Mansa Moneybags

Given the 'Gentle' nature planned for this game, I decided to add on a couple extra variants:
- Must end each turn with a positive net income. I.E. no deficit research.
- Can only upgrade LVL4 or greater units. (except in case of dire emergency of course!)


4000BC - Settle Timbuktu in place. Build set to Settler . There's gold down there to be had...
2880BC - Djenne settled securing 2 gold.


Continental neighbors met -
2600BC - Huayna who founds Hinduism and converts in 2160BC.
2040BC - Washington - founder of Buddhism.


1720BC - Exploring of the starting continent virtually complete. Dotmap...


1760BC - Huayna founds Judaism. Stays Hindu.
1320BC - Currency research complete. Time to backfill some worker techs. And - Mansa wants his markets!


1240BC - Kumbi Saleh settled grabbing sugar, pigs, and ivory. More importantly seals of the top half of the continent.


1040BC - Huayna completes Oracle, Stonehenge BIFAL.
800BC - Timbuktu hears the crack of the whip... Mansa wants his markets!


625BC - Huayna demands we stop trading with Washington... No problem mate.
625BC - Confucianism founded in Djenne. Don't bother converting just yet.
475BC - Pyramids BIFAL.
425BC - Great Lighthouse BIFAL.
375BC - Gao settled. Also far away from Timbuktu to discourage AI Galley settling behind my Kumbi Saleh land blockade.


250BC - Huayna completes The Colossus with Imhotep. Forge popped GE???
200BC - Walata settled.
150BC - Convert to Confucianism. Adopt OR.
25AD - Niani founded grabbing that last Gold.


100AD - The Parthenon BIFAL
200AD - Christianity founded in Gao. Stay with Confucianism.
475AD - Victoria and Qin Shi Huang met. Both religionless.
560AD - Elizabeth met. Also religionless.


700AD - The Great Library built in Djenne. Finally some wonders falling my way.
800AD - The Sistine Chapel built in Timbuktu.


860AD - Catherine met. Founder of Taoism.


940AD - Plato builds an academy in Djenne. Looking like the future home of Oxford.


980AD - Awdaghost settled
1010AD - Tadmekka settled
1170AD - Tekedda and Awlil settled. Islam founded in Walata. Dotmap fulfilled! and Washington declares!!


1180AD - Catherine builds Notre Dame.
1250AD - Huayna declares on Washington. That'll keep him busy.
1300AD - The Spiral Minaret built in Timbuktu.
1330AD - Ollantaytambo (Incan) captured by Washington.
1440AD - The Hagia Sophia built in Timbuktu.
1450AD - Economics!. Revolt to Free Market. Make peace with Washington; Only ever seen one Galley load of pillagers. They did some minor damage around Gao and Kumbi Saleh before being dispatched by my War Elephants.


1460AD - Vilcas captured by Washington.
1470AD - Versailles built in Kumbi Saleh. +10 much needed culture to help push back against Cuzco. Wadan founded on Qin's continent. Was trying for the Iron but Qin got there first with Hangzou.


1490AD - Liberalism!. Astronomy taken for free. Revolt to Free Speech... err. wait a minute. Doh!


1500AD - Ok. Now adopt Free Speech.


1490AD - Huayna and Washington make peace. Huayna declares and looses 2 cities.
1520AD - Timbuktu completes Angkor Wat.
1580AD - Kumbi Saleh completes The Hanging Gardens. More culture.
1590AD - Washington declares again... Somewhat serious this time.

But not much of a match for my Rifles...

1670AD - Kumbi Saleh completes The Taj Mahal. Delayed a couple turns while a catapult was cranked out to help with the American stack.
1675AD - Peace with Washington. Again he was turned back with minimal damage done to Malinese property.
1705AD - Democracy! Adopt Universal Suffrage.
1730AD - The Church of Nativity in Gao. Cottage heaven holy city. Definitely the place for Wall Street!


1735AD - Pop Iron at Kumbi Saleh; Just as my second Iron expedition gets into place.


1770AD - Timbuktu completes The Statue of Liberty.
1810AD - Timbuktu completes The Pentagon.
1816AD - Kumbi Saleh completes The Kremlin.
1818AD - Adopt Free Religion and Emancipation. Elizabeth and Qin, my Confucianist partners had already abandoned me...


