The Ultimate Guide on Game Strategies on Huge Maps - your input-

[TheArsenal]

Agreed. The key words in that sentence are: "you just have to bring the war upon yourself... "

As a Democracy, I had just fought The War to Liberate India From Existence On The Map (with the French as my ally). I then opportunistically jumped in on a war for some overseas cities. I had been mobilized for war, and fighting wars for many turns when the French stabbed me in the back. There wasn't much I could do to stop the weariness problem other than swapping governments.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by TheArsenal
As a Democracy, I had just fought The War to Liberate India From Existence On The Map

[vmxa1]

Yahweh Sabaoth could you post a save from some point late in one of your huge games. Preferably where you have the most units/cities.
I ordered a new machine today and I am interested in comparing the behavoir of the thing with a hige map loaded with lots of AI moves. I don't care about how things are going, just want to run a few turns and see what it looks like. Thanks..

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

I'd be happy to. I have all my regent victories saved, one turn after the victory. They're all cultural, except for Spain, which was space...

Which would you like? A "typical" victory? My finest day ever? The one where I have the most units, or perhaps the one where the turns take the longest to process?

[vmxa1]

Well if know which one, then the longest turns would be great. Thanks.

[Arrian]

vmxa1, I could get you my last save from AU207, but I can tell you right now that on my gf's computer (I'd call it "ok" 800mhz, 512MB RAM, if I recall correctly) it wasn't bad at all. Far and away the most time consuming aspect was my own builds/moves. The AI moves didn't take long at all.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

Ok. I was just curious. I have played some huge maps, but with smaller numbers of civs and I usually did not have that many left at the end. It never seemed to tax my Amd 1.6G with 512MB. I am gooing with a P4 3.06 1G mem and wanted to see if it mattered.
You know we have seen lots of post from players that had seen slow downs and I was not sure if I just never had a map layout that did enough. I tend to get by with a min up troops.
I would love to see one that was loaded with civs and units to see if that slows things down.
It will be at least a week before it is availbe so no rush.

[Arrian]

The issue for me isn't the computer munching on its turns, but rather the sheer size of my own empire & the time it takes me to take care of it. All those cities building things, all those workers working on things, and all those units killing, erm, liberating people.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

I agree, it is just an item of curiousity.

[nbarclay]

The biggest difference between a 16-civ huge map and an 8-civ standard one is that corruption is much less of an issue. Your civ is roughly the same size in absolute terms unless and until you start conquering other civs, but the corruption rates make allowance for building a significantly bigger civ. Of course AIs also benefit from the lower corruption, which can result in AI armies' tending to be significantly bigger relative to the size of the civs than on standard maps.

I suspect that the lower corruption rates, in turn, may tend to make earlier GAs more profitable on huge maps. On a standard map, waste and corruption eat away a lot of benefit from a despotic GA and a pretty good chunk from a an early Monarchy or Republic GA if there aren't lots of courthouses in place yet. (Of course, the flip side is that a GA can help build courthouses.) But with waste and corruption lower in the early game, the degree to which those factors undercut the GA's value would tend to be lower. I've never tested my hypothesis, mostly because I just thought of it , but it seems worth some consideration.

[nbarclay]

On standard maps, it's not too rare for me to play straight builder until the era of cavalry if I have plenty of room for REXing and I don't have a UU that's begging me to use it earlier. The basic premise is that if I can use peaceful expansion to build up a major tech lead, I can do more conquering during the era of cavalry than I could in the entire game up until then if I fought with less potent units. And by focusing on building and researching, I can get to the era of cavalry faster, with a bigger window to use them before Nationalism cuts into their advantage. (Cavalry work a lot better for conquering large amounts of territory without serious war weariness problems than slower units do.)

