Super-Wide Fast Science Game

[danaphanous]

Hey Everyone! Here's my first super-wide fast science experimental game. I'm almost done with it so I thought I'd share my progress!

A few people didn't think it could be done, so I decided to try my hand at a very wide empire fast science game! This is shaping up to be a sub T270 standard speed science victory with the Celts, full liberty, and 11 founded cities. Settings are huge and emperor difficulty. I'm not claiming this as a record time and I made many mistakes in hindsight. Will post final time when I finish but I'm pretty pleased with the result nonetheless!

As you can see in the screen this is not a particularly good start meaning you can do this without an exceptional starting location. Liberty actually is an especially good choice in these situations if you don't have a rich initial area. Most of my cities are in grassland and I've struggled with production with them as a result. Also there are no good growth or production tiles to jump start my capital, and the map starts you landlocked with little hope of using the coast. All these were fun challenges to overcome. I focused on economy and religion and ended up cash-buying over 50 buildings to keep the empire competitive. Also even though there were mountains only one city spot could really work with them due to the weird way they were off rivers. I chose the rivers over the observatories. Record times with this strategy, a good start, and the Mayans could probably be competitive to fast tradition times and I really believe that seeing the insanity in action on this average map. My science is shooting up every turn and I'm getting an insane chain of scientists here at the end having started running specialists early in all cities.

I'm pretty sure a better player could easily have been sub T250 with this game, I didn't really try that hard to be optimal in the beginning just REXing cities and trying to grab all the land I could then started growing in earnest empire-wide around Turn 120. Probably a bit slow, but it worked out pretty well. I was able to grow at max rate everywhere till the game end due to careful planning ahead with my happiness and some religious choices. (Read fine description)

I have typically been running more than 20 happiness all game due to my religious choices so this could probably be done on a smaller map size, but for proof of concept I did select huge map setting for my test and emperor. AI fell dozens of techs behind so immortal or Deity is probably a more appropriate level for this strategy. I barely got to use RA's as they became almost useless for most of the game.

I chose huge map to ensure I had the space to test a larger empire on science rate independent of war though I still needed to REX fast to forward-settle my neighbors and build a larger then normal military to keep the empire safe but all this is standard for larger empires.

For comparison: on huge map settings tech costs are 130% of baseline (110% on standard) and the science penalty is 2.5% per city as opposed to 5% on standard. This means that if you build 8 or less cities your techs will cost more on a huge map then standard giving you an incentive to build a larger empire to be competitive. You guys can do the math. I chose 11 cities which is comparable to standard. I wanted to see if the fast growth, running early university specialists in all cities, and extra terrain could still result in a fast science finish time. Due to space and differing science penalties I'd recommend 8 cities liberty for a comparable rate on standard sized worlds and I think this is doable on many games if you are aggressive with early settling.



If you guys are interested I can give details about the policy choices, religion, and other decisions I made for this game, read in-detail thoughts here, I may write up what I did as a guid as well as it was quite fun!

Spoiler :

Religious Choices:
- Founded near 3 forest for +2 fpt early.
- Chose the pantheon sacred waters as an experiment in aiding early REXing as most of the surrounding city spots could potentially be on rivers. This resulted in an extra 9 happiness from 9/11 cities on water. I REXed cities at this point choosing the forest sites first to make up for not picking a faith pantheon.
- Was the first to found religion and chose tithes and pagodas. The pagoda culture zoomed me through the policies and I had to choose 5 points before Rationalism became available.
- For my enhancers I chose: +2 happiness from temples and itinerant preachers since cities were close-packed on this map. From my early founding the religion swept through the world.

I never produced a single missionary and soon had 25 cities under my control as it spread north into Siam and West into Rome. This allowed all my faith to go into early pagodas empire-wide and then saved from then on for end-game scientists. (Bought 3)

Social policies:
1. liberty opener 2. Republic 3. Collective Rule 4. Citizenship 5. Meritocracy 6. Representation
7. Patronage Opener - Filler
8. Commerce Opener 9. wagon trains - Medieval finally was available
10. Rationalism Opener 11. Secularism 12. Humanism 13. Free Thought - Renaissance finally available
14. Socialist Realism 15. Skyscrapers - Chose my ideology 2 free tenets
16. Worker's Faculties 17. Young Pioneers

I forget my order from here but I remember getting to the +1 science from gold buildings and 33% discount on buildings in commerce then finished rationalism as I was near ending the game if I could faith-buy my 3 scientists. A lot of order, commerce, and rationalism tenets at the end came from free tenets from Kremlin and 2-3 GW bulbs.

