So whatcha all doing for BG1
- Thread starter jeremiahrounds
- Start date
jeremiahrounds
Prince
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2003
- Messages
- 404
if it wasnt so prone to "tricks" it could be fun to have a challenge of "fastest real life time spaceship" Like quake done quick.
After many launches 1650-1680 i finally managed a great game! 1475 with 73k score. Balanced map, Tropical climate, Low sealevel with Washington, Mansu Mansu, Elizabeth, and Victoria. I played Cathrine.
My starting position looked horrible when i loaded. I was on the corner of the ocean with 6 water tiles. Taking another look before restarting, i noticed that 4 of the tile had resources: 3 crabs. 1 fish, AND marble. Stone wasn't too far away but i chose better city placement than to get it sooner. From then on it was pretty much smooth sailing
I cottaged almost everything. Cities were placed with usually atleast 1 food resource to offset any plains or grasshills. I put ironworks in my capitol and it was able to have 6 engineers due to the masive food from the crabs and fish. I don't think the AIs had either wonder resources, because I didn't have any competition with building the few i got around to building. I also only traded for maybe 5 techs and on the rare occasion gift the same tech to everyone for whatever gold they had. One thing i keep seeing ppl do is build the pyramids early for representation. I don't understand how much this helps when you have 15-20 cities. The +3 per specialist is nice but all my citizens are working cottages.
Turn 324 (1470 AD)
Novgorod finishes: The Pyramids
Rushed it at the end just for fun. Nobody built it the entire game
A few other bits of detail:
Turn 285 (1275 AD)
Tech learned: Rocketry
Turn 309 (1395 AD)
Moscow finishes: Apollo Program
Turn 318 (1440 AD)
Tech learned: Ecology last ship tech
I had 3 Golden Ages. One from the Taj Mahal to speed up researching to Communism. Another to speed up production on Apollo Program as well as research for the other ship part techs. And the last during ship production. Had to wait for Fusion on the 3rd GP due to a game crash. After I replayed the 3 or so turns doing the exact same thing (looked at autolog), the 2nd time through i was given a great artist which i already had instead of a merchant the first time through.
I spent 4 turns in anarchy once i got liberalism/democracy (which i spent chopping the Taj Mahal in a city built just to chop for it) and another switching to state property. I'm addicted to Cathrine so no spiritual trait. Mansu Mansu is usually ahead in techs compared to the other AI, so I like playing with him rather than as him. Creative is nice as you don't need to build any culture buildings or bother with stonehenge. It also expands your borders in just 8 turns letting your city have better options on what tiles to work sooner. The other thing i love about Cathrine is she starts with a scout as opposed to a warrior. This lets you find the best places for cities much faster than a warrior and you can usually grab more huts (with supposed "better results..."). Get another scout or 2 from a hut and you should be able to get quite a bit of gold and some techs from the huts they find before the AI (who start with 2 units on prince).
edit: Cleaned up my autolog (removed map restart logs) and attached
My starting position looked horrible when i loaded. I was on the corner of the ocean with 6 water tiles. Taking another look before restarting, i noticed that 4 of the tile had resources: 3 crabs. 1 fish, AND marble. Stone wasn't too far away but i chose better city placement than to get it sooner. From then on it was pretty much smooth sailing
I cottaged almost everything. Cities were placed with usually atleast 1 food resource to offset any plains or grasshills. I put ironworks in my capitol and it was able to have 6 engineers due to the masive food from the crabs and fish. I don't think the AIs had either wonder resources, because I didn't have any competition with building the few i got around to building. I also only traded for maybe 5 techs and on the rare occasion gift the same tech to everyone for whatever gold they had. One thing i keep seeing ppl do is build the pyramids early for representation. I don't understand how much this helps when you have 15-20 cities. The +3 per specialist is nice but all my citizens are working cottages.Turn 324 (1470 AD)
Novgorod finishes: The Pyramids
Rushed it at the end just for fun. Nobody built it the entire game
A few other bits of detail:
Turn 285 (1275 AD)
Tech learned: Rocketry
Turn 309 (1395 AD)
Moscow finishes: Apollo Program
Turn 318 (1440 AD)
Tech learned: Ecology last ship tech
I had 3 Golden Ages. One from the Taj Mahal to speed up researching to Communism. Another to speed up production on Apollo Program as well as research for the other ship part techs. And the last during ship production. Had to wait for Fusion on the 3rd GP due to a game crash. After I replayed the 3 or so turns doing the exact same thing (looked at autolog), the 2nd time through i was given a great artist which i already had instead of a merchant the first time through.
