It was great fun to play some MOO again, but the holidays and other factors consumed so much time I was not able to complete the Grinch's campaign against those horrible Whos. So I will report as incomplete (played through 2409), and sometime soon I will finish and update with what might have been. Now on to the fun!

As a MOO noob, I have always had difficulty with playing the Darloks. Just how hard do you dare to push their spying talent, given the risk of negative -- sometimes disasterously negative! -- diplomatic outcomes? I ended up taking the passive approach and only sending in my agents against races with whom I was already at war. Given the difficulties I was having overall, and how many wars I got into, the agents were kept fairly busy.

I opened the game at The Hideout, and checked the galaxy map for info. Psilons, Humans, and Silicoids in this game...ouch. Sakkra and Bulrathi, OK. Clusters of yellows to the SE and SSW, likely to have early competition for planets from those areas. Need to move fast.

Sent out my scouts and guessed on one of the red stars in range for my colony ship. A few turns, and I got my next inkling this was going to be on the hard side of Average. Both reds had hostile worlds, and the only planet in initial range was at the blue (!) and was poor. Ack! I hate poor worlds for the initial colony, I never seem to get them developed. (As of 2409 Aquilas still has only about 50 factories....)

The difficulties continued to stack up -- the rocks quite close by and threatening to take many of the available worlds early, lack of early clean up techs in the tree, erratic AI civs as ticking bombs, xenophobic AIs, the one stable race I could have had good relations with (Humans) being my main competitor for the south-central systems.... This game was definitely tougher than the Average rating suggested.

I ended up fighting with everyone I met, although by 2409 I still had not met the Psilons. Silicoids were first, when they colonized fertile Esper immediately south of the Hideout and threatened ultra-rich Kailas. No way could I allow them those planets! I was able to claim both worlds, sending an invasion force against Esper and then beating back multiple counter-attacks against both worlds. Thank goodness for the traditional wimpy laser fighter and slow Silicoid population growth. Eventually we got peace, and I kept both worlds but got nothing further south. I got three tech steals during the war for the Grinch's bulging bags of loot.

Sakkra were next, although they were never much of a threat. When I finally gained contact in 2375, they had only 2 worlds! Sssla and the rich barren world of Tauri which they had beaten me to by 1 turn. I considered sending transports, but slow speed and things heating up further south decided against it. Of course, the erratic lizards promptly declared on me anyway.

Next war was against the humans. They were allied with the Sakkra and I figured they would probably declare on my anyway, and they were threatening to claim the entire south central region -- 6 excellent planets I desperately needed for growth. So I started sending troops against each world as the AI's ridiculous immortal colony ships planted everywhere. The honorable apes hated me, of course, but what can you do? I could not let them have all those worlds, which they were beating me to by 1-2 turns each (grrrr). The fighting was ugly for quite a long time, worlds gained and lost and gained again, but eventually I had all 6 and the humans asked for peace. The south central region was mine. I also got a bunch of tech steals from the apes, more loot for the Grinch's sleigh!

I even managed to reach Herculis 1 turn ahead of the human colony ship, finding another artifacts world. Got Robotic Controls III from it, which enabled a key improvement to the empire's productivity. Painful to spend heavily on factories during the war, but I managed to get my core worlds built up to the new maximums.

Next war was with the Bulrathi and overlapped the human conflict. The erratic bears went nuts and came after Kakata, where I had turned back their colony ships by a single turn years before. I had very little defense, so the planet got pounded for a while and took a couple whacks from large (40-50 million) bear assaults. Lost a LOT of pop, shipped in most of the population of my second planet (which had been raided for troops over and over again...I never seem to find better uses for poor worlds) to reinforce. But I eventually destroyed the bear ships once I got planetary shield V built at Kakata. Fighting at Draconis and Kailas was nastier as the nebula made my better shield tech useless, but an expensive deal with the Sakkra (Robotic Controls 3 for Hyper X missiles, ouch!) was just enough to hold the line.

As of 2409 I have 16 planets and am in the process of turtling up with plantary shield V and lots of bases. I am still working on more speed (sublight drives), been in the percentages for ages and not yet in (39%!). I believe I am in a winning position, but just ran out of time.