Build Order:

I honestly don't remember it well. I know I did get early pyramids and the liberty finisher chose an engineer to hurry Oracle to get a free policy and finish liberty quicker. Even though my plan was to REX I knew it would turn out best if I got 50% reduced settlers for most of it and grew to a decent size for production first so I diverted to Pyramids very early and allowed my city to grow to size 7 before spamming almost constant settlers. This was a little risky but I definitely finished my 10 settlers much, much quicker as a result.

But because I could skip shrine with Celts I probably went:
1. Scout 2. Monument 3. Scout 4. Granary 5. Worker (then stole 1-2 more to supplement) 6. Library 7. Pyramids (with chopping, sub 10 turns if I recall) 8. A bunch of Settlers

Tech Order: pretty uncoordinated in the beginning but more streamlined later. I'm trying to recall but can't remember all my choices. What I'd recommend now after playing once though is:

1. Do whatever it takes to get early faith for religion. Most games this means pottery but for Celts pottery didn't matter. The granary, however did, so I think I still chose piety. 2. probably animal husbandry so I could see horse spots and was hoping one would be in capital as my production was poor. 4. don't remember but probably writing for the cap library before settler spamming. 5. Calendar for connecting up all my silk. 6. Mining for axing forests 7. I had only one campsite near so I probably went masonry since I had marble which I wanted up by pyramids 8. Iron working (to see iron and build the UU for faith) 9. Camping

Here is where it may diverge from a normal game:

Since I was so flush on happiness I sold many early luxes and most of my resources to have enough money to buy buildings around the empire. In the beginning though I bought maybe 3-4 archers to help keep barbs down and discourage rushers that were jealous of my REXing. I kept this up with some pictish from my expos and kept a nice force early game. Shortly after I started saving to cash-buy granaries and libraries in slow cities. This helped my growth and tech rates. At this point you have many new settled cities and you want them to grow as fast as possible all game. There are 3 nearby maritime cities you should've been working on. If you can ally them all early that's a huge growth boost empire-wide. Your internal route options are limited due to being land-locked but I still chose most of them to be food all game. I had one round of gold-trading with Siam when I was briefly behind on tech as they brought in some nice gold and science. I think the most optimal play is to beeline aqueduct tech as quickly as possible and build them all everywhere shortly after the granaries go up. This gets all your little cities growing rapidly. Then following optimal growth go straight for civil service for the big riverside food boost and pick up education. I had saved a stack of gold so I could start buying universities by this point and borrowed a bit from friends to do it even faster in my jungle cities. Workshops are next as your empire is production poor. There are a lot of unique and duplicate luxes so the faster you REX, connect them, and trade the more options you get on early gold or foreign luxes. I was bringing in a lot of foreign gold all game from selling stuff from my large empire. Tithes helped too. After workshops I followed optimal tech pathing beelining each new science tech and saving money so I could buy some immediately. For research labs/factories in particular I borrowed a lot of money and even sold off a few single luxes to friends to buy them all quicker. This usually is hard to pull off on a normal game and large empire but going commerce and order my discounts on buildings were over 66% by this point.

My thoughts after doing this once:
could definitely be improved upon and sub T250 games of this nature are definitely possible if you play a map with a better start, coast, and more mountain sites--this game was not all that great for starting terrain and the capital site was poor. If it was possible to build more banks before the long line of more important buildings started in industrial my economy would have been lots better and I would have had to borrow less money. But borrowing worked due to my high income and massive amount of resources. I also could improve the beginning of the game by beelinig aqueducts. I was not originally going for fast science and kinda wandered about the tech tree too much in the beginning. Once I hit aqueducts and built them and saw my early time reaching universities that was when I decided to try for fast science. Also my growth was so high that on multiple cities even with an extra +2 culture from pagodas I completely outgrew my available useful hexes. This worked ok though as I cash bough specialist buildings not long after and have been going tall in every city since. However, liberty definitely has problems with border growth on these fast games. I had to throw a point in a 2nd tree before medieval rolled around so next time I might throw it into the tradition opener rather then patronage just for the border growth. I chose patronage because I thought I'd get forbidden palace but I missed it by a few turns and did fine so you don't need it. Also, Mayans would be incredibly more OP for this strategy due to their Pyramids. I originally picked Celts for guaranteed religion choices and extra happiness but I haven't even had time to build Ceilidh halls and I've had way, way more happiness then I've needed all game. My strat does rely on a religion but Mayans usually get a good one since pyramids is also +2 faith, esp. REXing like this so they should work well. I may try them next to see if I can match the good Tradition times. If they play similar to this game I bet I can get sub T225 with them, a good start, and 10-12 cities or so

