[BTS] Shadow Game - Immortal - Louis - HoF like Start

[kostja]

I think, if I'm going for a second settler too early, that city would only have unimproved tiles to work and I am desperately missing workers. I think, I'm going to grow the capitol to size 3, then work the gold mine and build a second worker while teching to writing. Then, follow with a library while growing and then start on the next second settler. That way, the second worker and Writing should be completed by T36 and a library by T44.

 

[kostja]

Played till T45. Paris is size 5 and just finished library and has a few hammers in a barracks.

Orleans is size 3 working on one.

Research is half way through Alphabet.

I am missing Pottery right now. Second worker builds farms to help bootstrap the next city faster.

I have also

Spoiler found... :

Darius land in the south, met Hindu Pacal who also founded Juduaism and is in Organized Religion.

Visiting the Russian after open boarders showed, that Cathy has already

Copper and Horses hooked up.

 

[kostja]

I figured, if I run two scientists in Paris immediately and in Orleans as soon as the library is ready, I can accumulate up-to 1312 beakers until T70 if I build an academy in the captiol using the GS at T62. That is without incorporating possible rounding errors and the fact that I'm going to found another city by T60. The total amount of beakers required to get Math, Masonry and CoL via Mediation is 1520 taking the regular discounts into account. This is without the bonus from other civcs knowing the technologies as well. If I get Mysticism and Mediation in trade, then it's 1317.

I don't know if will be able to build the Oracle by that time (T70) and take Civil Service for free. Maybe, it would be feasable building research in Paris after getting Alphabet.

I was expecting a much faster start than this. I think settling 1S of the starting location has severly slowed down the research output of Paris in the early game. I tend to consider that attempt a failure. My initial goals were to understand how HoF players are able to acchieve around 450bpt around T100.

@Choggy were you able to play? I would be very interested what you could acchieve settling 1W.

Any recommendations?

 

[6K Man]

Not getting Bronze Working sooner is really slowing you down now. Alphabet's an expensive tech to research at this point.

Working those unimproved Floodplains and even the Oasis isn't as helpful as getting more Workers out faster would be. And more Workers would have let you chop as well.

 

[kostja]

Thank you very much for the reply. Maybe, you are right. I can't tell for sure without replaying. My initial thought was, that I have nothing to build, so I wouldn't know what to chop into. Maybe, I could have had the worker out earlier and have the flood plains improved, but for that I would have needed Pottery as well. Of course, teching the latter would also have speed up researching Writing.

I think, if there are no other suggestions for this game, I will play it until I get Alphabet and see what's available for trade and then shadow myself with replaying first, with getting Bronze Working earlier and then compare it with settling 1W.

 

[kostja]

T52, Alphabet opens

Spoiler ... Tech Trades ... :

Wouldn't have thought not to get Mysticism.

Going to play the same game now settling 1W and compare after getting Alphabet.

 

[kostja]

Alternative Variant: Settle 1W
Alphabet T56 (I ran a turn of no research too many, could have been T55.) It feels like it is exaclty 3 turns slower, which might directly result from the initial later worker being 3 turns later. This time, however, research is at 36 commerce and 49 beakers per turn, compared to 29 commerces and 41 beakers. On the other hand, the first Great Scientist will be 9 turns later. In total, it feels kind of the same and is not much better.

By the way, this is the game, I'm comparing it with. https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/another-hof-spacerace-start.490952/ Maybe, I need also to try not to go with Animal Husbandry first.

Going to play without Animal Husbandary next.

 

[kostja]

Alternative Variant: Settle in IP and skip Animal Husbandary.
Alphabet T48. Research at 29 commerce, 35 beakers per turn. No scientists running, yet.

Going for an even earlier Alphabet, opens

Spoiler ...much nicer trading opportunities... :

Could trade for Fishing, Mysticism and Animal Husbandary T48 and Bronzeworking T49. Unfortunately, no one wanted to trade me Sailing, Mediation or Polytheism "just yet", although I could have enough to trade for it.

Still, the result looks so much better this way.

