Here they are:

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/comments.html#Adv26

This was kind of a strange game, so I hope the comments help clear things up.

Adventure 26 - Holiday Surprise

This game had no clues as to its settings!

It turned out to be on immortal difficulty with an isolated start (the other AIs were on a continent together). Worse than that ... Sullla had deleted every single resource from our starting continent!

BTW, I'm really annoyed at my computer for not taking some screenshots. I played up to 1000 ad on my laptop, then switched to my desktop for 1000-1400 ad. For some reason, my desktop didn't take the pictures and they turned out to be the most interesting part of the game! I think the pictures only take if you open the game from scratch rather than double clicking on the save file. Anyway, that period will have to make do with some pictures grabbed from savefiles.

I settled on the spot and noticed a distinct lack of resources. I couldn't imagine that Sullla would leave us without at least copper though, so I started on a worker, mining and bronze working. Nope! No copper. Oh well, I console myself with the ability to chop forests and use slavery, all the while writing Sullla's name into my book of grudges.

I was pretty shocked at how to proceed and decided simply to spam warriors. I didn't see the need for an early settler, since there were no good tiles to work anyway! Also I really needed some barb protection, so I just built about 10 warriors. I remember from SGOTM 2 over at civfanatics (a game with raging barbs) that the winning team just ignored archery and built a million warriors at the start, thinking to bust the fog and team up on any barb archers and it worked well for them. Whereas our team had researched archers and axemen but suffered a lot from barb attacks since we couldn't afford the sheer number of men to bust the fog. It worked quite well for me - I only saw a couple of barb archers before all the fog was busted and they only took out one of my warriors each before falling.

Techwise I went for the wheel and pottery, and my one worker cottaged those floodplains.

Once I realised I was isolated I came up with a plan. I didn't think I could win a spacerace because all the other AIs would be sharing trade routes for years and would be miles ahead on immortal (this was even while I was thinking that the AIs had no resources too!). So it was either cultural or diplomatic. Conquest/dom would be out because without food I have no production and therefore few troops. Culture would be ridiculously hard without food, because while you could generate good culture from the slider you have no production to build temples or cathedrals. Plus I hadn't gone for any of the early religions. Also I hate playing culture via the slider because it's such a gamble of whether someone will declare on you. So it's diplomacy, and I wanted to try the religious victory option because I hadn't done it before and it seems the perfect cheesey way to win on this cheesiest of adventures.

So after pottery I went to priesthood, writing and monotheism and built the oracle to grab theology and christianity.



After those techs I went for monarchy for the happy bonus (all those warriors I built earlier suddenly came in handy again!) and then it was a literal beeline to optics. No time for even mathematics, I needed to see where the other AIs were and how they were situated with each other before I could plan how to befriend them and/or missionary them.

I settled my first great prophet and used the other for a shrine. New York built the apostolic palace in 375AD. The production bonus for christian buildings turned out to be really useful, and monasteries became much better than forges for production and science.



I found out that the other AIs were all on a continent together, and their lands looked fertile with lots of resources ... yikes! However, they were all at war a lot, with Genghis doing what he does best. I knew this was happening earlier on because of all the great generals being produced in a distant land.

On the plus side I did see a few islands that I could plant a colony on to vote for me in the diplo elections.

I traded optics away for maths, currency and calendar, and then stupidly gave Mao theology and got code of laws. That's a completely useless tech for the benefit of Mao going into theocracy just before I would missionary him! He'd better come out of it before I want to win the game, grr.

My missionary tactic was to missionary islands first, because they are likely to stay small and not build monasteries. AIs building monasteries seemed very scary as it let them spread their religion. Thus Hammurabi and Churchill got missionaried. I held off the other civs because I was scared of the cities I wanted to spam becoming really big and also building missionaries. But when relations dropped below cautious I hit the city before the AI could cancel open borders (this only happened once, but it was OK since I gifted a tech and got back up to cautious).

The only AI I couldn't infect with christianity was Pacal, who didn't like me and wouldn't open borders. He didn't like my religion or trading partners. But I had a cunning plan! There was a roman city that was 75% mayan and likely to flip, so I infected it. Sure enough ...



Well I felt proud of myself at the time but this all became pointless later on because Pacal's relationship with me improved. I had forgotten that he's easy to befriend because his favourite civic is hereditary rule - d'oh! Well at least I had gotten christianity into a low population city.

