Adv 42 - Frozen Halls of Fervor

[Olodune]

Adventure 42 – Joy to the World

Scoring for this game is based upon spreading your seven religions to the most cities possible. For each city, score points as follows:

1 religion present = 1 point
2 religions present = 2 points
3 religions present = 3 points
4 religions present = 5 points
5 religions present = 7 points
6 religions present = 10 points
7 religions present = 15 points
Record your score at the end of the 1900AD turn.

I wasn’t actually going to play this one, but thinking through the optimal path to religious domination got me hooked. I was a little sad to see the difficulty set to Prince, since we’ve demonstrated that Monarch already lets the player do whatever he wants. Deviations from the standard map script further hamper the AI, so the “very cold” climate should also play into the players favor.

So what about the missionary spam play? Well, since the game runs until 1900AD I’m fairly certain the best approach is going to be a maximum growth builder game followed by a frenzied era of missionary zeal. But how should I spread the faith in the most efficient manner possible?

What I really want to know is the expected number of points per missionary spread attempt. Luckily VoiceOfUnreason had previously calculated the failure rate for every possibly number of religions present. The expected numbers of points per spread attempt E(pts/sa) is actually trivial to calculate: since we have the failure rate ® the number of interest is just the mean of a geometric distribution: 1/(1-r).



Clearly it is best to attempt to get all seven religions present in as many cities as possible since the 6th and 7th spread attempt yield by far the best return. Getting as much spread from the AIs would also be great.
Another note is that the total expected hammers per city is ~400. If I assume that it will take an average of 2t for a missionary to get where he needs to go, then I only need to be able to build 10.5 missionaries per turn (we are capped at 21 total missionaries at any given moment). If I further assume that there are 100 cities then I’ll need 100 turns of continuous missionary building to convert them all. Since 1900AD is turn 320, I’ll need to be ready for the spread around turn 220 (1550AD). If all goes well by the end of the game I should be able to pump out ~1000 total missionaries ...

In terms of tech I will need the following: Railroad (absolutely critical), Astronomy (possibly critical if I need boat chains for efficient spread), Flight (important), Assembly Line (optional). Can I get all this by 1550AD?

Yeah. Time to play.



Well this is interesting! We are in a very resource poor location here. At least I have plenty of trees for chopping. The initial tech path is actually easy for a change: Fishing->Mining->Bronze Working. Hatshepsut, Sitting Bull, and Elizabeth are all quickly encountered so it looks like we are on large continent. Good.

My first expansion was a little further away from the capital than I usually aim for, but I have big plans for Mecca. When Christianity was the first to auto-spread my religion is selected:



I have access to a couple of health resources, but the initial challenge for this map is finding enough happy faces. Everyone likes a kingmaker:



The North Pole is a solid city but doesn’t have great commerce potential. Since my plan requires a fast tech pace let’s build a new Palace:



Now I need just one more piece of the puzzle to make sure those beakers start rolling in:



By 1AD I’m in a solid position:



Mecca is producing more than 80% of my beakers:



With the surprising exception of Sitting Bull none of the AI’s are doing much of anything:



I’ve been trying to get Christianity as the dominant world religion both for diplomatic reasons as well as potential shrine income. I’m also fairly certain that getting an Academy for Mecca before a priest was a good move.



I have stone (which I’m quite happy about – Hanging Gardens and Sankore). I don’t have marble, but I think building the Mausoleum is still worth it for such a long game:



Deciding what to do with Liberalism is also driven by the large number of turns remaining:



Democracy is a solid choice since I still have quite a ways to go in the tech tree. Switching into universal suffrage is a bit of a problem with such a reliance on MP for happiness. Sitting Bull’s land looks quite attractive since it has Silks + Ivory. With both, markets, and a capitulation I will have +5 happy.
With Prince level AIs I don’t expect many units. Since I’d also like a fast conquest mounted troops are the best option. I don’t have horses. Camel Archers are resourceless, but don’t pack much of a punch. Hatty is quite happy to help out for a very reasonable fee:



I plan on marching straight for Sitting Bull’s capital – with Cuirassiers and a clear production advantage there is no need for siege (or spies) as long as I strike quickly (or so I’m hoping).



All of my target cities are captured leaving SB with nothing but a few frozen townships to his name:



The war went fairly well, lasting only 11 turns. Casualties were quite high; I lost 14 of 24 Cuirassiers in the fight. In fact I liked the “mounted blitz” strategy enough to repeat it against on unsuspecting Hatshepsut (this time with Cavalry). I was getting good odds even on the top defender without siege:



The war was again quickly over, and I lost only 6 Cavalry – two thirds of which I got back from a greed quest reward:



With lots of good land under control, and the tech pace right on target I began the missionary spam with about 100 turns remaining.
In the meantime I had plenty of excess commerce for technological development, and even a few hammers for some more military.
In the end Elizabeth’s land was just too vulnerable (and I could fit a few more cities in the corners of the world if I controlled her territory):



The English were eliminated in only 6 turns. I didn’t lose a single unit (bombers pulverized everything in sight).