1836AD - Kumbi Saleh completes Broadway.
1846AD - Timbuktu completes The Eiffel Tower. 10000 buckaroonies!!! Malinese Overview -


1854AD - Djenne completes Rock N Roll.

-------- All pleased... Must be time for...
1870AD - Kumbi Saleh completes The United Nations.


1870AD - Mansa wants his....

Trade routes are good.

1872AD - Secretary General shoe-in. That's a lot of golden ages all at once!


1880AD - grrr.


1888AD - Kumbi Saleh completes Hollywood.
1890AD - Missionary spamming to Victoria finally pays off. She's voting for me anyways, but no point giving Catherine those shared religion bonuses...


1904AD - Better.

But...

1912AD - Enough is enough.



1920AD - Progress...



1923AD - The story of the War - Riflemen splat everywhere.


1924AD - Finally!

Forgive the lack of screenshots, I haven't quite figured out how to upload them yet. I do have some, though.

I didn't actually start playing the game until a week before the closing date, due to a HD crash which took alomst a month to repair. During this time though I was able to read the game description which allowed me to work on a plan, though I didn't decide for sure to do so until I actually got the game and took a look to see if I could.

The first thing was to determine what exactly was the route of techs to start. Well, we start with Mining and the Wheel (good, worker techs). And the order of research suggested I could try my initial gamble: a Civil Service Slingshot. The initial tech path supported this very well, giving Fishing for the clam, Pottery for flood plain cottages, and Math, for better forest chops.

Initial Tech Path: Fishing (3800 BC), Pottery (3440 BC), Writing (3000 BC), Math (2400 BC), Currency (1720 BC)! I also popped Hunting from a hut in 3240 BC.

Initial Builds Worker, change to Work Boat when Fishing discovered, back to the worker when that was done, Scout (after the Hunting pop), 2 warriors, settler

After discovering Currency, I researched Bronze Working (1520 BC), Mysticism (1440 BC), Meditation (1360 BC), Priesthood (1280 BC), then Code of Laws

I also built one more Warrior before starting the Oracle, which I rushed with two forest chops. With one turn of starvation work I finished both Code of Laws and the Oracle in 900 BC, allowing my CSS!

After that the really did become easy, so I basically played around with it, trying a couple of other stunts just because I could. One worked: I wound up getting all 4 late religions (Washington got Buddhism, Huyna got both Hinduism and Judaism), and through luck spread and careful missionary spread, I got all the AI's in different state religions! (I myself never chose a state religion). One didn't: I tried to used the Liberalism free tech to get Democracy for a 4 civic swap (Heritary Rule/Nationhood/Serfdom/Paganism to Universal Sufferage/Free Speech/Emancipation/Free Religion) but Qin got close enough to Liberalism himself to panic me into researching Liberalism before I had Constitution. Whoops.

BTW, I had pressed to Nationalism and Rifling before going after Liberalism to give me the opportunity to draft a solid defense as a precaution.

Given my time pressure, I chose to avoid war for the most part. The only AI which I had poor relations with through the game was Huyna, as early I decided to support Washington over him. He never did anything about it though.

I wound up with 10 cities on the main continent we started on, getting almost all of the jungle land (Huyna got one city near the south end of the jungle early, and I pressed my cities south quickly to cut him off). I also took 2 barb cities, one of which was on the wine isle (Polynesian in my game), one on one of the large islands east of the homeland, planted 3 offshore colonies: one SE of Polynesian, and two on a somewhat fertile island south of Liz and Vicky which had Iron and an offshore Oil. I also got a late flip of an English city (Liz's) which she planted next to Polynesian.

One AI-AI war did occur between Cathy and Liz. I actually saved the game and shut Civ4 down immediately after the declaration because I wanted to think about what I should do when they asked for help. Ultimately, I decided for a safe space race, and stayed out of their war, though I kept a close eye on them. Relations did become somewhat strained with Cathy after I turned her requests for help down.

