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So yesterday I decided to try a (noble) marathon huge map game for the first time.
The fractal world had a big ass continent with most players, a small continent with Catherine the Great, and a medium sized continent with me and Saladin. Other than that, just a few tiny islands.
My starting position was not great, but Saladin did not start too near me, so I was able to expand more or less as desired. When he started crowding me, I eliminated him and had the whole continent to myself. Because he got Hinduism and I got Judaism and Confucianism, I was a pretty religious mofo and could get lots of income from that. Also, the continent was pretty safe. I was able to squash every possible invasion (pretty much everybody else was Buddhist, except for Darius who was free religion from early on).
The tech trading on the big continent left me behind, but through dint of hard effort, I worked my way up to the top, in tech and score. In the 1880s, I launched a massive invasion of Catherine the Great and took out her civ in a few turns.
(I soon thereafter turned her into a colony, to see what that was like, and it gave me more money, but overall it seems to me to be a disadvantage)
So I was in the lead, but not by too much. Charlemagne (military) and Darius (tech) were the only other two contenders. The rest of them were just nuisances. Charlemagne was accumulating vassals and Darius was going strong for the space race.
It seemed to me that invading the big continent would be very difficult; I had no tech advantage over the big two, and the fact that they were all Buddhist and had better relations with each other than with me meant that if I did invade, I'd probably be fighting several at once--and giving up my "island fortress" advantage, while fighting at a distance. Moreover, the two most obvious invasion points were square on Darius and Charlemagne territory; it wouldn't really be very feasible to try to get a beachhead by knocking off one of the lesser ones, just by the way the geography laid out.
So I was looking at the victory screen and noted that my capital city had the highest culture in the game by far, and that I had two other cities which also had pretty high culture. Maybe I could go for a cultural victory. I remembered that it took 50k culture points to become "legendary."
I had never tried this before, so I was not sure of the best strategy. I built up enough of a defense to be able to repel any invaders while going on my culture run, then spent some time building up my infrastructure, especially economic and science. Then I turned those 2nd and 3rd cities to produce culture.
So I was basically in a waiting game. I figured I had one legendary city and needed two more. So I was clicking next turn constantly, waiting while the computer thunk it all out, and constantly turning down the various diplomatic entreaties.
I was not producing culture very fast, so I eventually started running at 100% culture, which stagnated me technologically. Even that was not producing culture fast enough in those two cities. I maxed out their specialists to help produce culture as well.
And waited, turn after turn after turn. We are talking we hours of the morning here.
Through all of that period, I only got 3 "great" figures. I don't know why I wasn't getting more. I got only one great artist, which I used as a culture dump for one of the two cities, getting 12k culture. The other two I combined for a golden age to increase culture output.
Finally, I got my 2nd and 3rd cities over 50k. But nothing happened! The game kept playing!
I went into civilipedia and the rulebook and discovered that apparently the 50k was only for "normal" games, not epic or marathon!!!!!!!!
How much did I actually need to win? 60k? 75k? Neither the pedia nor the rules said, nor did the victory screen.
I had no idea. So I kept playing, as Charlemagne accumulates vassals and Darius builds components and 4 am turns to 5 am and still later.
I get to 60k, 75k, still nothing.
It was around 6:30 in the morning that a glance on one of the CITY screens, for crying out loud, finally showed me how much culture I needed. I actually needed 150k culture to get a city legendary. My first city had it, but #2 and #3 were nowhere remotely close. Even leaving aside Charlemagne and Darius, I'd have to keep hitting that damn next turn button for over another hour just to get them legendary.
I "retired" in frustrating, feeling that about 20 hours had been more or less wasted--or at least that portion of it from the point of time when I made the "culture victory" decision. Even if I had won, those hours of basically doing nothing but hitting next turn were joyless.
I doubt I'll try that again.
The fractal world had a big ass continent with most players, a small continent with Catherine the Great, and a medium sized continent with me and Saladin. Other than that, just a few tiny islands.
My starting position was not great, but Saladin did not start too near me, so I was able to expand more or less as desired. When he started crowding me, I eliminated him and had the whole continent to myself. Because he got Hinduism and I got Judaism and Confucianism, I was a pretty religious mofo and could get lots of income from that. Also, the continent was pretty safe. I was able to squash every possible invasion (pretty much everybody else was Buddhist, except for Darius who was free religion from early on).
The tech trading on the big continent left me behind, but through dint of hard effort, I worked my way up to the top, in tech and score. In the 1880s, I launched a massive invasion of Catherine the Great and took out her civ in a few turns.
(I soon thereafter turned her into a colony, to see what that was like, and it gave me more money, but overall it seems to me to be a disadvantage)
So I was in the lead, but not by too much. Charlemagne (military) and Darius (tech) were the only other two contenders. The rest of them were just nuisances. Charlemagne was accumulating vassals and Darius was going strong for the space race.
It seemed to me that invading the big continent would be very difficult; I had no tech advantage over the big two, and the fact that they were all Buddhist and had better relations with each other than with me meant that if I did invade, I'd probably be fighting several at once--and giving up my "island fortress" advantage, while fighting at a distance. Moreover, the two most obvious invasion points were square on Darius and Charlemagne territory; it wouldn't really be very feasible to try to get a beachhead by knocking off one of the lesser ones, just by the way the geography laid out.
So I was looking at the victory screen and noted that my capital city had the highest culture in the game by far, and that I had two other cities which also had pretty high culture. Maybe I could go for a cultural victory. I remembered that it took 50k culture points to become "legendary."
I had never tried this before, so I was not sure of the best strategy. I built up enough of a defense to be able to repel any invaders while going on my culture run, then spent some time building up my infrastructure, especially economic and science. Then I turned those 2nd and 3rd cities to produce culture.
So I was basically in a waiting game. I figured I had one legendary city and needed two more. So I was clicking next turn constantly, waiting while the computer thunk it all out, and constantly turning down the various diplomatic entreaties.
I was not producing culture very fast, so I eventually started running at 100% culture, which stagnated me technologically. Even that was not producing culture fast enough in those two cities. I maxed out their specialists to help produce culture as well.
And waited, turn after turn after turn. We are talking we hours of the morning here.
Through all of that period, I only got 3 "great" figures. I don't know why I wasn't getting more. I got only one great artist, which I used as a culture dump for one of the two cities, getting 12k culture. The other two I combined for a golden age to increase culture output.
Finally, I got my 2nd and 3rd cities over 50k. But nothing happened! The game kept playing!
I went into civilipedia and the rulebook and discovered that apparently the 50k was only for "normal" games, not epic or marathon!!!!!!!!
How much did I actually need to win? 60k? 75k? Neither the pedia nor the rules said, nor did the victory screen.
I had no idea. So I kept playing, as Charlemagne accumulates vassals and Darius builds components and 4 am turns to 5 am and still later.
I get to 60k, 75k, still nothing.
It was around 6:30 in the morning that a glance on one of the CITY screens, for crying out loud, finally showed me how much culture I needed. I actually needed 150k culture to get a city legendary. My first city had it, but #2 and #3 were nowhere remotely close. Even leaving aside Charlemagne and Darius, I'd have to keep hitting that damn next turn button for over another hour just to get them legendary.
I "retired" in frustrating, feeling that about 20 hours had been more or less wasted--or at least that portion of it from the point of time when I made the "culture victory" decision. Even if I had won, those hours of basically doing nothing but hitting next turn were joyless.
I doubt I'll try that again.
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