Observations on Huge/Marathon

[CivCorpse]

Lately I have been playing on Huge maps with low sea level at Marathon speed and have noticed a number of things.

Traits
Imperialistic: Somewhat weaker on Marathon because of the imbalance between unit production and building production. Traits that give a discount to buildings save you considerably more hammers. I have found my economy crashing well before all the peaceful Rexing is anywhere near complete.

Organised: Very strong. Though it appears that maintenence and distance from capital scale with map size, you are going to build a LOT of courthouses so the raw hammer savings are pretty big.

Philosophical: Strongest early but fades much faster than on smaller maps. Especially if you are trying to use settled GP's. I have found that on huge maps at marathon speed a single super science city just doesn't produce the number of beakers several heavily cottaged cities can. The best use of those GS is academies. Bulb and trade seems to be less effective as well. With eleven civs in a game, you cannot reliably bulb techs noone else has. Though early bulbs are awesome. You have a monoploly tech for quite a long time if you choose not to trade it around.

Charasmatic: Solid trait in the early game that fades. Due to the larger number of cities you will have it greatly increases the number of extra happy citizens. More citizens means more of everything. Especially if adopting a religion is dangerous due to the political climate. It takes many many turns to research monarchy for HR. Eight cities with two extra citizens is like having ten cities early game.
The promotions bonus is stronger on huge maps because a larger percentage of your troops will be coming from cities without military instructors. If you are running vassalage and theocracy you can get troops that are 1 point from level 3 in a gigantic number of cities.

Expansive: Weaker for the same reason Imperialistic is weaker. Though getting a discount on a building that should be in every single city is nice.

Financial: If you're running a CE then it is much stronger. More cottages means more tiles getting the financial bonus.

Creative: Very strong early game. Building/whipping/chopping a monument takes a while on marathon and then you have to wait 30 turns for your first border pop. Building discounts are great as well.

Industrious: Mixed bag. When going for wonders that affect all cities it is a major boost. More cities means more benefits. However the majority of your cities will not be building wonders and except for the discounted forges will not benefit as much from industrious as from other traits.

Spiritual: Another mixed bag. The cheaper buildings are great but anarchy times do not triple on marathon so you lose a little bit.

Wonders

As I mentioned earlier wonders that have an effect on every city are stronger because you have more cities to benefit. But I have found the most valuable wonder to be the Great Wall. Barbs on marathon speed/huge maps are a freakin nightmare. Fog busting is an invitation to economic ruin. Right around 2000BC the waves start coming. Coming for the human player at least. I have found myself building swarms of antibarb units while my economy crashes and my building infrastructure gets put on hold forever. Sure would like to build a granary but I have a zillion barbs axes trying to pilliage me to death. Build the Wall. I popped masonry from a hut last game and did a little dance in my chair. I am 43yo. It was not a pretty sight.

Opening strategies

I find myself building warriors first instead of workers. Especially if I have a heavily forested start. It takes 30 turns to build a worker but 52 turns to research BW, And that is if you start with mining. Also there are more huts for the grabbing and more map to explore. As well as more lions and tigers and bears oh my. Once I am at a point where my worker has things to do I build one. I then start spamming 2-3 more cities while I research masonry for the Wall-O-salvation. The worker is prechopping his heart out. I place my cities for long term impact. If you make a good attempt at the wall you won't need copper/iron/ponies hooked up asap. And with all the room between you and your opponents there is less of a chance of someone beating you to the strategic metals. Pottery is a big for me. City growth takes longer so granaries are key. Well they are key at any speed or size. You want early pottery for the cottages. they take a long time to mature and you need a heck of a lot of beakers on marathon/huge. Start them early and you will be fine.
Never stop rexxing. There is a lot of land to claim. Just be sure to keep a nice balance between production/commerce.
But you say to me "Mr. Corpse, it is better to rush your opponent and take his/her cities". Sorry to inform you but axe rushes are few and far between on huge maps at low sealevel. Your closest neighbor is usually 20+ tiles away. Yes on marathon you will still have a chance to overwhelm him/her but you economy will nose dive even if you just keep the capital. It is also very difficult to continue supplying troops to the front lines. So the time honored strategy of "Axerush then win with 2 capitals" rarely applies here. And unfortunately ya gotta learn the rest of the game. The good news is that the Ai sucks at the rest of the game. Most of my games have seen everyone with 10+ cities before all the good land is taken. That means the Ai has misplaced and poorly developed 10 cities.

