Epic 9 - Ruff's Report

[Ruff_Hi]

Here is my Epic 9 Report featuring ...

• Units on a Frigate
  
• Three dualing scientists
  
• The mid ocean transfer
  
• A crazy gold graph
  
• and a whole lot of fun!!
  

[T-hawk]

Nice report -- certainly a different tone than I take in mine.

I think I know the cause of the strange spikes in the GNP graph. It's anarchy. When you have a large empire, with big numbers for both positive commerce and negative maintenance costs mostly netting out against each other, a turn spent with no maintenance costs shows up as a large positive spike.

My GNP graph had one such spike (besides the golden age) - but only one - right when I made my last revolution of the game, to Vassalage and Mercantilism.

As I understand it, mid-ocean transfers are allowed by design. I did it a couple times in this game without note. It's not exploitive as in Civ 3 because only one transfer per unit per turn is possible, so you can't instantly chain armies across the world. Transferring uses up a unit's movement so it can't transfer again that turn.

I solved your little chess problem, assuming the missionary is a bishop, but I don't quite get the connection to the Civ game. Your missionaries waited for the enemy warriors to move out of the way?

[sooooo]

Ha, that was an entertaining report Ruff - thanks and well done!

[Ruff_Hi]

My GNP graph had one such spike (besides the golden age) - but only one - right when I made my last revolution of the game, to Vassalage and Mercantilism.

I solved your little chess problem, assuming the missionary is a bishop, but I don't quite get the connection to the Civ game. Your missionaries waited for the enemy warriors to move out of the way?

The GNP graph was a little test - it was anarchy - 2 turns for every single civ swap. I was interested in the causes so thanks for the info.

Re chess - I thought the missionary = bishop was obvious so I didn't include it. There wasn't really a connection except that some people had started discussing chess issues lately and I thought that I could make a CIV based one. You solution sounds about right.

[Compromise]

Well written and played, ruff. Like reading a short story. It felt very familiar since it looked we attacked the AI in roughly the same order. Then, your superior play let you conquer India rather than just pillage it like I did. Cool.

As I understand it, mid-ocean transfers are allowed by design. I did it a couple times in this game without note. It's not exploitive as in Civ 3 because only one transfer per unit per turn is possible, so you can't instantly chain armies across the world. Transferring uses up a unit's movement so it can't transfer again that turn.

I think you can still exploit this if you have a long oceanic distance to cover. Even with their movement point used up, you can move units onto new ships. So, you can transport them all the way across the ocean in a single turn, but you can't end that turn by getting them on land (or if you dock in a city with them, they can't move out of the city).

[T-hawk]

The GNP graph was a little test - it was anarchy - 2 turns for every single civ swap. I was interested in the causes so thanks for the info.

What civics were you flipping around with so much? I stayed permanently in Rep / Vassalage / Slavery / Merc / Org Rel. I don't even see what other civics would be worth the anarchy to use, besides HR if you didn't get the Pyramids, and Theocracy.

I never got the tech for Theocracy, and Org Rel seemed more helpful anyway in helping my conquered lands become economic producers. (Org Rel also enables easy entry into exploiting the whipping bug, and I did that bigtime here. I want that bug killed yesterday.)

Even with their movement point used up, you can move units onto new ships.

Really? In my experience, giving any unit any command when it has no movement available does nothing. Most common example is a missionary that arrives in a city with no movement left -- the "Spread Religion" button is clickable but won't actually do anything. A few units (workers) will queue such an order and execute it next turn. I'll have to test later with ship chaining.

[Ruff_Hi]

What civics were you flipping around with so much? I stayed permanently in Rep / Vassalage / Slavery / Merc / Org Rel. I don't even see what other civics would be worth the anarchy to use, besides HR if you didn't get the Pyramids, and Theocracy.

I think I was flipping between slavery (whipping) and caste system (lots of artists for border pops). In the end, I just decided to stick with caste system and use the method outlined in my report (last page) for cities coming out of revolt.

[Compromise]

Really? In my experience, giving any unit any command when it has no movement available does nothing. Most common example is a missionary that arrives in a city with no movement left -- the "Spread Religion" button is clickable but won't actually do anything. A few units (workers) will queue such an order and execute it next turn. I'll have to test later with ship chaining.

It's weird. I think you have to individually select the (zero-moves-remaining) units, or use Shift-click to get a group. I know that with workers who have used up their movement, if you try to Ctrl-click to select them, you move on to the next un-moved unit. But, if you individually or Shift- click on them, you can give them orders (such as "Cancel") that become effective on the next turn.

[darrelljs]

Very fun read, I like a good story to go with the game .

Darrell

[Kylearan]

Hi,

great repot! Thanks for a very fun read.

I saw you had to deal with some big landings - nice. This can be a challenge on archipelago maps, so I'm glad I avoided this by not letting the AI get to galleons.

-Kylearan