EDIT:
...And victory! Turn 265, 1775 AD! Here's a pic close to the end:

Spoiler :

I would like to challenge other players to try to beat my time after reading the strategy I think you'll find this game very unusual and fun from your normal play! I would especially like to see how an optimal time with the 4-city tradition strategy compares here just to see the time difference! This time is enough to beat pretty much any Deity game--I've never seen Sejong be faster--but I know some players get ridiculous finish times!

Unusual things about this start: no good early hammer or growth tiles, no capital mountain, you are completely landlocked with no good coast options too! But plenty of space to expand and choose your expos. Liberty is good for salvaging games like this and creating a strong game out a poor start. It is often underrated because players reroll for good starts instead. In this game in particular I feel that choosing liberty and settling a larger empire actually improved my empire and time, but I'm not a very optimal player so maybe I'm wrong. I would like to see one of the fast SV tradition fellows play it to compare time though as I wonder how many of the sub 220 finish times are purely due to rerolled great starts. This start is a bit more challenging and was quite fun!

 

[inthesomeday]

(On quick speed, small Pangaea) I find I can never get nearly as much science out of tradition as I can out of liberty, which I might be doing wrong or something but I have simply found that. The problem is without the faster workers, faster buildings, and faster settlers, I can never seem to get up enough population by the time universities show up; one of the key differences in terms of timing between tradition and liberty is that your cities will be fairly different population by the time universities and workshops come around with tradition. The capital will be very high population, working lots of delicious hills and growth. That's perfectly great and what tradition does well. But I can never seem to get third and fourth expands with enough hammers or even a high enough population by the time it's relevant.
Whereas with liberty I might have 6-8 cities, each one around 8-10 pop, plus a roughly 15 pop capital? Because I'm specifically focusing on happiness, getting up trade routes, farming rivers and then popping civil service, early granaries, etc. In a brand new ~T30 liberty expand I can get a monument and a granary in about 15 turns, whereas with tradition I might get the granary with about 20 turns. Then I get to start working very good growth tiles in every liberty city, and then they grow to the pop I really want them to be at and they can start working brand new mines with impunity. I just can never get the hammers or science out of tradition I'm supposed to be getting. By turn 100 on quick speed I can get my wide empires up to the proper like ~250 bpt, while I've never found myself able to get more than like 120 out of tradition.

Very possibly just me, I'm not nearly as experienced with tradition.

 

[stormtrooper412]

One of the recent GotMs had you as Egypt on Highland where you were kind of forced to go wide

 

[sugerdady87]

You should share save.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

Sorry, but I must say that sub 270t SV isn't really very fast.

However I don't say that really fast wide SV it is not possible, but it is harder and require very suitable map for it and good player (in fact AFAIK only Acken and Ribannah posted really good results on this forum playing wide)
eg: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13800178&postcount=47

EDIT: Also playing wide on huge map (reduced tech, policy and happiness costs) really kinda miss point in proving that it is good for fast SV IMHO.

 

[danaphanous]

@sugardaddy Sure, would you like the T0 save for replay or the current one right before I win? Out for the day but back this evening to finish hopefully.

