Hi,

here are the results for Adventure 13. Lots of shadow games this time...


Victories:
---------------

T-hawk: Conquest 1700AD
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1466

Compromise: 1790AD Conquest
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1476

Qwack: Conquest 1840AD
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1468

uberfish: 1924AD Cultural
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1473

theGrimm: Conquest 1925AD
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1472

Kodii: 1980AD Diplomatic
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1469

Swiss Pauli: 1995AD Diplomatic
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1471

mucco: 1997AD Cultural
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1477

mike p: 2011AD Cultural
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1482

Blake: 2019AD Space
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1467

ZuperT: 2050AD Time
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1479



Lost/Retired:
-----------------------

mostly_harmless: 2050AD Time
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1480



Shadow games:
----------------------------

paleman: 2050AD Time
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1483

Ruff_Hi: 2050AD Time
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1475

Snaproll: 2049AD Space
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1478

Strange Power Duck: 2016AD Cultural
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1470



-Kylearan

Unless Sirian objects, here's just a little something-for-the-weekend in case people have finished their epic 8 reports:

Civ: Russia, Peter
Version: Civ 1.61
Map: Pangaea, standard size, high sea level, rocky climate, natural shoreline
Difficulty: Monarch
Extras: One City Challenge is checked. No permenant alliances.
Speed: Normal
AIs: Random, default number
Victory: All enabled, but players must aim for a spaceship launch.

Variant rule: No great wonders are to be built. National wonders are OK.



Post in this thread with your launch date and the strategy you followed. Hell, feel free to put a write-up on your personal website if you want.

It shouldn't take too long with just one city and normal speed. No closing date. Just don't read any spoilers in this thread if you haven't finished the game.

Download the start here

Hello there,

After moving to Poland I've had some problems getting hold of games. Most of what is published here is translated into Polish making them useless for me as I need an original English version.

I used to buy from online stores in England, but those I used to use either doesn't ship to Poland or doesn't have what I'm looking for. Since finding a proper store that also ships to other EU countries is a bit of a jungle I figured I'd ask the Europeans here where you usually buy from

Stores in England/Ireland would of course be optimal, but ones in Germany should also be able to work... as long as they sell English versions I can read German, so navigating the webpages shouldn't be a problem.

Currently I'm thinking about some older ones, namely Hearts of Iron 2 and, possibly, Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun (or something like it... both from Paradox). And yes, I used to play Europa Universalis

Anyway, all help is welcome as even E-Bay has struck out

Anyone remember Kylearan's no science game? Here is my own personal version of it.

http://qwack.byethost15.com/Civ/Manufactured/index.htm

I have an idea for a new Adventure or Epic. How does sponsoring a game work? I read about scenarios requiring approval before they can become eligible, but who do I send the idea to? Or do I post it here?

Also, I think I'd want to team up with someone on sponsoring a potential event revolving around my brilliant idea, because I think I'm not experienced enough to make sure it'll be balanced enough.

As usual I played an Adventure and didn't have the patience to report it.

In Adventure 12 I came across an event of cities being placed with 2 tiles of each other. The weirdness didn't end there though...



As you can see, the Frigates take it in turns to bombard the defences of Lahore and L.A.


In a recent solo game I also produced a quite impressive (to me at least!) GP factory without going all-out to do so.



This is taken before Biology is availible but also while the Great Library specialists are still in effect.

Sadly, this has to be a shadow report because I reloaded (I believe with good reason), but my autosave was set to every 4 turns instead of 1. Other than breaking one of the core RBCiv rules, I was faithful to all the variant rules for this adventure. I promptly changed my settings afterwards so this wouldn't happen in future RB games.

The reason I reloaded - I had my whole navy (like 15 galleys) parked in a neutral city. It never occurred to me that a single enemy land unit could obliterate my entire navy by simply moving into that tile. So I reloaded and destroyed one of my galleys to be fair. It was then I realized that I hadn't changed my autosave settings. Building all those galleys from scratch was not something I was prepared to do, and I would have retired rather than do it.

