Early Landing Comparison Game #7

[Zenon]

I have looked through my collection of starting savs and found a game that seems adequate for Christmas. Rivers, grassland, forests a lot of specials and 3 excellent SSC sites to choose from:

91,11 with 3 silk (one rivered) and a whale
95,9 shares 2 silk with the first site and has also wheat and a hidden special
and to the South
88,24 with 3 gold (one rivered) and gems
All sites have river tiles and access to the sea

Game Settings:
Yung Lo of the Chinese
Medium Map
Seven Civs
Diety
Raging Hordes
Restarts are On
Starting Techs: None

Enjoy the game and feel free to set up new records! The game should be played until January 31.


Rules used for Comparison Games

a) The human player may not tip any huts. What’s a rule without an exception, so in the rare situation where a hut may block a player’s movement, the player must save the game, after which the hut is tipped enough times until it produces a military unit or a nomad, which must then be immediately disbanded. Huts appearing in a radius of any city can be destroyed without reaping any benefit by placing a citizen on the hut’s tile while in the city display.

b) Since the game attempts to prevent caravan and freight re-homing, this exploit is not allowed. Any other ploy or exploit is allowed.

c) As a minimum each player should provide a summary of their game, using the format provided with each game start. Each player is also encouraged to keep a chronological log of their game, listing significant events. The addition of details describing the game and strategic decisions made while playing it add interest, so doing this is very much encouraged. Once a game is completed, a short game summary and the optional log should be posted in the game’s thread. Attached to this post should be a save of the game made showing a completed ship or one on the way to Alpha Centauri.

d) The player posting the best landing date before the deadline will be declared the winner of that game. If the date is the best so far attained in comparison games, it will become the new “official” record.


Summary Format

Governments
Monarchy
Republic
Democracy
Communism/Fundamentalism

Wonders
HG
MPE
ST
Colossus
Copernicus
Isaac's
Leo's
Michaelangelo's
Darwin's
SETI
Apollo

SSC stats
size 8
size 12
size 21
max. size

Techs
Trade
Invention
Railroad
Automobile
Nuclear Power
Computers
Flight
Space Flight

Key civ contact

AC arrival

[solo]

This sounds promising! Thanks Zenon, and watch out, I've cooked up a "cunning" plan based on your strategy!

[rjmatsleepers]

What a great starting position - silk forests, wine hills, gold mountains and lots of rivers. A veritable land flowing with milk and honey.

If anyone out there has never tried an early landing game, this should be a beauty to start you off.

RJM at Sleeper's

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by solo in Why bribe? Just defend like a diplomat!
ST,
I am nearing your city total in EL #7, but have yet to try Xinning with disorder. You might like trying that game too if you are not too busy knocking off opponents in your new style of MP games.

One ELG was enough for next 5 years.
If my time were inflatable I would start a new one, but I would allow undemanded commodities only or first I would write a tool that would show all relations between cities, supplied commodities and demanded commodities. To maintain tables of commodities of 30 cities is very laborious.

I plan OCC fortnight #21. (http://www.paulvdb.cistron.nl/occ/occ.htm#fortnight)
It is an extremely simple OCC (two mini-continents, one is yours, one is AI's). I want to try the Xinning with disorder there.

[-Jrabbit]

I assume there's a GL article devoted to the ELG topic. If so, I may give this a try.

My personal best early landing in my personal games is in the late 1800s IIRC, which I gather is pretty laughable in games like this...

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
I assume there's a GL article devoted to the ELG topic. If so, I may give this a try.

My personal best early landing in my personal games is in the late 1800s IIRC, which I gather is pretty laughable in games like this...

Article?? Well, thread really. Check out the top of the Strategy Forum. It is some of the best writting about our dear game.

Monk

[Zenon]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
I assume there's a GL article devoted to the ELG topic. If so, I may give this a try.

Give it a try, Jrabbit! Solo´s Early Landing Guide alone is reason enough.

Just think of it as a different game and forget about building troops, marketplaces or factories. A good SSC, MPE, diplomacy and trade is all you need to see your landing dates improve with each game.