@inthesomeday What's the difference in quick speed? I played standard for this so I can't really compare with the numbers you listed. I know what you mean. Personally this will be faster then any of my tradition games, and definitely faster then if I'd tried tradition with this start as no one area was great, together there were enough spots to make a decent wide game though. This is why I think players are missing out avoiding liberty. It really is the superior choice in some situations and reliably performs well for me. All it takes is a non-awesome capital start to realize the power of liberty to improve your situation, but I must not know all the tips and tricks to fast tradition or something. When I see T200 victories with tradition I feel they must be perfect maps or something--I haven't seen a "perfect" map like those very often with my random-rolled games. Seems the fast tradition games really rely on a good seed and science civ and players reroll till they get what they want. I played the first map I got with this test and look how well it turned out! I'm guessing tradition is much more situational but most players don't roll full random like me so it works for them. Not to be snobbish, but seriously, if you only play stacked, perfect maps on Deity for your times you really shouldn't look down on people that don't. In my opinion all that matters is you win, and after that what your empire is like. Those fast tradition empires look vulnerable and weak to me, they must've gotten lucky to not get crushed like an eggshell early--or abuse the predictable AI to bribe them to fight each other till they outtech. Either way it doesn't seem like a reliable strategy to me, and definitely would never do as well as this strategy in multiplayer, whereas this game I just played I can replicate on any map or situation. I appreciate the HOF scores for their novelty but I don't pretend you can get sub T210 victories with any random map. It's a very special circumstance.

@ironfighter ah, I knew somebody would say this. yeah I know it isn't close to the fastest times. But it can be a lot better from what I observed. I consider T270 the be "fast" as in it'll win basically every Deity race which apparently most players can't do. So if I can do it with this average start and REXing super-wide with a non-science civ the strategy can't be bad. That was the purpose of this experiment. Did I mention I didn't even start trying for fast science this game? Decided to go for it 100 turns in after reading the liberty is trash thread been playing this game a while, it was actually an experimental religious game initially. I'm proud to say though that I matched the population sizes I see in Acken's post at that date and did it with 11 cities rather than 8 so my growth must have been near-max I guess. Acken is a great player thanks for sharing! I must have missed something else that he knows about...or maybe I just need to pick a science civ, the Celts have no natural advantage. :/

Also, I get what you say, but how is choosing a larger map missing the point? Isn't playing small or standard biasing the game towards tradition since you don't have as much space? Just my opinion at least.

EDIT: huge maps actually have a 130% penalty to science costs so I'm not sure of the conversion rate but it isn't all easier. The penalty per city is lower at 2.5% per city, but the base penalty is much higher. So I'd say the games are still comparable. If you can manage an 8-city standard sized liberty empire it should work about the same as this game.

Terrain and start had poor production, and being land-locked kinda sucked. However, despite my very slow start I was 2000 bpt by T235 on standard speed and this is with a poor/average terrain game.

There are some upsides to this map though if other ppl wanna try it:
1. Room to expand if you REX. I would definitely aim to put down 11-12 cities before turn 100 as all the spots are there.
2. about 4 jungle city sites to the south if you forward-settle Ethiopia
3. 3 maritime CS right near you so easy to get allied by quests
4. a decent amount of unique luxes near expands
5. Started next to exactly 3 forest for +2 fpt from the get-go

Downsides:
1. landlocked so no cargo ships
2. mostly grassland
3. not a lot of good mountain spots so only 1 observatory possibility in my game

I will eventually retry this with someone more suited (Maya) and look for a good starting seed to see how fast the win can be accomplished with this size empire but it looks to be rather low (sub T225 for me at least with right conditions). The main time-killer is when you are REXing which the Mayans are perfect to do while keeping science good and getting a religion to boot. Another upside to this wide style is you get twice the scientists too if save your faith like I did and run specialists in all cities quite early. I got a massive stack of around 14 for the end of the game and some of them went to waste actually.

 

[danaphanous]

@IronFighter: Wait, I'm confused, I thought you said this wasn't a good time for the Celts? I just checked the hall of fame and I'm set to beat every standard-paced space race game listed there. No one has won a sub270 space victory with her which is weird to me...I always expected the HOF to have amazing scores. lol, and this isn't even a good map! If you are comparing my game to a great start with a science-oriented civ that's apples to oranges but still, I really expected the HOF to be higher. I know I could've done much better on this game even!

