Since most of us know each other already, and I haven't heard any negative comments about them, to say the least, we should just send out alliance invites to both Arch and Fail. But just in case, lets give this at least one day (say around 6pm pst June 27) for anyone who wants to register any concerns.

Otherwise, are we good to go to send out invites?

KoP

The sign-up thread for SGOTM5 has opened. The game is set to begin on July 19th, and a team of minimum 6 players must be registered before then. I don't think there will be much trouble putting together a Real Ms. Beyond team this time around.

I am posting here for the previous members of the RMB, current RMB members who have unsubscribed to the SGOTM4 thread, RB members who participate on other teams, as well as for anyone else interested.

So far we have six confirmed returnees:

Kodii
TheArchduke
Compromise
LKendter
Swiss Pauli
Sir Bugsy

And I am looking to hear from current members:

BeefontheBone

And there has been interest shown by:

sunrise089, scooter, BWardly, Stagnate

And of course, anyone else who is interested.

-Kodii

points first because otherwise i'll ramble and forget:

+8 points for the 260 AD stuff: i had a total of 4 cities (hey i'm a late starter *giggle*), and had built 4 libraries, 2 hindu temples, 2 confucian temples.
+5 points for the 1502 stuff: i had 5 universities and no cathedrals.
+0 points navy seal.
+9 points from wonders: i built the parthenon, eiffel, and hollywood without GEs
+25 points for culture victory in 1872. i'd not be surprised if that was the latest one of all, i was the queen of weed in this game but i had so much fun!!!
+24 points for 6 rival civs alive at the end. fred and hatty died, not my fault. saladin, 100% my fault. monty, i did all the killing but he did all the declaring. isabella, alex started it but i did most of the killing.

so that's 71 points.

i had WAY too much fun. i cannot tell you how much this surprised me. this game was going to be weird for me, i knew that going in. i don't touch that aggressive AI box. for me, axemen are barb protection, using them on AI cities without catapults is "huh? how the heck does that work?" hubby would say "overprepared to an extremely ridiculous degree". i have faith in my diplomacy skills (sometimes overly so, leading to my demise), and usually try political jedi mind tricks to avoid wars completely, or at least until i am prepared for them. i rely on that, i seriously truly do. yeah often it doesn't work and i die. often it helps me buy in other guys to help out with DoWs i didn't want, but that wouldn't be so easier here since agg AI makes them agg-ier only towards me, not each other. i was scared to open the save.

well of course i knew this "keep them my friends, let's all get along" approach would not work for epic 11, and that i would most like get completely obliterated, smooshed into the dust in the most painful way. i usually encourage the ones i want to trade with to get along with each other, to avoid "worst enemy" penalties, and expected that to be harder here. and i'd never tried cultural without the slider. i think that i muttered "why oh why isn't roosevelt spiritual" about 2050 times while playing this game. i have played an industrious leader maybe 3 times, i don't know how to estimate how useful it was, especially at prince. organized was great since i went a leeeeetle bit overboard on number of cities as you will see. i always play poorly on prince, i just have no sense of how quickly they'll research things and build wonders. i didn't want to miss statue of libery for example, but i didn't want to research demo too quickly and make it cheaper for them, since i wasn't sure how bad emanc unhappiness might get with only 20% slider and i wasn't about to change out of caste system. wellllllllll, i finished the statue in 1670 AD. in 1872 when i won, only 2 of the 6 living AIs knew democracy, one only because i'd given it to him. granted, having the statue early is in no way a bad thing. but this demonstrates that i'm just not a really good judge of how fast they're to research, and what direction they're going to research, at this level !

i never would have predicted it, but things actually worked out so that only izzy, monty, and HC didn't like me. well, hatty didn't like me terribly much, but she was far away, and she wasn't furious. she came by asking for OB about every 5 turns it seemed like, but she was worst enemy of the world so i didn't give them to her. monty and isabella, that's no different from normal games at all. HC, he was so far away that he never declared on me and i was not concerned. i denied ever demand from the guy. he was not an issue. ever.

the "OMG wow ... i never ever would have predicted in a zillion billion years!" thing...

