This thread is for reports and discussion on Epic 39. Have at it. You have until the end of Monday to finish playing the game, and until the end of Tuesday to post at least a summary of your result to be included in the official scoring.
There were quite a number of posts in the info thread indicating rushing to finish the game by the deadline. Was this a case of 1) the micromanagement really did make the game take that long, 2) an interesting enough variant to grab people that'd be on the fence about playing and fitting it in, or 3) the old college syndrome of waiting till the last minute no matter when it's due? Probably some of each, I'd wager.
There were quite a number of posts in the info thread indicating rushing to finish the game by the deadline. Was this a case of 1) the micromanagement really did make the game take that long, 2) an interesting enough variant to grab people that'd be on the fence about playing and fitting it in, or 3) the old college syndrome of waiting till the last minute no matter when it's due? Probably some of each, I'd wager.
Not for me. 1) I finished some time ago. 2) I was never on the fence. 3) I only wait for the last minute for the reports, not the actual playing.
Trebuchets are neat, but they are overpowered. I'm not sure if you're aware, but in Conquests they changed bombardment units to always attack units in cities. Cats and trebs and cannons don't go for population or improvements until all the defenders are redlined.
That means you need one-third as many bombardment units to redline a city. It used to take about 30 catapult attacks to redline a city with a few pikemen, which usually wasn't practical, but now that takes about 8 trebs, which is brutally effective. 8 trebs and three knights (or worse, one army) can take no losses in obliterating a civ. And you get to keep the cities at full size with improvements instead of burnt shells.
Fascism's pop loss is 1 per city at size 1-6, 2 at size 7-12, 3 at size 13+. As I understand it, it's a one-time penalty and you can just grow it right back.
The notion is that it historically represents "ethnic cleansing" policies often imposed by fascist governments. You should know by now that effects like that are done on a basis of what seems cool, not on how the AIs will handle it. Think volcanoes. Same with the artillery bombardment change - that was directly in response to people complaining that they wanted bigger bang from their artillery. Never mind how horribly it hurts the AIs who can't use it.
I've always built fighters, too, and like you, I don't yet know exactly how to balance between flaks and fighters, either. I've just been putting one of each in each city for the most part. I also turn off animate battles by the time I get into any modern wars, so it's kinda hard to judge the effectiveness of either. One additional detail is that flaks do work for ground defense, MP, and suppressing resistance.
1814 AD might turn out to be not a great finish date for conquest; 'twas certainly possible to do that with cavalry, especially with a few armies. Sounds like you did have fun with the game and the Conquests features including the specialists, at least.
This message has been edited by T-hawk from IP address 66.166.198.165 on Mar 29, 2004 10:10 AM
they changed bombardment units to always attack units in cities. Cats and trebs and cannons don't go for population or improvements until all the defenders are redlined.
This helps the defender in the modern age. And yes, I noticed it. You can't miss it. Thing is, once civil defense is in place, defenders get the defense bonus from that added to their chances to resist bombardment. And the Civil Defense improvement itself, as well as Coastal Defense, will now survive for much longer. It used to have a glass jaw. So I actually believe this change HURTS attackers in the modern age.
Of course, as you point out, it rips the AI a new one in ancient and midieval combat. As if THAT game element needed to be tilted further in that direction.
You're undoubtedly right that conquest could have been done by cavs, but I have been there and done that with cavs enough times, there is little entertainment value left in it for me. Thus, perhaps I have come to a place with the Epics now where I was with GOTM a year and a half ago: marching to a different drummer, ignoring the competition, playing with a few less options on the table than others are using.
Cavs are to Civ3 what Psilons are to MOO. I may take them out for a rare spin now and then, and enjoy them within that context, but I'm usually more interested in exploring less uber gameplay paths. Your mileage may vary.
Thus, perhaps I have come to a place with the Epics now where I was with GOTM a year and a half ago: marching to a different drummer, ignoring the competition, playing with a few less options on the table than others are using.
As long as you are having fun, who cares how you rank? I'm glad you have adopted this attitude Sirian. It's not like you have anything to prove anyways.
As long as you are having fun, who cares how you rank? I'm glad you have adopted this attitude Sirian. It's not like you have anything to prove anyways.
Nevertheless, I'm still a bit disappointed by some things. As T-hawk points out, the changes to bombardment favor the player in early military action. I hadn't thought that through far enough to see that just from what I played, but it makes sense, and it is likely to force me to decide more clearly in a variantish way about how many options to leave on the table. The new game balance may actually be fun to explore for its own sake, once, to see just how the changes fit together, precisely, but in the bigger picture, the overview is clearly unchanged from when I departed active Civ3 land for GalCiv last fall.
Say, I'm glad you stopped in here. I know there are a number of folks highly active at SG play who don't hang around RB land much when Epics action is thin. Not to beat a broken record here, nor to play a dead horse, but are you aware of the Master of Orion action starting up here at RB? Don't know if you've tried the game, are a fan, never heard of it, or what, but I would expect it has something to offer a Beyond-Deity player such as yourself. Hop to our GalCiv forum for more information, if interested. OK, end of shameless plug, we now return you to your regularly scheduled Civ3 chat.
Very nice game and a decent report. I'm glad you enjoyed the game and concept. I find myself in agreement with most points - I like the new specialists (alot, but I'm a MM'er at heart), the fascism pop drop is extreme, and yes - it's a self gunshot wound to the head for the AI and yes, they always choose that govt for late warmongering.
I'm glad a human player tried that. You'll see in other games how communism fared.
I'm surprised you and T-Hawk build a fair amount of fighters. I've never seen the AI build anywhere near a realistic amount. I go 95% bomber 5% fighter, and only deploy the latter after a bomber gets shot down. If they have any fighters I bomb out the oil first round and soon the problem disappears. Flak is **useless** in single player. Nice and fun in concept, but of no redeeming value. I don't like TOW either. In fact, with Guerillas and TOW, etc. there is now NO cheap MP alternative in late game, even if you have no resources. Yuck. They could use a "Military Police" unit in nationalism that was something like 1.4.1 but cheap, maybe 40 shields.
Longbows are ok until they're "replaced" by wicked expensive but useless guerillas.
I like units tied to resources, but only because it avoids the other problem you mention. It's HUGE help in acceleating the mop-up phase when you can whack their rubber/aluminum/oil. Then you only have to kill 249 infantry, not 249+all their replacements. 8-|
Trebs are not overpowered, I agree they're balanced and fill a needed gap. What's broken (imho) is the change to what they target. Hits only units first is both unrealistic, amplifies the human's advantage, and renders them (unnecessisarly) powerful.
I'm surprised you and T-Hawk build a fair amount of fighters. I've never seen the AI build anywhere near a realistic amount. I go 95% bomber 5% fighter, and only deploy the latter after a bomber gets shot down.
Fighters are not for offense, but for defense. You can't shoot down an enemy bomber with a bomber. If going up against an opponent who has had time to build their own bombers... with the new lethal air, you don't want your carrier fleet bombed out, relying only on the "AA" of the ships. Likewise, the AI likes to mass its bombers. Combine lethal bombardment with units in cities being targetted first, an AI bomber SoD not only redlining your border city but emptying it, and then one cav charges across the border, and bingo.
Yeah, I'm paranoid. But if a bomber can now take out infantry or other pricey units in a city, why not build some fighters and actually END the threat?
Of course, the real solution is cavalry, to end the game before it goes that long, but hey, I'm stubborn, you know?
Thanks for the invite Sirian. I have heard of MOO, but have never played it. I've been a Civer since the original, and when not playing Civ games I've mostly played sports games (NHL, Madden, FIFA, etc) and Unreal Tournament.
At the moment I don't really have a lot of time for video games. I'm in my last semester of college, writing an English thesis and playing varsity lacrosse. I am a little ashamed by my SG participation of late, asking for skips and hardly commenting in the threads, but I anticipate I will have more time for gaming after graduation in May.
As for Epics, I do love participating. I've played 5 of the 20 or so since I first started coming to RBC, but I've found that during the school year I just don't have the time (was gone today from 8am until 8pm , with a paper to write tonight, for example), so my play has been mostly limited to games open during vacations. I do a lot of lurking in the Epic forum and read most of the reports, and sometimes comment.
Lately I've felt like I am barely staying above water, not in the sense that I'm unhappy or depressed or anything like that, but there's constantly something to do (practice, work, finding a job, etc) or somewhere to be. I've had small pockets of free time, maybe an hour or an hour and a half a day, and passive activities like laying on the couch, watching TV have been a lot more attractive than sitting upright at my computer playing Civ3. Nothing against Civ3 or the Epics or the SGs, but more a reflection of all the stuff I've got going on in my life at the moment. It's hard to believe that college will be done in about 6 weeks, but in some respects it will be a relief.
Anyways, longwinded response, but like you, I'm a writer...
after reading some of your reports from different games over the last few days, I must say that there is a direct correlation between the quality of your writing and your love for the particular game. One can see that you "only" like civ3, while you are absolutely in love with a certain other game.
Wow, that was a stellar landgrab you managed to do there! You created a northern border to you rivals I had to establish by other, more violent means - impressive! But then I allowed myself the luxury of building great wonders which you did not. And I envy you your somewhat exciting war against Carthage; I never had to face a challenge the whole game, and my wars were surprisingly boring.
The drop in population when you changed to fascism was quite drastic, eh? Would you have done the same if you knew beforehand how much population you would lose? (Makes you miss a manual where such "unimportant" details are explained, huh? ) I don't know if you have followed RBC10 and 11 which contained some interesting details about the different governments in C3C.
I have mixed feelings about resources needed to be able to build certain units. I like it if the player has to adapt his strategy because some vital resouce is missing, like saltpeter in my game. But I agree that the inability of the AIs to defend their resources and their lack of intelligence to acquire needed resources may hurt the game more for us experienced players.
I must say that there is a direct correlation between the quality of your writing and your love for the particular game.
That's not something I can judge from an unbiased perspective. However, I see it more as a matter of having already spent my passions on the topic, rather than how much I like the game.
What use is there reiterating for the dozenth time my lamentations about imbalances in the military options in Civ3? We all know that beelining to cavs is the strongest available option in most situations. Your results are Exhibit #15278 for that concept. And that is not to take away anything from your performance. I knew what I was in for by pursuing the builder's path.
My land grab may have been impressive, but where did it get me? Peace doesn't pay in Civ3. I knew I wouldn't finish very strongly unless I chased the uber strats, which I did not. You ask if I've read about certain SG's. I've read nothing about C3C. Not any of the SG's, not a single line, not the GOTM, not the private patch forum. Nada. The less of my attention focused on the game's imbalances, the better I can enjoy my time with Civ3. To that end, the Epics themselves may be counterproductive for me, in some respects.
I had more fun than the report indicates. There are specific reasons why this doesn't translate into the report, but I'd rather not detail them.
I knew that Fascism with two cores would be weaker than Communism with three, but two cores was all I managed to gain in the land grab, and I was not interested in early warfare here. I made no effort to go on the offensive, and only did what I did to Carthage because I had been forced to build those units by their aggression, so I made use of them. I probably would not go for conquest a second time in that situation, but this was a chance for me to try out the new lethal air and the new modern units for the first time, and I enjoyed that.
Great report, I'm glad to see you went for the "early wall" to block the AI's settlers, I don't feel so bad now. I was worried I was giving up too much early production by delaying first-ring cities to the south, but it paid off. And odd to see that Carthage landed a settler in almost the exact same spot as in my game.
Congrats on a very fine cultural victory. Most impressive under this variant. In my game, I was too busy with a rabid land grab to build wonders. I doubt this gameplay would have occurred to me even to try. I suppose that is partly the result of me now being the n00b while most RB players have been playing C3C for half a year now.
I had some problems reading the report, though. My browser was loading images in random order, and on my dialup, loading ALL those images on one page was like eating all my meals for a month in one afternoon. Quite painful. If you notice, in my Epics reports, I generally limit screens to between seven to eight per page, varying slightly with size and story continuity. That's about all a dialup can handle in one chunk.
In addition to Sirian's comments about images, there's a couple that aren't loading at all, like the 3000BC.jpg image.
Yes, a city cultural victory was definitely a challenge - you're the only one to have tried that so far. Entremont wasn't a horrible site to try for it - it could make 15 shields even in despotism. That was enough for you to get five ancient wonders including the Great Library? Very good, of course.
The lower corruption of Fascism is irrelevant for a 20k cultural victory. For speed to 20k, you're probably better off saving the two turns of cultural production by not revolting. It didn't hurt anything to try it out here, but the government really isn't that useful. It's probably most useful when trying to come from behind - use the elite spies to steal techs and the worker labor to slap down rails really fast.
Now that we have engineers citizens, start cutting the trees on plains (and even on grass, hoping for bonus - and there was one under Entremont forrest!!-) as we want more population
I didn't even think of that! I kept the forests until the end, and I think so did most players. But you're right: the food from an irrigated plain can support an extra civil engineer specialist, thus making up for the shield difference between the forest and plain.
And yes, policemen are strictly better than engineers with the multiplier buildings in place. Some players didn't realize that either.
525 science in one city - wow. All that wonder tourism, multiplied by all three double-science wonders, really added up. Wow again. Must've been even more before the Colossus expired.
Two wow's actually. First, excellent game! That was very nicely done. I started out with delusions of a 20K option and did fair in Entremont, but there's a second wow...
Your Rome was incredible?! In my game the three Eastern civs were incredibly cooperative and balanced and without war. They were about 4 techs ahead by the end of the Ancient era, and with low shields and no prebuilds I basically missed the entire early-to-mid wonder cascade and abandoned thoughts of a 20K win. I bounced back to get Shakespeare's and Bach's by the slimmest of margins (losing Smith's) and all the later ones, but the civ-culture pace and tech pace did not allow a 20K win.
Not only was Rome not a power in my game, they were the weakest of the three and I had to prop them up with gifts to not let more enlightened England become a runaway. I didn't expect that kind of differences in what went on in the 'other half'. I think T-Hawk's Eastern continent was different from both of ours, and in one players Epic Rome founded on HIS mainland, and in another Rome founded the island just off Entremont's coast.
That was a huge plus for you, and you took great advantage of it -- well done
Close McFinish, too bad it didn't go your way. I was surprised by how long the AIs took to get the spaceship parts built, though. Maybe England went into Mobilization for a while.
Looks like you lost the land-grab pretty badly, and never really recovered. In the 50 BC picture, your cities are all at sizes 6-8; why didn't they build more settlers? Were you playing a 5CC on purpose? It wasn't because of your city placement; your 5 cities exactly matched the location of my first 5 in my shadow game, except that your McLugdunum missed actually being on the river.
It actually hadn't occurred to me just how hard it'd be to catch up from a lousy land-grab. You wouldn't have the economy to push your way back in without Republic, and you wouldn't have the military to smack your way back in without mines. Wonder how many other games might've ended up in such a hole.
Building the Colossus may have been the critical choice that set you back. Building settlers instead would've gotten you just as much commerce in the short term with two additional size-6 cities, and far more long-term. This is exactly the situation that I was lecturing the RBC11 SG team about regarding the Colossus.
Communism was, well, inadvisable. In an empire that small, you'd have less corruption just staying in Monarchy, especially with policemen. I guess you were trying to use the veteran spies, but looks like the elite spies of rival Fascist governments tripped that up.
At least it was an entertaining writeup. Too bad it wasn't Super Sized.
Since I don't see any reason not to found on the starting tile, I go ahead and start there. The first thing I notice is that, without mines, the despotism penalty really hurts! There are a lot of tiles that won't benefit from anything but roads in despotism. With that in mind, I send my worker out to the plains by the fish to irrigate. I'll irrigate there first, and then see about hooking up those wines. I settle Entremont, and start a warrior. I start mysticism, thinking I may be able to trade it.
I send the first warrior west, and the second one north. I don't get the wines connected until 3400 BC, when I can turn the lux off and science up.
Curiosity always gets the better of me. In 3400 BC, I pop the hut to the west, and get barbs. I still don't understand Conquests barbs, though. They fortify, so I do, too, thinking I might have a better chance of surviving them if I'm fortified. They still don't attack, so I attack the one that has a tile between it and the others. That way, I'll have a turn to heal. I win, and fortify.
In 3200 BC, I pop the hut to the north, and get barbs there too. Between turns, both my northern and my western warriors are killed by the barbs. That leaves me with my one MP warrior, and one worker for units, and not very much land explored. I'd started a granary, though, and want to finish it. Mysticism comes in at 3050 BC, but of course I haven't explored, so I haven't met anyone to trade it with. I start alphabet at max.
In 2710 BC, my granary is complete. At least the barbs that killed my warrior didn't swarm me! I don't know where they are, though. I build a warrior, then a settler, and send out a settler pair. Scouting will just have to wait, but I don't feel safe sending unescorted settlers out into the blackness either.
Here's my civ in 2230, when my second city, Alesia, was founded. You can see how very worldly I am! I also haven't done much in the way of improvements outside of roads. I spend a lot of turns mining the hill for shields, but since I'm working on settlers and not growing, I don't get good use out of it for a while. I do better with the irrigated plains (and deserts, of course) and the bonus grasslands.
Alphabet comes in, and I start writing. I send my second settler SW, to found in a pretty close spot that can hopefully make use of the mountains and hills there. I don't think it will make too much difference if I'm building close to my capitol, but that limits my available food tiles, which limits my ability to use the nice shield tiles there.
I still don't do any scouting, but in 2070 Egypt finally marches a warrior down my way. They have all the techs that we do, and we lack bronze working, masonry, the wheel, and warrior code.
I build my curragh, and start paddling around to the north (if I'd picked south, of course, I'd have made more contacts, but I wouldn't learn about that for years since I stick with the one curragh). Carthage strolls by. They have the same techs as Egypt does. Soon they also have writing. My writing comes in soon afterwards, and I figure I'll try for map making. With the current tech model, it wouldn't necessarily be cheaper than buying anyway, and I have at least a chance of a two-fer.
In about 1550 BC, I have built a barracks in my capitol, and have the spices by Alesia online.
With the curragh, I notice that the AI tend to treat it like a scout. They'll ask me to move it once, but never complain again if I agree and then move out on the other side, not the side I came in. So, I just paddle around the continent. I find the island to the NE, and paddle around that. It's not another continent, of course.
Carthage beats me to map making by quite a bit, but I keep going on my research, and buy bronze working and eventually iron working. I've founded some more cities, but will need to stretch for that northern iron! In 1000 BC, Egypt founds by the iron! Our settler was on the way, but will be too short. I decide to fight for it, since the iron would be in their second ring, and I can get it into a first ring.
You can see how that worked out here. It's close to Byblos and to two of my cities, but it will have to do. What are the Celts without iron?
In 570 BC I double-whip two granaries. We're not so food-rich that I can do without them, but waiting for them to build out without mines is like watching grass grow. So, I think it's worth it.
The English had built the Colossus a while ago, and in 550 BC the Portugese complete the Pyramids. The Oracle isn't even completed for another few turns. It seems like nobody has great production in this game, which I appreciate!
The no-discount tech race is scary now in the ancient age. I buy warrior code, and start Monarchy. I don't have a lot of cash, though, and techs are hard to afford.
I can't see any advantage to waiting for a FP in this version, and location is unimportant. So, I started to build it in Alesia.
In 510 BC, I finally get my iron hooked up, but I'm not really ready to build Gallics yet. Luckily, they should be useful for a little while yet.
In 450 BC, I see a red border. That's when I realize how close I'd been to meeting the other continent!
In 350 BC, I sail my one little curragh over and meet Rome, and England soon afterwards. They had both settled the island to my east. I also notice that Carthage is fighting Egypt (I hadn't been able to afford embassies yet).
In 270 BC, there's finally a tech brokering chance! Carthage and England have Monarchy, and we can buy it at a discount because we've been researching it. Then, I can sell it to Egypt for masonry, philosophy, the wheel, code of laws, and 55 gpt. Then, I can sell Monarchy to Rome too for math and horseback riding. That was nice!
We revolt, and draw a 2-turn anarchy? I've never seen it be longer than one turn with a religious civ. Is this new?
We enter Monarchy in 230 BC, and can finally really start to irrigate! My workers are sent back corewards. We can also pull a currency-construction two-fer pretty quickly.
We're not that behind all of a sudden- only Carthage has a middle age tech.
Our curragh (still my only naval vessel) has done all it can do, so it becomes a suicide curragh! It survives, and I start paddling around the other continent. I complete my FP, too. Things are looking up for the Celtics!
Egypt completes the Great Wall, which will make it slightly harder for me to crush them with my Gallics. I'd actually planned to be at war sooner, but there were other useful building things that took priority. I'm still getting techs at a nice rate, as I'm able to buy engineering and use it towards feudalism and literature. I don't have the production to get done with infra in my core and start building military, so I just keep building improvements.
Egypt had paid for an embassy with me, so I get the memo when they make peace with Carthage in 210 AD. In 230, I can afford my first embassy- with Carthage. Carthage is at 11 spt, and I note that they're not working any mined tiles, either. Soon, I can afford to make an embassy with England. They're using three mined tiles, but still only manage 9 spt and size 8. No wonder I haven't been left behind by these AI! An embassy in Rome (in 340 AD) reveals their capitol making 6 spt. They're still working on the great library. I wonder if they'll get there before education? They do have a gigantic garrison of ancient cavs. They could hurt somebody with them, but they seem to be leaving them all at home. That seems unusual, for the Romans.
My marketplaces are coming online, and I'm also starting to build gallics finally.
In 350 AD, Portugal completes the Great Library, putting Rome out of its misery. Just a little bit later, I can afford an embassy with Portugal, and notice that they have a musket due in 1. It's not every day you see a Great Library-musket production queue!
The Great Celtic Army has finally been assembled. Well, at least I won't have to worry about having my GA in despotism.
Here you can see the glorious Celtic empire on the eve of war. I didn't do all that well on my land grab, but that had some potential advantages. Both Egypt and Carthage had some lightly defended cities that were separated from their core and should be much easier for me to capture. Plus, the distance from their core (even if only a few cities) should give me some time to prepare for whatever they sent my way. In this shot, my three barracks cities are producing either pikes or gallics, and Camulodunum would be joining them shortly. I have seven Gallics poised to attack El-Amarna next turn, and a settler ready to resettle, although looking at the shot now I'm not sure exactly what was wrong with the current city location. I never did make a dotmap for this one, and my city placement certainly suffered as a result. I also wish I'd made a less dense settlement pattern in my core, to take full advantage of the late-game specialists, but what I was mostly thinking about was trying to have a city for every mine-able section of the map. Just about every forest, hill, or mountain got its own city. :P
The two gallics and the MDI by Byblos are mostly to cover the iron, because I didn't have the units to open two fronts but couldn't afford to lose the iron.
In 420 AD, we declared war on Egypt, and attacked! My first two attackers retreat and then lose, so it takes the third Gallic to trigger the GA (facing regular spears). I guess that's not too bad considering I was fighting the Great Wall civ. But, there were only three defenders, so El-Amarna was soon burned to the ground! In 440 AD, Lapurdum was settled in the area.
Meanwhile, I was wheeling and dealing with the other AI, getting theology, chivalry, gunpowder, and education. I decided to try researching banking. My memory from RBC1 was still vivid, as well as my struggles with other Conquests games, and I knew I couldn't count on the AI to stay tightly bunched forever. I hadn't had time to build libraries yet, but that was certainly on my mind.
In 450 AD, I attacked Hieraconpolis, which had at least one veteran spear. It took me an extra turn to raze that one, which I resettled with two cities. I also attacked and captured Byblos to the north. Hiera had some mind tiles, so I had to remember not to work them until I'd irrigated.
Well, the war was going much better than I expected, especially for gallics in the middle ages. In 520, I captured Pi-Ramesses, which was further than I'd expected to get with my first war.
This is where it really got interesting, though. Egypt had offered almost no resistance, but in 530, Carthage moved units into "sneak attack" position on Pi-Ramesses. I had been sending units to Egypt's little core, but Carthage was bigger and stronger than me, so I had to pull back. Carthage had three Numidians on the iron mountain by Pi-R, and a stack of 8 archers covered by a Numidian on the way. I had knights and pikes, but not very many. I had to make the most of what I had. I could get three knights and three gallics (one of them redlined) into Pi-R that turn, and it would have to do.
Actually, looking at the save, although my military was "weak" compared to them and I wasn't expecting the attack, I wasn't in such bad shape. Maybe it was just the size of their empire on the minimap that was scary. At that point, I had 9 pikes, 6 knights, 6 gallics, and 3 MDI. But, most could get to the front pretty quickly, and I had water on my other three sides.
I did buy chemistry from Carthage for 57 gpt. All I had ever wanted was to be friends with them, so I figured they owed me that much. I hadn't managed to research banking at all, but had bought it and traded for astronomy.
Anyway, Carthage did indeed declare war, and attacked me with its Numidians! That was fine with me, since that meant I wouldn't have to worry about fighting their 3-defense on the mountain, especially if they'd sent offensive units to the same tile.
In 540, Carthage also completed Sun Tzu's. I could tell we were not going to be friends any more. At least the wonders were spread out. England got Knights Templar, and the Romans got Leo's.
Egypt had finally managed to send some offensive units my way, and I couldn't take them and Carthage. So, I made peace with Egypt although they didn't really have anything I wanted.
It took a couple of turns before the attacking-numidians and the archers were scattered and not so scary. Although I stayed at war, I switched Entremont to a bank, so that I wouldn't get left behind.
Trade routes were open, now, and I could trade for some nice English dyes. It was kind of refreshing to still have MP and no WW, since I haven't used Monarchy much lately.
The wonders started getting less spread out. England completed Copernicus and Sistine. I was starting to realize that they'd be my true competition, and was thinking of ways to prevent them from taking off with the game. I already mentioned that I was trying to maintain infrastructure builds even while at war, and at least keeping the option of self-research open although I hadn't been able to accomplish much with it just yet. Also, I was thinking that it might be better to attack England sooner rather than later, because it's hard to catch a runaway civ on another continent. I kept this in mind in my trading, and tried to buy from Portugal as much as possible. As I mentioned before, I was trying to make sure I'd learned something from my experience in RBC1. I did try researching once again (not much to lose, I figured, even if I wasn't first), this time with economics.
But that was long term, and I still had a war at home. Carthage had some galleys out, and I was worried that they'd land units. Past the front, I was all cardboard cutouts, so I had to divert some knights and gallics and set up a quick zone defense.
By 610 I was ready to actually bring the war to Carthage. They had a couple of cities on my side of Egypt, but even those had muskets. I was able to raze Oea using knights. I wanted to resettle on the fresh water. I then headed for the Carthage-held Alexandria, which I had to raze also to make room for Oea's replacement. This was fine, as I could resettle Alexandria by the coast.
By 690 AD, I'd captured or razed all the Carthaginian cities on my side of Egypt, and Egypt (with her four cities) declared war on Carthage as well. The next turn, I got my first leader, and quickly made a knight army.
Oh, I'd also been the first to economics, hooray! I was able to get metallurgy and some gold for it. I bought the AI world maps, and saw- saltpeter! Close by! If I could get the saltpeter before Carthage had cavs, things would be much easier for me. I can move my knight army up and pillage right away, and then work on capturing their city. I was able to capture Leptis Minor, the salt city, in 770 AD.
So, what had started as a limited war to compensate for a mediocre land grab had already netted half the continent! I could have continued my pursuit of Carthage, but at that point Egypt was really in the way, and my peace treaty was up anyway. I declared war on Egypt in 810 AD, but, being in Monarchy, didn't have any reason to take peace with Carthage. I just didn't focus on them for the time being.
In 830, I captured Mempis, in 850 Heliopolis, and in 890 Giza, and Cleo was reduced to a OCC.
In 930 AD, I made it to the industrial age. Only England and Portugal were also industrial. Carthage had been keeping up, but they were out of gas.
Steam Power at 60% was 22 turns, but with the industrial-age AI so predictable, that still seemed like a good bet.
In 980 AD, I captured Thebes, and of course this happened:
In 980, England completed Smith's. You may have noticed that I hadn't even entered the wonder race yet. Without mines, and with a war to win, it didn't seem reasonable. It will be interesting to see what wonders other players manage to build.
I decide that I might as well capture Carthage. I wasn't sure what good those cities up there would do, but I did like the idea of removing the threat of a land invasion, and the freedom that would give me to focus on the other continent.
But, since Carthage was not a real threat at that point, I needed to stay competitive. I put most of my core onto infrastructure- libraries (finally), universities, and banks.
In 1030, England got Magellan's. In 1100 AD, I am the first to steam power. Both Portugal and England had nationalism, so I took the tech from Portugal, and gold from England (full market value, I'm pretty sure). I started medicine.
I needed to decide whether I wanted a new government. Both communism and fascism would soon be available. The fascist unit support was temping, but I suspected that the corruption would more than eat up those gains. The draw of the Secret Police Headquarters, on the other hand, was very tempting. With almost an entire continent to my name, I could use a higher OCN! I'd kept at least one eye on the RBC10 and 11 SG's, and was especially reassured by Aggie's comparison shots on the last page of RBC11. I was expecting to have to compete with AI democracies, and, even with the two-turn anarchy, I didn't want to switch a lot.
The Romans got Newton's, and Portugal got Bach's, and the wonder cascade was finally over!
In 1110, I captured Carthage city. I had a second leader in there somewhere, who made an army, and a third, who waited to be sent to England. This was silly, of course, as there would soon be shipping available that could ship a full army. Still, Carthage was toast, so I didn't need an army there.
In 1170, England and Rome signed a MPP. That might make things more interesting.
I was the first to medicine, and decided to hang on to it. I wanted to buy from Portugal, and I wanted communism or industrialization. England had both, of course, but I didn't want to help them to pull further ahead. I started making policeman specialists wherever I could. They could even take away corruption in cities with one-shield corruption!
In 1220, I captured Utica, Carthage's last mainland city. I knew that going after their four island cities would just be a resource drain, so I took peace with them for their three non-capitol island cities.
I never did have many workers (most of my workers were just the ones I'd captured in the wars), so it was taking a while to get things railed. This meant that I had to be extra careful not to use the mined tiles up north, because I wasn't going to sacrifice getting my cities connected for a couple of colonies. I wasn't in too much of a hurry to rail the irrigated tiles, of course, but I was still working on getting all of my cities connected! Then, the priority shifted to the hills and mountains, and after that I railed the flat lands and irrigated my captured lands. I eventually set up Elephantine as a two-turn worker factory, although the truth is that it didn't need any MM, so there wasn't much setting up required.
I also started to build a navy, since I didn't have one yet. I knew I'd need to upgrade soon, before I could sail anywhere, but I figured I should start. I completely forgot that I couldn't upgrade frigates, though, or I would have just built galleons for now.
In 1240, Portugal finally had communism. I still had a monopoly on medicine (I had been keeping track of that), so I took communism from Portugal, and a full market value of gold from England. I then sold communism to Rome for a bit of gold.
The SPH was just too temping, so I decided to switch. In Monarchy, I was making 102 gpt at 90% science, with electricity due in 5. I could turn science off to get 519 gpt, and electricity in 44. For an accurate count, I should have turned all my scientists off, but I had a lot of cities and wasn't in the mood.
I revolted to communism, again drawing the two-turn anarchy. I should have cash-rushed defenders in as many of my undefended island cities as possible, because rifles aren't cheap and are hard to poprush in no-harbor island towns, but I didn't think about that until afterwards. I never did get attacked up there, though.