I spent 4 turns in anarchy once i got liberalism/democracy (which i spent chopping the Taj Mahal in a city built just to chop for it) and another switching to state property. I'm addicted to Cathrine so no spiritual trait. Mansu Mansu is usually ahead in techs compared to the other AI, so I like playing with him rather than as him. Creative is nice as you don't need to build any culture buildings or bother with stonehenge. It also expands your borders in just 8 turns letting your city have better options on what tiles to work sooner. The other thing i love about Cathrine is she starts with a scout as opposed to a warrior. This lets you find the best places for cities much faster than a warrior and you can usually grab more huts (with supposed "better results..."). Get another scout or 2 from a hut and you should be able to get quite a bit of gold and some techs from the huts they find before the AI (who start with 2 units on prince).
edit: Cleaned up my autolog (removed map restart logs) and attached
Wow, no one built the Pyramids, what the hell were your enemies doing? I ended a game that was looking to be pretty good when Elizabeth built them in the early BCs. I'm now building them a bit earlier.
I agree about the scout but I wouldn't play a subpar civ just for that as you have a high chance of getting a scout from huts.
Edit: Hah, looked at your logs, you got a scout the first turn from a hut.
I agree about the scout but I wouldn't play a subpar civ just for that as you have a high chance of getting a scout from huts.
Edit: Hah, looked at your logs, you got a scout the first turn from a hut.
When the game does the whole victory dance, go through all the screens until you're prompted whether or not you want to keep playing. Select "Just a few more turns..." and then save the game immediately. That will be the file we're looking for.syneris said:
Nicesyneris said:
What's going up in 1120 AD when you are switching tons of technologies research in the logfile ? (while you are building the kremlin) I am crazy about how much workers you've built, impressive
All the game long, not just an army at the beginning, always more workers.Playing against 4 peaceful civs usually means not a single war so no need to build an army. Yes, autolog seems to log all those starts at once when i set research to follow a path (you can add research to the end of a queue just like buildings with shift but you can't add to the start without doing it all again). I wasn't sure if i wanted biology first or not, so i kept changing my mind that turn. I chose biology because most my smaller cities had farms because there wasn't enough food to support a cottage. A few times I actually dropped my techrate down to 0-20% for a turn or 2 for the money to rush buildings (such as right after physics i believe to rush the Kremlin for cheaper rushing and i slowed down fiber optics to rush labs and the space elevator). Once, I remember slowing a tech down by a turn to rush science bonus buildings in most my cities and ended up getting that turn back because of the extra science those buildings output. In 1115 i finished Physics and set research to go Electricity for the extra commerce on what few windmills i placed (either too late to start a cottage or plainshills). Then it set it for biology to help cities grow faster, and after that industrialism to reveal aluminum. After industrialism, it was set to research to Rocketry then Plastics for hydro plants. I didn't build hover dam like usual as i've been noticing it's faster to just rush hyrdo plants in the cities i choose to turn into ship producers. When i noticed my research was going to be way ahead of my production, I decided to change another city into production. I had my 10 or so cities that weren't going to be building anything each pump out one more worker as seen in Turn 296 (1330 AD). It takes 3 workers 2 turns (floodplains take slightly longer/another worker) to change a cottage into a workshop, and 6 only takes 1 turn. More workers = faster change to production. Building a worker is an easy way to pause growth shortly because of happiness if you know you are in the process of hooking up a happiness resource.