Still things proceeded relatively smoothly. I completed Apollo in 1888 AD, the Space Elevator in 1904 AD, and finished researching the last tech I needed (Ecology, I had already done Fusion to get a jump on the engine) in 1922. After that I turned science down to 0%, and completed the ship in 1933 AD, with 23,202 gold in the treasury! (game score 3762, normalized score 13325, Time spent 11:30)

Mansa Moneybags

And where better for him to stash his loot than in Switzerland? The Adv 17 variant didn’t float my boat, so I decided to start this game, mainly to see how the locked tech progression to Currency would pan out. This went well, so I decided to play through to completion, with the basic idea to tech as hard as possible then switch research off whilst building the space components in order to accumulate a kingly fortune. I was also intrigued to see whether, with all that gold and all those floodplains, could I finish quicker than on Monarch, where the AI will help me along tech-wise; I was sure to have to research everything myself in this game.

The start goes quite well with lots of gold to fund our tech. Later, we hut Hunting and meet this fella:



Oh dear. I was hoping to have a peaceful time of it, but with Capac founding Hinduism it’s not likely, unless his religion spreads to me, as I’m planning on snagging one of my own.




Yup, that’s right, I hutted Currency! I can’t recall how many turns I had to go on it, but it must have been a fair few. Now that I’m free of the tech lock, it’s time to start expanding in earnest:



I meet Washington, who has founded Buddhism and establish Kumbi Saleh at fish/marble next for Oracle and other marble-based wonders. The tech path included Pottery, so our worker has been busy cottaging those flood plains and, as a result, our tech pace is rapid. In BC 1240, we finish research on Code of Laws, and found Confucianism in KS, adopting it as our state religion. Looks like we’ll be quarrelling with Capac at some point. The pre-programmed path to Currency also includes Maths, so I think you know which tech I’ll pick from the Oracle in BC 925:



Score me ‘nul points’ for originality, but I haven’t attempted a CS sling since the latest patch(es); it’s like welcoming back an old friend. With Timbuktu having awesome production, as well as great commerce, let’s grab a moneyspinning wonder:



With all these wonders, I’ve been ignoring military and I get a wake-up call from Capac when I notice a two quechua-one archer stack heading my way. Not much of an assault force, I know, but my army consists of a handful of fog-busting warriors, and Djenne is unguarded, so a deterrent axe or two gets trained. This also reminds me to go settle in HC’s face to block his expansion and ease my own campaigning.

Then it’s back to wonders, with Colossus going up in 225 BC and the Parthenon in BC 75. With all these wonders in Timbuktu, it seemed logical to put the National Epic here. I figured I’ll get a lot of artist spam, but it’s not as if the win is in any doubt here. I also build Great Library in Timbuktu. The next G-Man off the conveyor - the first was a scientist who built an Academy in the capital - is a Merchant, who gets settled in KS (which, as the holy city of Confucianism, will also get Wall St should I decide to build it).

Homer gets settled in order to steal Capac’s elephants and to push back his borders, so I can take Macchu Picchu on turn one of the war.

From Wired Magazine:

http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworld...tiers_0423

Lots of interesting points made. In terms of the three groups he listed, I tend to fall in between the "die hard" and "walkthrough." I like to find out as much about a game as I can, but after my interest begins to wane, I might peek at a walkthrough/guide to see what I missed.

dathon

Before I say anything about the game, I'll mention that I've never written anything more than a SG turnset about Civ. Also I have no idea how many characters/pictures can be inserted into one post so this might get frustrating!

The basic concept of the game is to grab as much money as fast as possible with the finanical tyrant Mansa. I'll be stuck researching towards currency for the first couple thousand years, since that opens up pottery, the clear path is to cottage spam early on and thats therefore the plan. I'll also have to adopt Universal Suffrage and Free Market when they become availible. But I don't see either of those as much of a hindrance with it being Noble.

I also decide that I will not declare war this game.


Here's the starting spot one turn into the game.



I was tempted to move the settler 2N 1 W so not to waste the land to the north, but the floodplains were too valuable to resist. With no worker techs to use for some time, scouting the land is the priority and warrior first was a no brainer, with work boat following soon enough.

So my warriors head down south east and pop some Gold and also this



Not much of a bonus though since I only had 2 turns of research left on it.

I meet my immediate neighbours Washington and Huayna and then their borders block me of from further scouting.

Enter the Classical era in 2400 BC and then finally get to Currency in 1600 BC (60 turns it took).



