I played this one to completion and had a great time. Looks like I won't have time for a full report, though, so here's a short summary in text/plain, written entirely from memory.

I decided to build no boats and play for a spaceship victory. I founded 7 cities, their placement influenced by the (correct) assumption that most of my sea squares would be unworkable due to naval blockades. My second city went directly on the southern stone, which meant I could grab the 'henge and pyramids without founding a city in the arid north. (Once I had chain irrigation, I founded my Iron Works city in the "true" Iron Works location N-N-NE of the original capital). City #3 was my main commerce city, founded two north of where many people founded, on the east coast just south of the dyes. I founded a military factory on the plains on the west coast (another popular site) and two more filler cities. In total I wasted a grass hill and a desert hill.

I founded christianity and islam, both by means of great prophet lightbulbs, and both in my commerce city. (This was not entirely coincidental, as I took steps to make this outcome more likely.) I also moved my palace there, for a few more commerce (from the palace, not Bureaucracy). My research prioritized calendar (lots of yummy resources), civil service (for chain irrigation), banking (for mercantilism), liberalism (grabbing astronomy) and then railroads. From that point on, it was a traditional space race, which went mostly according to plan, except that Peter executed a successful beeline to physics while I wasn't looking, nabbing the free scientist.

I think I literally saw a single landing before I got to railroads; at least the first one was two combat I axemen from Tokugawa (guess they were upgraded warriors, why else would he build them without barracks?) and the second one featured grenadiers. With railroads, I could hit any landing with my best forces, which combined with my tech lead gave me an insane kill ratio. (I have to look up the numbers, but it was on the order of 100:1). I believe my highest losses were in mechanized infantry (!), since I was using ambush-promoted MIs as tank busters, and eventually lost a couple of those.

At first I was slightly worried that I might not get the required techs in time, and that could indeed have been a problem if I had gone for more of the optional techs (like flight). My main concern, though, was losing to a UN vote, but Gandhi only completed the UN in 2021, the same year that I launched my spaceship. Gandhi was my prime competitor, having landed all of the important wonders that I missed: The oracle, great library, colossus, taj mahal, and statue of liberty. (Boy was I hoping to pop a bronze for that last one!)

Writing this summary reminds me how fun I actually had playing this. The suspense was great, as I was very unsure just how strong my economy could grow without trading partners and coasts (health was a minor issue as well). I only wish I had the time and skill to convey that suspense in a well-written report. I'll post an update if I get around to writing one, but don't hold your breath

Hi,

you can read my report of Epic 9 - Horse Feathers here, as usual.

-Kylearan

Here it is. it's listed as a blog but I kind of ignore that to write these.Epic 8 is there to

An aggressive Always War on Archipeligo? Different especially with the variant rules. Only methods to win would be domination or space race (well also cultural in theory but that would be very dangerous toward the end game).
The expansion costs on having to keep captured cities will make domination a long drawn out affair.

Intitial scouting reveals I'm on my own continent although there appear to be two nearby islands in Galley range. Maybe a route out ? Certainly naval control is going to be important in this.

Leave Animal Husbandry and Worker builds as set. Early hut pops for map and gold.

Move onto Agriculture / Mining / Fishing and Barracks / Warrior / Warrior whilst my capital grows.

Then move onto Sailing/Bronze Working and Settler / Settler.

Beshbalik founded in 2140BC
and then after much debate about exactly where to place it, Turfan founded in 1720BC

War is declared on Tokugawa

First invasion force lands on Japanese soil

and Osaka falls the following turn

- this nicely brings Stonehenge along with it for the border culture boost

Gandhi beat me to the Pyramids due to the my delay in hooking up Stone before starting build. However the money helped fuel deficit research into Mathematics (towards catapults and later, currency)

Tokugawa finally bites the dust

Epic 9 - Horse Feathers

Epic nine was the second Always War epic. it promised to be significantly different to Epic 6 due to the archipelago map and no-city-razing rule. The difficulty level was higher too - Prince and tech trading allowed (which adds on more than a difficulty level). However, we would be under less pressure from troops due to the map. The other variant rules were that we could not build a wonder that has a doubler resource without having said doubler connected. Also, half of an attacking stack must be mounted/armored/helicopter.

