Bronzing before a booming opponent is highly unlikely with a slow civ such as hittite. 25 mins iron might be possible with a mostly intact land econ, but you killed many of his villies and I assume destroyed his farms as well.

It might be a slingshot.

What was the tribute score for his allies?

I think wedsaxz hit the nail on the head. Although me and you may have been useless at slingshotting each other (me in particular), some of the players on the zone can do it very well, and if they were, i'm not surprised he ironed and flattened you to pieces, especially if he had more than 1 player slingshotting him along.

No, I made sure that it wasn't a slingshot either. I checked and throughout the whole game, the opponent team didn't do any tributing at all. The first thing that struck me when he reached Iron was tribute from an ally, but no, that wasn't the case.

So, in other words... it's very likely that this guy cheated?

Yes, very likely he cheated.

Iron jumping isn't practical without booming or tribute.

Post his name and that will help. A very good player would have problems doing that, but it isn't "exactly" impossible. My guess would be that he cheated.

[This message has been edited by BlitzkreigComin (edited 09-07-2004 @ 06:39 PM).]

His name is Spartaca. I even have a screenshot of the timeline of that game, but I haven't uploaded it up to my site yet. It's running out of webspace.

The odd thing about this is that he doesn't cheat outright. He just does a little bit here and there to, say, get faster Tool and Bronze timings. Funny fellow.

Ok, I just uploaded the timeline onto my website. here it is.

As you can see from the population alone, my econ and military were both way superior to green's. I lost the moment he Ironed. Looks a bit incredible huh? What's worse, he was Hittite, my most feared civ.

By the way, my team consisted of me (yellow), Worry (gray) and Cata (red). Worry was the guy who beat me in the 1v1 I mentioned sometime ago. Strangely, he does dock-first starts, yet he can get big pretty fast. Unusual way to start the game. You can see his standard of gameplay just from the timeline. Sigh, if only I weren't beaten so early, I'd make the timeline more even.

Quote:

That sounds strangely familiar... especially as minoan...

I've tried docking first a few times as Minoan too... I didn't find it very fast though. There's always this period of time after the dock has been completed where no FBs are being made at all. Also, if I happen to get far forests and bad stragglers, it's almost time to say good game.

Anyway, I suppose the cheating issue is over. No point talking about it anymore, I guess. I'll just have to avoid playing with that person again...

Oh my...maybe someone ACUTALLY pulled off a Minoan Fastboom.

Notice on the timeline how his population was much lower than the others for a period during mid-stone? That's when his initial food ran out and his boats weren't yet bringing in enough for more villies.

And he managed to get to Tool and Bronze about the same time as I did too, with about the same population. I'd bet that he didn't have as many real villies as I had though. Assuming he stopped villager production after some time to get the 500 food to Tool, his huge increase in pop must have been due to him pumping out FBs.

Maybe my guess is correct. When I started attacking on the sea in Bronze (took out both green and teal) I didn't see gray's ships at all in the main sea. Apparently he was fighting brown at the rivers, but it doesn't sound like he could amass much of a navy in such a small space... And that suggests some form of wood shortage.

Well, I do think that his dock-start sort of affected him in late Tool to early Bronze, since he would be having fewer real villies than me to chop wood for a good sea fight. I need to play him more to see if I can beat him on the sea easily though. So far in my 1v1 with him I won the sea in early Bronze. Got overwhelmed after that due to negligence of military affairs.

CenturionZ_1:
His age times are late. It's a boom but not a fastboom.

If it was, he'd have bronzed about when Duan Xuan tooled.

Duan Xuan:
From his timings it looks like he didn't stop making villies to get to tool, but sea battles did delay him.

With a dock-start he has less wood but more food, so his strength is on land. Once he bronzes however, with all that food he can easily pump villies from multiple TCs.

Attack his woodpile. Tool rush him at the same time as you fight him on the sea. Force him to relocate, raze his houses. He can't recover from that as easily as a granary-start can.