Epic 10

[uberfish]

don't have time for a full length report but -

I know I can "win" by playing nice with everyone, teching to Internet and then fighting a future tech level war just because all the other victory conditions are turned off and the AI sucks at future tech wars. In the absence of a special scenario like epic 4 I don't consider this path to victory legitimate. Since there are 2 opponents on the starting continent, I will therefore declare the AI to have won the space race and resign if I haven't cleared my starting continent by the time the AIs finish the tech tree.

ok, so - No early rush possible and no elephants. Bad start. I have to research archery but fight off the barbs without much trouble and turbo expand out to 6 cities.



Mao took over a barbarian city in my back yard and founded Taoism there, amusingly enough that city flipped in 350AD and was disbanded.

I research Alphabet and CoL and trade for mathematics. In the meantime I am preparing an army of swords to go with catapults when I get construction. The AIs have founded cities in a weird pattern, this is very bad due to overlapping culture. I decided to take on China here because these cities were better than the NW roman cities.



I declared on China in 515 AD with 12 swords, 6 cats, and some axes and spears. To my annoyance he quickly upgraded to knights and CKNs but somehow I managed to beat these by sheer force of numbers and catapult abuse and take these 3 cities. Unfortunately, I had to return Xian for peace after this as more knights showed up than I could handle with my depleted force. Because of the cultural overlap the captured cities were a terrible return on the huge amount of production sunk into taking them. Hopefully I had damaged China enough to be able to finish him off in renaissance because I was getting out teched badly. Isabella being quickly annihilated by HC on the other continent didn't help with that at all as his tech quickly became runaway and he traded with the other AIs.



I researched up to grenadiers then cannons and went again, first razing Xian then moving on the too distant Chinese homeland. Unfortunately, again shortly after I declared war, Mao had infantry. I was able to take Shanghai with more siege weapon abuse but had to make peace afterwards. Before I had infantry or even riflemen, Mao reached industrialism somehow (he had 3 remaining cities but all of them supercities.)



Crippled by WW and facing tanks with only grenadiers+cannons, the bloodsucking bourgoise capitalists decided to gracefully resign. Even if I could hold my ground the other AIs were much too far ahead. The main reason for this lost game was that I didn't get enough return for my heavy sword/cat attack and as a result fell too far behind in tech. It was unfortunate (or evil scenario design possibly) that the AI capitals started very distant and they ended up colonizing the north in such a haphazard manner.

[sunrise089]

Sorry to see you lose your variant attempt Uberfish. After reading through your high-level SGs I expected this to be no problem for you.

[uberfish]

I'm flattered Sunrise, but actually I can't beat normal (random settings) deity consistently. I'm not aware of anyone who does actually, the extra settler the AI starts with on top of its bonuses is a bit too much to overcome without a bit of luck going your way.

That said, I think I picked the wrong time and place to start my military campaign.

[darrelljs]

I kind of had the same reaction as Sunrise...I expected you to win. One thing that surprised me was how many cities you founded at the beginning. I would have been reluctant to spread so fast with Deity upkeep, but I guess you were more worried about production. Is this what you typically do on Deity without a rush opportunity?

Darrell

[uberfish]

One thing that surprised me was how many cities you founded at the beginning. I would have been reluctant to spread so fast with Deity upkeep, but I guess you were more worried about production. Is this what you typically do on Deity without a rush opportunity?

Yeah, I only rarely play SP civ4 games now, but I always grab as much land as I can if the AIs are distant. Settlers and city maintenance are MUCH less expensive than the amount of military required to take out deity-level AI cities. Normally I would commit 100% to culture or diplo after this type of opening and build absolutely no military for the rest of the game.

[sunrise089]

Yeah, I only rarely play SP civ4 games now...

Does that mean you play primarily MP, or are you differentiating between RB Epic like SP and SGs? I ask because I don't recall seeing you in an MP lobby or reading much about MP games you have participated in, if that's where your action is tending to be directed these days. (All that assuming you use Uberfish as your MP handle).

[uberfish]

Does that mean you play primarily MP, or are you differentiating between RB Epic like SP and SGs?

The latter. I think human vs AI in civ4 is more fun, because many more strategies are possible.

[sylvanllewelyn]

Uberfish: you couldn't have won even if your early aggression worked. I tried it myself; note the childish temper tandrum I threw a couple weeks ago. My version of early aggression was Oracle CoL and 5 axeman by 1200BC, and took THREE cities from Julius. But the maintenance, even with whipped courthoses, meant I couldn't keep on training units. So Mao decided to help his buddhist ally get rid of me.

The concept was great, but the problem was one of design, I believe:
- when and who the AI's declare on each other. There's nothing you can do against 2 deity AI's randomly choose you as landgrab target. I believe that may be one of the reasons why soooo won.
- the map setup. If we played as Mao instead we could've all crushed the Romans that were right next to us. Tokugawa was actually quite far away, with tundra too.
- small map and maintenance costs. The official idea was to cut down on the tedium of modern combat, but the result was rendering early aggression impossible on the player by economy and hapiness cap, not military.

[Sullla]

Now see, this is truly useful feedback. Let me try and address these points one at a time:

The concept was great, but the problem was one of design, I believe:
- when and who the AI's declare on each other. There's nothing you can do against 2 deity AI's randomly choose you as landgrab target. I believe that may be one of the reasons why soooo won.

Right, there's not much you can control about how the AIs choose to act in the early going. If the Deity AIs come after you right away, you're pretty much dead.

- the map setup. If we played as Mao instead we could've all crushed the Romans that were right next to us. Tokugawa was actually quite far away, with tundra too.

This is what I don't really understand. I was trying to give the player a break by having the AIs NOT right on top of him/her out of the gate. Are you saying you'd rather start with an AI capital right next door? On Deity?

Let me put this another way: are you saying the ONLY way to win on Deity to build zero settlers, whip out a bunch of axes, and then sucker-punch the AI with an early rush? Because that is NOT the gameplay I was trying to create in this scenario!

- small map and maintenance costs. The official idea was to cut down on the tedium of modern combat, but the result was rendering early aggression impossible on the player by economy and hapiness cap, not military.

But would that really have been different on a Standard-size map? I don't have much Deity experience, so I can't say for sure. This argument seems rather dubious to me, personally. Maintenance costs are absolutely crippling on Deity difficulty regardless of the map size.

What I was trying to create was a fairly "normal" game, with the one difference of having all victory conditions except Conquest turned off. The comments here in this thread seem to be criticizing the scenario for not having set up a map in which a VERY exclusive strategy (early AI rush) could dominate the action. Is that what players want? We can certainly create a map to "beat" Deity, by gaming the conditions to take away various AI advantages, but if we're going to do that, let's call a spade a spade and be honest about it.

I thought the map was more than fair (2 food resources available at start, copper easily in range, room to expand, etc.) but perhaps I was in error.

[sooooo]

The comments here in this thread seem to be criticizing the scenario for not having set up a map in which a VERY exclusive strategy (early AI rush) could dominate the action. Is that what players want? We can certainly create a map to "beat" Deity, by gaming the conditions to take away various AI advantages

I agree. The map, starting positions and/or choice of civ could be engineered to beat deity, but what's the point? I would rather have games at 1 or 2 difficulty levels lower.