Spoonwood's Hall of Fame Attempts

[BlackBetsy]

Wow - a new #1 game if that's Large Emperor Spaceship. Congrats! Looks like you are going to smash the old record of 1270 AD. When did you do your conquering to get all that territory, and what was your army composition?

 

[Spoonwood]

In the 10 AD screenshot above, you can see some irrigation. These days, once I get Republic, I'll irrigate cities to try to get to 5 food per turn, and if anticipating a golden age soon, I'll only irrigate bonus grassland tiles. It might be better in some circumstances to delay the golden age, and just irrigate more places to get 5 food per turn in all core cities. Then mine/forest to maximum shields at size 12.

 

[BlackBetsy]

59 cities, 68 culture per turn ... all from libraries, or universities, and there's only one university, 7 settlers, 87 workers (most cities built a worker or two first, especially if corrupt or maybe an enkidu warrior if it had 2 uncorrupted shields per turn) 4 knights, 1 galley (for contacts), 5 enkidu warriors, and 5 trebuchets.

So from what I can see from the screenshot, you went from 14 cities in 1000 BC to 59 cities in 10 AD...that's 45 cities in 48 turns, extremely impressive. I know in my 100k culture game I was relentlessly focused on city growth, but this is something I hadn't really thought much about from a science game perspective. Watering grasslands for growth vs. mining makes a tremendous amount of sense outside a core of 5 cities, and I've usually gone to watering only @City 30+, maybe I should have started sooner. Usually my core is mined except for food bonuses.

Of the 59, how many were liberated from other civs?

I note that I've gone with a city naming convention starting at 101-Capital but if the ranking works for 001 I might adopt that.

 

[Spoonwood]

Wow - a new #1 game if that's Large Emperor Spaceship. Congrats! Looks like you are going to smash the old record of 1270 AD. When did you do your conquering to get all that territory, and what was your army composition?

I have a 390 AD save where I'm fighting The French. I have 9 settlers, 96 native workers, 29 knights, 3 rifleman, 19 cannons, and 1 enkidu. I'm researching Industralization and rails are just going up. The French only have spears as their best defenders in that war, and the biggest threat I see are some horsemen.

The Front:

Note also that Industrialization gets researched, with factories to get built quickly here with our golden age going on. Perhaps the best time to have a golden age, ignoring research considerations, is when you have factories going up, since they cost 240 shields each. I don't recall upgrading a whole lot of horseman to knights. Some from the capital, but not many, and I didn't disconnect iron or saltpeter (we needed/wanted that gold for trading for modern age technology).

The war with the Byzantines appears to have started in 640 AD (I waited until I had Replacable Parts, which Persia researched, and had upgraded to artillery guns from cannons), as I have a save then where I remember having settlers moved into their territory (they are underneath infantry units) to settle the next turn so that the guns can roll into fire the next turn:

We have 16 settlers, 119 workers, 2 knights (they are elites, but didn't fight in this war or the next as I had an SGL), 54 cavalry, 8 infantry, and 32 artillery. The last cities I took from them was in 660 AD. I had to wait another turn or two (I'm guessing it was two), before I could renegotiate for peace.

We take on Persia the next turn having

2 settlers, 124 workers, 2 knights, 57 cavalry, 16 infantry, and 33 artillery.

By 690 AD we end up waiting on the peace treaty to renegotiate, which also takes a bit.

Of the 59, how many were liberated from other civs?

None. There's no wars until that war with France referred to above, which started shortly before we reached the industrial era, I think. I had rather good luck, even for an Emperor map, I think on vacant territory. Build order for core cities, other than the capital, might be a worker or two, but once they have something to make shields, then they put out a granary, and then settlers (or maybe a unit at size 2 and then a settler after a granary).

I had good luck on my 2nd/3rd ring cities with food bonuses, as you might see in the following screenshot:

Perhaps I might have expanded faster if 004 also was 002 instead! But, I sent a settler east early, because there was a luxury out there. It was a rather corrupt area:

I don't think I would I have tried to snag that site on Demigod, and definitely no way would have tried for it on Sid. On Sid, I'll even leave luxuries for AIs to settle or gift them cities so that I have more for trading to get their gold, techs, maps, etc.

 

[Spoonwood]

Watering grasslands for growth vs. mining makes a tremendous amount of sense outside a core of 5 cities, and I've usually gone to watering only

In the core cities, I think a mix works best. That isn't necessarily only 5 cities, and likely more. I think of it as the inner ring and maybe the 2nd ring if not the 3rd ring also. 5 food per turn is 4 turn growth size 7 above, or 2 turn growth below size 7. I tried 7 food per turn, a while back now, with 3 turn growth size 7 to 12, but I felt it too little production. I also once tried 10 food per turn for 2 turn growth, but that also felt like too little production. And then all those tiles need reworked, which is too much time for payback, I think.

