Archduke´s Adventure 34 - The shadow

[TheArchduke]

EPIC SPEED:

Despite creating the game, upon playing it myself I had a long and hard thought about which great person I would choose. The Great spy was out as you get that often enough through the GW and I am not a big fan of espionage. The Great Artist.. I thought long and hard about that and played another map as Charlemagne as a test. Despite building my capital right next to some other capital of a non-creative civ it seems an early flip (making it the best strat) seems impossible. I only managed one revolt before loosing steadily in the culture war.
I was disappointed that this strat that I wanted to try in the real game failed so miserably in the test.


So that left only a performance enhancer for a massive Imperialist city sprawl. The merchant seemed like a nice idea, but I opted for the Great Engineer and to settle it down. This would boost my research a bit and provide me with massive initial production, making Aachen an industrial powerhouse from the getgIf I got time, I will try out something more insane, but GE it is.

Despite a tempting plains hill to the south, I settled in place as I decided the delay of one turn and the sacrifice of the clam was not an option. And cursed as a sponsor I knew that there was a bronze at this start, making the city placement a no-brainer. One south is valid though as you get another food ressource into the BFC. With 9 possible hammers, I could build the settler in 15 turns from the getgo and as I didn´t have fishing or agri, I thought this a good idea.

My scout meanwhile encountered Lizzie to the east. A good rush target and she actually started on a hill without my doing making it not too easy to overcome her.

In 3550 BC Prague is founded, quite close to London to avoid Lizzie going too far into my direction and with cows and an oasis after the expansion, a good site. Despite loosing Mediation, I tried for Polytheism. Of course I fail, London gets it, making Prague a risky affair. Awesome, I thought at that time, I might screw my own sponsored game up.

2325 BC

I quickly build 2 workers, followed by a warrior and settler and after a quick monument wipe, I start the Stonehenge in Prague, if it doesn´t get finished, I might be forced to rush Lizzie to avoid being culturally strangled. And it fails. Great, two plans down the hole.

1750 BC

I rush the Great Wall with 1 wipe and 3 workers and follow this up with a big push on settlers and galleys. Seems I have to play a more classic game then I thought. My early settler managed not too much. I hoped that I could pressure London not the other way round.

1100 BC

My production advantage shows as I manage to get a late Oracle after Mathematics and I go for the catapult. Together with Iron Working I will take London the hard way. My inital expanion is complete with 6 cities including marble island (a nice site which hopefully some guys spotted. The marble was one of 2-3 ressources I added/moved)

950 BC

Supported by 5 workers chopping, I am working on a catapult supported axe force (as iron is nicely outside my borders, damn you Lizzie!

525 BC

London is taken as with catapults 3 archers don´t stand a chance against 5 axes. The islam capital is mine, I decide to utterly destroy Lizzie to get much needed space.

500 BC

A great Spy is born and settled in Aachen.

410 BC

A great general is settled in Prague.

320 BC

After razing all her measly three cities, Lizzie is no more, disappointing, I have to find stronger enemies, but only after a small round of economic buildup.

200 BC

I have replaced both of Lizzies cities with my own and I advance onto code of laws with all speed to raise my teching above 50% and 57 beakers again.

125 BC

I convert to my own dominant religion Islam as Augustus asks me to. Why not, Mansa will trade with me anyway and Isabella is perhaps my next target.

80 BC

Two turns later, Augustus goes Confucianism. Finally Rathäuser are built all around the country.

145 AD

Economy catches up, thanks to a settled GM in London and Rathäusers getting finished, I decide to expand somewhere and after converting to Christianity I plan to hit Augustus next.

880 AD

After playing happy builder for quite a number of years, in 880 AD, Augustus dows me and forces my hand.

910 AD

I manage to involve my spanish, christian ally in the war with Rome.

1100 AD

Slowly rolling back the roman empire which encroached right south of Aachen.

1200 AD

I manage to take Neapolis and in light of Liberalism being around I start a golden age with a GP to recover economically.

1250 AD

One city is taken by a sneak stab by Mansa Musa, prolonging the time of war in my empire.

And that´s where my time constraints kicked in. I actually played quite mediocre, but I was leading in tech, land and everything else.

[TheArchduke]

Comments of the Sponsor:

The map was the third I rolled, the two first starts provided me with very bad starting positions and I wanted to have a relaxed adventure (as if the GP wasn´t enough of a goodie). The starting position didn´t push for any specific strat, but enabled pretty much all strats. The only noticeable absence was stone. Marble was on an island (Put there by myself) and bronze, iron and horses were nearby, as well as flood plains in the near neighbourhood.

I edited the game slightly, swapping Mansa Musa with Augustus to provide more of a middle game challenge and providing Russia with a bit of a better start, though the AI does horribly on islands.

The basic promise of the game was to provide a relaxed, fun game, much as I had with the excellent Mao´s Muse game where you had a free tech to choose from and I hope I suceeded.

Also I ran a second shadow game shortly to test the GA for real on this map:


And here my try for a Great Artist supported Aachen taking over London. It doesn´t seem possible. Or is it? London soon managed to beat my influence back to less then 50 percent on the home square.

[T-hawk]

I was wondering if the map and scenario were specifically crafted for the Great Artist bomb-flip plan. Flip England out of existence, and the player gets huge tracts of land to grab, with an Imperialistic civ to boot. And your info page writeup carried that little telltale note on the Great Artist: "weakest, or is he?"

The starting position relative to London was just about perfect, able to reach the three-tile distance within four turns. And the culture aggression location was a good site in its own right with two food resources and flood plains. And the approach direction is even right to steal London's food resource to cripple the city.

London does catch up, by 2:1 at first and 3:1 after it hits 100 culture, but it takes time to catch up to the bomb. I worked out a spreadsheet with the turn-by-turn revolt odds (although it's not accurate; poking around in Civ's debug mode showed I had several assumptions wrong.) The exact odds depend on the AI's garrison, but it's somewhere around 4% per turn initially, declining to zero eventually.

Game speed plays a huge role: since revolt chance does not scale down with game speed, you get 50% more tries on Epic. The revolt chance seems to decline to zero by about turn 80 on Normal and 120 on Epic. You can also slow that decline slightly by producing regular culture in the capital, which could be done with a religion or Stonehenge or both.

To quantify the math, we can approximate it with a binomial distribution. Call it a 2% revolt chance on average, and need 2 successes. On Normal speed, 80 trials works out to a 48% chance of winning the flip: very much a coin flip. On Epic speed, 120 trials works out to 70% chance of success. More likely than not, but still very dicey, so it's nothing unusual if your game attempt didn't see success.

This discussion isn't over, I'll have more to say in a bit...

[TheArchduke]

Hmm, well if stonehenge could be rushed, it might be possible and worth a try.

My second ingame test suceeded, well I think it is a huge gamble, a shame noone tried it out.

[T-hawk]

Oh no? :neenernee

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/adv34/page5.shtml