Sullla said after the last AW epic that it was foolish to start with a worker. He's right, but with a worker pre-selected by Sirian, I felt it would be OK. In fact, this was a clue that we were isolated on our own continent. I stayed with the worker and AH beginning. Early scouting revealed a small continent with not much production. No seafood either - but this was probably a blessing in AW because the AI boats love to pillage those nets.

So with no city razing, a strong enonomy will be needed. Otherwise, it just won't be possible to do much fighting. With always war, if you take one city on another continent, you pretty much have to take them all. Otherwise the attacks and culture won't let you make the captured cities productive. My plan was to keep a minimum defense until cavalry and astronomy, then go and take on the other civs.

Tech order was AH -> mining -> bronze working -> fishing -> pottery -> writing. I wanted to found a religion, but decided to go after one of the later ones. I was beaten to confucianism by 4 turns, but got Taoism in 95 AD.

I settled here:



Looking back now I am writing my report, I should definitely squeezed a city in on the marked red dot to share Karakorum's cow. I went to organised religion and spread taoism. I also prioritised Calendar for the nice resources.

Anyway, I had a minimun garrison in most cities, with a few chariots and axemen around as a mobile response force. I had quite a few galleys though to sink invasion/settler parties. In fact, one settler party landed on the south of my land in a terrible place. I won a lucky dice role vs the final archer escort, which was really important. I could not have let the settler settle with NCR turned on.

So I cottaged Karakorum heavily even though I could never adopt bureucracy. There wasn't much food about, so I would never have a GP farm. In fact, I delayed the heroic epic for a very long time because I thought I couldn't build it without marble, being a wonder. It was only when Sirian said that national wonders were excempt from this in the info thread after my game had started that I built it in Beshbalik. I didn't build any world wonders the whole game, though I will be interested to see if anyone settled the stone early and built the pyramids.

Anyway, there was little excitement until I discovered liberalism in 1370 AD, taking military tradition. After getting gunpowder, HBR, feudalism and theology, I switched to vassalage and theocracy and started pumping out the cavalry.



Well, maybe "pumping out" isn't the right verb because my cities were still production-poor. I couldn't workshop over the cottages because of the NCR rule. I would have to keep every crappy city my opponent had, otherwise I would keep the WW forever

One mistake I made was not to detour to optics, meaning I missed the circumnavigation bonus. Try as I did, I couldn't circumnavigate with galleys. Once astronomy was reached, I sunk all the enemy caravels around and went towards chemistry for frigates. Before that though, some galleons were whipped and my horsies went out to seek new civilisations, meet new people and kill them all.

I chose Russia first because its continent had better land than Japan. I didn't want to go after Cyrus and Qin, since they shared a continent and I would have to fight them both. Ideally I would attack Gandhi, since he built nearly all the wonders, but he was too far away. So Peter went down at the usual speed of cavalry vs longbow battles.



Some of those cities were really bad. the NCR rule is quite interesting actually. Novgorod had the sistine chapel, which is really nice with mercantilism for getting quick border pops in new cities.

Anyway, Japan was next and still had longbows. The main continent was captured by 1766 AD, but I couldn't find the last city until later.

My finances were now poor, so I took the gamble of getting communism (state property) before rifling.

I went after Gandhi next despite his rifles, as I figured his continent would put me over domination. Also, he was tech leader and I didn't want him getting to combustion before me.

My cavalry took a back seat in this war, just hanging around to make up the minimum number of mounted units and killing weakened troops. The main fighting was done by cannon and grenadiers, and later infantry. This meant that my frigates could not bombard, because then they would count as troops attacking a city and I could not afford 1 cav for every frigate.

