Adventure Fourteen Discussion

[Jabah]

I did play this adventure, but didn't finish in time and was away.
On reporting day, I was still well alive in 1950, being friendly with both Ceasar and Cyrus (same religion, lots of trades...), Saladin was tech leader and building his SpaceShip and was just sneaked attacked for the 3rd time by Napoleon (luckily it has always been with lots of horses against my elephants). His cavalries did overflow my rifles defenses on a (ex french) border cities on the first turns, but my highly promoted tanks were coming back from destroying the Mongol together with Cyrus.
I just finished the game yesterday (only around 20t extra turns) for fun and curiosity. I was tech-ing on the lower side of the tech tree (aiming initially at UN then Internet), build the UN and manage to just win the Diplomatic-Victory on the 3rd try once I managed to capture all France up to Paris and Orleans (Cyrus+Ceasar voted for me, Saladin and Napoleon against).

Jabah

[MJW (ya that one)]

Part of the skill in the game, especially at the highest difficulty levels, is deciding how little defence you can get away with in builder mode without completely folding if you get attacked.

No, if you want to win the even and not attack anyone the best uber-start is to build no miltary and hope you get good RNG rolls. Anything else and some else who did get lucky would win. So the only way to win is to lose 90% of time.

This fact may be the reason why Civ4 is so boring and broken after the opening. If you don't attack then you just chose the best econ techs. If you do attack then the best move is to just attack someone else and snowball out because the AI's are too stuiped to react to your plan and after the opening getting more citys makes you tech faster.

The opening is broken too. If you want to win the best way is to pick one if the few viable plans from "a drop-down menu" stick with it tottaly and hope you get lucky. If you don't someone else will. That is why I don't play in plain GOTMs. I might play in Relems beyond because Sirian is good eough to make games that don't have that menu and have some rules to keep thing intersting after the opening. Good work Sirian.