In communism, the first thing I noticed was that no city had more than 3-shield corruption. That was in anarchy no-production mode though, and it went up to a max of five per city once I set up the cities. Now, 90% science could get electricity in 4, with 166 gpt. and I could make 626 gpt at 0%. My cities had changed enough, and a few turns had passed, so it wasn't a true comparison. But, at least I was pretty confident that the switch hadn't made everything worse.
Although I wanted to go and take the fight to England, I entered a building phase. I'd been at war for most of the AD-era, although I hadn't completely neglected building for that time. Still, in communism I wanted police stations, and a SPH, not to mention the factories and other assorted things that needed to be built.
In 1265, OCC Carthage declared war on Portugal! Portugal put them out of their misery in 1300.
I was the first to electricity, and drew a scientific leader. I decided to hold him for ToE. I do think I could have built it without the leader, as I'd been planning to, but it certainly would have been dicey. England had been building suffrage for a while now, although they were the only one, I think.
My best spt cities didn't have rivers, so my best Hoover city was 16 spt (with police specialist) Gergovia. I started my Hoover prebuild in 1285.
In 1280, England declared war on Portugal. To the best of my knowledge (even looking at the replay later), this is the first war that happened on the other continent. Amazing! Portugal has already been starting to fall behind, so I trade them some horses in a lux deal. I hadn't traded electricity yet, and England demanded it. I told Liz to go take a milk bath, and she backed down. England completed suffrage, and I decided to also trade Portugal some iron and coal.
When scientific method came in, I leader-rushed ToE. I then traded electricity for industrialization, and decide to get espionage from England at second, for sanitation. I started the Secret Police Headquarters in 1385.
When I was first to radio, I drew another scientific leader. I do think I could have done ToE or at least Hoover on my own, (I think, I think...) but I went ahead and leader-rushed Hoover in Carthage, and swapped my prebuild to intelligence agency.
In 1420 replaceable parts came in- and England had no rubber! I celebrated, then gleefully declined when she demanded it a few turns later. Once again, England backed down.
At this point I had swapped almost entirely over to builder mode, and had to decide whether I really wanted to go for domination and war with England, or settle down and try to head for space. Space certainly would have been the bolder choice, since England was still out-researching me, and Portugal had been left in the dust. But, I suspected that the space win was going to require a war with England eventually, too. My game had already had a lot of warmongering, and if I was going to ship over to England one way or another, domination was more appealing. With my own continent in 1490 AD, I was already at 47% land and 61% of the population. I figured that one more civ, say, about the size of England, would finish the job.
OK, I suppose I wasn't exactly fair to England there. Certainly it would have been much easier to roll over Rome or Portugal, but I knew that just one of the two wouldn't be enough. Also, war with England served the double purpose of slowing Liz down a bit. I didn't think she could race ahead to space while I attacked Rome and Portugal, but I really didn't want to find out. Plus, at least Portugal had been my ally for years. England had made two demands, now, and was just plain asking to be attacked.
So, it was settled. I built some infantry and some boats, loaded them up, and headed west. I figured that the little island off of England's west coast would be my best approach. It would provide a close landing to the mainland, and require only a turn at sea when I shipped west. I could park some destroyers on the middle tile and ship units without being disturbed.
I thought I'd stopped trading gpt to England, but the turns were going more slowly now, and I got to their borders with 6 more turns of gpt payments to them. I decided to wait. I may be a dastardly leader pursuing a path to world domination, but I honor my gpt deals!
In 1490, Rome and Portugal made peace. In 1510, England declared war on Rome. In 1520, my deals were up, and I declared on England. I'm always cautious, probably over cautious, when declaring war, especially on a stronger civ, so I signed Rome and Portugal on to an alliance.
I landed on that SE England island, and in 1530 had captured my first city there. In 1535, England landed seven cavs next to Entremont, but of course I was ready with my homeland cavs, and was able to kill them all. I did make a note to leave a stack of artillery at home, though.
In 1540 that SE island was mine, and it was time to head for the mainland!
In 1560, I entered the modern age, with all self-research of course. I was fourth in literacy but had built many libraries and universities. Plus, I used scientists instead of taxmen where I wasn't using corruption specialists.
I built my beachhead on the tile that's the furthest East on the other continent. It was cramped and risked flipping, but I wanted to have a home base before I felt I could take cities. That city was kind of nice, because I could pillage the plains and hold the hill, and feel somewhat secure militarily.
Of course, I expected at least a small SOD. It never came. So, the war was more about logistics that anything else.
One interesting thing is that, in this game, none of the AI stayed in a representative government. In 1580, all the AI were either in fascism or anarchy, headed for fascism. In 1590, we were finally "strong" compared to England, accoring to our military advisor.
Warwick, the city closest to my beachhead, flipped back almost right away, but after I recaptured it I held it for the rest of the game.
I was a bit puzzled as to what to do with all the laborers in my captured cities. England was a cultural leader, and I couldn't cash rush! I could pop rush, of course, and run specialists, but I couldn't always count on that being available the turn I needed it (whereas I really didn't have anything to do with my cash anymore, since I wasn't going for space). Since I wanted to poprush as many improvements as possible, I didn't always starve my cities, though, and this created flip risk.
The specialists were very helpful, though.
Here's Nottingham, which is still in resistance. Although I couldn't rush anything in resistance, in any government, I can use civil engineers and policemen. Plus I have communal corruption, and most of the improvements are intact. So, I still have a cathedral due in 3. I had to watch getting too greedy, though, because I wanted to try to make sure the city didn't riot as the resistance ended. I had three flips total, two in Nottingham and that one in Warwick, and I think that they were in civil disorder each time the flips happened.
In 1650 I built the UN, and didn't hold elections. I certainly didn't want to win by diplomacy, even if I could. I figured I was likely to win if it was England and me, but by then England was much reduced. I wouldn't have built it at all if England, and maybe even Portugal, hadn't seemed like a credible threat when I started it.
Anyway, I marched along, still probably building more than I should at home, but certainly gaining ground in England. In 1680 I captured Canterbury, England's last mainland city. That put me at 65/82- not quite enough! I suspected that all I needed was some border expansions in England, but this was slowed a bit by Nottingham's second flip (actually in 1685). I whipped what temples I could, but also rushed a settler for that two-tile island off the west coast of England. In 1705 I founded Glevum on the island, and that took me to 66% exactly. Between turns, I had enough borders expand that I was at 67% when the victory was triggered, so I think I would have won on the same turn with or without Glevum. I certainly didn't want to wait until then to find out that I needed a bit more, though!
It was a very fun game. I'm sure there will be a lot of people with faster wins, but I had a lot of fun. It was challenging enough (techwise and production wise, if not militarily) to be fun the whole way through.
Thanks to T-hawk for another great Epic.
Edit- Forgot my last screenie
This message has been edited by Grizelda from IP address 24.21.149.128 on Mar 28, 2004 11:39 PM
congrats on your domination victory! I see you too decided to revolt to communism, and I bet it helped you a lot more than it did in my game. Your captured cities sure would have been quite productive if not for the no-mining rule... And I see you have adapted to the new rules better than I did; it somehow never occured to me to use engineers while starving down cities.
One nitpick about your opening moves, though, if you don't mind: Why did you irrigate the plains first? An irrigated plains has the same stats as the unirrigated bonus grasslands and the wines tile, so connecting the wines and roading the bg tiles and then irrigating plains would have given you more commerce and more beakers in the beginning.
I agree about the weird barb AI in C3C - they seem to fortify a lot, one warrior just sat there on a mountain in my territory literally for centuries. And they nearly always seem to fortify for one round after moving...
Reading your report about your first war with Gallic swordmen reminded me about the one good thing my unexpected, pyramids-induced GA had: I never had to build those overpriced Gallics.
One nitpick about your opening moves, though, if you don't mind: Why did you irrigate the plains first? An irrigated plains has the same stats as the unirrigated bonus grasslands and the wines tile, so connecting the wines and roading the bg tiles and then irrigating plains would have given you more commerce and more beakers in the beginning
I agree. After roading the wine and the bg's, I irrigated and roaded one plain, then roaded the forest. With +3 food and a granary, you often waist food anyway, so you end up using the forest quite often.
Well, if you like micromanagement, which I actually like in the capital in the beginning.
Awesome brokerage on Monarchy to get out of that hole right quick. And a shrewd move on researching Banking as well, even if it didn't pay off this time. The AIs just about always prioritize other techs ahead of Banking and it's often possible to get first.
When to self-research can be a tricky decision. Generally, you won't be able to research something first yourself if you're still making significant tech payouts to any other civ. Research can still be worth it, though; it blunts the eventual purchase cost. Often a good strategy is to keep researching yourself; if you don't get the tech first, buy in as soon as two rivals get it, resell it again for whatever you can get, and try again on another tech.
And, whenever you're researching, it's almost invariably right to do so at 100% as long as you have money in the bank to pay for it. In an emergency (somebody shows sneak-attack and you need to rush a defender), you can usually take out a loan from another AI for that turn, and then you can halt research for money. Instead of keeping a cash cushion, it's better to guarantee that treasury cash will be useful, by turning it into beakers via deficit research. Taking the concept to the logical extreme might illustrate the point. If you could snap your fingers and immediately turn banked cash into beakers, you almost always would - so get as close to doing that as you can by always running deficit research. (I know you know most of this, Gris, I'm just generally commenting. )
The location of the FP does matter prior to Communism; it does give a distance corruption reduction to cities in its area. The effect is nowhere near as large as in PTW, though; best bet is just to build it as soon as you can in the direction where you have the most cities. First ring is fine; second ring on a larger map if your Palace is at one end of your civ.
Communism was a great call for your kingdom. Just to go over some of the mechanics for it: Communism's OCN is naturally huge to begin with; the SPHQ is actually fairly marginal. The government gets an automatic +100% to OCN, and the FP (which you'll already have) adds +300%. So the OCN is already 5 times the regular number - coming to 85 cities on this small map. The SPHQ then bumps it by another 300%, to 136. This isn't trivial - of course you should always prebuild the SPHQ ASAP - but it just a contributing factor to Communism's power.
In Communism, all your cities are treated as halfway down the line to your true number of cities with regard to the huge OCN. If you had 30 cities when you switched, all your cities would be behaving as if they were 15th-closest (half of 30) to your palace with an OCN of 100 or 160. That works out to about 8% or 5% corruption from city rank wrt optimal cities: the equivalent of mid-first-ring, minimal indeed. "Distance" corruption is Communism's chief problem - it's a flat 25% regardless of distance and FP/SPHQ. But that can be halved with each of a courthouse, police station, or WLTKD, all stackable multiplicatively.
In a near-complete reversal from earlier versions, the number of cities you have is no drag at all on Communism's productivity. With a small number of cities, your unmodified corruption is 25%. With as many as 68 cities on this small map - which would be almost up to domination - that base only goes up to 37.5% in each city. On any map size, you can't GET enough cities to slow Communism's productivity without just winning by domination.
Whenever your goal in a war is civicide (England), it's almost invariably good to sign everyone you can to alliances. Especially if you're just flipping techs to them and not really paying anything of cost to yourself. If you do get in big trouble, which wouldn't happen anyway with a tech lead against an off-continent opponent, you can renege and sign peace.
Glad you were able to fit the game in and enjoyed it. You also got to do a lot of city capturing, and that indeed is where the specialists are at their most valuable. Not unlike real life, in fact; ask the Army about the civil engineers and policemen that are rebuilding our conquered cities of Baghdad and Basra.
The variant rules for this Epic of not being allowed to mine any arable tiles and to shun representative governments would lead to a less productive empire than usual, and the resulting larger cities should provide for a nice playground for trying out the different types of specialists. To get as much specialists as possible, I decided to go for a sparse empire layout with no or nearly no overlap between cities, so that each city could grow as much as the terrain would allow for. I also decided to go for a space race victory: I hadn't done this in C3C yet, and also wanted to let my cities build as much as possible to experience this variant as much as I could.
After looking at the starting position, I decided to found right on the starting spot. At least my capital would not be hurting that much for shields in the beginning, with two bonus grass, lots of plains, a hill that could be mined and fresh water for size. Since irrigating the wines or the bonus grass would be wasted during despotism, there was not much worker labor to be done at first other than roading for commerce.
Since I knew pottery already, I could shut down science immediately and buy techs once contacts were established, but there had been indications that it may be cheaper now to research a tech by yourself than buying it and you always would have the chance of scoring an SGL, so I checked which civs were in the game to see which techs were already known in the world. Nobody had bronze working or the wheel, so I started to research the wheel at maximum science as trading material. Entremont built three warriors (two for scouting) and then a granary, as usual. Thanks to the agricultural trait, Entremont could be micromanaged for additional shields every time the city was about to grow.
I sent my two scouts north and west, and already the first hut I popped in 3250BC gave me...a settler! Grmpf, surely a boon for my civilization, but not something I like in a tournament. Well, let's hope my usual sloppy play will make up for the advantage this gave me compared to games that didn't get a settler from a hut. The settler was quite far away from my capital, though, and so I decided to move him to a closer location, even if that took several more turns before my second city was founded in 2850BC, at a freshwater location to the west of Entremont near spices. By the way, the replay later showed that every AI had founded their second city before me.
The wheel was discovered in 3050BC, and I started to research mysticism next on my way to monarchy. I hadn't met any of my rivals yet, though, and couldn't trade. A second hut yielded only barbarians, and the first contact I made was Egypt in 2950BC. Then I found Carthage in 2550BC and now could trade the wheel to Egypt for masonry and 35 gold.
On the same turn, Alesia was whipped to complete its temple - I like the religious trait, especially in a game where shields will be scarce and so whipping more powerful! I would whip a temple in every of my new-founded cities while in despotism, and several other buildings as well.
Entremont built its first settler in 2770BC, and I decided to go for the pyramids soon, even if I would not be allowed to mine all the nice tiles at Entremont. But I hadn't self-built them in a long time, and this being only emperor, it should not be a problem for me to get them. Additionally, my scouting had revealed lots of land for me to grab even if I delayed my expansion by building a wonder, and so the granary in every city would be quite powerful. So after the settler, Entremont built a temple, then a worker to irrigate the plains and mine the hill, then started with the pyramids.
A third hut again only gave me barbs, and my third city was founded in 2150BC near the furs to the east. In 1700BC I discovered polytheism first and traded it to Carthage for warrior code, bronze working and alphabet. Monarchy at max science still would need 50 turns to complete and my research wouldn't increase much in the near future, so I decided to go for mathematics next.
My scouts spotted a razed city between Egypt and Carthage, so there had to be war already between these two - good for me, that would probably delay their expansion a bit. Another hut produced only barbs, and finally Alesia, my second city, was ready to produce settlers. Camulodunum was founded in 1375BC, again with enough distance to its neighbours so no overlap would occur.
Mathematics came in in 1275BC and was traded to Egypt for iron working and some gold (Carthage knew it already), and I was delighted to see that Comulodunum had iron in reach! Research was set to monarchy now. Richborough was founded in 1150BC, on a bonus grassland at the coast, now that I knew I would regain the extra shield once it would reach size seven.
England had completed the colossus already in 1350BC, but the next wonder to fall was...the pyramids for me in 850BC!
Portugal cascaded and finished the statue of Zeus the next turn. I sold my two granaries in Entremont and Alesia, and because this had gone so smooth and Alesia was a good enough settler factory, Entremont immediately started to build the temple of Artemis as a prebuild for another wonder, probably the hanging gardens. The pyramids had set off my golden age (unexpectedly, as usual...) and so I was sure to get another good wonder.
In the screenshot you can see a settler/warrior pair on the far left - this became Verulamium the next turn, securing more wines, and several precious forests for good production. I also built a curragh and sent it out exploring, and it found Rome in 670BC before it got lost in treacherous waters on the same turn trying to cross the distance to the other continent. Rome had several techs I didn't know, and I had discovered monarchy and revolted two turns before. So now I traded polytheism to Rome for writing and some money, then monarchy for map making, code of laws, philosophy and horseback riding! It's always nice to make contacts first.
I researched literature next and discovered it in 550BC. Entremont would have completed the hanging gardens next turn, but I decided otherwise and switched to the great library instead and completed it five turns later. I had decided to do a lot of my own research this game, but with this much land to grab, that could wait until the land-grab phase was over and my cities were developed a bit, so the great library would allow me the accumulation of some cash and the rushing of key buildings.
England found me in 470BC by settling a city on the small island east of Entremont. I ferried over a warrior to that island to explore a hut, but only got barbarians again. Later I founded a city on that island, too.
Thanks to the golden age, Alesia had a nice 6-turn cycle of producing two spears and one settler, and so Entremont had started to construct another wonder after the great library immediately, whatever this may become. Meanwhile, embassies revealed that Portugal and England were at war with Rome, but England made peace soon thereafter. The great library got me into the medieval age in 410BC, on the same turn I received the message that I could build the forbidden palace now.
The AIs completed several wonders next: Rome got the great wall, Carthage the Mausoleum of Mausollos, and Egypt the Temple of Artemis and the Hanging Gardens which I would have finished four turns later, oh well. Entremont switched to the Great Lighthouse, which I didn't really want to have, and slowed down production. And luckily, two turns before it would have been completed, feudalism came out of the library and I was happy to finish Sun Tzu's instead.
I self-built three wonders in a shield-challenged game.
In the shot, you can see that I had Camulodunum set up as a two turn worker factory, which I desperately needed. I had finally found Portugal in 110AD, and they now declared war on England. My landgrab was done in 330AD, and when chivalry came out of the library in 350AD, I made the typical I-am-a-scholar-of-the-great-library-and-so-I-am-very-rich move of upgrading eight horsemen to knights and declared war on Egypt in 390AD! Here's the situation prior to the declaration.
I captured El-Armana and razed Byblos (too much overlap!) on the first turn. On the same turn, gunpowder came out of the library and I discovered I had no saltpeter! The nearest source was under Carthagenian control, so I already knew what to do after the Egyptian war...
Anyway, Egypt defended only poorly, mostly with warriors, archers and longbows, and so I razed Giza in 450AD but made peace with them to focus on getting a source of saltpeter instead. Two cities were founded in ex-Egyptian lands, and troops were healed, reinforced and moved into position. Education came in in 480AD, and I started full research on chemistry on my way to military tradition. Which brings me back to my goal of acquiring saltpeter...well, Carthage had no horses. Too bad for them.
Note in the shot of razing Oea how my workers were busy removing the Egyptian mines near Lugdunum - they had to correct several of these ecological mistakes other nations had done to nature.
And while my units razed the offending saltpeter city of Rusicade, the general who had thought up this brilliant plan showed up!
He immediately formed an army which I left empty for the moment, waiting for cavalry. Although my objective was met, I did not make peace with Carthage yet to fish for leaders and to settle the gaps. Note the swamp in the shot? I wanted to found a city on that exact spot, and for the first time in C3C had to clear a swamp first before being able to settle. Annoying!
I finally made peace after razing another city, Hippo, in 660AD. I was satisfied about having saltpeter, but not so satisfied about a very long, stretched-out border to Egypt.
Well, that had to wait until cavalry! I discovered military tradition in 740AD and upgraded 9 knights. I totally forgot about the empty army, though... War was declared in 800AD. Alexandria was the first target, although I had to attack it across a river due to a wicked river layout.
I killed a few knights, but otherwise had to fight spears only. And although I could have pressed on if I had dedicated my economy to war, I made peace again now that my borders were straight again. Being not allowed to mine took its toll now: I still had much infrastructure to build.
I entered the industrial era in 930AD, and starving Egyptian scientists helped to shave off a turn which I find rather silly. My high-food size 12-cities had hired several scientists as well, I had prioritized libraries and universities everywhere. Although the science building were not so helpful as in normal games, they still were needed if you wanted to research all by yourself. But I was not the first to become industrial! Rome was. Caesar was in a very impressive 4 turn research mode at the moment, skipping all optional techs and beating me to every tech by two or three turns.
I finally traded for a world map in 1010AD.
I had thought about what government to choose for this game, whether I should remain in monarchy the whole game, or maybe switch to fascism later on which some say is the improved communism of C3C. But having played RBC10, I now beelined to...communism! I didn't have many cities due to my minimize-overlap approach, but my land area was quite large, so I wanted to try out communism under these circumstances. I hope somebody else will use fascism for a comparison! I revolted in 1130AD, and compared to monarchy, both research speed and income increased slightly. But that would improve more later, when the SPHQ would be finished! (By the way, my forbidden palace was located in Alesia)
Next was steam power, which Rome discovered two turns before me, then industrialism which Rome got on the same turn as me. Argh! Couldn't Caesar research something different so we could trade and speed up the tech pace a bit?!? Next up was espionage and the SPHQ in Tolosa, a city bordering Carthage with a very good shield potential (well, very good under the variant rules, that is). That city was chosen because the SPHQ removes corruption nearly completely.
Medicine was discovered on the same turn as Rome again, but then our choices of what to research finally diverged. While I had researched espionage, he had discovered electricity which I now traded for, and while he researched replacable parts next, I went for scientific methods for the theory of evolution. I discovered the tech in 1335AD. On the same turn, England had replacable parts, too, so I traded medicine for it to have access to civil engineers! These sped up the constructio of the theory of evolution.
Now I finally was ahead in tech! But I was really impressed with Caesar. He lacked vital resources: Iron, rubber and coal. He had only an average-sized land. And so he had concentrated on research to gain an advantage at least in that field. Too bad for him he failed.
Oh, by the way, Carthage had declared war on Egypt some centuries before. It was a war with rifles and longbows only, and Carthage actually managed to raze on city, and to pillage Egypt back into the stone age.
I could have crushed both easily, and could have taken control of the whole continent - but why? I wanted to concentrate on the space race and not turn this game even more into your usual warmonger's game.
I built Shakespear's and Suffrage next, and my only city on a river, Camulodunum (my ex worker factory) was constructing one of the most important wonders for me: The Hoover Dam! Some painful micromanaging happened. Cities building units had only scientists as specialists, but when the city started to construct a building, they all had to be changed into civil engineers. And often it was better to hire an additional civil engineer than working a one-shield irrigated plains tile. Only policemen were never hired. And more often than not, I didn't bother with micromanaging my cities at all - I had a very dominant position already despite the non-optimal government and the no-mining rule, so I found it hard to motivate myself to do so. That can also be seen later by my fast total playtime of 10,5 hours.
In 1485AD, Rome landed seven cavalry near on of my cities. I told him to leave, he declared war, I killed his landings easily and made peace again in 1520AD. Nothing exciting, really. To fuel my research, I once in a while sold tech, for example:
In 1530AD I discovered mototized transportation and finally filled the empty army I still had hanging around with tanks. I was now researching most techs in four, but some still in five turns. The modern age was entered in 1550AD, and computers was researched next, needing six turns. I forgot to prebuild for research labs, so fission needed longer to research than it should have. I had prebuilt for SETI in my best-researching city, though. When computers came in, it needed another 10 turns to finish it - 16 without engineers.
I could have gifted all my techs to the other AIs to get them into the modern age, hoping they would research something I had not to speed up my victory, but neglected to do so. Giving up my huge tech lead wasn't very stylish, was it?
Egypt actually dared to declare war on me, and so my tank army finally got something to do and quicky captured both Egyptian cities that were left on the continent, and so Cleo finished the game with an OCC on an island.
It's about time for a word on pollution. What is it actually good for? I HATE pollution - what does it add to the game besides tedium? It's sooo boring to wake up your worker stack, move it to the polluted square, hit "shift-C" a few times, then realize you had clicked it once too often and the first worker was already busy clearing the forest you aren't allowed to replant, so you have to wake him again. Then you have to zoom into the city to reassign the citizen to the tile. Of course the game picks not the taxman who had been working the tile before but a scientist, so you have to change the taxman into a scientist. But because it's a large city with lots of specialists and Firaxis cannot calculare coordinates correctly, you click exactly on the center of the taxman graphics but the neighbouring scientist gets changed instead, so now you have to change two specialists into scientists... ARGH! Because of all the specialists, you cannot let the governor take control of the cities either, and automating workers doesn't help because the tile won't get reworked once the pollution is gone, so again: What is pollution good for? It forces you to keep some workers in the late game, but that's no big deal. And it weakens the AI because it's not very good at cleaning pollution, so all it does is adding tedium. I hate it. I hate it! I HATE it!
But let's stop rambling and go back to the game.
Space 'race' victory in 1774AD, with a tech lead of 8-10 techs. And here's my list of top-producing cities.
My top-producing city is worse than in your normal game of course, but overall I didn't suffer much from the "no mines" variant rule - it felt not very differently, probably because this had only been emperor. Several of my cities had benefitted greatly from building offshore platforms by the way, but they come way too late to be really useful.
I was intrigued from the first sentence of your report, where you hit on exactly the same strategy I did for my shadow. (I haven't posted it here yet, but you can probably guess the URL and read it now.)
Not sure why, but your reports always inspire me to point-by-point analysis, so here we go...
I checked which civs were in the game to see which techs were already known in the world. Nobody had bronze working or the wheel
Also available, and quite likely to be researchable first, was Mysticism, and that's on the Monarchy beeline. Don't forget those second-level techs.
That city was chosen because the SPHQ removes corruption nearly completely.
The SPHQ, and FP, do remove corruption completely in their cities once a courthouse and police station are added. This is true in any government. The maximum corruption for any city is now 90% (changed from 95%), and the courthouse and police station each reduce that by 10%. The FP/SPHQ is coded to subtract another 70% from the maximum corruption, and so everything totals to 0% maximum corruption in a city with one of those small wonders.
That's yet another tweak that helps Communism; previously, one of its weaknesses was that it couldn't have corruption-free super-cities for wonder building. (The Palace city also now always has 0% corruption, even in Communism, which is another change.)
Also see my reply to Gris for more comments on Communism.
And often it was better to hire an additional civil engineer than working a one-shield irrigated plains tile.
True, but that plains tile also provides food to grow the population and hire a second civil engineer as well.
Only policemen were never hired
Actually, policemen are the most powerful of all the specialists. See my report. :D
How soon did you go for Sanitation? You didn't mention that. I went for it right away, even before Industrialization, as lifting the population cap ASAP seemed to be the best move to boost city production.
The purpose of pollution is to convey a mild pro-environmental message, and that's been around since Civ 1. I agree that it's a pointless nuisance, which did indeed hit in a big way in this game.
Shift-D makes workers automatically clear pollution and return to manual control when done, and once all your tiles are improved, Shift-A makes them clear pollution automatically and then go back to sleep. Putting the cities on governors for Manage Citizen Moods will automatically put the laborer back to work, although that couldn't be done in this game if you wanted to optimize the specialists yourself.
Its game effects are minimal, of course, although it does pose a danger to the AI that sometimes winds up polluting faster than its insufficient quantities of workers can clear it. Especially if it goes to war and keeps pulling its workers off jobs near border areas.
1774 AD for space? Pretty good time without Republic. We'll see if anyone else manages to top that...
I haven't posted it here yet, but you can probably guess the URL and read it now.
I've done so yesterday already, but if you publicly hint at your report here, wouldn't it be fair to post it for all now and not only for the URL guessers like me...?
Not sure why, but your reports always inspire me to point-by-point analysis
You're welcome! :p
Also available, and quite likely to be researchable first, was Mysticism, and that's on the Monarchy beeline
My intention was to research as many techs first as possible, and researching the wheel first before mysticism seemed to be good for that. Unlike others *cough*, I haven't seen an SGL in any of my games yet and wanted to try to get one. Didn't succeed, though. And as it turned out, Egypt had mysticism when I met them, but lacked the wheel.
I forgot why I didn't try to go for philosophy; I know I had a reason at that time, I'm just not sure what it had been. :p
True, but that plains tile also provides food to grow the population and hire a second civil engineer as well.
True, but sometimes I need the shields now to finish an important project. And regarding policemen, I never realized they would give more commerce; my mistake I had my eyes only on shields.
How soon did you go for Sanitation?
That decision had been a hard one, what tech to reaearch first in industrial age. Nationalism to beeline to communism? That research would probably be redundant because of the AI's. Steam power for rails? But you needed rails only for mined tiles, which were not many. Or medicine to beeline to sanitation for larger cities and more specialists?
In the end, I felt monarchy lacked something to be desired and wanted to try out communism ASAP. Once I had revolted, I was a bit disappointed by the difference to monarchy and thus wanted to have the SPHQ ASAP (I only had a fuzzy knowledge then of what the SPHQ actually does), so industrialization then espionage was next. Then, with a strong Rome as a tech contender, I feared for ToE and beelined to scientific methods next. When I had this, my prebuild would have finished the ToE in 8 turns, and besides sanitation I had no tech to research in 4 to squeeze in two techs before it, but refining would exactly need 8 turns to research so I made the foolish decision to get that before sanitation, too - I was angry at me afterwards about that.
I always felt bad about delaying sanitation for that long since I knew about its importance, but never paused long enough to think it through thoroughly enough. (Note my total playing time of 10,5 hours that includes ~1 hour AFK... )
1774 AD for space? Pretty good time without Republic. We'll see if anyone else manages to top that...
Assuming someone else has a much faster ancient and medieval age, and assuming that same someone doesn't make foolish mistakes like my move with sanitation, and
also assuming that player would be more willing to micromanage and to think this through thoroughly, sure, then that player should beat me quite easily. Now imagine what would happen if that same player had spoiler knowledge, and/or got more lucky and scored an SGL (or, heaven forbid, even two)! Ah, the possibilities... :p
What I'm asking myself is why such a someone would ponder switching to communism mid-game but delay that decision because of a war, then never mention it again? (It looks like my game could outresearch such a player in the modern age).
What I'm also asking myself is what an AI does if it scores an SGL - will it always try to rush a great wonder, or will it use it for a broken age of science as well? One way to get a hint at that is if someone by chance catches an AI scoring one...
Communism is only significantly better than Monarchy when you get to have a lot of cities, at least around the optimal number for the map. Controlling the starting area plus most of Egypt probably put you right around the breakpoint where Communism starts to take over. It'd be about equal at first, but as Communism got improvements built in the outlying cities, it would pull ahead in economy. Communism isn't an instant productivity spigot; it takes time to build up.
Now imagine what would happen if that same player had spoiler knowledge, and/or got more lucky and scored an SGL (or, heaven forbid, even two)! Ah, the possibilities... :p
Actually, when I said "let's see if anyone can beat that time", I really did include myself in that. It'd been two weeks since I wrote my report and I actually didn't remember what my finish date was. I knew it was in the 1700's but thought it might actually have been later than yours.
What I'm asking myself is why such a someone would ponder switching to communism mid-game but delay that decision because of a war, then never mention it again?
I did mention it again, in the second paragraph on page 6. With corruption already almost zero in most cities thanks to policemen, revolting wasn't going to help anything. I didn't have enough cities for Communism to make up the revolt time and get ahead.
What I'm also asking myself is what an AI does if it scores an SGL - will it always try to rush a great wonder, or will it use it for a broken age of science as well? One way to get a hint at that is if someone by chance catches an AI scoring one...
I keep meaning to check my saves and the replay to see if I can figure out anything towards that end. I'll try to remember tonight. They didn't rush a great wonder, but I think none were available to them. I'm also not even quite sure if that was indeed an SGL in Egypt's city. Finally, there is the possibility that the Age of Science might not actually be broken for AIs; whatever's causing the bug could be specific to the player.
I'm getting increasingly annoyed by pollution as well, and I can do without the social messages in a game where I'm committing genocide, thank you very much :P Good choice on Communism. Police the best? I'm looking forward to your report T-Hawk, in my game engineers absolutely ruled, although I often used a 10-2 or 5-1 mix of the two for best effect.