Trading for backfill vs. self-research for backfill. I have found self-research to be more effective. With more AI's the discounts to research are pretty hefty. But so many AI means that you can trade your techs to fewer of them before everyone has it. Then the Ai passes out my tech like candy to their buddies and I end up supplying a nice tech to the entire world for little return.

The Art of War. Needless to say, you need more troops if you are going to take more cities. A lot more if the enemy has some nice cities you plan on keeping. I only go to war when my economy can handle aquiring new cities. Razing them just means open ground for the other AI to settle. Two stacks seem to be best. One main SoD to attack the core with a smaller one to start on the border cities. I count the number of cities i want to take with a stack. I build 5 siege units plus 2 per city. I usually lose two rookie CR1 siege units per city. Then I build 2 CG/1antimounted/1antimelee unit per city. And 5-6 CR units for the main stack and 2-3 for the mini-stack. Post collateral damage I use the CR units to take out the top defenders and mop up with future garrison troops. It's a lot of units to build and pay for. For a ten city target you need 60-70 units. That is 60-70 gpt. Attacking and grabbing 2-3 cities is not advisable. It leaves a fairly large and pissed off neighbor.

The Economy
I have tried a number of economies. CE seems to be the best. The SSE/WE starts pretty strong but there is a limit on the number of beakers a single city can produce and it does not go up with mapsize or game speed. As empires expand you need a lot of commerce from a lot of cities.
I tried a few SE games. I'm not the strongest SE player and i struggled a lot. The problem was cash flow. Having a heavily cottaged capital can pay for the costs of an empire on a standard map. On a huge map it can't. I also play with tech brokering off. While this slows down the tech path for the Ai it pretty much kills any chance of the bulb-n-trade bonanza that a SE seems to require. Another buzzkill with trading techs on huge maps is the number of AI's means you are pretty much assured of trading with sombodies worst enemy.
I try and have 1/2 my cities as cottage monsters and the other half production with 1 or 2 GP farms to produce GS's for academies.
Currency seems to be better on larger maps. More cities means more trade routes. And you are going to have more production cities, which enables you to set 1 or 2 to building wealth and still produce troops in adequete numbers. Selling off old techs for cash helps a lot. Especially when you have more civs to milk.

Ok, i am going to kill a few more hours on my current game.

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

Huge maps on marathon can be fun But yeah they can be a lil bit dif and take a lil longer than standard size especiallay at marathon.

I'd also like to add that civs that start with hunting have BIG advantage on marathon/huge. Starting with free scout then building second scout or even third can be HUGE with all the goodyhuts on huge map. Add in fact that huts can give up to 200 plus gold on marathon now and you can build very nice nest egg.

Resoruces seem a little farther spaced out too. Even on standard maps it sometimes feels like everyother city has at least SOMETHING in its in bfc but on huge it can be easy to find like a chain of 4 or even 5 nonoverlapping cities with NO resources at all.

And waiting till late indy/early modern age can be more attractive when things like railroads and airlifting can make VERY big diff in moving troops where you need em.

And yeah diplomacy can be crucial. WIth 11 plus civs (more once colonies start happening) You cant make EVERYBODY happy so it very important to pick like one or two buddies then STICK with em. It also means looking out for things like religious blocks especially if they have AP or defensive pacts since they can be HUGE if you dont watch out. But it can be nice when it goes you way and you can arrange MASSIVE dogpile on your enemies hehe.

Kaytie

 

[kazapp]

Thanks!

Though...

Organised: Very strong. Though it appears that maintenence and distance from capital scale with map size, you are going to build a LOT of courthouses so the raw hammer savings are pretty big.

Well, compared to the total number of hammers you generate and spend, it isn't bigger than usual. And getting discounts on individual buildings is kind of meh, isn't it? (A city needs more than its courthouse, after all).