Zenon

[Zenon]

ST, since you posted your remarkable ELG I have tried Xinning with disorder occasionally. I found it very helpful when needed to complete a tech or in cities that support triremes during democracy. To use it more often it is probably best to have a surplus of cities to compensate the loss in production.

BTW, its probably another huge factor to make the game more laborious!

Zenon

[solo]

EL #7 Summary

I used the SSC site with 3 gold and gems. Besides having maximum trade arrows, it also had excellent wildcard commodities, with silver in supply and copper in demand early and later with gems in supply and spice in demand. This site also came into railroad bonus range with the Japanese city of Edo, allowing two 35 trade arrow routes, later in the game. (One route was kept open to facilitate SSC commodity resupply.)

Besides being situated on such a fine map, we were playing as the Chinese, which are perhaps the best civ choice for early landing games: first because they are a light blue civ, allowing some better AI research speed; and second because they produce a lot of silk, a lucrative commodity that was in demand by the Russians throughout the game.

Quick expansion, resulted in a total 26 cities, and thanks to having built the Pyramids, 11 of these could be well-placed colonies, many of which supplied commodities that were in demand by the SSC.

The only piece of bad luck was losing the Colossus to one of the AI, who built it first. This probably cost me a few turns of research and many coins from trade early in the game, but also gave me the incentive to start building libraries and universities in helpers and colonies. Later on, after SETI was built, and when most cities had the library/university/superhighways combination, three techs per turn became available, allowing the last 11 techs to be researched in just 4 turns.

As a result, the 500 AD barrier was finally crossed with a landing in 375 AD. It was a novelty to be able to set the science slider at 50% and still notice that the next tech was available in just 1 turn! This new capability of my own variation of Zenon’s (and Slow Thinker’s) robust early Monarchy strategy really allows it to surpass what might be possible with a lean and mean early Republic. When Zenon has finished his game, it will be interesting to compare the choices each of us made while using it.

Below is my summary. A complete log will be posted when it is ready. Attached at the end is a save made on the turn of the launch. Thanks to Zenon for making the 500 AD barrier beatable!


Governments

Monarchy – 2650 BC
Republic – 525 BC
Democracy – 60 AD
Communism/Fundamentalism

Wonders

HG – 900 BC
MPE – 1350 BC
ST – 350 BC
Colossus – not built
Pyramids - 675 BC
Copernicus – 75 BC
Isaac's – 80 AD
Leo's – 75 BC
Michaelangelo's – 200 BC
Darwin's – 120 AD
SETI – 300 AD
Apollo – 340 AD

SSC stats

size 8 – 375 BC
size 12 – 275 BC
size 21 – 25 BC
max. size - 23 in 40 AD

Techs

Trade – 2150 BC
Invention – 100 BC
Railroad – 100 AD
Automobile – 200 AD
Nuclear Power – 280 AD
Computers – 300 AD
Flight – 300 AD
Space Flight – 340 AD

Key civ contact – 1300 BC

AC arrival – 375 AD

[Zenon]

Congratulations, Solo!

A fantastic game and a new record! It´s even more remarkable you could do this without Colossus.

Zenon

[Bloody Monk]

Solo,

Cunning plan indeed!! Congratulations!!

Your versatility and ability to dump one plan and create another one is a lesson in itself. 26 cities!! 375ad landing!! Pyramids!! Bigger does seem to be better. Your log will bear some intensive study.

I'll save my questions until later after everyone else has played. But perhaps you can answer this now. Is it more fun to play this style or the first??

Monk

[solo]

Monk,

Slow Thinker is right about this style being laborious to play, even without going through what he did with Xinning with disorder!

In a way it's sad to see the simple and more elegant early Republic system fall to the brute force method of just adding more cities.

However, after single minded expansion in the early game, I blended in some of the things I used to do, by switching to Republic earlier and by prioritizing SSC growth after doing this. However, success was mostly due to the fact that more cities mean more caravans which allow additional trade.

