I suppose you are doing some exploit since even if you hunt all the mammoths around I don't believe it's possible to get these numbers by turn 15 without exploit. However I do agree this age has problems, specifically AI is not doing anything, not ransaking outpost and does not know how to manage units in the era, (probably due to the fact that autoresolve is pretty poor at fighting wildlife)

You do get that by hunting the mammoths around. The main thing I do is constantly 1 v 1 them by taking advantage of high grounds. I could do better than those numbers if I also drain my outposts of people, since the free scouts will earn a lot of tempo as well. Just thinking the long term benifits may be better by having settled people, because I have so many "scouts" anyways. The real difference is the p roduction I gain from having fully exhausted the era maybe 2-3 turns quicker and I think that is made back by having people working asap once I do get cities...

Anyways when game was announced there was a concept of generals, like there are goveurners (spelling, I know) of cities...

1a) Make it impossible to split armies without a free general
1b) Give only 2 generals in the neolithical era
2) Make influence gains from hunting a fifth of what it is

Neolithical era is solved. 8 units max, no random overexpansion and a purpose settling down. Staying could still be viable for that last era star or if you have a curiosity or 2 in sight, but staying because it's broken; not gonna be worth so long.

Then on to Huns and Mongols who are even worse :D 

ps: Not exploiting any bugs. The only bug I found was losing save games, when I overwrite my file at times.

Not sure what experience you have but 1v1 you are not always have chance to get higher ground. In any case this is an issue with AI and not with hunting. Even logically thinking why animals should attack hunters and not other way around.

My idea of a possible solution to the way Neolithic is currently broken as you illustrate (although I do think you have to get lucky to be able to kill a mammoth) is that each subsequent pop costs 5 more food than the last. So when you are gathering food to make your second pop, you will still need 20 food, but then for the third pop you would need a total of 25, and for the fourth pop you need a total of 30. The devs would have to switch to a global food pool, instead of a food pool that's specific to that stack of unit for this to really work, but imo that's not that big of a change.

This solution normalizes the amount of pop that people will leave neolithic with, reducing RNG impact and the benefit of staying in neolithic a long time, without giving neolithic complicated mechanics or a hard population cap.

There is still the issue of influence generation being really crazy in neolithic compared to ancient, so you can explode with outposts, but the pop issue has a much larger negative impact on the game

blackwell wrote:
My idea of a possible solution to the way Neolithic is currently broken as you illustrate (although I do think you have to get lucky to be able to kill a mammoth) is that each subsequent pop costs 5 more food than the last. So when you are gathering food to make your second pop, you will still need 20 food, but then for the third pop you would need a total of 25, and for the fourth pop you need a total of 30.

The food requirement of the Neolithic tribes are decided by their "Nomad" trait - that is, if you change the food requirements into a scaling fashion, the Hunnic and Mongolian Hordes, who also have the "Nomad" trait, will have a higher food requirement as well. (Which I personally support, it should balance out the powerful "duplication" ability of them.)

On the other hand, the (min-max type) player can always divide their tribes into 1 pop units and spread them out as soon as they reach 2 pop, in order to take advantage of the unscaled 20 food requirement.

MumbaUmba wrote:

Not sure what experience you have but 1v1 you are not always have chance to get higher ground. In any case this is an issue with AI and not with hunting. Even logically thinking why animals should attack hunters and not other way around.

True it is kind of buggy that even peacefull animals charge and even in to your high ground advantage. But even without that 2 v 1 ing a mammoth, which gives way to much influence would still be rather easy. Honestly with the amount of units you can get, it would not make the biggest difference ever. I just advanced in turn 17 with 16 outpost, 134 units and 124 science. Seriously need BIG changes.

blackwell wrote:

My idea of a possible solution to the way Neolithic is currently broken as you illustrate (although I do think you have to get lucky to be able to kill a mammoth) is that each subsequent pop costs 5 more food than the last. So when you are gathering food to make your second pop, you will still need 20 food, but then for the third pop you would need a total of 25, and for the fourth pop you need a total of 30. The devs would have to switch to a global food pool, instead of a food pool that's specific to that stack of unit for this to really work, but imo that's not that big of a change.

This solution normalizes the amount of pop that people will leave neolithic with, reducing RNG impact and the benefit of staying in neolithic a long time, without giving neolithic complicated mechanics or a hard population cap.