Impressive run on early Wonders. I did notice something I didn't know:
Quote from Kylearan> On the same turn, England had replacable parts, too, so I traded medicine for it to have access to civil engineers! These sped up the constructio of the theory of evolution.
I didn't know Engineers could help on Wonders? I'm not sure if I just assumed they couldn't, although I guess it is considered a building/improvement. Learn something new every day!
The Celts are great for my playing style: I like to build temple first in my new cities, then worker, then barracks, then offensive units. Let us hope I will have iron, so I can build those overpowered Gallic swordsmen. The agricultural trait should help a lot in growth, the capital site is quite good for both growth and production.
I cannot go to republic or democracy, so it will be monarchy. This means it will pay to be agressive, much more agressive than I usually am. Also, with the lack of the super-trade and super-industry in the Industrial Age, characteristic of my peaceful builder style, I might as well try to reach a dominating position earlier, if at all possible. I have no idea what the suggested, excessive use of those specialists will be, but I am eager to try. Let us go!
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Birth of a Nation
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4000BC - Entremont is founded on the starting tile. The worker goes to the wine, to connect this great luxury to my capital. Next, the bonus grasslands need to be roaded, but let me not forget: Mining them is not legal in this game! I start training warriors, let us see the land that surrounds us, and let us find our friends whom we share it with! Celtic wise men start researching Mysticism.
4 fearless celt warriors are trained. The first goes west, the second south, the third north. The last one stays home, providing defence and to maintain law and order in my glorious capital.
3250BC - My scouts have discovered a good amount of fertile land by now. We seem to be at the eastern end of a great continent. Only one river has been spotted, crossing a desert in the nort-west nearby, but the landscape is also littered with lakes of various size, offering good settling sites for my agricultural people. Rivaling civilizations have not yet been seen however, I decide to build a granary. We need an exceptional growth rate in Entremont to claim all this free land! My warriors investigate two huts. Both are inhabited by barbarians, and one of my men is lost in the merciless fight with the villains.
Claiming the Heritage of the Gods
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2710BC - My western scout meets with a servant of Cleopatra. We trade Mysticism for Warrior Code + 7g.
2590BC - We meet the Carthagians, but cannot afford to trade with them, we research Bronze working on our own within 3 turns.
2390BC - The first of many settlers is ready to expand our glorious empire. We see the yellow borders of Egypt, far beyond a distant river. The land we are going to settle is made of a great grassland in the south, and a great desert in the north. In the middle there is a lake. I make an ambitious plan, and the first settler is heading towards the lake. Entremont now trains settler-spearman pairs, with a worker, barracks, a temple (and a couragh!) thrown in at later times.
2270BC - Alesia is founded on the shore of the Central Lake, between a hill and a forest. Fish in the lake, silk in the forests, and wheat on the plains make this site an excellent choice.
1990BC - According to Tacitus I am the wealthiest of all the nations in the world. No wonder - My wise men are researching polytheism with minimal effort, our treasury of 120 golds is growing 9 golds per turn.
1950BC - With a brave move, Lungdunum is founded in the west by a bay that actually forms a little inland lake, with wines in site.
1525BC - Camulodunum is founded north-west, close to, but not on the desert river. I want to take advantage of the fertile floodplains by the river, but cannot risk the life of my citizens founding on them. Together with Alesia and Lungdunum, they make a continuous patch of cultural influence, shielding my eastern lands. These new cities build temples, workers, and barracks, in preparation of a possible conflict.
1275BC - The research of Polytheism is completed. I trade this valuable technology with great success: To Egypt for Alphabet, Iron Working, Masonry and 13 golds, to Carthage, with 140 golds for Writing and Mathematics. Monarchy is next, also with minimal research. So do my lands provide all-important iron? Yes! Close to Camulodunum, on a hill, I sight the precious ore. After Richborough is founded south-west, close to Entremont in schedule, this site becomes my highest priority.
1025BC - The iron town, Verulamium is founded in the desert, next to the iron hill. It is only three tiles away from Giza, an Egyptian outpost.
In the centuries to come, the Celts inhabit the land inherited from the gods:
850BC - Gergovia
750BC - Augustudorum
690BC - Agedincum
590BC - Eboracum
470BC - Burdigala
290BC - Cataroctonium
My empire now stretches across the south-eastern third of my home-continent, its western border skirting the Great Desert across the Central Lake. In 1050BC, as I establish embassies with Egypt and Carthage, it becomes clear why they have been so sluggish with expansion: They are at war with each other. They must have been fighting for some time, and they will be, till their eventual demise...
Exploration and Trade
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At around 1250BC, I notice the contours of what seems to be the shores of some nearby land close to my eastern coast. I decide to explore it with a couragh that is hastily constructed in Entremont.
1175BC - The little ship crosses over and start exploring the new patch of land. It proves to be an island, but at its north-eastern corner there seems to be a crossing to even farther lands.
1025BC - The brave captain steers the ship into the open sea and sees the orange border-line of a yet unknown civilization... Years pass... And courage is rewarded! The couragh makes it through to safe coasts. England is contacted. I am the only one who has intercontinental contact! In a furious session of trade, the Celts acquire Construction, Mapmaking, Currency, and The wheel. The heroic boat sails on, and shortly the other two empires of the New World are contacted: Rome and Portugal. The powers of the New World are in peace, and they are technologically developed. In 570BC however, England would declare war on the Portugese, and Rome would soon join England. These wars rage on for a while, but the balance of power remains intact in the distant continent.
1000BC - Hannibal demands construction. I see no reason why I should not share knowledge I have acquired with who will soon become my most important ally...
710BC - With all the nations in the world contacted, a new trading opportunity presents itself. I buy Philosophy from Egypt, then, trading with everyone, I acquire Code of Laws, Horseback Riding and Monarchy. I am in the Middle Ages, as most of the other powers, and it means the Celts are in technological parity with the rest of the world.
690BC - Celts revolt.
670BC - Celtic Monarchy is established. Population growth and production improve greatly in a crucial period for the Celtic Empire...
The Wars in the Old World
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My core cities have been preparing for the inevitable conflict with my only neighbor, Egypt.
70BC - I make an alliance with Carthage to destroy the evil Egyptians. I have been training an army of a dozen Celtic swordsmen, backed by some catapults, and spearmen. In fact, at the moment of declaration I am already training medieval infantry and pikemen. I attack on two separate fronts, and conquer two Egyptian outposts. The war is a smashing success. Egypt lacks iron and horse, my superior war machinery cuts through her outdated troops like knife through butter. She is also pressurized from the north by my Carthagian ally. In 300AD a peace treaty is signed; Egypt gives us Engineering and Cleopatra goes to exile to a far northern island.
At the very beginning of the war, Golden Age for the Celts begin. During the first half of this glorious period our military potential is furiously enhanced. The second half is used for building up much needed infrastructure. Courthouses, aqueducts, marketplaces are erected, foundations of a powerful economy with medieval standards. Scientific progress yields Monotheism and Chivalry.
300AD - I trade Chivalry and Engineering for Theology+19g with Carthage. Hannibal however lacks iron and horses...
330AD - Shortly after our treaty expires, war is declared against the Carthagians. My troops have been positioned at the Pun border, and advance victoriously. A stream of knights hit the front shortly after the war begins, and not even the mighty Numidian mercenaries can withstand the force of my mounted warriors.
330AD - With a morbid turn of events, Carthage conquers the last city of Cleopatra, destroying Egypt. I wash my hands.
460AD - I capture the capital city of Carthage with the Pyramids, a most important wonder.
500AD - A great leader emerges. I make an army, putting one single knight in it and return it to Entremont.
510AD - I make peace with Carthage, they give up all their holdings in the continent. Hannibal goes to exile to one of the northern islands, just as Cleopatra did before...
Life in the Empire Where the Sun Never Sets
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By 510AD, the glorious Celts have united their home continent, writing history with iron and blood. Population grows with an exceptional rate, due to the Pyramids in Carthage, and to the agricultural gift of the Celtic people. Industrial production is less impressive, the Celts refuse to build mines on arable lands. The vast territories of the Empire yield many strategic and luxury resources for my civilization, and also offering excellent trading potential.
530AD - Forbidden Palace is built in Agedincum, at the western shore of the Central Lake.
I organize the production of my Empire into regions. Surrounding my capital is the Core Region, 12 of my oldest, most developed cities. All have temples, courthouses and aqueducts if needed, marketplaces, barracks and/or harbors. The core cities, after infrastructure, produce military. After hitting size 12, their production is optimized, yielding 10-14 shields per turn. The food surplus usually allows for hiring 1-2 scientists. The scientific output is in the range of 8-15 beaks per turn. Libraries are not built in the Celtic Empire.
Across the Central Lake, in the desert strip, the Developing Region struggles to build infrastructure comparable to the Core. Only at around 900AD would the 7 cities of this territory join military production. Shield output is 4-8 shields per turn, after courthouses.
Further in the wild west, where the proud Egyptian and Carthegian Empires used to rule the land, lays the massive Peripheral Region. Food production and growth is as fervent as anywhere else, but corruption waists most of the production. But 2+2 makes 4 everywhere in the world: Countless scientists live peacefully with the peasants in these underdeveloped settlements. Each of my 7 peripheral towns support 2-3 scientists, while each of 5 cities house 4-6 wise men, producing what is about half of my scientific output. Only temples are built in the Periphery, to expand my cultural influence.
540AD - I get Gunpowder from Rome for spices and furs, and Banking+26gpt for iron, wines, silks and gems. I would continue to trade with Rome, but does not deal with the scientific leader: England, who would become my next victim...
The Final Showdown
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730AD - Egypt was shattered by swordsmen, Carthage by knights. I knew I needed further modernization of my army if I was to venture to the lands of the developed New World nations. My core has been training knights, musket men, trebuchets (later cannons) and caravels, and my troops are mustered in Entremont. Timing is perfect: My militarization program is just finished as Military Tradition is finally discovered. I waste no time and upgrade a dozen or so knights into fearsome cavalry. Before you can say 12 cavalries, a knight army, 8 cannons and 8 musket men in 10 caravels, my fleet of doom embarks on a journey across the English Channel. My ships sail silently by the English Island, where two Roman and an English city has been founded, then unload their deadly cargo on the south-western shores of the English Empire.
760AD - As soon as I land in England, I ask the English Queen to share the technologies Printing Press and Music Theory with the Celts. Elisabeth "does not give in to extortion", I have to punish such foolish pride, I declare war on England. It is not very hard to find allies in the New World: Rome joins my side for Military Tradition, (but lacks saltpeter and iron), while Portugal also declares war on my enemy for Metallurgy. For the hack of it, I also enlist the weak Carthagians for Gunpowder. England, pressurized from the north, scramble fast in face of my late-medieval combined arms. In the first English city I conquer I load two cavalries in my knight army, making it a very strong force indeed. One English city is captured after the other, and as soon as I have dealt with resistance, temples are rushed to extend my cultural borders.
850AD - I capture the English capital, London with the Knights Templar.
890AD - London revolts.
900AD - London is recaptured, and now England is destroyed. The very reason for my still ongoing diplomatic agreements, alliances against England, vanishes, I again have a free hand with my military decisions...
910AD - I declare war on Carthage.
920AD - Carthage is gone.
960AD - Not learning from England's mistake, Caesar refuses to hand over Democracy and Economics. What can I do? I declare war on my former ally. Portugal joins me against Rome for silks. I capture the English Irelands from Rome then advance to the north in their continent. My territory is approaching 67% ...
1040AD - The glorious Celtic Empire dominates the world! Victory! I control the entire home continent, the northern islands, the Channel Islands, and the southern half of the other continent. I have already entered the Industrial Age, I am 4 turns from discovering Steam Power.
Even if the quick domination win didn't let you see the late-game specialists, sounds like you got to make good use of the original specialists in faraway highly-corrupt land.
I cannot go to republic or democracy, so it will be monarchy
I've seen a couple reports with this sentiment so far. Feudalism was clearly inferior to Monarchy, with the variant rules and terrain encouraging growth of cities over size 7 quickly, but I'm curious as to whether players actually made that analysis, or just forgot about Feudalism.
Well, I also thought the way I played this game was kind of against the spirit of the scenario. It just happened this way. I was very successful against Egypt, who did not have resources, and was checked by Carthage. Then I was very successful against Carthage who had no resources and had been smoked against Egypt. At that point actually I was considering to land knigths with galleys at England, that is why I put only one knight in my army, so I can transport it with a galley.But reality check soon calmed came when England discovered Gunpowder way before me, and god knows what else.
So I had this huge semi-developed empire and the civs on the other continent were gaining on me scientifically being in Republic. I just panicked and made this desparate plan to build up a huge late-medeival combined army to shut them down.
Saltpeter? I must have traded it with Portugal. I had a lot of excess lux resource, so it was no problem, I even forgot about it.
So when I landed in England I was not really sure I am doing the right thing. They have had Military Tradition for ages, so I expected a very tough war. It turned out to be very easy (They had like 5-6 cavalries altogether showing up) especially that England was also pressed from the north by my allies. So before I knew it, the game was over.
In retrospect, I could have played a peaceful builder's game on the eastern half of the home continent, but somehow I was convinced at the time that my only chance is military.
A very nice (and fast!) domination win! I drove hard on my own continent but firmly decided to stop there so I could play with the new specialists. If you've NOT used them in some other game I strongly encourage you to give them a try.
I'm surprised by your new city build order, although as you say it seems to fit well with your style and worked well for domination. It's not a "population is power" approach, but more a "culture and captured population is power" :P
Actually, the build order in new cities is something I could not get from reports I have read. So, without feedback, and without having seen different options, I have kind of grown dogmatic about it.
I am talking about the first 2-3 new cities, that are ripening fastest.
My dogmatic build order: temple, 1 or 2 workers, barracks, military (it usually is horseman or swordsman by the time I get there, but I also like to substitute my early warrior protection to veteran spearman protection in all cities.)
Now military is not a purpose, but a mere necessity and I do not overdo it usually. But I like it if I have a spear+swordsman in each town, and a couple of fast horses to cover 3-4 cities each. If I have to go on offense, this is intensified, and in this game I wanted to go on offense.
In later new towns actually I do not even build barracks, but go for infrastructure. In this game somehow it never happened...
First, by far the best way to get a sense of early build orders is to look at Succession Game 'regular' games. The early moves are scrutinized by most other players on the team and after playing many such games, most openings are quite solid.
Second, there is for me absolutely no set pattern for the opening build. It depends on so much - difficulty, game goal, variant conditions, and very much on the food and shield mix of the capital and early cities.
So let me share some key principles I keep in mind, then finish up with some 'common' build orders. If my capital is low food and high shield I will look to use it for the unit production of the nation and let early new citeis take up the task of settler and worker production. If there is a +5 food ~5spt city site that's the closest thing to dogmatism - I build a granary in it immediately and make a worker farm (or better, a settler farm). Depending on the situation it's either: granary - settler - warrior - settler ad infinitum or granary -worker - ad infinitum. No temples, no rax, no troops.
Second, if my capital is that +5 food high shield workhorse, I reverse things. My second city becomes a rax - spear - spear - spear machine. Capital stays on settlers until it has spit out probably a dozen. Third city will probably build workers or exploring units or a granary or a boat.
I seldom build early temples, unless: I'm religious... or I NEED a temple to pull in an important resource, or I'm going for a culture win. I tend to like granaries in a decent number of early cities - more when more rivers, almost none if I decide to get the Pyramids, less if high food but low shield.
Ironically, the higher the difficult the LESS troops I build, and tend to go with 2-3 warriors for exploration and that's IT until I have as many cities founded as the expansion-rabid AI will let me have peacefully, caving in to the assured tribute demands, then when land is gone very quickly getting some defenders everywhere and turning attention to the economy using cardboard cutout defense.
On a lower diff or where the game rules or situation dictate ancient war (e.g. I'm Iroquois next to Rome who is slow to Iron working or hooking up iron, or Germans next to the Indians, etc) - then and only then would I build more than a single rax. In that situation though, I tend to favor a four-city all rax plus offense unit (temple? no way) and start the war ASAP, capturing the capital and about 2 other cities plus about 2 techs for peace, then hit them again in 20 turns.
On an archipelago things are different yet again. I forget military almost completely and go for settlers and boats.
So above are described 3-4 situation-specific build sequences. In a typical potluck situation with a totally plain looking start, I would still tend to specialize my cities, and not use the same order in each. Perhaps a quick worker from each so that I didn't get "behind", followed possibly by a warrior for cheap exploration or MP, then a granary in one of the cities, a rax in another, and a boat or temple in a third. The granary city would follow up with workers/settlers, the rax city with spears at least one per city in the empire, then start adding some offense to the mix for barbarian control (opposite priority of offense and defnese if I'm going for a blitz early war)
Now, if you like the set order you mentioned because you can't stand even a chance of culture flips, and if you in almost every game like hitting the AI quickly, it may work fine for you. I would however suggest you consider the power of early granaries, the inefficiency of not having more specialization in cities, and definitely that you become more situational and dynamic in choosing early build queue orders.
Thanx a lot for your detailed answer. In a game as complex as civ, flexible and versatile strategies sure must be superior to dogmatic ones.
There are two fundamental points from which my dogmatism may originate and I would be interested in your opinion.
1. I build temples mainly to get that first expansion, so I can work all my tiles. This makes city placement more flexible, I can pull in valuable tiles from a distance. I somehow must be overrating this argument.
2. This is the crucial one. Since my early civ1, civ2 days, I like to develop the population of my cities as evenly as possible. Because then luxury % does not waste commerce, but gives roughly equal benefit everywhere. So I actually like to build granaries (which I seldom do anyway) in low-food cities. For example, if my capital has 4-5 extra food, I do not even build a granary. If it only has 2-3, I build it. In other cities I almost never build granary.
Is it a crucial mistake, now I start thinking... Maybe (at least some of) the settlers CAN be built in a secondary town, or the workers CAN be built in a specialized city, rather than one in each city... Hmmm... I definitely have to try.
Ok, thanks for the additional info - and I do have some comments on those points.
>. I build temples mainly to get that first expansion, so I can work > all my tiles. This makes city placement more flexible, I can pull in > valuable tiles from a distance. I somehow must be overrating this argument.
Ah, would I guess right to think you enjoy civ1 / civ2 style "optimal city placement" where each gets their full 21 tiles to work? The more one tends to far apart placement, the more important a temple in each city gets by FAR. I've come to VERY MUCH like a 3-step placement between cities. The benefit to defense and war are tremendous. Also, when cities are 3 away that row of border gap you would expect between them will disappear - so you get to work any tile you want without needing a temple. So if I might generalize your thought... build a temple when you want to work more tiles. But as to the when, build a temple WHEN you NEED to work more tiles ASAP. See I don't disagree with a temple per city, and I very frequently eventually get a temple per core or second ring city, it's definitely NOT a high priority unless there is a lux or wheat sitting outside the border. In other words if the tile you pull in won't even be worked until it's size 6 or 7, build the temple when you're size 5 or 6.
> 2. This is the crucial one. Since my early civ1, civ2 days, I like to > develop the population of my cities as evenly as possible.
Ok, I did sense that civ1-2 philosophy :P It's not true that even *builds* lead to an avoidance of waste of commerce. Even happy faces lead to avoiding a waste due to luxury %. High commerce low shield cities will see greater benefit initially, and even more after marketplace, than low commerce high shield cities. So high commerce favors holding off on the temple until after marketplace.
> So I actually like to build granaries (which I seldom do anyway) in > low-food cities. For example, if my capital has 4-5 extra food, I do > not even build a granary. If it only has 2-3, I build it. In other > cities I almost never build granary.
As you point out, yes there are several critical mistakes here. (Not mistakes as in weed, mistakes as in barriers to mastery of the game :P )
1. Worker farms spitting out a worker per 1-3 turns basically forever have a massive impact on overall city productivity and economy. 2. High food secdonary sites with decent shields too are the best settler producers there are, with a granary. 3. Subtle but very powerful item to learn. Civ3 is a "quantum" game, not "classical". Building a swordsman, there is no difference between 10, 11, 12, 13 or even 14 shields per turn. There's a huge difference betwen 14spt and 15spt. One sword per three turns, vs one sword per two. That's a whopping 50% productivity gain. That's why you hear some players rejoice over reaching "the mark" of 10spt, 15spt or 20spt depending on what the key unit being built is at the time. There is likewise a key quantization of food. +1 stinks, +2 is twice as good, +3 a fair improvement, +4 no biggie, but +5, ah that's magic. With a granary +5 food means it grows every two turns. At +4 food it's every three turns. a 50% difference. Get +5 food in a city build a granary and with just 5 shields, presto!! You have one worker coming out every 2 turns for the next two millenium. It's better than that - if the extra tile that is brought in the instant the city grows brings in extra shields, you can actually get one worker per two turns with what 'seems' to be only 4 shields per turn (plus a mined hill that is chosen by the governer next)
Bottom line: a city that can reach 10spt is of superb value for cranking troops and should specialize in doing so. Often this is the capital or the first built city (and/or the future FP). A city that can reach +5 food and 4-5 shields *BEGS* for a granary and to become a worker farm. A city with +5 food and 7-8 shields BEGS for a granary to become a settler farm, spitting out one settler per four turns like clockwork, which is awesome. Some people throw out the term 'farm' simple to mean "it's got a lot of food" but never set the city up properly to get this kind of 'super-effective' production.
1. Worker farms spitting out a worker per 1-3 turns basically forever have a massive impact on overall city productivity and economy.
No doubt! And a fine analysis you have offered. Spot on.
However, all the way through your post, as you recount the value of worker farms, a phrase echoes through my head: "Phoenix and New Bombay!" Do you remember?
When I look at how awful my early play was, I surely must be one of the 'most improved' players around, whether or not I'm actually any good now :P
Learning first hand in SG games just what this +5 mark meant and seeing some games with +10 food and 8 shields that were actually ten with growth spit a worker EVERY turn was a huge 'aha!' moment for me.
BTW, superb post on 'balance comparison of Civ3 to MOO'. It was interesting to see the "hysteresis" effect in MOO, where there is no implementable difference in the range of 1:3 to 3:1, and above/below things hit the fan. That's compared to a "seesaw" style of game where small advantages can be leveraged and turned into something larger. In this context, I can see that my 'ranting' about some recent changes which promote 'runaway' games is that it's one step further along that continuum. MOO includes a negative feedback loop which dampens small changes in relative power up to some point, Civ3 is closer to 'neutral', and 'runaway' is a positive feedback cycle where small advantage -> more cities -> with less corruption -> MUCH more power -> MUCH more cities -> game over. I'm trying to think of a game with that hysteresis effect, and can't really think of any I've played. Chess (one of my favorite) is one of those seesaw ones, where small advantages can skillfully be transformed into winning advantages, but there is not the 3:1 to 1:3 stalemate zone. Anyway... a thought provoking analysis of the games, thanks :P
Ah, would I guess right to think you enjoy civ1 / civ2 style "optimal city placement" where each gets their full 21 tiles to work? The more one tends to far apart placement, the more important a temple in each city gets by FAR. I've come to VERY MUCH like a 3-step placement between cities. The benefit to defense and war are tremendous. Also, when cities are 3 away that row of border gap you would expect between them will disappear - so you get to work any tile you want without needing a temple. So if I might generalize your thought... build a temple when you want to work more tiles. But as to the when, build a temple WHEN you NEED to work more tiles ASAP. See I don't disagree with a temple per city, and I very frequently eventually get a temple per core or second ring city, it's definitely NOT a high priority unless there is a lux or wheat sitting outside the border. In other words if the tile you pull in won't even be worked until it's size 6 or 7, build the temple when you're size 5 or 6.
So, do you like ICS much Charis, or is this a new fad?
Not trying to knock your playing style, but doesn't it somewhat unbalance the game and break the engine to place cities that close together? Why not just go 'whole hog' and place your cities 2 tiles away instead of three to get the full benefit, hmm?
I've already had long debates on this and won't get my blood pressure up again, I'll just say...
- This isn't, by very definition, "ICS"
- Dense packing is IMMENSELY better for 100K culture games, which is my context for this epic
- My primary like for 3 tile spacing is when I expect my core to be attacked and solely due to roads being 1/3 movement
- It's not a fad, I space cities according to need. Recent games have been bloodthirsty or short on land, so I've packed them in.
- I don't care at all for 2-tile spacing, although for a special resource or odd geography I would easily consider 1-2 cities at that spacing.
ICS is not a threshold, but a continuum. The more densely packed the cities, the more advantage to be had in the pre-hospital era. That is the decisive part of the game. Combine denser cities with ancient or midieval aggression and you are simply not playing the same game any more as those using lower city density.
This is relevant to the Epics, and a topic we are overdue to revisit.
The RB house is not in order. This is a conversation we should be having in private, but you are still unresponsive in email. You sent me an ambiguous message recently, offering me two addresses, and my question about which to use went unanswered, along with all my other remarks. I guess I picked the wrong address to reply to, even though it was the one you sent your message from. I will try again with the other address.
"This is relevant to the Epics, and a topic we are overdue to revisit."
Exactly what is this relevance? In your opinion, should cities spaced 3 tiles or less be considered an exploit? I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, but am just curious as to your position on this matter.
In your opinion, should cities spaced 3 tiles or less be considered an exploit? I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, but am just curious as to your position on this matter.
If it were that simple, I could (and therefore would) legislate it.
A few issues are too complex to be governed by written rules, because effective rules would require long lists of contingencies, exceptions, and loophole plugging. Our rules are already too long. We'd choke under the weight of rule books if we encoded these issues. Yet they are too important not to be governed. For the first twenty Epics, I led an effort to govern these issues through unwritten rules of ettiquette, agreed upon by the tournament veterans and backed by a joint exercise of ettiquette and social taboo.
That process broke down over the worker farm issue, at the time PTW came out. I saw worker farms as an unbalancing force, an uber tactic that must either be taken off the table or allowed to become a no-brainer must-use move for Epics competitors. I thought taking it off the table would better serve the tournament's interests, and yet we cannot forbid all use of workers, so this was one of those sticky issues where the line could not be drawn with written rules. I worked to get the issue added to our ettiquette list but a group of players objected, with Charis being the most senior objector. This tipped the balance I had crafted, unravelling the entire process I had used to govern the tournament.
I had kept everyone on one page by instilling the value that we must stick together, play by the same rules, and in cases where disagreements could not be resolved, that I would make the tough calls in line with the vision I used to create the tournament in the first place. Charis lent his weight and authority to the notion that I should not make the call, that the value of keeping everyone operating under the same rules should be subordinated to the value of keeping everyone happy and giving squeaky wheels what they wanted. Why couldn't folks who wanted to use worker farms be allowed to do so? The answer is, because it mandates everyone doing so from a competitive standpoint, and that's not desirable for the tournament.
I lost the debate. Not just about that issue, but about the core values of the tournament. And not because my case was weaker, but because my will was weaker. I was weary from months of such debate, with MOO3 (still a hopeful-looking venture) on the horizon, while Charis was fresh off a hiatus away from Civ3 and ignorant of all the earlier iterations over similar disputes. In order to hold the line, I had to win that debate. I had to win every debate, with each player to come along who questioned why things were done the way they were and wanted them changed.
As well as the ettiquette system worked for most of a year, it was personally costly to me to maintain and eventually I wore down. Nothing has been done with the rules since then. We've been running on autopilot. How long that can last is anyone's guess. This tournament is still my baby and I worry about her. Who's looking out for her interests? She's way past overdue for a tune-up.
This tournament is still my baby and I worry about her. Who's looking out for her interests? She's way past overdue for a tune-up.
Who is looking out for her best interests? Certainly not the "win-at-all-costs-yet-complain-about-how-broken-the-game-is-but-still-abuse-the-hell-out-of-it" players. It's interesting to see some of the 'variants' that have sprung up where ICS, or almost identical 3 city spacing, has been the way to 'win'.
I guess it doesn't matter how exploitive a concept is as long as the "W" is added to the correct column...
Who is looking out for her best interests? ... I guess it doesn't matter how exploitive a concept is as long as the "W" is added to the correct column.
Don't be bitter. We're not that bad off.
The goal of the Epics is to craft an environment where strong players will be challenged: where the game can be lost, where there's something at stake, where players have to apply themselves creatively to problems and situations for which they don't have pat answers.
That's easy to do for the short term, much harder to maintain over the long haul.
If a game allows for pat answers, formulaic strategy, or a single clear best path to victory, players can reach a point of having "solved the puzzle", after which replay value drops.
If we want to get more out of a game we've "solved", we need to find ways to compensate for the game's weak points, to change the balance or limit options to remove some of the certainty and sameness, to inject the game with renewed uncertainty and new challenges.
There can be multiple solutions and multiple degrees. Allowing for varied standards works OK in the SG environment, not so well in the tournament environment. The value of the tournament drops, the meaning of the competition drops, if players are playing by different rules, different standards.
A lot of things have changed since the last time the tournament rules were modified. The game has changed. The tactics have evolved. The community has evolved. The culture has shifted a bit. Care will have to be taken.
I am not new to civ, I am not new to Realms. For over a year I've admired you all for your game skills, your reports and your advise. But most of all for your fair attitude to the game. For you that have counters on your websites which show many visitors have been reading your reports; I have increased the count a lot, on many websites.
I am contemplating playing Epic 40 and posting for the first time.
Why ?
Because I like to play by the rules. Because I like a fair contest. Because I want to know how my game measures up to the ones I hold in high regard. Because I want to win (or loose) without self-critisism on dastardly moves and exploitive moves.
My point: I don't care if minimum/maximum city-distances, worker-pumps or even settler-pumps are on the dastardly acts or exploits lists or not,as long as we all play with the same rules. OTOH if this is considered important by the sponsor, why not add it to the variants-rule ?
I know this is not a solution, only a work-around. But it will do for the short term. For the long term consent on whether those acts are Dastardly, Exploits or Perfectly acceptable needs to be chieved. RBCiv is so highly regarded that it's list of Dastardly and Exploitive acts are copied to many fora.
Pardon for the slow response on the email. I got it and just responded. If you guys think it's relevant for the Epics, by all means discuss away! If there's consensus on what's best, make changes or rules as appropriate.
But when I say I'm not going there, I mean it - I've said all I'm going to on the subject.
congrats on a very fast domination victory! And a very good write-up, too. I don't like reports without screenshots normally, but somehow you report produced enough images in my head to enjoy it. I especially liked "Carthage conquers the last city of Cleopatra, destroying Egypt. I wash my hands.".
I find it strange that several people, including me, mentioned the weak military response the AIs gave when attacked. Hm...
I wish I could include pictures, but I do not know how, and I am too busy to learn it... I am happy you enjoyed my writing, you would love it if it was in Hungarian, which is my native language.
For me, a civ game is an adventure of history, not a battle with a computer. I deliberatly refuse to think of my opponents as "just a stupid AI", no, they are worthy leaders who may make mistakes, just like me. So I try to tell a story, rather than trying to peek behind the artificial intelligence.
"I find it strange that several people, including me, mentioned the weak military response the AIs gave when attacked. Hm..."
Maybe they also observed the limitations of the variant somehow, not building enough military.
"Appears that your early sea going was the factor that tipped the balance, kept the tech pace up and gave earlier opportunities for luxury trades."
Yes, that was a great break when I got through to the other continent. I could broker for 1000 years, nobody else was in contact. So at early midieval I was in tech parity, and could follow the leaders without libraries.
Compared to your game, you had a normal game, one I would also usually play.