At this point I head to settle southwards, Huayna beats me to the spot that I wanted, but I settled 3 tiles away in a decent, if lacking in production location to the north. My next cities seal off the north to Huayna's settlers (I quickly stopped Open Borders with him and never opened them again, one Incan galley was marooned all game).

Despite being denied the freedom to choose early tech's, I quickly grab worker techs and also Confucianism.



I then grab the Oracle and complete the dreaded CS slingshot in 650 BC.



It's Wonder Time!

Timbuktu builds the Great Library in 100 AD and science is booming.



Mahavira constructs the Kong Miao singlehandedly (that always amazes me how they do that)

The Colossus is built and immediately gets stuck in fishing nets...



Harkuf my first Great Merchant is born in 580 AD at extremely low odds. For now he'll be dormant.

After grabbing Optics, I build a couple of Caravels to explore the world with an Explorer on board in case there were any huts on Islands unclaimed. I find 2 huts on various islands but all they gave me were warriors which I disbanded immediately.

The exploring reveals a nice sized island to the East whith a couple of Barb cities present, my Macemen quickly take charge and the island is mapped out.



I grab Taoism in 980 AD, don't recall if I ran Pacifism or not from here on, or if I stuck with Organized religion. Anyway it goes to Djenne which also is the Confucian holy city.

Build Hagia Sophia in 1010 AD as much for denial as anything else.

I met Qin, Cathy and the English ladies with my Caravels and relations were good with all but the Chinaman, he declared war on me but he only sent one boatload of troops. It was such an insignificant conflict I didn't even take one screenshot.

I also convert Cathy to Confucianism for the hell of it

Anyhoo I race through the tech tree grabbing Liberalism and Economics first.

I build the Spiral Minaret after founding Islam.



Washington has been boxed in all game in mostly Tundra land by the Incan, in 1530 he finally snaps and declares war on him. It turns into another pointless affair with no cities changing hands.

WAR, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

I stumble across another Barb island with a number of nice resources on it and thus Etruscan joins the Empire.

quick overview at 1645 AD



Note Los Angeles on my eastern island? I'm quickly bombarding it with culture and it'll flip soon.



I build the Taj and then head down the Democracy route, once thats done I pick up the Statue of Liberty.



Which gets built 35 years before Oxford University

Anyway by now I'm on the home stretch of the game. I've barely built a military unit since Qin's declaration and I don't need to. I've got an Infantry > Medieval units tech advantage on Huayna and almost as much on everyone else.

I build the happiness wonders, Rock n Roll and Broadway.

To speed up the game I burn my Engineer on the Space Elevator in 1900 AD



Also build the Pentagon while I'm waiting for the end.

Teoihuacan was one of the Barb cities I captured in the 15th Century, now in 1914 and its still 13% Barbarian culturally.



Which results in this...



And they still want to join their motherland!

To finish the space parts quicker I bulldoze some cottages for workshops and it finally ends in 1931 AD.



The screenshot also shows 18693 gold in the treasury, Mansa Moneybags indeed!

Here's demographics just before the end (after cottages destroyed)



Was a very easy game really, the tech fixing at the start didn't really hamper the player that much on Noble and I could've easily steamrollered the other Civ's if I'd cared to. I just didn't feel that was what Mansa and the scenario asked for.

I was pretty disappointed with my launch date though, I mean I only launched 18 years earlier than I did with Adventure 4 and that was on Monarch.

Well it was fun

Blame this on Seijin for asking about a "vanquishing" variant.

Concept: to vanquish select explorable areas of hard mode with a team of level 20 humans and/or heroes (not hench), using only what you are given. For you noobs, "vanquish" means to totally wipe an area, and hard mode will inform you of it when you've succeeded. One can set goals for vanquishing a chain of a few areas without any party wipes, for example The Breach -> Diessa Lowlands -> Ascalon Foothills -> Traveler's Vale. This can be done in select chunks by starting from outposts, such as Piken Square -> The Breach, Nolani -> Lowlands and Foothills, Yaks -> Vale. Competition and reports are also possible by tallying kills versus time spent.

