It occurs to me that enlightenment age may be too early to use as a test. What we're really trying to compare is an early II versus COM2. But if we would never get to +150 anyway, then COM2 is useless in this test. But that defies reason since, you'd need those resources to make military. Of course, there IS some efficacy to this. The resources devoted to getting to those later ages could be used to make military and thus conduct early attacks with superior troops. This could be a proxy for it. However, it's clear that to achieve this goal you're forced to do things differently than you would if you knew the game were going to last a long time. Taking the learnings from this Challenge Game might help shape the next one.

Perhaps a refined test goal would be to include a certain level of military at a certain point in time. If we defined the goal as a healthy military force upgraded and ready to attack at a certain age, then that would have real-game implications.

We'll finish up Challenge Game 1 and see if anybody can break the current record of 12:23 held by Buckets (has to be a film!)

Meanwhile, I'm looking for suggestions for Challenge Game 2. Perhaps fastest to Medieval or Gunpowder army consisting of 1 General, 1 Supply cart, 2 siege, 5 fully upgraded knights, 5 fully upgraded archers and 5 fully light infantry, 1 explorer (and maybe a spy or two, if available). Thoughts? What would be useful?

The clear thing to realize is that researches and expansion which improve the economy (normally no-brainers) might actually SLOW your ability to get an army assembled. And thus in competition, you might have a bigger econ (temporarily) but you'll find yourself losing cities to an early attack.
posted by Tim at 9:55 AM