Archive Bingeing: picklepikkl plays the oldies

[picklepikkl]

In which I, a rank newb, delve into the history of Realms Beyond community games, give them a shot, and post the results here for general entertainment!

Epic One

[picklepikkl]

So there I was, poking around Sullla’s site for edification, when I happened to open up his Epic One report. I got a little way into it -- his T1 scouting, founding on the plains hill tile, and early build -- when I started wondering how he’d play it these days. I watched his first hundred turns with the HRE and have been working my way through his Willem of the Dutch full game, and it seems like thinking has shifted to a growth-oriented worker-first start, and in that new position there’s totally a relevant Agriculture tile while you work towards Animal Husbandry, and…

Wait a second. I totally have Civilization 4. I can explore the counterfactual myself!

To recap: I have played one full game of Civ 4: BTS, on Warlord difficulty, without tech trading/vassal states/random events. Epic One is on Epic speed (the ramifications of which I will have to puzzle out as I go), Prince difficulty, and in Vanilla with none of the toggles off. I gather that a bunch of the mechanics I find intimidating (vassals, corporations, espionage) are expansion features, so I don’t have to worry about them. But still, this is a heck of a jump, and there’s also the Honorable ruleset involved, which means I cannot declare war to expand if I fail at landgrabbing. Let’s see how far all my study gets me!



So I’m on the coast. I’m not financial, so water tiles aren’t super strong, but if I understand the game correctly, I will eventually be able to build a Lighthouse which will add food to the freshwater lakes that are also in range. My tentative plan is something like AH -> Mining -> BW, so that I can get into the chop/slavery mode of city management ASAP.



Well, that’s quite lucky! Though with all this jungle everywhere, not sure how good moving twice will be. Guess I’ll move the warrior generally north and west while the scout heads back south and east.



Oh dear. That’s Genghis Khan, and he’s quite close by. I gather he’s one of the warmongeriest of the AIs. Though I guess this means I will theoretically be able to claim his land, despite the Honorable rules, after he inevitably declares war on me?



State of affairs at about the year 3000. Genghis Khan is indeed very close, but it seems I’m on a peninsula that in theory I could seal off to the southeast and backfill without competition? The main problem with that is that my land is about half jungle; it’s going to be a while before I get Iron Working to clear that out, and there isn’t really a lot of food to the southeast -- the most obviously strong early-game site is the pigs/fish to my west, since that will have a ton of food. All the other food I can see is choked by jungle (mostly rice and bananas, but also the pigs to my east) or only technically a food tile (plains cows in the southeast). Probably, as a weak player, I want to grab inherently strong sites over strategic sites, because I’m less confident in my ability to manage marginal land and deal with aggression (I imagine the Khan will not be amused if I take land so close to him).

Also, my scout got munched by a lion despite defending on hills, and I’ve met Washington. He seems like a nice neighbor to have, though I haven’t seen his land yet. Paris is pumping out a lot of warriors while I grow to size 3, whereupon I will probably make my first settler off of wheat farm/cow pasture/plains hill mine (and maybe a chop -- I don’t have the hang of how much time stuff takes on Epic).



Two more friends come to the party! Gandhi (nice person!) and Montezuma (oh dear). Judging from angle of approach, it seems the Aztecs are on the far east side of the Mongols and Gandhi is to my northeast? That would be nice, Gandhi might distract the Mongols from me . I believe there’s one more person to meet.



So that’s Karakorum. And on top of that (man, I want grass cows), Genghis has Archery and Bronze Working (judging by being in Slavery). While him taking military techs is not what I would call a surprise, it’s also discomfiting.



The good news: I have Bronze Working.

The bad news: There is only one copper in sight.

The worse news: It is right in between me and Genghis Khan.

So… I could settle it. But that city would not have any food until I finished Iron Working and cleared out the pigs (and rice, if I wanted to settle the super aggro spot out of some sort of suicidal impulse). It would only be a copper grab. So I need to decide: how important is copper to me, especially since I already know I want Iron Working sooner rather than later?

My current thinking: if I don’t settle the copper, Genghis Khan might attack me before I have horses or iron hooked up, in which case I probably die. If I do settle the copper, Genghis Khan will definitely attack me, and that might well kill me anyway. I feel like on balance my analysis from before about strategic versus strong cities comes in here: ironically, the thing that will make the copper city useful (IW tech) will also obsolete the reason for its settling (unless I don’t have Iron in my big peninsula, in which case I’m just completely hosed).

