notoptimals' Adv 8 Report

[notoptimal]

Long time lurker, first time poster/participator...

I had a report ready to go, but the whole thing disappeared , so here's the executive summary -- I'll try to get the full report online at some point in the next day or two.

EDIT2: I had to retype the report, and it's now available for viewing: http://www.dingusegg.com/Civ4/LouieLouie/

Domination Victory in 2032 A.D. -- I'm a noble-level builder, so it took me a while to get going on this one. Took out seven opposing civilizations in the procees:

Mali 75 BC
Arabia 1510 AD
Rome 1824 AD
Greece 1924 AD
Spain 1987 AD
Mongolia 2019 AD
Russia 2031 AD

Mali was easy to take out, Arabia took two tries (unintentionally), Rome was two wars (intentionally), Greece got done in one shot, Spain was a slog fest, and the last two were modern age stealth bomb, send in the modern armor, fortify with mech inf and repeat jobs.

One thing that occurred during this game but puzzled me -- Mongolia was landlocked behind Spain and Greece in the southeast corner of the continent. Once I had conquered those two empires and cities came out of revolt, Mali was effectively cut off from all other Civs save my own, as I had open borders with no one. However, according to my spies, his cities still had trade routes with other civs and he was still able to trade resources with them. I think it's mentioned somewhere that closed borders are like "trading mountains" and would block trade routes.

Am I misunderstanding trade routes and resource trading, or is something funny going on?

notopt

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Am I misunderstanding trade routes and resource trading, or is something funny going on?

Misunderstanding, though not entirely your fault.

Open Borders determines whether units can cross the culture limits, but doesn't change trade routes at all.

Trade routes depend on capitals being "trade route connected", which basically means that the player on either end has the techs to make the transit from one city to another (rivers, roads, coasts with Sailing, ocean with Astronomy, some fiddly little corner cases having to do with fog of war and unexplored territory.

The other aspect of trade route connected is war. You can't connect through a tile belonging to a civ that opposes you in war. So if the Germans and the Mali can only route through your civ, you can disrupt the traderoute by declaring war.

If I'm translating the sdk correctly (I haven't tested this), you have to declare war on both parties to cut off the trading.

Example: you want to disrupt trade between Germany and Mali. You have Timbuktu surrounded, so if you can close the borders for trading, Mali is isolated. My understanding is that you have to declare war on both Mali and Germany; if you declare war only on Mansa, Berlin to Timbuktu is still valid trade network, so they can continue trading.

[notoptimal]

Misunderstanding, though not entirely your fault.

Ah, thanks for the clarifications...it was most puzzling as it was going on.

notopt