I had a rather extreme game, not my style mind you: All I built was military, with minimal infrastructure. It worked, because I was OK scientifically, and because I always had allies
Bihary, of all the other games, yours most closely resembles mine. I ballparked that the difference in the number of turns in finish time roughly approximated the turns between making contact with the other continent. You got there early, and me late. That let you get to monarchy a good bit before me.
Realms Beyond Civilization - Epic Thirty-nine: Division of Labor
Victory: Diplomatic in 1868.
And now the tale begins:
The tribe of the Celts, led by a High Cheiftain named Bede, camps on the grasslands between a lake and the sea. A soft breeze from the east brings the scent of the sea as Bede stretches out by the flickering fire and dreams of the future.
A Druid interrupts his reverie, "High Cheiftain, your clan is weary of roaming. You have led us to the place promised by your ancestors where our tribe can grow and prosper. There is the sea nearby with its fish, kelp and mussels, a forest with sacred oaks, hills which we can mine for riches, a lake of sweet water to irrigate the fields to grow crops to feed your people, and grapes in abundance will supply wine for our revels and holy rites. More wearisome wandering could not find a place offering such abundance."
Bede considers the Druid's words, then nods his shaggy head in agreement. "Tell the clan we have found our home. Begin building our homes of wood and send a worker to the vineyards so that we may celebrate properly".
"We shall make it so," replies the Druid who hastens away to fulfill the High Chieftain's commands.
So in that place the tribe builds the town of Entremont.
The High Cheiftain returns to his dreams of magnificient buildings and armies which will bring glory, power and riches to his people and honor to him and his descendants.
The tribe immediately begins to train warriors to uncover the boundaries of this land. The warriors are sent north, south and west and discover forests with fur bearing animals in the south, to the Northwest a lake rich in pike, plains where sugar cane grows, a forest containing spices, to the North a fertile crescent bounded by the sea to the East and desert to the North and West, and much grassland to the West.
Then comes the morning when Bede emerges from his wattle and daub mansion in a rage. Several harvests have passed; the corn is rotting in the fields for the granary is not finished. He summons ths Druids to explain.
The eldest steps forth, trembling. "Lord, we understand your wrath, but the gods of fields and forests forbid the building of unsightly mines on our grasslands and plains. To do so would disrupt the Nyads who dwell there. They have also forbidden us to touch the sacred oaks in the forest. We may only build mines in the hills and mountains and bring water to the plains, grasslands and drylands. These Commandments delay our buildings. Thus have the gods spoken and if we wish to prosper we should heed their commands."
The Chieftain is not pleased at the Druid's words, but realizes he must adhere to the directives of the Holy Ones. His dreams are dashed; the buildings he had imagined become vague shades glimmering in the far distance, unattainable.
Bede orders the Druids to study only the arts of war, then, once those tasks are completed, to go into the fields and labor with the rest of the. If he cannot build the monuments he had dreamed of, he will make powerful armies from the bones of the Druids and conquer the monuments of others.
In the era T22 after the settlement of Entremont the High Chieftain ordains the building of another city to the west and Alesia (grasslands and forest) is founded in 2950BC, Lugdunum (spices) is built in T51 (1750BC) to the north of Alesia and by T72 (1225BC) Camuladorum (furs) to the south of Entremont.
While the warriors explore the Druids are studying the martial arts of Bronze and Iron Working and Code of the Warrior. Once these three things are learned the Druids are ordered to cease studying so that the tribe may grow rich and put to work in the fields (the First Cultural Revolution) From this point forward the Celts will take what they need to know from other tribes.
The warriors have met two other tribes to the north, the Egyptians and the Carthiginians. There are no other peoples on the Emerald Isle. After an initial period of cordial trading of knowledge, relations among the tribes grow quarrelsome as each covets the others' lands and riches. In T70 The High Chieftain sends an army of archers, spearmen and horsemen to prevent Egyptian encroachment on Celtic homelands and vows to rid the Emerald Isle of these interlopers.
In T77 (1100BC) after a short battle the army captures the Egyptian city of Alexandria. This town had been built north of the desert and controlled land rich in food and resources. After that victory the Egyptians give up all their scientific knowledge and gold for peace with the descendants of Bede.
At T88 Verulamium (iron and floodplains) is built in the fertile crescent and the heirs of Bede go to war with the Carthiginians who are encroaching to the north and east. From this era until Era T270 (1395AD) the Celts are constantly at war with only brief intervals of peace. In T270 (1395AD) Hannibal is exiled to a boat and Cleopatra to an island and the Emerald Isle belongs to the Celts.
During these eras the Celts meet three other tribes, the English and the Portugese (both are great sailors) and, through them, the Romans. The English enjoy Most Favored Nation status and become great trading partners. The Celts sell them trade goods for much gold and in return buy their scientific knowledge. During this time and until the mid Middle Ages and the acquisition of the ability to build universities, the Celts spend few resources on science, concentrating instead on the development of their economy. Once universities (after marketplaces and banks in most cases) are built the Druids are given a free rein in their investigations of natural phenomena and by the end of the Middle Ages the Celts are the scientific leader and remain in that position until the end.
For all these years of war and trading the Heirs of Bede had squabbled among themselves. No two agreed as to the proper direction of the realm. A new era is about to begin, the Industrial Age, (it is T267, 1385AD); the Egyptians and Carthaginians no longer a threat, or even any importance; a succession of indecisive Kings who had chosen to disguise their leadership failure with success in war had left control of affairs to advisors who in most cases were totally corrupt. Nearly half the realm's income passed to their purses, and the waste of precious production can not be enumerated.
Well, it took 20 eras (T287) or 100 years, but a new leadership emerged and took control. The Heirs of Bede were banished and the rest of the hereditary leadership executed. The new leadership (The Proletariat) implemented measures that reduced corruption by 50%, and ordered the Druids (now called Scientists) to study ways of increasing production and reducing waste.
By T310 (1600AD) anti-corruption measures had really taken hold as the Secret Police ferreted out corrupt officials across the state and the State Auditors looked into the books and determined that corruption was now only 5% of total income.
The leadership could now turn its attention to the future. Gradually a consensus emerged. The State can support both a large military and a world class research establishment. There is only one rival left, England, and two tiny clients (Hannibal still in his boat, and Cleopatra on her island). By offering the protection of her military to Hannibal and Cleopatra the Emerald Isle could have her leadership validated by the UN. And by funding the construction of the UN the Celts could control the timing of the voting.
So, in era T312 (1605AD) Hannibal and Cleopatra were settled into their new homes of El-Amarna and Cataractonium. Both are inland cities and have no known resources. (The gift of El-Amarna turned out to be problematic as some eras later it was learned that its boundaries included the only source of oil on the continent, so the Celts had to buy Oil from England at exorbitant prices to build the Air Force to protect themselves and their clients from the English. That problem solved itself some time later when the English were allowed to capture the city, thereby eliminating the troublesome Hannibal who kept declaring war on his foster sister Cleo and the Celts could take it back from England.)
From T312 to the second (Cleo abstained on the first vote in 1848AD) and final UN vote in T399 (1868AD) the Celts concentrated on getting the most productivity and income from the island. At T355 (1778AD) the Celts built their first Great Wonder, Hoover Dam in Alexandria and the second GW, the UN, also in Alexandria 44 turns later and their last GW, Manhattan Project, in Leptis Minor 8 turns after that. The cities were kept content by employing as many specialists (policemen, scientists, tax collectors, engineers and clowns) as the food supply could support with the assignment of specialists determined by what combination delivered the greatest income and greatest output. The city adminstrators discovered that the allocation of specialists is a time consuming task (nano-management, if you will) as the proper balance depends on what is being built, how long it is taking to build it, how much longer is left to build it, and can only be determined by inspection.
(It was deeply pleasing towards the end to look at the Domestic screen and see 0 red coins or shields in the largest cities)
These final eras were marred by wars with the English. For some silly reason the English really wanted Cleopatra's two tundra island at the NE tip of the Isle, which naturally involved the Celts as we were her Protector. The English finally took the island from her and we took it from them and held onto it.
During the end eras, the military strategy was a simple one: lots of artillery, and bombers when available, and a stack of infantry and several tanks. The English would sail across to either the east or west coasts, get bombarded by artillery, land a couple of cavalry, the cavalry would get crippled by artillery, and killed by infantry or tanks, then the English ships would sail home if not sunk by the bombers (sequence being bombard first to cripple, then bomb to sink).
The science strategy was economic advances first, then research benefits, then military. The Communist government did have a small dampening effect on the pace of scientific discovery. At the end of the Monarchy research into new technologies was in the 4-6 era range; with the advent of Communism that extended out to 5-8 (no change in budgeting or specialist assignment).
The Celts were the dominant mercantile state during the middle period. The Emerald Isle held tradeable surpluses of gems, wine, spices, silks, furs and these goods provided the extra uncorrupted income to fund technology buys and research or were traded directly for technology.
You had an interesting ending, although it seems you could have won by other means as well. Having a pet state protected against some big bad guy, and then win by Diplomacy - I like it. But why didn't Cleo vote for you immediately? That must have been a drag... And why did she vote for the second time? Did you figure?
Also, what happened to Rome and Portugal? They got overrun by the English?
Cleo was still a little miffed at us for the drubbings we had handed her the previous millenium and for having made peace with England after wiping out the force threatening Egypt (no MA in effect, but I guess attitude is affected if you make peace with an opponent when you have MPP, though I had certainly fulfilled my end of the agreement); and I forgot to make really nice to her just before the UN got built. Didn't make the same mistake 19 turns later.
Once I had the lay of the land I put aside any thought of Conquest or Domination victories (I really hate seaborne invasions).
Nice story writeup. A bit light on the game mechanics, but most of us know how that works by now, so a more storytelling approach can be refreshing.
Keeping pets around for a diplomatic victory - neat idea. Sounds like you got a good look at the specialists, too. Yes, policemen are the most powerful, because their production is then affected by multiplier buildings like libraries and factories.
At the end of the Monarchy research into new technologies was in the 4-6 era range; with the advent of Communism that extended out to 5-8
I wouldn't expect that to happen, actually. Did your beaker production actually drop that drastically, or were you just getting into more expensive techs when you got into Communism? If the former, did the beaker production recover when you got libraries and universities built in outlying cities?
I think what happened with the research rate is I really liked the "red zero" effect, so when I should have hired scientists in cities without lib/univ I kept the cops on the job.
Very good storyline, as usual. Having played a couple SGs with you now, I look forward as much to the "in character" references as the results. First diplo victory I've seen, it may have worked out for the best with Carthage gone, you wouldn't want an ungrateful Hannibal siding against you!
Hello everyone, I'm back playing Civ after a leave of absence because of personal problems.
I do not have time to write the report quite yet (it'll be another half-day to a day), but here's a teaser:
This was my first game ever played under Conquests, and my first-ever hand-built wonder in Conquests shocked me by triggering a despotic Golden Age! That wasn't a SGL-built wonder, either (I did not get a SGL until late in the game).
Also, I actually did finish up my Epic 36 game (it was almost done before problems appeared in my life). Would people be interested in a report? I spent a lot of time on it, so I hope a few people are interested in a shadowland report.
I would also be interested in your Epic 36 results. That was my baby and I had a great time playing it. Just that I was too ambitious in my urge to report and collapsed before I finished the job. Still, it would be fun to learn about your experience with it.
I thought that was already clear? My apologies if you've been waiting.
More than half the screens are uploaded and on the server, and have been since before Closing Day. Perhaps I'll do a collage where I throw up a shell that loads these graphics and you can see a picture show through most of the game, but I do not intend to write a report nor crop and upload any more pics.
By the end, I owned all but a smallish England and one Zulu town on the starting continent, and most of the second continent as well, with one invasion and a lot of poaching. Only Rome was left fully intact. I finished with more territory than anybody else who played, but scored behind Urug's flawless no-invasion performance. Every single AI in the game fought against me, most in the huge dogpile that came about because AI's with cash will always buy other AI's if they can, unless you do it first, but I could not, and so I had to go through the teeth of every other civ's full strength in the industrial and modern ages to get to where I did. I fought the largest battles I've ever fought in civ, flipped 32 cities and produced 58 great leaders.
There. That's about all the report you can hope for at this point.
Just the 'nutshell' description was pretty impressive, just from the city flipping if nothing else.
I hadn't really been waiting for a report, I figured that was hopeless months ago, I was hoping some pictures or something might emerge, since the reports of those who played seemed to be as 'Epic' as the game itself.
I didn't take any screenshots during the game, so all pictures are from my set of saved games.
I found Entremont at the start location (it's pretty clearly the right spot); it builds three warriors before starting on the granary. (I was more than a little paranoid about barbarians this game -- I never saw a barb camp all game.) I research Mysticism first, at maximum -- I'd like to be able to do a min sci run on Polytheism, and by the time I get Mysticism I should know if I'm alone or not on this piece of dirt.
The min sci run on Polytheism gets going as I find Egypt and Carthage, scout out the outlines of the continent, and found my second city Alesia. Alesia is on the lake northwest of start, and between the fresh water, the spices, and the adjacent hills and two forest tiles, this is clearly the best spot to get a non-capital wonder going. Since I'm religious, I build a temple first before starting on the Oracle as a prebuild for ... well, whatever I end up with.
I space my cities far apart, as I want them to grow nice and big so I can check out the new specialists. Egypt does beat me to the gem mountain by about two turns, but I'm feeling good about my landgrab otherwise; I'm expanding towards Egypt and leaving the first-ring tundra locations near Entremont for later.
London completes the Colossus in 1325 BC; that's a despotic Golden Age for Liz.
Carthage has decided that it really wants the Oracle, which completes in 775 BC; and Egypt takes a long time before starting any wonder at all. There being no other industrious civs in the game, I just might end up with the Pyramids!
Here is a picture of my territory with the landgrab phase of the game nearing completion:
I had gotten Polytheism first, of course; this had gotten me a whole pile of techs in 1250 BC. Egypt already had Philosophy, or I would have researched it next; I decided to run min sci on Monarchy, after researching something else for a few turns.
One of the techs I got was Map Making, and soon I had a galley out of Gergovia wandering eastward. I make contact with Rome in 775 BC, and with England in 750 BC. Neither has Polytheism, so I trade it around again for another pile of techs and cash. One neat thing about this is that I'll be the only one with many contacts for a while, and the AI's can't even demand a contact from me in Conquests. Both Rome city and London are building the Pyramids; establishing both embassies shows me that I have both of them beat by comfortable margins.
That same year (750 BC), a warrior that my galley had dropped off on the small tundra island between the continents pops a hut there ... and gets me a monopoly on Literature.
I make contact with Portugal in 630 BC for full world contact. Henry is building the Pyramids in Lisbon ... an embassy shows me I have him beat by all of one turn. Whee! Of course, maybe I should have not wasted time building that temple; it wouldn't have been this close, although it's also painful to have to run 50-60% lux tax to support a size 7 city buildling an early wonder.
The first two AI's make it into the Middle Ages by 430 BC. The next turn, Alesia completes the Pyramids! I wasn't expecting to get that at this late date. And, whoa ... I just triggered a Golden Age! I completely wasn't expecting that; I hadn't thought about the new combinations of civ attributes and Wonder attributes in Conquests, and I was expecting to get something like the Great Library in Alesia. I'm still in Despotism with about a dozen turns left on my min sci run ... I don't want to waste this Golden Age and the precious shields that it grants, either. I pay 31gpt and change (ouch) to Carthage for Monarchy and immediately revolt. I get a two-turn anarchy (ouch).
When I emerge from Monarchy I use my new income and my ability to broker between continents to get me into the Middle Ages. I also decide to start several Wonders. I enjoy building as many Wonders as I can get my hands on, even if it's just the Great Wall. I set max research to Feudalism, to try for Sun Tzu and because it's a very expensive tech to purchase.
The AI's were slackers about starting wonders earlier in this game, but now with a whole lot of wonder techs around, half of the AI cities are trying for one wonder or another. Here is my mid-GA empire with the landgrab phase complete:
I got beaten to a couple of the marginal city locations, but I plan to eventually flip or capture them; no big deal.
I didn't have a worker farm until later in the game, by the way; they're somewhat harder to set up under the variant rules, and I got a decent number of workers by just skimming them off of food-rich cities.
I decide to take the wonder build in Entremont as the Mausoleum. It's a neat little wonder, I think; it never becomes obsolete, it's cheap, and it eventually draws tourists. If you can build it early enough it can be almost as good as the Colossus.
London completes the Temple of Artemis in 90 BC. I hold my breath, but no wonders crash-complete in the ensuing cascade. Then Rome city completes the Great Library in 70 BC. Well, I didn't need those wonders anyway. :P
Viroconium flips to me in 10 AD. Thanks for the free city, Seizure! You should know better than to found cities so far away from home.
Tech moves along at a fast clip; as far as I can tell this has been an entirely peaceful game. Egypt is the tech leader, and now I see that Egypt has started Knights Templar in 70 AD. With Egypt already having a monopoly on Monotheism, that gives Cleo a clear two-tech lead. And she's my neighbor. Whee!
Carthage city completes the Hanging Gardens in 90 AD. Oh well. Now that the Egyptian monopoly on Monotheism has just been broken, I console myself by conducting a 3-for-1 broker, getting Monotheism, Engineering, and The Republic (why not, it was basically free at this point).
Some Portuguese city that has maybe three shields completes the Great Lighthouse in AD 150. I thought I would get that, as all the AI's on that were very shield-poor. That starts Portugal's Golden Age, too, not good news. Well, with four of my cities trying to build wonders, I'm beginning to run out of cascade options. I decide to crash-complete my FP in Gergovia, wasting only 4 shields. It might be a tundra city, but it has a lot of production potential in this variant, and FP location does not make a difference in 1.15b except for the city it's in.
The next turn, York completes the Great Wall. Ack. I thought I'd be doing well backed by the Golden Age, but it's tougher to build wonders in this variant. The least of my wonder-building cities wastes 63 shields building a colosseum. The turn after that, Egypt completes Knights Templar. Whoa.
In AD 310 a 2-fer opportunity appears, and I get Theology and Invention for my two remaining wonder-building cities. The next turn, Thebes completes Sun Tzu's Art of War. Well, I can just go capture that someday, at least.
Two turns later, Lisbon completes Leonardo's Workshop. D'oh! The Palace is too cheap to tide me over now. Oh well, you can't win them all; and I did get the Pyramids, so I can't complain too much. Camulodunum is now the home of the world's most expensive colosseum. Someone named Daniel Snyderbrenner buys it.
I do complete the Sistine Chapel in Alesia in AD 380, a tasty wonder for a religious civ. One city, Memphis, cascades to Copernicus, but the massive cascading is finally over.
I'll wrap this up later; it's getting very late here.
I felt the next step was to prepare for war against Egypt, my neighbor. Since I had poured a large number of shields into wonders (something I like doing even if I know it isn't quite worthwhile), this wasn't an option before. I never built a single Gallic Sword all game, actually.
In AD 400 I take advantage of a 2-for-1 deal on Education and Gunpowder. I don't have any saltpeter, but it looks like England has tons, and I don't intend to build many muskets or declare war soon, as it'll take a while to build up a decent number of trebuchets and knights that I'll be upgrading to cavalry for the eventually war.
During this trade I use a trick that I don't see often in RBCiv games or SG's, so let me mention it ... if an AI cannot quite offer market value for a tech I am selling, I often simply give the AI money, which I will get back anyway once I sell the tech. I'm not 100% sure of this, but I do think this greatly reduces the chance that the AI will demand something (which is annoying if it's a lux, resource, or tech rather than the usual 25-50g). Later in the game, it can be profitable to give an AI enough money so that it has 1000g. This will often cause the AI to magically have more gpt available from Wall Street; a tech sale will then not only get my 1000g back, but up to 50gpt extra. For now, though, this trick just gets me up in Carthage's good graces.
I begin construction of non-cutout defenses and some knights and trebuchets. Egypt's Memphis completes Copernicus's Observatory in AD 510. Ah, another wonder I can capture.
In AD 520 I pull off this succession of tech deals:
Wines + WM + 1003g to Egypt for WM + Astronomy
Furs + 269g + Astronomy @mono to Portugal for Chemistry @mono
Chemistry @mono to Egypt for Navigation + Music Theory + 395g
a whole bunch of money-making map deals now that I have the ability to trade maps
Give 200g to Carthage, then trade Chemistry + Navigation to Carthage for Banking + WM + my 200g back
Astronomy then goes to England for Dyes + 6gpt
That's a 5-for-1 deal. Quite the bargain.
I then swap Gergovia to Magellan and Lugdunum to Bach.
AD 590 sees the first war action all game, as Portugal declares war on Rome. Rome doesn't have much territory, so I'm figuring Portugal will do well here. The peaceful AI's have been researching quickly, perhaps a shade too fast even though I'm aiming for a space win.
In AD 640 a 2-for-1 deal on Economics and Metallurgy appears, and I take it. Augustodurum by now is a powerhouse, even though it has not a single grass or plains tile; the deserts and hills are enough for it to make a lot of shields in this variant. It swaps to Bach as I swap my Bach build to Smith -- with happiness already not much of an issue with Sistine-powered cathedrals, it's better to get Smith if I have a competition problem.
Roman cities fall quickly before the Portuguese as Gergovia completes Magellan's Voyage in AD 700.
In AD 730 Egypt declares war on Carthage. I'm nearly ready for war now, so this is very convenient. I'll wait a few turns for Egypt's units to wander into Carthage or get killed, then start my own war.
In AD 750 I get Physics and Printing Press in a 2-for-1 deal. Here is the state of my empire, which is almost ready for its first war:
This message has been edited by DarkSavant from IP address 64.160.52.219 on Mar 30, 2004 9:38 PM
First of all, congrats on your winning game, and I'm glad you're enjoying CIv3 again!
I'm a little bit curious about this:
"if an AI cannot quite offer market value for a tech I am selling, I often simply give the AI money, which I will get back anyway once I sell the tech."
You're saying that instead of selling a tech for below market value, you give the AI gold, then sell the tech to them at full price? Outside of Wall Street, I can't see the advantage to that over simply selling the tech at below-market price if you are going to sell it. Sure, giving the money away helps your reputation, but so does selling tech at low prices.
I can't personally see the benefit of doing it that way, but then again I like to do things like making sure the negotiating table has been cleared before saying good bye to the AI if I'm not making a trade. The only difference is that I know my method doesn't have any in-game value at all. :P
As you can tell from the last screenshot, I get Smith's Trading Company safely; also, Rome is getting conquered by Portugal very quickly. In fact, Henry has just burned the city of Rome and the Great Library to the ground. (In real life, both the Great Library and the Temple of Artemis were destroyed and reconstructed something like three times each. Saddam Hussein actually provided a good deal of funding for the modern incarnation of the Great Library.)
I blow some cash investigating AI cities trying to build Bach, and it turns out Carthage has a backline core city that has me beat. Carthage is in a Golden Age from its war, and it looks doubtful that Egypt can conquer Carthage fast enough to beat me. Besides, I don't really need the happiness much anyway, so I'm going for Newton instead of Bach.
In AD 770 I get a 2-for-1 deal on Military Tradition and Theory of Gravity. I use the first to upgrade knights to cavalry, and the second to swap Augustodurum over to Newton. I have to pay England an arm and a leg for Saltpeter, but Egypt will have Nationalism not long from now, and Cleo also is rich enough to upgrade all of her defense, aided by Sun Tzu.
I'm ready in AD 800, and I order Egypt out of my territory -- and she complies. Well, I'll just declare war myself, then! On the first turn of war I capture El-Amarna and burn Hieraconpolis to the ground. I await the Egyptian counter, and ... there isn't one! Egypt is doing well in its war against Carthage, and there wasn't any offense around to counter my sudden attack. Hehe.
Egypt does re-take El-Amarna in AD 820, but then I retake it and this time burn it to the ground, as I don't quite how the defensive resources to defend another city there. I'll just park some units and my replacement settler on the nearby mountain until things calm down. Oh, Augustodurum also completes Newton's University this year, and I score a 2-for-1 deal on Democracy and Magnetism, which puts me into the Industrial Age and complete tech parity for the first time in many years.
Shortly thereafter, Egypt takes the city of Carthage. Maybe I was wrong about being beat to Bach ... at this time, Egypt shows up with Nationalism. Drat. I burn Alexandria to the ground on the turn (AD 850) that Cleo shows up with her brand-new monopoly and freshly-upgraded defenders everywhere.
In AD 890 my cannon/musket/cavalry force takes Memphis and Copernicus's Observatory from 4 rifle defenders.
At this point, Rome was down to one island city. I gave nine techs to him out of pity. Then Rome allied with Egypt against me the very next turn! Well, Seizure, I was thinking about defending your last city since it's close to me, but if you insist ...
AD 940 brings a peace treaty between Egypt and Carthage, who has been reduced to a couple of tundra islands. Portugal had been brought in an alliance against Carthage, however, so Carthage is also probably not long for this world.
In AD 960 I defeat the rifle defenders of Heliopolis and burn it to the ground. I also get my first MGL on my 9th elite victory; I form a cavalry army. Shortly thereafter, Egypt signs a MPP with England, who promptly declares war against me. Oops, so much for my saltpeter. The brand-new army assists in burning down Byblos, but is nearly killed in its first attack; Egypt's counter kills my army. Oh well.
With no saltpeter and facing a growing number of rifles, I want to end this war. However, I need to get a replacement settler in for Byblos, and all that territory is covered by Thebes's culture, so I need to stay at war a few more turns to escort in the settler. At around this time, it occurs to me that I can do research myself -- the AI's are being greatly slowed by all the wars. I go for Steam Power at 100%, due in 11 (would have been due earlier if I had started it sooner, d'oh).
AD 990 brings about the elimination of Rome. Seizure, you are the weakest link, goodbye! Egypt also allies with Portugal against me. Oh well, it's not like they're a major threat. I found the replacement city in AD 1010 as Portugal destroys the Carthaginians.
London completes J.S. Bach's Cathedral in AD 1030.
I discover Steam Power in AD 1080 and have made peace with England and Portugal by this time. I promptly cash in my monopoly for Nationalism and a large amount of gold. Here is my new and improved empire at the dawn of the era of the railroad barons; my entire empire just barely fits into one screenshot. Also note the Egyptian cavalry near my new city of Glanum. It stayed put there, and I didn't dare ask it to leave. Alas, it was sitting on a dreaded mined grassland, so I had to be very careful about micromanaging a corrupt new city for many turns.
Report Part VI : On to the end of Egypt and the game
March 30 2004, 11:47 PM
A whole heck of a lot of peaceful building ensues. Rails get built and factories go up. I'm now the research leader, with my new territory and all the AI wars. I make what in retrospect is a mistake, and decide to pursue ToE/Hoover before getting to Sanitation. This was lazy on my part, as I didn't enjoy the prospect of having to deal with tons-o-pollution. As it turned out, just holding down shift-D on a mammoth worker stack automatically wipes up all pollution in a fully railed empire nicely; I only need to go back and return citizens to the tiles (I wish there was an option to not reallocate citizens when pollution hits!)
I got Communism while trading around Industrialization, and I decided I had too few cities for a revolt to really be worthwhile. As it turned out, it probably was the wrong move -- I should have revolted right away.
Portugal declares war on England in AD 1295, though what happens in this war isn't much other than musical cities, as the two civs are currently evenly matched (so long as I supply rubber to England).
Some AI discovers Free Artistry. I build Shakespeare's Theater in Entremont in AD 1330, then build Universal Suffrage in Gergovia in AD 1335 just because I can. The AI's do come up with The Corporation, Refining, Steel, and Replaceable Parts as I research the bottom of the tech tree, but those were the last mandatory technologies the AI's researched before I got a chance to.
Lugdunum completes Theory of Evolution in AD 1360, and I take Electronics and Radio (I self-researched Atomic Theory). Augustodurum wraps up the Hoover Dam in AD 1380.
At about this time I have hospitals and tons of food, which really gives me a chance to play with the new specialists. I discover that all the improved and new specialists are indeed useful -- the policemen and civil engineers allow me to construct things in my captured territory at a good clip. Other people have gone into detail on this, so I won't say a whole lot about them, other than that I had a good deal of fun figuring out how they worked. I don't feel any of them are overpowered, though. I still play Alpha Centauri a fair bit these days, and the Civ III specialists are NOWHERE near as powerful as the ridiculous AC Engineers and the even more ridiculous AC Transcendi.
I do wish that extra beakers and shields weren't wasted, though. Something like Alpha Centauri's rules would be nice, I think.
Oh, and I'm currently building up to wipe out the rest of Egypt. I declare war in AD 1490; I'm still in the Era of Defense, but what I do is conduct a defensive war and exhaust Cleo's offensive forces with artillery and infantry before I move in for the kill with tanks and bombers.
And that's exactly what I do. No cities change hands for a while, as Portugal and England start another war. Alliance are formed, and it ends up as the Celts and Portugal versus England and Egypt.
My cities alternate between military and things like commercial docks and airports. I discover Motorized Transportation in AD 1545 and enter the Modern Age.
The appearance of tanks and bombers enables me to conduct a cost-effective offensive. Thebes and its 10+ infantry are the first to fall, in AD 1580. I get a MGL who rushes a new Palace in Alesia in AD 1600. In fact, I got a ridiculous number of MGL's, but they mostly went to armies that I didn't bother to fill (in retrospect, even a 1-tank army would be better than leaving them unused!) I finally get around to revolting to Communism in AD 1615, and I realize after revolting that I should have done so a long time ago. Oh well; this was actually the very first time I've even used Communism since the days of Civ 1!
In AD 1640 Egypt is down to the single city of Utica, and I sign a peace treaty. I've got all of Egypt's wonders, including Sun Tzu. And that's it for wars for me, although Portugal still is at war with England and is slowly making headway.
I research Ecology first in the Modern Age, (I hate pollution), then Computers, Miniaturization, and Fission. I get another good production boost from the offshore platforms, which now appear early enough in the game to be a factory.
In AD 1705 I complete research on Rocketry and get my first-ever SGL! I also complete The Internet in Lugdunum and the SETI Program in Gergovia this turn. I use the SGL to rush the United Nations in Lugdunum. I'm going for space, so I bury the vote; now that I have tons of specialists and the Internet, I finally have research down to 4 turns apiece, and would research all remaining techs at that rate. I build the Manhattan Project in Augustodurum in AD 1725. The next turn, Portugal eliminates Egypt.
I'm actually running a profit now, and I amuse myself by blowing huge sums of cash on propaganda attempts. Both Portugal and England were Fascist from their constant war against each other (someone should teach the AI's that Communism is far stronger in most circumstances for a war government), and I made something like 15 attempts to convert a couple of size-1 cities with no luck at all. These were good size-1 cities too -- they were the Portuguese city on my continent with Uranium, and this choice reduced-to-size-1-by-war English city with iron, coal, and dyes that would be by FAR my most productive city if I had the time to develop it. Oh well, it doesn't matter anyway.
What a great variant! Thanks for forcing me to step out of some old habits and really explore some of the new features in C3C.
I started by settling in place, just building roads. Irrigating the grassland obviously wouldn’t do much good. I was searching for some hills and mountains to settle near. All I found was the grass to the south, and some plains and that lousy desert to the north. I also tried a 50-turn gambit on Mysticism (which failed.) The 50-turn gambits never really worked for me. The only thing it did was make it cheaper to purchase the tech. I met Egypt and Carthage and was able to trade quite successfully with both civilizations.