Here is the list I'm looking at. There is one faster time but it's epic speed and drastically different settings so easier to get an earlier date. I will launch somewhere in the 1700's at the current rate.
http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ5/index.php?show=lead&leader=Boudicca&dtSc=0&exp=2&pubID=120&submit=Go

This may just be because science players don't typically choose the Celts but I did some searching and finally found a Deity player using Tradition for a science victory with the Celts. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jncxVUpc_zk
He does the standard good strategies of always growing his coastal capital, plants his first scientist as an academy, buys science buildings fast, and collects and bulbs all scientists at the end. I didn't plant any early academies, didn't have a coastal capital, and REXed like mad the first 80-90 turns of my game and he still lost to me and my juggernaut end-game science by more than 30 turns--If I can beat other average Deity players using Tradition on time I think this was a successful test demonstrating the efficacy of liberty and at least proving that it isn't a "bad" choice for science. I'm happy with my accomplishment even if I can't match IronFighter and his friends in the HOF. By the way, I'm a big fan man! I've seen some of your great scores!

 

[IronfighterXXX]

There are hundreds of possibilities in HoF and not really much participants, so it's not really strange that you haven't found good result with similar game to your (and only this one epic game had any competition).

 

[danaphanous]

Done! Finish time was T265 on standard speed 1775 AD with 11 cities. Could have been 264 lol, my last piece ended it's last movement point in the capital xD wasted a turn.

I had a wide enough empire I cash-bought nuclear plants and spaceship factories everywhere and simultaneously built all the parts at once in my 6 best cities. They all finished within a turn of each other. I was able to do this because of the insane scientist stack I had at the end from so many cities producing scientists. Hubble ended up useless because 6 turns after I got the tech to build it I had every tech needed for every spaceship part. I tried but ended up switching off when I saw it wasn't gonna help any.

Pretty fun game I must say! I think I can be a lot faster then this too but this would beat any science AI on Deity already so I think it definitely demonstrates wide empires aren't bad for science as players have been telling me. A more optimum number of cities may be around 8, I'll have to optimize my system. I think with an actual science civ like Maya and actually using hubble to make up for the lower amount of scientists, I can win with an empire this size in Sub Turn 225 somewhere, but not sure if I'll do this again for a while. A bit too tedious late game for my taste.

I don't know what the optimal play is here at the end but I stopped all my cities from growing about 30 turns out from what I projected to be the end of the game and ran all specialists and put cities on science. I switched all my growth rates slowly over to production starting the same time so that when I started the parts in my 6 best cities I had a production route for each, and cash bought nuclear plants and spaceship factories for all of them. I also timed a GA golden age during the building for the gold and production bonus.

I think doing it this way order is way faster then liberty. The immediate 25% science from factories, the over 50% reduction in building purchase costs for fast purchases of labs, plants, and spaceship factories, plus being wide enough to build all the spaceship parts in about 10 turns simultaneously. The end rate seemed quite a bit faster then a typically smaller tradition/freedom end. How you compare on time all depends on how fast you can get your large empire growing and science buildings up.

 

[sixty4half]

I like how you still have a couple Warriors, a Pictish Warrior, some Pikemen and several XBows garrisoned.

Good Job man. Going wide with a science based civ like Korea I'm sure you could crush your 265 time.

 

[danaphanous]

thanks! All my gold from medieval onward was constantly being pumping into buying buildings and saving for the next wave of science buildings.

I kept checking the military score of neighbors to see if I was threatened but we stayed close so I didn't bother upgrading. I kept them about to surround prophets as my religion was really helpful to me this game. I trapped 3 prophets in my territory with old units and just left them around for that reason lol! It would've been expensive to upgrade them. My tech rate was simply breathtaking at the end and I was outdating military hardware every 10 turns or so. Plus with 66% discount on buildings upgrading a crossbow was like the same price as buying a hospital so I wasn't willing to do it.

I agree that either Maya or Korea would be best for this kind of game. Maya improves wide early science which is a lot of saved turns and they work religiously for keeping the empire happy. Korea doesn't have a religious advantage so it might be hard to keep their cities growing but if I could their perk would be amazing wide. Imagine 2 extra base science from every specialist on an empire this size where I was running most of the specialists in all cities by the end like this game!

 

[danaphanous]

Hey guys, I've added my policy order, religious choices, and build/science order as best I remember to the OP in a spoiler along with the T0 save! If someone else wants to try the game enjoy! See if you can beat me on time! You probably can!