Charasmatic: Solid trait in the early game that fades. Due to the larger number of cities you will have it greatly increases the number of extra happy citizens. More citizens means more of everything. Especially if adopting a religion is dangerous due to the political climate. It takes many many turns to research monarchy for HR. Eight cities with two extra citizens is like having ten cities early game.

Isn't this huge? As in, much stronger than most? If there is plenty of land, having a trait that lets you stretch your empire farther than otherwise before the economy tells you to stop must be excellent?

(Do be sure to chop the 'Henge though!)

Creative: Very strong early game. Building/whipping/chopping a monument takes a while on marathon and then you have to wait 30 turns for your first border pop.

But isn't the time savings partly illusory? Yes, I know many of our fellow gamers here can't stand a 30 turn wait , but relative to the other civs, 30 turns isn't much on Marathon.

I have found that any trait I can emulate through a chop I find to be of somewhat lesser value. And don't build Monuments - build the Stonehenge! Once you have the 'Henge, you'll ask yourself why you ever chose Creative...!

As I mentioned earlier wonders that have an effect on every city are stronger because you have more cities to benefit. But I have found the most valuable wonder to be the Great Wall. Barbs on marathon speed/huge maps are a freakin nightmare. Fog busting is an invitation to economic ruin. Right around 2000BC the waves start coming. Coming for the human player at least. I have found myself building swarms of antibarb units while my economy crashes and my building infrastructure gets put on hold forever. Sure would like to build a granary but I have a zillion barbs axes trying to pilliage me to death. Build the Wall. I popped masonry from a hut last game and did a little dance in my chair. I am 43yo. It was not a pretty sight.

But I get the impression you're running with enraged Barbs on, from that description? If you can stand the micromanagement, barbs shouldn't be more difficult to handle on bigger maps provided you make sure to allow for a tech that gives you a barb-buster unit early on, as you can't expect to have neighbors on all borders like on small maps.

Anyway, that the Great Wall is a borderline cheat I agree. But so is any Wonder that provides something per city. And none of these are cheaper than the Stonehenge!

But you say to me "Mr. Corpse, it is better to rush your opponent and take his/her cities". Sorry to inform you but axe rushes are few and far between on huge maps at low sealevel. Your closest neighbor is usually 20+ tiles away. Yes on marathon you will still have a chance to overwhelm him/her but you economy will nose dive even if you just keep the capital. It is also very difficult to continue supplying troops to the front lines. So the time honored strategy of "Axerush then win with 2 capitals" rarely applies here. And unfortunately ya gotta learn the rest of the game. The good news is that the Ai sucks at the rest of the game.

I've played a few Arborial maps lately, and they tend to simulate the effects of bigger maps, I've found.

You could add that with neighbors so far and few between, leaders with UUs before the age of Macemen/Trebuchets are relatively weaker.

Then the Ai passes out my tech like candy to their buddies and I end up supplying a nice tech to the entire world for little return.

Read my lips - No Tech Brokering!

 

[Kesshi]

CivCorpse,

You make a lot of points, but as this is my prefered playstyle, I want to make a few (read: a lot) of comments.

Traits
Imperialistic: Somewhat weaker on Marathon because of the imbalance between unit production and building production. Traits that give a discount to buildings save you considerably more hammers. I have found my economy crashing well before all the peaceful Rexing is anywhere near complete.

Because city distance is calculated based on percentage of the world away from a capital, unlike smaller world sizes you can move your cities 1 or 2 spaces over in Huge maps with a smaller economical strain on your empire. This permits you to move that 1 or 2 or 5 spaces extra to get that key location without worrying about settling too far away. The number of cities maintenance modifier is much lower as well. I'm not sure if conqueror's plateau tops out at the same number in all map sizes, but the cost per city in Huge sized map is (I think) half that of a Duel sized map.

Philosophical: Strongest early but fades much faster than on smaller maps. Especially if you are trying to use settled GP's. I have found that on huge maps at marathon speed a single super science city just doesn't produce the number of beakers several heavily cottaged cities can. The best use of those GS is academies. Bulb and trade seems to be less effective as well. With eleven civs in a game, you cannot reliably bulb techs noone else has. Though early bulbs are awesome. You have a monoploly tech for quite a long time if you choose not to trade it around.