Of course, this variant would also be interesting with settling 1W as well, since the trade would allow to start the pasture on this turn.

Opinions?

 

[konata_LS]

Glad to see people post shadow games - and welcome to CFC

If I could, I would certainly give you advice about your game. But the fact is, I usually play at Monarch, and strategies which work well at Monarch might lose their effectiveness at IMM or above. Besides, I'm unfamiliar with HoF games or Space race (most of my games aim at domination / conquest). I think many people who play at Emperor or lower levels want to help you, but they feel "not competent enough" to help you. You'll get very good advice from DEI / IMM players, though you may need to wait for a while before getting advice, as all people have to deal with real life. It seems you've already get inspired by that Deity Marathon BC-Space write-up.

For Space game under Normal speed, @ Fish Man has several recent Space games at Deity. For example in a Capac game , and Alex game . His write-ups and explanation may give you some hints.

Another good example for you is a recent Deity space win with Willem by @ Henrik75 . You'll get more detailed information about tech path and city management when you watch the game turn by turn

Spoiler :

The T0 save of Willem game is here . If you have questions about his game such as early tech path or city placement, you may want to put your questions in his thread (it's recommended that you put questions in the Spoiler, to avoid spoiling the contents of the videos). He's usually willing to answer questions about his videos when he's online.

Some years ago, there was a successful Space win at Deity. Though the game was posted by a very good player, the game in the video below might be hard for you to imitate in your case, because Lain often chose tough maps and said he was not fond of HoF games. "What people do with a poor start" is usually different from "what people do when they get a strong start".

Spoiler :

Good luck for your game

 

[pigswill]

Settling one west gives pigs and more flood plains which is nice. Looks like beelining alphabet means working gold mines which slows growth quite a bit. No BW means no chopping which also slows expansion.

 

[kostja]

Thank you very much for the links. I'll check out the videos. I've also read the posts by FishMan. I've won some space games already on lower levels before. And, although I've never been so fast as him, I remember the late game to be quite similar. However, most of the time, I find myself to be so slow to arrive at the point where the game becomes an optimization of getting the space ship parts unlocked and built.

It seems to me, that the key part is getting to more than 30 cities as soon as possible while not going broke and maintain the technological advantage. I've opened this thread in the hope to learn how to do that.

Settling one west gives pigs and more flood plains which is nice. Looks like beelining alphabet means working gold mines which slows growth quite a bit. No BW means no chopping which also slows expansion.

That is absoluletly true. I'm also not sure, if sacrificing two population in the captitol at this point in time is worth to get (Fishing, ) Animal Husbandary and Alphabet over just Bronze Working which is availble now after the trades.

What could be the next steps?

My idea would be to continue teching Math, Masonry, Meditation, Priest Hood and Code of Laws. Meanwhile building the Oracle in order to get Civil Service if possible somewhere between T65 and T70. However, lot's of AI have Masonry already and Cathy has marble (currently mined). Another settler claiming the land north of Paris or making marble availble might be a good idea, too.

Expansion is important as well. From reading the forums, it seems the fastest way is through warfare. Military units are cheaper then settlers, the cities can continue to grow while building them and they can be whipped into resource boosted wonder builds for failgold. (This forum is lacking an emoji for wonderbread.) However, I often find myself not being able to do it as efficient as I seemingly should be. Did you see how WastinTime basically destroyed 4 civilizations with not much more than 9 Horse Archers?

Is an early war even feasable in this game? What would be the options?

Spoiler I've found :

Copper 2SW of Orleans and Horses 10N of Paris. There is no Ivory that isn't already claimed by Cathy.

Warfare with Axes seems not to be feasable. Settling a city so far away for the horses seems also to be not that great of an option, but might be considered.
Should Iron Working be beelined instead? Or might be a war with Axeman and Catapults be successful and fast enough?

