Adventure 48: 464 ships sunk

[fluffyflyingpig]

Teaser shot, report coming later. I'm not exactly sure how big my lead was at the end, but I think it's around 36 techs. Finish in 1852.



The AIs... didn't do so well this game. Charlemagne killed Hannibal, not me!

[Thoth]

Played it as an AW game did you?

[fluffyflyingpig]

I really liked the concept, thanks T-Hawk! Simmed out the first 100 turns or so a few times in worldbuilder and played a couple of test games.

Thoughts on the land:

-Coastal start for lighthouse/access to other continent
-Lake fish for an early workboat build
-Wheat/fish/corn are the best food resources
-Forest/grassland/corn for faster worker/workboat
-Forest/plains/corn needed for micro as well
-Found on stone to get Stonehenge, Pyramids sooner
-Marble for wonders
-Gems and silver for early happy cap
-Iron for military later
-Plains/hill/forest/elephant for early 4hammer tile (Stone/marble works too)
-Plains/hill iron and elephant are the only hammer tiles, can be pulled off for scientists as needed
-Diminishing returns on GPP, grassland gold is the best tile after the food surplus is large enough to ensure most great people are Scientists.
-9 unforested tiles + elephant + lake = 11 happy cap w/ gold, silver, gems, rep. Forest everything else for chops.

A few more tests showed some grasslands had to change to plains to build the early wonders quick enough. A couple of final tweaks to ensure a nice symmetrical map and we have this:



Which turns into this in 50 turns:

[fluffyflyingpig]

Looking around at the AIs in the game, we see Izzy, Sury, and Shaka on our continent, and Hannibal, Cyrus, and Charlemagne on the other side of the world. The AI on our landmass are great, interesting choices, but I don't see any rhyme or reason to the guys on the other side. Cyrus and Hannibal will be the the competition for techs, Cyrus has a ton of land and Hannibal is the only financial civ. No Industrious civs is kinda nice, but does make things easier.

On my landmass, Sury near by should keep the barbs away and Izzy next door should make it possible to keep all religions close to home. Shaka might try something funny, but he's far enough away that we should have macemen or gunpowder before he has a chance. For that matter, our starting warrior should be able to kill any barbs that spawn fortified on a hill surrounded by rivers on all sides!


I decided to gamble and try for Hinduism. It only delays Civil Service by 3 turns or so and lets you pick up Stonehenge. If I get it, the other three AIs will have no religions till I sail over and contact them, assuming Izzy is her usual self. Other than that, it's the tried and true Civil Service slingshot. Even with all the gold, I don't want to take chances going for Education and let an Immortal AI beat me to the Oracle.




The Plan


Tech path:
Mining -> Mysticism -> Polytheism -> Priesthood -> Writing -> Code of Laws ->Math

Build:
Worker -> Workboat -> Stonehenge -> Pyramids -> Oracle

Worker starts on the wheat in the south and works counterclockwise.
Wheat -> Gold -> Gold -> Gems -> Marble -> Silver -> Gold -> Gold -> Gold

Warrior marches east to make contact and returns home.
City shuffles between the 4h tile, the 3f 1h tile, and the 2f 2h tile multiple times to build or grow sooner.






Amazingly, everything goes exactly as planned. Hinduism on t23, Stonehenge on t29, Confucianism on t43 (Goes to Sury before he can sign OB with Izzy), Pyramids on t46. Oracle completes on t50 to grab Civil Service, along with math, and Cahokia growing to size 9. One quick revolution later.



Turn 51, we have nearly 100 beakers per turn, exactly enough food overflow to grow in 5 turns, and enough hammers to build a library in 4 turns.

[fluffyflyingpig]

The start went as well as we could ask for. Next up: build the Globe Theater for the happiness, get Oxford online, get Observatories running, get privateers harassing the AIs. And of course, get all the wonders for ourselves. It is Christmas time after all. Gotta get all the presents for ourselves. Also swap to Caste/Pacifism in a mausoleum powered golden age.

Tech
Alphabet -> Drama -> Sailing -> Literature -> Paper -> Education -> Calender -> Philosophy -> Astronomy -> Chemistry -> Biology

Build
Library -> Workboat -> Worker -> Grainery -> Aquaduct -> Theater-> Globe

First worker chops the top half of the forest, second worker chops the bottom half, most chops go into the globe and oxford.