OK, the theft list:

ECM I (2363, from Silicoids)
Class II Force Field (2364, from Silicoids)
Range 4 (2366, from Silicoids)
Battle Computer 2 (2384, from Sakkra)
Reduced Waste 80% (2391, from Humans, and my first clean up tech!)
IIT9 (2394, from Bulrathi)
Death Spores (2394, from Humans)
Anti-Missile Rockets (2395, from Humans)
Fusion Bomb (2401, from Bulrathi)
ECM II (2402, from Bulrathi)
Gatling Laser (2402, from Humans)

Total of 11 steals at 2409, no double since I have not won yet (but hopefully will eventually). Likely to be a pitiful total compared to others, and much of it was junk. But there were a couple gems, primary RW80% -- desperately needed clean up tech, fully half my RC3-maxed worlds' output was going to Eco spending! FF2 saved me spending my own RP and got me to the critical Planetary V just in time for the Bulrathi assaults. Kept hoping to get Bulrathi planetology as they had Controlled Toxic, but it has not happened as of 2409.

My report has gone up in the usual spot
But a usual kind of report it is NOT!
If you must see my score (please don't give in to rage)
You can scroll to the end of the very last page.
I had lots of fun with this game; I speak true:
To Maniac, the sponsor, my hat's off to you!

Sorry guys, played this in a rush so no screenshots this time. I had good intentions of doing a proper report, but RL intervened and my allotted time over the festivities was significantly less than anticipated.
Apparently Mr Anti Sociable needed to socialise with his guests and put the bloody laptop away, even though I never invited them round in the first place!

A 7 hydra city on Prince level – how many of us thought Christmas had come early? Come on, with North Pole as a Capital too, Sullla really was playing Santa Clause to us!

My initial thoughts at the start were:

1) Get as much of the land explored as possible
2) Build Stonehenge and Oracle
3) Specialise as many Priests possible to get the Great Prophets for the shrines
4) Get at least 6 cities by turn 100
5) Cha Ching – start spreading those missionaries baby!

I went with Warrior – Work Boat – Worker out of the gate, based on my chosen tech path of Fishing, Mining, BW. Yes I was tempted by all those fish in the sea. Went Work Boat before Worker as I thought I wouldn’t have enough for my Worker other than road first off.

I had great luck with Goody Huts in this game – first 2 popped sailing and pottery I kid you not. 3rd some gold, 4th a free warrior, 5th another free warrior, 6th a scout, 7th more gold.

By turn 54 I had proven the world was round!

After the first round of builds completed as mentioned above I went Work Boat, Worker, Granary, Stonehenge.

I ended up missing out on Stonehenge, by 1 turn (turn 55). I had every Worker chopping that out. To say I was not amused would be an understatement. To top it off, the Oracle was built on Turn 78, and yes you’ve guessed it, 1 turn from completing that too! Again chopping like mad for it. I turned my computer off in disgust. 2:

After a few hours of calming down, and managed to be rid of some unwelcome guests :wink2: who couldn’t understand why I was in such a grumpy mood that afternoon, I booted up. Things always go wrong in this community right? And it’s from situations like this that make the game more fun to turn around.

From a positioning perspective, I had Hatte to my West, with Ceaser further West of her. Sitting Bull directly to my south and Elizabeth South West with Louis being West of her and South of Ceaser, but a huge ocean separating the 2. Further to the west was Washington who ended up being East of Sitting Bull who met through a small land mass down at the South Pole.

I went on to found 6-7 cities by turn 100 (so an improvement on my last adventure) towards Elizabeth first and then started blocking Sitting Bull. Louis declared on me more times than I can remember but showed up with minimal units 1-2 which were easily squashed each time. I decided to go for Sitting Bull, but had inappropriately not brought enough to the table to complete a full whitewash of him or even to a state of Capitulation. I had pillaged him though rather badly. As each turn went by and my reinforcements arrived it was too late – he had capitulated to Elizabeth and of course she declares war too. Sitting Bull had nothing aggressive, but adequate defence units so I had to re deploy my attack force to counter what Elizabeth had. By this point it was a bit of a phoney war, I made peace with Sitting Bull after taking control of Cahokia, and eventually made peace with Elizabeth. As it turned out Cahokia finally returned back to Sitting Bull through the Apolistic Palace. I didn’t mind in the end as it was in revolt virtually every few turns or so.

I then set to obtaining open borders with everybody and spreading the good faith. I didn’t play to finish this game by reporting deadline, just make 1900 AD, so with every possible effort I sent out missionaries and built Settlers to fill any nook / cranny available in and around my empire to spread the faith even more. I stupidly forgot to build a Hindu Monastery anywhere which was a really bad move on my behalf so really struggled with spreading the Hindu faith. I only managed to build 4 shrines in total too.

