Adventure 52 - regoarrarr report

[regoarrarr]

I played pretty quickly. Full report up later but in short...

Sent my initial settlers west to block off Qin, managed to hold my own against an expanding Mansa (I barely got the marble site), built GLib, and then the tech pace was so slow that I got RIFLING () with Liberalism, and whupped Qin and Mansa and got bogged down on Toku and then just coasted to Space

Space victory in 1894 AD, never stole a tech and never dipped below 3000 EPs on anyone.

[regoarrarr]

Okay - we are Huayna of Inca on Immortal. So IND/FIN, quechuas, and terraces. This is actually a pretty good combo - it's one I've used in many of my deity adventures

So here's our start



Hmmmm... let's see if we can't scout anywhere a little better



Nothing too crazy, and given that this is a hand-crafted (or at least hand-tested) map, I'm guessing that settling in place is the right move.

One interesting note that I thought about - here's the F2 screen from T0



Those Great Spies are going to have some real costs in Unit Supply and Cost in the early game. Though actually once I settled my capital my unit supply went away, at least for now....

Torn between Fishing / Quechua and Animal Husbandry / Worker. The 6 food pigs are great of course, but unless I get Mining and BW, my worker is going to twiddle his thumbs for quite awhile. Plus I'm probably going to want Hunting sooner rather than later, for the ivory, so maybe it makes sense to delay AH. Dunno.... hate to lose that 6f tile, even if I do have 2 4/0/3 tiles.

So I begin with teching Fishing and sinking hammers into Stonehenge (:rolleyes. I won't get it (nor do I really want it), but it will be worth a few coins in failgold, and on Immortal, you need it....

[regoarrarr]

And we're off. 2 more huts spotted on T1, giving 38 and 39 gold each.

T3 we spot a scout of Qin Shi Huang.



I'm confused as to why we haven't met, then I realize that his scout can't see my Great Spy We end up meeting later on in the turn when I spot his borders. I pop 43 more gold and then hostile villagers, who of course can't do anything

T6 I finish Fishing and move on to the Wheel, heading for Pottery. Next turn I decide to do my first infiltration. Beijing is building.... a workboat!!!!

Turn 10 and I finally meet the full complement of folks and my worries of having sent my spies in the "wrong" direction (3 had to go one way and 2 the other) have come to fruition. Of course then I go bother to check what type of map we're on and find that it is a donut map. Gotcha. So it should all work out.

Turn 13 J. Edgar Hoover infiltrates Kyoto, and a few turns later I infiltrate Mali also.

Hinduism falls early (to Boudica) and then a turn or two before Mansa finishes Meditation



Ooh suerie Mansa. This actually isn't great for me, as I'd prefer to buddy up to Mansa and get his religion. Ah well, I bet he gets a religion before too long. Cyrus actually timed it up nice to get a border pop in his 2nd city

T24 I infiltrate Cyrus and here's where we stand





I'm working the 2 clams and the lake tile. Qin and Toku are really close to each other, and Toku even settled his 2nd city to the east. As you can see Qin is working on a settler. I'll be monitoring where that guy goes. Hopefully straight north to the corn / gold site. At Immortal, you really need to do the "blocking" cities - so I'm thinking about the river clams / sheep / whales site.

Of course Qin had other plans....



(jerk)

With BW in though, I think I probably will still head that way, but probably on the other bank of the river (NE of the clams and S of the copper). No other copper in sight. I still have not built a worker, but at this poitn I'm trying to figure if I should build a worker first or go right to the settler

I end up going right to the worker and then to a settler. I see Qin is going for a settler himself



I beat him comfortably



Go to another worker and then a settler. Time to start thinking about the best way to "block" off Qin.



Maybe something like this. Not quite a perfect seal but not bad. I could move 1S which gets more forests and is on the river and maybe leaves room for a city. Beijing is building a settler so we'll have to see.