I had tried to keep worst enemy trading modifiers to a minimum, but hadn't completely succeeded. People were cautious and would open borders but I didn't really see a chance to get anyone to vote for me. The people who I had no negatives with except religion had the wrong favourite civic. And since in the new patch you can't get a diplo win on your own ... that meant creating a cheesey little colony. I had actually planned on this as my tech after optics was astronomy. After trading for currency my research was up to 100% because I could build wealth in my cities and a market in my shrine city of New York. My plan was to raze this barb city



and place one city 2S of its ruins and another on the iron. However, by the time I got over there Hammurabi had captured the barb city. By the way, I was basing all this on the assumption that you need two cities to for a colony and not one. I haven't even checked if that's true yet ... I hope it is. Meanwhile everyone had dogpiled the English. So I just rerouted by barb-capturing party to invade Warwick. This was a mild inconvenience since Warwick was my English christian city so I had to reroute a caravel+missionary to mainland england - somehow I didn't think the bulldog would open borders to me after I had captured his island city. There's a reason Churchill is in the game and not Chamberlain. Fortunately I found a low pop english city that had just flipped from babylonia.

Thus my stack of infinite DOOM



(yes, I didn't even bother to build barracks in my cities) declared war on Churchill. No danger of a counterattack because he didn't have astronomy.

I put my new colony under the rule of Asoka.



I was trying the odd diplo victory in the elections and it seemed that I had enough votes, it was just that no one would vote for me. Worryingly though Pacal was increasing his vote tally - he was spreading christianity! I spammed settlers and set my cities to max growth, and also built spies and upped the espionage slider. my plan was to poison all the christian cities the AIs controlled if it turned out I didn't have enough votes. When the crucial vote came, the first one after I had created a vassal, I was shoked to see that Asoka was standing against me! Oh no! Why was this? He only had a population of 3 but I guess since he was the only christian civ that makes him the opponent. That's a slight disaster, since not only would I not get his 6 votes, but also I would have no one except me voting for me and could not win. My only plan would be to tech to liberalism and gift it to Asoka, because Asoka's favourite civic is free religion and that would get him out of christianity. But that would take a while and I feared Pacal spreading more christianity. But when the results came in ... I won!



I didn't notice, but Pacal had gone to free religion a few turns before. That coupled with our fairly long mutual struggle with Churchill, large fave civics bonuses and a gift had gotten him up friendly and he voted for me. Well, quite embarrassingly I blundered that one up horribly and still ended up accidentally winning. I didn't even need to poison any water.



Second to the "Why doesn't the diplo victory have a movie?" question has to be "Why does a religious apostolic palace victory have a UN logo in the background of the winning screen?" Disappointing.

Anyway, sorry for the exremely cheesey winning tactic, and for even bungling that up and fluking a victory. I did enjoy the game though after the initial holiday surprise

The apostolic palace is really stupid though. Don't think I'll go for that victory again.

Three player teams with characters from different factions gather at the Gates to Stonehenge for a Raiding Party

Each player has one active character with two characters from different factions in reserve. If you start as a Templar your first reserve must be either a Cabalist or Hunter and your last of the unplayed faction. As a character dies it is replaced by a reserve of a faction different from those still standing until only one character remains standing or the session ends - whichever comes first. Each session can last no longer than it takes to acquire the head of each Baron.


All rare or better item loot is held by the acquiring player until the end of the session when it becomes the property of the Last One Standing. If more than one player still stands at the end of the session all items become the propety of the longest survivor. If there have been no deaths then items are distributed according to faction. Weapons mods go with the weapons they fit into.

First player to die thrice becomes the mule.

Cash or consumables acquired may be spent as needed by the owner.

I hope to encourage experimentation with different factions with this game so that all of us learn a lot more about how to play when partied with different factions and classes.

I don't think a set time is necessary - just when there are three players with characters available of the appropriate levels and factions in game at the same time.

I know - I am easily amused.

But this way of viewing the forum just tickled me.

Well, I wasn't able to muster the energy to sort through the 100 or so screenshots I took for this game, but I will give a summary. I realized immediately that Sulla had erased resources since we are guaranteed one in the BFC. Washington was a nice leader for this since he is Expansive, but Charismatic was a waste. There are "other ways into happiness" as the tip goes and I would rather be Financial Pacal. Anyway, I ran a pure CE since obviously not enough food for an SE and laid down cottages when possible. I prioritized HR and Aqueducts, and Liberalism -> Astronomy since we had an isolated start to boot. Unfortunately despite bulbing Philosophy and a good chunk of Education, I lost the Liberalsim race by eight turns. That was about the time my Caravel found out the AIs still had their resources . Wow, what a tough game Sulla gave us! By the time I had Astronomy it was too late to have a war of conquest. I used some basic diplomacy tricks to stay alive long enough to see JC launch, at which point I was researching Radio I think.

Darrell

"I came, I saw... and I can't believe my eyes!"
- Julius Caesar in Asterix.