I founded Alesia in 2270 BC on the lake to the northwest. An then it dawned on me. The desert was my friend. I could at least get one shield from every tile in the desert. I started aggressively settling the desert and plains, and set up a series of running blockades to keep the Egyptians and Carthaginians from settling the grasslands to the south.
I also started sea exploration with curraghs. My first two curraghs headed east and found the small island, but couldn’t make it across the strait on the far side. However, by opening up the map, I was able to see a Roman boarder across the starit, and sent my third curragh to meet them. I ran into the English settling Eastern Island in 590 BC, and met Rome in 570 BC. I was able to broker techs between the two continents, for some nice profits. My curraugh survived and I began exploring the coast of England.
Since I had grabbed the desert and plains, I started back filling and had virtually the entire southern portion of the continent settled, except for the furs just south of Entremont. In 390 BC, I was able to enter the Middle Ages through trading. We also revolted out of despotism. As soon as I entered the MA, I met the Portuguese. They dropped off a settler pair on the furs, and built Faro. In 370 BC, the Celtic Kingdom was created.
The Portuguese had an Ancient Cav along with their settler, and as soon as they had a spear to guard their city, the AC began exploring. Entremont must have looked enticing, because they marched the AC up to the gates of the city and attacked without provocation in 170 BC. Well that allowed me to solve the Faro problem. After gathering my forces together, I was able to capture Faro in 90 BC, and sued for peace.
My troops must have had a bull’s eye pained on their tunics, because, in 300 AD, Carthage decided they wanted one of my desert cities, and they attacked. We barely survived and pulled in Egypt to act as a buffer. Carthage had one city south of Egypt, Rusicade. We slowly moved our stack of Trebs, Gallic Swordsmen, archers, and eventually knights, into position. In 380 AD, our Golden Age was triggered by a defending GS. The Numidian Mercenaries were gallant defenders holding off our troops for several turns. Finally in 510 AD, Rusicade fell. Since the MA was over, We brought Hanibal to the peace table and was able to get Education and Printing Press for 498G in the peace deal. Egypt didn’t sign a treaty until 800 AD.
Upon discovering gunpowder, we find that the only source of saltpeter is in northern Egypt. I will need to capture at least two cities on the northern coast to get it. I began to slowly build up a force of trebs and knight in anticipation of a campaign.
Throught the first millennium AD, Portugal and England were in a series of three wars. With each war, Portugal would grab a few more English cities, and slowly became the game’s powerhouse. About 700 AD, Portugal and England began their third and final war. England was reduced to two cities on Eastern Island, and about 900 AD, I started assembling a force to pick these two very ripe cherries. As soon as my armada left port, Cleopatra had a little surprise for me and attacked. She grabbed two cities on the first turn with her swift cavalries.. At a steep price, Carthage was pulled into the war. The fleet was recalled and the cities were retaken three turns later. The war was two pronged. The city just over the frontier to the south was Alexandria. This was one source of horses, and I pillaged that quickly. I then set up a holding force to the south and harassed the Egyptian forces, drawing resources from the north. I then reassembled Operation Saltpeter in the north. With trebs and knights, first Buto (near Cleo’s only iron) and then Pi-Ramesses fell. The saltpeter was ours. An attempt was made to continue the campaign by moving inland from Pi-Ram. However, when Carthage made peace, the campaign stalled, and we brought Cleopatra to the peace table in 1210.
With our newly upgraded cavs, we decided that England was finally ripe for picking, and assembled an Armada for the second time. In 1255, we declared on England and landed two forces. The next turn England was destroyed.
In 1275 AD, we were attacked by Carthage, and we brought in Egypt on our side. The Queen of the Nile was not very reliable and she sued for peace with Hannibal in 1290 AD. We fought a holding action for several turns and signed a straight peace treaty in 1315.
The Celtic people almost had two whole centuries of peace. We were able to stay very close in tech, up until the middle of the Industrial Age. We had begun a ToE pre-build, and had just learned Electricity, when suddenly Rome was up two techs and started building ToE. No one else was even close to Rome, and the only thing I can figure out is that they entered a scientific golden age. Figuring that Rome had to be slowed down, I began to plan a long-distance campaign. Then in 1495, Henry of Portugal demanded that we send him wine. We refused and of course we were at war with the Portuguese. We brought Rome in on an Alliance, and allowed Caesar to fight for us. We also completed the dogpile and brought in Egypt and Carthage. This slowed Rome’s scientific endeavors considerably, and his ToE build in Pisae was captured by Henry. We made peace as soon as the 20 turns were up, but Cleo continued fighting for quite a while.
About this time, I decided it was time to try out some of the new governments. I had already tried Feudalism in a succession game I am playing in (Gang of Four), and I felt that that government wasn’t going to work for me in this game. I researched Fascism, and in 1580 revolted. I did not like Fascism. I knew that the population would drop in each city, but my income dropped dramatically. After two turns, I revolted back to a Monarchy, a 105 gpt difference in income.
With Caesar’s ToE build destroyed, I was able to build it and selected Atomic Theory and Electronics. Here is where I had made a huge error. With all the irrigation across my lands, I overlooked the river and thought that there wasn’t a river to build the Hoover Dam on. I lost about six turns in pre-build, before I realized my error and started building on the river north of the capitol. I missed out on Hoover by three turns. Luckily Cleopatra built in in Memphis which was right next to Pi-Ramesses. Yes, time for another campaign, and I started assembling forces.
I decided that the only way I was going to get back into the tech race was through larceny. I researched Espionage, built the Intelligence Agency. I made my first steal in 1665 and stole Steal from Rome. I would continue stealing techs (safe only) all the way to the Modern Age. The only tech I researched myself was Radio at a 50-turn rate.
I received a nice give in 1670 when, the Roman city on Eastern Island, Hispalis, flipped to us.
I built some outposts overlooking Egypt, and watched Egypt fight Portugal in the war that continued from the alliance two and a half centuries earlier. I also learned about policemen and civil engineers. The CE has to be one of the more powerful specialists in the game. The ability to cut a build by 67% just by adding one CE is huge. I would make significant use of them the remainder of the game. This is the reason my game took so long. The added micromanagement burden slowed things down dramatically.
In 1752, we declared on Egypt and two turns later our forces captured Memphis and Hoovers. We pressed on and in 1790, Egypt was destroyed. In 1800, we stole Motor Transportation.
About this time, I was thinking that domination would be a good way to win this game, so with my CEs, rails, factories, and the Hoover Dam. I quickly built a force of tanks and in true Napoleanic fashion, launched an invasion of Carthage in 1812. I brought in Portugal. I didn’t worry about Rome, since they had become a non-entity. In 1824, I finally got my first military leader. I’ve never been very good about fishing for them (although I sure try enough) and this game was no exception. I used him to build by palace in former Egyptian lands. In 1850, the Carthaginians were destroyed.
In 1854, we stole our way into the Modern Era. About this time I made a second huge era. I misread the victory screen. I mixed up land area with population, and thought I was short on population, when in fact I was short on land. So in 1862 I went to war with Rome in search of the extra population. In 1870, Rome was destroyed, and I hadn’t gained much population….er, land area.
This was at about 6 PM on Sunday, March 28th. Going to war with Portugal was going to be a long drawn out affair across two separated fronts. That was when I decided that a spaceship victory would be the quickest way to win the game.
I stole three more techs, Rocketry, Computers, and Space Flight, and then I researched the rest. Making use of the scientists and policemen, I was able to get to a 6 turn research rate. Using pre-builds in my best cities, we built our spaceship. Apollo was completed about 1955, while Portugal didn’t start building their ship until 1970 or so. They wasted a lot of time with building the UN, Manhattan, and SETI. I spent my shields, building research labs. In 1987, we researched miniaturization and a Scientific Great Leader was born. He was used to spark a Scientific Golden Age which cut a year from each of the subsequent research projects. In 1996, we researched our last tech, Robotics and another SGL appeared. Our pre-build for the Stasis Chamber was three turns away, and the SGL rushed it for us. The Celtic Spaceship was launched in 1997. Our final score was 4315.
What a fun game! The government restrictions added a substantial challenge, but combine that with the irrigation restriction, and it was huge. I really learned a lot about specialists, but they are a significant micro-management factor. I will need to revisit Fascism. Perhaps a SG where you can only use governments that use a whip.
I decided around 6 PM to go for a spaceship, and I still didn't finish until 10:10 PM last night. Micromanaging all those specialists takes a lot of time.
Sirian had a good point in his write up. I don't think the AI will be able to manage them as well as the human.
Good writeup! I'm curious how moving your Palace to Egypt worked out. Did you notice an increase in income? Obviosly it should help production in the newer towns, but did it make up for the loss in the original core? With the newly-weakened FP, I didn't think a palace move would pay off, but I haven't tried it in v1.15 yet either, so I'm interested to know how well it worked.
Also, you mentioned saving a research turn during your Scientific Golden Age, but everything I've seen says it doesn't work right. Did it work out for you? It would be a nice feature if it did.
As for the space decision, I have faced that dilemna before, I hate it when RL time constraints force me to change my choice of victory condition, but it happens. Almost happened on this one, I had a "contingency plan" in the back of my mind of going for domination if I didn't think I would have time to ride out the culture (of course, I didn't have the military to make it happen, but that's another story).
I think intially, the palace jump hurt my income and productivity. However, in the long run I think it helped because of more shields being available and there were more cities that reduced the corruption.
As for the scientific GA, it is hard to say since to only lasted six turns. It would be nice to see what would happen in a non-variant game over a full 20 turns.
Fascism is definitely an odd government; I'm not sure what to make of it. It really isn't much different from Monarchy; the unit support and corruption are minimally better. You trade the population hit and xenophobia for the faster workers and elite spies, which doesn't seem worthwhile to me. The elite spies could have potential in Always War, but other than that it seems pretty useless.
Good game, although if you were doing 6-turn research with Rome also researching, you should've gotten you to space much faster than 1997. Kylearan and I both launched in the mid-1700s. I guess that'll happen if you go for a military win and then switch over to a space goal after already getting to the modern age.
Yes T-Hawk, switching goals definitiely hurt. Although my finish date would have been lousy either way. Probably 1900 or so for domination and about four more hours of playing time.
If I knew of the time crunch on Saturday, I would have kept Rome and Carthage around to help the research.
Found on initial tile. Its fresh water and coastal. Four warriors and then a granary. MM for all that I am worth. I do make an important error. I miss fully exploring to the south and seeing the island to the SE.
2230BC Next town founded is on the lake to the NW with spices and fish in the first ring.
Meet the Egyptians. Wonder if we are alone. Nope. There are brown borders. Carthage. Actually, they are at war. That will help my growth.
1790BC Lugdunum founded by the dual wines with the lake.
1475BC Camulodunum founded SW of the capitol on the southern edge of the lake with fish in first ring and whale in second ring. This will ultimately be my top shield producer once forests are planted in tundra and hills are mined.
1225BC Richborough founded near the iron. It can work a couple of floodplains. This city, and several others, really benefited from the Ag trait. Being able to irrigate desert like plains allowed me to have significantly stronger cities than otherwise possible without the AG trait.
875BC was an important year when I founded Verulamium south of the capitol on one of the furs. That allowed border expansion to see the island. A curragh was soon sent to investigate.
About 650BC The curragh gets there, and we meet a Roman and English galley that were dropping off settlers.
630BC, I am able to confer a Lit monopoly into Masonry, Math, Construction, MM, Philo, CoL, and Myst. Such is the power of a monopoly on two continents.
Here is a map of the lands as of 270BC:
You will notice the FP being built. This location turned out to be particularly beneficial as it substantially reduced corruption in about 7 or 8 towns, all to the north. I have no second thoughts about its location.
Also of particular note on the above picture is the Roman blemish. That will play a key role in the development of my lands. By 200AD, I had entered into a monarchy and it was time for a GA.
250AD An unsupported town like that is begging for a smack. And a couple of Gaelic Swordsmen was all it took to capture that town and set off my GA. And a very effective GA it was. Markets, cathedrals, aqueducts, courthouses, granaries were all built. A huge boost in production.
Of course, I brought in Portugal and England to help keep Rome busy.
260AD I continued the Roman advance forward and captured one city on the island to the SE of the capitol.
After the 20 turns of alliance, there really wasn’t much point in continuing on with Rome. I could have gotten a garbage city on their landmass as compensation, but it wasn’t worth having an undefendable colony over there.
Ahh, but England continued to be the tech leader. And Lizzie being Lizzie, she decided to get uppidy with me and sneak attacked in 400AD on the island. That was fine as I wanted to slow down her research anyway. So Rome and Portugal were brought in with some older techs.
It is helpful to have a monopoly on communication across the water. Despite the prevalence of seafaring civs, they did not send forth an exploring galley. So I was able to broker techs from one side of the pond to the other and stay near the tech lead. This was a critical component to my game. The idjit AI not exploring and contacting.
I was able to take Dover from England on the island in 430AD. Then, it was time to grab a foot-hold on their continent.
I had been producing a handful of galleys to help shuttle troops to the island, and then to the other continent.
510AD I had assembled 4 knights and a Gallic on the outskirts of Newcastle. Newcastle was just across the water from the 2-tile island. Defended by pikes, it soon fell and I had a good DEFENDABLE foothold on the other continent.
I also founded a town on the 2-tile island to help with “virtual rails”. This port city was particularly important once England had their Man-O-Wars. I could send ships from port to port in one turn, never exposing them to attack.
560AD England had muskets. Gunpowder had been passed around some. For Furs, Wine and 37 gpt , Cleo revealed the location of saltpeter to me. What??? No salt in all that desert we control? Carthage has some. And what’s this, some just outside of Coventry, 1 tile from an expanded border of our captured Newcastle. Well, we know our target now. I had been amassing troops for an assault on first-ring Nottingham to help secure the dyes. But salt will be more important. So my 15 unit SoD of knights, gallics, and trebuchets overcome the defending muskets in a couple of turns and we secure saltpeter. Raze and replace.
In retrospect, the timing of the acquisition of gunpowder with my establishing a supportable foothold on the other continent was very fortunate and very deterministic. It set the direction for the remainder of my game. My closest neighbor, Egypt, had no salt. No iron either as they were boneheaded about claiming the source 4 tiles from Thebes. Easy target. Likewise, Carthage had no horses. So no cavs. My directions were clear. Domination it would be.
Research was set in all haste towards Mil Trad.
I left a significant force of troops in England. I settled another town on the hills next to a second saltpeter, 3 tiles from the former Newcastle. I did bring back my elites before moving on Egpyt.
700AD The idiot AI has never sent out exploring galleys to make contact. I sell contact across between the continents. Unbelievable.
810AD I declared war on Egpyt. Cavs rolled over pikes and spears. They had imported a bit of iron from Carthage.
By 930AD, Thebes was captured, along with the Hanging Gardens, Leo’s, and the Oracle. Egypt was destroyed. In the process, we get our first GL. Cav army. YUM!
940AD Waste no time and go after Carthage. First order of business is to pillage their saltpeter. No new muskets.
1020AD Carthage captured, along with Sistene and the expired Great Library. A second leader emerged and formed another cav army.
1040AD Carthage pushed off the continent to their little islands. Get a third leader in the process. A third cav army.
1110AD After capturing the larger northern island and pillaging their small island, take peace with them for Magnetism. This will allow for upgrades to galleons to carry cav armies across the seas. Next, sell them a ton of luxes and a fair bit of GPT for ToG to get into the industrial age.
Start max research on nationalism.
Before this game began, I had originally planned to move into feudalism to help develop corrupt areas. But I found the gold from monarchy was more helpful in selectively rushing temples (aided by religious trait) than burning corrupt citizens. Also, my towns were all size 12 and unit support problems would have been a significant issue had I switched to feudalism. So in monarchy, I stayed.
I have to admit that I did work some mined grasslands/plains in captured Egyptian/Carthage lands. But I made sure that they were corrupted shields. I felt that this situation fit within the spirit of the game guidelines. I did not benefit shield-wise from the mining of an arable tile.
With our continent secure and a couple of nice islands in our hands, we have 48% of the land and 62% of the population. Time to hit Rome who is ironless, horseless, and saltless. The newly-upgraded galleons ferry our troops and armies via “virtual rails” to our English holdings. From there, they board more boats for a trip north to Rome.
Around 1170AD, I declare on Rome, landing 3 cav armies and a few other troops outside Neopolis. This is a first-ring town on the peninsula south of Rome.
Utica flips back to Carthage despite my superior culture.
England and Carthage decide to MPP. Ok, no problem.
1190AD Rome falls and we capture Sun Tzus.
Well, how about this!?!? England sneak attacks! Their cavs actually kill several of my units. But on the good side, in counter-attacking, we trip the MPP against Carthage. We get back our GPT and can wipe them out now.
Bring in Portugal to help with England.
1200AD Veii falls. Recapture Utica.
1210AD Hmm..the research time on Nationalism drops significantly. Carthage and England both have it.
1220AD Wipe out the Romans. The Carthage island defended by rifles is proving tough for 3 cavs. Killed one, have to heal again before resuming.
Meanwhile, in England, an explorer more than pays for his shields by pillaging the only English saltpeter. He is not attacked and goes on to pillage their incense.
1240AD Capture the English Sagres on the former Roman border. We are now at 58% landmass, 71% population.
An army is sent to collect the Carthage blight on the tip of the other continent near Portugal.
1250AD The carthage island capitol is captured with our 3 cavs, leaving only the blight city. It absorbs 3 attacks from our cav army.
Continue to hold steady against England as my armies heal and move through Portugal towards the main part of England.
1255AD Cav army kills the last carthage defender and Carthage is destroyed. Nationalism is discovered. Turn off research to get more gold for rush-building.
1260AD Ravenna captured from England, allowing my foothold-cities to connect with Portugal with former Rome on the other side.
Move troops on Nottingham.
62%/74% for area/population
1265AD Nottingham razed. Replaced by Segusio. Move on Canterbury and Hastings.
1270AD Capture Canterbury, along with Copernicus. Idiot English didn’t put Cop’s with the Colossus in London.
1275AD Capture Hastings. Capture York. We are now at 67% land, 81% population. Fill in captured cities as much as possible with units to reduce flip risk. Hit enter and
Conquest victory in 1280AD. Total Score 5882.
In retrospect, there were several keys to victory:
1) The lit monopoly allowed me to go from far behind in tech to tech leader. Having monopolies on two continents significantly helped this situation.
2) Rome placing an easy target on my landmass. This allowed my to time my GA extremely well.
3) The early Roman war allowed me to get access to the island SE of our landmass.
4) England sneak attacking me. Twice. The continuation of the first war allowed me to get a defendable foothold on their continent. Also, timing was excellent with gunpowder. Allowed me to acquire 2 saltpeters in England, one for my own and one for denial. This was huge for allowing me to unilaterally build cavs on my continent. The second war triggered the MPP with Carthage. That allowed me to finish Carthage sooner than otherwise possible.
5) The MAs that I signed. All were with the other continent and forced them to take the brunt of the fighting. Those wars normally continued after my 20 turns. These wars substantially slowed the tech pace.
6) The Idjit AI did not make contact across the pond. I ended up selling contacts around 700AD. The delayed contact also slowed the tech pace and helped with tech trading.
7) The resources were distributed favorably once I had saltpeter. It was easy pickings afterwards.
The lack of shields definitely altered my plans. I did not go for a wonder. Actually, I did go for the colossus, but England badly beat me to it. (And triggered an ancient age GA for them.) My “colossus” shields went nicely into my first Gallic. Cavs faired extremely well on pikes, spears, and NuMes. Those shields were well invested. Knight attacks on English muskets was tough and limited my aggression once my immediate goal (saltpeter) was obtained..
I did not build the military academy. My top shields producer was about 18 spt. No way that I could produce armies. I did build the Epic. I ended up with 4 armies (all cavs). I sometimes had trouble filling the armies, however.
The government choices played into a warmonger game. I had hoped to get into communism for its shields. Never got there. I also never got to use the specialists, other than the taxmen and scientists.
I was never really thrilled with my city placements. I wasted too many good tiles near the capitol and FP.
All in all, it was a fun game. In the end, it was largely decided by resource allocation. I had all that I needed. Most of the AI’s didn’t.
congrats on your victory! What I really find remarkable is that the Romans in your game managed to ferry a settler over to your continent to found Viroconium in BC times! That's really different from all other games. Maybe your Egypt and Carthage were battling each other longer than in my game for example, and thus never managed to settle in that spot.
I can't believe that Roman settlement! Very different indeed, and changed the knowledge of civs. In my game the eastern AI was pathetic at exploring and I had a hemisphere-brokering position for a huge part of the game.
You will notice the FP being built. This location turned out to be particularly beneficial as it substantially reduced corruption in about 7 or 8 towns, all to the north. I have no second thoughts about its location.
Yes, that location came with a big neon sign "Build FP Here!" Almost everyone put it right there, usually on that exact same tile, which was a fine choice.
Did Rome end up with the Great Lighthouse? That's the only way I could think of for them to have gotten that city there.
BTW, your text says Conquest victory in 1280AD, but your picture says Domination. Just making a note for whoever compiles the score results (which will probably be me.)
They got that settlement by normal means. The passage was makeable with a regular galley.
Charis, you mention that the settlement impacted the meeting of the other civs. Actually, it did not. I met them (at least Rome and England) with a curragh on the island SE of the capitol. That boat successfully suicided to the other continent and met the portugese.
The settlement also didn't really delay my GA much. I would have put some troops on boats and taken the island. That island was too close to the capitol not to control.
Great report, and looks like a very fun game. I love it when events/timing come together like that. Strange that Rome could found a city on your continent, but never got another 10 tiles to make contact! Good news for you, though, and probably another benefit to taking that city out. I found out the hard way that the AI had contact in my game, when my rep was mistakenly trashed by idiot Carthage, but I was able to broker some techs early on. Also strange that Egypt didn't connect the iron in my game either, that should have been a first-ring city site!
My game illustrates a problem that I have been having with C3C. The paucity of resources.
From reading the beta reports from people like Sullla, it seems as though Firaxis/Breakaway inadvertantly reduced the number of resources and luxuries when they created the new bonus tiles. Oasis, tobacco, etc. take the place of actual luxuries and resources.
The reduced luxuries make religion more important for happiness concerns. I find it a bit annoying, but tolerable. It might slightly unbalance things as the AI hires clowns instead of adjusting the lux slider as a human would.
But the much more severe issue is the resources. The AI cannot survive without them. The human can (assuming a non-Sid game and even then....) The reduced resources makes the game a crap shoot. Its all a question of who gets the resources.
A related issue is how poorly the AI defends its resources. It is so easy to come in and take the nearby city or at least pillage the site. Huge vulnerability that could be reasonably programmed around.
Another solution would be to reduce the trade cost of resources. Yes, they are valuable. But if they didn't cost so much, it would not cripple the economy of the buyer, thereby hamstringing them by other means. Though not in this game, I have killed the economy of a tech leader by selling them a resource. They never led again and fairly quickly became an also-ran civ. All because the economy was paying for a luxury. So reducing the trade value would substantially reduce this problem. It would also ensure that more civs got resources.
Qouth Ridgelake
Though not in this game, I have killed the economy of a tech leader by selling them a resource. They never led again and fairly quickly became an also-ran civ. All because the economy was paying for a luxury. So reducing the trade value would substantially reduce this problem. It would also ensure that more civs got resources.
End Quoth
Exactly. In my game one of the reasons I was able to gain the tech lead in the late middle ages was by selling all my excess trade goods (not strategic resources, though) to the English Kong. Her money funded my research and her appetite for fancy clothes, tasty food and aromatherapy crippled hers.
My first Epic over and done, my first report. It's not going to be a big and detailed one. I'm a bit to lazy and a bit to short on time to write anything close to what I am managing for the RBC games, but I'll post something of an executive summary.
First Impressions:
Celts are strong, this is my second full game with them and their UU as well as their traits allow for very strong starts. Something I was very aware of and keen to take advantage of. The starting location was solid and there were excellent expansion possibilities.
Initial Turns:
Ok, very frustrating, all my notes have disappeared.
This is by memory (2 weeks old and full of RBC13).
After the initial expansion phase, my map looked a lot like Ridgelake's except I settled a lot more tightly. I kept reasonably up with the tech and when I started lagging I decided it was time to set off my golden age and take some cities. IIRC Carthage was first, getting me some desert cities and a tech. Egypt followed similarly. And then I went for the kill. Egypt, and tehy were gone by the time we discovered Gunpowder, realizing that there was only one source of saltpeter on the continent I hit Carthage for it right afterwards. That clinched the continent. Backfilling, teching and city development followed.
Mid-Game:
Carthage was hit down to three cities (on the Island NE of the starting continent), all of which they had borrowed from Portugal. All of their cities were gone by the time Cavalry ruled supreme. Portugal had gotten both Zeus and KT, but that was really it. I decided, after having read RBC11 (Communists) that I wanted to try that governement. It was qute excellent. By the time Tanks rolled out England was the only nation in contention considering techs, and I hit Portugal with tanks, keeping their cities so I could airlift in troops if I needed to conquer.
End-Game:
With several wonders from the late middle ages (Smith, Newton, Cop for sure) in in hand I trounce Portugal quickly (grabbing Magellan's), establish a border with England, fortifying with leftover Cav and tanks. I then hit Rome while alternately researching at 100% taxing 100%. Production was good, all my cities were generally producing modern armor in four-five turns late game. When the game ended I was in a low grade war with England, still debating (as I had for about the last 20 turns) if I wanted to just kill them or do the Communists in Space idea that I wanted to try. As it happened it was a moot point, domination hitting in 1784.
Notes:
1. The single saltpeter resource really made me hammer home my first wars. It meant that there was no recourse to cav on teh continent without it... which could have gotten ugly.
2. The resource distribution in general was interesting and often I found it driving the decision-making process.
3. The new specialists are very strong. Even all-non bg grasslands cities were pumping out buildings at a reasonable pace.
4. The inability to mine was a small handicap compared to what I thought it would be. I did miss mming cites off the mines occasionally, especially in the captured Roman cities, as often they only had mined squares. By the time the game ended there was only one AI mined square that hadn't been pillaged or irrigated, I missed it when my tanks were running through. I felt the crunch just as cavalry disappeared, but once I hit communism and started to get factories in place it was all peachy.
5. It was a lot of fun, and the first time I actually bothered to, and found it interesting to fight a modern war.
This message has been edited by WalkerintheMist from IP address 142.103.37.39 on Mar 29, 2004 5:59 PM
I also was surprised at how little the lack of mining hurt. It made for very large and very rich towns far sooner than I normally would. So fewer shields making more advanced units didn't leave me with problems.
More on that later...
Welcome to the Epics, and glad you enjoyed the game. 1784 AD is a bit late for a domination win as compared to other games, but if you had fun, it's not about the scoreboard.
The saltpeter distribution was my doing as I customized the map. I intended to make it harder for the player to get cavalry, to slow down that all-powerful option at least a bit. Most players who wanted to seemed able to conquer the one on the home continent or buy some from the other continent soon enough, though. Early war can be restricted by iron placement (I placed that one iron, a little ways away from the player's start but still reachable for an alert player.) But by the gunpowder era, the world is developed enough that saltpeter is just about always available.
Communism is great for a large empire, as always. If available, Republic is still faster to research up to space; but with that off the table, Communism was the best government for any player that expanded out beyond their home end of that continent.
The handicap of not mining had its biggest effect in building ancient and middle ages wonders. Only a couple locations - the capital and the east end of the big lake - could make up to around 20 shields in medieval times. But even so, down here on Emperor difficulty, you could get most of them if you put your mind to it. In the late game, of course the specialists would give you all the shields you needed to build whatever you wanted.
I tried to settle near any possible iron source before I had IW. When I saw the few sources of iron I thought maybe it was a C3C feature. But when I saw the one source of saltpeter and its location I was pretty sure that was intentional. When I saw the one source of oil, I was positive that T-Hawk's hand molded the map.
When customizing maps, I usually hand-place the first three resources, but everything from coal onwards I usually (and did on this map) just leave wherever they originally land. The game can go in too many different directions by the Industrial Age for manual resource placement to impose a particular influence on events by then. Even saltpeter often ends up in the hands of civs that the map maker didn't intend, and that happened in several games here.
Yupp you are right T-Hawk, 1784 is a lot late for domination... but accidents happen (I was planning on going for space, but got sidetracked by how much fun modern armor/bombers were - as I rarely have my games last this long). I probably should just have razed the Roman and back-area Portugese cities to ensure that I didn't have the land area for it. Then again there is the whole laziness factor. I don't generally feel like MMing my way properly through a whole game which leads to late dates in the first place. This also makes SGs alot of fun as I get to pull out my best for ten turns, which is really interesting and takes my gaming ot a totally different level.
On a completely different note: I'm curious as to how everyone else takes notes for their reports. Doing reports the way I do for SGs is much to time consuming, so any tips and hints in advance of Epic 40 would be really nice as I would like to provide people with more material to critique.
I always have a text editor and paint open while playing civ3. While playing, I take every screenshot I think could be interesting later and save it; I sort it out later which ones to use. I keep a brief log about what happens in the game and about my decisions, like
800AD: physics->ToG. Damn, Rome 1 turn ahead for 2 techs now. War on Egypt. Have to attack Alexandria over river but luckily only defended by a knight and two spears. Still, lost 2 cavs! Gems now.
830AD: Capture Memphis. Fighting spears is fun. Why hasn't Cleo upgraded?!?
After the game is complete, I write the report from this log and the screenshots.
I know some people like Sirian take very few notes and write most of their report from memory, but my memory is very bad so I cannot do this. Another strategy would be to write the full report while playing. I have tried this once, but immersion into the game suffered immensely by the breaks between turns where I wrote the report, and the report tended to get a lot longer, too.
I'm probably not the most efficient note-taker, I tend to take too many notes, which can bog down the game. Like Kylearan said, have a paint-type program in the background (I use IrfanView, which is quick for croping or resizing, but doens't allow adding text etc, I have to do that later). I will also tend to just take the screenshots as I go, then sort through and edit later. As for notes, I usually just keep an old-fashioned notebook on the desk, and write down key events (Techs, cities founded etc. ) and if something major happens (like changing govt's, turn before and after GA starts, etc) I will save the game, so I can go back later and get the stats. I have tried having a text editor open in another window, and Alt-Tab back and forth. I seem to be able to do that better for SGs, as I am pausing after each turn usually anyway, and want a lot more detailed notes, but for an Epic-type game, I find it takes away from the immersion, and/or I get to an exciting part and forget to tab over.
As I complete a session or two, especially if I get to a 'decision point' (end of an age, beginning of a war, fork in the tech tree), I will then take the time to type up that portion of the report. I usually note which screenshots I want to use, although I may not edit them yet. I find that it helps me review what has happened up to that point, and reflect a little on my long-term strategy, before playing through the next big decision. This is also often tied to RL, if I know I will be out of town for the weekend, I will play to a good stopping point, where I know there are some decisions to be made, then type the report to take with me, and mull it over. The biggest downside to my method is that (in addition to being pretty time-consuming) my handwriting is terrible, and more than once I have had to guess at what my notes say (I bought Astronomy from Germany? They're not even in this game!)
Anyway, hope that helps, and hope your handwriting is better than mine!
I apologise for this rather brief summary of my game here at the moment, I hope to get my report on the net soon.
I know the spirit of the epic was geared toward heavy micromanagement and specialist analysis but I'm sure there are more than enough capable players to do this so I'll just have some good ol fun!
I achieved a Domination Victory in the Year 770AD
Some excerpts from my report.
