Adv2 - My First RB Game

[xenikos]

I. Overlong Introduction

I feel obliged to introduce myself, as it feels strange to be reporting my first Realms Beyond venture. I was a casual Civ2 player in high school, and an even more casual Civ3 player in college. Casual is code word for “bad.” And “bad” is code word for “I had less skill than Paris Hilton has tact.” I’m so bad at this line of games that I tried playing Colonialization once at a friend’s recommendation, and somehow, the next thing I knew it was 3 days later and I was waking up in the garden section of Home Depot with goat’s blood on my mouth.

Ever since Civ4 has come out, however, I have felt a strong urge to reverse this trend. This is due to the confluence of several factors:
1. Being in philosophy graduate school isn’t exactly arduous, since we philosophers as a group tend not to believe in “work”.
B. Living on enormous loans means I don’t need a job, and
3. Civ4 is so balanced and engrossing that I actually enjoy it enough to want to become really good.

Thus, I came to stumble across Sul/rian’s RB1 (a game so unique I’m sure it drew hundreds of folks just like me….well, actually it wasn’t the game, just the MILLIONS of smilies that hypnotized anyone foolish enough to scour the whole thing). Which led me to reading the Epic1 reports, which made me start Adv2 (first, since its conclusion date was sooner). I was just 1-1 in Monarch games beforehand, so I didn’t think I would stand a chance at this one with its insane start.

Before I start with my game, a quick note on my reporting: this being my first go-around, it will both suck *and* be overly long, a win-win for everyone. My notes during the game alternated between stopping every turn to write down EVERY little thing and just making awful jokes (near the top I wrote the following: “My biggest disappointment with the frozen jungle is that all of the natives have to cover up, so no National Geographic like random nudity. - work this in somewhere!”). I’d meant to be as detailed as possible so that better players could correct some of my bonehead moves - eventually, however, I became too involved in the game to take notes, so this report will be more general than I’d like.

II. Opening Moves

Starting off: I hadn’t read the pre-game info very well, and assumed that I was starting on an island! I assumed that given the heavy naval influence that I had seen in Sirian’s play-style, the key to this game was to buck my tendency to stay away from naval exploration/expansion. So I begin by beelining for sailing, and start building a worker to build camps on those deer.

My early tech path goes as follows: Fishing – Sailing – Masonry (to nab that marble, that I never really took advantage of) – Archery – Writing – Wheel - Alphabet

My early production order in the capital is: worker – warrior – warrior – settler – archer – barracks – settler ( I meant to just work on the barracks while waiting to grow to size3 before starting on the settler, but I forgot to pay enough attention to switch)

Early exploration: When on large pangea maps I never seem to have more than one spare warrior to explore with, but on this crazy convoluted map my scout pops a 2nd scout right off the bat! One of those scouts goes on to pop Animal Husbandry, the other a map of the area to the west.


My second city (I’m not going to bother with the Aztec names) went here:


I could have put it one tile east to fit more aesthetically with the capital, but I would much rather have the plains hill and extra sea square than the ice and one fur square. I start the new city on a galley.

Meanwhile, my scouts manage to encounter the Romans, Chinese, Arabs and English before they are consumed by bears and barb warriors alike. At 875 BC I finish alphabet, and proceed to make a series of trades to net me mining, agriculture, polytheism, mathematics, and pottery. This puts me in almost-tech parity. My plan at this point, now that I’ve taken stock of some of the area, is to expand into as many good city locations as I can get, and then to start doing some military fun. This is my plan simply because of a bad assumption I made – the way to level the playing field in these kinds of situations is to go the route that you can leverage the human strategic capacity the most in, aka military. This, I thought, would help nullify the effects of the crazy starting location. Unfortunately, my assumption doesn’t hold up to the reality of the situation.