To cut a long story short, gandhi's continent and the outlying islands fell to the mongols, and after taking a few of cyrus' cities on his home continent, the domination limit was triggered in 1884 AD. Qin got destroyers towards the end, but by that time I was only 2% from winning.



Interesting game. Always war on an archipelago is very different to pangaea. But the NCR rule added a level of difficulty, and having to research all techs by yourself while the AI trades between themselves mean you have to manage your economy well. I'm pretty sure most of the games will be fought mainly with cavalry. Keshiks and knights don't have good enough odds vs archers and longbows respectively, and astronomy and cavalry come near the same time. I can see tanks coming into some games, and I can even imagine someone (Zeviz?) teching to space without leaving the home continent. A Culture win should be possible too.

I don't know if it's possible to verify this, but here are my votes for which of the random personalities the AIs got:

Gandhi - Louis (built nearly all the wonders, was one of the more aggressive AIs in terms of sending out raiding parties, founded a religion, stayed in HR (louis' favourite civic) after building pyramids, gave me +ve for being in HR)
Peter - Victoria/Asoka (built loads of cottages)
Qin - [strike]Mao Zedong (pretty aggressive, not many wonders, teched well)[/strike] OK, can't be mao because he liked free religion. Must be Elizabeth.
Tokugawa - Hatshepsut (founded judiasm, built cottages, bonus for HR)
Cyrus - [strike]Saladin (did not send out long-distance invasion parties, founded 3 religions)[/strike] Can't be Saladin, he liked HR. Err maybe Kublai.

Here is my Epic 9 Report featuring ...

• Units on a Frigate
  
• Three dualing scientists
  
• The mid ocean transfer
  
• A crazy gold graph
  
• and a whole lot of fun!!
  

I must say that I did not give the AI enough credit on this one. It kept surprising me. Like my game, my report ends a bit abruptly.

Here it is. No strange diplomatic losses this time.

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/epic9/

This game was very interesting. I really wanted to finish, but I could not. I seems that the spare time that I have is mainly dedicated to getting my SG turnsets in. Therefore, my game was incomplete, though I managed to play near completion. I'll try to find time to organize my screenshots to put up later.

When beginning the epic, I knew that there'd be many challenges. First of all, no city razing was turned on. If I wanted to wage a war, my economy had to be strong. Secondly, since tech trading was still on, I had to find a way to keep up in tech. The AIs could trade techs to each other, where as I could not. My initial plan was this:

1) Find marble
2) Make a GS factory ASAP

So I began by researching Animal Husbandry. It revealed that Horses were nearby, so I founded Beshbalik beside the horses, with gems in the BFC. I also managed to found Hinduism, also in Beshbalik. Before long, my workboat found the Japanese, then the Russians. Alas, there was marble just north of Moscow. I researched Sailing and sent four chariots to Russia. I easily took St. Petersburg, then Moscow, which were defended by lowly warriors.

So, what was the point in getting marble? Obviously the Oracle was out of the question, since I would never get it done fast enough. My plan was to get the Great Library. By the time Literature came in, Moscow's borders popped twice. Not much longer, I build the GL in St. Petersburg, which began to churn out GSs at a tremendous rate. All but one went towards techs.

Because of that move, I was able to stay far ahead in tech. Since Russia was removed from the scene, I went into build and expand mode. When I stopped playing, I had all of the Russian and Main continent settled. I built my FP fairly early in Moscow. Experience from SGOTM2 helped out with that. Before I stopped, I took over the main Japanese continent as well. My economy was going strong, as well as my science. I was first to circumnavigate, and first to discover Liberalism. Alas, I ran out of time, and I don't plan to be able to finish before the deadline. I'll dig out my incomplete date once I have more time. I'll be too busy reading other reports

EDIT: I dug out my Incomplete Date: 1637 AD

Please post your Epic Nine reports.


- Sirian