"Without the ability to mine most tiles, unless there are plenty of hills/mountains nearby, all cities will be rather shield poor. Under this assumption, a cultural victory will probably be the toughest unless there are plenty of nearby food bonuses. Diplomatic/Space Races will probably be difficult as well since a shield restriction means less improvements and units. This means, conquest/domination victories will probably be the simplest, (probably domination is easier).
Under despotism, unless there are plenty of plains/flood plains nearby, it would be useless to irrigate lots of tiles. Rather workers can build lots of roads to get useful commerce.
This commerce can be used to purchase/upgrade military instead and what I am going to do for this variant. I am planning to forgo science in favour of a few Gallic Swordsmen.
The plan is to conquer my continent and keep conquering until domination is reached."
Settler moves south-west to start, then west onto the hill, then finally settling north of the hill to claim sugar. -_-
2670BC: I found Alesia in the middle of some flood plains. The role of Alesia is to whip out settlers.
"2590BC: Buy Bronze Working off Carthage for 50g. Begin Minimum science toward Iron Working."
1950BC: Found Lugdunum.
1700BC: Found Camulodunum.
I built lots more cities but I'll just skip them.
1325BC: IBT Carthage builds the Pyramids. I believe the Carthigans used a scientific great leader to snag the wonder.
900BC: Use an iron colony to train 6 gallic swordsmen for 540g. Carthage has a city near the iron.
You might laugh and wonder what 6 gallic swordsmen can do against mercenaries but they can do plenty. The first swordsman loss occured in 270BC.
800BC: Declare war with Carthage and auto-raze their town near MY iron.
730BC: Drunk on my own sense of power, I declare on Egypt now also. Auto-raze Byblos and Capture Alexandria (Near gems) in this war.
690BC: Peace with Carthage
650BC: Peace with Egypt, my army consists of My awesome army consists of 12 gallics, 4 warriors, 6 workers and 2 settlers. I have 12 rather spaced out cities. As in I'm wasting a heck of a lot of space.
(Point stick research here)
390BC: Meet the English and Rome using a galley. They are super advanced. (Middle Ages)
IBT: Golden Age ends.
350BC: Forbidden Palace completes in Lugdunum.
270BC: War was declared on Carthage's last turn. Oea and Leptis Minor are taken immediately.
170BC: Carthage is taken which contains the Pyramids and the Temple of Artemis. Peace is declared and revolt.
130BC: The Celts are a Monarchy!
70BC: Redeclare war upon Egypt. At this point in time, I have contacted every civ and none of them have iron? I think this is going to be an easy game.
260AD: Finally get enough units to the last city on an island Egypt had gotten to and wiped them out.
230AD: On Carthage's last turn, War was redeclared.
"230AD: Gallic swordsmen pour over the border eager for blood. Hippo is the first to fall. In 250AD Sabratha and Theveste fall to the Celts. The celts now have control over the Great Lighthouse in Theveste! This turned out be critical when invading the other continent since I could reinforce my armies faster and move my units around more effectively. For my vastly undermanned and underdefended nation, logistics is critical to all my army efforts."
I enter the middle ages in 250AD by trading wines + 100g to the Portugese.
420AD: I have destroyed the last of Carthage's many island cities and have wiped them from the game as well. My new target is Rome since they do not have saltpeter. All they have are horses.
With an entire continent under my control, it's only a matter of time till I can flood the other continent with gallic swordsmen, since they effectively cannot build any offensive units.
Longbowmen/Spearmen are totally ineffecive against mighty gallics. Rome did build a few horsemen, but they were too few to do any real damage.
I pop 2 leaders in the war against Rome, which is balanced by the fact that the Roman capital and one other major city flipped back taking almost all the units in the north with them. However, 2 armies of 3 elite swordsmen are more than enough to crush spearmen, so they do that.
Rome has one last city in the south which I have been attacking as well.
700AD: I have finally gathered 15 healthy vet swordsmen to surround hispalis and I capture it, kicking Rome out of the game. There are an additional 16 redlined swordsmen from previous failed attacks ready to recouperate inside Hispalis.
720AD: My forces are ready to go at it again, this time I shall use Portugal as my ally to distract the English since Portugal has many dangerous AC's, although England has musketmen.
However 60+ swordsmen and 2 armies and Portugal's numerous AC's prove impossible to stop and I capture enough English cities to take the game in the year 770AD.
Final Statistics:
Domination Victory: 770AD
World Area/Population: 67%/80%
Game Time: 10 Hours, 44 Minutes, 31 Seconds
Score: 8456
Most of my cities were producing Gallic Swordsmen and very little else. Just barracks/courthouses/aqueducts and the occasional marketplace.
When I won, I was behind 13 technologies. I had all the ancient area techs except Literature/The Republic.
The Ai's had gotten as far as Navigation, possibly Magnetism.
Last remarks:
"So it goes to show, you don't need a fabulous tech lead to win the game.
Iron is the lifeblood of the AI. English did hook up iron, although maybe it was around 200AD.
Gallic Swordsmen are teh bomb.
Wasting 3 turns early on for sugar isn't the end of the world.
Medieval Cities look much better than Ancient age ones.
Taking wonders off other civs is teh fun.
The great lighthouse is extremely good for warring on continents/pelago.
The great library is overrated. Hence technology is overrated. What good is Chivalry if you build 1 knight? (In England's case)
ToA is awesome if you manage to slow the tech rate by lots of warring. I built a few temples at the start then I captured the ToA and had the highest culture all game... or this could just be Emperor..
I had access to temple as my only cultural improvement and I had the highest culture at the end.
Defending your cities is overrated (!)
-The most defense I ever built was 8 regular spearmen built for MP purposes, otherwise my cities were all defenseless.
I relyed upon the speed of the Celtic swordsmen as my defense.
Not defending your cities is overrated (!) (curse that 1 Numidian Mercenary that captured Heliopolis from me)
Cash Rushing >>> Pop Rushing any day of the week
Building cities close together looks messy
Building cities far away is wasteful
MM cities not to use captured mines is a pain in the butt.
"The plan is to conquer my continent and keep conquering until domination is reached."
Never a bad choice for the Gallic Celts!
> Iron is the lifeblood of the AI.
> Gallic Swordsmen are teh bomb.
> Taking wonders off other civs is teh fun.
> The great library is overrated.
> Defending your cities is overrated (!) I relyed upon the speed ...
Well said, imho Especially the last point, which many people never quite 'get'
> Building cities far away is wasteful
Do you mean far away from each other? I agree.
Do you mean far away from the capital? I don't think you do, but I would strongly disagree for this game. The specialists made the *most far away, most corrupt* cities very useful. One would not see this in 770 AD though.
> MM cities not to use captured mines is a pain in the butt.
When they were so corrupt that they got 1 shield regardless of the mine, I spared myself that torture. With the #cities I had, I would never have finished otherwise.
I guess it would make more sense if I could upload my report...
What I meant was that I wasted lots of tiles in between my cities, either because they could only work 12 tiles in their radious or I just plain didn't use them.
Thank you for your comments.
Hopefully I can find a way to upload my report within another 24 hours at the latest.
Definitely don't feel bad about taking it in a different direction from the initial game concept. I've done that several times, and those are often the most interesting reports.
When setting up the game, Griselda and Charis and I thought that the restriction on mining would limit military production enough that you wouldn't be able to overrun the world with Gallics. Guess not. You might've been in trouble if your opponents had gotten to Nationalism, but you pulled it off before that happens.
Your game does highlight the issue of scarcer strategic resources in Conquests. In editing the map, I did not add or remove resources from the random distribution; I just moved a few instances of them. In the future, I'll probably add a few more to make sure that they're available to more rival civs. Even one civ lacking iron and saltpeter presents an easy opportunity for the player's civ to swallow another and double in size.
Welcome to the RBCiv games - great showing! I expect this will quite likely be the best domination score - congrats!
Excellent game, great example of selecting your objectives and then focusing on them exclusively, something I still need work on (in Civ and RL!). It's a shame the AI isn't better about connecting resources, they have the prescience to settle near them centuries before they appear, but can't connect it when it's in their backyard???
And I thought I played in an extreme fashion, going all-out military! Compared to you, my game was quite balanced. Congrat to your early domination, before your report I toyed with the idea mine would be fastest... But not this time!
Talk about getting the most mileage out of your Unique Units! I hadn't realized from your earlier report you made it all the way with Gallics, very nice. Good recovery also from the flips, that is still one of the most frustrating aspects of the game to me, so I tend to just leave cities vacant until the war is over, and have some reserves to recapture if needed. It's a shame, though, as it encourages either scorched earth (razing) or genocide (starvation).
As for T-Hawk's questions:
Definitely the micromanagement took some time, and I was also a fence-sitter, not because I didn't want to play, but couldn't decide if I would have time to get it done. But I finally went all-out last week, and am very glad I did!
This message has been edited by Justus2nd from IP address 12.223.151.153 on May 3, 2004 10:06 PM This message has been edited by Justus2nd from IP address 12.223.151.153 on May 3, 2004 10:05 PM This message has been edited by Justus2nd from IP address 12.223.151.153 on May 3, 2004 10:02 PM
I can see that we were both influenced strongly by the Cultured Comrade SG
I have to try to whip up a report tonight, and I wish now I could remember my finish date, but it looks like your victory was pretty quick for 100K (er... 80K, and I shared that "doh!" moment!)
Wow, that *was* a fast finish. Even after I 'correct' to account for my big temple sell-off to slow down the 80K win, I probably was on target for a 1770AD win. So you were about 60 turns earlier. I'll have to reread what the key differences were, but I'm guessing it's a combination of:
- core cities getting founded and temple/lib done FAR earlier than I did due to thematic initial wonder - better whipping technique in Feudalism?! I hit them hard, but stopped short of sixfold whips on the bigger buildings, as my goal was communism and so let the cities grow because they would be very productive after that revolt. Yet this was many many turns after you had already whipped them during Feudalism - I kept the tech pace as slow as possible for as long as possible, harkening back to my much earlier potluck epic where I took the Iroquois to an Emperor 100K victory and the biggest danger by far in the game was foe space launch. That was PtW and this is C3C and the latter is *far* friendlier to civ-culture victories than earlier versions. I was fighting a phantom fear. I could have hit 200K before they would launch.
Looking back at my notes, I think the Feudal whipping had an effect, but also my wars happened earlier, so I had more cities to whip sooner. I had kicked Cleo off the continent by 110BC, whereas your first war hadn't started yet. In 10AD, I hit 1,001 culture, growing by 58cpt, and had completed my first 2 cathedrals (mid-GA). By 250AD, the GA was over, and I was just shy of 2,000 culture, but growing by 126cpt, with 15 cathedrals and a couple libraries. I declared on Carthage 2 turns later, and they were island-hopping by 410AD, whereas your Carthage war was again later. In 450AD, I had 50 cities, culture was 5,451, and growing by 229cpt. I had 21 cathedrals, most core cities had libraries, and I was in the process of whipping temples, and a couple quick cathedrals due to capturing ToA. It expired within about 10 turns, and most towns already had temples, so it wasn't a big factor, but I did get 2-3 cities to whip a cathedral before the temple.
The downside to all that is I never had near the population you did, so my production in Communism wasn't all that great. But by then, most easy culture was done, and I actually switched to Communism for the income (never thought I'd say that!). Maintenance was killing me, and recovering all that corrupted gold, multiplied by 60+ libraries and universities, would boost my research, giving me at least some chance to make some money off my 4-turn tech rivals on the other continent.
I was wondering if some players might hit on the Cultured Comrades strategy for this game, which would work quite well with the restrictions and the civ traits. Feudalism is clearly superior than Monarchy for extracting productivity from a large number of permanently corrupt cities. You could almost call it a mini-Communism. 'Twas very interesting to see that in action here - you had the territory to really make use of the whipping, unlike the two SGs.
I saw the "doh" moment on the 80K coming from a mile away. (I was hoping that it would happen, as it would mean that I hadn't screwed up that setting. For some reason, the editor didn't set the 80k number automatically; I had to manually set the 80k at the victory options dialog when I started the game.)
Regarding declaring war "honorably" on this page, there's a subtle distinction to be made. An honorable war by the RBCiv definition can only occur if they declare war on you, or if you declare war but then don't invade enemy territory. What you describe in your Egypt attack is dastardly by RBCiv terms. You're using "honorable" to reflect the fact that it keeps your in-game reputation unspoiled. The distinction didn't matter here, but there are situations where it could, so a clarification could be helpful.
You'd probably agree with the sentiment that I wish they'd get rid of the silly restriction on not whipping more than half a city's population. There's just so many ways around it, but the ability to use those workarounds is rather arbitrarily dependent on what potential builds a city has available.
Also, I'm not sure if you realized this, but you can also "whip" by drafting and disbanding, once you get Nationalism. You get the same effect of 20 shields for one pop point (22 after infantry), and the unhappiness clock for drafting ticks down concurrently with the unhappiness clock for whipping.
Six settlers in Memphis - wow, is the AI bad at dealing with blockades. There was still space available in the south for some time, so Egypt kept building more settlers to fill it, being unable to realize that it had other settlers already on their way trying to get there.
An excellent result - 1475 AD is by far the earliest civ-wide cultural victory I've ever seen. Of course, grabbing territory and grabbing it early (again unlike the two SGs) is what you really need for a fast national-culture win. But you showed just how well Feudalism is able to exploit territory like that, far better than any of the cash-rushing governments could.
Although I started with the cultural notion, I didn't realize how well it all fit together until I got into the middle ages. The Cathedrals in particular were an "aha" moment (as opposed to my "doh" moments ). 3 whips for something that provides 3 contents, perfect match. That's why this was such a good fit. Although the Russians (or any scientific civ) can easily whip libraries also, the happiness problems are harder to deal with. Combining Religious with Agricultural for faster growth, and the pure-irrigation strategy, just came together to make things work out.
I totally agree the whipping restriction is more cumbersome than helpful. Now if they included it with a restriction on swapping after a whip, it might be useful, but as it is it becomes a tedious exercise in math and clicking (and having the right pre-builds). One nice thing about Agricultural, the 50-shield aquaduct makes a nice step to whipping a Knight!
The worst part about the Memphis settlers, was all that time, there was an FP spot near Thebes that would have gotten them iron that was never filled!!!
Edit: Acknowledge your point about Honorable, poor choice of words. I guess I meant a clean declaration, no ongoing deals or units in their territory. Clearly it was not a defensive war!
This message has been edited by Justus2nd from IP address 65.42.9.12 on Mar 30, 2004 1:01 PM
That looked like a fun ride. I may have to dabble in some SG's after all this time and try out something like this... on a larger map, of course. Thanks for a very entertaining read.
great game and great report, especially the presentation! Although the pictures need a while to load on my poor dial-up connection.
Very interesting choice to revolt into feudalism! I like your analysis how whipping cathedrals pay for themselves in terms of happiness - I have to remember that one. In my game, I also came to the conclusion that whipping could be powerful in a high-food, low-shield scenario, but I totally forgot about feudalism, and whipping in communism isn't so great. Your approach seems to be quite good when aiming for a cultural victory, at least with this combination of civ traits.
Selling Carthage a pricey tech so that they would do a deficit research afterwards and then lose their harbor sure is a very innovative way to trash your rep! :P I've never seen that happen to an AI, very interesting.
-Kylearan
This message has been edited by Kylearan from IP address 217.185.233.223 on Mar 31, 2004 3:29 AM
Kylearan said> Selling Carthage a pricey tech so that they would do a deficit research afterwards and then lose their harbor sure is a very innovative way to trash your rep! :P I've never seen that happen to an AI, very interesting.
You know what they say, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is! I was the victim of Hannibal's Ponzi scheme! I was wondering how Carthage was able to pay 40+gpt when they were down to only 2 cities. Looking at my notes, it looks like I was still paying them a couple gpt payments for tech, which they turned around and used to make the deal with me for a later tech. But since my gpt payments ran out first, they were broke, and suddenly the harbor disappeared. (Funny thing is, the harbor remained in the second city for a few more turns. Sure, sell the Captital harbor first!@#!) That'll teach me to be greedy when it comes to 2-city AIs!
Click Here if you want to see a shot of another AI having sold a harbor in their capital. It does happen, and my AI must have "voluntarily" sold it to balance the budget rather than eating the lost-building penalty. The city also has a barracks; the penalty always takes the first building in the list in the order defined by the editor, which starts barracks-granary-temple-market-library. (I'm sure they didn't lose the harbor to bombardment - there wouldn't be a ship and a transport sitting in the city if they were at war.)
Not the best choice, when half their food was coming from coastal tiles! I wonder if there is a routine the AI uses when deciding to sell buildings, or if it is just random. Whatever "decision-making process" they used, though, I would have to say it's flawed! Unless they, like Hannibal, were deliberately trying to ruin my reputation!! (Musn't . . be . . bitter . . Game's over . . )
I enjoyed your report and I want to thank you for providing an excellent model to follow for my future reports. Your combination of analysis and reportage is spot on.
I also took a detour through Feudalism, actually before Monarchy. It was less successful than yours as I have yet to master the finer aspects of pop-rushing. I took that route to get the food bonus, and since my cities were small and I had workers and soldiers all over the island the unit support was also useful. I used the whip to finish off marketplaces and libraries and universities and put up with the riots in the Egyptian cities because until I got into Communism they were so corrupt they actually contributed more income when in disorder than out of it. At one point the entire NW of the Isle was covered with smoke, and not from fireworks!!
they were so corrupt they actually contributed more income when in disorder than out of it.
I could be wrong, but I don't think that's possible in Civ 3. Economy and science are calculated at the beginning of each production phase, before cycling through each city's production, and that's done without regard to disorder. A city can riot forever and it'll still contribute all its science and taxes, and its buildings still cost maintenance.
(Unless you mean they were contributing income by hiring taxmen or scientists instead of entertainers, and that caused/allowed the city to riot.)
When I first saw this variant, I had in mind exactly what you ended up doing. A civ-wide cultural win based on pop-rushing. Alas, I chickened out and played a "normal" game due to perceived time constraints. I am glad that someone made a run at it that way.
I have to say taht I picked up a few pointers on multi-stage pop-rushing as well. I had not fully considered the ins and outs of it as you described it. Very helpful at getting around the 50% population.
Great report T-Hawk, and an excellent analysis of the specialists. I don't know why I didn't take the building-multiplier effect into account when using police, I used several in core cities just to get rid of the corruption, but never thought to use them instead of engineers if I wanted shields. But then again, I didn't have that many factories, and no power plants, so for pure shields, Engineers were probably still the better choice. But they certainly beat out taxmen on the other side of the equation, for cities with market and bank, they generate 2gpt and the shield, if there are corrupted sheilds remaining. Funny thing is, I WAS taking the buildings into account when deciding on scientists vs. taxmen in specific towns.
I didn't realize you had tweaked the map so much, but I knew those lakes were quite fortuitous. The ready availability of luxuries was also suprising, especially for C3C, when they tend to be more clumped and less available. The strategics seemed about normal for C3C, although I never ran into any problems with them. The iron could have been iffy if I had delayed getting Iron Working more than I had, as I quickly rushed a temple to get it before Carthage landed near there. Salt wasn't a problem, as Cleo and Hanni were already on tundra islands by the time I got gunpowder.
BTW, I passed the MicroManagement pop-quiz, I also got the 2 warriors in 9 turns with MM'ing the forest. But maybe I failed the exam, as I think I'm the only one who didn't build a granary in Entremont. I normally do go for an early granary, but with the limited shields, and plenty of other high-food sites available, I didn't think it would pay off on the investment soon enough, so I went directly for settlers, with some warriors in between. I wasn't sure whether it was the right move at the time, but it seemed a good fit for the situation.
I wouldn't have thought, under these conditions, that you could get to Philosophy first AND have Polytheism on hand to pull a free Monarchy. But you did, and so you not only got the tech free, but you got to it 1500 years ahead of when I did. Going full research on Polytheism rather than min sci did the trick. Nice work. As to whether or not we should take that out of the Epics, I don't know. The reward is massive, but it is one of the few areas of the game where strategy matters more than luck, and the risks are also high. You had to sacrifice with full bore research for 33 turns to pursue that gambit, and if you had not been first to Poly, that investment would have gone for naught. Fortune favors the bold.
The one thing I did expect from you and did not see was an early suicide curragh. A little luck there could put folks way ahead of the curve, and I've been very worried about what that will do to the Epics. Putting that much benefit into the hands of one or two dice rolls in the early game... you know how I feel about that. Trying it is akin to a warrior or archer attack gambit circa 3000BC, but even worse because there's less at risk. You don't have to start a war to take your chances. I'm not sure what to do about this.
As for the Ambrosia of micromanaging a Civ3 start, all of that micromanagement would be moot if the game didn't truncate and waste remainders. I too enjoy the puzzle aspect of making the most of a Civ3 opening. It is akin to a chess puzzle "mate in three moves" or a crosspatch word puzzle, or a logic puzzle. But in the big picture, it means that too much rides on minding the minutiae. Those who pore over the diplomacy screen every turn gain significant advantage. Those who pore over cities in the early game to save a shield here, a food there, and fit the puzzle pieces together to minimize remainder loss are significantly advantaged. These are not strategic choices, but merely willingless to endure tedium for advantages. This is one of Civ3's biggest failings, always been Civ's achilles heel, and it also plagues GalCiv, but is blessedly absent from MOO.
Are you going to be joining us for any MOO action? There are no remainders to manage, but there is some "attention to detail" advantage to be won, and via bona fide strategic choice rather than no-brainer efficiency management, through adding to the planetary reserve and redistributing some of your wealth to strategic priorities. As a fellow connoisseur of ambrosia, I must inquire as to whether you've sampled that particular vintage? If you have not, I believe it would sit well on your palette.
I'm looking forward with excitement to the first tourney game for MOO. Of particular interest to me is how much range in AI performance there will be across the games. In my Epic 39, Carthage totally dominated Egypt from the word go, and that seems to have been anomalous. Your Egypt thrived quite nicely, and so did many others.
I too had the idea to use civil engineers to add shields toward buildings, then swap to units. Doesn't work. The game takes away the shields added by the civil engineers. Score one for the C3C team in stamping out loopholes.
Congrats on your launch. Thanks for the scenario, your report and insights, and not revealing to the masses about how I couldn't tell whether this was a standard or small map. Oops, did I just say that out loud?
I wouldn't have thought, under these conditions, that you could get to Philosophy first AND have Polytheism on hand to pull a free Monarchy.
Why not? The variant rules restricted shields, not commerce. The only thing making that move harder than a normal game was the lack of rivers on the map, but one could compensate for that by building roads sooner since less worker labor is needed to irrigate as opposed to building mines.
The strategy I pulled, to grab Monarchy for free, isn't unbalancing. It's roughly akin to going for a wonder, in all aspects of the amount risked, the payoff, and the strategy/luck balance.
Where it becomes a problem is in a nonvariant game, grabbing Republic for free. Monarchy isn't tremendously more powerful than Despotism, and balancing research between the Polytheism branch and Writing branch does involve strategy. To grab the more powerful Republic, though, just requires luck on the AIs not researching Philosophy between the time Writing appears and the time that you finish Philo after Code of Laws. And there's little risked; even if the gambit fails, all you did was spend full-price research on two cheap techs to get yourself to the verge of Republic anyway. I would plan on trying this on almost any nonvariant game on Demigod or below, and there are reports in the CFC stories forum that it can even be done with luck on Sid.
The one thing I did expect from you and did not see was an early suicide curragh.
Er, would you believe that was because I completely forgot about curraghs? I intended to take luck OUT of that equation, by setting up that gap to be reachable safely by a non-suicidal galley. Totally forgot about the earlier boat.
I'm not sure what to do about the issue going forward. A map designer can mostly compensate by making continental gaps either reachable by curragh or requiring 3-4 turns at sea to greatly reduce the chance of success. And of course it's not an issue on pangaea maps. Can still be a problem, though, especially on random maps or for seafaring civs.
Are you going to be joining us for any MOO action?
I've never played any of the MOO games at all, but I've been debating about that. I decided a couple weeks ago to try to reduce my gaming time in general in favor of other pursuits, which is why I haven't gotten into either MOO or GalCiv yet. I'll see where the wind blows me over the next few weeks, though I doubt I'll get into any new games for some time.
The game takes away the shields added by the civil engineers. Score one for the C3C team in stamping out loopholes.
You sure? It doesn't display or credit engineer shields when a unit is selected in the production box, of course, but are you saying it actually reduces the number of shields in the box when you swap from a building to a unit? (and puts them back if you switch back to a building?) I don't think that's what I observed.
It very definitely does take away those shields -- I sometimes had to swap from a large shield building I no longer wanted to a military unit and it said I would waste xyz shields, and after the swap, I was WAY short of completing the mil unit. How short? However many engineer shields had 'gone in' to the building. As Sirian says, a loophole successfully closed - yay!
I'm looking forward with excitement to the first tourney game for MOO. Of particular interest to me is how much range in AI performance there will be across the games.
OK, I'm interested, but I've checked this forum, the general RB forum, and the RB main page, and I don't see any mention of this. Tell me more! Yeah, I'm still writing up my Epic 39 report in stages, I'm taking a bit of a break now.
One HUGE source of early-game randomness in MOO1 comes from artifact planets. There's a whole heck of a lot of difference between getting Hand Lasers, and Nuclear Engines or Deuterium Fuel Cells!
"Erratic" MOO1 AI's will declare war COMPLETELY at random, on a roll of the dice. Alan Emrich says in the Master of Magic strategy guide (where "Chaotic" AI's behave exactly the same way) that some people absolutely hate it, while others think it's realistic. What's your take on this?
According to the MOO1 strategy guide, MOO1 AI's also declare war largely at random at the end of the early-game expansion phase. The AI does have a preference for piling on a particularly strong player, but unless you're playing with a low number of races that doesn't have much effect at this stage of the game.
For the above reasons, I'm going to guess that in a tourney, who declares war on who will tend to be random. (Add in the Darloks for some real chaos -- they have a way of starting wars between everyone with all the spy framing they do.) Other factors, like the Psilons and Klackons pounding the snot out of the crummy Mrrshans, dumb AI's never expanding beyond their first planet, and the Humans threatening to win diplomatically, won't be random at all. One thing about game balance is that it tends to increase the randomness of the typical game, and Civ3 is more balanced than MOO1.
Another question I'd been meaning to ask: where does the name "Sirian" come from? I assumed it was the Warlords strategy games, but that might be wrong.
Artifact planets - most of the time, you don't run into one early enough to make that big a difference, and if you do most of the time it doesn't give you a critical tech. It does rarely happen that an artifact planet can make the game substantially easier, though. This is one luck element that could be dealt with through scenario editing or map selection.
Erratic AIs are not that big of a random factor, though, because you KNOW they will turn on you sooner or later; it's just a question of when. The chance that they will declare is sufficiently high that, in the long run, it's a virtual certainty. Thus, the randomness in the actual timing of the event is less significant. Personally, I find it annoying (how'd you like to live next door to someone who you know is unstable and occasionally comes over to try to beat you up?) but, in the context of the game, livable with.
No, I don't guess that you are. Well then, let's talk. Perhaps I can disabuse you of this notion.
One HUGE source of early-game randomness in MOO1 comes from artifact planets. There's a whole heck of a lot of difference between getting Hand Lasers, and Nuclear Engines or Deuterium Fuel Cells!
Indeed. The biggest boon, without doubt, is to pull Controlled Dead Environment off an artifact world. You instantly gain not only access to half the hostile planets, but the leap in planetology dramatically reduces standard colony ship construction costs.
However, let's LOOK at Civ3 and compare. Does the best-case MOO1 lucky break at an artifacts planet actually give you any free planets? No. You still have to build up enough factories to build colony ships, and you still need range tech to cross small gaps in the star map. Compare to Civ3.
What happens when you pull a settler out of a hut in 3500BC? That adds a full third or more to your growth curve. The effect of a single free settler outstrips the impact of the best-case rarity for MOO1. How often will you even have an artifacts planet close to you? Rarely. How often will it churn out the best-case tech for you? If you play for years and years, maybe a couple of times, ever. How often do you pull a settler out of a hut in Civ?
Civ pulls techs out of huts all the time. One is as likely to run into a hut a little bit later, and be able to pull a stronger tech (like Writing or Iron Working) as one is to pull a strong tech off an artifacts planet. There is even MORE randomnity to civ, though, with many huts scattered around, and each of them randomized to spew barbarians, free cities, free units, free tech, or free money. Maybe maps, maybe nothing. Figure one artifacts planet in range every four games, vs four to six huts in range every game. And you think MOO is more randomized than Civ3? Are you sure you've thought that position all the way through?
Then there's what can actually be done with the given advantage. In MOO1, can you translate a free tech into an ability to steamroll and completely wipe out your closest neighbor? No. You cannot send a couple of units on a fishing expedition to win the lottery. No warrior gambits, no archer gambits, no suicide curraghs for early contacts, no waltzing into cities with lucky dice rolls to defeat one or two defenders. In MOO, you need a sizeable fleet to dent a planet from orbit, so no easy razing, no luck-based shortcuts to wiping out a rival. You need to send entire planetary populations to win on the ground. No freebies for you in MOO.
In MOO, you do your own research, and on higher difficulties it COSTS A LOT MORE. You pay way more than the AI does for techs, and anything you get in trade, you pay extra for, because they will only trade you techs that are worth less than you trade away for them. Compare to Civ, where even at the highest levels player can pay a fraction of what rivals do for techs by riding coattails, being the last or nearly last to the party and enjoying MASSIVE deflationary cost reductions. There's almost (almost) no such thing as a hole too deep to climb out of in Civ3. Try that on MOO and enjoy your exile when the victor ships your nonperforming rear end out of the galaxy on a freighter, if you're lucky enough to survive at all.
"Game Balance" and "Civ3" aren't quite oxymorons. Civ3 is a good game and it takes a lot of skill to perform well at it. But let's be frank here. It's not in the same class as MOO1. It's not even close.
"Erratic" MOO1 AI's will declare war COMPLETELY at random, on a roll of the dice. Alan Emrich says in the Master of Magic strategy guide (where "Chaotic" AI's behave exactly the same way) that some people absolutely hate it, while others think it's realistic.
With all due respect to Alan, who wrote some of the best strategy guides ever published, he's correct on the fact but not the conclusion.
The MOO1 AI is coded to play to win. The game has a Machiavellian bent. Might makes right. Possession is nine tenths of the law. There are no niceties, no safety hatches, no political correctness, and no pulled punches.
The AI in MOO is coded to seek technology, acquire territory, and look out for its own interests. If any AI reaches a position of strength, it will turn aggressive. The different personalities available to the AI behave differently, with different priorities, but each has a potentially valid way of acquiring both territory and technology.
Every personality has pressure to expand territory. If planets are still up for grabs, they will seek to claim them. If all systems have been settled, they will seek to take territory away from a rival. Not to have this urge would be tantamount to being programmed to lose by design, allowing anybody who plants a flag on a plot of land to hold it unchallenged. The game would then diminish to one of planting the most flags, then it would be over. Instead, the MOO AI will fight for territory, and it will try to do so according to its own particular weightings. Some will spend more resources into technology, hoping to be able to attack later from a stronger position. Some will spend more resources into fleets and try to attack sooner. Some will emphasize fleet building, some emphasize perfecting planets (economy), some emphasize spending on espionage and gathering allies. But all of these varied strategies disappear if a significant lead is earned, giving way to a universal strategy of conquest from a position of great strength. And in MOO, if you earn you way (as player or as AI) to a position of strength, you can run away with the game.