III. Early Expansion and War

My scout and galley exploration has turned out some decent sites for new cities – one or possibly two to the west, and some across the water. I choose west first for the simple reason that my capital is awful at production and my second city only nominally better, so I thought a production city more important than high food ones. Thus, I plop down a settler here:



600BC – Tensions start building here, when Mao asks me to stop trading with the English, and Saladin wants me to stop trading with Mao. I refuse both.
550 BC – Julius gives me Iron Working for Alphabet (which I consider gracious of him, given his Pretaeorians and my lack of bronze or iron at the time). My third city becomes even more powerful, since iron pops up right next to it! What is it that Sirian says? It is better to be lucky than good? Having never been good I lack a basis for comparison, but it is pretty nice to be lucky!

Fourth city pops up on that same spot that everyone put a city – on those two tiles separated from the main landmass.


I love this spot SO MUCH, since a single jaguar got to defend it the whole game. In fact, it is somewhere shortly after this point that I realize that no other civ has planted a city on this big lake, and that the seas would forever phear my two galleys that I built early on. Did this happen in every other game, or did someone see an AI actually try to create a city with naval power? Maybe that doesn’t happen in enclosed water spaces like that.

Around 100BC – I finally expand to that fertile area near China. I start with just one jag to defend it there, with the plan to ship in help right away. (An embarrassing fact – it is right about this point that I realize that galleys have a cargo space of 2. I had always thought it was 1. This goes to show how much of an aversion I have to early navy!). My second city starts on the Great Lighthouse at some point in time around here. I figured I should get at least *one* wonder in this damn game.

1AD – Mao, while hungover from celebrating the new millennium, makes an offensive joke about my cannibalistic habits. The resulting tiff breaks out into all out war. Part of why I love the AI is how brilliant it has gotten – instead of just rushing to attack the city I foolishly stuck undefended right in his territory, he takes the time to develop a second front against my third city (the iron city, and also the gateway blocking my homeland peninsula) to strike at the same time.


Uhhh…..let’s whip an archer there. Another thing that I’ve learned about the game from reading reports is just how powerful slavery can be. I’m still working on how to use it best, but beforehand I wholly ignored it.

A turn later, Alex senses my weakness and piles on: he sends units over to city #5 (the one near Mao).


I quickly get a few more units in boats to try and save my colony. The jag takes care of Alex’s little test, but Mao finishes me off. Fortunately the western front progresses a lot better, and Mao’s initial stack is wiped out in a perfect 5 for 5.


A few turns later I complete the Great Lighthouse, and try for some more military.

The price for peace with Mao and Alex is higher than I am willing to pay, so I pull back, get forges/markets/etc. built in my other 4 cities, and use archers/axemen/jags to defend against periodic Mao units. The big thrust to the war came around 600AD. Mao assembled 4 axemen, 3 spearmen, and an archer right outside city #3 and then asked for peace, with me giving him metalcasting as the condition. I refuse, and my 2 archers, jag, and axeman win every battle. The next turn the “price for peace” that Mao offers me is to give me 140 gold and 3 gold / turn. Upgrade!!!!

IV – Slow Re-Expansion

After the Chinese threat was over, and Alex’s war more and more obviously phony as the turns went on, I focused on improving my economic infrastructure. I also knew that I was screwed if I didn’t get a few more decent cities. The Chinese never re-settled that fertile spot (they seemed more concerned with their border with Rome), so I stuck a few spots there, this time pre-loading the area with 5 or 6 military units before bringing the settler. Note that Alex had signed peace with me just before this (giving ME money in exchange!)


Note that I have FINALLY adopted a religion – Mao spread Hinduism to me after our war. Fortunately he was a busy beaver and exported the same thing to Julius and the Malinese. Julius had been fairly friendly with me beforehand for reasons I was never clear on (I thought he was going to be my biggest aggressor, but I think he took too much pity on my starting location to care), but this sealed the deal, and turned the only two civs with direct land access to me into religious allies. A genius move – if only I had pursued a religion earlier and done it myself. Beginner’s luck that it worked out that way for me, as that diplomatic advantage single-handedly allowed me to win when I should not have by any other means. Thus far in the game I had been staying alive tech wise by researching something advanced and then trading it to the AI to catch up on everything else. It was a constant struggle to not far too behind, but Victoria and Mansa Musa slowly developed a huge tech lead on me. What victory condition was I hurtling towards?

