Apolyton the Successor (Succession game thread).

[Dinner]

Good turns though I think I'm going to have to read both this thread and the other in order to figure out exactly what you and Thoth were discussing about the best moves. I really want to learn how to be a better player so I'm going to read it several times.

That said who is next? We could start letting people play a second turn but if possible it would be nice to find a few more new people to take a first turn.

[rah]

Ok, that was fun. Thanks to you builders I was ready to cruise. Having faith, I opened the game, saw the balance of power and without even knowing where all my troops were, I declared war on Hannibal and released the hounds. I was surprised to see the civics we were in, but then realized that it was marathon and it takes a **** load of turns to change. I eventually bit the bullet because it didn't match what I was accomplishing.

Attached is the save 97 turns into my move. Domination WIN.
I did rig the last golden age so if I didn't finish in time the next person would have had 1 free turn to change to whatever civics they desired, but alas it wasn't needed. My first tank just came off the production line but couldn't get to the front fast enough to be blooded.

Saladin, Destroyed
Hannibal, reduced to a one square city back in the middle of korea.
That anoying blue civ, destroyed.
And finally India beat to capitulation.



I'll write more later. Never played a marathon game so it was weird.

[Thoth]

Good job Rah.

[rah]

It was easy, everyone else had gotten us the tech lead. Cannons when your opponent doesn't have them make it easy. I did expect Hannibal to have more troops but he only had one SOD that our cannons made mincemeat of.

The civic choice was a surprise to me.
Rep (ok) but then the market civic was the one for the free trade route and not the one for free specialists which you would expect to match with REP. Also free religion was available and not being used. (granted I'll sometimes do this for diplo reasons but since everyone was either a vassal or an enemy, that part of it didn't matter)
There seems to have been 3 golden ages already so plenty of time to line up civics.
Or if you're going to take 3 turns to go to rep, you might as well go one more to take the market civic to match it. And since I was capturing lots of cities, I dropped back into slavery to help whip the conquered cities down.

AND if anyone looks at the save, please keep in my that I'm a blood thirsty type of player so with a tech lead, there was only one strat for me.
SO, almost all the workers were automated since I couldn't be bothered with them. (including the 30 more or so that I captured along the way)
I didn't bother with too many buildings in cities and concentrated on just building more cannons and redcoats until i got infantry.

I loved all the Notes of interest on the map since I never use them. They helped at first but then I stopped paying attention to them. I saw the note for where the National park was going to go but finished the game before I could do anything else with that.

I did build the required wonders. SOL, Pentagon, Mt rushmore, but that was about it.
ARMIES ARMIES ARMIES and done.

Marathon was quite different for me. MAYBE I'll try that setting at one of the higher difficulty levels to see if it makes it easier.

[Blaupanzer]

Marathon makes the game more warlike, as if that would be a drawback. On higher difficulties the AI built-in advantages last longer. If you don't want to be gobbled at that speed, use raging barbarians. The AIs really like early rushes on the human, with or without aggressive AI. So beware. An early rush of your own can end with another AI marching up with an early mixed force before the city you rushed can fall. I don't know if they sort of send these mini-SODs out as soon as they spot you, or if it just seems that way. Upshot is: turn on raging barbarians and get used to the time everything except movement takes to do. PS: Well done.

[rah]

Some have said that it makes it easier since the human is better at war than the ai.
I may give it a try but man, it was like watching paint dry. I can't imagine the first 100 turns. Ok I have a warrior and a worker, what's next.

[Blaupanzer]

A lot of hitting enter. But it is slow, even for us epic-speed players, there's a lot of "Takes HOW long!" response to the time involved. Note that larger maps stretch that time even more, and the AI does not get careless or bored. Humans have a greater advantage at marathon especislly at war, but the early advantage at higher levels must be dealt with or it compounds much more in each era at this speed. Or at least ti seems that way to me. I prefer epic speed and I tried marathon a lot.

[rah]

Yeah, I've never played epic or marathon, so you can imagine my "TAKES HOW LONG" moments.

[Hauptman]

bah marathon is the only speed worth playing...

How can you people like mercantilism so much? 6 at most per city, hardly makes up for lost trade routes. Wouldnt matter so much when at war with the world, but we had 2 nice juicy vassels to keep trade routs open with.

Ive seen trade routes hit 15 a piece in mature cities, thats 2 gold mines multiplied by 4 or 5 routes. But trading with your own cities only ya get what 3 or 4 max? mercantilism is for always war settings, nothing else!~

[rah]

Well considering I was at war 97 of the 97 turns I played.
There were only a few mature cities. And more surprising, very few that had any specialists at all. There was plenty of food avail to support specialists.

And yes the only time I do think of merc is when I'm running rep. Running merchants will usually generate more than the diff in trade routes and you still get the extra beakers, but you're right, it depends on the situation. Otherwise I too will go the extra trade routes.

Don't look at the save and assume anything about my cities, because I knew I was racing to finish before the 100th turn and stopped paying attention to my cities about 50 turns in.

[Dinner]

Domination win.

Well, that was fun. We should start a new one.

[rah]

With the exception of a cultural win. (which I didn't check) almost any victory condition was doable, but being limited to 100 turns kind of forced my hand.