Adv59 - Timmy, Hatty, Half-y

[timmy827]

Ouch, bad pun...another game not finished.
I got a rather late start, to be honest I didn’t look at the site for quite a while (although I wouldn’t have been able to play much before the final week with Christmas and New Year’s trips anyways). Initially I wasn’t sure if I could play, but took a look.

The settler in the Egypt start was the hill between the rice and pig on turn 0. But I really dislike coastal capitals unless multiple seafood (plus thought that cramming another city east would be awkward) so wandered inland, and the desert hill looked great!

Then decided a basic gameplan, hardly novel in general but rather so for me personally
-only capital builds cottages (actually, this would be a first for me), rest of cities are production/whipping centers
-get an academy early (from 2nd city, one exception to the avoid)
-use the ivory to conquer the world
which I thought would go pretty well with limited time availabilty.

I also put more exploring warriors than usual. Huts were I'd say very 'even' - one gold, Fishing (a tech is nice, but of all the possible ones this was cheap and not immediately useful), but no kicks in the teeth. That did delay city 2 a bit, as did a cottage-over-mine focus at the captial:

good for chopping out a library early for the academy, although the gold complicated it...in the end I delayed the scientists for that tile. Next up:

Nice location both as a blocker and in its own right, too bad the jungle went over the rice. (The incense should almost count for scenario points as well as the lakeforest - I think plains incense only happens with capital-normalization....)

Academy in 650 BC. Someday I should figure out if that's good, or still slow for a non-Phi civ.
Rest of the expansion:

all with at least 2 4+ food tiles and some hills. Elephantine kept the rice all the time, Thebes didn't need it with all the floodplains.

As far as the tech plan, the general path after the ancient age was
Construction (start whipping catapults)
Calendar (appease the citizens not yet whipped into catapults)
HBR (whip elephants)
Currency (pay for all this)
Iron Working (anything besides elepult? Nope, we have no metal)
Religious techs to Monarchy (more happiness -> more whipping!)

I beat the stuffing out of most cities, got into the 40's as far as turns of whip anger.

Justinian went Hindu-missionary wild, and I just went with it. No one else was, but Asoka and Mansa play nice regardless, and Izzy far away, and with tech trading off less incentive to avoid irritating the AIs. Feel lucky that while Izzy was always upset, she never cancelled open borders. Also, I had trade routes with her long before finding any of her cities - doesn't seem right, wonder if there is some weird artifact of the potluck maphacking?

Was already thinking of Asoka as first target due to proximity, then he clinched it:

Just the thing to avoid stagnation. At the same time I finally found Spain further NE - great, Justinian will be friendly from same faith, I can leave him for last while all my targets are in the same general direction.

Show got started right at 1AD:

Razed the first city
Halfway there:

10 turns total to keep Bombay and Delhi, and burn Varanasi. I decided to not finish off Asoka; leave him crippled and use my elepults against next target (Mansa) before he gets longbows. Also you can see the map setup was nice here - even when Vijay eventually popped to 3rd ring, Delhi will still keep its important special tiles (interestingly, that iron was the only metal I owned! Very few strat resources in the Egypt start, though I basically proved ivory alone is just fine), and won't be a revolt risk. The final reason to change now was this:


Real annoying I have to re-raze the ground I just razed, but walking into an AI city was quite novel! (And of course, I raze again, and Asoka would plop cities down while I fought Mansa, grrrr). Other downside was my Indian army had not been healed and re-formed yet, so moving in was a bit of a rushed mess:

After stupidly leaving my catapults out in the open, I was able to sacrifice my scout as a tastier target for that sword, sparing me more serious consequences of carelessness.

The army ground ever forward, even with skirmishers on hills and not waiting for culture bombardment the elepult is just unfair; sacrifice one or two cats per city and elephants will have 75-90% odds after.

Also more great luck:

Besides the Colossus you see, also Pyramids, very fortunate that the next logical target built two other high-value wonders. Interestingly the Colossus worked even before I finished MC. Also ensured that Mansa would not get to Feudalism (18 turn was with his capital). Speaking of which:

Hey, I've never learned that an AI has a tech that way before! (Feudalism and Machinery are the exact same cost, and each have one 'arrow', so the researh). Having ignored Alphabet with no tech trading, this was useful information, and I felt lucky and clever...

...or senile.

But longbows don't need to be a big problem. Pyramids + Colossus revived a mostly stagant research budget (prior to Timbuktu I was only slightly positive at 0% and was mostly coverting pillage cash to tech). Love being spiritual; adopt Rep + Caste, hire merchants everywhere + switch cities to Wealth. In 7 turns I've blown through all the techs useful to finish this - Machinery, Engineering, Feudalism (for vassalage more than longbows) and alphabet (confirming both Izzy and Justinian have Feudalism, but lack metal casting and thus very unlikely to get to the hated Castle in time). Then I can switch again to Police State + Vassalage + Slavery, back to whipping units nonstop. PS was of course also useful to manage the war weariness as I sent some units to mop up India:

Before the declaration - had a close call with border expansions, I just got these guys through as Bombay popped and closed the door! Madras could have too but didn't get any culture.

Much faster now with more veteran elephants and the 3-road movement. Note all the ruins in the jungle - 3rd time I've razed a path through!

