistry for better workshops.
Both banking and pyramids are done already

I'm down to try going into strike. I'm still wrapping my head around it but it should be fun and good practice. IIRC from my test game, wall st/market/grocer/bank in HQ + courthouse in the city you spread to will more-or-less be enough to completely cover the corp maintenance so you can spread to a lot of cities without bleeding much gold

I'm also wondering; I know you want to spread 5 corps per turn, I imagine you need to stack overflow, could you just keep building warriors to get up to the required 100 OF, or do you do it some different way?

 

[krikav]

I wasn't even aware that you could stack overflow with warriors up to the base hammers of a city.
What I have always done is to set up some whip with a building or a unit previously, perhaps two, with the smaller one rolling into the larger one.
5 per turn (Or more common, 3 per turn with missionaries which is basically the same procedure) is something I have seldom managed. That more or less requies railroad and having every single city on the mainland.
Island complicate things alot... The missionaries need to be built, then loaded into a boat and shuttled to the right position, then it can spread next turn.
So in best case it takes up it's slot twice as long, and thats if you manage to have perfect galleychains.

Helps alot to have diligent planning, knowing which city will spread to which at what turn.
It's always a nightmare though.

 

[Anysense]

I meant engineering so I can do lib->chemistry for better workshops.
Both banking and pyramids are done already

I'm down to try going into strike. I'm still wrapping my head around it but it should be fun and good practice. IIRC from my test game, wall st/market/grocer/bank in HQ + courthouse in the city you spread to will more-or-less be enough to completely cover the corp maintenance so you can spread to a lot of cities without bleeding much gold

I'm also wondering; I know you want to spread 5 corps per turn, I imagine you need to stack overflow, could you just keep building warriors to get up to the required 100 OF, or do you do it some different way?

Chemistry is a useful tech, making workshops really good tiles at 152 during Golden Age, better than rep scientists. Not so impressive but still good at 141 without GA. Obviously, you should prioritize riverside. How many workshops you will have at this point? Probably about 100, so its about 100 increase, quite substantial and yet it is smaller than Mercantilizm, unless you tech Communism first for supererly Kremlin and State Property. It is not that difficult really, you only need to bulb Education, Chemistry, PP and Scientific Method. They are all so small on Noble that each will take just one bulb, that is 4 GS and then Communism. This is an interesting way I haven't tried yet.

I doubt that strike is much use on Noble. Probably, best not to overload your first space game even if it is.

You don't need 100 overflow on Normal speed. Executives are only 100; assuming 30 Mining (very modest) and 20 from other sources, you need only 50 overflow; 30 with forge, as executive's base hammer cost becomes 80. You can't build warriors at this point unless playing as Inca or giving away all metals, and you don't have to. I used mostly whip overflow from settlers, as they are needed for collecting corporate resources, anyway. However, on Normal speed with Industrious it is very straightforward to set up a network of cities with forges and 60-70 base production for easy executives with mere 10-20 overflow which could come from just about any building or unit without even using a whip. With proper planning you might be able to stay in Caste. Kremlin is still great for whipping factories and power, though.

 

[pigswill]

I tend to play lower difficulties because I'm too lazy and/or stupid to play Immortal+ so often beeline lib>communism and SP is quite nice with a large empire. I'm also too lazy and/or stupid to play corporations so I'm not sure how well lib/comm would synergise, the only real benefit would be Kremlin which is nice but probably wouldn't justify a communism beeline. Good point about going for scimeth via chemistry rather than astronomy.

 

[Anysense]

In a State Property game Kremlin may not be that great, but with corporations you are still expanding when you get Communism and if you do not use strike you will also need courthouses everywhere. This is a hell of a lot of whipping made 1.5 times cheaper, especially if not Organized.

WastinTime contemplating the the idea of early Communism https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-10-year-veteran.574724/page-37#post-14842705