Epic 9 - Shadow Game

[Zalson]

Hi All,

In my intrepid metier of playing games 6 years after they're closed, I present the Epic of arb-Zal Horse Feathers (epic 9).

http://www.earnestwords.com/rb-civ-epic-9/

[GreyWolf]

Shanghai, and later, Bactra, suffered Persian revolts after conquest. What was up with that? That was an unexpected setting for this game.

There was no special setting, I think. Conquered cities revolt, but don't flip to your enemy. Common source of confusion.

[Zalson]

Shanghai was a Chinese turned Persian City that revolted (two revolts - and rejoined Persia) back to Cyrus after I conquered it. Same thing happened with Bactra.

I think there is a setting for that, right?

[T-hawk]

Thanks for sharing, looks like that was pretty well done. Something I'd like is some wide-angle overview screenshots every now and then, which gives a much better picture of a civilization's overall progress and conquering.

As for GNP: In Civ 4 before the expansions, the GNP number and chart were extremely misleading. In fact, my game of this very scenario begat analysis and discussion that led to changing the behavior in BTS. See here for all the details: http://www.dos486.com/civ4/epic9/page7.shtml

As for flipping: A conquered city cannot flip back to its original owner, unless the option "City Flipping After Conquest" was checked at game start. I don't remember if it was for this Epic; you can check on the F8 settings screen in game. A conquered city can flip to a third party - if you conquered a city from China, it can flip back to Persia - maybe that's what happened here.

[Zalson]

I may have taken some wide-angle screens; I will see if I can find them for your viewing pleasure.

Misleading stat or not, my GNP was on the rocks at the end. I think I was scraping 45/gpt with 0 science and 20% culture. I will probably try to use your analysis in some future games.

I can't post pics right now but I can confirm that epic 9 did NOT have City flipping after conquest checked. I wish I had recorded that happening a little more closely. I do know that Bactra was a Persian city that somehow ended up in Persian hands without me losing units (I could be misremembering - - I was a little burnt out at the end of the game). It may not have flipped at all :/

Thanks for reading T-hawk (and. GreyWolf as well)

[NobleHelium]

It's possible that the cities-not-flipping-after-conquest logic only applies to the original empire who founded the city, not the empire that the city was conquered from. So since the city was founded by China and the empire that instigated the revolt was Persia, flipping was still allowed.

[Compromise]

Ah this takes me back to the good old days. Reading your report I remember so many mistakes I made in this game. I think I even wanted to found a religion because I didn't think I'd get one. I think that failed. Then I got a religion spread from Japan or something because there was a route for the religion to spread, but I hadn't met--and auto-declared--yet.

Also, when you wrote about bringing enough troops for the second, third cities, etc.... I failed on that with this game and ended up pillaging Gandhi instead of being able to take him over.

Thanks for posting your report!

[Zalson]

I remember that Bactra flipped too (even though it couldn't according to the game settings!).

The situation with Shanghai, I think, does happen as described quite often. Enemy city in frenemy territory flips to the frenemy because the player captured the enemy city (okay, this is has happened once, i think).

@Compromise: The one problem with single player is that the longer sessions (30-50+ turns in a few hours) tend to blur together. it's easy to forget to whip efficiently when you're not keyed in on maximizing the output from each of your cities (as I imagine one might be when reporting every turn in a PBEM or PB game).

I've gotten better at bringing sufficient force and being patient. When I can remember to be patient.

Thanks for reading, guys! And T-Hawk - do you have the modification for the GNP graph? I don't forsee getting BTS anytime soon but I would like to use a better graph.

[T-hawk]

Thanks for reading, guys! And T-Hawk - do you have the modification for the GNP graph? I don't forsee getting BTS anytime soon but I would like to use a better graph.

Afraid I don't still have that around. Most likely lost it after a post-virus reinstall a couple years ago, and didn't ever need to redo it because it was patched in the game anyway. I could redo it, but would have to set up the vanilla Civ 4 SDK again to recompile it again.

Why not get BTS anytime soon? It's four bucks on Amazon, and almost all modern Civ 4 content uses it.

[Zalson]

It looks like it's only $9 for the mac copy (when I last checked it was like $25), so that might be an option...