Oxfordless Hatty

[iggymnrr]

425 BC Update

As planned Victoria met her demise. I don't seem to have the knack yet for when to take screens. But at some point before 575 BC alphabet became available for trade. Some back filling was done. In 575 BC, Victoria received a summons to "discuss something else." All available war chariots crossed her borders. The next turn, Victoria died. 4 or 5 war chariots were lost but 3 cities, 3 workers and 2 granaries were gained.

Spoiler :

Techs in 575 BC


Victoria's Demise

However, before she died Victoria bribed Mansa into war. That war is still going on. 2 more cities were founded in the West and in 425 Hatty completed the pyramids (with bureau not stone) and acquired monotheism.

Spoiler :

Western Empire in 425 BC


Civics in 425 BC


Tech Screen in 425 BC

There is no pressing need to sign peace with Mansa yet, but pillaging is an option. Both Gandhi and Mansa have monarchy but Hatty was briefly worst enmies with Gandhi and Mansa wouldn't trade before the war. With 2 calendars and 1 wine, calender seems to be the place to go. Gems will come online next turn so MC is in play. The music line is still wide open so that may be chased down for a GA.

With the downfall of Victoria, Hatty is one step closer to the aluminum district with gold/silver. The simpe solution is to punch a hole in the center of it and kill Joao. The green district south of Thebes needs to be settled too. It's just that there are no food resources near except fish/clams in the far south.

At the moment, things are quite and not much more may happen before 1 AD.

 

[iggymnrr]

The game has proceeded to 100 AD, a decent checkpoint. Not much has happened. The war with Mansa ended by sniping a city. He upgraded his 2 warriors defending the city to axemen. No problem. A couple of other cities were settled. Assorted screens at 100 AD:

Spoiler :

100 AD Tech Screen


100 AD Religion Spread


100 AD GPF


100 AD Forbidden Palace

1 AD came and in successive turns Memphis finished the Great Library, Thebes finished the Hanging Gardens, the Oracle city finished the MoM and music was finished. Gandhi had literature so I decided to get music first. A great Scientist is on hand to go with the artist. I decided to make the dog city of Barcelona the GPF city. Highly likey it will get the National Park too.

Gold and silver are on view. A settler is being slipped past Lincoln and Joao to lay claim to the aluminum district. Not sure yet how to fight the next war and with whom. The next few hundred years be be directed towards bio/state property and finishing expansion.

Spoiler :

 

[iggymnrr]

1070 AD. Both state property and biology are in. Update coming.

1070 AD and 1080 AD Update (I accidentally hit next turn.)

Empire stands at 28 cities with 1 or 1 more coming depending on aluminum or dyes. War with Joao was declared in 520 AD and raged for a while with mace and war chariots. Mansa got bribed in AGAIN. Overview of the empire:

Spoiler :

Northern District


Southern District


Central District


Western District

Various statistics:

Spoiler :

Land Percentage


Wonders Built


Manufacturing


Crop Yield

Civics, Tech and the Capitol

Spoiler :

Civics


Tech


The Capitol

How have I wasted my time?

Spoiler :

The Taj just finished and the capitol is working on an engineer for the iron works. OR with be re-adopted soon. It's remaining forests have been pre-workshopped. (They may get lumbermilled.) Hatty has gotten to this point without Oxford, universities or observatories. The latter will come soon enough.

 

[Amao]

the jump between 100AD to 1070AD is the most amazing part. and 59 workers!

 

[iggymnrr]

the jump between 100AD to 1070AD is the most amazing part. and 59 workers!

I should probably cover the tech path in there too. The game is coming to a close soon. It looks 1565 ADish. Looking for a rabbit in a hat for 1550 AD, but beating 1600 AD is a slam dunk.

Edit: Just checked the game. It's 1390 AD with 9 techs left, leaving 10 turns to build every. If last part finishes on the 10th turn, 1490 AD, the ship is launchable in 1500 AD for a win in 1550 AD. I have 3 GPs for a GA and 2 more GSs to help crank tech at 1 per turn. Photo finish. Can I find that rabbit? Will update after work.

 

[iggymnrr]

It seems I was off on my count before dashing off to wrok. 11 techs remain in 1390AD (genetics is done

Spoiler :

Research from 1080 AD went compass->astronomy and then economics->AL. Accidentally hitting next turn while taking screens in 1070 AD, triggering the Taj GA, left me wondering what to do. Recent research has been at 1 tech per turn: steel (engineer ironworks) ->rifling->artillery->rocketry (start Apollo)->industrialism. A couple of more screens from 1390 AD:

Spoiler :

Ironworks


GPF

During the interim a 3rd GA was trigger and the 4th is about to get underway. Happiness from fur just expired creating a couple unhappys. GPF may or may not use it's trees for a cheap spaceship part. Research on railroad is from OVERFLOW no beakers have been invested yet. I will finish the game in the next post by counting down from 1400 AD, updating each turn with something. A screen may or may not be included. So trigger the last GA and get on with it.

