The Almighty Scout

predesad

Emperor
Joined
Oct 14, 2003
Messages
1,615
Location
Vol country
I decided to create a seperate thread for my next HOF game, instead of just posting in my quartermasters thread, in the hopes of getting more feedback. I am doing a large map space race on emporer as Russia, sedentary barbs. My early strategy involves attempting what has been dubbed the scientific triple shot (or something like that) by popping all the techs early, saving Philosophy for last, then when i get philosophy, gift all the scientific civs up to the MA, trade for their free techs & then get 2 more MA techs with my own freebies from philosophy & the scientific trait. My opponents for this game will be the other 8 scientific civs (Sumeria, Babylon, Germany, Ottomans, Persia, Byzantines, Greece, & Korea). I have some pretty strict opening requirements for this game & even though it is a large map I have high hopes of getting an early date. Admittedly, I sandbagged in my other HOF games, but this one I am really going to try my best.

For starters, I believe I am an excellent expansionist trait player, it has been my favorite trait since vanilla & I have discovered many benefits of scouts, hopefully I will be able to exploit each and every one of those this game.

Opening game requirements:

- 4 turn settler factory at starting location, with over 90 maps generated, each one has at least one food bonus at the start, hopefully a good percentage has another food bonus in the capitol because I feel I will go through a lot of maps / attempts before I get what I want

- a 2nd 4 turn settler factory site, hopefully not a situation where 2 cities share 3 cows, but 2 true seperate factory sites

- an early popped settler, within the first 5 turns or 3 huts

- a second early popped settler:

-this is the part of the game I am researching now, my capitol builds will be scout, scout, worker, granary, settler; I want a second popped settler before that first hand built settler is completed, after this point it will be virtually impossible to pop a settler because with 2 factories running I will have settlers running around constantly

-I plan to pop huts until I get that first settler, then I wont pop any until I have at least 3 contacts & have traded for their techs and enough time has past that the requirements are met for me to pop a second settler. This means that after popping the first settler & founding my second city, I will need to wait until every civ has at least 2 cities, if my granary completes before this happens, I will use a barracks as a build for a settler. After doing a bit of research using the reveal map option in the scenario screen, I made myself a 4 turn factory site on a created map, then went through the porcess of setting up my factory & using the build order outlined above. Having a view of the map, I can tell when the other civs build their cities. A date of 2900 BC is about the earliest I have observed all the civs having 2 cities. Somtimes it has been a little later, about 2750. That gives me the impression that if I wait until about 2670 or 2630, I can be fairly certain all the civs have built their second cities by then. In almost all of these trials I have still been building my granary at that point in the game, but at near completion.

- I think those goals are pretty lofty & will take many attempts without throwing in that triple slingshot thing

My next concern is trying to figure out on average how many initial scouts I need to make 3 contacts by the date (2670 - 2630) I want to start popping huts. I plan 2 from the capitol, then with an early second city via popped settler I will build more, but I dont want to delay setting up the second factory too long.

Another aspect of the game I want to research is how long I can leave my goody huts unpopped & at what radius form my start. I will prolly give myself a bunch of extra scouts at the start to go contact everyone & watch their exploration to see when units start crawling all over "my" territory & claiming "my" huts. I hope to hold off on the aggressive popping until I get all 8 contacts, but I am not counting on being able to do that.

Future game plans include OCC my 2 nearest opponents, just for that little bit of extra help each era with the free techs. I might OCC a 3rd opponent depending upon how close they are (map details: Large pangaea with 60% water, wet warm 5 billion) I will ofcourse emply ICS once I reach the OCN. I plan to intiate my GA with my UU, I also plan to get a fair share of leaders from my UU. With the blitz ability & auto promotions with 2 victories on the same turn, I will surely be able to have an abundance of Elite Cossacks running around.
 
I have been trying Russia for a fast 20K. The beauty of a large map is more huts for the popping. I usually fish for an SGL on the cheapest techs, CB, mysticism, wheel, HBR. On a standard chieftain map i can usually pop the rest and count on the AI to research iron working, and get to the MA by 1750.

With your setup, you could definitely get an early SGL or two if you played all 90 maps out. An early Pyramids would solve all your problems with balancing scout builds with expansion. Otherwise I would build a 3rd scout initially to go long and pop huts from far to near. This would probably allow getting the first tier techs earlier via contact, and starting the first popping phase until you hit writing, stop, finish what research you are doing, and then set to philo on minimum. Pop away after that. Another reason for a third initial scout is the Emperor AIs will send their bonus spearmen out right away to explore and pop huts. The longer you wait to get around, the more scout-slaying barbs there will be from the AI running into and ruining some perfectly nice goody huts.

It strikes me that the first hut popping phase would coincide nicely with around your 3rd popped city 2670 date, allowing you to finish your 2nd or 3rd researched tech and segue into philosophy easily. Assuming you initially start research on the wheel, finding the Germans or Babs to allow for the relatively cheap HBR or mysticism would be a high priority.