What would you recommend for my next wide-empire fast-science game? I'll not be doing it for a few weeks but I do plan to return and try to utilize all I've learned in an even more optimal game to compare to the fast tradition times with good starts/settings.

I'm currently thinking due to the amount of people criticizing my choice of a larger map that I'll play standard sized, standard speed, pangaea game with the Maya and aim for 7-8 cities liberty. I'm practicing with them a bit as I haven't played them in a while.

I don't usually roll for good starts but if I did just to see the difference in performance what should I look for? What's standard for speedy tradition science victories? Mountain-Coast-River? In a wide game the overall surrounding terrain matters more but a strong capital never hurts. The biggest thing for me early would be solid production tiles which I didn't have this game to crank out this early settlers faster. I would strongly prefer plains to grassland as I was hurting for production in most cities all game. If so I could've stopped on a smaller capital population size to make them earlier or just had 2-3 less turns per build which would've made a larger time difference. Also, I may give up on Forbidden Palace. The AI like it too much and choose the tradition opener as my filler for faster border growth and extra +3 culture which I really missed this game. Grassland is definitely faster growth so maybe a mix of plains/grass/floodplains is better? Hard to say...

Thoughts & Suggestions for the next game?

 

[IronfighterXXX]

Also, I get what you say, but how is choosing a larger map missing the point?

If not per city science, policies and happiness penalties the only optimal way to play C5 would be ICSing (plating cities every four tiles, no matter how good\bad this spot is).

By plaing huge instead of standard your reduced those penalties by half so in fact you played as with 5.5 cities on standard, what by any means isn't super wide as you claim in your first post title.

What would you recommend for my next wide-empire fast-science game?

What do you want to prove? That you can win using liberty? That you can win fast using liberty on appropriate map?

Well, in this cases you want to reinvent the wheel. In fact game is easy enough to win by doing almost whatever. Different question is if it will be faster than tradition - probably not.

 

[danaphanous]

I'm not really trying to "prove" anything, just have a fun game with a big empire but see how fast it is possible to win using the larger empire style and liberty as opposed to the established traditional fast science win. Maybe you are taking offense at the title of this thread. When I say "fast" I mean only that it is fast for a liberty game and given the empire size, and fast enough to win on all difficulty levels. All I'm doing is sharing a fun game where I used a new strategy that I thought some players might find interesting. I'm not claiming to be an expert or to have the new secret to winning the fastest SV's ever. (I don't think I've ever claimed that but I keep getting your response from ppl which is confusing me) I've never been assuming I can beat the record traditional times but I AM interested in seeing how close the times compare on a good map. This is why I asked for advice from players that have more experience playing fast games to make sure I know all the standard practice. If you have a guide link or something that would be helpful!

My motivational question is not really "can you win" because I know I can win already quite easily. My question is "how fast". I am exactly interested in determining what you say, how close is the times to a standard tradition fast SV game? I don't care if it's worse I just want to know. There are not really any established guides that I see for fast SV with a wide empire so I thought it'd be fun to test the question with a standard-sized GOTM map where I could directly compare times. I expect to lose to the tradition time by about 30 turns but it'll be interesting to see how big of a time gap. If it's only a 30-turn gap I think many players would prefer to play a game with a larger empire. Since many players don't care about making HOF record times and instead just having fun and playing interesting games, I figure if I can demonstrate a competitive wide-empire strategy I think they will be interested. There have been many threads recently from new players asking for advice to play liberty and wide well. So I thought others might be interested in this first successful experiment and the strategy I used.

Here is my understanding of Settling Penalties and how they affected my game, correct me if I'm wrong:

I enjoy bigger games more--always have--so this is the main motivation for me liking large and huge maps more. I did not think they reduced the penalties that much though...I had heard they reduced science penalty from 5% to 3% and cultural from 10% to 7% and base unhappiness settling penalty per city from 3 to 1.8. This is less then half but still significant I know. However, now that I've practiced on settings that are more conducive I do plan my next game to be standard and demonstrate it's generally applicable if you find yourself in a game with a little space. I plan to aim for 7-8 cities on standard as it seems about right for the conversion in world size.