I was still stuck with that assumption that I should take someone on militarily. My thoughts were that, once I got a decent amount of macemen, I could swipe some great spots from Rome or China. I figured Rome at first, since the Chinese had Cho-Ku-Nos and macemen should put me on even terms with Rome’s Prats. But as I scouted their area and military presence, I decided that there was no spot that would be worth the huge undertaking that a war with Rome would be. Plus they were being super friendly, and I didn’t want to tarnish that. So then I thought I could wait another hundred years or so and then take on China – but as we had established good relations by then, and I still had a craptastic military….I scrapped all such plans. What that means in the long run is that I spent a great deal of time shuffling military units first west, then down south, only to never use them. I had to find another way to win, and space was the clear answer.

Now I probably should have expanded to the west more – there are some areas along the river there that would have been decent.


However, I felt like taking established barbarian cities in the east instead of bothering to build settlers. It was lazy not capitalizing on every expansion opportunity, but giving Rome that area probably made my life much easier. I went on to build a few cities out east in addition to taking a very nicely situated barb city. (uh, I lost the pic of Visigoth).

(Note: at this point in time I got so into the game on my second play session that I forgot to do any kind of chroniciling or reporting whatsoever. So, no more pictures until basically the end. )

The Chinese and Romans had been taken care of, but I knew that the biggest threat were the English. She had been asking for tribute (I accepted once and denied another time when it would have meant all of my gold), and was friendly with the Mali, so I figured the writing was on the wall. Plus, I had a couple of workers with an accompanying axeman guard that was de-foresting much of the space east of my 3rd city to speed up various builds, and they noticed some English units heading my way. So I did the only thing I could do, and traded a couple techs to Julius to convince him to stop trading with Victoria. This worked, and what it did was send a lot of Vicky’s units back to her borders, but, even better, a couple of hers that were close already were sent to my land! Since Rome had expanded to the point of closing off the few passage points in that crazy terrain, it took Victoria FOREVER to get those units off of my land….and while they were on my land, she couldn’t declare war on me. It was so dirty, and just the beginning of my masterplan to exploit diplomacy as much as possible to squeak by. Victoria took out her frustration by eventually declaring on Mansa Musa.

V. Space

Around when I started entering the Industrial/Modern eras, here was how my civ broke down. I had a few good production cities (Iron city, the barb one I stole, and the two in Chinese territory were decent). The rest were mostly or wholly meant for cash and science. I very singlemindedly pursued the techs I’d need for space, and was able to let my military lapse to a ridiculous extent due to my geographic isolation and religious ties. I had managed to climb my way up economically (my GNP was #1 for awhile, inexplicably), but Victoria was still a tad ahead of me science wise. Only time would tell if my production focus and human smarts would outdo the AI’s various discounts at spaceship building.

Of course, I wasn’t about to leave everything up to fate. My goal for most of the 1900s was to keep the rest of the world in perpetual war to slow down their spaceship launches. I got Rome to go to war with Victoria (who got her units off my territory and declared war awhile back, but was unable to ever reach me), China to war against Mali and Greece.


Saladin wasn’t as much of a threat, so I ignored him…although he eventually declared against me, and trashed up my eastern cities pretty bad towards the end. Only Visigoth was of any real importance to me, however, as a spaceship producer.

I did beat everyone to the Apollo Project, but others weren’t far behind. First England, then Mao, then Rome…all were scarily fast at building those casings and thrusters. My big gamble was that they hadn’t planned ahead well enough to set their most powerful cities on the big units the instant they became available, and had instead passed production off to a weaker city. I was just barely correct, as I was able to steal a space victory out from everyone else.

Everyone had built the 8 cheap spaceship parts, but Victoria was the closest to me in the end.
Pictures!:

Western Half


Eastern Half






VI. Conclusion

My critique of my own game is that I did indeed make some large mistakes. Not pushing for at least one religion hurt my economy. I was able to hold on with heavy sea exploitation and the combo of the Colossus and the Great Lighthouse, but just barely. I was real aggressive about expansion in the early turns, but didn’t push enough to get better spots earlier – and when I did grab that city near China, I was so afraid that Mao would snatch it up first that I didn’t properly prepare for its defense. My biggest problem was thinking that since this game would be so hard, I couldn’t allow myself any “luxuries” (early wonders, religions, etc.). I didn’t even consider how, say, the Oracle, might just be a good idea to pursue (especially when marble was sitting in my lap!)