Im unsure about worker before granary; I would probably do it if there are 2-3 forests to chop while your first worker is irrigating the other food bonii. Otherwise city 2 with only having a single bonus grass can be a scout-worker factory for a short time.

Ive gone away from the triple slingshot to education; switching to republic early is worth it, and gives you something else to bait the AI with when they dont want to give up their occasional feudalism monopoly for monarchy and literature.
 
input from a fellow tennessean much appreciated, if i understand you right, you are suggesting building 3 scouts from the capitol instead of 2. i was only going to build 2 from capitol, then build a couple more from my second city via the popped settler. normally as an expansionist i would build 3 or 4, but i think my plan was distracted by getting the settler factory up & running. the worker / scout factory is a good idea. i am thinking hard about zero research because i always play with SGL's off, I dont like SGL's. Besides with all the other demands I have, trying to get an SGL on top of that would really complicate matters, of course getting the Pyramids from an SGl would be awesome. Anyway, back to the zero research, usually as an expansionist, I try to block a tech I dont want to pop, in this case I am going to use HBR. Hope I pop a settler from my very first hut, dont pop anymore until I do that "go long pop from far to near" that you mentioned, that was part of my plan, but i dont think i was really clear about it. trying to figure out how long I can allow those near huts to sit unpopped before those spear arrive. So anyway, the zero research thing again - I will try to block HBR by researching it @ zero after making a few contacts & trade I think I can easily get masonry, warrior code, ceremonial burial, alphabet, the wheel, & mysticism. then my first pop would be iron working. Usually, I can trade for those techs being a broker as an expansionists much quicker than I could research anything & then have all the gold to boot. If i can eventually get a trade for HBR, i would then think about a self research project if my tech rate is high enough, but from that point I just might rely on the pop. Basically I have 2 research phases, a broker phase & a pop phase, both with zero research.

i have never done the triple slingshot, so while the republic slingshot may be better overall i just want to try this once. with 8 other scientific civs hopefully nobody gets a feudalism monopoly.
 
I think playing with SGL off is not giving you you full potential. If you do not want to play explicitly for a SGL that's fine but why not have it on and if you get one great if not oh well?

I'll be interested to hear how successful you are with getting the 2nd popped settler. I don't believe I have ever done that.

Good Luck and keep us updated
 
Mistfit said:
I think playing with SGL off is not giving you you full potential. If you do not want to play explicitly for a SGL that's fine but why not have it on and if you get one great if not oh well?

I'll be interested to hear how successful you are with getting the 2nd popped settler. I don't believe I have ever done that.

Good Luck and keep us updated

the reason I play with SGL off is because i feel it is a very unbalanced & unfair aspect of the game. its a personal issue, just like some players dont feel right about using the communism gov't, i dont feel right baout playing with SGL on
 
Pentium said:
Zero research Space Race? Won't it slow down the tech pace?

actually, i was unclear about the zero research:

- zero research through the AA because i will be popping techs faster than i could possibly research them

- after triple slingshot gets me into the MA i will switch to max research
 
I recall seeing on a recent thread, that you cannot pop a settler while you have a settler active or building, and also that they do not pop if you have more cities than any of your opponents. I'd be interested to see if your games seem to bear this information out and it might affect your game plans if it is indeed true...

BTW I agree that exp is a terriffic trait.
 
Your information is correct brennan.
 
brennan said:
I recall seeing on a recent thread, that you cannot pop a settler while you have a settler active or building, and also that they do not pop if you have more cities than any of your opponents. I'd be interested to see if your games seem to bear this information out and it might affect your game plans if it is indeed true...

BTW I agree that exp is a terriffic trait.

you are almost correct: you cannot be building a settler, have an active settler, or have more than the average number of cities. I am planning for that:

predesad said:
I plan to pop huts until I get that first settler, then I wont pop any until I have at least 3 contacts & have traded for their techs and enough time has past that the requirements are met for me to pop a second settler. This means that after popping the first settler & founding my second city, I will need to wait until every civ has at least 2 cities

unfortunately my time now is very, limited & i have zero time for this game
 
i regret to admit that i may have to abandon my bid for quartermaster, time is very limited right now & my wife has plans for me to go back to school in January, she insists. What that means is there are things we have to get done in the next few months to permit me to go back to school which further limtis my time. right now I barely have time for the 4 pbems i am in & the occasional quick game. everytime i do try to pick this up, i have to spend too much time refreshing my memory on the various strats i concocted to give me the best opportunity for my most recent game. I hope to have some time in the future, but right now I am even (gasp) thinking I might not buy civ4 when it first comes out.

good luck to all & thanks where it is due. see you in the HOF sometime in the future, hopefully before civ5
 
predesad said:
see you in the HOF sometime in the future, hopefully before civ5
All the best in your new adventure. :thumbsup: Just make sure that you have plenty of time when you return; I think that the new HoF will take even more time than the current one does!
 
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