the fact that they were extra-aggressive towards only me and not each other had been my biggest fear. it actually turned out to be a good thing. it meant i could trade resources and stuff without worrying about those "cancel trades with so-and-so" demands that are guaranteed lose/lose situations. if they'd started out liking each other less i'd have had trouble trading for my precious health resources. they kept their "warmonger respect" for each other, and with this set of guys, i guess enough didn't really care about religion enough to hate HC and Monty for them to be worst enemies. so i was able to trade freely, even with HC who was a heathen, and even with heathen monty when he was in the mood. for my "diplomacy is very important, and i benefit if they like each other in addition to liking me" style, with this set of opponents, aggressive AI was not a bad things at all. yay! nobody, and i mean nobody, except Monty declared on me. and he'd probably have declared even if the game had the "Always Peace" option, knowing him.

i tend to settle aggressively for resources and hope for diplomatic smoothing over of close border tensions regardless of victory condition, and i did that even here. i reached -4 close border tensions with peter, JC, and alex several times. checking saves, i'm at -3 with alex at 275 AD, i imagine i hit that earlier, -4 not long afterwards, and i don't think it ever dropped. none of them ever declared on me, so that was fine, yay!

note about screenshots: as always, i named my capital Peepsville, so expect to be confused by seeing a Washington that isn't the capital. additional confusion this time because i renamed cities late game, so they won't match screenshots i took early game. like, New York is one of the Legendaries, so i renamed it Hollywood, but not until like 1800something. but for the pictures i reloaded old saves for, i did rename it to be consistent. you will probably see some where it has the old name tho, just chalk it up to me being a complete oddball.

i didn't realize until writing this report that i stayed at just four cities from 745 BC until 530 AD. that's 86 turns, and the game has only lasted 202 turns at that point. that seems like forever. what a kook. looking at sulla's comments from the sponsor/shadow, he had five by 500 BC *giggle*. what's more, he already knew which 3 would be the legendaries! now granted, he'd done a cultural game based on wonders before. but still, i am the queen of weed and the idea of picking the big 3 based on how many hammers they could pump out did not occur to me until 2007 AD ... more specifically June 25, 2007 while reading his report, i kid you not. i got cultural victory anyway, and tons of giggles, and had a blast, so it's all good!

my world in 715 BC:

i had met everyone but not seen much of the map at all. i had founded hinduism, and oracled CoL to found conf but not picked a state religion so i had no holy vision. the shot has some spoilers of stuff i saw later that i added to help me remember when i writing another too-long version of the report. like the city alex put later by the western iron (i flipped it, naturally) and an izzy city i hadn't seen but i'd stolen ellies out of its cross (neener neener).

from the beginning my mantra was "okay i hope i live through this". i'm not quite sure at what point even figured out what cities besides peepsville would be the legendaries. i had his wacky plan that i should kill saladin. not sure when i came up with it but my notes say that in 700 BC i was busy building barracks to actually officially do that, i was going to make myself do it. i mean, he had marble, and he had wheat which i didn't have, that's a granary resource so it's +2 health, he had deer for +1 health, and health is good. and he wouldn't open me up to any new border clashes, my only new neighbor would be the ocean. i'm the world's WORST axe-rusher, so i knew this was a bad idea, and i know i'll put it off far too long, but i'm the queen of weed. izzy (who was the last one i met i think, even tho she was so close to me) was buddhist and so was monty, hatty and JC were jewish. slowly hinduism, which i'd founded, was spreading to the rest of the world (altho i stayed NSR for a long time to be safe, that's typical for me). i was hoping saladin would go conf so that i could DoW him without earning -you declared on our friend. well, saladin and alex went conf the same year, 280 BC. then in 85 BC, saladin went hindu but alex stayed conf. this makes most of the world like saladin more, and makes me picking hinduism a not-so-good idea since alex won't like that much; that was NOT the plan!!!!!! alex wouldn't open borders so i couldn't get him the right religion yet.

in 55 BC toku HEOOHRN. alex HEOOHRN. i freak out. 40 BC alex goes hindu. i'm like 'yeah sure NOW, after you've decided who to kill, now that i know monotheism and can use OR to speed up building the parthenon, you choose to use the state religion i'd like to use. at the point where me using it won't change your mind if i'm your target. thanks a LOT." but i changed anyway, the happiness didn't hurt and the building bonus was worth more than the extra culture from the one extra religion i had at that point i figured.

actual cut and paste from 35 BC notes: "OMG OMG war trumpets, alex declared on fred it wasn't me!!!!!!!! toku doesn't like fred either, should i push my luck for OR? nah, a few more troops first before libraries/CHs. and get sally to conf. nono, i'm gonna do it, i researched it, i'm gonna do it. wow, 7 hindu civs, 2 jewish, 3 buddhist." i think i sound happy there *giggle*. i was actually so happy that i joined in when alex asked me for help, to get MMS. i didn't actually help tho. going hindu revealed a lot of the map, it was fun. i got to see new cities every time it spread, i hadn't realized how far it had spread, i got so lucky with that! this is from 155 AD, religions. minimap and score shown too, i know so much about the world just through holy vision alone.