Slight hitch in the plan when alphabet comes in and reveals that Izzy went for sailing instead of bronze working OR pottery. Get bronze working and the wheel from Sury and wait a painful three turns before Izzy gets pottery. Get pottery and hunting from her.

Hannibal managed to complete the Great Wall and temple of Artemis in 1680BC and 1120BC, but I get all the other wonders.

~1300BC Globe
1140BC Great Library
900BC Hanging Gardens
775BC Great Lighthouse. Amusingly, I get all the trade route benefits for free with no scouting. I guess things work differently in multiplayer?
650BC Oxford complete.
625BC Great Scientist for the Academy (3rd GP) Science has doubled from 280 bpt to 587 bpt in two turns.
600BC Taoism
400BC Mausoleum
375BC Music artist starts a golden age

Izzy dutifully founded Judaism and Christianity, but had completely failed to spread any religions outside her own borders. Sury and Shaka both converted to Confucianism in 1800 BC and had spread it around to a few cities, so I followed suit in the golden age and picked up Pacifism and Caste System

350BC Statue of Zeus

Looking at the final save in Worldbuilder now, it seems that the AI has zero WW unhappiness despite over 600 points of war wariness. Not sure what to make of this. Does the AI suffer from any war weariness at all? It was probably a wasted build, but hey, I had Ivory! At least for a few turns, until I converted it into a national park for elephant conservation.

200BC Parthenon
125BC Sankore
100BC Suryavarman II declares war on Isabella!


Oops. Well that's interesting. Demographics show Sury has almost twice Izzy's power, this probably won't end well. The Taoist Missionary is dispatched to monitor the situation. Additionally, my scouting Caravel found that Hannibal and Charlemagne were fighting as well on the far continent. And of course they lacked religion and were terribly backward compared to the glorious Native Americans.



The situation in 1 AD






Izzy... is in trouble. I am one turn away from Scientific Method, and have just started to build privateers a few turns ago. I really want to just pump out privateers, but it looks like we may need to intervene here. However my military consists of 2 privateers, 1 caravel, and my starting warrior....

[fluffyflyingpig]

Took a break for the night here and came back the next day. Decided that I wanted to try to maximize my score, rather than sit back and tech peacefully. My early tech/build path delayed Bureaucracy and the Academy to deny the AI stuff, so I might as well continue along that path. I still need to grab biology for the national park, but after that it's time to play world police. Insert Military Tradition into the queue before physics and hope Izzy holds out for a while. It will delay nukes, but hopefully not by too much. Yeah, nukes are the next tech goal.


50AD Barcelona falls to the Khmer. Bribe Shaka to declare on Sury for some old tech. Shaka's cities are pretty poor and easily crippled by privateers, no risk in trading with him here. Swap builds from privateers to macemen.
150AD Toledo falls to the Khmer, the Spanish filler city just outside our territory to the north. There's a couple of longbowmen in Madrid now, but Sury has 20+ units marching in that direction and is showing no signs of turning to deal with Shaka. Hannibal makes peace with Charlemange. Unfortunate.
250AD Circumnav with the initial caravel.
400AD Shaka captures a city. However the northern Khmer army is not turning around.
450AD Khmer army is at the gates of Madrid. I've trained 4 macemen, a musket, and 4 granadiers, plus the upgraded starting warrior->maceman. Steel comes in next turn. Declare war on Sury, and raze Toledo and steal a worker. The Taoist priest is told to hide in Madrid and hope for the best.
500AD My army cleaned up all the Khmer reinforcements heading north and set up on a forested hill in my territory overlooking the Khmer city of Isvrapura to farm defenders for experience using city raider granadiers/cannons. Hundreds of Khmer soldiers die in this city over the next few dozen turns.
520 AD Madrid falls. Taoist priest among the casualties. I actually miss the announcement due to the 'your privateer has plundered 2 gold outside Ulundi spam' and don't notice for several turns. I turn off the sound around this time, for related reasons.
540 AD Hannibal completed the Hagia Sophia. Grr.
560 AD Declare war on Hannibal. Hopefully he'll shift into military mode now.
600 AD Hannibal founds Islam. Oops. I still don't have Monotheism. Oh well.
680 AD Shaka completes Chichen Itza. Hey maybe I should pay more attention to the tech screen...
700 AD Liberalism for Superconductors for labs. I could've saved it for fusion, but since I'm going to learn every tech eventually labs earlier seems like a good idea. I didn't think real hard about this choice. I realize Madrid fell around now and decide to march my army up to burn some cities.
740 AD Hannibal completes the Spiral Minaret and the Masjid al-Haram. Looks like Islam might be a significant religion this game! Cyrus also adopted Confucianism and Charlemagne is now Taoist.
820 Shwedagon Paya built
840 AD Barcelona razed. Jewish holy city.
900 AD Notre Dame built, to deny the AIs
980 AD Madrid razed. Buddhist holy city.