I started with the goal of conquest, and had to settle for a time victory. It has nothing to do with the Adventure itself, but I did discover by playing it that I do not find conquest against militarily disadvantaged opponents on an archipelago map very much fun, and I wish I had gone for another victory. The challenge of it was that conserving units was a priority, because production was relatively static before factories due to the city limit and the islands needing to be conquered were far away from one another. The unit conservation premium coupled with the distance between islands made the wars a bit long. An annoying variation on this was needing to play some serious Whack-A-Mole on an archipelago map. This was all hindered by the fact that I started conquering too late and that I lost focus on other aspects of the game (i.e., the tech race) while engaged in my spree of city destruction.

A highlight was being first to liberalism and claiming steel as the free tech. Unfortunately, liberalism came way late - 1700. And my best unit in 2050 was the recently invented tank. I'm stunned to even write those two facts. Liberalism in 1700 is already late, but after that to not have tanks until 2050! Three things I would do differently: 1) start conquering earlier, 2) declare war against opportunistic settlers to prevent later whack-a-mole; 3) make an effort to maintain focus on the tech race while engaging in a mind-numbing spree of city razing (for me this warmaking was tedious and seemed to operate just like a narcotic, resulting in play that resembled that of someone "under the influence"). At some point I'll post a link to an actual report, just for the record.

I'm sure this adventure was (like Adventure 11) a bit beyond my skill. Like Adventure 11 and Epic 9, it was definitely beyond my experience. These were all my first experience with no tech trading, first experience with AI alliances, first experience with a limited city challenge. Adventures like these seem obviously calculated to challenge those who are used to playing variants and who play very well at the highest levels, but to me a monarch player like me, they are fabulous learning opportunities, win or lose. So, thanks to Sirian for putting these out there and for leaving them open to all comers. It’s a privilege to be able to play them, and I'm looking forward to doing well in some of them eventually.

So here's my first crack at a RB Adventure. Feedback on my report will be appreciated first time out, even more than on my play.

Looking at the settings, I decided right out of the gate to try for a cultural victory. I figured I might as well get some mileage out of those castles! And, while cultural probably isn't going to be a winning strategy as far as fastest time, I should at least be able to finish, right?

The constraints will make city placement more difficult since the first building has to be walls.

I started by settling in place and finding Fish just out of range to the east and Sheep just out of range to the west. I queue up a workboat and work coastal tiles for the extra commerce. Research wise, I'm going Mysticism, Polytheism, and then Masonry and then might as well go for Monotheism while Judaism is still available. Plus Organized Religion will allow me to get culture pumping without needing to build walls first.

3360 BC Hinduism is founded in Athens. At this point I've explored the starting island and have a bit of a dilemma for my second city. If I grab the gold, then the corn will go unused and I ultimately decide that food is more important, and hopefully there will be a sea food resource on the other side of the island north across the channel from the gold. My workboats go out exploring.

2760BC I meet Mansa Musa. I wonder if he'll be as runaway powerful in a no tech trading game and somehow doubt that he will be.

2200BC Monotheism due in 1, Sparta is founded to become the Holy City and expand right off the bat, allowing a corn farm food resources - I haven't gotten around to Animal Husbandry so the tastiness of pork is still underappreciated by the Greek people. Need to prioritize pottery because every tile that isn't a bonus resource is getting a cottage there. With all of the plains it will still have a reasonable amount of production.



It's clear that with a small empire (6 cities) we won't have a whole lot of resources so I'm planning on going the cottage spam/culture slider route, especially as there is no fresh water for farms on my home island so specialists won't work well. And 2 surplus food can support 2 plains cottages or only 1 artist. As it turns out, there will be enough food here to cottage every tile and have enough for two specialists left over, so I probably won't ever even need Caste System.

I revolt to Organized Religion and Judaism so that Sparta can build a Missionary for Athens prior to starting the Walls. I reason that units before walls must be OK or else everyone lost this Adventure in 4000BC.