Let’s go west, grab what clear land we can, and try not to die before IW. Current tech is on Fishing, because only suckers need Archers, with the tentative path of then grabbing Pottery and maybe Masonry before the iron age.



Oh. It turns out I was wrong. My other closest neighbor is Montezuma, not Gandhi.

Well, that’s exciting. And to compound the excitement, another scouting warrior determined that Genghis has horses to his immediate east.

What a time to be alive.



First settler out, so it’s time to plop down some general ideas of where my cities ought to go. This will undoubtedly be obsoleted in the future by resources (particularly iron) and barb city placement (since being honorable apparently means taking a dim view of razing cities to the ground), but it’s a sketch of what I’d like to do in the way of getting the most out of my land. I’ve opted for a dense city placement in the south, where there are relatively many resources. I have no idea what to do yet about the bananas/rice/dyes site to Paris’s southwest, because the obvious special-tile maximizing location will also end up wasting a bunch of grassland near my 4000 BC starting spot. C1 is going on the hill rather than the plains next door to it because it grabs extra land tiles (Moai Statues, which I’d love, is apparently not in this version, and as non-financial water tiles aren’t super great), and as a plus it means I might be able to chain irrigation up to the rice, assuming that works on a diagonal.

Also, with all these coastal cities as goals, The Great Lighthouse seems like an excellent target to make use of my Industrious self.

[picklepikkl]

I decided to leave that as my first play session, because I have dinner plans and I want to see if this works at all.

Related to the question of this working at all: dropbox is a huge pain and not nearly as user-friendly as I thought it might be for this purpose, is there some sort of guide to using it properly?

[greenline]

I'd note that any attack Genghis makes won't be that threatening if you have copper and he doesn't.

[Sullla]

Very nice report! It's always fun to hear that someone came across something I wrote or broadcast and was inspired to try their own hand. I'll be reading so I hope you'll be able to keep posting more.

It's hard to believe that Civ4's Epic One took place over 10 years ago now (!) My how the time does fly. Yes, I would obviously do some things differently if I were to play the game over again; I think it's fair to say that the community has gotten a lot better at Civ4 since the Fall of 2005.

By the way, that's a tough map for Prince difficulty and with the Honorable ruleset. Not a lot of food anywhere near the capital, that's for sure.

[Hesmyrr]

It's interesting to see a new take on these old events! I already see few things I'd do differently, but that's post-game analysis fun.

Unfortunately I never actively reported on this forum (note my title ) so can't really help you with your Dropbox problem. I do know you don't have to worry about size of the images since [ screenshot ] tag automatically re-sizes, if that is of any help.

[Qgqqqqq]

Posted in the other thread, but here as well:

For my typical reports:

[Dropbox installed]

ALT-PRTSCRN at pertinent moments

[Finish Playing]

Move all the pictures to a subfolder in my Public Dropbox folder

Use Bulk Image Converter to change them all to jpegs (mine save as 1meg png's for some reason)

Rename all as [a number][a name], e.g. 200Overview. The number helps sort them by session (more relevent in PBEM/SG than Tournaments, but still). Note that this is multiple screenshots bearing the same name, so you'll end up with a bunch with names like 200Overview (1) and 200Overview (16)

Copy Public Link, paste into a blank post box.

Wrap [screenshot ] [/ screenshot] tags around it, copy with wrap.

Paste as many times as I have screenshots with the same name.

Write report, renaming them as I go along to fit the proper narrative.


Long and possibly not applicable depending on your OS, but it's the sort of breakdown I would have appreciated when I started, as a lot of it is non-intuitive.


If you've been playing for a while, I suggest skipping some of the early games, as they're not aimed at someone used to the game as you. Potluck, for instance, is much less interesting if you've played all the civs before.

[picklepikkl]

I founded Orleans and did more scouting around. I’m losing very little money from having only two cities, so I decided that Paris should go straight onto a second settler after finishing a second worker (to help chop it out). Furthermore, I decided to go for the cows/clams/horses site in my south: it’s pretty far away, but it’s a strong location, will be hooked up to my trade network once I have Sailing, and will let me build Chariots for early defense. As long as I can escort the settler safely through the jungle, I should be fine.

Also, I meet the last AI, Alexander (jeez, three incredibly belligerent AIs in one game!) and he immediately proposes Open Borders. I see no harm in accepting. Poking around in the Foreign Advisor reveals that all the AIs know each other, apart from Alex and Genghis not having met.