Compare to Civ3. Civ3 is purposely designed to prevent runaway civilizations. The tech leader is saddled with higher research costs than others. Two tech leaders climbing different parts of the tree can trade with each other, but ALL the AI's are coded to sell any advantage they pull to the highest bidder as soon as possible, to keep all civs bunched in a pack and prevent anyone from pulling away. This keeps player in the game no matter what, even with a single city. Thus it is almost unheard of for a runaway to emerge with a commanding position. Instead, leading civs will run out of things to build in the industrial age and bog down into wars, which pull them out of the best governments and trigger all manner of alliances and MPPs that usually plunge the entire planet into warfare, with no "real alliances", only a bunch of glass-jawed yahoos who are ready to sue for peace if they take a few licks or if enough time passes. That is, they are coded with a pressure to oscillate their wars, to enter and exit from a state of war without any regard to obtaining objectives. Player can often stay out of these wars entirely, and can buy allies at the drop of a hat. The degree of predictability to these elements is staggering.
Since Civ3 is designed to keep all civs bunched, it requires MASSIVE bonuses and HUGELY DEEP HOLES for a skilled player to be challenged. And even then, the AI has no ruthless streak. It's coded to pursue resources, mainly. And you can often fend them off by trading them the resources they want. They have no hunger for territory, only pressures to enter and exit a "state of war".
MOO AI cares almost nothing for "state of war". It is objective-oriented. Sure, Erratic civs will roll dice regularly to see when they'll declare hot war. That makes them unreliable partners in any alliance, and difficult to keep as friends, but otherwise is not particularly relevant. Why not? Because the MOO AI is coded to smell weakness. (The Civ3 AI is coded to cut you a break if you are weak. The only time it piles on is the urge it has to sign up allies when it DOES go to war, meaning the side with more cash on hand signs up more friends, and the effect tends to trigger a dogpile. NO SENSE of self-interest. Just simplistic "sign me up for the cash" alliances. No strategy, no depth, and darn near no unpredictability!) The MOO AI will look for targets of opportunity and pursue the weakest-looking targets. They don't need to declare war, often won't bother. They'll just come and take what they want, if they can. Declaring war is irrelevant. ALL the AI's will be aggressive if you present a weakness. The only time an AI is completely trustworthy is when you are allied against a third threat, when it is in your ally's interests to remain on good terms with you because you're doing them a favor by fighting their other enemies. When it's in their interests to be friends, they'll be quite friendly! But if they are not under attack and see your worlds as the easiest target, well, too bad for you.
The game balance favors defense, though, so that makes it impossible to use cheap or luck-reliant rush attacks in the early game. The core worlds of all sides are secure unless and until some faction or other gains enough combined advantage in production and tech to send a fleet capable of overwhemling a planet chock full of missile bases. That never happens by luck. NOT EVER. Only new colonies, which take time to stand up from scratch, are vulnerable to smaller forces or when civs are evenly matched or relatively close in strength. Thus conflict takes place on the fringes, and nobody gets steamrolled. Dice are almost irrelevant.
There are no uber-techs in MOO. No loopholes for translating small advantages or small leads into decisive victory. In Civ3, deny iron and/or horses to an ancient rival, enjoy a massive military advantage and crush them underfoot with swords or horsemen of your own. Get to knights while they have no iron, and roll them up. Get to cavs while they still have muskets, or lacking saltpeter, pikes, or lacking iron too, perhaps even spears (!!!) and you roll them up. One uber tech, a few uber units, cheap victory, and then have peace any time you like, while you consolidate your gains. You can even build lots of horsemen and shortcut the production process by translating cash into shields via upgrades. Also works with warriors into swords. In C3C they've made it more expensive, but it can still be a shield multiplier.
In MOO, the AI is coded to gather its forces at a rally point and NOT to send them until it believes it has enough for decisive victory. It is specifically coded to build SoDs and to use them. Civ3, by contrast, will scatter its forces at any available target of opportunity, only builds SoDs by coincidence when its roads and railroads cause units to bunch up on their willynilly march toward a target, chooses only one primary objective at a time, based solely on attack odds rather than value, strategic position, or defensibility. Civ3 has NO sense of objective, no evaluation of total force strength for or against, and no corrective mechanism for second or third tries. MOO will up its estimate of what it needs, when it fails, and try again with a larger force. And again and again, unless a better target presents itself or you beat its tail so badly it gives up and treats you with more respect. The MOO AI is coded to respect strength. Civ3 is coded only to worship cash. No war it won't buy into, no tech it won't sell, no ally it won't trust, no stupidity too massive, if there is cold hard cash on the table!
Civ3's aggression is like a light switch. Flip it on if there is hot war, flip it off if there is peace. MOO3 AI is ALWAYS aggressive. There is some logic to its choice of targets, choice of friends and enemies, military plans, and layers of friendship vs aggression. The MOO AI actually respects the agreements it signs, backing out of alliances and nonaggression pacts before launching attacks against core worlds. Brush wars in disputed territory over unclaimed worlds, disputable colonies, or Hot Potatoes, is another story. Only full allies will not squabble over disputable territory. The one who rightfully owns the land is the one whose flag is planted there at the end of the day. If you can't defend it, it ain't yours. Pieces of paper mean squat. The interests of the civilization as it understands them are what drive behavior.
Dice cease to matter when the sample size is large enough to tranform from luck and lottery into probabilities. As Zed replied to you about Erratic civs, their fickle ways are a certainty. The only question is not if, but when, they will turn on you, and that can be managed when the game balance heavily favors defenders.
That's the chief difference between Master of Magic and Master of Orion. MoM plays like Civ, favoring offense and mobility. Player cannot dig a deep hole and use strategy to climb out of it. Player cannot weather the storm of being attacked by stronger rivals. Thus, the REAL gap between player and AI opponent must be smaller. Difficulty levels, faction choice, terrain, all the elements that combine to pose the actual degree of challenge... the challenge MUST BE smaller to avoid having one's fate put into the hands of the dice. I can understand why folks hated Chaotic neighbors in MoM. I hated them. They undermined the game balance there, and so did the heroes. The economic model was a no-brainer series of repetitive build orders and citizen management, rather than a system with strategic options. How boring (for me, at least).
The Erratic personality trait in MOO doesn't have the same effect. An AI opponent must achieve a combined production/tech lead on you of significant proportion to be able to roll you up, and to do that, it needs a lot more than one dice roll to break against you. A whole lot more. Thus your fate is not, in fact, in the hands of the dice at all. The number of dice rolls that have to break against you in MOO for you to lose by luck are many, rendering the likelihood statistically irrelevant.
A curse should fall upon the heads of the "geniuses" who came up with the idea of combining MOO and MoM to make Master of Magic II, Magic at Antares. A pox on all their houses. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that Mr. Emrich was one of those. Those folks killed the Master of Orion franchise. MOO3 was doomed before it ever started because it tried to appeal to both MOO1 and MOO2 fans. That's like trying to combine baseball and American football into one sport. Doesn't work. I hoped against hope that it might work, but no.
OK, I'm interested, but I've checked this forum, the general RB forum, and the RB main page, and I don't see any mention of this. Tell me more!
The new RB forums at LurkerLounge are open for business.
The Master of Orion discussions have been held in the GalCiv forum over the last couple of weeks, but are moving (along with everything else) to the new forums, where MOO has its own RB forum now.
I'm going to guess that in a tourney, who declares war on who will tend to be random. (Add in the Darloks for some real chaos -- they have a way of starting wars between everyone with all the spy framing they do.) Other factors, like the Psilons and Klackons pounding the snot out of the crummy Mrrshans, dumb AI's never expanding beyond their first planet, and the Humans threatening to win diplomatically, won't be random at all.
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been an MOO tourney on the scale of the Epics. I'm certain that MOO has the best overall game balance from a single player perspective. I can't predict how well it will hold up under a tournament structure. However, I cannot imagine the results being more luck-dependant than those of Civ3. Have you SEEN the Epics results over the years? Civ3 AI's declare war PURELY on dice rolls. Look at my Carthage and Egypt in Epic 39 vs those of others. Go back through the Epics and have a look. Who declares on whom and when varies wildly, without any strategic basis. Results of wars vary widely, too, with luck breaking for or against whole civs on military results, leader luck, timing of who happens to have more cash to sign up dogpile partners on which timing, and so forth.
I will be SHOCKED if there half as much warmaking swing in MOO as there is in Civ3. MOO wars turn on who has the stronger force. Combat won't even start until an AI believes it has a SoD capable of achieving a particular objective. Quite unlike the Civ3 AI, the MOO AI won't throw its forces at a target unless it thinks it has a chance to win, and will retreat if it believes it is outmatched, or if shown to be losing. The MOO AI might declare war, but if it looks at your missile bases and sees that its best SoD has no chance, it will WAIT to gather more ships, and when it does attack and loses, it will TRY AGAIN at the SAME TARGET with a proportionally larger force. That kind of sophistication just isn't present in other empire games.
The chief thing to be said against MOO is that, being a nodal game, there are far fewer variables, and it is much simpler to code effective rally points and SoD behavior. Civ3 has to play on a tile grid with more mobility, with land, sea and air units, with water tiles, roads, rails, terrain variances, rivers, blah blah etc etc, using forces that can be ambushed en route, distracted, divided (thus weakened) and which engage in combat one unit to one unit, not whole force vs whole force. Thus, the combat model for MOO lends much more easily to effective strategy than does Civ3. Civ3's AI is miles ahead in sophistication and ability, but it has such a steeper hill to climb, the net result comes out way behind. The game rules for Civ3 require tactical combat choices, for the AI to adapt its tactics on the fly according to the micro result of each unit action, rather than strategically commanding its forces as a whole. I'm sorry to say that, while more ambitious, this system leads in net effect to a much less strategically competent package.
For lovers of strategy, the nodal game comes out ahead. There's something to be said for the KISS principle. MOO works on a scale of entire armies clashing rather than single units dancing around one another, and the combat takes place at a very limited number of locations, with no cheap tricks for dividing (and thus conquering) the opponent's force. The tighter playfield and limited engagement points work hugely in MOO's favor for crafting an imperial environment. Results turn on big choices, not an endless series of little ones.
Survivability in any empire game is based on defensive strength. One must be able to protect production centers to stay in the game. When defensive strength is, say, for example, three times the power of offensive strength, then an opponent would have to be three times as strong as you to challenge you. You could then survive when outmatched, being up to three times weaker than your opponent. Yet to move against your opponent with success, YOU also need to be three times stronger than him. Now, how do you get from being weaker to being stronger? Strategy. Attacking weak points, making gains, choosing research options wisely, choosing espionage efforts and spending wisely, lining up allies effectively. Survive to breathe another day, maybe a weakness will open. An opportunity to advance your position may present itself.
The MOO game balance lets the player survive when the real degree of challenge is higher. Not only is the hole deeper, but the climb out of that hole is longer, because you can't just get to equal footing, but must put the opponent into the hole you climbed out of to turn the tables.
Civ3 has some degree of this with the defensive bonuses and behavior of production centers. Stacks put their strongest defender out front. Cities heal damaged units faster. Larger cities enjoy stronger defense bonuses. Defenders have full mobility on roads and rails within their cultural borders while attackers do not. Without Battlefield Medicine wonder, attackers do not even heal at all while inside enemy borders. These combine to give advantage to defenders, which puts Civ3 ahead of many games in terms of balance, but it's still not even in the ballpark with Master of Orion's trim nodal environment. MOO vs Civ3 in terms of game balance? No contest.
So you say you're interested in some Master of Orion activity? Excellent! We could use more players for our new tourney, and we're just getting started, so you can still get in on the ground floor!
No, I don't guess that you are. Well then, let's talk. Perhaps I can disabuse you of this notion.
Well, sure, I can talk. Plenty! As powerful as, say, the pre-Conquests Persians in Civ III are, they have nothing on the sheer power of the Psilons/Klackons/Humans over the Alkari/Mrrshans in MOO1. You've admitted that yourself. Nonetheless I will contest your argument on other points.
"One HUGE source of early-game randomness in MOO1 comes from artifact planets. There's a whole heck of a lot of difference between getting Hand Lasers, and Nuclear Engines or Deuterium Fuel Cells!"
Indeed. The biggest boon, without doubt, is to pull Controlled Dead Environment off an artifact world. You instantly gain not only access to half the hostile planets, but the leap in planetology dramatically reduces standard colony ship construction costs.
Actually, I don't think that's the best tech to get, nor is it either of the two techs I mentioned (although Range-5 or Speed-2 certainly is a very good thing to have, and they do SEEM like the best things to have). The best early tech to get, I think, is Industrial Tech 8, even if it doesn't seem sexy at first glance. Not only does having this reduce the cost of every factory by 20%, it also increases hull space on all ships and reduces the cost of Reserve Fuel Tanks, which both happen whenever you get a higher Construction tech level. Having Industrial Tech 8 is almost all by itself enough to construct Large-hulled colony ships with Reserve Fuel Tanks; the ability to do this greatly increases your expansion rate.
However, let's LOOK at Civ3 and compare. Does the best-case MOO1 lucky break at an artifacts planet actually give you any free planets? No. You still have to build up enough factories to build colony ships, and you still need range tech to cross small gaps in the star map. Compare to Civ3.
The biggest thing that helps early in a game of MOO1 is the ability to construct a Large-hulled colony ship with Reserve Fuel Tanks, IMO. My expeirence is that it's a very powerful strategy to aim for this ability ASAP. If you happen to get a high-level Planetology or Construction tech that allows this, or a perhaps a decent Propulsion tech (but Propulsion actually doesn't do much to help get your super colony ships), you greatly increase your growth rate.
What happens when you pull a settler out of a hut in 3500BC? That adds a full third or more to your growth curve. The effect of a single free settler outstrips the impact of the best-case rarity for MOO1. How often will you even have an artifacts planet close to you? Rarely. How often will it churn out the best-case tech for you? If you play for years and years, maybe a couple of times, ever. How often do you pull a settler out of a hut in Civ?
Civ pulls techs out of huts all the time. One is as likely to run into a hut a little bit later, and be able to pull a stronger tech (like Writing or Iron Working) as one is to pull a strong tech off an artifacts planet. There is even MORE randomnity to civ, though, with many huts scattered around, and each of them randomized to spew barbarians, free cities, free units, free tech, or free money. Maybe maps, maybe nothing. Figure one artifacts planet in range every four games, vs four to six huts in range every game. And you think MOO is more randomized than Civ3? Are you sure you've thought that position all the way through?
Oh, yes, I have.
Unless you are playing as an Expansionist (where it is a feature anyway), or on a huge map, it's unlikely you'll be able to get anything gamebreaking out of a hut at high difficulty levels. Sure, settlers greatly increase your growth curve. However, in a competition game, many people end up getting the same settlers anyway out of the pRNG; remember all the 3950BC free settlers in Epic 15, and all the free Yorks that appeared for the English players of Epic 31 (both human and AI)? And in Epic 37 it was practically raining free settlers and cities. Iron Working out of a hut isn't really much of a game breaker at all; for a second-row tech, it's cheap, and it's something the AI's LOVE to research.
Artifact planets are not quite as rare as you think they are -- my experience is that I can usually outscout the AI's even at Impossible. On a huge map, there's something like 3.7 artifact planets on average, so you're likely to hit about one every game. On a large map, the average is a bit more than 2, so you get about one a tad less often than every other game. Even in medium maps there's a significant chance you'll trip an artifact planet. It's not a certainty, but it's far from unlikely.
And the ability to create that Large-hulled colony ship with Reserve Fuel Tanks is huge. Getting a Computer, Force Field, or Weaponss tech will not help you much in the early expansion phase. However, there's a 50% chance you'll get a Planetology, Construction, or Propulsion Tech.
If you get a Construction tech (1/6 chance), there's a 75% chance it will be one of Reduced Industrial Waste 80%, Improved Industrial Tech 8, or Duralloy Armor, all of which will greatly enhance your growth curve. (The last of these isn't so much useful for the tech's direct effect as much as the ability to automatically produce the LHCSWRFT at Construction Level 10.)
If you get a Propulsion tech (1/6 chance), there's a 80% chance it will be one of Deuterium Fuel Cells (range 5), Nuclear Engines (speed 2), Irridium Fuel Cells (range 6), or Inertial Stabilizers (this isn't so useful early in the game, but it does give you level-10 tech status right away and it has AWESOME trade value).
Planetology tech (1/6 chance) isn't quite as great. Controlled Dead is the best as you say, but that's a 1-in-7 shot. Controlled Tundra, and Improved Eco Restoration (reduce pollution by a third) are also good to have though, and each is also a 1-in-7 shot. And Death Spores aren't too bad either, for the automatic level-10 status (certainly not for ability to use biowarfare!)
Then there's what can actually be done with the given advantage. In MOO1, can you translate a free tech into an ability to steamroll and completely wipe out your closest neighbor? No. You cannot send a couple of units on a fishing expedition to win the lottery. No warrior gambits, no archer gambits, no suicide curraghs for early contacts, no waltzing into cities with lucky dice rolls to defeat one or two defenders. In MOO, you need a sizeable fleet to dent a planet from orbit, so no easy razing, no luck-based shortcuts to wiping out a rival. You need to send entire planetary populations to win on the ground. No freebies for you in MOO.
No, blitzing certainly is a no-go at high levels in MOO1. However, tripping an artifact planet has a significant-but-nowhere-near-certain chance of giving you something very much like an instant granary in your capital in Civ 3 from your scouting warriors. That's HUGE in the expansion phase!
In MOO, you do your own research, and on higher difficulties it COSTS A LOT MORE. You pay way more than the AI does for techs, and anything you get in trade, you pay extra for, because they will only trade you techs that are worth less than you trade away for them. Compare to Civ, where even at the highest levels player can pay a fraction of what rivals do for techs by riding coattails, being the last or nearly last to the party and enjoying MASSIVE deflationary cost reductions.
That doesn't quite work out in practice, though. In Civ III, we experts smile at the prospect of a 2-for-1 deal, and positively bounce around at the thought of a 3-for-1 deal.
OK, so in MOO1 I just research the tech myself. Then, I can often trade it all at once to EVERYONE else, and often I can trade the techs that I get for the initial tech. Even when I'm far behind in tech, it's not rare to pull off something like a 12-techs-for-1 deal! Sure, in most cases, the techs that I will get are outdated things. But those outdated techs are often still useful, and more importantly each will add +1 tech level for miniaturization and price-lowering purposes (this is a big weakness of the MOO1 AI IMO). That adds up to a lot real quick. Also, there are certain techs (Inertial Stabilizers and Repulsor Beams, for instance) that CAN be traded for higher-level techs, and other techs (like Hyperspace Communications and the Oracle Interface) that are almost utterly useless to the AI (i.e. they're only useful for the techlevel and research-allowed values), so they can be traded freely.
And you can also just invade a planet and steal 5 techs at once; unlike the AI, the human can coordinate transports to FLOOD a planet with tons of troops, get them past the guarding bases and ships by sheer numbers, and snatch the factories and their precious techs. They're often top-notch technologies, too (taking techs by force does not have the restrictions that trading and espionage do). You can't do that in Civ III.
There's almost (almost) no such thing as a hole too deep to climb out of in Civ3. Try that on MOO and enjoy your exile when the victor ships your nonperforming rear end out of the galaxy on a freighter, if you're lucky enough to survive at all.
Well, yeah, except I've never seen a hole THAT deep in MOO1, even playing as a crappy race at Impossible! I've only been in such dramatic holes in Civ 3. I do admit to restarting if there is no habitable world within 3 parsecs of start, but most people do that anyway unless they want to challenge themselves. I also do fall far behind in tech at Impossible except when playing the Psilons, but unless things go really pear-shaped I do always have a good number of planets.
"Game Balance" and "Civ3" aren't quite oxymorons. Civ3 is a good game and it takes a lot of skill to perform well at it. But let's be frank here. It's not in the same class as MOO1. It's not even close.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
""Erratic" MOO1 AI's will declare war COMPLETELY at random, on a roll of the dice. Alan Emrich says in the Master of Magic strategy guide (where "Chaotic" AI's behave exactly the same way) that some people absolutely hate it, while others think it's realistic."
With all due respect to Alan, who wrote some of the best strategy guides ever published, he's correct on the fact but not the conclusion.
[you say a lot of correct things about how MOO1 pursues victory more directly than the Civ 3 AI's, and how Civ 3 is designed so that things stay even]
Well, this is all less true in Conquests than in PTW. The 0.75 multiplier for tech purchases seems to have disappeared, for instance. Charis in fact complains often about the greatly-increased prevalence of runaway AI's and runaway players in Conquests, although I haven't played much myself so I can't personally comment.
I happen to think the behavior of the AI's in Civ 3 is pretty good ... they're not nearly as Out To Get You like they are in so many other strategy games.
(sorry, I need to get somewhere soon ... I was wanting to say more, but maybe later ... I'll have to wrap this up faster -- I did want to write nearly a book here )
There are no uber-techs in MOO. No loopholes for translating small advantages or small leads into decisive victory.
In MOO1 early in the game, getting a tech that speeds growth is huge.
Late in the game there ARE uber-techs. Black Hole Generators. (Always a Woo-Hoo! tech.) Combat Transporters. (So it's a core world guarded by 120 missile bases and 60 huge ships? I'll just teleport past them all. The Artifical Stupidity concerning attacking planets with ground forces doesn't help either.) Subspace Teleporters, if there aren't any Interdictors around. (Oops! Did I just insta-destroy your 120 missile bases?) The stream projectors and pulsars also can be great weapons against the AI.
Even mid-game, sometimes the AI just can't handle a human fleet with Repulsor Beams.
Ack, I'm really out of time here. I'll get back to this later this afternoon.
As powerful as, say, the pre-Conquests Persians in Civ III are, they have nothing on the sheer power of the Psilons/Klackons/Humans over the Alkari/Mrrshans in MOO1. You've admitted that yourself.
You're missing the point.
Game balance is about strategy and variation, about having multiple valid resolutions to a challenge. It is a question of replayability.
The range of difference between the MOO1 factions is wide enough to stir variety, but narrow enough to preserve variety. What do I mean by this? There is a healthy range, which I call "balanced". Balanced means different but comparable. Undifferentiated factions do not meet the "different" standard. There is no variance in the gameplay. Factions with too much gap between their strength levels do not meet the "comparable" standard. They pose a predestiny, leaving no variance to the gameplay.
Civ3 meets the "balanced" standard ONLY from the player's perspective. The UU's, the civ bonuses, the wonder combinations that trigger a golden age, these do offer strategic variety within the balanced range, for the player to enjoy varied gameplay based on his civ choice. However, from the AI perspective, there is insufficient differentiation. When played by the AI, the different civs are set to different aggression levels and have different sets of construction emphasis, but there are no behavior differences. The AI's universal readiness to make any possible transaction for which it has the money or credit causes the AI opponents to blend together into one faceless crowd, effectively indistinguishable one from the other.
Thus your measurement is invalid. You cite less variance and range between Civ3 AI's as if that were an asset. However, balance only has meaning when comparing apples to oranges. Apples to apples meets the "comparable" aspect, but not the "different" aspect.
Apples to automobiles = not comparable.
Apples to apples = not distinguishable.
Apples to oranges = a healthy balance of fruit.
I don't like to eat automobiles. I get tired of eating only apples. See my point now?
Empire games with the factions too far apart in strength render many of the options untenable. Keep in mind, you not only choose your faction, but the game chooses factions at random to pit against you. If the swing in their performance levels is staggeringly wide, you'll not be facing uphill and downhill battles, but cliffs. Climbing cliffs is no fun if you came looking for a healthy uphill jog. Jumping off cliffs is no fun, anybody can do that and there's a painful landing awaiting you, whereas a downhill jog might be envigorating now and then.
Balanced games present you with a healthy range of slopes: uphill, downhill, flat, but few cliffs. You can dial the total difficulty up and down to suit your own pace, but when you do, you get a reliable range of results instead of a bunch of cakewalks and a bunch of no-win scenarios. Games are funnest when you face competent opposition matched to your ability, to where you can win or lose, and the outcome is decided by your gameplay, not predestined before you ever take the field.
Scenario balance is what you are addressing when you talk factions. When there is only one faceless opponent, there is complete comparability but no differentiation. You learn how to play against it and then it stops being able to pit new challenges against you. You don't have to worry about cliffs, but you do not get to enjoy slopes. It's all flat all the time.
MOO2's faction balance is broken. There is way too much gap between the strongest and weakest factions. You never know what the game will pick for you, so a large number of games see you wasting your time. You draw cliffs, and lots of them. Cliffs straight up and cliffs straight down. MOO2 options, especially including customized races, are apples to automobiles. You can chip your teeth trying to munch on an automobile.
Civ3 has only minor difference between factions. This is great if you want a steady ride, bad if you crave variety. If you experience all it has to offer, and you've "been there, done that", you come to the end of the road sooner. You get bored faster. The terrain is level and you always know what to expect around each bend in the road. Civ3 factions are apples to apples.
MOO1 AI's have more significant differences, and even within a particular faction, significant personality differences and tech tree differences game to game which add more variety. The combinations are more numerous, the challenges more varied. There is a wider range of unpredictability, but almost always of the slope variety, not the cliff variety. That's what I prefer.
There's a sweet spot of convergence at the top of the parabolic curve, where balance exists between differentiation and comparability. Too much or too little of either skews the balance, knocks the game out of balance, thus diminishing the total area of "playability" that it covers.
The definition of balance is the fulcrum point, the center between two opposing forces, the intersection of two lines, two planes, or two spaces.
When you focus on only one of the two aspects, and observe that Civ3 is farther along toward the ideal for that aspect, you have missed the point. It is not one aspect or the other, but the combination of the two and the point that balances between them, which provides the richest result.
Nonetheless I will contest your argument on other points.
I welcome that. And I will respond to all your points, but I think perhaps we should take them one by one, to make sure none get lost in the shuffle.
Artifact planets are not quite as rare as you think they are
Finding an artifact planet isn't what matters. Finding one first isn't even what matters. Finding one in your starting radius, within six parsecs of your first two colonies, is what matters. That will give you the bonus tech before you've taken the time to build up your first two worlds, before you've invested in any research or built colony ships at the full price. It will also put the planet in your core and let you begin research with it much sooner.
If the artifact planet is not within six parsecs of your first pair of colonies, then you must extend your range to find it. That means researching higher range or settling more worlds, maybe both. Once you've taken the time to build up significant factories on your home planet, key turns have passed. In Civ3 there's a big difference between popping a free settler in 3800BC and doing so in 1800 BC. Those forty turns make a huge impact on total growth curve, and likewise for artifact planets. If you don't scout the artifact planet inside your initial six parsecs range, you won't find it in that critical early period where its impact is as significant as you describe.
The rate of finding artifacts within six parsecs of your starting colonies is about the same across all map sizes. Your odds of getting to it first are obviously smaller on smaller maps, where neighbors may start closer and compete to get there first.
By your own figures, an artifact planet shows up about one in thirty. I'd agree that's a fair shake. Can we also say about eight planets within six parsecs range, on average? (Actually think it's closer to seven, but let's use a liberal figure). Now, seven to eight planets in starting range per game, one artifact every thirty planets... looks like one in four games to me.
Hmm. Isn't that what I said?
If we add in artifacts planets outside that range, again, we must include the time it takes to gear up enough factories to build colony ships or conduct research. On Impossible, that will take some time, during which the AI's are expanding and scouting.
Also, by the time you're doing your own research or have built several colony ships, you're past the point at which low level artifacts goodies qualify as game breakers. Again, a free settler in 1800 BC is not the same as one in 3800 BC. By 1800BC you may have built a granary and three settlers on your own. Getting one more would help, but it helps a whole lot less than getting one before you've even built the granary.
I can usually outscout the AI's even at Impossible. On a huge map, there's something like 3.7 artifact planets on average, so you're likely to hit about one every game.
If you hit one later, it's only a minor help. You might pull as much as 5000BC worth of free techs. You can get hit by random events in the same time period. You can pull a plague that COSTS YOU 5000BC to cure, plus lost population, plus lost growth curve. You may have to pay 2000BC to stop a nova. A planet may revolt, costing you 40m colonists to rebellion plus 50m to put them down and retake the planet, plus lost growth curve. A planet could go rich or it could go poor.
Drawing a poor planet or a No Habitables system in your starting radius can hurt your growth curve, too. Drawing a rich or ultra rich planet may help it.
These are all situations that establish that MOO gameplay DOES have a fairly wide swing in terms of terrain and what it may mean, but these factors will all be the same for players in a tourney event. The only thing that won't be the same is the techs people pull out of artifacts planets. Well, I'm willing to admit I don't know precisely how this will affect the fairness and comparability of players' results, but if we are not satisfied with these swings, we can work around the problem with scenario editing to craft desirable terrain and/or playtesting to eliminate maps with artifacts worlds within initial range.
It CAN'T be worse than Civ3's terrain swings, which gave us many duds when our fate was put into the hands of random map generation. Epic 14 remains the most notorious example. Epic 17 was the end of the road for using random maps as the default. After that, I went to editing almost every scenario. The map situation for Civ3 has actually worsened with the expansion, since the new (nerfed) resources crowd out the strategic and luxury resources and have skewed the game balance.
Actually, I don't think that's the best tech to get, nor is it either of the two techs I mentioned (although Range-5 or Speed-2 certainly is a very good thing to have, and they do SEEM like the best things to have). The best early tech to get, I think, is Industrial Tech 8
Depends on how early is "early". If you find that in the first couple of turns, with the initial scouts at their first destination, then yeah, I'd agree. Depends on the terrain, too. If there's a rich Tundra or Dead planet nearby, you'd have to admit, the environment tech would be useful in a way the construction tech would not. But it's arguable and variable.
The irony is that you've actually furthered my main points by disproving one of my minor points. There isn't one clear best tech to pull from an artifacts planet. I could also make a case for Scatter Pack V as a hugely desirable item to be pulling. Massive boost to standing up colonies quickly, as each base is worth a whole lot more. Remember, it's not just planting your flag that matters, but holding the ground.
The biggest thing that helps early in a game of MOO1 is the ability to construct a Large-hulled colony ship with Reserve Fuel Tanks, IMO.
I don't think so. What reserve tanks buys you is range. You can get range with cheap research. Range 4 lets you cross most gaps. Range 5 gives you almost unlimited ability to hopscotch your way through the stars. Range 4 is available for about the cost of one colony ship, give or take a bit. IF it is in your tree. You'll get either Range 4 or Range 5, though.
In order to put reserve tanks on a large colony ship, you need planetology, propulsion and construction breakthroughs, and more than minimal ones. We're talking about thousands of BC in research. Often you can grab three to five planets with Range 3! Why research at all? Get them as soon as you can. Whatever you can get with Range 4, do that. Would you rather have Range 4 and six colony ships or enough tech to put reserve tanks on your ships but not have built any yet? I know what my preference would be!
If Range 4 isn't in your tree, you definitely can get Range 5 and doing so would be necessary to put reserve tanks on your ships anyway. Past a certain point, say about ten parsecs radius from your homeworld, getting Warp Two engines becomes more urgent than extending range. And you also have to start thinking about DEFENDING what you claim, as you run into AI's who will attack if you let them park ships in orbit over your new colonies.
My expeirence is that it's a very powerful strategy to aim for this ability ASAP.
I agree, but this strat is useless on small maps, not likely to be useful on medium maps. Large maps may see you reach the end of your claimable terrain without needing more than range 4 or range 5. If you do need more range, it probably involves one or two systems, rather than doubling your claimable terrain.