There is still the issue of influence generation being really crazy in neolithic compared to ancient, so you can explode with outposts, but the pop issue has a much larger negative impact on the game

I got lucky enough times to get 600 influence and 30 free units from killing mammoths 1 v 1 in a span of 16 turns. Trust me, a little consideration on how to bait the mammoth charge, you can 1 v 1 mammoths almost every time you se 1.

8roomsofelixir wrote:

The food requirement of the Neolithic tribes are decided by their "Nomad" trait - that is, if you change the food requirements into a scaling fashion, the Hunnic and Mongolian Hordes, who also have the "Nomad" trait, will have a higher food requirement as well. (Which I personally support, it should balance out the powerful "duplication" ability of them.)

On the other hand, the (min-max type) player can always divide their tribes into 1 pop units and spread them out as soon as they reach 2 pop, in order to take advantage of the unscaled 20 food requirement.

Well the Hunnic and Mongolian Hordes are absolutely busted for a number of reasons, I do not think it is necessary that they are tied to how Neolithic works, just cause everything falls under the "nomad" category. In my opinion those two cultures need to be heavily reworked, so there's no reason to keep neolithic like it is because two broken cultures currently share some of its mechanics. Off course players slit their pops in neolithic as soon as they reach two pop. People should be doing this right now as it allows you to cover more ground and really expand exponentially. That is why I mention that, if my food cost scaling suggestion were to be implemented by amplitude, you would need to have a global food pool, not food pools for every separate army. Not a large or even bad change.

I think the only change is needed is to put peaceful animal AI in passive mode initially. I.e. hunters have to attack probably from unfavorable position. That will basically put an end to 1v1 mammoth hunting and even 2v1 there will be chance to lose 1 hunter.

Another thing is AI is super passive and does not raze empty outposts. As soon as they will start to do it it will remove a lot of issues as well.

MumbaUmba wrote:

I think the only change is needed is to put peaceful animal AI in passive mode initially. I.e. hunters have to attack probably from unfavorable position. That will basically put an end to 1v1 mammoth hunting and even 2v1 there will be chance to lose 1 hunter.

Another thing is AI is super passive and does not raze empty outposts. As soon as they will start to do it it will remove a lot of issues as well.

you can defend them with 1 scout. Long as you dont go aggro on ai it doesn't really have war decire to attack you (nor you it) on outposts.

Neolitical don't need minor ajustments like scaling food costs or slightly "smarter" animals. It needs hard changes, very hard.

Oh yeah and the entire food gather mechanics for huns and mongold should be removed/reworked (or it should cost 10x). So unbeliavebly broken.

Da_Hill wrote:

MumbaUmba wrote:

I think the only change is needed is to put peaceful animal AI in passive mode initially. I.e. hunters have to attack probably from unfavorable position. That will basically put an end to 1v1 mammoth hunting and even 2v1 there will be chance to lose 1 hunter.

Another thing is AI is super passive and does not raze empty outposts. As soon as they will start to do it it will remove a lot of issues as well.

you can defend them with 1 scout. Long as you dont go aggro on ai it doesn't really have war decire to attack you (nor you it) on outposts.

That's the point if you need more than 1 unit to defeat mammoth with possible losses and need to guard your outposts. Your units will be pretty busy, And at least under real serious difficulty AI is advancing pretty quickly.

MumbaUmba wrote:

Da_Hill wrote:

MumbaUmba wrote:

I think the only change is needed is to put peaceful animal AI in passive mode initially. I.e. hunters have to attack probably from unfavorable position. That will basically put an end to 1v1 mammoth hunting and even 2v1 there will be chance to lose 1 hunter.

Another thing is AI is super passive and does not raze empty outposts. As soon as they will start to do it it will remove a lot of issues as well.

you can defend them with 1 scout. Long as you dont go aggro on ai it doesn't really have war decire to attack you (nor you it) on outposts.

That's the point if you need more than 1 unit to defeat mammoth with possible losses and need to guard your outposts. Your units will be pretty busy, And at least under real serious difficulty AI is advancing pretty quickly.

I don't know what game you're playing, but Da_Hill has the right of it. There are plenty of Youtube videos demonstrating this, and plenty of accounts on here of people abusing Neolithic, as well as units with the Horde trait in general in a way the AI is absolutely not doing. Maybe in a future build with some improvements to the AI and balance changes this won't be the case, but they released this opendev for feedback, and the current state of Neolithic and Horde absolutely needs to be addressed.

Also, there's a video in the strategy section that can show you how to 1v1 Mammoths very consistently. It's easily replicable by anyone willing to learn it.