The skills you may use beginning your Ironman run will be randomly chosen (let's say 80 for 4-man) just like a Sealed Deck PvP game. This is accomplished by generator software such as this. The team can only use skills from this limited pool, and may only use each skill recieved once. (If you recieve duplicates of a skill in your pool, you may use that skill once per duplicate) Res Sigs (not sunspear) are also permitted. In addition to this, we might allow any one non-elite/sunspear/lightbringiner skill to be used per player. We might also rig the random generation to produce at least X skills per 4 professions of the team's choosing. Heroes are recommended or maybe at least 1 should be required to further ease unlock difficulties. Once one area is vanquished and the team returns to an outpost to prepare for the next area, an additional deck (say 20 skills) is added to your existing pool and you may incorporate these skills into your builds, but you must stick with the same original primaries that you started the run with.

An Ironman run is begun under some equipment restrictions. Ideally players will "clean out" their inventory from all but the permitted starting gear. Players may bring one req 5 item purchased from Teipao or Saara. No upgrades may be applied to these nor may they be customized, and you can't bring any of your other items. Your armor must be a set of maxed "vanilla" armor, with no insignia. This can be attained from collecters, the half-price vanilla armors in droks/kaineng, or simply nightfall armor with no insignia. You may fill this armor with runes of vitae and no other runes. (This should make doing many ironman runs cheaper so you don't have to junk your armor...) You may purchase and bring along any number/quality of ID and Salvage Kits (as well as lockpicks? would make better gameply but are expensive), but you may not bring anything else, especially various one-use items. (In the event of a holiday, you can't use special holdiay items that drop during your Ironman run either)

As you progress through vanquishing areas, you are permitted to use anything the team finds, IDing and Salvaging as appropriate. Any upgrades, runes, or other items found during your run are fair game. These items will carry over into further areas on your ironman run. Insignias should perhaps be exempted because trashing your armor to remove insignias for subsequent runs may get too expensive. You may also use collectors in an area as it is being vanquished, if you can get enough drops. Between areas, only ID/Salvage/Lockpicks may be purched in town, no other purchases or collectors. For standardization, you may *not* take any quests in an area you are vanquishing, and must abandon any relevant quests before entering.

Finally, we may wish to limit rezes. Naturally use of res sigs is allowed, but for the true Ironman experience, we may wish to disqualify players that are ressed by a shrine. In this case the ressed player must either remain at the shrine or suicide down to 60 DP. If following this rule, hard res skills should probably be outlawed (and a skillset will be re-drawn if it contains one) The no-res at 60 DP feature of hard mode might be hard enough however. In any event, if the entire party is wiped and unable to res, the Ironman run has ended, and you will need to start a new one with new skills/items.

Those familiar with Diablo 1 will recognize the attempt to re-create the challenging, go-with-what-you-got, one-clear-through intensity of Ironman. The random skills are there to provide some of that fresh randomized sense that GW is lacking compared to D1, as well as encouraging underused skills (much like inferno and heal other in IM). Keeping this randomness from being too unfair or too dificult to employ due to PvE skill acquisition needs to be kept in mind (though D1 ironman could be quite unfair with the spell books/staves.) Aside from a discussion on the rules, I'd like to hear ideas for good area chains for vanquishing, as well as the number of players/heroes that should be used from them. These chains should be kept fairly small because this is intended to be a "fail much and succeed occasionally" variant. We might add that they should start from locations easily run to from port cities, to maximize the professions players can bring.

It's in a Civfanatics thread, because I don't know how to post screenshots here.

Space race victory in 1971 AD. 21,583 gold. I think I made the tycoons category.

Report here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218569

I see that prevailing advice is not to collect both kinds of faction at the same time, because you spend them both at the same time (so to speak).

And because it's account based, it needs to only be collected once, and can be used by all chars.

My question is this: Assuming I have nothing I want to SPEND faction on (I merely want to collect it to get through that part of the game, befriending the whomevers), is there any reason NOT to collect both kinds simultaneously on one char (so as to ease the passage of successive chars without faction farming)?

And, as an aside, if I don't want amber or jadeite, is there anything worth spending faction on?

Hello, everybody!
This is my first report in a RB event.

It can be found here.

Please, feel free to comment anything you'd like.

I wasn't planing on playing this game, but I found a day late last week with nothing to do ... what better than playing Civ IV? Well, lots of things but ... anyway, game report here.