What's missing from the tech tree can have as much impact as the best-case freebie from artifacts scouting. If you happen to be missing both first-generation waste cleanup techs, your early growth curve will suffer significantly. If you miss missile upgrades, your ability to defend against Ruthless personalities who rush you may be undercut. Missing the first several terraforming techs leaves your population and economy stuck in park. If you miss both Industrial 9 and Industrial 8, you may have to pay full price on all early factory construction and take much longer to stand up your empire.
There will always be some options missing. However, for tournament purposes, the tech tree is pregenerated for each new game, so the same techs will be present or absent for each player in our tournament.
The artifact planets will be in the same places, and the odds of beating AI scouts to these systems will be fair to all. Beyond that we'll just have to see.
Unless you are playing as an Expansionist (where it is a feature anyway), or on a huge map, it's unlikely you'll be able to get anything gamebreaking out of a hut at high difficulty levels. Sure, settlers greatly increase your growth curve. However, in a competition game, many people end up getting the same settlers anyway out of the pRNG; remember all the 3950BC free settlers in Epic 15
If "many" people catch a break, that's statistics. The ultimate winner won't be decided solely by handing a major advantage to one or two lucky players.
The problem is when only a few hit the lottery, and the advantages gained turned out to be decisive. Civ3 is actually pretty good about this as far as the huts go, but you're citing the wrong examples.
Think about Epics 12 and 30, Deity games where one or two players did pop free settlers out of huts that spewed barbarians at most players. These breaks were decisive for those who caught them, compared to everybody else. That's about the same effect as most players drawing Hand Lasers, ECM Jammer I and Class II shields, while one or two draw Industrial 8. Thus, Deity games with huts and without expansionist civ for the player DO tend to fall into the same pattern as artifact planets. Thus it is not valid to discount my comparison to huts. The comparison is valid.
And in Epic 37 it was practically raining free settlers and cities.
Epic 37 was edited to double the number of huts on the starting landmass, precisely to REMOVE the luck factors by increasing the number of dice rolls to a point of being sure events wouldn't turn on one or two huts. By making sure there were so many, it was a virtual certainty that everyone would draw at least one bonus city, most likely two, maybe three. That is about how it worked out.
Change it to a single hut, though... then it would be a dice roll.
The artifact planets are a dice roll and a potential lottery, but they are not the all-intrusive element you portray them to be. If we decide they provide too much luck swing, we can reduce or remove their impact by being choosy with scenario maps or even editing them.
Iron Working out of a hut isn't really much of a game breaker at all; for a second-row tech, it's cheap, and it's something the AI's LOVE to research.
You're not thinking the way I am about Iron Working. The value isn't in what it costs to research. If you pull it early (admittedly not a frequent occurrence because you have to have acquired all the first-row techs first) you can SEE where the iron is. You can identify who has none and gear up to go and stomp them right quick. That's WAY more valuable than even a free settler. You can eliminate an entire rival in the cradle and double your territory, pull a leader to rush your FP, and go completely nuts. You may be able to deny somebody iron by beelining to claim the resource or park units on or near it, or run blockades near it. Swords vs spears and warriors is not much of a contest.
Pulling the Wheel early can be decisive, too. Find out a neighbor has no horses, hook up yours and go on the warpath. And one is much more likely to pull the Wheel out of a hut than to pull Iron Working. Still, getting these techs sooner than you otherwise would can change the entire face of the game, because of how much reward is available in Civ3 to those who prosecute successful ancient wars.
Heck, forget the huts. The distribution of resources in itself is a bigger deal. Secure the iron, build swords (especially Gallics, Legions or the mighty Immortals) and go crush some pipsqueak without resources. That worked pretty well for some folks even in Epic 39 with mines unavailable. You won't be doing that in MOO, artifacts planet or not. It's not happening.
Did Rome declare because they planned to or because they hit your sub?
In C3C, the 'bug' of an AI, even an ally, hitting a sub and automatically declaring war is back. Looking at the picture you took of where Rome declared it looks like their Frigate (Galleon?) is pointed right at your unprotected sub, hence my question.
The only way that I've found around this is to station another ship on top of the sub to keep accidental wars from happening, which totally kills the ability of a sub to hide in the first place...
I totally forgot about that bug! Yes, I think you're right - Rome ran into the sub and auto-declared war. I'll see if I can check my saves and find out for sure.
Realms Beyond Civilization - Epic 39 - Division of Labor
This epic was a variant game which one simple rule: if a terrain could be irrigated, it could NOT be mined or planted. The implications were far-reaching, and a real challenge to productivity. There was one additional rule: no representative governments.
The scenario goal was to challenge players to learn how to effectively use 'specialists', in particular the new policeman and civil engineer specialists, though taxmen and scientists were also useful. We played an agricultural civ, the Celts, to further emphasize the food aspect.
I wanted to embrace the scenario goal, and so ruled out a 'quick win' approach of early domination or conquest. A diplo win or a OCC approach would not have fit my vision of the scenario, and I wanted to pick a victory path. A civ-culture win fit this very well. On a small world sometimes the tech pace is quite fast, and our ability to research would be limited without a Republic/Democratic govt. Or would it? This was the other aspect of the scenario I wanted to test, how well could we use Communism and scientists to obtain and keep a tech lead for a space launch.
So my own goal was... a multiple victory. Civ-culture would be primary, space launch secondary, with 20K and Diplo wins as gravy if they could work in the same time period.
Rather than delay days (cough, weeks) for a long-winded and highly pictorial report, I'm going to report this on time (midnight Tues) and in (for me) a summary-like report (although now looking at the length, this 'summary' would be a tome for many people!) The longer turn-long is available though I doubt that's of interest :P
*** STARTING APPROACH ***
I knew from the start that I would depend on food, a large-ish number of fairly dense cities, and heavy use of specialists. I played a succession game recently with some similarities, RBC11 - Cultured Byzantine Communists. Another game which impacted this one was RBC1 - Rise of the Incans, my first C3C scenario and one in which I first saw how interesting and powerful the new specialists were. Alas, I also so how if unchecked a C3C civ could run away with the game, either in tech or in culture, and it was a *PRIME GOAL* to keep other civs in balanace.
Similar to RBC11, I knew my first key goal... the Pyramids. For a high-irrigation agri civ, what could be a better wonder? I went so far as to push the variant nature of this game and chose to build the Pyramids *before any settler*. It was a long-range approach, chosen more for theme than for optimality, and one confirmed as definite when I saw how much room I had for expansion. The nearest neighbors would be quite some distance away, allowing me to delay the inital land grab and instead build a supercharger for later land grab - whether by peace or Gallic sword.
Highlights of the opening... - First research: Bronze at max for Colossus (Pyramids prebuild) - Build order was odd: two warriors sent exploring, the directly to wonder This was a thematic choice, settler first would have been smarter - Huts gave barbs and Masonry (right after picking WC specifically to block cheap tech) - The shorter you perceive yourself to be the more you'll rush and get slowed down. I irrigated a plains-wine very early on which was useless in Depotism :P - 1250BC I get Pyramids and in my slumber am surprised by the ensuing Despotic OCC GA! - With just one city I am defiant against first tribute demand. I almost ignore Hannibal completely and go back to building a wonder! We whacked a warr-settler pair and ended up paying twice the tribute cost, but we defended our honor (and slowed down them down) - This also casts the die. Hannibal shall die.
*** FIRST CONTACT and END OF THE ANCIENT ERA *** - 775BC - I saw what looked like a short crossing and went for it with a Curragh, and was rewarded to meet England and Rome, then Portugal, to become the sole contact broker for several centuries. This was a huge boost to my tech and economic situation. Before then the Eastern hemisphere in my game was rather ahead of our continent, due to the lack of Carthage-Egypt cooperation. - The biggest tech deal got me out of the Ancient era when brokering options became available the same time I got to Literature first. I was able to pick up: Math, Code of Laws, Map Making, Construction, Currency, Monarchy, all for about 100g That went so well I don't think I'll need Great Library. After seeing the eastern civs snag almost all wonders Cleo pulls a shocker and scores the Library.
*** SECOND WAR (FIRST REAL WAR) *** - On the verge of revolting to a better govt and with an army consisting of 3 whole Gallics, what do I do when Cleo demands tribute? I do what any good defiant would do, and tell her to jump off a cliff. She declares. I whip two Gallics to avoid instant collapse of front cities, but when they win, she had no units in position and momentum swung our way. - 10AD - We get our first MGL! From an elite Gallic valiant in battle? No!! From an elite spear holding off two *War chariots* and getting one on defense!! :lol: A Gallic army is formed and it soon takes two cities. Egypt must have been crazy to ask tribute, they have NOTHING to throw at me, and I swallow several more. - To insult Cleo further, I go ahead and proceed into anarchy mid-war. Like others in this epic, I drew a sad two turns. 23 of 62 units allowed shows just how razor thin we are despite offensive gains. In 90AD an elite gallic beats an archer for MGL #2. With Chivalry due soon, we hold and in a few centuries fill with Knights. - By 200AD we're capturing Alexandria. Sheesh, if there was any sign of resistance I was willing to stop long ago. I wait for her to pop a new tech from library to extort before stopping at this point. - 300 AD - Hannibal is just NOT WATCHING what is going on, and demands tribute. I really debate whether to turn this into a defiant game, but decide it would take too long to play and I would risk not finishing. I give in, for now. - 310 AD - rng goes whacko. Full 4hp vet GS loses to a hurt archer in the open, then it feels bad and gives me a MGL with a hurt elite who was planning to heal up. - 320 AD - FP done in Alesia, but benefit seems tiny. (I have too few cities :P ) In same year Burdigala is founded as a native city among Egyptian thorns. It's a city destined for greatness. One more turn syndrome consumes me, and I go 6+ hrs to 3am.
*** MEDIEVAL WARS and WONDER WARS *** - After decimating Egypt down to a small handful of cities, I grant peace for tech, go zero research and high cash, and built up many horses. Then bam, huge upgrdade. - 610AD - It's payback time for Carthage, time to trim their sails. On turn one we cut their iron colony and the Knight army takes Leptis Minor, defended by just 2 numes. - 670AD - English start Bach's, which I desperately wanted. I react with unswerving dilligence at FP city, merging in two workers instantly and stopping all jobs next door to finish improving the last needed tile. It's a close, close race. - I was not garrisoning cities (on purpose, prefering a city loss to a big troop loss) and lost Leptis Magna but recaptured right away. Utica, home of Copernicus, is captured and we look forward to communism which will make it a useful city. - Pentagon due next turn, our 600 shields in FP city due any turn now and we're short about four techs!? A problem? No my friend, that's by design. As we've planned and kept close to our chest for many years now, with research OFF, we attack Cleo and capture Thebes and the Great Library. We score *TEN* techs:
By what seems to be a bug we did NOT get Music Theory although two civs we know have it, so we have to get that from Portugal immediately.
- With Bach's coming close, I investigate London and see we'll beat them by 1.5 turns! I MM Entremont to the hilt after a Pentagon prebuild to make it complete Shakespeare the same turn as London would, and SLOW down Bach's one turn. Thus we snag both ST and Bach's in same turn as London would have completed Bach's. (It gets Smiths instead) - Around 900 AD we look close at culture - to our surprise England is whipping us, we are 6317/2403 for civ/city, and England is 10,102/2549. We're +129/turn, they +199.
*** MANIFEST DESTINY ***
There was really no reason in the world why I shouldn't take ownership of my entire continent, and the sooner the better so as to focus on city growth, empire growth, and cultural building. The whip was applied rather liberally, during small city size when happiness was not a big issue, and when the Pyramids would help re-grow the city quickly.
- As far as Carthage, his repeated pleas for peace fall on deaf, defiant ears. We even go out to the nearby island, and wipe Carthage off the face of the planet. - Yea, though mass murderers, we are cultured, scoring some nice wonders after totally missing the parade of early medieval wonders. Newton's is added to Entremont's list. - 1110 AD - we're first to ToG tech and Maredudd ap Owain shows up. An SGL! I have nothing to rush and keep him in case our low shields would cost us a wonder later.
*** The BOLDEST MOVE in My Game ***
Still stinging from my experience in RBC1 with runaway AI (admittedly in v1.00) I wasn't about to reach 100K culture only to have England with 120K, or even 60K. (Yes, at this point I was oblivious that my target was 80K, not 100K culture!) I did NOT want a huge war and did not want a phony smackdown later to prove my cultural superiority, so I had a straightforward plan. With a pair of armies and several cavalry earned in the fighting with Carthage, I would send over a few ships and in a 'honorable surprise attack', raze London!! On precisely the IBT after I landed England learned Nationalism and what would have been a cakewalk became a nail-biting episode in pain. My ships were gunned down instantly by Man-O-War ships, and so it was a do-or-die proposition. The rng did not help initially, and if I waited, there would be whipping, cavalry arriving and no hope of reinforcements. I pressed hard, and the armies went deep red. They would NOT survive. The cav attacks were hit and miss, and though many rifles were killed, I was left with a cavalry defender and no attackers left. I had brought two muskets to help defend counterattacks, but they had to take up arms. The first died, injuring the English cavalry - which stayed on top. One left. The 2hp army attacks... and DIES! The 1hp army hits the 1hp sole cav defender. AND DIES!! The ONLY unit we have left is our last musket! The vet lost 2hp then finally, won! He had the very lonely honor of razing once-glorious London. Chances for getting Lizzie's vote were slim indeed :P There was one hurt ship left in the water, which three 1 and 2 hp winning cavs escaped in. They fled due south and hugged the artic barrier, not knowing if a Man-o-War would come out of the fog to slay them. On the counterattack, my armies and remaining force outside the ruins of London were slayed to the man. The attack worked, but by the slimmest of margins, and my progress on the Pentagon was instantly curtailed -- with less then 4 armies it now swapped me to something else (!?) The three injured cav did arrive home, war heroes! They healed, joined our other armies, and led a bold attack on the small island to the SE of the capital, where we captured the three English cities including Liverpool and Dover. With this success, England could not reach 40K before I could reach 80, and they were kept permanently from running away.
In fact there was a careful balance of power in the Eastern hemisphere, and with trading and alliances I did all I could from a distance to keep Rome, Portugal and England in rough balance. This worked out surprisingly well. Early on that meant free gifts of tech and iron to Rome, sale of Rubber to Portugal, only to see them pull ahead when I cut off their lux shipments.
*** INDUSTRIAL ERA ***
Two MAJOR items impacted the industrial era, neither a surprise. First, the advent of Communism. That was soon followed by Espionage in order to build the very nice SPHQ. This was done AFTER rails were laid down, and after the best looking cities got their factory, to see which city would get this excellent boost. My Burgidala was placed somewhat centrally and had a rich set of hills and mountains around it. It became one of the best producers, although a fourth city way up next to Carthage which I named "Celtic Pride" was also very nice due to communal corruption. The second big impact was the arrival of civil engineers with Replaceable Parts. This was a MAJOR boost to the national culture building program. The worst of cities could easily knock out buildings in 8-16 turns instead of 80, and temples were very quick.
My science advisor, at 1:30 am, says "Sleep is for the weak!" I should have disagreed, and Went to bed, but pressed on til 3:00am.
*** TRANSITION TO THE END ***
The micromanagment in this era was initially fun, always effective, but the only downside was a real risk that I would miss the Epic deadline, so I probably didn't handle this quite as optimally as I hoped. In particular, my timing of the end was off. By 1300 I was an the verge of communism but so few cities had finished their cultural bldgs that the civ culture and rate was lower than I wanted. I had a far worse blunder / mental lapse which I'll get too shortly :P
Effect of Communism compared to Feudalism (which is rather like Monarchy in econ/shields): Feudalism: Shield output of top 8 cities: 52,18,16, 8, 8,8, 8, 8 All nation: 230. Communism: Shield output of top 8 cities: 50,19,16,16,15,13,12,10 All nation: 363. That's a 58% increase in shields going to Communism, and 47% increase on science. HUGE!
In 1440AD Burdigala completes SPHQ hitting 62 spt, eclipsing the FP with 52 and capital 38.
In 1540 the culture situation was: 36,639 +666 per turn. Victory would have come in 65 turns, less with more bldgs continuing to complete. In fact, I would complete the Internet before then, so I estimate culture victory would have been in 1770 AD. But that didn't happen, and wouldn't happen. For I really did want a space victory (actually a double victory) - to see if communism plus scientists were strong enough in economy and science to keep up a fast tech pace. I literally had to sell dozens of cultural bldgs to slow down the culture pace. Tech time estimation was tough too, but it seemed like if I did NOT sell techs it would take about 7 turns per tech, but about 5 turns per tech if I sold to the other AI for gpt. Because the year of victory was important in this epic, I had to use tech sales to fuel research. There was slight risk if I didn't have enough shields to build the space parts fast enough.
So also in 1540 I decided to have a large sell-off of cultural buildings to reach space. The blunder was that I did not realize UNTIL 1758 that the civ culture victory condition for small maps was *80K* not 100K. I *so* commonly play standard maps, and had never fathomed civ-culture win on small map and never noticed this. I noticed only when looking at the VP screen in 1758, when I was at 62,879 culture, 27 turns to victory! I then had a massive temple and cathedral meltdown, which was quite highly dissatisfying in a thematic sense, but I was at Miniturization at that point and was not going to give up going to space.
However, I learned something else. I had known Nuclear plants were an increase to shields, +100% instead of +50%, but I didn't realize Manufacturing plants were *additive* with power plants. I had always assumed from the 'plant' designation that they were just another redundant power plant. They're +50% shields, and also go nicely in combination with offshore platforms. So at the end, my shield totals for my best cities were:
Burgidala - SPHQ - 102 spt Gerogovia - FPHQ - 111 spt (the frozen tundra forest spot! Thanks to the game) Entremont - Capital - 81 spt Celic Pride - spiritual center of the nation - 90 spt Leptis Minor - Carthaginian empire - you non-Communists never knew how good this one was :P Alesia - decentish location on fresh water in the core - both of these around 50spt.
Largest cities? Size 32, 32, 29 (cap), 29, 28 (SPHQ), 28, 28, 27, 26, 25, and FP is 21.
Entremont was the top city, with Rome, Lisbon, York and Veii behind. Six wonders for Entremont. We had 69% world pop (!), 52% area, 80288 culture, 11,145 in capital. Econ was 21926g+821gpt at 80% sci (!) (+2443 at 0%, or +312gpt at 100%)
Looking at other folks city placements, many chose my Alesia for the FP location, but it really didn't have the shield potential of other sights. I was surprised to see that my FP site selection was not even a CITY SITE, much less an FP site, in most other games. It had just enough food for size 12 before rails, and was able to grow larger later. My Burgidala was, I thought, a great spot, and it was my first city to break 100 shields.
*** VICTORY ***
I did end up with the UN, not too difficult, but I had at BEST one ally, with a very real chance I would lose due to England's enmity and due to a war with Rome. I was able to time it to achieve space launch and passing 80K culture in the same inter-turn, so it was a moral victory for me. It wasn't until re-checking saves a day later that I saw that vile England had just crept over 40K, spoiling my claims for a double-victory! 8-\ Well, I can at least say that Entremont was no longer in fear of whether it would beat London's culture or not. If I had not sped down culture to get the space win, England would have been well under 40K, so the lack of getting 2x-2nd was simply due to the space slow down. This was in turn due to being in communism. With the great economic base I had, in Republic/Democracy it was a guaranteed 4-turn rate, while I could not comfortably reach 4-turn until right in the middle of the Modern Age after every significant city finally had a Stock Exchange *AND* a Commercial Dock, and when the Internet powered a research lab in every city. Entremont's culture was quite a bit less than 20K. I expected it higher though not enough for a city win. I DID have enough culture there for a city-win to beat the histograph date, but that would likely have lost to another civ space launch (unless they continued to bicker and fight and stay in Fascism! <-- the official AI's gun-to-its-own-head govt of C3C, as Communism was to PtW)
*** EPILOGUE ***
This was a very gun game. The difference in play style and thinking imposed by no mining was good, although in my mind a better challenge would have been no mining *period*. I enjoyed the London assault, even though it was harrowing (ok, 'because' it was!) :P Still, the tedium here was *FAR FAR* less than in FRFR, where I could not mine, could not irrigate, and worse by far, could not make ROADS. Playing that game simultaneously with this one kept this one from ever feeling a grind, although the management was extensive. It was also fun to put Communism to a real test. In the RBC11 game we just walked all over the AI, and it was a blowout. The specialists are I think a nice addition to the game. Why a nice addition, and why not just "one more factor favoring the player!?" - For a 'normal' game situation you don't need them to win - They can make your empire a lot more productive, but you have to work at it - They open up other victory conditions, rather than create a big imbalance. (ie, they were very nice in this game, but had I chose a military victory and non-variant rules, I would have blown the AI away, as in fact other players did with quick domination win) - If you reach Replaceable Parts with an empire large enough that you have many corrupt cities, you're already in excellent shape (a 'won' game in most cases) - It counterbalances what I still (as a minority?!) view as a return to Civ-1 style runaway-AI with the new corruption model, giving the human player on Deity or Sid with a "good" empire but half-an-age behind a last chance to catch up.
I look forward to seeing: i) how my 'thematic' Pyramids-first approach compared to traditional and/or aggressive peaceful expansions, ii) if anyone beat the 1770ish date for the culture win I would have gotten if I didnt' sell-off 25% of my cpt to ride to space, iii) how quick folks focused on the space race, not culture, could win. I'm going to guess that culture (slow tech pace desired) and space (fast pace desired) were at odds in their builds and optimal conditions and so I doubt my years will be impressive.
FINAL SCORE: 4936 Game time: 33 hrs, 34 mins though it seemed longer :P Victory: Space win in 1832 AD, turn 381, also had 80,234 final culture.
Thanks to all who played! (And nice variant concept T-Hawk) Charis
Wow, I'm surprised by the differences in the games, having read all the other reports and just now T-Hawks. He answered my question of what a "strong" and more traditional expansion would do for tech. Our continent was WAY behind the others, but he ended up a few techs ahead! The other major differences were consequence of goal decisions. The spread out cities for his Monarchy run were very different from the 3*OCN path of the Communist, as well as his comment why he like policemen so much where I liked engineers so much. (I had courts and police stations in every city. One policeman was enough to make the city fly right leaving room for lots of engineers. And pre-communism, my #cities was huge, so no amount of police would make them non-corrupt. His game also showed proper space race technique, selling techs abundantly to fuel your own research, rather than hording the techs. I avoided this approach until a very late stage as I wanted to slow the tech pace in case my civ culture (cough, 100K... not) victory was in jeapordy.
The other very large difference I'm seeing is that many strong games showed no concern for spt output of a city, and were excited to see 60spt. I had TWO cities cranking over 100 spt by the end, and no one else I see seemed to have gone for (or at least mentioned) my very best city -- one that on apperance was a miserable landlocked frozen tundra poor excuse for a city. So I made screenshots of my two prize cities, as well as a snapshot of the end.
I didn't realize Manufacturing plants were additive with power plants
Funny that you've mentioned Civ 1 elsewhere in this thread, yet were confused by this. Manufacturing plants have worked that way since Civ 1. Really, they're additive with factories and have nothing to do with power plants.
My best shield producing cities (outside of engineers) were in the tundra as well. Your comparison of others' 60-shield cities with your 100 shields is off base, though. Take a city producing 60 shields, add a nuclear plant and manufacturing plant, and that becomes 90 shields - the comparison is about even.
I'm also wondering why you're worrying about top-end shield production at all? You're supposed to pick an FP location for empire-wide corruption reduction, not to set up one city for shield production. OK, in Communism, that's all the FP is good for, but I'd think that the corruption picture pre-Communism will make much more difference than whether your end-game FP city has 60 or 80 shields. And you do get the SPHQ to place anywhere for one super wonder city.
It became more apparent in this epic that I really enjoy maximizing arbitrary self-set goals
The solution to that would be to sponsor an Epic. Then the Epic goals and your own goals would coincide. Do you or Gris have any ideas for an Epic Forty?
Funny that you've mentioned Civ 1 elsewhere in this thread, yet were confused by this. Manufacturing plants have worked that way since Civ 1. Really, they're additive with factories and have nothing to do with power plants.
They're additive in Civ II and III, but in Civ I a factory does nothing except require 4gpt maintenance once you build a manufacturing plant, and if you have the technology you can skip straight to the manufacturing plant. The main difference is that manufacturing plants become available early enough in Civ I and II to actually make some contribution to the space race.
The solution to that would be to sponsor an Epic. Then the Epic goals and your own goals would coincide. Do you or Gris have any ideas for an Epic Forty?
I'm neither, but I do have an Epic idea myself. I'll need to construct and playtest a map, though -- it's not going to ready for at least one week, minimum.
Great game, looks like you really got a chance to try plenty of specialists with those big cities! Your report mentions 3-tile spacing, yet you were able to get some pretty large metros, it looks like you left some room to grow? I ended up squeezing more cities in along the coast, and in gaps, and never got cities that large. (Well, there's another reason my cities never got that large :whipped:). Actually, I had delayed getting Sanitation for a while, and many cities had only recently completed hospitals when my game ended . . . abruptly. Good to know I wasn't the only one working under the 100K delusion.
High adventure on your London assault as well! I always hate to see an army go down, but two in one attack!
Re: SPT, Massive SPT cities were never an issue for me, with a cultural goal, I wanted lots of decent spt cities, but obviously it would be more important for Space, or a late-game military win. It was somewhat frustrating to max out at 28 spt even in my top 2 cities after factory (and the capital wasn't one of them), but they had also built everything they needed and were gradually working on defenders, or a few on wealth. Same reason I never built Hoovers, as my river cities weren't that great, the few cities that had factories had run out of culture to build, and I didn't think the game would last long enough to make it pay off. (Even expecting 100K, I was projecting to finish before 1600).
Well that was the odd thing about going so crazy with irrigation. In the majority of my cities I *did* go moderately tight in spacing, 3 tiles, but that was usually enough food to feed a size 20 city even working 9 tiles! The truly full sized cities I mentioned, going up to 32+, were ones that I let have the full 20+center working tiles, and forced their nearest neighbors not to poach. It was just odd that where in a normal game those cities would be called fishing villages, they were size 12-18 cities in this game, or size 20 if it was 4-spacing from a metropolis.
It became more apparent in this epic that I really enjoy maximizing arbitrary self-set goals than the defined win conditions. I was far more pleased with seeing not one but two cities hit 100spt, and with matching 80K culture total and space launch on the same turn than I would have been in coming in with the earliest date. (Though of course if that happened on the side, so much the better :P) It's impressive how well those with more focused styles did in achieving their objectives in this Epic.
In an Epic, as in life, one must always set his own criteria for success and happiness, and neither let others define it for him, nor let admiration for the good results of others be replaced by a baser response.
I haven't figured out yet how to quote a message on this forum, so here's my manual attempt:
Charis said: It became more apparent in this epic that I really enjoy maximizing arbitrary self-set goals than the defined win conditions. I was far more pleased with seeing not one but two cities hit 100spt, and with matching 80K culture total and space launch on the same turn than I would have been in coming in with the earliest date. (Though of course if that happened on the side, so much the better :P)
I am getting to this point myself in Civ, which is what attracted me to first the RBC SGs, and now the Epics. This time last year, I was struggling to win consistently at Emperor. I had been playing solo since it came out, and was playing to win, but have fun. But I had recently gotten serious with GOTM at CFC, and was confused because, at least at Emperor and above, it seemed I had to do things that were counter-intuitive to win. "Minimum" research? Trade away, or even "Gift" techs to the AI? Jump my Palace? That's my home! Break a treaty?? I never had a ROP rape back then, because I never signed 'em, I'm not letting that AI in MY territory! And Granaries, they just gives you unhappy people that much quicker!
Participating in Cracker's Quick Start Challenge in particular really helped me improve my early game, actually using a granary to produce settlers, and accept that yes, at higher levels I'm usually better off trading techs with the AI. I still couldn't bring myself to a palace jump, though. Anyway, for a variety of RL reasons, mostly due to military workload but also family, I stepped away from CFC and Civ completely for a few months. I did some historical strategy games (I have basically a board wargame background), but very limited gaming.
When I heard the buzz about Conquests, and with my heavy summer commitments winding down, I decided to get back into Civ and the GOTM. Playing consistently, and getting lots of feedback, has helped me to improve, as well as learning from a lot of good players. And the "targeted victory conditions" made it interesting to try some new things (like my first-ever diplomatic win). But now that that is no longer in place, the trend is pretty inexorable to fastest domination wins, period. On the one hand, I have gotten much better at that style, and feel much more confident that I finally know what I am doing, but on the other hand, how many times do I want to do the same thing over again?
Meanwhile, the RBC Conquests SG series was starting up. I was very excited to get into the actual Conquests, as the historical flavor really appealed to me, and the chance to "explore" them with a group sounded like a lot of fun. As you can tell, I've been hooked, both on the Conquests and the SG format. (I had actually played in one two years ago, RBD7 or 8, the Viking one Sirian designed before PTW ever came out, but was afraid of the time commitment). In fact, I've been so busy with them, I've only completed the first 2 conquests solo!
Anyway, when the Epics started back up, I thought I would give it a go, and I'm glad I did. I like the fact that there seems to be plenty of room to try for different victory conditions, the variants make for a different set of strategic challenges by taking certain options off the table, etc. I really look forward to trying some of the self-imposed variants (OCC/5CC, Always War) that I've often read about, but never tried, if I think a scenario would be a good fit.
It's impressive how well those with more focused styles did in achieving their objectives in this Epic.
It's ironic that one of my biggest problems has always been keeping a focused approach! I tend to be a builder at heart, and love to get cities with all the trimmings, while still building a decent military, etc. But this game I made a conscious effort to keep focusing everything on getting culture, giving the other AIs anything they asked for just to keep them on their side of the ocean. (That's why I took a certain satisfaction from reading some of the other reports, especially your burning London to the ground!)
In an Epic, as in life, one must always set his own criteria for success and happiness, and neither let others define it for him, nor let admiration for the good results of others be replaced by a baser response.
One of my early "mentors" in college used to always tell me, "You should never be dependent on someone else for your own personal happiness." He had had a rough life, a Vietnam vet, but never let his circumstances or other's situations affect his attitude. A lesson I've never forgotten, although I still struggle sometimes to apply.
(I had actually played in one two years ago, RBD7 or 8, the Viking one Sirian designed before PTW ever came out, but was afraid of the time commitment).
Thus your moniker is familiar to me and I think of you as an old timer, if not a regular. Maybe your participation levels have not been high, or have been sporadic, but you've been around long enough and often enough that it seems only fitting that you should be here now. At least I know who you are, and -I- have been out of the SG loop long enough NOT to know everybody any more. I suppose when the lifespan of any venture begins to be measured in "years", the comings and goings will lead to quite a crisscrossed web of relationships and acquaintances.
I'm glad you have more time now for playing. The more the merrier. Certainly the mention of "RBD SG#" triggers similar feelings for Charis. So an apt place to be making these remarks.
Grimjack, that's too bad. Looks like you had a promising start, too. I was wondering when I read the opening of the second page, something wasn't clicking quite right...
I hope that you stopped just because you were short on time. Ok, you went in a Republic. Oops. Revolt and move on. It's a side rule, designed to encourage rushing via the peole. If you cash-rushed something, sell it. This isn't a legalistic competition my friend.
In any case, better luck next time, and don't be quite so harsh on yourself
Charis
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