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As a French person I feel like it's my duty to explain strikes to you. - AdrienIer |
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BWardly's Epic 11
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Here's my first RB report, my first cultural victory ever, and also my first Civ game played since the winter of 05. I probably should have tried to go for more scoring bonuses...
http://www.freewebs.com/bwardly/index.htm
Very entertaining report! Tons of wars in this one, but not too many civ deaths. Nice work on fighting off all the attackers.
Great effort on actually having some culture built between all the warring. This must have felt more like a conquest game than a culture game.
Great report, BWardley! Very entertaining to read. Now, as for some of the specifics:
Your second city location (New York) had great potential, but the jungle greatly limited what could be done in the early game. I considered that area for one of the three cultural cities, but ultimately rejected it because it would be impossible to get culture going before Iron Working. It was interesting to me that you ultimately reached the same conclusion. Oh, and since you had horses, why not build some chariots for early barb defense? They're very cheap and can handle anything short of barb axes pretty well. Your third city (Boston) was founded on the same location as my second city! They evolved somewhat differently (I focused more on cottages, usually leaving one of the two gold mines unworked) over their lifespans - fun to see the same spots being taken. The biggest problem diplomatically is that you were running Hinduism as your state religion, while no one else aside from Saladin was doing the same. It's hard to keep everyone happy, especially with Aggressive AIs turned on; religion is often the best way to accomplish that. Your terrible luck in getting Hinduism to spread was undoubtedly a major factor here. (Vishnu bears an unfortunate resemblance to Alex Rodriguez)  Converting to Confucianism was a nice move - even if it didn't save you from more grief down the road! The four-way pile-on from your neighbors looked... painful. One thing that was very unlucky in your game was so many AI civs founding their own religion. Alex had his own religion (Christianity), Peter had his own religion (Taoism), as well as the usual Monty and Hatty. With so many different religions floating around, a lot of hate gets built up between the AIs - and against the player. It's a no-win scenario. I think that helps to explain why your game was more violent than mine, where Confucianism was the dominant religion and Christianity/Taoism/Islam were all buried without seeing the light of day. How many total war declarations came against you in this game? I tried to count; I think I counted 8 before you even reached 1500AD... One thing I don't like about Civ4 is the way in which the AIs sometimes seem to gang up on the player. They are actually programmed to attack civs that are weak, but when your military count drops, YOU are the weakest civ, so what was intended to be fair ends up becoming a vicious dogpile. It's one of the worst aspects of the gameplay we ended up with. All musketmen icons look like Adam Morrison â make joke about this No, you can't captured Great People either. Maybe the spies will be able to do that in the expansion, but no such luck right now. Truly an entertaining game - I don't think I've ever seen quite so much warring before. That game had Civ3-levels of warring, and our longtimers here will know what I mean when I say that. I hope the ending wasn't TOO painful to play through! I had my reasons for setting the game on Epic speed and not Normal, but you mostly had to pay the penalty of increased tedium. Sorry about that! Thanks for the report! 
Sullla Wrote:Oh, and since you had horses, why not build some chariots for early barb defense? They're very cheap and can handle anything short of barb axes pretty well. One of the traps I've always fallen into is just falling in love with sitting back and getting buildings while ignoring my military. And given that this was a cultural game...I was so drunk off of the great starting lands that I didn't play like it was Aggressive AI at all! My assumption was that I could ignore barb defense due to my neighbors and then build up military before AI war started happening...the first part of that was true, the second, however... Sullla Wrote:Alex had his own religion (Christianity), Peter had his own religion (Taoism), as well as the usual Monty and Hatty. With so many different religions floating around, a lot of hate gets built up between the AIs - and against the player. It's a no-win scenario. I think that helps to explain why your game was more violent than mine, where Confucianism was the dominant religion and Christianity/Taoism/Islam were all buried without seeing the light of day. Alex getting Christianity was really the turning point of the game, I think. He canceled open borders just a few turns afterwards, and he ended up warring with me for 30 or so turns before I could take him down a peg. Which ended up weakening him to the point where Japan was able to grow unchecked, and prevented me from going after Saladin for a boost in territory...etc. Sullla Wrote:How many total war declarations came against you in this game? I tried to count; I think I counted 8 before you even reached 1500AD... One thing I don't like about Civ4 is the way in which the AIs sometimes seem to gang up on the player. They are actually programmed to attack civs that are weak, but when your military count drops, YOU are the weakest civ, so what was intended to be fair ends up becoming a vicious dogpile. It's one of the worst aspects of the gameplay we ended up with. I don't think it was all that unfair. I did have a lot of war declarations on me during the 1000s-1500s era. My notes are hand scribbled so I can't get an easy count, but Alex declared on me at least twice, Peter at least twice, Monty from 4-5 times total, Japan 3 times, Saladin twice, Khan 2-3 times...(plus I declared on them and other civs a number of times for various reasons  )but that was mainly because I was reeeeeallly  and had a military that was maybe viable for a prince level non-aggressive game where I'm not surrounded by all of the most warlike civs. I don't know what I was thinking. And there were SO many AI/AI wars as well. I just stopped documenting this, and even reading the report doesn't give a good sense for how much warfare went on (and resulting constant requests from both sides) Part of it was the diverse religion spread, as you point out...but many of them were between civs of the same religion! And it wasn't even limited to those with a strong start taking on those with a weak start. No one really liked each other, and there were more or less constant shifting regional wars happening at all times. Japan/Germany/Greece saw all possible permutations multiple times...Saladin warred with me, Greece, and Russia...Monty warred with Germany, Rome, and me after swallowing Spain...the Incans were mostly peaceful, but even they got in on the Egypt dog-pile, and Mongolia/Russia/Rome had all sorts of wars against each other as well. It was a ton of fun! The toughest part were the turns during the 1200s 4-sides war which were brutal - both in length, and also in how gut-wrenching it was to have to constantly whip military out of my cultural cities, see their populations reduced by 4 or 5, and have so many improvements destroyed. I'm glad my stupidness made for a fun report to read though
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