Sorry for a poor report guys, tempted to play this game again now spoilt, I think I could do so much better in getting more religions spread and all the shrines built. Again, never really sat down and thought about this game too much, and then didn’t go on and record it turn by turn, like I have done in some of my practice games earlier this month. Been doing that on Monarch level and even 5 barb axes coming at me early game I had covered when I sit down and plan things properly. I’ll do my best to dedicate more time to the next one. Assuming there will be a next one!

Many thanks go to Sullla for setting this challenge. Again, an enjoyable game, shame I couldn’t do it justice it deserved.

I have attached the save file and an excel spreadsheet of my score. And for those that had seen my earlier posts about me not being able to count – well I now can, after checking the world builder for the umpteenth time I finally rechecked my spreadsheet and realised my totals were counting Sitting Bulls twice. If you guys knew what I did for a living you would understand why I couldn’t allow this report to be submitted unbalanced!

Thanks for taking the time to read this, sorry about lack of piccies for this.


Pegasus.

Executive summary:

Total of 140 cities: (Arabia 101, France 9, America 13, Rome 15, England 2).

* 58 with 7 religions (*15 = 870 points)
* 22 with 6 religions (*10 = 220 points)
* 3 with 5 religions (*7 = 21 points)
* 9 with 4 religions (*5 = 45 points)
* 18 with 3 religions (*3 = 54 points)
* 15 with 2 religions (*2 = 30 points)
* 15 with 1 religions (*1 = 15 points)
* 0 with 0 religions



Total = 1255 points. I was happy with that. I don't really expect to win (because there's always SOMEONE who is even crazier, but I do expect that to be a competitive showing.

Full report at my website.

You'll note that this is the first game I've played and finished since Epic 7

Please don't laugh at my old website that I had to resurrect or at all the in my old games

Adventure 42 – Joy to the World

Quote:Scoring for this game is based upon spreading your seven religions to the most cities possible. For each city, score points as follows:

1 religion present = 1 point
2 religions present = 2 points
3 religions present = 3 points
4 religions present = 5 points
5 religions present = 7 points
6 religions present = 10 points
7 religions present = 15 points
Record your score at the end of the 1900AD turn.

The Plan:

Plan implies having an idea of how things are going to go. I’ve been out of Civ4 for quite some time. How can I plan?

OK, a failure usually comes from a failure to plan. I have to have some kind of a goal or gameplan or I’ll flail and thrash about uselessly. The scoring is based on spread of religions to cities. Missionaries aren’t cheap, though. Plus, the description is a cold, icy land. What does that mean I should do?

Religion economy! REX into a near-ICS. Build a bunch of cities and support them all with shrines. Oooh, and a fuller religion economy (RE). Use Apostolic Palace for shields … err … hammers. University of Sankore for beakers. Spiral Minaret for more coins. It’s just crazy enough to work. And use a supplementing SE because cottages, well, I dunno, just because.

Once I have a lot of cities and my econ is crashing, I can use missionaries. And larger cities produce more hammers to get missionaries out faster. I can build and spread religions whenever. Also, I can maybe use religion as a diplo weapon to make an outsider we can all hate and keep everybody else happy with me. It’s a theory, anyway.

(More later -- it's all written, just limited time)

Hey, this is my first report for a RBCiv adventure. I've played quite a few but haven't ever really documented a game well enough to post it up. Hope you enjoy it, all comments are welcomed

So, we start this game with a seven-headed hydra. I've always wanted one just to see how it goes, but to be honest I always seem to have more pressing things to do than research religions. If I pick one up that's fine, but I'm not one to go chasing the dragon so to speak.

Anyway it seems a good idea to try out the priest Economy this game, it's pretty much custom made for it! I've not tried it before really so it should be interesting.

So as I see the major steps...

1) Found and spread religion(s)
2) Build a number of Priest wonders, particularly the UoS, Apostolic Palace and Spiral Minaret. Make sure you are in the correct state religion when you finish these.
3) Built temples, monasteries and profit. (aside: I'm sure plenty of people will make the prophet/profit gag)
4) Build Wall street in the shrine city and use prophets to shrine religions.
5) Swim in pools of cash.

Ok, well step one is already taken care of, sweet! With the number of religions I've got I think it'll make sense to shrine at least 2 or 3, maybe more. So I'll want great prophets, which means that Angkor Wat is pretty handy to pick up too. Getting priests early means I want Pacifism, and both of those come straight from Philosophy. So Let's try and pick that up with a slingshot. The Oracle also provides Priest Points so that's some extra synergy there too. Philosophy from the Oracle isn't any harder than Civil Service so should be easily doable on Prince difficulty. Let's get to it!

