Adventure 47 - Sponsor Comments and Shadow game

[SevenSpirits]

The seed of this game was the following thought: what if the decision of where to settle your capital was more important?

My initial idea was starting your settler/warrior in the middle of a big desert. Obviously you have to move then, right? But there’s an immediate problem with designing a game like this, which is that how you do will be randomly based on which direction you scout in. Clearly, if you’re going to require settler movement (and keep it at the same cost of not having a capital/palace) you need to provide some free map knowledge. So why not go all out? Satellites! So the first concept is that you start in a desert, but you have Satellites.

Two sequences of speculation spun off that, and then met back up again: First, if you have satellites and start in a huge barren area, the obvious theme is that you’re aliens and your spaceship crashed. Second, the whole “where to settle” question becomes a lot more interesting if you have two settlers! Both of these were soft indications for deity difficulty; because of the theme and because the AIs get two settlers too. Meanwhile it felt right for you to start with exactly two techs, so I looked around a bit to see if there was another good advanced one (I didn’t want one that was the sole prerequisite for another) and quickly settled on Communism. In addition to giving no distance maintenance which opened up even more settling possibilities, it threw in several interesting twists: early strong workshops and watermills, a powerful but pricey espionage building in the Intelligence Agency, and the Kremlin.

Because deity difficulty is way harder than I was shooting for, and because the theme supported it, I also wanted to throw in a few interesting starting units. As you can see the locations of all the huts on the map via satellites, I added an explorer. I also wanted to throw in the weirdest possible great people, which I decided was a general and an artist... but the general has one obvious use - settling for the +2xp bonus - so I put him directly on a warrior. Oh, and a fast worker, why not.

I generated pangaea maps until I got a good one, swapped the player out for Arabia who was in the middle, and drew in a big desert ringed by mountains/hills directly underneath. I then slightly improved the land surrounding the crater, adding different kinds of good land in various directions, and making sure to include a stone and a marble on opposite sides.

I then started a test game, and it was awesome! I played about strongly enough to beat emperor (though if I try I expect to be able to beat immortal), expanded a ton in a weird ring around the crater, built many wonders, and led in score the whole time. And then China declared on me and, because I lacked horseback riding and construction, I was only barely able to avoid losing a city. Wow! This was actually the most exciting Civ IV game I’d played in a while, and it felt almost like a multiplayer game in terms of tech priorities. I played a bit more, but basically decided the game and map were good at that point. I threw in a great engineer to make it a bit easier (and because it’s somewhat unclear what he should be used for), because the game felt hard for me, almost Immortal-ish.

So at that point I refined the thematic elements a bit, doctored up a tech splash screenshot, and sent it off to Sullla asking what the heck I needed to do with it. A bit later it was confirmed, so I played my full Shadow game. I’ll post that soon.

And by the way, if you haven't tried playing this yet, I do still recommend it. The shadow game was one of the most interesting games I've played, and it's at a weird difficulty level that's about equal to emperor, but with an amazing start and a danger of being overtaken later.

[SevenSpirits]

Opening

First of all, while you can’t see where your opponents are via satellites, you can actually get a pretty good idea of it by looking for clumps of resources and forests. In particular, on this map you can tell where Ottomans and Greece are.



I settled my capital on the plains hill river mouth in the south, blocking Greece in, and settled Thoth the great engineer there. I suspect this is the correct use of him - rushing the pyramids or partially rushing the Kremlin are tempting but not nearly as useful for quickly claiming land. Plus, the settled engineer accelerates teching significantly in the early turns. This is even more relevant since you start with zero early techs.

The second city was placed in the totally sweet eastern river area and received Osiris as a settled great artist. Soon, the 100 culture ring blocked Ottomans off from the west. I’m not sure if there’s a reliably better use for him. If only Ottomans didn’t send their second settler west, it might be good to flip their capital. As it is, I grabbed the best site I could, got 3gpt, and incidentally blocked off passage across the continent.

I then researched worker techs and expanded as quickly as possible with workers, settlers, and minimal defense. With the engineer, Thebes was fantastic for this.