However, my playing skills in general leaped up quite a bit during the course of this game. I did better than I usually do in planning for each city’s future purpose in relationship to my general strategy (it helps when there are only a few viable squares per city!). I used slavery and production micromanagement much more adeptly. And some diplomatic deftness saved my ass big time. To give you a window into how much I’ve improved in just the past few weeks, I shadowed the Epic 1 game around Christmas, and gave up halfway through! Basically, adversity breeds inventiveness, and that’s why this Realms Beyond community is such an unbelievably rich resource. If you actually read all of this, thanks, and I am excited for future events to come.

Edit: I knew I forgot something - the score! For some reason I can't seem to get a screenshot of my HOF, so - ingame - 2677 total score - 6220. Finish date - 1997 (anyone got a later launch date than that???)

[Yosh]

Wow... that was some game you played there! Nicely done on the win with that!

I wish I had something more constructive to say, but I lost my game pretty miserably, so I think I'll just read more and talk less

[Sirian]

I did not think I'd read any reports that recorded both "War with China" and "Victory For Aztecs" in the same space. Truly amazing!

You may be right that this community is a good resource that accelerates people along. Certainly people are doing better than I expected, at least from reports posted so far! (I may have to whip out the Deity gaming soon, just to create that warm and fuzzy "Epic Twelve - Gauntlet" magical feeling. (Then again, even THAT got beat by a player! )

Starting off: I hadn’t read the pre-game info very well, and assumed that I was starting on an island!

Not possible on this script. There is always a land path to all other start locations. (If there isn't one on the first blush, it gets added in there!) This path can be long, twisty and obscure, or blocked by another civ's starting location, but it's there.


Congrats on a great win! I can't promise all our events will be this sweet for you, but this was a heck of a first RB game, eh? If the new arrivals keep displaying this kind of talent, the universe itself may bust a seam (or something)!


- Sirian

[Sullla]

Ooh, a Philosophy grad student. Kindred spirit, perhaps? You see, I am a History Ph.D. student, and let me assure you that our work is *ALMOST* as irrelevant as that done by philosophers!

Building the worker first was a good move. So was going for an early Sailing beeline. However... you could have delayed Sailing until you actually had a city ON the coast! (That's why I didn't go for it until I built my second city.) In the meantime, it might have been a good idea to grab a religion of some kind. Not that you had to pull a Hydra like Sirian, but getting one religion early on can be a huge help. And the marble was there to be used; if you didn't get anything out of it, you were making things too hard on yourself.

You popped exactly the same things out of your first two huts as I did, a second scout and Animal Husbandry. Must have done almost exactly the same moves early on! Your scouts did some nice reconaissance, certainly got further than mine did before dying. Some nice early tech trades early on too, it looks like. Going for Alphabet early on usually pays good dividends.

The Tlatelolco site was a good one, and founding an early city there meant you didn't have to conquer a barb city there later on.

Ooh, early aggression from Mao, dangerous. This is where having a religion to shield you from AI attacks is worth its weight in gold. You better believe that I was glad to see my Buddhism spread into Mao's lands! One thing that I should mention is that your building of walls early on in Tlatelolco was brilliant. Brilliant! That's the ONLY reason that city was saved from Mao's initial stack. Excellent long-range planning there.

I still can't get over the fact that China had NO interest in settling that sheep spot. Here I am thinking I made this genuius move to get there in 500BC, taking a spot NO ONE else would get, and in game after game I see people settling there uncontested in 1000AD. Unbelievable.

You then sort of fell into the religious strategy that some of us had been pursuing from the start. It clearly would have been better to set that up before you got attacked early on!

Wow, you won the game? I must say I'm surprised. I really didn't get the impression that you were in good shape from that report. It also looks like you got some VERY strong cities in the east that you made almost no mention of in the report whatsoever. How were you keeping up technologically with such a low GNP? You were next to last in every category, I'm impressed you were able to launch the spaceship under those conditions. You must have done SOMETHING danged impressive to win the game from that position! And your capital was only size 6 at the end. Frankly, I don't know how you did it. Is there any way you can give us more info? The second half of that report had very few details.