I disagree. Philosophical is an INCREDIBLE trait for Huge. Are you building only one Great Person farm? You're doing it wrong. Build 2, 3, heck build 5! They're worth it, trust me. Your map is 2, 3, 5 times bigger than the other sizes, so you should have 2, 3, 5 times the number of specialist cities. Five times the number of military cities. Five times the number of science cities. Five times the number of units, etc., etc.

Okay, it's not an EXACT 1 to 1 ratio, but the benefits from having more than one GP farm with a Philo leader are incredibly useful.

Charasmatic: Solid trait in the early game that fades. Due to the larger number of cities you will have it greatly increases the number of extra happy citizens. More citizens means more of everything. Especially if adopting a religion is dangerous due to the political climate. It takes many many turns to research monarchy for HR. Eight cities with two extra citizens is like having ten cities early game.
The promotions bonus is stronger on huge maps because a larger percentage of your troops will be coming from cities without military instructors. If you are running vassalage and theocracy you can get troops that are 1 point from level 3 in a gigantic number of cities.

The problem I have with this strategy are the extra costs that incur based on city size. If you grow your cities they cost more. Instead use Charasmatic to permit yourself to whip your cities more, thus retaining the happiness bonus while keeping the cities small enough they don't cost too much. To me, Charasmatic means more hammers, not bigger cities.

Expansive: Weaker for the same reason Imperialistic is weaker. Though getting a discount on a building that should be in every single city is nice.

Expansive is EXTREMELY nice on Huge maps. Settlers fly out like you wouldn't believe, and even if I'm playing with 30+ civs, I find Expansive useful because of all the hammer savings. There is no rule stating that you have to keep every city you conquer.

As of late, I've found Expansive to be so useful in many many ways. First there's the hammer savings on producing Settlers. This means I can raze more enemy cities and place them the 1-2 spaces over that they should have been settled. Then there's the hammer savings when I don't need to start on an Aquaduct for many of my cities. And finally there's the gold savings, after I start to get my empire developed I usually won't need a whole lot of health, and I can start trading away my resources for even as little as 1gpt. That adds up to quite a bit after a while. I think my record is 50gpt from foreign trades.

Industrious: Mixed bag. When going for wonders that affect all cities it is a major boost. More cities means more benefits. However the majority of your cities will not be building wonders and except for the discounted forges will not benefit as much from industrious as from other traits.

For a long time I've found Industrious to be more useful than Creative. If I start my game off properly I can expand and build Stonehenge, and then I have 1/2 of the Creative bonus while retaining my Industrious bonus. Also Forges are production + happiness, making them essetial in every city. Industrious is worth it for that bonus alone.

Spiritual: Another mixed bag. The cheaper buildings are great but anarchy times do not triple on marathon so you lose a little bit.

You're calling Spiritual a MIXED BAG? Oh dear god you're using it wrong! Slavery is awesome on Huge maps. However it's 1, medium maintenance, and 2, can cause undesireable results in your capital city. So when you whip something, swap out of Slavery, then swap back in. Because you can swap back out of Slavery in as few as 5 turns, you minimize the amount of chances of having a Slave revolt.

Also is your best buddy asking you to convert Religions? Do it! Swap back after 5 turns for a minimal loss and a diplomatic bonus.

But I have found the most valuable wonder to be the Great Wall. Barbs on marathon speed/huge maps are a freakin nightmare. Fog busting is an invitation to economic ruin.

I find you to be very odd my friend. Barbarians shouldn't be seen as stumbling blocks, but rather as stepping stones. Use them to gather extra experience for your units. Sure the experience doesn't count towards your Great General points, but they do count for upgrading your units. Up to 5 points for animals and 10 points for all other Barbarians.

Instead of fogbusting park some units of your on hills or forests in your boarders. Chances are your barbarian friends will attack them before moving inward. If they skip your unit move inward strike with your defensive unit. This means you should be using offensive units for your "boarded defense." Axemen, Elephants, Macemen, etc.

The biggest upside here is that you can defend more cities with fewer units. However the tradeoff is that you lose the HR happiness bonus because your units aren't parked in the city.