1000 AD Status

Military update:
We are up to 4 GG (3 settled 1 academy for faster ICBMs) 7 Grenadiers, 1 Musketman, 2 Canon, and 12 Privateers. We took a couple of losses, but we have 3 City Raider Grenadiers and 2 medic/woodsman III healers (+25% healing!) for a solid core ground army. Sury is gassed and has been for some time, all new troops are promptly marched to Isvrapura where they are slaughtered. Manhatten project completes in 7 turns. The bulk of the army is up north after dealing with Madrid and will return in a turn or two.



Naval situation: Hannibal is the only one with Optics. He managed to settle his east coast city one off the coast, so there are only two small cities on the west coast to worry about. More privateers are being rushed into position, but privateers are blockading all seafood resources, all of Cyrus's cities, and the Zulu and Frankish capitals. No contact between the continents.




Techs:






Still a big tech lead, and it's increasing. Swords vs Grenadiers. Pushing along at max shields right now to get Manhattan done on time due to some errors in timing . Declaring on Carthage hurt the trade routes, but not by much. 10 scientists, 2 prophets, 3 engineers, 1 merchant settled. Can't complain about great person luck!

[timmy827]

Wow. I discounted the max-aggression strategy because of the "no attacking other continent" rule. Thought privateers would slow them down but not cripple them so...looks like you ran this to perfection

[T-hawk]

Holy crap, that's spectacular! Can't wait to see the finish. Looks again like the gold economy wins. Especially for a warring game - gold will catapult you into a superior military tech position much sooner than waiting for the specialists to grow.

The AI on our landmass are great, interesting choices, but I don't see any rhyme or reason to the guys on the other side.

They were random. In hindsight if I had picked them, would have gone with no Financial civ to stick out and screw up the tech lead scoring. I did pick Isabella and Sury, intending that they have conflicting religions and favorite civics. Shaka came in randomly but I smiled at the idea. As you noticed, his expansion room should (and did) keep him busy long enough for the player to get to muskets or better.

775BC Great Lighthouse. Amusingly, I get all the trade route benefits for free with no scouting. I guess things work differently in multiplayer?

The rule to have a trade route is that you must have unfogged tiles in continuous connection from your city up to the border of the other civ. (Water tiles count once you know Sailing.) This happened pretty quickly here, the coastline shape had visibility directly from the city border pretty far north towards Madrid.

Looking at the final save in Worldbuilder now, it seems that the AI has zero WW unhappiness despite over 600 points of war wariness. Not sure what to make of this. Does the AI suffer from any war weariness at all?

It does, but it's something like 50% of the player's WW to start, and another modifier by difficulty level, 60% on Immortal. The best reason to build Zeus is for denial if you intend to go conquering yourself. (It's also useful for a culture win, pretty cheap with ivory for 10 culture and 2 artist GPP.)

50AD Barcelona falls to the Khmer. Bribe Shaka to declare on Sury for some old tech. Shaka's cities are pretty poor and easily crippled by privateers, no risk in trading with him here. Swap builds from privateers to macemen.

<double-take> Wait, that's privateers by 50 AD?

Liberalism to Superconductors is nice, I managed the same, though 300 years later than you -- and you were warring at the same time.

[luddite]

Wow. I discounted the max-aggression strategy because of the "no attacking other continent" rule. Thought privateers would slow them down but not cripple them so...looks like you ran this to perfection

yeah... I thought I did a good job slowing them down with privateers, but it looks like you completely crippled them here.

about gold- I wonder if gold would still be best if absolutely any terrain (like floodplains corn and water forest) was allowed?