I've also had some core cities have 4 (surplus) food per turn size 7 to 12, and that's 5 turn growth. That feels like a good balance also. So, I highly recommend either going with 4 food per turn or 5 food per turn once a Republic (or Monarchy) in all core cities, and then mining/foresting tiles once the city is about to reach size 12 or just has reached size 12.

I still find that I overbuild courthouses. I know I found one or two cities in the above where I thought the courthouse wasn't worth it turn wise, because the city had too few shields once it finished, meaning it took too long to finish.

If a city can get to 12 shields, then it can produce 2 uncorrputed shields. But, still, yes, I agree. Anything outside of the core, it just makes sense to irrigate everywhere. And then eventually use scientist specialists in those cities. At ICS spacing. And you can see in the Large Demigod and Large Deity Spaceship games I have submitted, I have ICS scientist specialist cities. Clicking on a city ocassionally to make more scientists or have better growth may seem like a slowdown, BUT, it's a lot less of a slowdown than all the planning and execution that goes into war turns in my experience. And it's fairly straightfoward and predictable also.

 

[Spoonwood]

Wow - a new #1 game if that's Large Emperor Spaceship. Congrats!

Also, thanks Yes, it's Large Emperor Spaceship.

 

[Spoonwood]

I tried starting a Warlord 130k again, but no luck on that.

I started another Huge Emperor Space, with NO one scientific to eliminate the "bad luck" factor of free techs. I picked a river start with Rome, but no food bonus. I lost the race to Philosophy by a single turn and quit on that one. I think I'll try that no science Huge Emperor Space again, but I don't know who I want to play. I thought about trying it as Always War, but I kind of agree that playing Always War takes out a large amount of strategy of the game. I also think about militaristic as something that I wish had better applicability on a pangea map, but it's bad for research, until specialist farms can get set up over building based infrastructure since universities have gotten built, I think.

I've also thought about trying something as a "no luxury slider at all" variant. That potentially comes as enough to make the religious trait more useful, as well as Monarchy, and motivates wonders like The Sistine Chapel for more purposes than just culture. No luxury slider at all more fits with a 60-160k victory than anything else I think.

Thinking also about corruption and commerce just now... a coastal city with a Seafaring tribe not on a river has 3 commerce for the city center, and 3 instead of 2 for any coast squares in a republic. So, at size 3 it has 12 commerce, for one uncorrupted if it has a harbor. Yea, scientist specialist farms probably end up more powerful than that easily.

 

[Spoonwood]

I've been playing this start for Huge Emperor Spaceship:

The Pyramids was still around, so we bulit that in Niagara Falls.

No scientific opponents. I wanted something different than gifting everyone up and seeing more of the "what if we have to research it all" sort of thing. I was going to have the empire go to war, and setup up ICS specialist farms. However, my interest kind of waned in this game in particular (not civ III as a whole), and I remember my first few HoF games for spaceship or diplomatic where I didn't go to war at all. Additionally, just not going to war takes less real time than going to war. Actually, The Dutch declared on me during the early middle ages sometime, and I got a golden age out of it.

Steam Power 4 turns Iroquois. Industrialization 4 turns. Electricity was only 5 turns. Replaceable Parts in 4 turns. We have 37 cities. I still feel a bit surprised at how much research capacity this game has had. I suppose I just feel more use to upper levels in terms of research. It is 60%.

 

[Spoonwood]

And in the most recent game, though we did manage Shakespeare's Theater, it's not like we have hospitals either.

 

[Spoonwood]

1525 AD finish for the Iroquois. France did declare war on me on the modern era. So, I conquered them in 1 turn.

 

[BlackBetsy]

@Spoonwood I came across your Sid strategies thread. Has anyone tried to use the extreme version of the road pillaging to essentially bankrupt all the AI, force them to disband all but a few units, and used it to walk through the AI's territory defeating the few units that remain? Or does it force them into high free-unit-support governments?

I'm thinking about doing a max version of this strategy. I saw where someone used it to get 6700 per turn from AI.

 

[Spoonwood]

Has anyone tried to use the extreme version of the road pillaging to essentially bankrupt all the AI, force them to disband all but a few units, and used it to walk through the AI's territory defeating the few units that remain? Or does it force them into high free-unit-support governments?

I don't believe that such is legal for the HoF. I mean, if you're injecting massive amounts of gpt to the AI, like LordOfDread was in his save, which you then don't maintain paying for since you injected it when buying luxuries, it sounds to me like you would end up taking more than they can afford, as I said in this part of that thread. You can take whatever gold and gpt that an AI has on the turn when you make the deal though.

