Epic One - Speaker's Report

[Speaker]

Here is my Epic 1 report, titled "Unwise Choices in CottageLand." Enjoy.

http://cassiopeiathedog.net/Civ4/epic1.htm

[Sullla]

Interesting to note that Speaker made the exact same opening moves that I did, on both the moving of the settler and even researching Hunting out of the gate. Thinking alike, it would seem.

Wow, that Lyons placement was... extremely aggressive. Good leverage of the Creative trait, but that's much riskier than what I like to do. I don't know if it was luck or skill that got the flip of an Aztec city so early in the game, but I guess I'll chalk it up to skill and good usage of your trait. I do think you were fortunate that those psycho AIs didn't attack you at that point, though!

Using the Oracle for an early Alphabet grab, hmm... You certainly cleaned up the early techs right away, but I wonder whether or not I got more value out of early access to forges instead with Metal Casting. That certainly was a much more expensive tech than Alphabet, but you did get 4 techs in trades, which is pretty nice. You did get Calendar before me, but not all that much faster. I'm not at all sure which proved to be the better strategy overall, since I did get Colossus into play very, very early on...

You got a Great Engineer for your first Great Person? I wouldn't have written the report that way, I would have been jumping for joy at my good luck at a completely free Parthenon. But hey, to each his own... :wink:

Interesting that you also got Christianity with a Great Person, then wouldn't have the Prophet on hand to build the shrine until much later. In many ways, my game turned out to be a mirror of yours - with the obvious difference that I didn't extend way out to the east so early on.

Hmm, you were reaping the benefits of being the tech leader in a way that I simply couldn't do. I wonder why that was... did the Pyramids and Representation happiness give you a jump on my game? Or did something else slow down the AI civs somewhat? I never had a chance to get the free Great Artist at Music, or reach Currency before anyone else and grab cash with backwards tech trades. Washington was already speeding down the tree ahead of me at that point. Was I just slower than you, or did your Washington AI get slowed down in some way? I suspect the former, but the latter is probably possible too.

Shocking that you were able to get any kind of positive diplomacy with Temujin. That's a minor miracle there. Not finishing off Monty when you had the chance may have been a mistake, however; after all, you can't declare war whenever you want in this variant! But it looks like it worked out ok. (Also one other thing - if you get the chance, try to include more dates when cutting and pasting pictures, it makes it easier to tell when things are going on.)

No offense Speaker, you totally kicked the AI's behind here, but your city placements near the initial starting position leave a lot to be desired. Lots and lots of wasted tiles all over the place, my friend.

I'm highly disturbed by the fact that you can rush a wonder so easily with cash in Universal Suffrage. You knocked out a 35-turn wonder with 3 turns of running cash? THAT shouldn't be possible. If Alex was your UN opponent, then your game doesn't even begin to resemble mine, as he was a backwards nobody in my game. See all the AI civs fall over themselves electing you is almost disgusting given what I went through.

Overall, very nice gameplan. You crippled the nearest AI civs with early aggression despite the ruleset restrictions, pushing your borders out to where their programming would FORCE them to declare war, then reaped the results of early conquest. Then you beelined for Mass Media, skipping factories even, and used the Universal Suffrage loophole (I'm sorry, but here on Epic speed that's clearly what it is) to get the wonder at no penalty. Very slick, beat my results by more than 50 turns. Reminds me of some of T-Hawk's best games back in Civ3.

Looking at the replay screen: Alex attacked Washington in your game and crippled him. I think that helped you in ways that you probably didn't even realize until you looked at my game; instead of a super-strong AI civ that sat back and did nothing but pump commerce the whole game, you had weak, divided opponents that had been at each other's throats. Washington reaped ALL the early tech benefits in my game, and I just could NOT catch him with the need to defend against Temujin and Monty. But you were ahead of me there too, having crippled the two of them much earlier with aggressive city grabs and stealing some of their highly productive lands, rather than having to hack your civ out of the jungle as I did. You had no production worth speaking of there at the end, just cottaged EVERYTHING and relied on Universal Suffrage to rush the wonders you needed. Brilliant stuff from start to finish, I envy you.