in 260 AD, monty declared war on me. i was not surprised by this, but i wasn't exactly pleased either. i had wonders to build, and missionaries of the faith that people weren't following to get the guy i wanted to kill to convert to, etc. i was too busy for a war with a psycho! i signed peace with fred pronto to discourage further dogpiling. at the time he declared, monty had 2 axemen that got stuck when isabella founded toledo to my north, on the coast. he had closed borders with her and with me, and they had nowhere to go. he brought them over to my horse pasture at new york/hollywood and attacked. his troops died, mine did not. that very year i popped a prophet. i'd been debating whether to pop theology or build the shrine. pasting from my notes: "crap a great prophet, just what i was hoping for! i was gonna pop theology and found christianity. but now i really need the money /cry. well, the shrine option will be there later, if i survive. the founding a religion option won't be. so i'll just do that. the little money it'd bring in during the war won't actually make the difference between living and dying i figure. let's make sure new york has the highest chance of holy citydom, since washington already is one, it needs another whip to be 1 less pop, they all have both religions already. here goes. oh oh and i could use theocracy right about now too!!!!!! and, let's even do the anarchy thing before the 2 units that would be done next turn finish, since neither is at new york. popping now. bingo! new york. no difference atm, since i'm hindu, but it'll count later on. and theocracy saves me money." i'm sure popping theology was the right call regardless of the war but the idea of using theocracy in a cultural game is so funny to me and seeing my thoughts at the time cracks me up. add in that i'd probably only ever used theocracy maybe twice in my civ4 life before that in any type of victory condition!

i had holy vision into Calixtlahuaca and i could see units coming in and out of it for years, but none ever did come down. he never sent any troops to my territory other than those 2 axemen. i didn't have OB with izzy of course, she was annoyed with me when we met, and furious from the instant i denied her demand for alphabet until the moment that she died. in 380 AD toku suddenly was no longer WHEOOH, he never did declare on anybody, i guess he changed his mind? someone on CFC said they sometimes say that when they're going to attack a barb city. i don't know whether that's really the case; i do know he took one barb city down south at some point (i don't know when), so maybe that's what was going on, but i don't think it took him as long to prepare for it as he was telling me he WEOOH.

in 500 AD i thought "maybe izzy is blocking monty from reaching me at all". i didn't have her map to be sure of the layout, but i did know that they didn't have OB. turns out that she was. he signed for peace in 545 and gave me 3 gpt, but wouldn't throw in his 20g. he's such a nutcase. he was the only AI to ever declare war on me the ENTIRE game! i still can't believe it! he did it twice. and i won both times.

check out how i got city #5 ... i got to neener neener a bunch of pixels on a screen! Pisae (the fifth city JC settled) was the first that culture-flipped to me, in 500 AD, and i really really wanted it to. this was before i knew drama or music, couldn't even use 20% so it took praying and effort in other ways but i did it, go me! i razed it and settled (with my waiting combat vulture settler) one tile NE so that i could, if culture worked out right, steal a banana tile from antium and a sugar tile from spain. the bananas were roman prior to the flip, and i didn't have any sugar at all, so of course i wanted some! i obsess over health resources, especially in culture games. even with slider only at 20% i expect my people will be quite happy, healthy's not so easy to find ways to fix tho. sugar is health with a grocer, and come on ... this is the Candyland Empire! our capital is Peepsville, named for the awesome sugar-coated marshmallow treats! we simply must have sugar! so, New Pisae was my 5th city. 500 AD was the exact year i learned feudalism (i was still at war with monty then, and figured a boost to my powergraph was not a bad idea), so it came with a free shiny longbowman--that made me giggle a lot!

here is the Candyland Empire in 545 AD:

Hollywood and New Pisae here ended up as legendaries 2 and 3. yes, a city i settled in 530 AD, so nothing in it ever had a chance to double, permanoob hahaha. it had a lot of food. of course it didn't have national epic, since i'm dumb and built that in Peepsville, which had way too many prophet points, but i won't mention that part. it ran a gazillion artists. i kept my workers busy landscaping and relandscaping often, especially at Hollywood and New Pisae. the vast majority of my workers were imported slaves by the end of the game actually, far more were captured than made, which is very unusual for me, but quite often the case for "normal" folks from what i hear *giggle*. i'd farm for artists, then watermill for hammers to make something since i didn't want to change artists to priests for hammers and mess up GPPs, and then farm again, etc. i had enough workers to do that *giggle*. heck post-biology i farmed over spare wine, and spice, and i workshopped a silk, workshopped oil before combustion and kept some that way even after combustion since i found out it's more hammers ... all kinds of bizarre things!