 

[Anysense]

This an odd way of using double gold. The whole point of strong early commerce is that it makes possible expansion at much faster pace than usual. Get BW and worker techs fast, steal a bunch of workers, quickly improve food and chop, chop, chop, whip, whip, whip, expand at blazing speed and get your army ready sooner than you could have dreamed of with a normal start. This is how HoF games are played. Getting Alpha before t50 is cool, but rather pointless.

Axepult from 4 or 5 cities is often a sensible way of relatively early breakout if you have very limited amount of land to settle peacefully. You are far from being boxed in here, though. And due to very slow expansion you are going to be ill-prepared for such an early war. I suggest you chop/whip 2 or 3 settlers quickly and may be add a worker or two.

Edit: Get Math. You are going to need these full value chops.

 

[kostja]

Ok, seems like people are telling me I'm heading in the wrong direction, but I'm not smart enough to listen. @Anysense thank you for beeing so direct. If I understand that now correctly, the goal should be to expand as fast as possible building settlers and use the given commerce advantage to fund the new cities. What I'm missign now is some metrics. What should I aim at? How many cities at which time? How will I know I overexpanded? What should be the desired techrate be at this time?

I'll try this variant next: Bronze Working first.

 

[Anysense]

How will I know I overexpanded?

You will know you've gone wrong when miss the tech train. It takes some experience to know what you can and what you can't do. However there certain important points which can help you. By the time active tech trading begins (that usually happens around t75) you need a tech that can be traded for Alpha. As long as you can do it you should be fine. Five or six cities by t75 are generally ok on Immortal/Deity; add one city per gold you have. This is all situational, of course. There may not be enough room for expansion, or you choose to wage early war, or the land is too poor etc.

 

[kostja]

Ok, I tried settling 1W and researching Bronze Working, Animal Husbandary, Pottery, Writing, Iron Working. Could settle city 6 T75 and city 7 T77. This is about when the first AI got Alphabet and I found myself not being able to trade. I think I did it not very well. I didn't let the capitol grow to it's happy cap and I build probably a bit too many workers, or built them too early in the new founded cities. Will give it another try.

What would be the next step from there? Pick a military tech and go for the next neighbor?

 

[Fish Man]

Is there a turn 0 save?

 

[Anysense]

Ok, I tried settling 1W and researching Bronze Working, Animal Husbandary, Pottery, Writing, Iron Working. Could settle city 6 T75 and city 7 T77. This is about when the first AI got Alphabet and I found myself not being able to trade. I think I did it not very well. I didn't let the capitol grow to it's happy cap and I build probably a bit too many workers, or built them too early in the new founded cities. Will give it another try.

What would be the next step from there? Pick a military tech and go for the next neighbor?

Why would you research IW? AI will nearly always tech it early, so its trading value usually is precisely zero. The safest trade baits are HBR and Aesthetics as few AIs will go for them early. Math is good option too. Hard to say anything without screenshots or a save file, but if you still can tech with 7 cities you probably had not done too badly.

Is there a turn 0 save?

Attached to post #8

 

[kostja]

Thank you very much for your response @Anysense. I went IW because I wanted to get the rice and gems spot south of Paris which I did clear and settle. However, I was not very happy with the state of the game there. I could tech barely, so I replayed that. Here is my latest approach played to turn T74.

• Settled 1W
• Animal Husbandary -> Bronze Working for food and chops and whips
  
• Mysticism -> Masonry -> Writing -> Polytheism -> Priesthood for Failgold or Oracle
• 3t / 4t to Math left, next would be Currency or Code of Laws, I guess.

I settled only 4 cities this time, but tried to invest into Oracle as well. Three cities have 239 hammers stored in the Oracle.
I think it was either a big mistake going Writing in between since PH would have given a bonus to research Writing and I haven't managed to build a library yet, or trying to get failgold at all.

I expect the Oracle to go soon. I could either wait for it for the full cash or trigger it myself after reaching Math for some payout and an additional tech.

Spoiler Attached are some screenshots :

Map
Cities
Build statistics
Finance
Research

@Fish Man Thank you very much for your interest. Looking forward to see your results. If you would post some of your saves, I think me and others interested could learn a lot from that.

Kind regards