As for fun, it was exhilarating to reach the new milestones of 3 techs per turn and to land under 500 AD, but for me a simpler game is much more pure fun. For recreation, I think I enjoy OCC the most because it cuts out so much of the tedium involved in shuttling caravans and freights around the map. Having fewer cities to manage is more fun, too!

[Bloody Monk]

Solo

Micromanagement can be tedious.

I wonder what result you would have achieved with the more sparce approach?? Getting Colossus might have been possible without Pyramids. And a ton of production and cash went into settlers for cities and roads, rails; as well as all those libraries and universities and colosseums and superhighways for the extra cities.

Monk

[solo]

If I find the time, I would like to try this and compare, since this is such a fine setup fo EL games. Maybe early Republic can be tweaked to get more out of it, too!

[Zenon]

ELCG #7
Medium Map, Chinese, 335 AD Landing

What can I say? I improved my best landing date on a Medium Map by 22 turns. In ELCG #6 I had a good game, but I had made one major mistake: SSC growth came to late. In this game I built Shakes right after MPE and HG and started celebration in 825 BC. In between I thought I had made a mistake again, growing so early felt like riding a tiger, but the excellent city sites on this map allowed to grow the SSC to size 22 + 11 cities to size 5 to 8 until 200 BC. At that time I had only one colony. 11 late colonies were founded between 200BC and 220 AD. The 13 early cities were sufficient to get 1 tech a turn + 2 times 2 techs a turn before Automobile.

When I had built MPE and exchanged maps I had nice tech trades ahead but the trading aspects did not look to good. My cities allowed just one trading direction towards the English (to close) and the Russians. The Spnish were to far at that time. It was to late to change that. This feeling became even worse when I realized that the Russians had no capital. They must have lost it in their war with the English. My major trading partner suffered corruption, leading to lower trade results and would never become a research assistent! At that time I was waiting for the Russians to complete Polytheism. Instead I had to trade for Horse Riding, research Polytheism myself and delay Michelangelos. But then St. Petersburg became a silk demander and stayed that way until the very end of the game. A silk demander for a Chinese Empire! All my trade problems were solved. I have calculated the deliveries in the end: 14 silk and several silver and dye, all demanded.

The log:

BC
4000 Beijing
3950 Shanghai
3850 Alphabet
3600 Code of Laws
3250 Bronce Working
3200 Canton
2900 CB, Nanking
2750 Tsingtao
2550 Monarchy discovered
2450 Monarchy
2300 Xinjiang, Chengdu,
2200 Hangchow (8th)
2150 Currency
1900 Tientsin (9th)
1850 Tatung (10th)

1800 Trade, Macao (11th), at this point I decided to limit my number of cities on the home continent to 12. This early decision corresponds with the ability to get 1 tech a turn once the SSC is finished and all cities have grown. On a map with less favourable city sites 14 or 15 cities or more libraries/universities are needed.

1750 Japanese (pathetic), peace, 50g tribute,

1400 MPE, Russians (pathetic), trade for Mapmaking, peace, maps, French (strong), trade for Writing, peace maps, Spanish ( moderate ), English (inadequate) peace, maps, Indians (mighty) trade for Mystizism, peace maps, Japanese (weak) maps,
Now that maps with the AI were exchanged and Map Making was traded for the ship line could be started. A dye and a hides caravan (both are likely to be delivered at this stage of the game to some demanding AI city) were allready waiting in a city that had accumulated 37 shields on building a settler. Production changed to trireme.
I decide to build my SSC in Chengdu (3 gold, gems). This site has the best trade and needs less settlerwork.