Opening strategies

To save space I won't quote everything you said, but you have a lot of good advice here. (By the way, I'm not quoting that which I agree with because this is already a long post and is getting longer. )

Trading for backfill vs. self-research for backfill. I have found self-research to be more effective. With more AI's the discounts to research are pretty hefty. But so many AI means that you can trade your techs to fewer of them before everyone has it. Then the Ai passes out my tech like candy to their buddies and I end up supplying a nice tech to the entire world for little return.

Oh god no! Always try to trade for your backfills. (Note: I don't mean always, there are always exceptions.) Even though backfilling may only take as few as 3 or 4 turns, try to trade for them. Target the civ lowest in score and trade it from them.

The reason I say this here is the value of the tech is based on quite a few factors. One of those factors is how many other civs know it. If a lot of other civs already know that technology then the AI will not place a high value on that technology, thus they will be willing to give it away for peanuts.

Three to 4 turns here, 3 to 4 turns there, and eventually you're saving as many turns as it takes to learn a "modern" tech. Trade Aesthetics for Alphabet. Trade Sailing for Priesthood. Trade Theology for Calendar and some gold. Etc., Etc., Etc. You're not helping your rivals because you're trading with the low man on the totem pole. He or she will never be a threat to you, while you are only saving time (at a diplomatic cost, of course.)

For a ten city target you need 60-70 units. That is 60-70 gpt. Attacking and grabbing 2-3 cities is not advisable. It leaves a fairly large and pissed off neighbor.

Don't underestimate the value of multiple military cities replenishing the front lines as you move forward. Unless you plan on taking all 10 cities in a single turn, you don't need 60-70 units AT THE START to take 10 cities. You can easily start with 30-40 and push forward taking 3-4 cities while producing the extra 30-40 units necessary.

The Economy
I have tried a number of economies. CE seems to be the best. The SSE/WE starts pretty strong but there is a limit on the number of beakers a single city can produce and it does not go up with mapsize or game speed. As empires expand you need a lot of commerce from a lot of cities.
I tried a few SE games. I'm not the strongest SE player and i struggled a lot. The problem was cash flow. Having a heavily cottaged capital can pay for the costs of an empire on a standard map. On a huge map it can't. I also play with tech brokering off. While this slows down the tech path for the Ai it pretty much kills any chance of the bulb-n-trade bonanza that a SE seems to require. Another buzzkill with trading techs on huge maps is the number of AI's means you are pretty much assured of trading with sombodies worst enemy.

I am a very strong SE player, and I can't stand playing on smaller maps due to how strong the SE functions on a Huge map. Maybe I just need to learn to play a CE better, or maybe I'm just patient enough to micromanage 40+ cities at a time, but I truly think that the SE is the way to go on a Huge map when you're being very militaristic. Actually I think the Hybrid is the way to go, but I'm still learning the delicate balance of Specialists vs Cottages.

I try and have 1/2 my cities as cottage monsters and the other half production with 1 or 2 GP farms to produce GS's for academies.
Currency seems to be better on larger maps. More cities means more trade routes. And you are going to have more production cities, which enables you to set 1 or 2 to building wealth and still produce troops in adequete numbers. Selling off old techs for cash helps a lot. Especially when you have more civs to milk.

Do you build your obligatory island city? If you can get TGL up and running, and build an island city, that's 4 overseas traderoutes (actually 8, because of the reciprocal) that will net you 2 commerce each, so you get +8 (+12) extra commerce, and that extra city probably won't cost you 12 gold in maintenance. That's a huge bonus when you're just starting off your empire. Even on Panagea if you can erect TGL and found your obligatory island city it's so very worth it because of how quickly SeaSide cities can become profitable under any circumstances. One Lighthouse + Lake and/or Coastal Tiles = no workers necessary for a profit.

Ok, i am going to kill a few more hours on my current game.

Good luck, CivCorpse, and have a good time!

 

[fed1943]

I don't feel myself as a strong player, but IMHO the great question was not asked:
How many food surplus (factoring health) and happiness are needed to surpass the
cottage option?
Best regards,

 

[Alsn]

Kesshi, I think you are confusing expansive and imperialistic since expansive gets a production bonus to workers while imperialistic is the one that gets the bonus to settlers.

Edit: Even then however, having a production boost to workers on a huge map is definitely something worthwhile.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It varies based on # of opponents too. 18 civs favors the rush much better than the default 11 (including yourself). Modding in more means you can just romp taking city after city, easily getting a commanding lead before anybody can react.

