No spaceship parts before 1 A.D.?

[solo]

Has anyone else noticed that spaceship parts can not be built before 1 A.D.? I am using MGE, and was not allowed to start building a spaceship before 1 A.D., even though I had discovered space flight and built Apollo Program prior to that date. The only non-standard thing about my OCC game was the map, which I had created with the map editor. Among other features, the map was filled with rivers to maximize trade and to accelerate early exploration of huts. It looks like OCC ships can not land before 436 A.D.

[Ming]

You are correct... so yes, there is a limit to the record

[oedo]

as I recall it was in 6AD, right?

[shamrock]

Wait, let me get this straight. Are you saying that you managed to discover space flight prior to 1 AD while never having more than 1 city?!? I cannot fathom this. Even with an absolutely perfect city site (say 2 silk, 2 gold and 22 river squares), I don't see how this is possible. Please, please post a game log!!

[Theben]

I am guessing his game was not played on deity, or the discovery rate was altered in the .txt files.

[solo]

I was experimenting, so did not keep a detailed log, but kept a few notes at key stages in the game. This was also my second attempt with this map (in the first game it took until 80 AD to get space flight). The map is the key, plus an “explore a bit” first strategy, because if you wait to found your city, only good things come out of huts, and with rivers almost everywhere, huts are found and exploited in a hurry. My city site had 2 gold and 2 spice, every hex had a river and all non-specials were green. I kept my two settlers busy irrigating until I founded my city (named Venice to go with all the rivers) at about 3000 B.C. By that time, I had unhutted an army of about 100 NON units, about 25 advances including republic, medicine and sanitation, and over 1000 gold.

Starting off as a Republic helps, and with so many units for disbanding and so much gold, I was able to rushbuy all the time. First thing built were 3 caravans in 3 turns to get trade routes going. Then a quick granary and temple before reaching size 2. Then a library and university and two food caravans before buying Shakespeare’s Theater as I reached size 3. WLTCD all the way to size 23 at about 1500 B.C., learning democracy on the way. In the meantime, I’m still unhutting more units, technology and gold because it is a 10,000 hex map. By 1500 AD, I have Copernicus, Sir Isaac’s and Colossus, and have discoveries down to every 2 turns. To keep my beaker requirement low, I always gave everything I learned to the AI every 10 turns or so, knowing that I could build anything faster than they could. Doing this helped the most, especially right after founding my city. I also got a lot of 1 turn advances by delivering demanded commodities, and just after building superhighways, science just barely by itself gave me a few 1 turn advances (beakers were in the 1600-1700 range). Even the AI helped me learn a few techs, because I always kept them up to date and trying to learn things I didn’t know. However this was not as helpful as I had hoped because they are such slow learners.

I’d be happy to email anyone my 4000 BC .SAV file. Trying is believing. I think I will play it once more, and keep a detailed log of the game.

[Theben]

What, did you create a hut on every map tile?

[shamrock]

Follow up to Theben's question (sorry if it sounds like I'm cross-examining you):
If you had 100 NON units, then even if every other hut yielded a unit, you knocked over 200 huts in 21 turns. Even accounting for exponential effects, that's quite a feat! And I guess it's not a big deal to squeeze 200+ huts on a full size map.

Custom map or not, your achievement is extremely impressive, and your strategy is obviously very good. Please e-mail me the sav file when you get a chance.

[Paul]

Please email it to paulvdbelt@hetnet.nl. I could also put it on my website so that people can download it from there.
[This message has been edited by Paul (edited February 03, 2001).]

[Shaka Naldur]

I´m amazed with the occ games
I try to play a few times and I´ve been closed to win but I´ve never been able to do it.

could you send me the sav file too??
send it to miguelsana@mixmail.com

[Paul]

I just received the save. You can download it here. It is apparently an MGE save; I couldn't load it in 2.42.

[solo]

Okay, I zipped my ma_b4000.sav, and sent it to Shamrock, Paul, and Shaka Naldur, misnaming it ma_4000.sav in the process. I hope copies were received okay, as I am a new user of WinZip.