1200 trade for Construction
1100 dye Beijing York (d) 136g (first delivery)
1050 trade for Literacy
1000 Pottery
975 A settler leaves Beijing on a trireme to found my only early Colony.
950 Hanging Gardens, Anyang (12th)
900 dye to St. Petersburg 162g
875 Philosophy, Republic, Japanese, give Construction, Republic 150g,
825 Republic, silk to St. Petersburg (d) 208g, I decide to try early SSC growth. I know that celebration has to stop somewhere at size 12 or 14, because neither the SSC nor the other cities will be ready in time. But the additional beakers add to trade and income and should outweigh the 30 or 40 luxury rate that is needed to keep my citizens happy. All warriors are disbanded in the next 2 turns. Defense against Barbarians is done by 2 phalanges, a few dips and a cash reserve of +50g.
800 Medicine, dye to Kiev (d) 204g
750 Shantung (13th), a colony

725 Engineering, trade for Mathematics, Japanese demand tribute: war, Russians: I just realized why the Russians don´t finish Polytheism: Moscow is missing. Must have been raised by the English before I built MPE. They don´t have a capital! , I have to research Polytheism myself, Michelangelos is delayed

700 Shakes, copper Tatung London (d) 168g
675 SSC aqueduct, the first city improvement in my empire, I reduce my cash reserves below 50, I know I have a delivery next turn, the Japanese demand now techs, truce, Indians trade for Horse Riding,
650 size 8, Japanese are contacted before the delivery, give techs, peace maps, gold to St. Petersburg 276g, demand in St. Petersburg seems to change with every delivery, dye, hides, copper, gold, silver, silk and now spices!
625 Sanitation, first temple built in Beijing, more temples will be added in the growth period when Michelangelos is built
575 dye Canton Hastings (Russian) (d) 224g (the fourth and final destination of this caravan), Kagoshima discovered close to Anyang, the approaching horse must have opened a hut during the short Japanese war, a possible railed trade route for the late game
550 size 12, SSC celebration stops, Astronomy, SSC library, demand in Kiev has changed again, silver to St. Petersburg 356g, and - yes – silk demand again silk to St Petersburg (d) 396g
525 Copernicus, Polytheism,
450 Monotheism, silk Xinjiang St. Petersburg (d) 384g, St. Petersburg is now a silk demander, trade for Seafaring,
425 University, SSC Sewer System, celebration resumes, size 13, trade for Bridge Building, a welcome trade on a map with so many river tiles, but all settlers are busy irrigating to allow the coming celebration, silk to St. Petersburg (d) 485g
400 Michelangelos,
375 Theory of Gravity, 11 cities celebrating at lux. 40
350 silk Hangchow St. Petersburg (d) 420g
325 Chemistry, dye to St. Petersburg 396g
300 Banking, Spanish almost finish Colossus, fortunately 2 caravans are allready waiting, 100 shields for 400g bought, silver Canton St. Petersburg (d) 537g
275 Colossus, Economics,
225 size 21, silk to St. Petersburg (d) 554g, trade for Invention, Iron Working,
Invention or Navigation, the maximal city size and INC should be reached at the same time to pass the Renaissance period as fast as possible. It worked well in this game.

200 size 22, celebration stops, Chendu had a potential for 23, irrigating 2 more rivered forest tiles, but the settlers didn´t make it in time and the additional 2 shields were also welcome. Not even the roads on the SSC specials are built yet. Other city sizes: 8 (4), 7 (2), 6 (1), 5 (4). Not optimal but the best I could do in the short time. Gun Powder, silk Nanking St. Petersburg (d) 408g, dye Anyang St. Petersburg 78g, Chinan (14th), a colony to support the trireme ship line during Democracy, founded on cattle, this way a size 1 city can support 3 triremes, 3 other triremes are supported by the SSC leaving the optimal production of 10 shields, one trireme is supported by a city that will be Xinning in disorder until the triremes are upgraded, to get the ship line going again as soon as possible is important not only for deliveries, but also to get the settlers to future colony sites as soon as possible. So far they were all needed to improve cities on the homeland, a consequence of the early growth.