[fluffyflyingpig]

Unfortunately, this is around the time when playing ship wack-a-mole starts to drag on and my notes and pictures are somewhat sparse. I'm having to go back and refresh my memory as I go.

Strategy wise, Things are pretty straight forward here: finish rocketry, get railroads/factories online, grab the econ great person before pushing on to robotics. Free trade actually is a wash, it Economics obsoletes the trade route from the castle, and you need to burn the Taj golden age to switch to Free Trade. The only techs remaining that help my tech rate are flight for the airport trade route, and communism/fascism for the great people, oddly enough. I should've really grabbed flight sooner than I did, oh well. We're going to learn every tech, so no sense rushing spaceship stuff till we have all the hammer boosts and the space elevator built!

Izzy is saved, my army will swings south and head toward the Khmer capital. Rear guard left at Isvrapura. Time to push out a few more privateers and some ICBMs.


1010 AD Izzy refounds Madrid
1020 AD Izzy sells New Madrid to Sury for peace
1040 AD New Madrid is burned to the ground
1140 AD Cyrus declares war on Hannibal!
1150 AD Angkor Tom burns. Hannibal builds Sistine and Versailles.
1060 AD Manhatten Project completes
1140 AD first ICBM dropped on the Carthaginian countryside.
1170 AD Cyrus captures Thapsus, the crappy Carthaginian coastal enclave. However Privateers can see a large Carthaginian response stack.
1210 AD Carthage captures the Guzz and marches on Thapsus
1230 AD DOW Cyrus so I can nuke the big Carthaginian stack outside Thapsus.
1240 AD Khmer capital razed. City Raider Grenadiers have 99% odds on the defending longbows even without bombardment. Carthage retakes Thapsus. Oh well, time to start nuking Persian towns.
1260 AD Taj Mahal complete. Revolt to free market in the golden age.
1270 AD Charlemagne dogpiles onto Hannibal!!! Hannibal returns Guzz to Cyrus for peace in response.

Hannibal has a gunpowder while Charles lacks machinery. Hannibal also has a bigger army in theater than Charles from what I can see, but we may be able to help.... Build switched from ICBM
to tactical nuke.

1290 AD Leptis, the other Carthaginian port city, falls to the Franks. Carthaginian army is temporarily trapped in Thapsus, behind Persian borders!
1300 AD first nuke dropped outside of Persopolis
1330 AD The situation still doesn't look great for the Franks, so we give them a tactical nuke, conveniently rebased to Leptis.



1340 AD Charlemagne nukes Hadrementum, dropping it from 13 pop to 8. Oops. I didn't do it!
1350Tactical nuke flown to Ulm and handed over.
1360 AD The HRE nukes the city of Carthage. Carthaginian army has right of passage through Persia now though. Lingpura burns, right next to the old Khmer capital.
1380 AD Carthage retakes Leptis. Peace between Carthage and the HRE.

Three wars on the far continent so far, only to return to the status quo antebellum each time. Except for 5 nukes dropped on the Carthaginian countryside. The fallout from that is still there. And a few more on Persian towns. And... a couple on Carthaginian cities.



Turn 200 Update, 1400 AD



Test games indicated that I should be looking to finish up the tech tree and launch around turn 300, so this is the cutoff for bulbing for all GP other than engineers, spys, or scientists. 3 bpt * 350% * 100 turns ~= 1000 beakers for bulbing. A Golden age only adds 21 base commerce * 1.5 bureaucracy * 350% *12 turns = 1300 beakers, so it is only worth burning two great people on a golden age if they can't bulb anything. 4 settled GG help make up for wasted hammers on military.




The spy for communism was settled, so we finally have demographics on everyone. The nukes seem to have dented the leader's GNP a bit. We continue to learn new modern techs faster than the AIs can learn Renaissance techs.



Hopefully Charles will refrain from researching banking and adopting mercantilism for a while yet or all my 39 commerce worth of trade routes will be gone. Shaka got Optics recently, so we divert more privateers his way and buy his map every few turns to check for runners. The Spanish just got optics last turn, so more destroyers will have to cover the Persian/Carthaginian front as we shift privateers over to cover. Still no contact between the continents. Ship wack-a-mole continues apace, destroyers make things much easier. Ships heal while blockading, completely broken.