You see that I am working on Mathematics. The typical play would be to go to Aesthetics, but given the tech pace (either they're going really slowly or I'm just teching super fast!), when I get to Aesthetics, nobody will have Alpha to trade me. At least this way when I chop out the GLib, I'll get full value for my chops.

[regoarrarr]

Aaaaaand.... apparently the northern site would have been a better one...



That's the problem with these Immortal AIs they just are so dang fast and sneaky!

About this point I stopped kind of reporting as I went, and just took a few screenshots now and again to help jog my memory. There wasn't really anything too terribly interesting.

I built a library in Cuzco, and ran 2 scientists, netting me an Academy in 625BC (T90).

I had been planning on heading up to the northern marble to get it for GLib but had to send my first 3 settlers south to block off Qin, allowing Mansa to settle it 2nd ring. I rushed a settler up there to put it in the first ring, and then Mansa hooked me up



Thanks for the 1 cpt bub!

Mansa got Alphabet a few turns later, and on T97 after I had put a few turns into it I traded him Aesthetics for Alphabet. Most games at high levels, you're able to get Math and IW for it, but here I did the following over the course of a few turns



Again, AI tech pace was much slower than I'm used to. Whether that was a factor for it being "only" Immortal, or the Great Spies, or just a favorable map setup, I am not sure. You can see that I decided to grab Music after Literature, then I got Calendar (most likely in trade) and nailed the MoM before spending the Music artist on a 12t golden age, which naturally only propelled me even further ahead. Went to Code of Laws and then Civil Service and Paper.

GLib completed on T106, and I used the first (next) Scientist to bulb Philosophy. I founded Taoism but never really spread it much. I got a low-odds great artist next, who I saved. Next scientist I used to bulb Liberalism to within 1t (because I had not teched Machinery). I was really rolling in the gold from selling old techs.

I had been meaning to head up the Guilds line to get the free merchant at Economics, but thanks to the spies, I noticed that Mansa was actually ahead of me. Hmmmmm how can I fix that?



Thanks again Mansa - you've been a bud!!



Nailed the merchant, who went for a trade mission up to the ToA city of Bibracte. Used my next scientist for the 2-man Golden Age, which combined with MoM and the Taj (in progress) meant a Parkinesque 24t of Golden Age!!



Tech situation at the time. As you can see, I'm in a commanding lead. Not only am I up all those visible techs, you can't see Replaceable Parts, and then the very next turn....



I had put the Globe Theater up north in a spot I had managed to carve out from Mansa - corn, rice and fish meant it was a great draft camp. It took a bit of time to build the Globe with whip overflow but managed to get it up just in time



Here you can see Mansa pulling an "Immortal AI" move and shoving in Niani there. I'll let you guys guess how many turns that lasted once hostilities commenced

[regoarrarr]

So here's the state of the world in 1270 AD, at the start of -time



Qin really got hemmed in here. Between myself and Toku both settling up on him, he managed only 5 cities total. I didn't do much better - only netting 7



And here were the initial tactical plans. I had flipped over to Theocracy and Judaism during the Golden Age and had been churning out CR2 maces and catapults, which I was upgrading to rifles and cannons with all my trade mission and tech selling cash. I had gone Chemistry -> Steel -> Steam Power after Rifling, which was probably a mistake. Normally I feel like I need cannons to compete, but at this point, with everyone still so far away from rifles, I should have concentrated on economic techs.

The power graph shows that this could be pretty easy



I won't go into the play by play details of the war. It went about as you might expect a rifles vs. longbows war to go. I did use one of my spies to city revolt Shanghai (still keepign above 3000 EPs).