Ok, I'll resubmit with the 1480 save then?
edit: Sumbited with 1480 save and now it looks correct under My Submissions (shows victory date and spacerace) except the score shown is higher than what the game said I got (my ingame hall of fame says 73269 while the submission page shows 87921). The old submission is number 133 and the correct one is 141.
edit: Sumbited with 1480 save and now it looks correct under My Submissions (shows victory date and spacerace) except the score shown is higher than what the game said I got (my ingame hall of fame says 73269 while the submission page shows 87921). The old submission is number 133 and the correct one is 141.
I've been experimenting with creative civs and the culture slider. After several failed attempts (launches around 1500), I just finished a 1420 launch for 118819 points. 
I played as Catherine and beelined to drama after bronze working. Then I raised the culture slider to let my cities grow earlier, and slave rushed 7 settlers to fill the continent. At one point the culture slider was at 30% and research was down to 20%. But I had size 15 cities before 800AD.
Every one of my 23 cities was fully grown and well developed, and I was generating over 4800 research per turn during my final golden age, even after replacing quite a few towns with workshops. I think I'd have done even better with more land - Elizabeth built in a row across the continent and cut me off :grr:, so I only had control of 46% of the map.
I doubt I'll ever be able to play another game without the creative trait.
Edit: BTW, when I submitted the game, the HOF web page said I played as Cyrus, not Catherine, and the score showed as 118817 instead of 118819.
I played as Catherine and beelined to drama after bronze working. Then I raised the culture slider to let my cities grow earlier, and slave rushed 7 settlers to fill the continent. At one point the culture slider was at 30% and research was down to 20%. But I had size 15 cities before 800AD.
Every one of my 23 cities was fully grown and well developed, and I was generating over 4800 research per turn during my final golden age, even after replacing quite a few towns with workshops. I think I'd have done even better with more land - Elizabeth built in a row across the continent and cut me off :grr:, so I only had control of 46% of the map.
I doubt I'll ever be able to play another game without the creative trait.
Spoiler eventlog :
Edit: BTW, when I submitted the game, the HOF web page said I played as Cyrus, not Catherine, and the score showed as 118817 instead of 118819.
You are rushing to drama so you can adjust the slider, so... you can acquire resources faster?
I've been playing Catherine a bit myself, the early scout helps when you get a bunch of techs, it speeds up that slow point at the beginning. Also I hate playing against her since the model annoys the hell out of me, slapping me like I just took her pimp's money or something.
I guess they didn't have many Russians on the dev team as they got the shaft this version, while India got a big boost and American is finally playable.
I've been playing Catherine a bit myself, the early scout helps when you get a bunch of techs, it speeds up that slow point at the beginning. Also I hate playing against her since the model annoys the hell out of me, slapping me like I just took her pimp's money or something.
I guess they didn't have many Russians on the dev team as they got the shaft this version, while India got a big boost and American is finally playable.
I'm rushing to drama so I can adjust the slider, so... my cities grow to size 15 and my cottages start growing. Each 10% on the slider adds one happiness, and theatres double that effect. Any civ can do that, but creative civs get half-priced theatres, which helps.
More importantly, creative civs can get calendar earlier without binding their cities, which also helps with happiness.
But most importantly, saving 180 hammers by not building Stonehenge makes for faster REX.
Add it all up and whaddya get? 23 fully grown cities in 1000AD.
I've tried other strategies, but this has worked far better for me than the Pyramids (too many hammers slows REX), getting more resources (mostly in lousy city sites), or capping my cities at 5-6 pop.
More importantly, creative civs can get calendar earlier without binding their cities, which also helps with happiness.
But most importantly, saving 180 hammers by not building Stonehenge makes for faster REX.
Add it all up and whaddya get? 23 fully grown cities in 1000AD.
I've tried other strategies, but this has worked far better for me than the Pyramids (too many hammers slows REX), getting more resources (mostly in lousy city sites), or capping my cities at 5-6 pop.
Tall German Joe
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2005
- Messages
- 514
Taelis said:
I've played at least 20 full games of civ4 and I seriously did not know either of those things.
I just finished a 1405 launch for 135629 points. Same strategy as before, with Catherine.
Just two turns behind - I nearly hit the computer.
Would have been 1395, but I built the parts in the wrong cities, and ended up waiting for, of all things, the life support system.
