Hi all,
My game is currently incomplete, but since it's reporting day I figure I need to post something. I got my save really late (my fault, not T-Hawks), so I've only played three decent sized sessions, and need 1-2 more to win. I took screenshots, but no notes, so this isn't precise.
Anyways, I took Globe + Heroic Epic after confirming that slaving did apply the HE bonus. This certainly isn't the best combo (IMHO GLibrary+Oxford is the best by a good margin, and everything that doesn't include either GLib or Oxford isn't really worth talking about). Darrell has taken me to task over that remark, made via chat, since Glib + Oxford might not lead to the fastest finishes. He tells me something like Oxford + SoL leads to a faster finish, but really that game is just expanding out to a bunch of cities, right? Darrell is a much better player than I am, but Immortal on this map should be pretty easy to win without any bonus if the player is Financial, has non-aggressive neighbors, and has time/room to expand to nine cities. I think the non-OCC enabled OCC win possible via Oxford + Glibrary is more impressive in terms of leveraging the variant.
Anyways, I teched Bronze Working while assuming we'd not have any (Sullla poisoned me to T-Hawk and resources) copper, and we didn't. I then went for Iron Working while successfully building the GLighthouse in my cap rather than expanding, since I figured I'd be capturing most of my cities. I settled, IIRC, four new cities (five total with cap) before DOWing Egypt with Numidian Cavalry and capturing/razing four cities. I then made peace, built some cats + elephants, and vassalized Egypt around the time the top AIs were getting Feudalism. This is pretty slow, but 1) no iron, 2) my UU sucks, 3) the map means I can't split cities well, 4) in general 2-movers aren't that great again AIs with metal. I then spent AGES moving my units over to Mansa, who was at war with a pair of AIs. I took one city then made peace (elephants + cats dying too easily to medieval enemies).
I then beelined Liberalism and won it, although Justinian did me a favor and didn't research it in the eight turns he could have and beat me to it. I took Nationhood, then researched Guilds + MilTrad. Mansa quickly crumbled to Cuirassiers and vassalized to me in ~1400AD. He did make me capture like five cities and kill all of his units in the open despite being at war with 1-2 other AIs constantly, which surprised me. I then spent AGES walking my new drafted rifles and newly promoted Cavs towards France. France vassalized to me in ~1500AD, and reinforcements are taking AGES to reach the Roman border. I should be able to defeat Rome (he has grens, but I have cannons now) at tech parity, since the AI will inevitably be silly and expose his much larger army of Grens to my 10 C4 Blitz Cavalry, that will chew through them in one turn. I'll then go all-out drafting as soon as Infantry + Artillery are available. I'd have gone all-out at rifles in a Pangea game, but since units take AGES to reach the front that wouldn't work well here.
I should say that T-Hawk's recommended Kremlin is much better than my Heroic Epic, and I wish I had known that the Kremlin bonus applied to slaved units.
I also want to say that while the game was fun and creative, I think the map and game speed are...not good. Economic wonders are simply more powerful than military ones. Even with my wonders I'd have worked my way to a more certain, if not faster, finish via slaving settlers I think. Knowing that, T-Hawk then picked a map where the player can easily defend, but not easily attack. He then added in a bunch of moderate commerce but low-production tiles, and then gave the player the financial trait on top of that. Now financial is fine, and a great military tech, but it's a great tech because it lets you win Liberalism and grab muskets/grens/rifles/cannons/cuirassiers/cavs before your neighbor does and then go on a rampage. But that's the same strategy to win Immortal in a non-culture non-space game anyways. In terms of the game playing easier than Immortal or letting the players have a fun boost...I'm not sure it was really viable with a military path. Or, I should say, not viable after accounting for a commerce-biased map where the enemy civs are going to be 50 tiles away after you've conquered the first two.
