Epic 5: Compromise's Report

[Compromise]

Had a good deal of fun with this one. My report is here .

[Sullla]

Wow, quite a game. Your early game looked a bit like mine, with a peaceful start followed by a realization that warfare was going to be necessary to win. Since you attacked later than I did, your AIs were a bit more built up than mine were. I barely had to deal with any longbows, for example. Your game certainly was another testament to the power of catapults! But the Jags are not as bad you made them out to be. When attacking cities, isn't +10% city attack better than +50% melee?

I wondered if anyone would get major value out of aquiring AI-improved Calendar resources, and you seem to have taken the cake on that one! I'm glad to see that you found a creative solution to managing the happiness crunch.

You finished at a similar date to my game, but the economic situation was, erm, a lot different. Apparently, I was one of the few players who never was on the point of total economic collapse. The ending shenanigans with Alex were very amusing to watch. 69.90%?! Now you know why I didn't want to declare war on Alex! One thing I have to conclude from this game is that there should be more of a penalty for units going on strike - that didn't seem to have much of an effect, if I read your report correctly.

Oh, and as far as your final point - tech trading being off absolutely helped everyone in this game a ton. That drastically slowed the AI tech pace, making axe/Jag/cat conquests possible. I've seen Emperor AIs discover Liberalism by 1150AD, and running around with rifles at 1300. Not exactly encouraging news when your last tech discovery was Construction in 100AD, no?

Thanks for the report.

[T-hawk]

I agree with Sullla - no tech trading *absolutely* helped the player. I ended my game before catapults even appeared; no way would we manage that if the AIs could help each other with research.

Our research path is pointed toward Monarchy. There's just no way our size 4 and size 3 happy-limited cities are going to cut it in this game.

Actually, limited cities like that worked just fine for Sooooo and Regoarrarr and myself. It's all about the forest chops.

there should be more of a penalty for units going on strike - that didn't seem to have much of an effect, if I read your report correctly.

The penalty is one unit per turn automatically disbanded, right? That's what happened in my game. Seemed appropriately stiff but not crippling to me.

[regoarrarr]

Nice game. It was good to see someone whose economy was even more in the crapper than mine :-)

[Compromise]

Nice game. It was good to see someone whose economy was even more in the crapper than mine :-)

Yeah, of the reports I read, no one's army was in more dire need of cities to pillage than mine. Not that that's a good thing....

The penalty is one unit per turn automatically disbanded, right? That's what happened in my game. Seemed appropriately stiff but not crippling to me.

That's good to know. Since I only had one turn where the units were actually on strike and since I had huge stacks, I'm not surprised that I didn't noticed the effect. Is there an algorithm for which units get disbanded or is it random, I wonder?

@Sullla: So many good points, thanks for the comments. I was quite pleased to see in your report that an economically solvent solution was possible. I was impressed with how early you were able to take on the English.

It was kind of funny to see all these improved resources within my control knowing that my workers couldn't produce them. That put a rather high priority on denying horses to the AI. It was kind of weird.

The late attack against Alexander was more in character than necessary. I held or could easily get enough land for the victory. But that backstabber had boats and had the audacity to offer us fish!

On the tech trading issue, everyone's right: it was obviously of benefit to the human in this game to have it off. But, I've been wondering about it more in general, though. In my personal games, I've been wanting quicker games (i.e. smaller maps) so I can focus more on getting each city working well without the games taking forever.

On a standard size map or larger with the default number of civs, there are enough potential trading partners that I think tech trading is almost always advantageous to the human. But on a small continents map, with only 4 AI civs, I'm starting to think that it's a wash. You usually start with one or two AIs on your continent and will have a war with at least one of them. This leaves two or three on the other continent.

Under those conditions, it seems like a wash. You get some benefit from tech trading, but the AI gets just as much because there aren't enough tradeable civs to trade the same tech to. Especially when you play at or above Emperor and have few techs to trade and necessarily bad deals on trades.

Thanks for the comments on the report. Reporting day is always a fun one.

[blid]

That was a nice game and fun report

Your second city was damn far, no wonder Gandhi planted one right in between it and your capital

That stack of cats and axes was scary Man I wouldn't have liked to be in Liz place

And loosing a city at 0.10% from dom sounds frustrating enough

[sooooo]

Nicely reported. I liked reading about the struggles to get the last few % for domination.

[Sirian]

Did Sirian mess with this map?

Nope. That's a low sea level, tropical pangaea with solid shoreline, 100% un-fooled-around-with. (I was originally considering playing the game, my first non-shadow since Adventure Four.) None of this was arranged -- at least not by hand.


Of course, being the map programmer has its advantages, since I know how to wring interesting scenarios out of wholly random maps.

* People are marvelling at all the Calendar resources, but that is a byproduct of a map type with intense land presence at the equator, combined with being tropical. (Calendar resources are most intense in jungle). Lots of jungle will naturally mean a tilt toward Calendar resources. ... Yes, that's evil, but where else are you going to go to battle this kind of evil?

* Horses, Copper and Iron won't appear in jungles. All I had to do to reduce the likelihood of player having access to these resources was to get a start in or near the massive jungle. I got that on the first shot, mission accomplished.

* The low sea level means more extra land for a Solid shoreline than for the other two types, and more of that extra land piled around the equator, so plenty of land for three AIs. With much of it going to be jungle, which the AIs are sure to avoid as much as possible in the early land grab, the player would naturally be harder pressed to expand peacefully.


So, basically, providing the most massive possible jungle, in combination with the particulars of the settings used to get there, ensured that we would have a Jag Rush event and a lot of miserable economies.

The fact that Calendar resources got taken off the table turned out to be the perfect way to redesign what was an untranslatable Civ3 scenario. (Civ4 has no helicopters, no paratroops, no way to transfer units by air from one landmass to another without already having a city on both masses.)

Now the next question is, what's in store in Epic Six?


- Sirian

[Compromise]

Nope. That's a low sea level, tropical pangaea with solid shoreline, 100% un-fooled-around-with. ...Of course, being the map programmer has its advantages, since I know how to wring interesting scenarios out of wholly random maps. ... So, basically, providing the most massive possible jungle, in combination with the particulars of the settings used to get there, ensured that we would have a Jag Rush event and a lot of miserable economies. ... Now the next question is, what's in store in Epic Six?

There is, of course, a special place in hell for you, Sirian. (And I'm trying to get a seat at that table! )

Thanks for the very informative post here.

After reading everyone else's report, I'm still impressed with Sullla's economy. I wish I'd saved some mid-game autosaves so I could play it out and see if a late start to the warmongering ruled out a sane economy before Steam Power forced the hand of Mars.

[Ruff_Hi]

Nice game and report. Did you actually build any Jags? Also, I particularly liked the shot of you taking Thermopylae - it shows that you got 152 gold bringing your treasure to 153 @ -66 per turn - lol.