[Speaker]

Interesting to note that Speaker made the exact same opening moves that I did, on both the moving of the settler and even researching Hunting out of the gate. Thinking alike, it would seem.

You know what they say about great minds....

Wow, that Lyons placement was... extremely aggressive. Good leverage of the Creative trait, but that's much riskier than what I like to do.

"Fortune favors the bold" right? I did protect my cities fairly well, so I was never really worried about losing them.

I don't know if it was luck or skill that got the flip of an Aztec city so early in the game, but I guess I'll chalk it up to skill and good usage of your trait.

Sometimes it's better not to know if you are lucky or good? The flip did come pretty quickly. Perhaps Monty's treasury was dying, and when the city went into disorder, it was the straw that broke the camel's back? Is this possible? It literally flipped a turn or two after going into disorder.

Using the Oracle for an early Alphabet grab, hmm... You certainly cleaned up the early techs right away, but I wonder whether or not I got more value out of early access to forges instead with Metal Casting.

The early forges were a stroke of genius, however my economy was much stronger than yours at that point, due to the gold tile, and early cottages at Orleans and Lyons. So I had no problem supporting Organized Religion, once I got Christianity. And I did prioritize Missionaries and spreading it around.

[quote[I'm not at all sure which proved to be the better strategy overall, since I did get Colossus into play very, very early on...[/quote]
You did get it into play early, but it no doubt took a little longer to see a huge benefit across your whole nation. Cities had to be founded on the coast right? I was getting tons of commerce from Paris, Orleans, Lyons, Teotxxxxxx, Marseilles, and Tours (Dyeland) and Rheims.

You got a Great Engineer for your first Great Person? I wouldn't have written the report that way, I would have been jumping for joy at my good luck at a completely free Parthenon. But hey, to each his own...

Truth be told, when I played the game, I didn't know just how good my luck was! When I played the game (the day after it was available for download), I hadn't yet had much experience with specialists, so I didn't value the Parthenon too highly. I had had a lot of experience with religion, and I knew I wanted that shrine. If I had played the game and written the report now... I tried to keep the tone of the report in the first person, although my writing definitely weaved in and out of first and third person because it was mainly stream-of-consciousness. So my attitudes and feelings mainly reflect how I felt at the time, except in places where I went back and made comments on how it affected the game.

Interesting that you also got Christianity with a Great Person, then wouldn't have the Prophet on hand to build the shrine until much later.

And that's why I was aggravated with the Great Engineer. The shrine would have kept me out of deficit research, which would have allowed me to upgrade troops, which would have...It didn't really affect my research time any, just limited my options.

In many ways, my game turned out to be a mirror of yours - with the obvious difference that I didn't extend way out to the east so early on.

I think you may be understating this difference. Your second city was a jungle-wasteland, that cut off Temujian, yes, but distinctly hampered your growth. It took you a long time to hack through that jungle and make Orleans a productive member of society. While my Orleans was out raking in the dough, and converting Aztec cities to the cause.

Hmm, you were reaping the benefits of being the tech leader in a way that I simply couldn't do. I wonder why that was... did the Pyramids and Representation happiness give you a jump on my game?

I think this definitely helped. Never did I feel like I had to stunt growth, while many other people will have had to stop at size 4/5. The early gold from Lyons helped in that respect as well, so I was able to grow to size 8-10 rather quickly.

Or did something else slow down the AI civs somewhat? I never had a chance to get the free Great Artist at Music, or reach Currency before anyone else and grab cash with backwards tech trades. Washington was already speeding down the tree ahead of me at that point. Was I just slower than you, or did your Washington AI get slowed down in some way? I suspect the former, but the latter is probably possible too.

By halting Monty's growth to the south, I forced his expansion to the east. As you can see in this picture:

Washington had no place to go, and I suspect that is why he warred with Alex, further halting his economic prowess. Gandhi was the most powerful AI civ in my game, while Washington was just a bit part.

Shocking that you were able to get any kind of positive diplomacy with Temujin. That's a minor miracle there.

I know! Shocking that it didn't last though.

Not finishing off Monty when you had the chance may have been a mistake, however; after all, you can't declare war whenever you want in this variant!