I swap Orleans onto a Work Boat one turn before it grows, so that I can immediately whip it to completion once it hits size 2:



Yeah! Look at me doing micro and using Slavery! Soon I will be a leet RB gamer!

Pottery comes in at 1960 BC, and I move on to Sailing. I am honestly not sure about this, but lighthouses are something I want, I could use a galley to explore/colonize the islands to my north, and I’d like to get trade routes going. Then maybe Masonry so I can quarry the stone and build The Great Lighthouse in Paris? That’d give my city something to do while I tech up to Iron Working.



Sure enough, Genghis founded towards the copper. I could have beaten him… but like I said, that would have been a really marginal city without the food. I’m just worried that, given that he founded for the pigs in the city radius, there will now be cultural tension between us. Maybe I should have founded the city anyway, on my terms, so that our borders wouldn’t touch? I may have screwed myself over, bluh.



I did not think ahead adequately, and so did not time my worker labor so that it would come along with the warrior and settler to found Lyons; it had to follow behind a few turns later. But at least now it’s there, to pasture the cows and then the horses, and to chop out whatever needs chopping. I’ll feel a lot better once I have some chariots.

That’s where I paused for the night. While I was away from the computer, I did some thinking:

1) I don’t know if it’s the Epic speed or just my inexperience showing, but I’m not getting a lot of utility out of Orleans’s high food. Whip unhappiness lasts 15 turns, I don’t have a high happy cap to work with (my kingdom for a minable luxury!), and honestly I don’t have a lot that’s worth building at the moment. Possibly I should just work some coast and mines to be food-neutral at size 3 when I don’t have anything to whip? Or should I cottage these plains and start investing in the future?

2) My current plan rests entirely on the coast being clear of barbarian culture that would block Lyons from my trade network. I learned from reading the opening to the 2012 intersite demo game that it’s possibly to block barb city spawns by having units in the area. I should look up what the rules are and quickly establish a sentry network on the west coast to prevent this nonsense; I don’t want to be forced to road across my peninsula.

[picklepikkl]

I'd note that any attack Genghis makes won't be that threatening if you have copper and he doesn't.

That's a good point; one thing I didn't mention is that I did find copper to Karakorum's south. It's not as close as this other source, but assuming the AI prioritizes strategic resources, it's still readily available to the Mongols, and I'm pretty scared of antagonizing my neighbors. This may have been foolish of me -- from reading about the different leader personalities, Genghis Khan and Montezuma come pre-antagonized :P.

Very nice report! It's always fun to hear that someone came across something I wrote or broadcast and was inspired to try their own hand. I'll be reading so I hope you'll be able to keep posting more.

It's hard to believe that Civ4's Epic One took place over 10 years ago now (!) My how the time does fly. Yes, I would obviously do some things differently if I were to play the game over again; I think it's fair to say that the community has gotten a lot better at Civ4 since the Fall of 2005.

By the way, that's a tough map for Prince difficulty and with the Honorable ruleset. Not a lot of food anywhere near the capital, that's for sure.

Oh my goodness, it would appear that senpai has noticed me; that doesn't amp up the pressure at all . Thank you very much for your kind words! I'll keep this going as best I can. By the way, I saw on your website that you took your doctorate at College Park? My girlfriend did so as well, in the same year even! (But she was in linguistics, and I hear that place was enormous, so I doubt you two know each other)

@Hesmyrr and Qgqqqqq: Thank you very much for the advice! The specific issue I'm having is that Dropbox URLs are formatted like this:

Code:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/abunchofnumbersandletters/filename

One would expect that the "abunchofnumbersandletters" bit would be constant for things in the same subdirectory, or at least things uploaded in the same batch. But no, they are not, which means that instead of simple copy/paste of some BBCode where I can change the filename slightly for each screenshot, I must instead grab each screenshot's URL individually from Dropbox (and add the ?raw=1 query strings each time). It's self-evidently not an insurmountable problem, but it's annoying.

[DaveV]

One would expect that the "abunchofnumbersandletters" bit would be constant for things in the same subdirectory, or at least things uploaded in the same batch. But no, they are not, which means that instead of simple copy/paste of some BBCode where I can change the filename slightly for each screenshot...

That is exactly how it works for me; I can just cut and paste my links and edit the filename portion. I suspect it's because I'm using a public folder. See this link for instructions on how to create a public folder.