Well, the start couldn't be more harsh. Even the nice grasslands couldn't compete with the lack of resources.

I thought a bit to move at the "Surprise!" square, but finally settled in place. It turned out to be good - more flood plains - but I still don't know what was the purpose of the signed square...
Since Immortals will be teching pretty fast, I was prompted to do the following:
-beeline Optics and bulb it; I was going to bulb it well before BC's, but... I am an idiot.
-Oracle-snag the Metal Casting and Colossus; my brother used to fare with that strategy on Islands script, and since the situation was quite similar, I was planning to do that as well.

And I still can't believe how much of a loser I am. That whole plan made me forget about expansion. First - Oracle. Success! I get Metal Casting, settled New York some turns before the build, rushed a Forge and went Colossus. And I can't believe that I LOST THE RACE BY ONE TURN! With Oracle to the boot! I was so mad, with only two cities at this point, and no real perspectives for the future. Nevertheless, game on...

Then I had my scientist. Let's bulb Optics! But... Machinery. :mad: OK. Mathematics. Then Alphabet... What? And then I forgot to actually research another prerequisite, so this guy wanted Alphabet... Damn, I finally bulbed that crap in 600 AD, flawing my plan once again. Fast contact, I see the monstrous amounts of AI techs, but I tech-whored nicely... It was too late anyway to do any more. I quit in around 1200 AD with four cities - it's not fun to see my score of 500 compared to 2000. It's my fault - I should pump those settlers, but I was mad at the loss of Colossus and neglected somehow... I knew anyway, that the game was lost... Just put the bastard to bed, seeing how the other AIs fared.

And now for something completely different. Now this is where my Civ was born:

Here is my report on Adv26 . It was a very tough game and I got within 3 turns of winning - oh so close, but not close enough.

Heads up.

There's going to be some kind of alliance gathering on the 9th of February, 8pm GMT (3pm EST). The agenda has been given as "Questions, answers and general getting to know eachother."

I've never done this before, but this is a historical precedent. I have to go out of character for a minute and say that David Tyree's insane catch on the way to the Giant's winning touchdown drives is one of the greatest Superbowl catches ever. It's on par with the Steeler's Immaculate Reception and the San Francisco 49'ers The Catch.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

Sorry for the brief report and the lack of screenshots. If your imagination is running low, feel tree to check out Guernica or The Scream to get a sense of things.

Are there no resources? I haven't played a game this year due to my living situation, so I probably just have forgotten how to play.

After 15min of trying to figure things out, I've come to think that maybe there are no resources on this map after all. I decide to settle in place after moving the Warrior; I can now see 32 tiles with nary a special resource.

Maybe the surprise is "Haha! You're screwed" (please use your best Nelson Munz voice-over while repeating this mantra).

Is it just me or are "surprises" supposed to be happy? Doesn't anyone ever come up to you and tell you "Surprise! You have rectal cancer!" ?!?

Good thing we started off with Agriculture and Fishing! If there are no resources, then AH will be useless. Hopefully there will be some metals, Bronze or Copper. The American Unique Unit and Building are both very late game and unlikely to be much of a factor. Great...

I decide to research Mining to see what's up. Bronze Working for Slavery is probably a good plan anyways. Even though we don't have any food resources, we do have Flood Plains for a good food intake. Not being Financial, and not having any food resources, I will probably farm at least a couple of those to fuel the whip.

3680 BC -- Mining shows no cool playful rocks

Having popped Mysticism from a hut, I decided to try and build Stonehenge. I wasn't going for any religions, but with Washington's Charismatic trait, the free Monument would mean +1 happiness in all cities. Given the complete and utter lack of resources on this god forsaken island, that seemed like a decent plan.

Sulla... remember when I said I was going to kill you last?... I lied...

So I guess that Washington was chosen as the leader to help on the Happiness (Charismatic) and Health (Expansive) front.

I stayed away from religions early, mostly because I don't have much of a game plan. Once I figured out that I was alone on my island, I figured having a religion would only hurt me when I met the other civilizations.

Research wise, I headed for Mathematics and then decided to bee-line towards Optics. My hope is that I will be able to catch up research wise once I can make some overseas friends.

But I have a little problem right now. Or rather, I'm about to have one. So far the barbs have been easily manageable, but it won't be long until they start showing up with Axes, and that's not going to be pleasant. Without any metals, I'm going to have to rely on Archers as my only significant troops. I don't have Archery yet, but I plan to bring it online next.

A Great Prophet appears in 500 BC, much to my surprise. It's been a while since I played... good thing this is an Immortal game with no resources... just freakin' swell... About that Prophet, I take a look at what tech I can pop, and it looks grim. Guess he will settle in Washington, the capitol.