 

[iggymnrr]

TEN: 1400 AD railroad in, mining resources railroaded, aluminum online, prechops being collected
NINE: 1410 AD radio in, more prechops collected
EIGHT: 1420 AD combustion in, more prechops collected
SEVEN: 1430 AD plastics in, Apollo finished, thrusters and stasis chamber tasked out, computers part-bulbed
SIX: 1440 AD satellites in, docking bay tasked out
FIVE: 1450 AD fission in, cities are starving from prechops, food being pre-workshopped, some cottages are gone
FOUR: 1460 AD computers in, fiber optics part-bulbed, starvation continues
THREE: 1470 AD fiber optics in, cockpit tasked out, starvation continues
TWO: 1480 AD fusion in, engines tasked out, I'm hungry
ONE: 1490 AD composites in, casings tasked out, starvation continues
ZERO: 1500 AD ecology in, life support tasked out, the time has come and gone for a 1550 AD win, no spacehip parts have finished, but the spaceship construction screen shows this:

Spoiler :

 

[iggymnrr]

The following turn all 16 parts finished and in the year 1505 AD:

Spoiler :

Note Thebes is on the very brink of starvation. The win date will be 1555 AD. The personal goal was missed by a single turn. But the finish was excellent. All final techs were done in 1 turn and the ship launched the turn after the last tech was researched as the last GA came to and end. Picture perfect.

For those who were interested in following this, forgive me if my presentation was not great. I'll be glad to answer questions and dig up saves for any more screens requested to answer queries.

 

[OKScientist]

It was a good writeup. I have some questions now.

So, first of all, with 28 cities do you think you missed Oxford? Probably not much, it would seem.

Which were the most crucial decisions in your game that you think affected your tech-pace? Civics and war time?

I play huge maps/marathon, so I cannot directly compare, but I find it weird in a screenshot above that you were using bureaucracy with 28 cities! I would expect Free Speech to allow for more beakers at that empire size. Any thoughts?

Now that it's over, do you think that you could have made some things different in this specific game that could have sped you up even more? (like beeline different technologies, delay or hurry war etc).

 

[Mylene]

Welcome to paradise city, but I don't think anything could be learned here besides getting spoiled.
This map looks like a very good chance to decrease skill levels

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

It was a good writeup. I have some questions now.

So, first of all, with 28 cities do you think you missed Oxford? Probably not much, it would seem.

Which were the most crucial decisions in your game that you think affected your tech-pace? Civics and war time?

I play huge maps/marathon, so I cannot directly compare, but I find it weird in a screenshot above that you were using bureaucracy with 28 cities! I would expect Free Speech to allow for more beakers at that empire size. Any thoughts?

Now that it's over, do you think that you could have made some things different in this specific game that could have sped you up even more? (like beeline different technologies, delay or hurry war etc).

Something that boosts cottages is utterly useless to a hammer economy.


Now iggymnrr what would you say is the most decisive factor of having a good time on lower difficulties? Early state property?

 

[iggymnrr]

It was a good writeup. I have some questions now.

So, first of all, with 28 cities do you think you missed Oxford? Probably not much, it would seem.

Which were the most crucial decisions in your game that you think affected your tech-pace? Civics and war time?

I play huge maps/marathon, so I cannot directly compare, but I find it weird in a screenshot above that you were using bureaucracy with 28 cities! I would expect Free Speech to allow for more beakers at that empire size. Any thoughts?

Now that it's over, do you think that you could have made some things different in this specific game that could have sped you up even more? (like beeline different technologies, delay or hurry war etc).

1. Final tech rate in 1555 AD was 5500+ bpt. Dairus can do that on ~21 cities with Oxford. So It helps somewhat.
2. Wars were most crucial. The path to bio/SP involved bulbing education/PP/Sci Meth/biology. At least 4 of techs were bulbed. While there were some cottages, none of these techs does anything. So GSs were going to get saved. The value of bulbs goes up with pop so I raised the pop with conquest to get the most out of them. Education was one turn with bulb, PP was 1 turn, Sci meth, I forget, say ~2 turns and bio was 3 turns. Communism was libbed instead of bio since it couldn't be bulbed.
3. Sorry I'm blanking on free speech. But Thebes and Paris were the 2 main cities with cottages. 18 towns at the end. Also, Thebes needed bureau, and a zillion workers, to barely 3-turn an engine.
4. Haven't thought about it much yet. It always seems like a chore attempting to get the Taj going while aiming for communism. It's just that philo is required for lib, making nationalism is 1 tech away...

