comparison game for woodan and whom else

[brandonjm8]

for the people interested in replaying this map, rather than replaying that one, i generated this one. changed a couple of settings to get all the resources this time. 13 AI's on 6 continents, this time you are not alone on your own continent, made sure of that. but this game is with the ottomans not the japs. prince level with no barbs/events/tech trading&brokering but with espionage this time. if you decide to play this, let us know prior and post saves at 1 A.D. and 1000/1500/1750 A.D. saves too along with crossover if you want, goodluck.

[Brael]

I'll give that one a try.

And that's very surprising to hear Genghis was wiped out by barbs, I've never seen him lose to them before. If anyone dies (which is very rare on Immortal, AI production/research bonuses plus starting archers give them a huge advantage against barbs) it's usually a civ that doesn't know how to fight like Isabella, Ghandi, Mansa, or Roosevelt. Having an aggressive leader lose is very odd. I imagine Pacal became a superpower in your game then given his starting location.

I'm surprised you couldn't get the iron though, one medic 2 and a couple fortified archers will hook it up, or a worker and a chopped great wall. Curious, what tile did you pick for your starting position? The starting tile, the southern hill, or the south western hill? Anyways, I went with those settings primarily because a 2x huge map had me sick of large maps, I don't like having too many cities, it reduces the importance of national wonders and the strategy in settling locations, and I did pangea because it's ideally suited for a GG strategy which is what I was going for, hence picking praetorians and a civ that has a shot at the great wall.

[Krill]

If you posted one of those maps on normal speed they might actually be fun to platy instead of an insane grind.

[Brael]

It depends, I love marathon myself. Infact, it's the only speed I play (and epic was the only speed before they made marathon). I just don't like 2x huge maps, but I've gone over the reasons a thousand times.

[Brael]

Ok, playing your map. Explored south first, found one civ on the continent. Coincidentally it's a guy who's a total wimp. Seeing the corn I kept my warrior near his city waiting for a worker to inevitably come by. On turn 67 that happened and I had him in my territory and ready to work at turn 81. On my way through to explore behind him I managed to take out his pig and cow to slow him down further. By about 2k BC I had the entire continent revealed and still no repercussions from the worker gank although I do expect something. After I got BW I saw there's a copper in his capital. It's too far away to take, and I don't really want to burn it so I may just lay siege to his city for awhile. Though burning would be more cost effective (unless he gets a wonder I care about).

I also managed to pick up the great wall along with a medic 2 scout and woodsman 3 warrior from huts, those are going to be very useful. Maybe the AI will cooperate with me and send some units. I want double GG points out of him, it's the whole point of letting him live. Oh and a second worker was stolen on turn 126. Atleast that one I can see being a legitimate AI mistake, it moved it away from my unit like it should have, but rather than cower in the city it hid, through a forest, with a woodsman 2 warrior chasing it.

Two things I did do bad though, the first is that despite having hereditary rule I haven't switched yet for the happiness. I did make the pyramids but that was for the 2-3 free engineers. I had stone and it seemed worthwhile for that reason. The other thing is that I crashed my economy by not paying attention to my treasury (it's hard to care about losing 20/turn when you have 3000 from huts). I was hoping expansive/organized would let me expand out a little further but it didn't, I suppose I can be more reckless once courthouses are up. Until then I can build my research and my expansion was effective at preventing the other guy from expanding out. He can only go south really, and very slightly north, and north will soon be filled.

[brandonjm8]

i forgot that i didnt erase the ice in the map, oops. i did in mine after remembering thinking i forgot something. i usually dont forget while changing deserts to plains but oops, oh well, to make our maps identical all you have to do is go to the WB and just erase the ice within 2 squares of any land, nothing more. its not much ice but i forgot to do it.

after reading your game, all i can do is , took his first worker heh , you got your work cut out for ya he looks stronger than you, i see the not switching to rep gov't is really hurting you right now. i saw you were building a stable in your eastern city, why? horse is on the other side (west side) of the two feet on the continent. im just now getting to the horse in my game. i see you have two GG's too, waiting for cats? gonna make peace soon til you get it or macemen? two ubber macemen with some cats and regular army should be enough to finish him off.