Looking at the start I realise we have no food. We lack fishing and there's only seafood in sight. So, what to build? I think the correct play here is to slave out a worker once Bronze Working is in, then chop out a couple of workboats, another worker and a settler. I don't like building a warrior first, so that leaves... Stonehenge. Also free prophet points and the free border pops come in handy too. Full growth ahead!

By turn 22 I realise I'd made a grave error. Workers are a two pop whip and not one like I thought . I lose five turns here as I slow build the worker enough to whip him out. Whoops!



On the brighter side I meet some of our fellow friends, I meet both Sitting Bull and Washington in successive turns. And Hatty, Lizzy and Louis turned up later. I didn't meet Augustus for a long time this game. I think he went the long way.

INSERT PICS




By the time I finally plant Mecca near the rice I'm setting full steam for the Philosophy slingshot. With a handful of turns left on Stonehenge I think I won't be needing to chop out a monument as it'll get finished soon enough. I turn out to be correct, unfortunately someone else finishes it before me! Guess I was sandbagging for too long.



At least the failure cash will help me along my research path. I switch Mecca over to a monument as it now needs one, I chop and whips it into a settler for my next city. I spy Stone in them thar hills! I settle on the stone as there's probably not enough food in the region to feed them. It does give me a sweet 3 hammer city tile, which ended up making Holy Hill my military city for much of the game.



The Oracle turned out to be the long pole of the Slingshot, but a couple of chops helped that. I land the Philosophy Slingshot on turn 80. I switch to Pacifism to speed up my first prophet, and I switch to Taoism as that's what's spread to Mecca. I consider switching to Caste Systems but I'm not interested in early scientists really, I want me them priests. So I stick to Slavery.



By turn 94 both Hatty and Islam are firmly Islamic, and come knocking at my dooring begging me to repent. Since I'm only using religion to generate GPP and I only have GPP in my capital it doesn't make any difference which religion I choose. I join the crowd and we rejoice with our brothers and sisters of the faith. I use the religious goodwill to kick off a few trades and a few turns later even Washington switches to the one true faith . Oh and Washington already circumnavigated! Must have been on foot.



I'm not sure exactly when my first prophet popped but since the shrine income seemed low I used him to pop this beauty.



In hindsight I think the shrine first was probably a better move, I didn't use Theocracy until much later I didn't have time to build the apostolic Palace until much later too. At least I hooked up stone though. Everything is running pretty smoothly, until turn 124, when I get my first disastrous event of the game. I lose 4 farms around Mecca along with my monument and the freshly finished Madrassa. Boo! and here I am without enough workers! I call it a day after that.


By the end of the first session, my major concern is my economy. I've got basically 0 cottages. The severe lack of food is really crimping my play style. Every whip hurts at the moment. However other than my two early screw ups (Miscalculating the worker whip and missing out on Stonehenge) everything seems to be flowing pretty well, just slow. Even Angkor Wat is well on it's way. However I need more workers! and I need more land! I've blocked off Hatty in my direction, but Sitting Bull has had a free rein down south. I know where I want to build, but what has he left for me down there?

I've also started laying monsteries down in a few towns, one for each religion. I'm holding off spreading the true faith to new cities until they get a religion naturally. I may as well take what freebies I can.

This is a placeholder until I get home from work this evening... I drew an early range tech (r5 i think) for a very nice xmas present. Too nice in fact; the game was all downhill and i won by vote in 2499. Report to follow...

The holiday season draws down to a close
And all that remains are the drippity nose
You got from some visiting fam'ly or friend
(But look on the bright side: THEIR health's on the mend!)
And a nice gift or two that may (or not) being working
(Of course every tech support call line is shirking!)
So was the Grinch wrong? NO! The Grinch got it right!
The thing that you do with a cold is to FIGHT!
And feed it! Or ... starve it? Or was that a fever?
Never mind! Never mind! Point is, you're the RECEIVER
Of this invitation to post your report
In the tournament sub-forum - now, don't retort!
I did play the game and (almost) finish writing.
I just need to upload some things (about fighting
With alien races and stealing their stuff!) -
In the meantime, if YOU post, that will be enough
To win you high praises! Surely you believe...
'Tis better to GIVE a report than RECEIVE!

Didn't have a ton of time over the holidays, and Average should be easy so I didn't take a lot of notes. However, it was fun to have a low-stress game.