One thing these FFH games have reinforced to me is that civs tech far too fast on high difficulty levels with tech trading on. Making the map smaller and more crowded, or turning on Torroidal, or maybe Huge map + high sealevel, or giving the player Expansive+Characteristic, or giving the player Copper or Iron near their cap, all would have gone a long way towards balancing out the viability of the military route. Most off all though, Epic (or Marathon) Speed was perfect for a game like this. Yes Epic plays a half-difficulty easier for the military path, but that's fair because the military wonders are that much weaker. I know T-Hawk doesn't like Epic, but he doesn't like it when it's used unnecessarily. On a large map with crazy-distance civ borders it is necessary IMHO. I suspect with Epic and copper near the start a viable game could be played with axes to one side, then Numids towards the other (substitute chariots + swords if you want iron instead), than an elephant war, the a drafting war. Being able to fit in four wars on Immortal would, I think, be the type of overpowered have-fun strategy that matches what's possible with SP wonders in this game.
Really though, what's needed I think is a basic modifier to tech beaker numbers, at least post-CS on Emperor+ difficulties. The AIs simply tech too fast, and anyone who knows how to build cottages reaches a midgame point where techs are 2-4 turns each, and you trade for half of the beakers anyways. Diety wins should be SLOWER than Settler wins I think. Instead the AI plays an order of magnitude better while the player's tech costs are, what, double? Therefore the player gets tied to the runaway AI tech train and finishes as if the tech costs were half of what they are. And we all know turning off tech trading makes the problem worse not better. Epic Speed doesn't fix the problem, since we still have occasions where a normal city takes as long to build one unit as it takes you to research to the next level of military techs, but at least you don't fall behind while moving across your own land.
Finally, talking to Darrell again just now, we've been discussing the idea, and power, of the "one-big-push" - the time you slave/draft your civ down to rush that too-close AI, or block off those chokepoints, or make 6 settlers maintenance costs be damned, or (most effectively) draft your civ down to where you need 50% on the culture slider, and start the invisible timer until you win (because without a better tactical AI once the player has three muskets per turn in the medi/ren era or three rifles per turn in the indy era the game is pretty much won). My problem with SP civ right now is that the one-big-push is so much more powerful, and necessary, in wartime than when going for a peaceful victory. Other than at the very end of the game (either workshopping over cottages for Space or running the slider for Culture) the hyper-tech-biased game plays pretty much like the generalist game. Maybe you sell your techs for 10-20gold when you REALLY need to cut one turn from Liberalism, or maybe you slave 8pop in a city to get GLibrary, but a "perfect commerce" city working bonuses and cottages only, and building wealth, has output pretty close to the default "work specials, mine grassland hills, cottage everything else" generalist city. On the other hand, the "perfect-production" city involves huge cost (pre-State Property) because you have to slave/draft yourself into the ground, but that city produces tons of hammers during that period. So you're left with one-big-push - winning the game during the time period where you're making tons of hammers per city. And back to this game, that leaves me with a counterproductive wonder/strategy mix. It would have been better to focus my cap (after initial settler production) to full-on beakers, especially with Globe and therefore specialists in the early game. Chop/whip 'Mids if you can and Glib (which should be easy) and work scientists and cottages. Let cities 2-6 or whatnot slave like crazy and make the 10 Numidians for the early rush instead of the capital slaving for 10 out of 12 turns. In the end, I think, you have more beakers AND more units in less time. Ditto for the drafting war, except now you can have Globe anyways in a different city. Final thought: I won liberalism with three cottages and zero scientists in my capital, and without an academy in my lands. I find it hard to believe that isn't indicative of tech costs that are too cheap.
__________
Anyways, sorry if I turned a tangent into the main body of my post, but while I'm not burned out on civ right now (RBP3 is exciting and FFH is pretty interesting too), but I am a little tired of it shouting at me "draft to victory" every time I don't feel like hitting End Turn 30 times in an end-game.