Congrats on your win, I hope you enjoyed playing this game!

[Griselda]

Congrats on the win! Maybe you just need enough adversity and challenge in a game to make it interesting before you can be successful.

[xenikos]

Sulla - you're right, it is a shame that I got so into the game that I completely forgot I was even supposed to be reporting it =) The last half of the game when I lack any specific sequential info, let me say more about. I was only in two wars - 1. War vs. Vicky (and this was as close to me as she could ever get:

(neener neener) 2. In the 1960s, Saladin declared war on me. I actually could maneuver enough tanks and mech infantry to keep him mostly contained, but as it was his territory, he was still all over the place. Keeping the city of Visigoth un-pillaged was my #1 priority, as it was my #2 production center (after the city in the west next to the Iron) and was building my 2nd to last spaceship part. Thus I let some cities that were much stronger than they look in that end of game screenshot (Saladin even managed to capture that one in the north) be messed up a lot.

In fact, a lot of things in general look worse than they actually were during most of the game in those late late screen shots (as you mentioned, it has me at 6th place for GNP at the end...I was #1 or #2 for most of the 2nd part). Aside from the east being picked apart, Teoth is down to 6 population - now I can't exactly recall why that was (it wasn't attacked), I do remember bleeding massive population due to a lot of war weariness unhappiness I recieved towards the end - I think it was so specialized as a science city (In order to beat my rivals I was squeezing every last drop to get those last few techs (fusion) in....I micromanaged most of my non-production cities to starvation to get more science specialists running). Basically I had lots of forced specialists in the capital, and thus it just kept bleeding population points because I didn't bother to fix it. I was actually 3rd and 2nd place in score for most of the 2nd half of the game - I just really had to stretch there at the end!!

You're right, my east cities more or less fell under the radar. First you have that spot right near Mao that you talk about - I settled it around 300 BC or so myself, and I wouldn't say that Mao had *no* interest in it....he did start a war with me soon after I took it! I guess he was more focused on continuing aggression with me than resettling the spot (too bad for him my city was size 1 still when he attacked it), so I was able to nab it again soon after peace was declared.

Other eastern spots I grabbed - the city just to the north of the previous one, which had one food resource, ended up being near to the oil too, but was pretty mediocre in terms of growth. Next I stole the Visigoth site from the barbs to the east of that, and this was a fantastic spot - between its two food resources and using lots of windmills, it quickly grew into a game shifting city. Then I had a 20 or so size great science city off to the south in Saladin's territory - the amusing thing about that city was that it was completely blocked off when Saladin canceled Open Borders (in the 1700s or so). So the only way I could get units in or out of there was to build a caravel on that wrench-like lake that would ferry them to the cities on the larger lake. (I am not sure and am too lazy to check, but I think this city was the one that aluminum) Then I had two more cities that I founded in the east, which were size 11 and 8 or so before the end war. All cities not stellar at production were well specialized for research....everything else I made up for in trading. Why was this area not covered by Saladin? It seems like the wide expanses in the northwest/northeast got taken much earlier in other people's games than they did in mine. More random wars between the AI in my situation I supposed (most influence by me, I am proud to say)

Yep, ridiclous amounts of trading was what helped me turn my not-so-hot situation into a win. I checked F4 FIRST THING every turn. I made the most out of my deer and fur monopoly (only Alex had a lot of health resources that I needed, so whenever he liked me I had good health, whenever he got pissed Ihe'd cancel the deals and I'd get pollution everywhere - an annoying seesaw effect). I kept shifting around who was getting my surplus resources depending on relations. One interesting trade was that I gave up my only source of oil to the Romans in exchange for coal and some gold. If not for that I probably would have been boned! I gave the AI a lot of good deals in tech trading, and that made most everyone so happy with me that even when I was calling in war allies against them they were pleased with me.

Thus, while this was a space win, I consider it to really be a diplomatic victory. Ironic...just like how most Diplomatic victories are really domination wins, and how a time win is when you really lose to time.