Specialization

Once further settling promised to tank my economy too much, and expose too large a front to barbarians and other enemies, I started using my capital for wonders (though I still expanded a bit more). While Suryavarman had already claimed my desired stone, industrious made it fairly easy to build the Great Wall and Pyramids, as well as the Great Library. Heliopolis was designated my espionage capital. It made an Intelligence Agency and got my first new GP, a great spy, settled there. Along with two spy specialists its output was 42 EP! (Those specialists also gave 14 science, due to Representation.) It later build the Parthenon. Elephantine, a northern coastal production city, started the laborious process of building the Kremlin. Alexandria got the Heroic Epic and became my primary military pump. Phrygian, a captured barb city in the southwest, became a spy pump, and the rest were pretty much commerce cities.

Techwise, I got Iron Working to unlock the two jungled Gems, ran up to Literature, then went Metal Casting, Alphabet, Math, Currency before continuing up to Machinery. The religious stuff could be ignored for now, as well as classical military techs since I figured that axes and spears and war chariots would be good enough to defend for a while. Machinery is a critical tech here because of State Property: it allows 1/1/0 watermills, and leads to guilds which lets you build 0/3/0 caste system workshops.



Defense

Guess what finished just in time? Yeah, right after Machinery, I researched Construction, and finished it just as Mehmed declared war. Here’s the stack (currently on the dyes):



Note that in the picture I’m researching Archery. With Iron I’d be able to build Crossbows; too bad I didn’t settle in place at the beginning! (I put Iron in the crater to represent the crashed ship, haha.) Pacal traded me Iron for a few health resources, and that plus my round of emergency-Kremlin-whipped catapults managed to hold off the attack. However, for the first time I was convincingly overtaken in score by Suryavarman. Time to counterattack, right? Well, not quite. First I had to survive the second wave, which was mostly catapults and War Elephants. But by that time, Civil Service was in, and I already had some Macemen. After picking up Engineering as well and having pumped out nothing but units for 15 turns, I was ready to counter.





Spies

After taking two cities with Axes, Crossbows, Catapults and Macemen, I vassalized Mehmed. Not great, but it would be worse if he managed to vassalize to someone else, particularly since my entire western empire was lightly defended. I then powered up my economy for a bit. I teched up to Chemistry for the 0/4/0 workshops and Nationalism for drafting, barracks happiness and +25% espionage. I built lots of Intelligence Agencies everywhere, as well as plenty of Buddhist buildings - I’d been thoroughly swamped with Buddhist missionaries, and it was the Apostolic Palace religion, so that was pretty sweet. Note that when I say I “teched” Nationalism, well, IIRC Pacal teched it for me. Tech stealing is pretty strong. I still had a great research rate but I was stealing lots of techs too.

Here's the former Ottoman capital after a bit of renovation, by the way. An amazing city, though it revolted irritatingly often.



Attack

The quickest way to win would clearly be domination, so I declared war on Pacal. With him neutralized, I’d be able to move my whole army to the west without worry. Muskets, Maces, Pikes and Trebuchets forced him to vassalize, then took down a couple Chinese cities (battling Cuirassiers!) before Steel came in and gave me the ultimate siege weapon, Cannons. I also produced a company of knights for quick city captures, and used some espionage points on city revolts to save time.





What the heck is going on here?



Aha, Mao is not well-liked these days. Yes, he’ll vassalize now. The rest is academic. I steal Rifling, upgrade to a Rifle/Cavalry/Cannon army, and stomp Sury.



My last move is to settle the crater, and I win by domination on turn 203, 1430 AD.











That's that! I enjoyed it quite a bit. Actually, afterwards I made a difficulty level mod where I removed all the starting AI bonuses (like archery, extra defenders, a starting worker, etc), so I can play at a higher level with a supercharged AI, but with an equal start. Playing where you start out way behind, try to catch up, and then once you do the game is over, just seems inferior to me. I'd rather the game get harder, or at least stay the same difficulty, over time.

Also, I have never used an espionage economy before. It seemed really strong, and it was a cool change of pace. I'm pretty sure I don't like the mechanic though - it's way too much micro! Even just producing spies, sending them over, sleeping for 5 turns, and then waking up is irritating. So that's the last time I do that, I think.

[kjn]

Interesting!

Comparing the various games, you went south and east, while the rest of us went northwards. Boxing in Pericles probably stunted him a lot - otherwise he had pretty free reign over the nice land south of the crater.

