Sullla's Epic Eleven Shadow/Comments from the Sponsor

[Kylearan]

Hi,

thanks for the great report and the detailed thoughts from the sponsor! I was too stupid to realize in-game that Madrid had no food resource whatsoever and that this couldn't have been the result of the map generator. This explained a lot, and your planning really worked out well, judging from the reports. I was also amazed just how many test runs you've made! Thanks for all the work.

-Kylearan

[Sullla]

thanks for the great report and the detailed thoughts from the sponsor! I was too stupid to realize in-game that Madrid had no food resource whatsoever and that this couldn't have been the result of the map generator. This explained a lot, and your planning really worked out well, judging from the reports. I was also amazed just how many test runs you've made! Thanks for all the work.

I usually do not do test runs for most games; a scenario like Adventure Twenty One wouldn't really gain a whole lot from having the AIs face off against one another. Since Epic Eleven was so dependent on AI/AI interaction, it was a bit of an exception. Fortunately, it's very easy to run a test game where the AI plays against itself using the debug tools. (I picked up on this from Soren when I was working at Firaxis.) I just specify the number of turns for the game to play, come back a half hour later, and the AI has completed a full 500-turn simulation. Sometimes it's fun just to play around with this.

While I'm sorry that numerous players had to go through tedious wars, the reports here have largely validated the scenario I had in mind. Not a single game has seen all 11 AIs survive to the end! The Great Lighthouse scoring was the biggest gaffe, but those who managed to build it had to invest a ton of time and resources, so I don't feel too bad about that one either. I'll be more careful about the red herring scoring options in the future, though!

[KMad]

i i have serious weaknesses in my gameplay (killing people) that i'm trying to improve. i have strengths that i use to help me survive those weakness, because obviously i have to. diplomacy is something i consider one of my major strengths. you guys saw how i have this "OMG i can't go to war until i'm ready!!!" thing. some people can't stand to deal with that crap, and i've posted too much already. so skip this if you want to, no skin off my nose as my daddy would say. i saw a post where someone hoped Kodii would report so that they could see someone great at diplomacy approached this. i'm sure i'm not as great at Kodii but maybe this is worth something.

ruff-hi, if you are still reading, please read this next sentence twice : i did not play this event with Exotic Foreign Advisor Mod active. i did load it today to take some screenshots since it will show the big picture all at once. that's part of why i can't use it in events i'm sure (which i don't resent) . i think ruff-hi might only see the picture and not read that part and smack me anyway *giggle*.

i found the variations in number of wars vs. the player in the different games absolutely fascinating. a big part is luck of course. i think a big part of it was diplomacy as well. a big part of that is how religions spread and that involves luck too, not something you can control easily. i admit i got lucky this isn't "OMG i am the greatest, worship me". but this might give insight about why i had, let's face it, basically nobody even wanted to beat me up. i assure you i was not #1 in power for most of the game, far from it early on, i definitely was late game tho. i mean really, wars Monty declares don't count, and that is all i had. he declared on me twice and he would have wanted to in an Always Peace game. there were AI vs. AI wars but i had less AIs declare war on me than in many non-Agg AI wars. not a complaint! but a serious shocker when i read the reports.

i obsessed about health here, so trading resources is important to me, and i hate "cancel demands with the vile whoever" demands since you get a guaranteed -1 with someone. i always want at least some leaders to like me and not pick on me, so getting +modifiers is good. having ongoing trades is good for that, +open borders, +2 years of resources (even if i have every resource i can gift them something), they are even a chance for +4 f/f with someone that's so advanced you don't want to trade techs with them. but those are the ones subject to cancel demands. so i want the options, and i want to avoid the demands! often people assume you need a world where everybody gets along with everybody to avoid that. you don't. you just need a world where everybody that you care about gets along with each other. what's more, gets along = does not consider anybody on your "friends list" their worst enemy. it doesn't mean they have to be Friendly or even Pleased. if an AI is Cautious or higher with everyone they do NOT have a worst enemy at all. at that moment anyway. things can always change.

for this event, i picked my lists of "you are important to me, i want you to be my friend" early, and "you do not matter to me" early. i was lucky, hinduism spread mostly the right ways for that. it screwed up on alex and saladin. i had to devote centuries of making missionaries between other build to convert saladin to conf before i DoWd him. that saved me a permanent "-1 you declared war on our friend!" with 2 people on my "friends" list, i'd been hoping for 3, was worth it, don't know. and i did make the switch to Hereditary Rule, mostly motivated to get +Wise Civics with Alex, so that he would sign OB and i could get my Hindu missionaries to him, conf spread to him too early. i was surprised to see Sulla skip HR to not go thru one turn of anarchy ... but he beat me, obviously that worked, he doesn't need to focus the way i do .