Epic 11 - Unfinished report.

Rather than a proper unfinished report, I will start with some of the "highlight" of sloppy play and wrong strategy...

- Isa (score leader, no joke) declared on 2380BC, while being trpped in settler production with only religious techs. Luckily she just sent 2 warriors to suicide and pillage before peace.



- Oracle missed by 4t in 940BC (trying to get a better tech...)



- Capac sent 3 axes (spotted coming since 940BC) while having only warriors (copper not connected, archery still in research), declared and razed Boston (775BC) before being repulsed with whipped axes.



- Missing Liberalism for 3t in 1454AD (trying to get an expensive tech...)
(no picture)

- and immediatly after being declared by AIs #1 and #2 from opposite direction within 10t...





Now for the quick report between those pictures.

Decided to go Religion chasing (with minimal hope on Hindhuism, but going for the following ones) and exploration early (to see if a coastal strong city is possible - didn't in time). Therefore Warrior x2 while growing to size3 before worker (then settler) while researching religious techs. I stay with 3 cities for a long time to try to gets as much religious culture as possible.

Religion-wise the plan was kind of OK, I missed only Buddhism (Isa) and Christianism (Hatshe, thanks to Capac and his war), but didn't manage to get the religions where I wanted : NY ended 3x holy (Jewish, Confuscianist and Taoist), Wash 1x (Hindhuist), and New Boston (Boston rebuilt) 0x while a latter city gets Islam much later.



A not that good side effect was that almost everyone went buddhist thanks to Isa fanatics (but were still fighting between them anyway).


Military-wise the situation was a disaster until Capac force me to whip an army which protect me for a long time and Wonder-wise I was terrible as I get nothing with points (I still manage to get the Great Library+Hanging Gardens a bit later)

In 260, my 3 cities had
Washington : library + 2 temples
New York : library + 3 temples
New boston : library + 1 temple





Decide to get more cities later (initially was thinking to stay at 3, but having marble just next was too tempting, and then later aim at having 9 peacefully but settling aggressively on my borders thanks to the huge culture of the 3 central cities).


Grow peacefully until 1454AD when Peter then Alex declare.

This being Prince (but quite overpowered ones with a lot of elephants), i managed to sign some backward AIs (Genghis, Monte, Ceasar) for 'modern' techs to help against them, repulse them and even capture borders (with cavalries coming) cities before signing

peace around 1600 when I stopped (sunday night).

1502 scores
3 universities, 2 Cathedrals (Alex+Peter means lots of changing in the build orders between 1450 and 1500).

Situation around 1600.
3 powerfull cities, access to 6 religions and 10 cities.
3AIs already dead (Capac 320AD by Ganghis, Isa 6680AD by Monte, Fred but Alex then Toku) and Saladin (by Alex then Peter) not that great.

Jabah

Hi,

After missing some events after my first two adventures, due to happy RL-stuff (got married), I tried my hands on Epic 11 because it was on Prince and the setup was very appealing. I never played a game on epic before, but enjoyed it very much. Please have a look at my game, it's here
Epic 11 report

My report is far from complete, but since I'm pushing the report deadline as it is, I figure I might as well get my scoring info up.

Main Scoring
25 points: Cultural Victory: Victory in 1944, 25 points
4 points: EACH rival civilization still “alive” at the time of your victory: Alive were Monty, Khan, Alex, HC, Peter, JC. 24 points

Wonders: Score these points only for wonders NOT rushed with a Great Engineer!
7 points: build the Parthenon
2 points: build Versailles
1 point: build Eiffel Tower
1 point: build Hollywood
Total of 11 points

Other Scoring
1 point: EACH library built by 260AD: I had 3
1 point: EACH temple (any type) built by 260AD: I had 2
1 point: EACH university built by 1500AD: I had 2
2 points: EACH cathedral (any type) built by 1500AD: I had 0

Total: 67 + (highly unlikely) fastest finish bonus.

EDIT: Well my memory appears to have failed me - I made some mistakes with the above, now corrected.