for my game, didnt get GW but i did get the statue of zeus for when i go to conquer him. hes far stronger on my game than yours, the only thing i could do since he got to BW before me and had alot already was for me to cut him and keep him to the south. i had 8 cities by 600 B.C. and killed my science and gold from huts. got lucky and got a prophet not too long afterward and i spread my religion (we are jews!) to him and went from 0% to 40% from that, then i found two more religions (im pissed, i did what you or someone said on that other forum for stacking holy cities, didnt f'ing work ) all three different cities. i better get islam to stack if and when i get it. im cruising now, my science is awesome. my fastest crossover in all time, but hes still more powerful than me. i have an army near 50-60 axemen/archers yet hes still alittle more powerful arghhh. got like 14+ cities now and expanding very fast. my first 8 cities are 12 or bigger already, makes for making units fast. once i get feudalism then machinery im gonna have to set gold slider to 0 for awhile to upgrade and hopefully surpass him in power. shouldnt be hard, i have many specialists already and i got the pyramids. got the +2 beakers wonder too, lets see: pyramids, parthenon, AP, statue of zeus, hagia sophia, angkor wat, two of three shrines, great library, one or two more cant remember. since i spread my religion to him, hes my butt buddy for now. gave him open borders so i can increase my economy through trade. hes yet to cross my lands to expand, hes expanded the entire southern tip hes on. hes got close to 20 cities, im just waiting for him to start using his galleys to go on the other side where the horse is. hes got two settlers waiting near our border, when you look at my game you will see i cut him off pretty good. ive got a settler going for the closest horse, im trying to take that coast all alongside of him before he starts too. if he wasnt so powerful id be building up, everytime i build up he does too , gonna have to wait til macemen/trebs before i can even think of going to war with him. i can outproduce him but i have some nice cities on our border. maybe 30 macemen and 15 trebs could be enough, maybe two of those sized armies probably. for now im just trying to expand all around him and isolate him inside the south eastern part of our continent. some nice land here especially to the west, nice long rivers and silk and horse. we dont have much luxury resources but alot of food resources, better get lucky and discover some luxury from mining. otherwise the UB for the ottomans is very nice +2 happy/health is a sweet deal and with my religions, my cities can get to 15 before having to stop. 17-18 once i get cathedrals. well anyways i missed my first save, oops, think the year is 200 A.D. and then my last save of tonight.

as far as that map of yours brael, i founded my first city on the hills to the east with rice, cow, and silk and on the coast. second city was just east of that with banana and something else cant remember. the barb warriors kept beating my archers, i was attacked for a good 100 turns straight one after another, no joke. soon after that i put my 2nd city and soon after i was surrounded by hannibal to the north and surveyeman to the east and south, isabella to the west with the barb city where the copper was. i was screwed and harassed by the barbs and kinda looked gloomy for me so i quit. and genghis was wiped out pretty early, maybe 2300 B.C. around there, i was surprised too.

[brandonjm8]

It depends, I love marathon myself. Infact, it's the only speed I play (and epic was the only speed before they made marathon). I just don't like 2x huge maps, but I've gone over the reasons a thousand times.

i love marathon too and prefer it.

[brandonjm8]

fastest crossover of all time thus far, with 8 early cities that were big with rep gov't made it seem too easy.

60% +120 beakers
+/- 0 gold/turn 3 gold in treasury
turn 338 (113)

[brandonjm8]

deleted by Robert Plomp

and spam gets deleted here buddy, you aint getting paid today

edit by Robert: Please don't quote the spam or I'll have to remove your post as spam as well next time

sorry robert, thanks for the quick response tho.

[Brael]

i forgot that i didnt erase the ice in the map, oops. i did in mine after remembering thinking i forgot something. i usually dont forget while changing deserts to plains but oops, oh well, to make our maps identical all you have to do is go to the WB and just erase the ice within 2 squares of any land, nothing more. its not much ice but i forgot to do it.

That would mean using the WB, using that kind of defeats the whole point of comparisons. It ends up providing info about the game.

after reading your game, all i can do is , took his first worker heh , you got your work cut out for ya he looks stronger than you, i see the not switching to rep gov't is really hurting you right now. i saw you were building a stable in your eastern city, why? horse is on the other side (west side) of the two feet on the continent. im just now getting to the horse in my game. i see you have two GG's too, waiting for cats? gonna make peace soon til you get it or macemen? two ubber macemen with some cats and regular army should be enough to finish him off.

He's weaker. Not switching to rep doesn't matter, I'm going with a CE and would rather not deal with the anarchy. The pyramids were basically because I could and I wanted a couple of engineers. It seemed like a good use of that forest I would clear for cottages anyways. The stable is pretty much because I can. I found where the horses are but I didn't have anything else to build besides research and that city is no good for building research. Anyways, on the subject of rep... the continent is devoid of happy resources that I saw, but abundant in healthy resources. There's a definite advantage to going with hereditary rule.