After spreading Christianity to the last city in the world (at the time) a look into the North Pole reveals some truly powerful shrines:



I decided to colonize much of the tundra for an easier time spreading religions. I also finished the tech tree (mostly because doing so didn’t really hinder the missionary spread). The world in 1900AD:



And, yes, I did build a few missionaries:



Scoring to follow.

[Olodune]

Scoring

The majority of my score will come from my own cities, so lets start with the AIs. First my vassals:



Egypt

<Religions/City> <Count> <Score>
---- ---- ----
7 2 30
5 1 7
subtotal 37



Native America

<Religions/City> <Count> <Score>
---- ---- ----
7 2 30
6 3 30
5 1 7
subtotal 67




America

<Religions/City> <Count> <Score>
---- ---- ----
7 1 15
5 2 14
4 5 20
3 5 9
subtotal 58



France

<Religions/City> <Count> <Score>
---- ---- ----
4 3 15
3 2 6
2 2 4
subtotal 25




Rome

<Religions/City> <Count> <Score>
---- ---- ----
7 1 15
6 1 10
5 2 14
4 6 30
3 3 9
2 2 4
subtotal 82

And my own cities:



<Religions/City> <Count> <Score>
---- ---- ----
7 79 1185
6 1 10
4 1 5
subtotal 1200

Final Tally:

Egypt 37
Native America 67
America 58
France 21
Rome 82
Arabia 1200
----
[SIZE="4"]Total 1465[/SIZE]

[regoarrarr]

Nice work - I played a similar style game but you beat me. I had about 20 more cities but you had more religions in yours. Also I didn't do a great job of proselyting the AIs, due to poor relations with Washington and failure to build RRs in their lands

[Pegasus]

Ok - this isn't funny anymore. I knew I wouldn't do well against you guys but jeeze. Oh well, I must keep learning the trade. Well done.

[Sullla]

Obviously very well played, I think that goes without saying.

The reason why the game was on Prince was to make it more accessible for a wider group of players. Yes, I know that Monarch doesn't pose a challenge for you, and you can make the AIs do whatever you want. But not everyone is at that same level, of course...

The next game (which I am hoping to finish up tonight and send off to Gris) is an Epic set on Immortal, and then we have a whole bunch of variant scenarios from T-Hawk, Arathorn, and Ruff Hi lined up after that.

[Olodune]

The reason why the game was on Prince was to make it more accessible for a wider group of players.

Actually I was very impressed with the map design. With such an austere starting area the game probably played more like a Monarch game anyways. In the end I was glad I played So Thanks.

The next game (which I am hoping to finish up tonight and send off to Gris) is an Epic set on Immortal, and then we have a whole bunch of variant scenarios from T-Hawk, Arathorn, and Ruff Hi lined up after that.

And this is good to hear too

[Olodune]

Nice work - I played a similar style game but you beat me. I had about 20 more cities but you had more religions in yours. Also I didn't do a great job of proselyting the AIs, due to poor relations with Washington and failure to build RRs in their lands

The strange thing is that both of us screwed up the missionary spam portion of the game. I didn't realize until the ~1860 that the cost to rush buy a missionary from scratch was so "affordable". I'm now fairly certain the best approach is a Lib->Democracy followed by a cottage spam. Complete commerce -> gold generation after Railroad would allow us to get much closer to the full 21 missionaries a turn. The important aspect to rush-buying is that you get to choose the location of the build (IE tundra city #17, etc). I bet if we replayed the final ~150t we could get ~2500 points. Conquering and gifting cities to the AI may be important to fit enough cities onto the board.

{On another note, I didn't even get the building missionaries manually down until the last 30 turns. By far the best way is to have a "placeholder" -- I used "research" you used "culture" -- and then <ctrl>+ <click build missionary> cities for next turn, but after this turns spreading action. Doing so removes the annoying "What do you want to build in this city?" pop-ups.}

[Sockboy]

Actually I was very impressed with the map design. With such an austere starting area the game probably played more like a Monarch game anyways. In the end I was glad I played So Thanks.

I second this comment, the lack of workable food early along with the general sparesness of resources did make for a more challenging game than I was expecting on Prince.

Thankfully we didn't need Astronomy to ship missionaries between continents or the micro would have been overwhelming

Otherwise top game and a great read!

[T-hawk]

948 missionaries, in a playtime of 1004 minutes. You averaged just under one missionary per minute for 16 hours straight.

I skipped the event after coming to your same conclusions about low difficulty and high micromanagement, plus also holiday travel and playing lots of Final Frontier. RB also had a similar game back in Dutch Masters, doing a dense build and max religion spreading. Glad to read reports like this, I'm usually the one that everyone else plays vicariously through, so I get to turn that around for once.

You got to Railroad quickly, did you use or consider Mining Inc at all for hammers? Or did your cities get to 40-hammer missionaries every turn without it?

[regoarrarr]

You got to Railroad quickly, did you use or consider Mining Inc at all for hammers? Or did your cities get to 40-hammer missionaries every turn without it?

I found that it was actually not as useful to do 40 hammer missionaries in my core, because even with railroads they couldn't always get to the front in 1t.

Better to rushbuy (180g) missionaries in the front cities.