Anyways, thanks for the comments, Sulla. Your critique of my opening turns is dead on - next time I have to make sure to 1. READ WHAT MAP SCRIPT IT IS 2. Ask myself "How am I going to use this tech I'm researching?" I'm amazed at how closely you paid attention to the details of those screenshots - enough to notice that I started off that one iron city with walls =)
One question for you - do you still prefer that one location for your 2nd city, or do you think my one-west placement is better?

[Snaproll]

Yep, ridiclous amounts of trading was what helped me turn my not-so-hot situation into a win. I checked F4 FIRST THING every turn. I made the most out of my deer and fur monopoly

I have to admit, I'm still totally blown away by this game. Last in GNP at the end? I understand that you traded, but what about the "we fear you are becoming too advanced"? Did that ever kick in for you? And, unless I'm mistaken, you can't trade resources for tech, so I'm not sure how the deer and fur monoploy worked for keeping up in tech either.

I guess those specialists you mention kept you in the game during the middle. Interesting. I didn't run many specialists with "low food" always running in the back of my head. I'll have to look into that.

I'm not criticizing at all, I'm just not sure I understand how you did your trading without running up against the "fear becoming too advanced" block. I seemed to have managed technology very poorly in my game, so I'm trying to learn!

[xenikos]

Again, my overall empire kind of went to hell in the last few turns. The war had taken out 2 cities and dragged down others in the east, and unhappiness/pollution caused by war weariness and canceled deals cut back on my population towards the end, and I didn't bother with anything aside from ensuring that my last two cities building SS parts were going to finish as soon as possible. So most of that slide you see in that screenshot is artificial - I was surprised to find myself 1st in GNP throughout most of the game.

Tech trading was important to me until the industrial era - I'd get to feudalism, or biology, or whatever first and would trade that to Rome/China/Greece (the English were never willing to trade much) for 3 or 4 things I needed. I skipped out any tech not absolutely necessary (Communism, Mil Tradition, put off Democracy for a long time, etc.) so I was never "too advanced" (I'm curious what exactly factors into the AI deciding that you are too advanced...just tech? your overall power?). But I was first to liberalism, and I beelined to rocketry and built the Apollo Program some 20 or 25 turns before anyone else did.

Resource trading was more important, though - the deer/fur didn't net me tech directly, but they got me health resources (happiness I could handle more through theatres/temples) that allowed my sea commerce cities to grow to 17-18, and also huge gpt deals that let me set research at like 90%.

Basically since I was so weak I just played a game of appeasement early on (giving calls of tribute, volunteering trades in the AI's favor), and combined with sharing a religion it paid off better than I could have expected; Rome was my big dumb patsy that kept the English locked down, and Mao was my smaller patsy that destabilized the east. Alex did some of that on his own volition, too I guess even a weak QB can succeed with a strong enough offensive line.

I wanted to provide some graphic evidence of what my civ was like more in its heyday - I didn't have many saves available mainly because I played most of the 2nd half of the game in one long Sprite-fueled all nighter (I really, really, enjoyed this game), but I do have one in 1902. Unfortunately the screenshot I wanted to get of the "active deals" doesn't seem to work. Here's my demographics and an overview of my empire in 1902:



I was really surprised at people who didn't settle here 3rd (Sulla) - this spot was such a powerhouse for me! Note 51 shields per turn on the AP - that's before aluminum is hooked up






I hope that helps I've learned my lesson, and I am taking much more thorough written notes on a turn by turn basis for adventure 3.

[Bezhukov]

About the capital going down to six:

There's a "bug" of sorts, where a starving city will keep its specialists instead of working available food tiles, losing one pop a turn if not noticed. Sirian, can you get this fixed? At least make this option non-default?

[Sirian]

About the capital going down to six:

There's a "bug" of sorts, where a starving city will keep its specialists instead of working available food tiles, losing one pop a turn if not noticed. Sirian, can you get this fixed? At least make this option non-default?

If you "force" specialists, the governor will not override this. Period.

If the specialists are managed by the governor, it will put them to food if the city is starving.


- Sirian