The economy shouldn't crash from peaceful settling though. Do that Snaaty opening where you put out some archers, then settler/worker 2x repeat. The nice thing about huge maps is that there are more civs and more resources. If you use cottages in the other cities (possibly capitol, though you can spam wonders there too, especially stonehenge if not creative, but also consider mids as then you have access to more early, same goes for religion), you can get tons of cities and not crash. I actually like EXP a lot here since you can easily whip in the granaries early to let the cities grow really fast.

Any kind of focus on resources, and the likelihood that you can trade for more, should keep happiness plenty high to support a lot of cities/expansion.

 

[Kesshi]

Kesshi, I think you are confusing expansive and imperialistic since expansive gets a production bonus to workers while imperialistic is the one that gets the bonus to settlers.

Edit: Even then however, having a production boost to workers on a huge map is definitely something worthwhile.

Alsn,

Oops, you're right. It was late and I mixed up the unit bonus for Expansive (Bonus to Worker) and Imperialistic (bonus to Settler.) Thanks for catching that.

 

[DaveMcW]

There is no Marathon bonus for settlers. Huge maps are where the Imperialistic bonus really shines.

 

[Bleys]

Lately I have become addicted to the following settings:

Large Map
Big and Small
Snakey Continents
Regular islands
Islands mixed in

I regenerate ONLY until I get at least 2 seafood with no more than 5 or 6 total Coastal tiles, and no ocean tiles.

I beeline the GLH, and build a lot of galleys very very early and settle the islands like mad.

The AI seems unable to play this kind of map at all. I even romped Immortal (with Darius, yeah yeah, I know, LOL). Its become a blast though. Most games there are a few remote islands full of Barbs, so it holds my interest for a long time. Generally, these settings will offer contact with most of the other civs pre-optics, with maybe 1 or 2 AIs getting the "small" and being unreachable except til Astronomy (I play it with the default for Large, 9 civs). Its a blast of a map, once you build the GLH, thats it, game over. Just make sure every single city you can is coastal, grab Sids for Space or SP for Dom and away we go. I have yet to play one where I felt "cramped", even if there were 5 AI on my landmass.

I think it goes back to my SMAC days, when I would play for incredibly stupid-high scores, using Huge, Islands, Transcend, Ironman, Abundant Alien life, and once you get the Elevator in that game, you use the Workshop to design a Drop-Colony ship and Drop Former, and and colonize every little tiny spec of land, and quick-buy all the fast-growth stuff like Tree Farms, etc. LOL I may just play me one of those, that game had some great stuff, and I am pretty sure its still installed on this machine.

 

[CivCorpse]

I did some peeking after reading responses and noticed that settlers are not treated as units when figuring hammer requirements @ marathon speed. They are 3x just as buildings are, therefore are not really affected good or bad by speed. However I still find the bonus less effective on Huge maps. Yes you build more of them, but you build more of everything. The weakening of Imperialistic on Huge vs. standard maps lies in the lack of a rush to grab land. On huge (especially low sea level like I have been playing) there is so much land I usually find my economy cannot afford to settle all the land available before my borders touch others.

More observations. I don't think I mentioned it before but Huge size maps also increase the beaker cost for techs. As a benchmark I generated 2 starts with Freddy. Both were marathon speed/noble. Bronze working cost 468 beakers on a standard size map. And 540 on a huge map. While this is somewhat offset by reduced distance and # of cities costs, it puts extra emphasis on balancing your economy. It also leads to some tough choices with regard to choosing a tech path. One thing I have started doing is researching the cheaper techs I need first in hopes that I will meet a civ that knows the more expensive ones in order to get the discount. I also try and research all the prerequisites for techs to get the maximum discount available. Well atleast in situations where i have that luxury.
But more importantly I have learned to avoid deep beelines. When you do, you are sacrificing some part of your growth. Shooting for an expensive military tech can mean ignoring important economic ones. You may find your rival has a much stronger research rate to quickly catch up on the military one. And if you use trading to backfill you have surrendered your military edge. The opposite is true as well, Beelinging economic techs the expense of military ones could mean being forced to either give up those techs in tribute or getting attacked for refusing. Marathon can favor the warmonger in both directions. If you have a military tech lead you can abuse it. But if you are on the other end you are in for a long and painful time while you sloooowly catch up. For this reason I have found leaders with economic traits to be the strongest. More advanced units are better than highly promoted ones. I'll take a unpromoted rifleman over Tokogawas muskets any day of the week.
I have found that early DoW by the AI are somewhat rare because they still have plenty of space to REX. So once I have a way of dealing with the barbs, I focus more on dropping cottages than units.