That said, taking every gpt that they do have when they have it available does work out as sufficient to have large amounts of gold and upgrade/purchase a large army. They change governments like normal with such. For an example on how to keep it all legal, here's one part of my Huge histographic games thread in particular. Actually, if I were to do that again today, in order, I would have taken 40 gpt from Babylon, bought the gold back. Then pillaged. Then I would have gotten the last 6 gpt from Babylon for 108 gold. Then bought the 108 gold back with the final luxury deal before the turn ended. I would pay extra for buying the gold back, but it would only last for one turn. So, it would still end up profitable enough.

I think it pretty simple to keep things clean, I think. Just pillage first.

Also, I've found that sometimes it's not exactly optimal to pillage every single turn. If one purchases iron, for example, one can get it via a technology. Then I think one doesn't want to pillage until there's another technology to sell them or enough new gpt to pay for that iron.

I also provided another example in this thread.

Perhaps also of interest:

By a horse-knight build, or horse-calvary build... I let the horse build finish, then I zoom to the city, and upgrade to a knight or calvary. I do this by first disconnecting any iron or saltpeter sources, either by pillaging the source in my territory with enough workers standing on the tile ready to reconnect (so industrious workers work best), or if I acquire iron or saltpeter from the AIs (both of which cost a significant amount, though they do come as worth it) I cut the trade route with the AIs, then make sure I have horses connected... I might also purchase horses for gpt, at least initially... I know I did in this Mayan game. Then I change all my relevant builds to horseman (if a city builds a bank or marketplace, I won't change that, of course).

I also make sure to acquire any techs, if not doing any research, before doing the next step (if I will learn a tech the next turn via research of my own, it would change the horse build to a knight/calvary build). Then I reconnect the iron or saltpeter, or both one way or another. Then on the inter-turn, I zoom to the city and upgrade the horse to a knight, knight-type unit, calvary, or calvary-type unit (though I haven't played with Russia or the Ottomans doing this, it should work in principle). The knight/calvary then sits ready to go on the next turn... without having lost any time in the upgrade process. Of course, horse-knights and horse-calvary won't work for India, and I doubt for Japan (though I haven't tested them).

I would buy some granaries and other infrastructure like courthouses. Then later maybe have a 10 shield city start on a horsemen, shortrush an explorer, then finish the horseman, zoom to the city and upgrade to a horsemen. Or go worker -> explorer in a single turn then finish a horseman -> (zoom to city) cavalry. Or spear -> muskets. Or find a city with 20 shields later and go worker -> temple (or granary if sold at size 12) and then finish the rifelmen. Also, some upgrading of trebuchets to cannons. And later artillery, in games where the AIs have learned Replacable Parts like the 100k game with Babylon.

So, the first "big use" of AIs gold goes to upgrading.

The second "big use" of that gold I did consisted of buying armies in a corrupt city with The Military Academy.

For how much gold I managed to pull... here's one fairly early image from the France 20k pangea game. Also, near that image, I manage to disrupt a trade route with a military alliance and get more gold that way. +1135 gpt a few turns later. 10744 gold and +1131 gpt in 70 AD. The peak amount of gold I kept in my treasury might have happened at 190 AD for that game. More gpt in 280 AD, but less in the bank. Oh... I was doing heavy research also in that game! The histographic games used more of the luxury slider in the middle ages and didn't maximize gold also, though I think Drazek didn't use the luxury slider as much as I did until the post war age. There were times I temporarily set the tax slider to 0% to make a deal or something in the France (and other) games. I took a picture from one of those times it seems. We see +2930 gpt with 6361 in the bank. That's enough gold per turn to purchase a worker->army and make a few horsemen -> cavalry units every single turn! Usually, I haven't done both. But, there have been a few times where I've felt I've had enough gold to both purchase armies and upgrade units for a turn or three.

Happy upgrading!

 

[Spoonwood]

Also! Since you're running MapFinder now and can find high food starts when you do other things...

You might taking a look at the middle saves from Drazek's top scoring game. From that I took inspiration about making 1 turn worker pumps, which I used later in my lower scoring game.

Alright, you could try to find a standard sized map or large map I suppose with a large domination limit for it's type. Or you could try to find with an ideal capital location. The above two games have ideal capital locations (Drazek's domination limit is also extremely high).

By 'ideal', I mean that you can get a 1 turn worker pump up, at least in a Republic. I put up some pictures of 1 turn worker pumps in this link.

Or if you don't have an ideal capital location, once you have rails, there's still a fair possiblity of setting up a 1 turn worker pump, for example in this picture.

Edit: Here's another picture post-rails from the lower scoring game (in above link also).