My game is currently incomplete, but since it's reporting day I figure I need to post something. I got my save really late (my fault, not T-Hawks), so I've only played three decent sized sessions, and need 1-2 more to win. I took screenshots, but no notes, so this isn't precise.
Anyways, I took Globe + Heroic Epic after confirming that slaving did apply the HE bonus. This certainly isn't the best combo (IMHO GLibrary+Oxford is the best by a good margin, and everything that doesn't include either GLib or Oxford isn't really worth talking about). Darrell has taken me to task over that remark, made via chat, since Glib + Oxford might not lead to the fastest finishes. He tells me something like Oxford + SoL leads to a faster finish, but really that game is just expanding out to a bunch of cities, right? Darrell is a much better player than I am, but Immortal on this map should be pretty easy to win without any bonus if the player is Financial, has non-aggressive neighbors, and has time/room to expand to nine cities. I think the non-OCC enabled OCC win possible via Oxford + Glibrary is more impressive in terms of leveraging the variant.
Anyways, I teched Bronze Working while assuming we'd not have any (Sullla poisoned me to T-Hawk and resources) copper, and we didn't. I then went for Iron Working while successfully building the GLighthouse in my cap rather than expanding, since I figured I'd be capturing most of my cities. I settled, IIRC, four new cities (five total with cap) before DOWing Egypt with Numidian Cavalry and capturing/razing four cities. I then made peace, built some cats + elephants, and vassalized Egypt around the time the top AIs were getting Feudalism. This is pretty slow, but 1) no iron, 2) my UU sucks, 3) the map means I can't split cities well, 4) in general 2-movers aren't that great again AIs with metal. I then spent AGES moving my units over to Mansa, who was at war with a pair of AIs. I took one city then made peace (elephants + cats dying too easily to medieval enemies).
I then beelined Liberalism and won it, although Justinian did me a favor and didn't research it in the eight turns he could have and beat me to it. I took Nationhood, then researched Guilds + MilTrad. Mansa quickly crumbled to Cuirassiers and vassalized to me in ~1400AD. He did make me capture like five cities and kill all of his units in the open despite being at war with 1-2 other AIs constantly, which surprised me. I then spent AGES walking my new drafted rifles and newly promoted Cavs towards France. France vassalized to me in ~1500AD, and reinforcements are taking AGES to reach the Roman border. I should be able to defeat Rome (he has grens, but I have cannons now) at tech parity, since the AI will inevitably be silly and expose his much larger army of Grens to my 10 C4 Blitz Cavalry, that will chew through them in one turn. I'll then go all-out drafting as soon as Infantry + Artillery are available. I'd have gone all-out at rifles in a Pangea game, but since units take AGES to reach the front that wouldn't work well here.
I should say that T-Hawk's recommended Kremlin is much better than my Heroic Epic, and I wish I had known that the Kremlin bonus applied to slaved units.
I also want to say that while the game was fun and creative, I think the map and game speed are...not good. Economic wonders are simply more powerful than military ones. Even with my wonders I'd have worked my way to a more certain, if not faster, finish via slaving settlers I think. Knowing that, T-Hawk then picked a map where the player can easily defend, but not easily attack. He then added in a bunch of moderate commerce but low-production tiles, and then gave the player the financial trait on top of that. Now financial is fine, and a great military tech, but it's a great tech because it lets you win Liberalism and grab muskets/grens/rifles/cannons/cuirassiers/cavs before your neighbor does and then go on a rampage. But that's the same strategy to win Immortal in a non-culture non-space game anyways. In terms of the game playing easier than Immortal or letting the players have a fun boost...I'm not sure it was really viable with a military path. Or, I should say, not viable after accounting for a commerce-biased map where the enemy civs are going to be 50 tiles away after you've conquered the first two.