I'd never used the culture slider before these last two games, because I didn't think it was worth the cost. It is worth it.
Just two turns behind - I nearly hit the computer.
Would have been 1395, but I built the parts in the wrong cities, and ended up waiting for, of all things, the life support system.
I'd never used the culture slider before these last two games, because I didn't think it was worth the cost. It is worth it.
Just finished my final attempt, a 1410 launch. Very annoying to be only 3 turns behind . Hopefully someone else submitted a 1350 launch! (gratz Taelis with your game!)
Score: 104.000 something.
Map: Great Plains (wanted to prove it can compete)
Starting position: Top left (!). I believe in general left is better than right, as you can found cities to the right anyway and the starting position to the left often has gold / silver & flood plains.
Leader: Mansa Musa. I wanted to combine Spiritual & Financial. I used both traits *alot*
Remarks:
- Playing these HOF games is a very good learning experience. Every new attempt adds a few things I need to do different. If only they weren't that extremely time consuming (22 hours on this one!).
- I had an interesting start strategy. I decided that I'd either have a super-start position or I'd try to capture an enemy city with exploring warriors. After a number of failure's I had a decent starting position and managed to capture the capital of Asoka (1 warrior got exp upgrade --> +50% city attack, the other softened the single warrior in the city). Instant Buddism, 2nd city, 1 less competitor and ofcourse some money to pay for upkeep.
- I then went for producing alot of settlers to capture health / happy resources & set up chop sites / commerce sites. Interestingly enough I pretty soon had 3 cities completely to the right (furthest possible point from my capital). Upkeep was expensive but due to courthouses affordable. Those cities became commerce powerhouses.
- I explicitly tried to found roughly 15 cities that could become commercial power houses. That was pretty succesful, although I could have done better. Also, there weren't enough spots on the map that were good enough. I had alot of plains commercial cities (who became my space part production cities).
- Delphi (the Indian capital) became my new capital, as it was more to the center. And it had a shrine + lots of commerce. With bureaucracy it was producing 500+ science (without specialists).
- I followed alot of what DaveMcW had been doing in terms of research, although I also tried some different things. Some things worked out (i.m.o.) better, some thing worse (I went for Education over Democracy, stupid move).
- I neglected specialists too much. I ended up with only two golden ages and 2 GL's that I had to use on tech's =(. And I had to *wait* for the statue of liberty to be built (40+ turns, sigh).
- The AI's weren't as helpful on the Great Plains map. Probably because there were only 3 and they didn't have that much space =). I only got a few techs from them (4-5 less than Dave).
- I actually chopped the Apollo Program. Thanks to that I could go for Computers first and it only took 5-6 turns to produce. I did miscalculate though as I was expecting the chops to be affected by the forge in that city. All this was possible due to me not settling nor chopping the top-left area. It had not enough commerce potential and too few tiles for a good production city (and it was *very* far away from the remaining AI's).
- I didn't go for Free Market + Free Speech + Universal Suffrage. Instead I went for Representation, Mercantilism & Bureaucracy (in combination with statue of liberty). Representation i.m.o. was a good choice as Universal Suffrage doesn't seem very useful unless production is your bottleneck (I switched during spaceship production, when almost done with research). Mercantilism i.m.o. was also a good choice, as I was probably producing alot more research than with Free Market (foreign trade routes seem to suck if you are that far ahead in terms of population & tech?). Finally bureaucracy. That was a mistake; I should have switched to Free Speech alot sooner; miscalculated the benefit it was giving my capital.
- Spaceship production went reasonable. Somewhere, somehow I probably messed up as I had to wait 2 turns for 2 parts and I had the last city reduce in size two times due to workshops instead of farms. (I was switching my Palace around during production, pretty effective technique).
- I seemed to have a huge GNP, much larger than Dave's, yet I still couldn't catch up / pass him. Or the research pace isn't equal to the GNP, not sure. I'd be very interested in seeing that graph again =). I should have an interesting one heh.
. Hopefully someone else submitted a 1350 launch! (gratz Taelis with your game!)Score: 104.000 something.