I had considered a move south, but thought it would take too much time, I thought the jungle would take too long to clear, and I wanted to lay claim to both the gold hills early on.

[novice]

Very impressive.

Your choice of starting locations was excellent and settling the great engineer didn't even occur to me.

I don't think I've ever seen an AI move its capital before:



Poor Pericles...

[T-hawk]

First of all, while you can’t see where your opponents are via satellites, you can actually get a pretty good idea of it by looking for clumps of resources and forests. In particular, on this map you can tell where Ottomans and Greece are.

Comparing the various games, you went south and east, while the rest of us went northwards. Boxing in Pericles probably stunted him a lot - otherwise he had pretty free reign over the nice land south of the crater.

Boxing in Pericles was clearly the strongest move in hindsight, but I'm not really sure that one could read Greece's starting location just from the Satellites map. I guessed at an AI starting right where SevenSpirits settled his Thebes, which is two food resources, river, and forests - that's a capital quality spot. So I didn't head that way with my own settlers, and it turned out my Greece expanded to that city location before I could.

settled Thoth the great engineer there. I suspect this is the correct use of him - rushing the pyramids or partially rushing the Kremlin are tempting but not nearly as useful for quickly claiming land. Plus, the settled engineer accelerates teching significantly in the early turns. This is even more relevant since you start with zero early techs.

Again, you're probably right but only with spoiler knowledge. We didn't know how boldly Mehmed and Suryavarman would settle towards our Egypt, so we didn't know how urgent it would be to quickly claim land. Pyramids-rushing was pretty competitive IMO: in addition to another Great Engineer to get the Kremlin anyway, the big point is the Representation happy boost. There was only one early happy resource within reachable range (gold), and we could not get religion for happy with the late start (~turn 3) and lacking worker techs. Representation helped tremendously there. Plus it denies the Pyramids to any AI.

The second city was placed in the totally sweet eastern river area and received Osiris as a settled great artist. Soon, the 100 culture ring blocked Ottomans off from the west. I’m not sure if there’s a reliably better use for him.

This I wholeheartedly agree with. Bombing to flip the Ottoman capital does turn out stronger, but is chancy and unreliable against Deity level garrisons.

(I put Iron in the crater to represent the crashed ship, haha.)

I actually guessed ahead of time that would happen. That was a neat little puzzle - if and how is it worth settling to claim that iron? There's one spot (I think) 2S 1E of the iron, which can reach it and four or so grasslands to make for a halfway useful city. Or 3S 1E of the iron for more useful land and figure out a way to get it to 100 culture quickly. Or somewhere north of it. Or ignore it entirely.

Here's the former Ottoman capital after a bit of renovation, by the way. An amazing city, though it revolted irritatingly often.

Yeah, my Mehmed also workshopped every tile around Istanbul. I wonder why? He definitely fell behind in tech without cottages there, I pasted him with rifles against muskets.

Also, I have never used an espionage economy before. It seemed really strong, and it was a cool change of pace. I'm pretty sure I don't like the mechanic though - it's way too much micro! Even just producing spies, sending them over, sleeping for 5 turns, and then waking up is irritating. So that's the last time I do that, I think.

Heh. I actually enjoy the spy micromanagement minigame, have done it in several games. I love the tension between waiting for the full -50% discount versus pulling an itchy trigger finger earlier. If there's anything I don't like, it's the chance for failure; whiffing on a 97% dice roll creates a big swing. The answer is to send enough spies that at least one of them will succeed, which works, but then 97% of the time leaves you having spent an extra 120 or 160 hammers and looking pretty silly. I suppose the chanciness is necessary to give some balance against the whopping discounts, though.

[kjn]

Boxing in Pericles was clearly the strongest move in hindsight, but I'm not really sure that one could read Greece's starting location just from the Satellites map. I guessed at an AI starting right where SevenSpirits settled his Thebes, which is two food resources, river, and forests - that's a capital quality spot. So I didn't head that way with my own settlers, and it turned out my Greece expanded to that city location before I could.

I checked the map, and it's probably at least a one-in-three chance that Pericles will send his other starting settler towards the mainland, and it would reach the site at least a full turn before a settler from the crater can reach the same spot.

You can probably settle nearby and culture-bomb, but you'd end up with a subpar capital and Pericles is far more resilient against culture bombs than poor Mehmed, being creative.