anyway, this is how i think, to some extent, in whatever type of game i am playing. it obviously is not how a heck of a lot of you think. i don't know whether this will be useful for a single one of you, or even of interest, but i do know that thoughts like this i've gotten many PMs about on CFC from people saying "wow i never even considered that" so i'll throw it in, even tho you guys are a brighter, higher level audience in many ways. you tend to be awesome warmongers and might not need any new diplomatic tricks, but i'm in a typing mood.

this is a screenshot taken using the Exotic Foreign Advisor Mod, today, which i did not have loaded during the game, it's not legal for events. the numbers are what you would see if you hovered over their heads. reading across, you see how the leader on the top feels about the guy on the side. green = "Friendly", blue = pleased, white = cautious, the magentaish (like the -2 on the first line) is annoyed, red = furious.

this one i took in 620 AD. i converted to hinduism in 35 AD, so this has let work up +bonuses over time with my side.


so that +11 means that alex is pleased with me, to the tune of +11. here's how that would look on the normal screen if you hover over it:

this lets you see it all at once, spares me 48,000 screenies for the post-game analysis.

monty/fred are annoyed with me, isabella is furious with me. they are buddhist, i don't care. hatty/HC are annoyed, they're jewish i don't care. zippeedeefreakingdoodah. i will tell those guys no all day. all my friends hate them, as long as they're not at war with somebody else at the time i can bribe them to help me if i get a DoW from one on the "dead to me" list and think they'll actually reach me and i'd need the help. i'm actually at fake war with fred atm to earn MMS with alex, he's my neighbor and he likes to start wars so i want him as a buddy all game long, i don't ever plan to try to kill alex on purpose unless he starts it, my personal style is to try to convince him never to start it.

how much i obsess over avoiding "we demand you cancel demands with the vile so-and-sos" requests that several or many people got in this event and how much i obsess over resource trades:
cancel trade demands suck. guaranteed lose/lose, one or the other is going to slap you with a negative. i never got a single negative with anybody on my "friends" list during the entire game. they are avoidable, with luck and with attention to diplomacy. this shot is back in 620 AD. i don't know guilds, i'm not having huge health issues, and i am pretty darned confident that i will take over a sugar tile from spain by culture even if i don't go war with her or culture-flip toledo.

i don't need the happy the sugar gets me before guilds, in fact i'm in HR purely for +wise civics as it is. even so, i'm trading with genghis for his spare sugar in advance, so that he considers it "reserved for KMad" just in case. that is how obsessed i get. in too many games (especially OCCs) i haven't grabbed a trade ASAP and then it never shows up as an option again. i also desperately do NOT want anybody on my "friends" list to demand i cancel that trade, that would SUCK. but that chart proves that for now (subject to change), that cannot happen ... an AI will only make "cancel trades" demands if you trade with their worst enemy, their worst enemy is the person they like least if they have at least one person they're annoyed or furious with. everybody on my friends list (and even some on my "dead to me" list) is cautious or higher with GK. three are even at friendly with him. if hatty/izzy/fred demands i cancel with GK, go suck on a egg you heathen, i don't have to think twice about it! i'm also trading other stuff with other friends, even stuff i don't need in the future at all, to work on +2 years of resource bonus, the more they like me the better.

added bonus: with the high number of warmongers we had on this map, who tend to like each other in the first place, they were not likely to be worst enemies with each other in the first place while the non-war-mongers were still around to be punching bags. and i kissed up to build up the plusses during that "i'm not yet the punching bag" stage. here, have a free tech. yes, you get that tech you demanded (in most cases, i deny some, CoL to Peter is one i remember). you want 90g? OMG i love you, my favorite demand, oh honey of course! here, i have only +1 f/f with you, i'll try give you this monopoly tech to try to get the extra bonus "+1 you have shared your technological discoveries with us". hatty, you demand philosophy and i'm still saving liberalism? go back in your cage, you're dead to me and to my friends.

thinking outside of the box can help. going to the extremes that i do is completely bizarre and far more than you amazing war-mongers that kick arse even when your focus is things other than making troops and 2 or maybe 4 leaders come at you will ever need. but maybe some of this ramble can help you somewhere in some game.