He was never going to be a threat to me and I liked keeping him as a buffer. He was so backward when I got done with him, that he wasn't even worth the time. His cities were also small and crappy, so not worth it at that point. And since I felt like Genghis would backstab me, I had bigger fish to fry at the time.

(Also one other thing - if you get the chance, try to include more dates when cutting and pasting pictures, it makes it easier to tell when things are going on.)

Will do. I did put the dates in many pictures, but apparently not enough. The one thing I did notice, when assembling the report, is that I didn't take enough wide pictures of my whole civilization. Shots at 1000BC, 1AD, 1000AD, etc would have made my report better. Epic 2...

No offense Speaker, you totally kicked the AI's behind here, but your city placements near the initial starting position leave a lot to be desired. Lots and lots of wasted tiles all over the place, my friend.

There was some definite for sure. I'll make a few excuses on my behalf, but they are just that, excuses.

1) Without the ability to declare war on my neighbors, I decided to adopt an outside in strategy, to be sure to secure myself a bigger slice of the pie. Getting the floodplains and flatlands with Orleans and Lyons were a huge priority, since everything around Paris would be jungle-infested. I wanted to make sure my initial cities had workable tiles.

2) I played the game almost a month ago, and was still learning. If i played the game now, I certainly would have put a city northeast of Paris very early, grabbing the iron and coast. And I might have prioritized the sites southeast and southwest, which had tons of grassland (under the jungle).

I'm highly disturbed by the fact that you can rush a wonder so easily with cash in Universal Suffrage. You knocked out a 35-turn wonder with 3 turns of running cash? THAT shouldn't be possible.

If you think that's bad: I once rushed the Space Elevator for 11,000 gold!

See all the AI civs fall over themselves electing you is almost disgusting given what I went through.

Sorry about that! I was a loyal trading partner with both Washington and Gandhi for the whole game, however. So in that respect, it worked how the game intended.

Overall, very nice gameplan. You crippled the nearest AI civs with early aggression despite the ruleset restrictions, pushing your borders out to where their programming would FORCE them to declare war, then reaped the results of early conquest.

Let's be honest here. With Monty and Genghis, all it takes is a gentle nudge. Genghis was upset about our "close borders" when *he* founded Turfan between my two culture monsters. By not spreading my religion to them, that was probably enough to ensure a war declaration from each.

Then you beelined for Mass Media, skipping factories even, and used the Universal Suffrage loophole (I'm sorry, but here on Epic speed that's clearly what it is) to get the wonder at no penalty. Very slick, beat my results by more than 50 turns. Reminds me of some of T-Hawk's best games back in Civ3.

I'll take this as a compliment. In my eyes, any comparison to T-Hawk is a supreme compliment indeed. I agree with you, that "slick" is the word to describe it.

Looking at the replay screen: Alex attacked Washington in your game and crippled him. I think that helped you in ways that you probably didn't even realize until you looked at my game; instead of a super-strong AI civ that sat back and did nothing but pump commerce the whole game

Like I said earlier, I think Monty definitely helped Alex to pare back Washington, and forced the conflict between them. And that was a direct result of my aggressive settlement.

But you were ahead of me there too, having crippled the two of them much earlier with aggressive city grabs and stealing some of their highly productive lands, rather than having to hack your civ out of the jungle as I did.

While the timing of the war declarations were certainly fortuitous, I was able to maintain a strong military while rapidly expanding and building wonders, so their war declarations did not take me off stride. On one hand, I achieved an early conquest of Monty and then Genghis. But on the other hand, I had to deal with war earlier than most (though not earlier than poor DaveShack).

You had no production worth speaking of there at the end, just cottaged EVERYTHING and relied on Universal Suffrage to rush the wonders you needed.

To be fair, I did have 5x the production of the AI at the game's conclusion.

In fact, my MFG were 375 in 1726AD, while yours were 266 in 1700AD. That's nearly 50% greater, at more or less the same time, and since you were 5 turns from Assembly Line (plus however much time it took to build the factories), I think I still would have been significantly ahead in 1726.

Brilliant stuff from start to finish, I envy you.

Well I appreciate the kind words, and the extensive comments.