The GG is for warlords if units get enough promotions or academies if they don't (the other one is an engineer, I'm thinking I'll make Shagedwon Paya or however it's spelled). I would rather not place them yet because I don't need them and want to keep the warlord option open. As for peace, no way it would only be advantageous to him. I don't have a single point of WW while he should have some due to always fighting in my territory and the statue of zues.

hes far stronger on my game than yours

I cut him off early. He lost a worker, then a second worker (I couldn't pillage the second time around though). When you consider the developed tiles he lost that's a much bigger loss than an early game wonder.

as far as that map of yours brael, i founded my first city on the hills to the east with rice, cow, and silk and on the coast. second city was just east of that with banana and something else cant remember. the barb warriors kept beating my archers, i was attacked for a good 100 turns straight one after another, no joke. soon after that i put my 2nd city and soon after i was surrounded by hannibal to the north and surveyeman to the east and south, isabella to the west with the barb city where the copper was. i was screwed and harassed by the barbs and kinda looked gloomy for me so i quit. and genghis was wiped out pretty early, maybe 2300 B.C. around there, i was surprised too.

Try it again, either found on one of those hills or where you start. I would suggest the southwest hill. Get a worker out to chop the GW, don't bother with the stone... you can't defend it much less the road for it. Use the animals to earn some promotions, you want a medic warrior. A cover warrior is nice too but not necessary. In my game I didn't even get archery for a long time, I went warriors to praets essentially (I made 1 archer at the end of the barb onslaught). Try to keep atleast 5 warriors in the city. 4 fortified warriors and an unfortified medic will do it. If you lose one use the whip to replace them, if you get enough people you can whip out a wall too. That will give you an easier time.

And barb warriors beating fortified warriors happens sometimes, no combat bonuses against barbs once you go high enough (no bonus starts on monarch I think). The trick is to heal up fast enough that you're not overwhelmed.

[wodan11]

I thought happy limits were set to 6 for every level now with the AI playing better instead. Is that wrong?

I think it's wrong but can't verify at the moment.

I certainly see CS being phased out as the game goes on, with the only exceptions probably being culture wins and small maps and that's because in a WS or Oxford city you would want to go beyond the cap of 7 (2 early building, 2 later building, 3 national wonder) and max that city out. That's of less and less benefit as the map gets larger however.

For all types of SE you see CS being phased out? You lost me.

Ahh, but lets say you have two cities each capable of running 8 specialists like this. Wouldn't it be a wiser move to simply build a library/observatory in one and a market/grocer in the other while using CS?

Those buildings may not be available. Even then, they don't allow 8 specialists. (How does Lib+Obs allow 8 scientists?)

I've never really done a switch (yay for almost never playing with a SE) but I'm not seeing how serfdom really speeds it up. Couldn't you use the same strategy as with pre chopping forests to prebuild farms? Once they're nearly complete move on to another tile. It wouldn't convert everything at once unless you switched after biology, but that seems to remove a large benefit of serfdom. Provided you have the worker turns available before it's time to switch.

The latter is the telling point. One of the benefits of Serfdom is that instead of, say, 40 workers you only need 20. Also, you're recommending an immense amount of micro.

I'll grant that slavery has the production advantage, but that's what it's designed for. I would ask though, if you're using CS do you have a need for slavery in the first place? Like I pointed out above, CS saves on necessary infrastructure and by the time guilds comes around a workshop is an ok improvement under CS, basically converting a tile from flat land to a mined hill.

I use slavery in new cities as well as (very infrequently) in cities that are at the cap but still have an oddball overflow food.

Given that expansion continues throughout the game depending on chosen game strategy, new cities are usually present. Particularly in eary to midgame.

Well, if you're turning the specialists off you're certainly going to regrow as fast as a CE if not faster as you can work more farms, but how much time is spent regrowing? If 25% of the time you're using specialists has them turned off that's going to add up and reduce the overall efficiency of the economy. Remember, specialists are equal, one scientist is just as good as another scientist. When whipping under a CE though, you're sacrificing work on the worst tiles you're working, it's the same concept as what we were talking about earlier with city overlap. Not every tile is equal.

If the SE whips a farmer then it will regrow slower than a CE who whips a townie. If the SE whips a scientist then it will regrow faster than a CE who whips a townie. These are always true.

as far as the SE and CE debate goes, if you have multiple religions and certain wonders, as soon as you hit biology the SE skyrockets

Why do multiple religions and wonders have synergy with Biology? I can't think of any reason.

i forgot that i didnt erase the ice in the map, oops. i did in mine after remembering thinking i forgot something.