 

[Shagrat44]

Nice thread. I have been playing only huge for a while, but haven't tried low sea level yet. Might have to try that.

The Great Wall Wonder is great, but my problem with building the Great Wall is I don't build enough military units, I am lulled into a sense of comfort and the other AI Leader will try and attack much sooner. So if I do build the Great Wall I need to try and remember to still beef up the military, it is easy to forget without the barb threat.

I am starting to like the barbarian threat if I am in a corner of a continent, since I use the barbarians as promotion vehicle for my military units.

As for the early rush, I agree with the distance issue and the impact it can have on your economy. I tend to only do an ax rush if I luck out and end up on a continent with 1-2 other players. If I only have a couple to contend with I will try and knock them out early if I have an advantage, so I can expand at my leisure.

Tech trading I can't offer any comments on this since I am horrible at it, so I turn it off

 

[feralminded]

There's several subtle economic consequences of playing huge maps on marathon. I personally usually play the Giant Earth Mod on Marathon which is in fact larger than huge I believe and is 36 civilizations. I also as a rule disable tech brokering to keep the game sane. Regardless the following results are a consequence of this style of game.

1. Obviously there's more turns and thus more warmongering can occur. That said there's more territory to conquer so the relative pace with which one consumes % of territory is something of a wash compared to smaller maps on normal speed.
2. Units see more combat and upgrade/obsolete slower and as a result get more promotions.
3. The slow pace makes some units potentially more worthwhile that otherwise would never or rarely be built (ironclads, airships, muskets, triremes) since they are viable for longer periods.
4. Fast Workers end up being largely useless. While ostensibly there are larger distances to cover the majority of workers spend their lives within the confines of a BFC which does not scale with the map size however what does scale is how long the worker has to work an individual tile. As a result workers on a marathon game spend a much smaller % of time moving vs working compared to a normal or fast game.
5. Conversely fast combat units like impis or calvary end up being far more useful than usual as support units and skirmishers once you initiate a campaign due to the size of the map. I typically end up with 2 large armies on each end of my empire and a smaller group of calvary rushing about either securing my borders or supporting those armies. Late game I have actually put together 3 or even 4 large armies to further my conquests and/or defend my borders.
6. Wars have to be planned out much farther in advance with supply lines secured. Replacement units usually have to be being produced or even already on their way to the front lines before you send in the first wave. Warmongering on Marathon/Huge requires a lot more nerve.
7. Airlifting has an entirely new level of use. On Huge or larger maps rails feel insufficient.
8. Sea-faring is a dramatically different affair. Distances are much farther so shuttling troops is very difficult and as long as you're not on a pangea style map getting the extra water movement for circumnavigation is a huge deal. The water movement effect of refrigeration is likewise pronounced.
9. Wonders that affect your entire civilization or entire continent are vastly more powerful.
10. Most national wonders are devalued.
11. Masochists play SE on Huge or larger maps. Learn to love your cottages (I know its hard for me too ).
12. The Religious economy is terrifyingly powerful as long as you're skilled at the diplomacy game.
13. You almost always build academies from your Great Scientists. Obviously you still have your oxford city but it won't cut it alone.
14. Late game it can help to build a war academy or two so that you can have more troop building cities beyond ironworks and heroic epic cities. It also is not out of the question to spread your generals across your various production cities. Having one city pumping out level 5 troops and the others pumping out level 2s is no good when you could have 4-5 cities producing level 4s.

 

[Supr49er]

Wow. Great first post.

Welcome to the Forums feralminded.

 

[6K Man]

feralminded - just out of curiosity, how long do your Giant Earth/36 Civs/Marathon games take to play? And how do you usually win (I'm assuming you win )?