Map: Great Plains (wanted to prove it can compete)
Starting position: Top left (!). I believe in general left is better than right, as you can found cities to the right anyway and the starting position to the left often has gold / silver & flood plains.
Leader: Mansa Musa. I wanted to combine Spiritual & Financial. I used both traits *alot*
Remarks:
- Playing these HOF games is a very good learning experience. Every new attempt adds a few things I need to do different. If only they weren't that extremely time consuming (22 hours on this one!).
- I had an interesting start strategy. I decided that I'd either have a super-start position or I'd try to capture an enemy city with exploring warriors. After a number of failure's I had a decent starting position and managed to capture the capital of Asoka (1 warrior got exp upgrade --> +50% city attack, the other softened the single warrior in the city). Instant Buddism, 2nd city, 1 less competitor and ofcourse some money to pay for upkeep.
- I then went for producing alot of settlers to capture health / happy resources & set up chop sites / commerce sites. Interestingly enough I pretty soon had 3 cities completely to the right (furthest possible point from my capital). Upkeep was expensive but due to courthouses affordable. Those cities became commerce powerhouses.
- I explicitly tried to found roughly 15 cities that could become commercial power houses. That was pretty succesful, although I could have done better. Also, there weren't enough spots on the map that were good enough. I had alot of plains commercial cities (who became my space part production cities).
- Delphi (the Indian capital) became my new capital, as it was more to the center. And it had a shrine + lots of commerce. With bureaucracy it was producing 500+ science (without specialists).
- I followed alot of what DaveMcW had been doing in terms of research, although I also tried some different things. Some things worked out (i.m.o.) better, some thing worse (I went for Education over Democracy, stupid move).
- I neglected specialists too much. I ended up with only two golden ages and 2 GL's that I had to use on tech's =(. And I had to *wait* for the statue of liberty to be built (40+ turns, sigh).
- The AI's weren't as helpful on the Great Plains map. Probably because there were only 3 and they didn't have that much space =). I only got a few techs from them (4-5 less than Dave).
- I actually chopped the Apollo Program
. Thanks to that I could go for Computers first and it only took 5-6 turns to produce. I did miscalculate though as I was expecting the chops to be affected by the forge in that city. All this was possible due to me not settling nor chopping the top-left area. It had not enough commerce potential and too few tiles for a good production city (and it was *very* far away from the remaining AI's).- I didn't go for Free Market + Free Speech + Universal Suffrage. Instead I went for Representation, Mercantilism & Bureaucracy (in combination with statue of liberty). Representation i.m.o. was a good choice as Universal Suffrage doesn't seem very useful unless production is your bottleneck (I switched during spaceship production, when almost done with research
). Mercantilism i.m.o. was also a good choice, as I was probably producing alot more research than with Free Market (foreign trade routes seem to suck if you are that far ahead in terms of population & tech?). Finally bureaucracy. That was a mistake; I should have switched to Free Speech alot sooner; miscalculated the benefit it was giving my capital.- Spaceship production went reasonable. Somewhere, somehow I probably messed up as I had to wait 2 turns for 2 parts and I had the last city reduce in size two times due to workshops instead of farms. (I was switching my Palace around during production, pretty effective technique
).- I seemed to have a huge GNP, much larger than Dave's, yet I still couldn't catch up / pass him. Or the research pace isn't equal to the GNP, not sure. I'd be very interested in seeing that graph again =). I should have an interesting one heh.
Taelis said:
Happiness never seems to be a problem for me (on Prince anyway). Even on great plains (with limited amount of resources), there are so many ways to increase happiness that I generally don't even bother going for Drama. However, getting enough health to get those 23 cities at 1000 AD, that seems to be more of a problem. I finished my last game with no 23 cities, just a few 21 cities, due to that (great plains probably has a bit too few health resources =(().
Interestingly enough I generally ignore Calendar, Stonehenge and creative as well. Caste System / 1 chop for an obelisk / a few turns of culture slider seems as effective without having to 'hurt' your science rate.
Note: I ended up not doing *any* tries on Pangae or Balanced map. Do those always have all resources or do they also miss some resources?