Artifacts to north popped IS, could have been better. Good to see that sublights are in the tree. Initial expansion to 2329:



Have just settled UR Kailis, went for Barren before +10 but finished that as ship finished.
Due to proximity of silicoids, built Barren ship as soon as it popped - was not expecting to lose those two world to my south. AI seemed smart, chasing my unarmed scouts with a single laser fighter - bare minimum of force to get the job done.

2350:


Range 5 has really opened up my options, and Kailis will crank out the ships. Given the variant goal, I'm already starting to have other worlds focus spending on pop - I don't really want to push tech a lot (besides Computers) and rely on stealing. Eventually I may prematurely stop my expansion in order to facilitate a better AI research pace.

2375:


Basically done expanding, have a couple more ships to small worlds en route. Since I want the AI to tech, don't want to grab more. The cursor's yellow star is an Artifacts that I pulled Controlled Dead from, thus the Psilons must be at one of the NE yellow stars (also, I'm deliberately leaving it open hoping an AI will make use of it...). The Sakkra just DOW'd me and I will eventually expand through them to meet the Psilons (sakkra only have researched 4 1st tier techs at this point, clearly they aren't going to be useful.) However, I have little invasion capability at present and want to finish the development of my outer worlds + start stealing techs. Nearly to ISS. Getting Dead opened up Enhanced Eco, but I really didn't want to research it and took a gamble on being able to steal Improved from someone, but no one I've met has it (chose +30 for vote-blocking). Sheesh, no waste cleanup this late is kind of weird. Almost to improved scanner. Spies sent hunting on bears (I really want their RIW80) and sakkra. Alliance pulled Humans in against me, so turned spying on them, and off Bulrathi after nabbing the big prize of RCIII - neither that or IV was in my tree.


Around 2410 I started assembling a silly fleet to kill the Sakkra - laser fighters and nuke bombers, at least I had the 2nd engine...Was continuing to push just computer tech after +30, and finished Adv. Scanner about this time.

First vote isn't until after I have taken Tauri, can safely throw mine to the Silicoids. Here's map in 2426, after I've taken Sssla; that plus stolen range tech finally allows me to talk to the Psilons. Despite only 4 worlds, they still have several techs the others don't.



Next 40 or so years spent turtling and stealing, with most AI's at war with me at some point or other, but no real threats. As the 2475 vote looms, I have mostly caught up with the AI's techs by thefts and they are starting to peter out on discovering new ones. So I decide to try and wrap it up by 2500, may miss a few thefts by knocking out some AI's early but if I was really going for max score, I would have deliberately triggered Final War at first opportunity.

The Humans draw the short straw as they have no planetary shields or any missile tech at all (although they at least get Merculites after I take the first world), and were the first race besides the weak Sakkra to run out of goodies. 2475 saw me with 22/49 votes, and I wrapped up warp 5 engines and AM bomb at this point, leaving me free to turn all worlds to ships and marines. Not surprisingly for Average difficulty, it was pretty trivial to roll up the Humans, take a big bite out of the Silicoids, score two Psilon worlds, and settle a few more that were open for no good reason besides the AI bugs kyrub has found. Scored a 2500 Conquest with 46/65 votes.



Full theft log:
2380 ECM I Bulrathi
2390 ClassII shields Sakkra
2394 RIW80 Human
2395 RCIII Bulrathi
2397 Nuke Engines Humans
2402 ClassIII shields Humans
2403 BCII Humans
2407 PDS Humans
2408 Range4 Humans
2411 GatlingLaser Humans
2413 Range6 Humans
2419 Range7 Humans
2419 Duralloy Bears
2420 IIT7 Bears
2421 IT+20 Silicoids
2423 Neutron Blaster Humans
2425 Ion Cannon Bears
2428 BCIV Silicoids
2429 IER Psilons
2431 RCIV Silicoids
2436 ClassIV Shields Bears
2441 MassDriver Humans
2449 PSV Psilons
2450 Zortium Silicoids
2453 Tundra Psilons
2455 Autorepair Psilons
2457 Stingers Bears
2462 IT+40 Silicoids
2463 ClassV Shields Silicoids
2464 Repulsor Beam Psilons
2464 AM Rockets Humans
2465 ECM III Psilons
2466 BCV Psilons
2468 FusionBeam Psilons
2470 Ion Rifle Bears
2472 Hard Beam Psilons
2473 Armored Exoskeleton Bears
2476 RIW60 Humans
2485 PlanetShield X Psilons
2493 Energy Pulsar Psilons

Total of 40 as the title implies Thanks to Ref for an enjoyable game.