A few more comments about the map might be in order. It consists mainly of one large continent, and the settlers start at 60,52 just about at its center. All huts (except one I missed with the river brush) are connected by rivers, so following any river eventually leads to one or more huts and units move fast on rivers. My city with 2 spice and 2 gold was located east of the settlers at 72,56. There are many others within short range. I will list just a few:

74,60 2 gold, 2 wine
71,73 2 gold, 2 wheat
67,75 1 gold, 2 wheat, 1 buffalo
55,73 1 gold, 1 fish, 1 whale, 1 wheat
51,75 2 gold, 1 whale, 1 wheat
58,60 2 gold, 1 whale, 1 silk
56,56 2 gold, 1 whale, 1 wine
59,43 1 gold, 1 fish, 1 coal, 1 wine
63,41 2 gold, 1 coal, 1 wine
75,43 2 gold, 1 spice, 1 wine
79,41 1 gold, 1 fish, 1 spice, 1 wine
88,56 2 gold, 2 whales

I missed a few hexes with my river brush due to fatigue, but noted them down while playing. They are:

80,74
115,95
66,42
101,93
113,21
23,23

There may be a few more.

There is also a small island on the map, covered with rocks, but it should not come into play, except for the barbarians, who seemed fond of it. I named it Alcatraz. A very narrow “ocean” runs north-south, surrounding it, but does not come into play either. There are also a few small lakes scattered around the map, but ships are not needed at all. If there is a way of adding extra huts to a map with the map editor, I don’t know of it. With such a large continent, though, there were plenty of them just the way things were. I was shameless with the rivers though, trying to squeeze every last advantage out of their use.

In the game that I discovered space flight prior to 1 A.D., three lucky things happened, that really helped me a lot:

1) The first hut I tipped gave horseback riding, and the next two gave horsemen. I was off to a headstart finding and tipping huts. This seemed a big advantage due to luck.

2) I unhutted a lot of tech before invention popped up. More than anything, this gave me a tremendous early push because I did not have to wait while researching vital techs. Reaching full city size so early, with vital wonders and improvements was mostly due to this. This was a huge advantage. I think I got over 30 techs before invention and attribute space flight prior to 1 A.D. mainly due to this lucky occurrence. The time invention appears is purely due to luck I believe, and in my opinion this ruins this kind of game for comparison play.

3) I happened to learn democracy on one of Oedo’s “o” years so that the WLTCD shifted to WLTPD in a seamless way, saving a turn or two.

All this luck might have led to a one-time, fluky result, although I would like to think I was alert enough to take full advantage of my good fortune.

From my games so far, I noticed two more things potential players might like to know:

1) If you unhut philosophy before founding your city, you will not get the free advance right away (you are bound to be first to philosophy!) You get it for the first thing you decide to study when you eventually found your city. Choose carefully, because the next thing to learn will take a long time.

2) The above happened to me, and I chose astronomy. Good thing! I also got theory of gravity from a hut later, before invention popped up! For my next subject to study, I picked invention, since it was the only prerequisite I needed for democracy, the next advance I wanted the most. My reasoning was that I was sure to get invention from a hut before learning it, and I wanted to study democracy next, and things happened this way. I kind of doubt it, but it may be possible that invention from a hut can be delayed somewhat by studying it! Given the tendency of the game NOT to give you things from huts you want to learn ASAP like monarchy, this is a possibility. Maybe I fooled the game for once, making it think I wanted invention as badly as I do in non-OCC games!

(Note to Paul: I will email the map to you)

[shamrock]

Solo-

Thanks for sending the save game. This opens up a whole new element to the strategy of earliest AC victory. This 1 AD bug sucks! Otherwise, it would be interesting to see who could get the earliest AC victory if we each person could use any map he/she created. And not just for OCC purposes - any number of cities could be built. In which case, how many cities would be optimal? Probably not many, considering the time needed to expand. Would it turn out (for reasons of unhappiness) that one city was actually optimal? Food for thought...

BTW, you don't need the prereq advance to get certain units from huts. For example, you can get horsemen without horseback riding, archer w/out warrior code, etc.

Wow, that is a lot of river.

[Paul]

I just received the map. When I have some time later today I'll make a 2.42 save out of it and make that available for download.

[Paul]

I made a 2.42 save out of the map. I thought it might be fun for the OCC fortnight #23 game, so I started a new thread where you can also finds the url to download it.