You know that nagging voice in the back of your head that says "Build more units"? I think it's trying to say something.

I started out in a nice strong spot, built a second city to the east, and expanded to 6 or 7 cities. I failed at almost all the wonders, no chance at the GL, didn't get the parthenon, but as sulla put it, could definitely get the cultural victory since everything else was disabled. I fended off many requests to join different wars, and refused everything, chose no religion, and was equally annoying to all. 5 temples and 5 libraries by 260AD.

However, my defense was an archer per city, and an axe per city. Then monty came knocking with an elephant, two longbow, two CRII axe, three jags CRIII, CRII, and CRI, and a spear CRI and ** (plus the +10 they all got). I spent my money defending against the single phant elsewhere (promoted to longbow), didn't see the stack and had no chance to promote at the key city, which was almost finished with Norte Dame.

With the bow I might have had a chance, the city would have fallen, but a counter attack had a (slim) shot. But I only killed two incoming units, so the city was strong. Playing under the gun (this weekend) I decided to not press through.

Defeated in 920AD due to incompetence on the part of my defense minister.
________
NotThatShy

Please use this space to introduce yourself to the alliance so that we can get to know each other better

Most people just call me KoP. I have too many toons to name them all here, so please just put this on your Friends List:
King Of Pain I (main account)
Il King Of Pain Il (spare account)

Cheers


KoP

Great fun. My report is here . I sure wish I'd had the computing capacity (new computer coming soon, though!) and real life time to complete this one....

I wrote the report in a hurry, so if you see any errors or missing/wrong screenshots, let me know.

Welcome to my first RB report.

Attached are saves from my Epic 11 attempt (260 AD, 1502 AD, and finish). Was completed in 1930 with 99 points. I will post detailed summary and score breakdown soon (hopefully later today). The reason for this delay is simple. Some post or another mentioned that role-playing might be relevant to such reports and the particular choice of topics absolutely begged for a completely loopy parody of American history. Unfortunately, writing this up is turning out to take longer than actually playing the epic took. The style of my report will probably be a bit different than is typical. For one thing, it's pretty much plain text. I took some screen shots, but figuring out anything useful or coherent to do with them is another matter. Also, lacking a web site and interest in maintaining one, I will probably take the unusual step of smacking down a series of quite long posts under this topic.

Some general comments:

I probably played one of the more aggressive epic 11 games. My 4th city was Mecca. Erm, peaceful builder? Whadya mean this was supposed to be a peaceful builder game? I actually declared war on and invaded the Arabs, Greeks, Aztecs, Romans, and Mongols. The Russians and Japanese kindly saved me the trouble of declaring war and as a result also got smacked down. The other AIs saved me the trouble of smacking down Egypt, Germany, and Spain. Only the Inca got away scott free (maybe I should load the finishing save and correct that?). I think I was nearing the domination limit by the end of the game. This is actually not a totally wrong strategy for this game because if somebody is busy gettting smacked down by me, they clearly can't be killing off another AI, right? Surprisingly, I'm actually a pacifistic builder by temperment, but well, I've been trying to win at Emperor lately and sadly, the city upkeep costs seem to mean that the best way to ensure that your neighbors don't grab all the land before you can afford to settle it is to make sure you don't have any neighbors. Or maybe I just suck.

I think I may have gotten a bit lucky with having AIs not try to build many of the wonders early on. I was surprised to read that the lighthouse was supposed to be unbuildable. Yea, difficult, but there were some not too distant sea coasts, so running a settler there early on seems perfectly viable. Of course, I failed to get the lighthouse, but only by 8 turns (I wonder if I could have whipped it...?)

Keeping the cultural slider at 20% or below seemed to be no big deal. Looking at a recent cultural victory (at emperor no less, yay!), even at 100% slider, only about 30% of my culture was coming from commerce and I coulda had less if I'd felt like adding some farms and artists. Funny the kinds of things that can be considered abusive. It actually seems like it would be more of a pain to try to get 3 cities with enough cottages to be able to use the slider for victory. Why not grab some early useful wonders in the chosen cities?

Epic speed is a pain for a game intended to get into the modern era. I probably fought some of those wars just to give me something to do while my 3 cultural cities matured. I'm sure it slowed me down a bit, but I was playing a sloppy, unplanned and unfocused game anyway and I didn't do too badly. I'd probably give the next epic a skip, except that with a starting position like that, you need all the time you can get to go take over someone else's starting position before they start fielding rifles.