1520BC Walls are complete in Athens. I start an Obelisk because every bit of culture will help. Previous to this I've built a settler, 2 warriors, 2 work boats and a worker or two.

925 BC Bronze working is complete and the only source of copper is just underneath my first cottage. The Greek Empire engages in the world's first Urban Renewal project as a result.

900 BC Walls are whipped in Sparta.

650 BC Writing is done, it's Library and Great Scientist time.

375 BC Circumnavigation of the globe is complete and I send my workboats back home.

25 BC I've been agonizing over where to put my third city and I really need a production powerhouse site for some wonders. I settle Thermopylae on a plains hill on the island to the north. It will grab me Rice and Ivory and the two extra food from the rice will let me work both grassland hills and still grow slowly with a lighthouse. Start walls right away. It isn't the powerhouse site I was looking for, but it should serve. Xi Ling Shi is born in Athens. I'm pretty sure he's a Great Scientist, and he builds an Academy in Athens - we're going to need the culture and the beakers.

450 AD I found Christianity in Sparta. I send the Missionary to Thermopylae since I don't want the failure chance in Athens. We can then spam missionaries from Therm.

500 AD Corinth was founded on the island with the two gems. After noticing a Russian galley heading back west through my territory, I decided to whip a settler out of Sparta. Thanks to the Circumnav bonus, I was able to overtake the Russians and beat them to the gem island by 1 turn. A few turns later, Buddhism spread to Corinth from Spain. At first I was ticked that my missionaries didn't get there first and then I realized that have a fourth religion was a good thing! (I'm certainly no cultural victory expert.)

710 AD Socrates is born in Athens, but moves to Sparta to build an Academy.

760 AD Catherine has foolishly built a city right next to my production power house of Thermopylae. What was she thinking? A few turns later she has (briefly) wrested control of the ivory from me and I remember that she's Creative.

840 AD I almost whipped the Colussus in Thermopylae for the culture war, but I needed full production from there to get started on the Sistine Chapel, so I laid off the whip. With predictable results:



1170 AD Delphi is founded to the west of Athens. It can work the fish and sheep and one mine and plenty of coast, though some it's tiles overlap with Athens.

1210 AD Civil Service is complete and I revolt to Bureaucracy.

1250 AD I won't make the mistake of waiting too long to whip a wonder anymore, but I still came up short on the Hanging Gardens in Sparta.



1290 AD I see 2 galleys heading west from Mali, loaded up with warriors. Mansa doesn't seem too unhappy with me, but I figure it's probably time to go to no state religion, to help relations, and to get culture from all of my religions, instead of just from Judaism.

He declares war anyway and lands four warriors on my horse pasture. I whip an axe in Sparta and upgrade a warrior and he pillages the pasture and gets his invasion force killed off. If he sent anything stronger than warriors I probably would have lost the game.

I have two galleys afloat and build a third one in Athens to sink his fleet and I win my first attack, but lose the second, but my third galley cleans up the wounded Malinese galley. And that's pretty much the whole of the War of Malinese Aggression.

I also found a city in 1290 on an island to the east which has fish and iron and lots of strategic desert.

1460 AD I pop a great engineer and will be able to complete my first wonder, the Hagia Sophia in Thermopylae.

1635 AD I've been working priests instead of artists in Sparta to try to get a Great Prophet for a shrine and some $$ and I end up with one, and use it to build the Temple of Solomon. I switch over to artists.

1650 AD I'm the first to discover Liberalism! I revolt to Free Speech and Free Religion. Athens has a full suite of 4 monestaries so I don't need Organized religion, and once each city has all four religions and temples I won't have any unhappy problems either, even before the cultural slider goes up.

At some point around here, I lose the game as I notice that I've built a university in Pharsalos before building a castle. As this was my sixth university, I hold off on starting Oxford in Athens until Pharsalos gets a castle done.