Welcome to paradise city, but I don't think anything could be learned here besides getting spoiled.
This map looks like a very good chance to decrease skill levels

The target date was not achieved. If that had been the date to beat on the HoF table the game is effectively a loss. A person will loss many, many games this way, even on settler.

 

[iggymnrr]

Now iggymnrr what would you say is the most decisive factor of having a good time on lower difficulties? Early state property?

Corps can be effective with some leaders. But if state property is used it is best to beeline it. However to make it tick biology is needed. In setting up the endgame I don't quite know what is best. Fortunately, there won't be enough time even with a massive amount of workers to get everything done. I usually use the rule of "3F and out." That is make sure cities have 3 green farms or food resources developed and state property improvements after that. Once SP is in, the worker army can fine tune things as needed.

Somewhat humorously, the fastest way to space on the lower levels is workers, more workers and even more workers. For example, the 90 BC game took an early detour from the pre-game strategy. The start was so fantastic that the inital tech path, ones I clicked on to research, went polytheism->priesthood->CoL->monotheism->theology. Monotheism->theology was the detour. 2nd city built Stonehenge and then Hagia Sophia en route to 4 workers per city. I placed my bet on the worker.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

en route to 4 workers per city. I placed my bet on the worker.

What is it that you have the Workers doing that requires so many of them?

Are they frequently replacing improvements?

For example, do you have certain stages of the game where you have them build one type of improvement and then later plan to replace those improvements with a different type of improvement? If so, which improvements replace which ones and approximately at what tech level would you start switching the improvements?

Or is it less a matter of replacing improvements and more a matter of just needing that many Workers to be able to lay down a single set of improvements, without even having time to replace many improvements?

 

[iggymnrr]

What is it that you have the Workers doing that requires so many of them?

Are they frequently replacing improvements?

For example, do you have certain stages of the game where you have them build one type of improvement and then later plan to replace those improvements with a different type of improvement? If so, which improvements replace which ones and approximately at what tech level would you start switching the improvements?

Or is it less a matter of replacing improvements and more a matter of just needing that many Workers to be able to lay down a single set of improvements, without even having time to replace many improvements?

Part of the 4 workers per turn is marathon speed, part from the empire that had "circumnavigated" very early, and part due to the fast BC date. The last batch of workers were to help with prechopping and getting things finished up. The map was huge with little roads. Imagine a huge map with ~30 cities at 2000 BC that circles the globe and looks like swiss cheese on the mini-map. A lot of workers are needed.

Edit: My memory is bad. I just checked the 2000 BC save from the BC game. The minimap is worse than swiss cheese. It's more like scattered puddles.

Spoiler :

All 30 cities are connected (mainly by water routes) with 60 workers.

 

[iggymnrr]

Returning to the Hatty game, I am not at all certain what happened in the mid game, the years between 1 AD and 1000 AD. It's a nebulous cloud I somehow got through. Specifically, ~580 AD guilds came in and cities were set to grocers with some more mace being built. The economy was suddenly 0%, bleeding cash, with ~100 bpt and banking 6 turns out. A 2nd scientist had been recently produced. Seemed like a great time to start the war with Joao. (I must have a proclivity towards self-destruction.) Yet 10 turns later, 780 AD, the economy was 70% with 500+ bpt. Banking was in, merc adopted, paper was in, education bulbed and finished, PP bulbed and finished, nationalism was 2 turns out and pacifism was adopted. What happened?

The empire was around 25 cities, with ~10 courthouses, ~20 cottages and grocers like everywhere. A number of specialists were being used with a number cities building wealth/research. I never looked back after that. Still, I do not understand what happened with the economy. It's like it was assembled ad hoc with a number of pieces from here and there. It puzzles me.

 

[Amao]

a GA?

 

[iggymnrr]

a GA?
Golded age.

 

[OKScientist]

a GA?
Golded age.

I guess he is suggesting that you had a golden age and that's why the situation was turned around. Which would make sense, of course.

Other than that, I find myself sometimes too in cloudy situations as the one you are describing. It is usually a GA that turns things around, or just waiting for newly conquered cities to get going (or get connected for trade routes). Or so I think, sometimes I am unsure of what changed too.

 

[iggymnrr]

I guess he is suggesting that you had a golden age and that's why the situation was turned around. Which would make sense, of course.

Other than that, I find myself sometimes too in cloudy situations as the one you are describing. It is usually a GA that turns things around, or just waiting for newly conquered cities to get going (or get connected for trade routes). Or so I think, sometimes I am unsure of what changed too.

I am a bit unsure of things too right now. I am willing to play to test the need for things. Followed up the Hatty test with Darius on a huge settler map with Oxford and almost skipped the national epic. Broke down and built it in a future 2-turn casing sight. Not sure it was worth it. Darius out-stripped Hatty's beaker speed, by a mile, with 22 cities instead of 28. Though 8 unis were required so that may have slowed up things a tad.