This is where I ran out of time between the aforementioned late start, and getting sick the final weekend, at the nice round number of t150 (800AD). Mansa has one out of the way, former barb city; Asoka has one fairly new (just south of the above screenshot), so more or less just two AI's to go. There would be some work to do, but with these demographics I think there is little doubt:

Through total dumb luck, Delhi just spawned a great merchant from Asoka’s wonders - I didn’t even think to look at its GP counter. So if continuing the plan - wait a few turns to send him to Spain for 1100, enough to finish teching Civil Service and have leftovers for sword->mace upgrades, at the same time the Indian army goes northeast. But twas not to be; glad this not an unscored game as I'm quite happy to hang up now anyways - the interesting part is more or less over.

Along the way I also discovered some other things that made the promise of a ‘fast’ conquest a mirage- first, I always play very slow in real time, even when I tell myself I won’t. (Almost 10 hours to get this far!) Second, while the elepult is very powerful, it’s glacially slow moving pre-engineering. Third, no vassal states takes away a big shortcut/timesaver (in my opinion, the capitulation threshold probably a bit too easy to reach, but the overall idea was good for speeding military wins...however I understand peace vassaling is problematic enough that keeping vassals off may be a lesser overall evil). Fourth, I was not used to conquering this early - decided it was prudent to burn some marginal cities, but didn’t realize how quickly another AI would throw a settler into them. Last (at least for me, was shamefully slow to realize information easily available on turn 1), the map really wasn’t that small - 728 land tiles. (for comparision, I rolled some medium pangaeas, which came at about 750, 790,800, 850 - and with only 4 opponents, you need a higher land %, comes out to needing same number of tiles as a 773-tile 'medium', only with higher distance maintenance terms!) I guess Big and Small just goes very high on the total land amount. Still, enjoyed getting back into Civ4 after a long break.

Oh, my tree score was probably horrendous. I didn't keep careful track, but I'm pretty sure each of my first three cities got the one in its fat cross and that was it. Would have been an interesting challenge - dare to strangle your economy through heedless expansion, plus maybe some small scale culture pushing - but wasn't in the mood for it.

[haphazard1]

Nice report. It may be unbalanced against the poor AIs, but I always enjoy seeing a solid wave of war elephants trampling the world.

Feel lucky that while Izzy was always upset, she never cancelled open borders. Also, I had trade routes with her long before finding any of her cities - doesn't seem right, wonder if there is some weird artifact of the potluck maphacking?

Interesting. I also had some trade route weirdness, with routes to Justinian (I was Asoka) very early after meeting him. This was long before my explorers reached his territory, and I never did (as of the point I stopped) clear a coastal path to him. So maybe this was something from the maphacking? India starts did have one tile visible near Justinian's start, due to a minor mis-edit by T-hawk (as per his explanation).

Anyone else see trade route oddities?

[WilliamLP]

Nice strat to just use the elephants and nevermind that there's no copper or horse anywhere near. Also, using known tech bonus for C&D is an interesting idea too.

It's also interesting that we had the same capital location in the end, but with me building a palace vs you moving the original settler.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Nice report. Thanks for the read. I played as Justinian and covered a large swath of territory with my IMP settlers, to the detriment of poor Hatty, who wondered and religioned away peacefully until she got Phracted. I did notice a tendency for the AIs to have several settlers available at a moment's notice, just waiting for some open terrain to hit the market.

[T-hawk]

The rule for trade routes is that every tile along the path must be defogged by you OR within the other civ's border. It's quite possible to explore partway towards a civ, then later get the trade route activated when they build a new city in the fog.

Good eye on the plains incense, yes that usually happens only with capital normalization. It wasn't a Christmas tree. I think it got that way because I changed desert to plains to make the lake-forest site more attractive.

Yes, captured wonders (Colossus) work without the tech. I've had that happen with Great Library, Sistine, Statue of Liberty, and of course the Divine Right wonders.

Nice work with the elepults of course, a change from the more typical conquering point of rifles and cavs. Yes, Big and Small skews very high on the land amount - and that was after I deleted almost half the islands that were useless ice. Good point about missing vassal states as a domination shortcut, but yeah the peacetime vassal silliness is the worse evil (also colonial maintenance), so I always turn off vassals in my events unless there's some good reason otherwise.

[timmy827]

(also colonial maintenance), so I always turn off vassals in my events unless there's some good reason otherwise.

Oh, good call. It's been long enough I forgot about that trainwreck mechanic - yes, that was clearly necessary with either Spain or India players designed to settle the large island in the east. Thanks for the clarification on trade routes (as well as the game setup) - quaint that I'm still learning 8 years after picking up this game

[RefSteel]

Wow ... no (non-elephant) strategic resources for Egypt at all! And here I was foolishly fretting about my front city with Hatty just because I had no spears....

And I loved your solution to the problem: Is the local fauna too large to draw war chariots? The drivers can't see around their pets' huge elephantine posteriors? Mount the chariots on the things' backs and trample your enemies into the soil!

[haphazard1]

Hmmm. My Egypt has had iron for a while (I was checking trade deals just into the AD years). Wonder where Hatty is getting it? Did she pop it from a mine? Get it in trade?

[timmy827]

Hmmm. My Egypt has had iron for a while (I was checking trade deals just into the AD years). Wonder where Hatty is getting it? Did she pop it from a mine? Get it in trade?

There was iron at an island to SE (which I did settle eventually in my game), as well as one ~10 tiles west of the start. I researched IW (to clear jungle as much as metal units) after placing most cities and was avoiding islands (part of that failed attempt to 'play faster' earlier). Sponsor/map definitely had iron accessible for Egypt, I just didn't prioritize it.