(I just finished an 18 Civs/Huge/Marathon/Prince game, won by domination, and it took so painfully long to finish that I might not try that again for a while. I've long been curious about the the Giant Earth mod, but I wonder if it might be a chore to play once I got to the late game.)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

feralminded - just out of curiosity, how long do your Giant Earth/36 Civs/Marathon games take to play? And how do you usually win (I'm assuming you win )?

(I just finished an 18 Civs/Huge/Marathon/Prince game, won by domination, and it took so painfully long to finish that I might not try that again for a while. I've long been curious about the the Giant Earth mod, but I wonder if it might be a chore to play once I got to the late game.)

I did and early 18 civs game on prince/epic that I won in less than 2 hours. The submission for G major 37 was 1 hr 55 for me .

It depends on how much you want to micro, and how much you hotkey/queue things...but huge maps don't HAVE to take THAT long!

 

[6K Man]

I did and early 18 civs game on prince/epic that I won in less than 2 hours. The submission for G major 37 was 1 hr 55 for me .

It depends on how much you want to micro, and how much you hotkey/queue things...but huge maps don't HAVE to take THAT long!

Well, ironically, I don't care that it takes a long time in the early, exploring/rushing/expansionist phase - that's the interesting part for me. And I definitely micromanage - for example, if I have a stack of units preparing to assault an AI stack, I'll pick and choose units to attack with based on:
- survival chance (duh )
- likelihood of earning enough XP for a promotion if it wins
- having an extra movement point left after attacking
- which units I want defending when the AI counterattacks;
and so on. So in the later game, wars take me forever.

Anyway, I was curious.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I do all of that, even tile swapping in individual cities, in the early game.

Once the game is in hand though, there's no reason to bother unless you're going for MAX SCORE...which for me is almost never...

 

[J-man]

What about a trade route economy on a archipelago map (or other sea map)? How well does that work?

 

[feralminded]

feralminded - just out of curiosity, how long do your Giant Earth/36 Civs/Marathon games take to play? And how do you usually win (I'm assuming you win )?

(I just finished an 18 Civs/Huge/Marathon/Prince game, won by domination, and it took so painfully long to finish that I might not try that again for a while. I've long been curious about the the Giant Earth mod, but I wonder if it might be a chore to play once I got to the late game.)

Well it really depends on how you want to play. I personally disable spaceship and cultural victories ... mostly because I don't consider either truly "winning" ... or maybe just because I'm a savage bastard and like to break things. Dominations take a LONG time on a map that big though and I'm not sure if a domination win is even possible without playing Epic or Marathon (you just need many many turns to take land). That said I have won three games on the GEM and each took me roughly 20-30 hours to play through. I did not attempt SE even though I'm far more comfortable on that level and one was chieftan, one noble, and one prince (or monarch, whatever is above noble). While I am a solid Emperor player with my SE on a normal map ... with a map this big I found it FAR more challenging and since I went CE twice and RE once I was a little unsettled. I barely pulled out the second CE victory.

Regardless GEM really slows down so unless you have a lot of patience I don't recommend it. Turns take 10-15 seconds a piece on a fast machine (don't worry too much about "fast" though ... honestly with the way Civ4 was built all modern machines are roughly equally "fast"). The mod is unplayable with less than a gig of ram though and you probably need 1.5 minimum.

The best part about the GEM or any fixed map for me is I can truly strategize before I even fire up the map. Every game I play the GEM I come up with 5 new strategies I want to try ... basically with a fixed resources map you can kind of plan out your progress. My last game I played Saladin (middle east) and made it my goal in life to

A. Get Hinduism.
B. Get the Great Lighthouse.
C. Destroy Israel with a Chariot rush and take their copper.
D. Destroy Babylon with axes (and now own the entire middle east)
E. Spread Hinduism and one other religion to the entire map.
F. Get the AP.
G. Cash in and play for maximum currency/trade and try to win a diplo victory.

It didn't all go as planned but it was really fun walking into a game with a solid strategy as to what I wanted to do and how I planned to do it. While I definitely like the on your toes tactical game of a regular game with random everything its nice to be able to strategize a bit as well. Diplomacy with 36 other nations is pretty tricky and fun.