One thing these FFH games have reinforced to me is that civs tech far too fast on high difficulty levels with tech trading on. Making the map smaller and more crowded, or turning on Torroidal, or maybe Huge map + high sealevel, or giving the player Expansive+Characteristic, or giving the player Copper or Iron near their cap, all would have gone a long way towards balancing out the viability of the military route. Most off all though, Epic (or Marathon) Speed was perfect for a game like this. Yes Epic plays a half-difficulty easier for the military path, but that's fair because the military wonders are that much weaker. I know T-Hawk doesn't like Epic, but he doesn't like it when it's used unnecessarily. On a large map with crazy-distance civ borders it is necessary IMHO. I suspect with Epic and copper near the start a viable game could be played with axes to one side, then Numids towards the other (substitute chariots + swords if you want iron instead), than an elephant war, the a drafting war. Being able to fit in four wars on Immortal would, I think, be the type of overpowered have-fun strategy that matches what's possible with SP wonders in this game.
Really though, what's needed I think is a basic modifier to tech beaker numbers, at least post-CS on Emperor+ difficulties. The AIs simply tech too fast, and anyone who knows how to build cottages reaches a midgame point where techs are 2-4 turns each, and you trade for half of the beakers anyways. Diety wins should be SLOWER than Settler wins I think. Instead the AI plays an order of magnitude better while the player's tech costs are, what, double? Therefore the player gets tied to the runaway AI tech train and finishes as if the tech costs were half of what they are. And we all know turning off tech trading makes the problem worse not better. Epic Speed doesn't fix the problem, since we still have occasions where a normal city takes as long to build one unit as it takes you to research to the next level of military techs, but at least you don't fall behind while moving across your own land.
Finally, talking to Darrell again just now, we've been discussing the idea, and power, of the "one-big-push" - the time you slave/draft your civ down to rush that too-close AI, or block off those chokepoints, or make 6 settlers maintenance costs be damned, or (most effectively) draft your civ down to where you need 50% on the culture slider, and start the invisible timer until you win (because without a better tactical AI once the player has three muskets per turn in the medi/ren era or three rifles per turn in the indy era the game is pretty much won). My problem with SP civ right now is that the one-big-push is so much more powerful, and necessary, in wartime than when going for a peaceful victory. Other than at the very end of the game (either workshopping over cottages for Space or running the slider for Culture) the hyper-tech-biased game plays pretty much like the generalist game. Maybe you sell your techs for 10-20gold when you REALLY need to cut one turn from Liberalism, or maybe you slave 8pop in a city to get GLibrary, but a "perfect commerce" city working bonuses and cottages only, and building wealth, has output pretty close to the default "work specials, mine grassland hills, cottage everything else" generalist city. On the other hand, the "perfect-production" city involves huge cost (pre-State Property) because you have to slave/draft yourself into the ground, but that city produces tons of hammers during that period. So you're left with one-big-push - winning the game during the time period where you're making tons of hammers per city. And back to this game, that leaves me with a counterproductive wonder/strategy mix. It would have been better to focus my cap (after initial settler production) to full-on beakers, especially with Globe and therefore specialists in the early game. Chop/whip 'Mids if you can and Glib (which should be easy) and work scientists and cottages. Let cities 2-6 or whatnot slave like crazy and make the 10 Numidians for the early rush instead of the capital slaving for 10 out of 12 turns. In the end, I think, you have more beakers AND more units in less time. Ditto for the drafting war, except now you can have Globe anyways in a different city. Final thought: I won liberalism with three cottages and zero scientists in my capital, and without an academy in my lands. I find it hard to believe that isn't indicative of tech costs that are too cheap.
__________
Anyways, sorry if I turned a tangent into the main body of my post, but while I'm not burned out on civ right now (RBP3 is exciting and FFH is pretty interesting too), but I am a little tired of it shouting at me "draft to victory" every time I don't feel like hitting End Turn 30 times in an end-game.
Also consider the overall health of the competition; I'd rather see more participation and completed games on Normal speed even at the cost of disappointing a few players who'd prefer Epic.