Somewhere along the way I tried to build the Great Lighthouse in New York, my second city. It's one of the few Wonders that doesn't have a resource doubler, and given the island that I am on, it would be a nice Wonder once I establish some foreign contacts. But alas, someone beat me to it (by a lot).

Some turns later, I briefly entertained thoughts about building The Colossus when I researched Metal Casing. That same turn, it was built in a distant land. At least I didn't waste any time, and my dreams were dashed early. But that's probably the best way to have one's hopes crushed: swiftly and without prejudice.

In 350 BC, Tacitus the Traitor announces that I am the weakest civilization. Shocking. Here's my obvious vision of the present "real estate in California is teh suck". And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

A Great General is born in 1 AD in a distant land. Finally some good news. Let those suckers beat each other up. That's pretty much the only way I can catch up.

In 350 AD, the glorious American empire finds its way to the Medieval ear with the discovery of Machinery. I don't think I've ever felt this far behind in a game before. On the bright side, once I get to Optics, I will know if the game is over or not.

In unrelated news, every single "random" event has been a disaster. The options have been on the order of "fork over a lot of cash" or "your city dicks around for a couple turns"... As Gary Larson said, Damned if you do... Damned if you don't.

In 820 AD Thucydides reveals that the glorious American empire... err... has the technological IQ of G.W.Bush. I really hope that the Creationist God starts smiting some foes!

Once Optics is discovered, I build two Caravels and send them to explore in opposite directions. I soon discover Genghis Khan. Much to my surprise, I discover that this game does in fact have resources. Or rather, the AIs probably have plenty. I had assumed there were no resources at all. Whoops.

Genghis has at least 8 techs that I do not: Polytheism, Priesthood, Alphabet, Aesthetics, Animal Husbandry, Construction, and Currency. Meanwhile, all I have is Compass and Optics (which I won't trade if I have the monopoly on it).

I start to think about how I might win such a game (if it's even possible for me at this point). Cultural is out due to the lack of religions. Space is probably out of the question as well due to lack of Copper and Aluminum, although it might be possible to secure those later in the game. I have no idea how I might mount a credible military attack being so far back tech wise, but it's still early. A UN win might be possible as well, but it's far too early to tell for that.

In the coming years, I would meet the other civilizations and learn that Mao has more than double my score, not to mention Compass and Optics. Yikes.

Pacal discovered Liberalism 20 turns before I got to Education; I also still don't have Philosophy.

The entire world with the exception of Genghis is Hindu. Hinduism did spread to one of my small cities so I decided to convert to beef up relations. My problem is that I have no resources to trade, so won't be able to get extra diplomacy points that way. Of course, the *real* problem will be being the first to build the UN -- and doing it before every other civ gets to space would be nice too. To be honest, I think there's no way I will win, but I'll keep playing to see what happens. Another thing that I did not realize until later was that although I was #2 in terms of land area, I was dead last in population. Not having food resource tiles will do that. Not to mention the happiness and health problems from larger cities on Immortal difficulty with no resource.

In back to back turns, two civs adopt Emancipation. That's going to suck.

I score my first resource (not including the Fish I am paying for) in 1605 AD when a random event gives me Spices! Woohoo, gaining a resource is one of the victory conditions, is it not?

I spot a Chinese transport not far from my coast, followed by a wandering Battleship. My defenses are pretty solid though: I have exactly one Archer per city. Who would possibly attack such well fortified cities??

Pacal II won a Cultural Victory in 1907 AD despite Mao winning in every single other possible way. Mao was the UN Secretary and twice fell just a little short of a Diplo win. By the end of the game, the Chinese had vassalized Hammurabi, Genghis, and Caesar.

On the bright side, despite trailing score-wise the entire game, I managed to come in third to last, thanks to the Chinese conquest of the Mongolian and Babylonian empires.

This game did not end with a Chinese invasion as I had expected. Although that would have been reminiscent of my very first Civ game ever. In that game (circa 1992 or 1993), I had my own little continent and was happily minding my business when Battleships and Tanks showed up on my shores. The only difference this game would have been that I saw it coming...

On a final note, I will be truly impressed if anyone manages to win this game. No resources and a huge tech whole (from lack of neighbors) is a seemingly insurmountable challenge on Immortal difficulty...

I was telling Shadow about this strange/cursed unique Templar pistol. It has some decent stats - 80% shield penetration is pretty good. However, my HP is drained by this gun gradually whenever I am wielding it. This is even with some HP regen (182/min). Haven't tried to switch to Aura of Renewal since it does come with AoR 4. Maybe that would balance out the HP drain.

Attached is a screenshot.