I captured all of China, and then declared on Tokugawa and Mansa. Mansa folded easily but it took awhile to go after Toku. I made a mistake and split my stacks and didn't have enough siege in one of them and didn't have enough attackers in the other. In the end, I razed and replaced one city and took Kyoto and then he vassaled. I actually wanted to vassalize Mansa, but it was halfway through the war before I realized he was already Toku's vassal. So I ended up just taking all his cities (Boudica took one)

I used the Great Spy from Communism to kick off my 3-man GA and revolted into US, FS, CS, SP and FR and then it was just a bunch of building infra, the occasional military unit and hitting enter. I had to build a few spies and run counter-espionage as Cyrus and Boudica kept sabotaging my SS parts (I lost 2t on my victory due to an Engine sabotage). But then, with 1t to go..



It turned out I think he mostly wanted to go after Toku. He took a few cities while I, the ever kind master, did absolutely nothing I killed 2 of his cavalry with tanks

Spaceship victory in 1894 AD



I think that is my first million point game, though not quite a "fair" fight

[T-hawk]

Okay - we are Huayna of Inca on Immortal. So IND/FIN, quechuas, and terraces. This is actually a pretty good combo

Duh. There's a reason that most of the CFC gauntlet challenges ban Inca. It's just so obviously the best restricted leader/civ combo, and of course quechua rushes go to a whole new level of break.

Nothing too crazy, and given that this is a hand-crafted (or at least hand-tested) map, I'm guessing that settling in place is the right move.

I don't think I edited the starting BFC at all. It just naturally rolled with branching options - stay in place, or move for river or lake or ivory access. There wouldn't be much difference any of those ways.

Those Great Spies are going to have some real costs in Unit Supply and Cost in the early game. Though actually once I settled my capital my unit supply went away, at least for now....

Yes, that I noticed and tested. If unit supply would have been a problem, I would have cut out an AI or two and reduced the spy count.

Of course then I go bother to check what type of map we're on and find that it is a donut map. Gotcha. So it should all work out.

Yes. I picked Donut because it's a very predictable shape, so players could easily explore it and know when it's finished. No tension where you spend ages traipsing around lengthy narrow landforms or try to save the spies to explore islands.

Most games at high levels, you're able to get Math and IW for it, but here I did the following over the course of a few turns

Yup, that's what was supposed to happen in this scenario, those tech trading naysayers in the info thread notwithstanding.

Million points? I'm extremely surprised by that, I may have to dig into those numbers somehow. It took a lot more land a lot faster than that to top 1 million in my Rome game.

[regoarrarr]

Million points? I'm extremely surprised by that, I may have to dig into those numbers somehow. It took a lot more land a lot faster than that to top 1 million in my Rome game.

I want to say I had over 7000 points when I won, which seems pretty high compared to most games I win around this time (I usually win by space). I still have the final save so if there is any particular data you'd like, let me know

[regoarrarr]

So I used T-hawk's victory score calculator

The values I get from my final 1894 save are

Population 400/603
Land 310/599
Tech 335/334 (I had Future Tech 2 but not Mass Media)
Wonders 210/310

I plug those in and Turn 317 and Normal Speed and Immortal, and the page says 86360 points. Interestingly enough if I drop down to Marathon I do get the correct value of 1048752, so perhaps there's a bug in the speed drop down

[T-hawk]

Yeah, that's what I thought had happened. It's not a bug in the calculator, it's a bug in the scenario file and in how Civ handles it. When I first rolled the map, the game was on marathon speed, left over from my last solo game. I fixed it to normal speed by saving in worldbuilder and restarting. But when you do that, somehow the scenario keeps the turn count from the original speed. I've seen this happen before.

IOW, you got scored as if you won on turn 317/1500 rather than 317/500. That's the difference between about 200 BC and 1894 AD. If you got your 400 pop and 335/334 tech score by 200 BC, that would have been impressive and worthy of the million points.

I'm not sure if that turn count glitch affects anything else in a scenario. Possible effects might include involve barbarian spawn timing and the inflation modifier over the course of the game.

So, sorry, but you didn't really earn a million points here

[Ronald]

@ reoarrarr: Nice game and nice report

So, sorry, but you didn't really earn a million points here

So also my 1.5 million are a fake