But then there comes the time when my bigger, more productive cities have pretty much built what they need to build prior to the industrial age. At that point, they can start prebuilding for cavalry; if the strategy is working perfectly, I'll have Leo's and have deliberately avoided getting Chivalry so I can build and upgrade massive swarms of horsemen. Then I unleash my cavlary and conquer civ after civ until my prospective targets start getting Nationalism. That gives me the size and industrial base to do rapid research in the industrial and modern eras; without conquest, four-turn modern research is rarely if ever possible on a crowded map.

I've never really played a game following that principle on a huge map. I play mostly standard maps, give or take a size, because that's where the AU games and CivFanatics GOTMs tend to be. But based on the success of the builder-style games in AU 207, I think that type of strategy has a lot of potential for civs without early fast-mover offensive UUs - if the map cooperates and if the player has sufficient skills relative to the difficulty level he's playing on to build up the necessary medieval tech advantage.

[nbarclay]

One other point about huge maps: civs can't research nearly as fast in the early game, while the rate of techs unleashed on the world by huts is almost certainly higher unless playing with no barbarians (and hence no huts). It's a difference I've very definitely felt in AU 207 and in a little playing around I've done with huge-map early-game strategy since then, but I'm still too much in the experimenting process to give clear recommendations for how to cope with that difference.

[vmxa1]

nbarclay, first I like the Avatar. Now I was wondering about the skipping of Knights. Upgrades from Horsemen to Cavs cost more than from Knights, so you do not save anything there. You save the research for the tech and I too skip it most of the time, but not on Huge maps.
The reason I don't there is often I may need those units for defense/offensive and they are deterents.
So I was just wondering what you see as the benefits.
Like you mentioned, you tend to have a city or two that has nothing to build at that point.

[Master Zen]

I never pass up the oportunity for a Knight war ESPECIALLY on huge maps. I usually usa a Ralphing city placement on huge maps, with the military camp cities almost exclusively producing horsemen. Like nbarclay I usually go builder in the ancient age to take advantage of the REXing space, however, I do hoard a lot of horseman by the beginning of the medieval period, say 20-30. I always go for Leo's which makes the upgrades much less a pain on the wallet. With 30 knighs I go berserk on my strongest neighbor. I win. I try to get in as many wars as possible before gunpowder, even after that I try and kill of civs that don't have saltpeter . If necessary I will go trhough a grueling war with knights vs musketeers but will usually wait till cavalry and go on the rampage again. By the industrial age I am usually able to conquer my continent, or most of it in case it is particularly big.

[nbarclay]

The reason I like going straight from horsemen to cavalry if my situation lets me is that I can build about twice as many horsemen as I could knights for the same shields. (Knights cost a little over twice as much, but horsemen are likely to average higher wastage due to cities' producing more shields than are actually needed.)

Rush building costs four gold per shield. In contrast, with Leo's, upgrading horsemen to cavalry costs only one gold per shield. So I can get an excellent return on my investment leaving my less productive cities building improvements while my more productive ones (which are already fully improved or close enough to it) focus on horsemen. To get the same number of knights, I would have to put a lot more cities on troops at the expense of their ability to catch up on city improvements.

On a standard map, a cavalry war I start with horseman upgrades almost invariably involves over forty cavalry and on rarer occasion as many as sixty or more. With that kind of invasion force, distance and Nationalism are the only limiting factors in how fast and far my conquest can reach. On a huge map, judging from my experience in AU 207, I'd probably want about twice the cavalry strength to get the same kind of decisive overkill if I'm taking on a major power, especially one with musketmen. (Note that I normally play on Emperor; smaller forces should work at lower levels.) And a hundred horsemen, give or take a bit, are a lot easier and cheaper to build than a hundred knights!

One other reason I'm not a big fan of fighting with knights is that they don't generally seem to move fast enough to take out entire civs (even on standard maps) without war weariness starting to become an issue under Republic. And dropping out of Republic to fight with knights would cause unacceptable delays in obtaining Military Tradition. (Of course Riders and Ansars don't have that speed problem.)

Nathan