Also I would say this game is still very wide. I don't understand why you say it is not. I rarely see players get this large barring war, and if they do I haven't seen them launch a spaceship this fast. I know the base penalties are a bit lower BUT I get no discounts on population unhappiness, maintenance costs, unit costs, etc. I still need to make decisions for and protect 11 cities from the AI--so it's not like huge just made it all easy. Most of the mechanics that punish wide play are exactly the same in huge worlds. I still had to get the happiness to support 20 pop in 11 cities and I still had to have it quickly enough and plan ahead so my cities would never stop growing even with internal food routes and maritime allies going constantly. Many players struggle with this and have to stop growing with larger empires in the medieval and renaissance before they get to ideologies. I did not with my strategy, despite the fact that playing huge only subtracted 13.2 extra happiness from the base settling penalty by my calculations. All this was a fair bit more challenging then monitoring 5 cities so I think it qualifies my title. Managing 11 cities on huge and planning ahead for them is still a much bigger job then managing 5 on standard. Base penalties are only a part of the equation imho. I monitored my extra global happiness pretty closely and actually the biggest game-changer was my religious choices, especially the pantheon which are not popular picks. I picked sacred waters to lower the settling penalty for cities on rivers and settled 9/11 on rivers. Meritocracy further reduces this by 1 in every city. This strategy works on all world sizes for lowering base penalties per city so by my calcs I'll only need to come up with an extra 8-10 global happiness to support 8 cities on standard as opposed to this game if I make similar choices. I had at least this much extra and only chose to stop settling because I wanted the fast science time. I could have ICS'ed to about 20+ cities from what I was seeing of my extra global happiness but then of course there's no way my science finish time would have been under T300.

 

[Browd]

One overlooked item here that penalizes larger maps is that the base costs of techs vary by map size. For Duel through Small, the cost is 100% of the base tech cost, Standard is 110%, Large is 120% and Huge is 130%. Makes for a slower teching game on Large and Huge maps, even though the per city tech penalty is lower than on Standard.

 

[danaphanous]

oh that's interesting. I missed that in my research I guess. I knew 14000 cost on the last information era techs seemed awful high but I didn't make the connection there was a base tech modifier independent of cities as well. Are my numbers for the reduced per city penalties correct for BNW or are they also wrong? It'd be useful for me to know as I plan my standard version of this kind of game.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

I did not think they reduced the penalties that much though...I had heard they reduced science penalty from 5% to 3% and cultural from 10% to 7% and base unhappiness settling penalty per city from 3 to 1.8.

No, it's 5% to 2,5%,10% to 5% and 3 to 1.8, but you are right that base penalties are only a part of the equation.

Anyway don't get discouraged by my previous post - it's good that someone wants to test something in 6 year old game

This link can be useful for you if you haven't known about it already: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=559009

 

[danaphanous]

ok thanks for the correct numbers, that's useful to know.

That guide looks great! It's sort of what I was already working on in the background but it looks like Acken beat me too it! Interesting that he also chose Celts, maybe they were more optimal then I thought. I chose them for the guaranteed religion, ability to pick a non-faith pantheon, and Ceilidh halls, but I didn't end up building many Ceilidh halls, my happiness just was good enough with order on this game. Like I said I was swimming in happiness.

His record game was T198 like you linked though right? I guess I'll see how I measure up!

 

[IronfighterXXX]

One overlooked item here that penalizes larger maps is that the base costs of techs vary by map size. For Duel through Small, the cost is 100% of the base tech cost, Standard is 110%, Large is 120% and Huge is 130%. Makes for a slower teching game on Large and Huge maps, even though the per city tech penalty is lower than on Standard.

Yes, I forgot about it. Point for danaphanous

But it's probably another argument to test things on standard - not so complicated calculations.

 

[sugerdady87]

ok thanks for the correct numbers, that's useful to know.

That guide looks great! It's sort of what I was already working on in the background but it looks like Acken beat me too it! Interesting that he also chose Celts, maybe they were more optimal then I thought. I chose them for the guaranteed religion, ability to pick a non-faith pantheon, and Ceilidh halls, but I didn't end up building many Ceilidh halls, my happiness just was good enough with order on this game. Like I said I was swimming in happiness.

His record game was T198 like you linked though right? I guess I'll see how I measure up!

When are you going to provide that save file?

Also, this is a general question to anyone: is there a way to prove that a game was not using Ingame editor?