We all agreed NO worldbuilder after the initial save, Brandon.

[brandonjm8]

brael,

yeah i erased the ice from the very start, no info to see and i didnt look to see where all 12 AI's were. just erased the ice, i can see your points, since your games already started it be kinda hard to go to WB to erase the ice and not see the other AI's. i forgot to post that save, well if anybody else plays this game they are reading this and before you found your city go into WB and erase the ice 2 squares within any land. sorry brael, my bad.

after looking at our map again we have three luxury resources: silk/fur/and whale down on surveyeman's side way down there by the south most coast. no mined ones tho but you can discover those by having many mines. but yes we have alot of food ones and with here. rule would be best for huge cities before astronomy, i use rep for the added beakers.

wodan,

since i usually get many religions and angkor wat, biology usually helps fill ALL cities to their maxes, which adds ALOT to my science and production. since i build alot of farmland biology is critical to me for maxing out specialists and attaining great science output.

i havent accessed the WB since the initial start, as i stated before, i erased the ice in my map prior to starting but forgot to save my save over the one i posted/uploaded here, oops. i usually dont forget those things, shows im human .

[Brael]

I think it's wrong but can't verify at the moment.

It seems it is wrong. I swear I read something saying happy caps were 6 across the board now but I guess not.

For all types of SE you see CS being phased out? You lost me.

Eventually, yes. I'm not saying you can't use an SE the entire game, just that there's better alternatives (for most cities, I think you should always be running a merchant and probably a scientist specialist city) if the game goes long enough.

Those buildings may not be available. Even then, they don't allow 8 specialists. (How does Lib+Obs allow 8 scientists?)

I was using two cities for the example. The library allows two, the observatory allows two. That's four per city, with two cities that's eight. It's another way to look at your example of

Let's go a step further. Consider for example the "mixed" SE. This runs mixed types of spcialists, and thus we see for example each city running 2 merchants (Market), 2 scientists (Library), another 2 merchants (grocer) etc. This is by design and is not a negative.

Essentially, it's taking city specialization to another level. Rather than build say a market, library, grocer, and observatory in two cities, if you're running CS you can instead build a market/grocer in one city, a library/observatory in the other city, run the same number of specialists, and get the same benefit with less infrastructure needed.

The same concept can apply to having markets/libraries only. Rather than having to build a market and library in each city to run mixed specialists, by running CS you can make less buildings while getting the same benefit. It's what, 720? hammers (270 library 450 market) saved on marathon. That 720 hammers per two cities translates into 8 90 hammer units (axemen for example). If you were running 6 specialist cities that's another 24 units. That's a moderate sized stack of units from CS. Overall I don't think it leaves you that far behind slavery while having other benefits. It just depends on if you want another x% production or x% to your economy.

The latter is the telling point. One of the benefits of Serfdom is that instead of, say, 40 workers you only need 20. Also, you're recommending an immense amount of micro.

No question on the micro. I didn't say it's something I would do. I don't like micro that much unless it's a tiny map. However, to the best of my knowledge, that 50% speed increase is additive. Steam power adds 50% to the speed meaning workers are going at 150% already. Adding another 50% makes it 200%. That's only a 33% overall increase which means it's not 20 vs 40 workers, it's 30 vs 40 workers. Since workers are 120 hammers each (marathon speed), can you say 10 workers (1200 hammers) are worth that anarchy? Your empire probably loses more than 1200 just in the switch, to say nothing of the research and coin loss. There's also the fact that the strategy means you're at a worker disadvantage before switching to serfdom. Maybe it makes a lot more sense if you're spiritual.

[brandonjm8]

this is the way i do it:

one worker per city, thats a pretty standard rule.

if i get pyramids, try to change to rep while switching to org relig

once you get feudalism, switch to vassalage and serfdom

once you get banking only switch to merc. if everyone else is and there is no possible trading with other AI's (for me i go for astronomy pretty early so once i get merc. some games i never switch to it since the economic boost of trading far outweighs merc.)

once you get economics and liberalism, switch to free market and free speech at same time.

only switch to emancipation if you must. (for obviously unhappiness reasons if alot of other AI's have it and you dont)

once you have steam power and assembly line, switch to emancipation and free religion.

then after that you should be able to get the jesus wonder and switch however you like if you are not spiritual, being spiritual does have its benefits but they are situational and other traits are more desirable. this is usually how i like to go about doing it, just me.

[brandonjm8]

actually brael, i forgot some ice on my map too, oh man guess im getting old. you can see some of the ice i forgot to erase on my last game save.