[Veovim]

After reading your report, all I can say is... Wow! That was about as different from my game as you could get, what with so much early success against Monty and Genghis, and Washington being a nobody. I was expecting some very different reports, but not quite that different!

One other thing: How in the world did you play that in 8 and a half hours? I didn't mention it in my report, but my game dragged on for almost 29.

[Speaker]

Two sittings. Got in, got out. I'm not usually one to play fast, but this game just...captivated me for some reason. Call it "one more turn" syndrome. The second sitting was very frantic.

I don't know. I guess I have been playing Civ4 games a lot faster than Civ3. I was a heavy micromanager in Civ3. You had to be to beat Deity/Sid. Now, I sort of just go with the flow. I'm not quite sure where to MM at this point. I plan to learn at some point soon. But until then, it's enter enter enter.

However I am beating Emperor handily at this point--and came 2 turns away from beating Immortal (I was going to write a great report for that one, but after I lost, well You guys can blame FDR for that.)--without really micromanaging anything. Maybe it's not necessary? But my suspicion is that it is.

[Smegged]

Nicely done. Interestingly I had a similar situation to you in a recent game. I wanted a great prophet, but got a great engineer while only having a 1% chance of getting it. Nice win, and one of the few diplo wins out there. Well played.

[Speaker]

Thanks. There have actually been 5 Diplo victories at this point--Sullla, Sirp, Bede, Herbie and myself. More than I expected. I figured pretty much everyone would do space. I wouldn't be surprised if there were another 2 or 3 Diplo wins posted today. I hope so at least.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

"Unwise Choices in CottageLand."

Fitting title, indeed!

A truly excellent game, very well done! Your empire was huge in the end, just the thing I hoped for when I had deliberately decided to remain small, to compare results! Too bad you didn't go for a space victory, though.

I'm not convinced about your unusual move to get alphabet with the Oracle, though. I've found that one can wait a looong time before researching Alphabet and still be first to it most of the time, so catching up via trading is very easily done even without using the Oracle, as can be seen in my game. I think I would prefer doing Sulla's Metal Casting move with it, or found a religion. Or don't have the time to build that damn wonder, as in my game.

I see you sold obsolete techs away for money, too - I do it all the time as well, a great way to finance 100% research in the early game. The idea to rush the wonder in the end simply by saving money for some turns was brilliant! Although I have to agree with Sulla that this looks broken (no offense meant!).

Great game, I'm curious to see if someone will be able to beat your date!

-Kylearan

[Speaker]

A truly excellent game, very well done!

Thank you kindly.

Too bad you didn't go for a space victory, though.

Sorry about that, but with 3 turn modern techs, my space launch would have been very early.

I'm not convinced about your unusual move to get alphabet with the Oracle, though.

I'm not convinced either, after seeing Sullla's move!

I've found that one can wait a looong time before researching Alphabet and still be first to it most of the time, so catching up via trading is very easily done even without using the Oracle, as can be seen in my game.

But I didn't want to wait a "looong" time. I wanted to push the tech pace as fast as possible to get the fastest finish.

or found a religion

I knew I'd be able to get Christianity with my Great Prophet, so no use wasting a free tech.

I see you sold obsolete techs away for money, too - I do it all the time as well, a great way to finance 100% research in the early game.

Agreed!

The idea to rush the wonder in the end simply by saving money for some turns was brilliant!

Don't drink all 6 beers at the same time...BRILLIANT!

Although I have to agree with Sulla that this looks broken (no offense meant!).

Perhaps it is something for Soren to look into.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Sorry about that, but with 3 turn modern techs, my space launch would have been very early.

That's exactly what I would have liked to see, if you really would have been able to keep the fast pace, because with the 1.09 patch the costs of the late spaceship techs were increased, along with the hammers needed to produce these parts.

Anyway, I did screw up the meta-game big time, thinking there would be lots of space victories.

But I didn't want to wait a "looong" time [to research Alphabet]. I wanted to push the tech pace as fast as possible

Of course, but letting the AIs research techs like Calendar and Mathematics for you, which you then can trade for via Alphabet, means a faster pace overall as well.

-Kylearan