1745 AD The Temple of Solomon has polluted my GPP pool in Sparta and against the odds, I get another Great Prophet. The Church of the Nativity will provide 6 gpt and 4 cpt, so up it goes.

1820 AD After researching Constitution, I revolt to Representation and switch the culture slider up to 90%, with 10% tax and zero science. I've been able to settle a couple of great artists in Thermopylae, but we're starting to get to culture bomb time instead.

Of course, my dreams of further great artists go mostly unrealized. I get another Great Prophet and almost use him to build the Hindu Shrine, until I realize that it's classified as a world wonder and would be built in my capital. So I merge him in Sparta instead.

I also spawned a bunch of long shot Great Engineers at the end, but at this point I was too far behind to use them for wonders. When I finally got a non GE, it was an Artist, so I couldn't even use them for Golden Ages.



1958 AD The war horn sounds and I think 'Oh sh*t.' But it's just Gandhi declaring on Isabella. Once all of my temples were done I made it a point in my non cultural cities to build at least one unit between every bit of infrastructure, but I was still pitifully weak at this point.

1989 AD Finally, Ykaterinburg revolts and I burn it to the ground.



2010 AD Only one city left to go Legendary and it looks like this:



2011 AD Thermoplyae hits legendary culture and the game ends.

And I have to report yet another loss.
I took lots of screenshots for this one, however I cannot access CIV at the moment for looking at the replay and have no time anyway to write a prpoer report for that in the next three months (so never ever).
I will just post a quick summary here:

Time loss to Ghandi!

I moved the initial settler one tile to the east to get the hill for production and settled on the copper! :mad:

Initial production:
work boat - work boat - warrior - walls - settler - worker - settler
Research went:
Mining - Masonry - BW - Agriculture - The Wheel

The second city Sparta went south of the sheep.
I met Izzy and Cathy, both are into buddhism and we will become friends later on after the religion spreads trough open borders.
I get Magellan in 125BC after lots of dead ends in the east.
I raze a couple of Mansa city around 1000AD to get some resources for myself. Ghandi is leading and I am happy in a buddhism block with the ladies.
And I have my five cities settled in 1240AD. My plan was to hold off the founding of the sixth city waiting for some crucial resource (coal, oil, aluminium). In hindsight, that was a weedy move, which probably cost me the game.
IN 1660AD (very late) I am the first to Liberalism (despite Ghandis tech madness) and I grab Nationalism IIRC.
By now my plan is to get the UN and have me voted to victory with Izzy and Cathy on my side.
However, Cathy wants me to join in against Ghandi, but he is just too powerful and I get some negative modifiers with her.
We get the UN in 1937 and are up against .....
.... Izzy!!!!!!!
WHich makes of course Cathy vote for her and I am screwed on the diplo front.
The game is lost, since I will never survive a war that late in the game, I cannot salvage anything on the diplo front with Izzy, Cathy and Washigton forming a solid block, culture is out and space ship is a bit too late now.
Frustrated I raze a couple of Russian (she is dead last in the score) cities and found my sixth city.
My first national wonder (hermitage) gets build in 2016!!!!
The last decades I spent polishing up my empireling with brandnew units, a nice air force and navy and some infra, to go down with dignity.

I built the following wonders:
Colossus - 375AD
Great Lib - 1160AD
Hagia Sophia - 1260AD
UN - 1937
Rock'n'Roll - 1978
Hollywood - 1988

In hindsight, early aggression was probably the way to go, or a more carefull watching the diplo fronts.

Since it is all about learning from your failures, here two things I learned in that game:
1.) if you disband any naval transport in a city and forget to unload any units still on that vessel, they go down as well. (Kind of stupid, being in a harbour!)
2.) the number of votes in the UN is the sum of all city sizes together. So it makes more sense to settle a lot more small cites (with rapid early growth) than trying to grow large cities one pop point bigger, if an election is tight and votes are needed.