175 INC, Navigation, research of Democracy is delayed to get an oedo revolution, silk Tientsin St. Petersburg (d) 366g
150 Physics
125 Democracy (oedo rev), I reached my aim: 1 tech a turn
100 Steam Engine,
75 Explosives,
50 Magnetism, gems to St. Petersburg 354g
25 Railroad

AD
1 Darwins, built in Macao, the 10th city to save the science beakers of the other cities, Industrialization, Metallurgy, science 1030, needed 1056, I lost the capacity for 2 techs a turn

20 Corporation, Leonardos, Leonardos workshop is very helpful if the production is strong enough to supply these 8 caravans. Not only the ship line and the settlers are upgraded but also the caravans with the discovery of Corporation, allowing better deliveries for a few turns, silk to St. Petersburg (d) 720g, science 1065, needed 1080, science adjusted to 1086, +44 for 3 libraries = 1130

40 Electricity, Refinery, Kaifeng (15th)

60 Steel, dye to St. Petersburg (d) 752g, silk Tsingtao St. Petersburg (d) 354g, science 1163, needed 1152, finish one library, one University, 4 libraries and 1 University were needed to keep the tech pace. The University was built at Canton. At size 8 and with 4 specials (I mined the hidden silk and the wheat) it becam a strong second city.

80 Combustion, Automobile, Ningpo (16th), Paoting (17th), Yangchow (18th), I am behind in building Colonies but even these late and small colonies will provide good trade results if they build superhighways and deliver demanded trade goods to the SSC, all they need is a good distance to the SSC and a supply wild card corresponding to the SSC demand, silk Shanghai St. Petersburg (d) 348g, trade for Feudalism

100 Electronics, SSC superhighways, silk to St. Petersburg (d) 901g, silver Anyang St. Petersburg (d) 255g

120 Chivalry, Leadership, Canton superhighways, silk Canton St. Petersburg (d) 936g, oil to St. Petersburg 759g, Fushun (19th), Changchun (20th), Qingdao (21st)

140 Conscription, Tactics, Tatung, Tientsin, Xinjiang, Nangking superhighways, silk to St. Petersburg (d) 970g, silk Tatung St. Petersburg (d) 792g

160 Mass Production, Atomic Theory, Shantung, Paoting, Kaifeng superhighways, gems to Salamanka (d) 1005g, dye Tatung Kiev (d) 510g

180 Machine Tools, Nuclear Fission, Macao superhighways, Taipeh (22nd), spices paoting SSC (d) 1040g, silk to St. Petersburg (d) 1040g

200 Miniaturization, Nuclear Power, Qingdao, Changchun superhighways, spices Changchun SSC (d) 1116g, dye Xinjiang Sevilla (d) 390g, gold Anyang SSC 102g, trade route replaced with a railed route but SSC is not unblocked,

220 Computers, Barbarians land near Taipeh, a diplomat goes on the ship line, 2 dragoons bribed, 1 defeated, gold Nanking Cordoba (d) 810g, gems Tientsin Valencia (d) 656g, SSC wonder bread, unblocked, Tainan (23rd), Kaohsiung (24th), the number of cities to build the space ship in 1 turn is reached

240 Laser, Flight, SETI Program, Taipeh superhighways, oil Kaifeng SSC (d) 887g, silk unblocked, dye Macao Barcelona (d) 128g, beads Tientsin Taipeh (d) 242g, the railroad to Kagoshima is finished and I don´t need it, a waste of settlerwork,

260 Radio, Advanced Flight, coal Taipeh SSC (d) 800g, copper to Salamanca (d) 852g, trade for Masonry,

280 Rocketry, Space Flight, Kaohsiung superhighways, silk to St. Petersburg (d) 1230g, with the 14th and final silk delivery to St. Petersburg silk demand has come to an end, coal Kaohsiung SSC (d) 870g, cloth Kaifeng Canton (d) 400g, , trade for Warrior Code

300 Plastics, Superconductor, Apollo Program oil Canton Changchun (d) 582g, silver Qingdao SSC 324g, dye Qingdao SSC 324g, dye Paoting SSC 255g, oil Xinjiang Paoting (d) 433g, beads Xinjiang Minsk (d) 268g

320 Fusion Power, Launch (15-3-3-1-1-1)

335 AC Landing

Zenon