These things are probably widely known, but I want to report progress nevertheless.

mh

I kind of got burned out on Civ4 already and decided only to play a game if it is interesting enough. I don’t have time for SG’s or MP sessions, so SP has been the only thing for me and these RB events have been really interesting. When I saw the variant rules Adventure 13 had, I just had to play one more game. After all, I have been using both CS slingshot powered both by the Oracle and GP’s from the Stonehenge, as well as some other “exploitive” tricks in many of my games.

No wonders in the capital most certainly means not getting the Oracle. It also pretty much rules out cultural victory, as some crucial early great artist wonders will be hard to get. In addition it means that its hard to get a diplo victory because it makes no sense to found Buddhism or Hinduism, as you are not allowed to build a shrine in your capital. But Judaism would be a good idea, because by then you can have your second city up and running, but then again it’s a coin flip in which city it will be founded and it’s so far up the tech tree that if you don’t get to monotheism first you are screwed.

First city improvement being walls means no lightbulbing of CoD nor CS, as you have to research masonry pretty early. I suppose this was the reason for this variant rule, but the actual building of the walls will also take quite an effort, at least in the second and third city. Building a castle before a university or a observatory is not that a big issue hammer wise, but it means that it’s not a good idea to beeline for education and liberalism too early, because you won’t get the full benefit before researching engineering. And with no tech trading you actually have to do the research yourself.

Being allowed to build only six cities will be a major restriction when aiming for a peaceful builders game and it rules out domination.

So what to do!? Well, of all the bad strategies a thought I should try to make the most out of the philosophical trait that Alexander has. Thought I would go for cultural victory anyway and aim to get the Parthenon and the Sistine Chapel (hope there is some marble around) and get into representation, caste system and pacifism as soon as possible and try to make the most out of it. With no tech trading I just might be able to get my culture up enough, before the AIs get too advanced either to launch or to smash me with more advanced troops.

But then I opened the start file. Moving the scout west and settling on the starting tile, because of the plains/hill extra hammer and moving west to get the sheep in range would take an additional turn.. I get some gold from the hut, but founding Athens reveals something very crucial about the map.



…. wohoooo…. it looks awfully lot like tiny islands….could it be!? Let’s hope it is! Moving the scout around the next couple of turns reveals that this in fact is the case. Change of strategy immediately. The AIs suck at this kind of maps. They are totally lost both what it comes to city founding and warfare.

First of all they tend to spam the cities just any place on the map where there is a good site for a city just totally neglecting the fact of maintenance cost and logistical problems of reinforcement at wartime. This was so evidently proved in Epic2.

Secondly the AIs are really bad at handling naval warfare. This has been proved on several occasions, but it is even worse at tiny islands maps, than on continents or even normal archipelago maps.
My plan was now to aim for a time victory….have you seen that before? The idea was to found six strong cities and then cripple the AIs one by one. I had no real rush to get up to the maximum amount of cities, rather scout the map carefully and then raze AI cities with improved lands and found a city of my own on the ruins. The first AI to found on a good location close to my capital would be the first AI to be crippled.

So from the beginning I started to the long path to a time victory. First I went for agriculture and build a worker to improve the corn south of Athens. Then I went for mining and BW to get some chopped settlers and reveal possible copper. As it happens copper popped right in the fat cross of Athens. That was very lucky… if I only was allowed to build some wonders here. This is such a nice production city.

The next step was obviously mysticism and masonry. Mysticism to knock down the cost of masonry and to build obelisks after walls in new cities for border pops. I also build couple of work boats to start the scouting and to get thee circum navigation bonus.

My plan was not executed as I first planned, because I did find some great city places quite close to my capital. Here is how my empire looked like in 25 BC.



Bad screenshot, I know, as it doesn’t show the resources, but here are some explanations. Sparta on the main island was originally planned to be founded one tile NE, but at the same turn I was going to found it, finished researching AH and that revealed horses SE of the current location. With the current location I missed out the gold, but got two food resources and the horses. Quite good at a tiny islands map. Thermopylae up NW has two gems and later I popped my only source of coal there. Too bad it did not have any food resources, but I think it was pretty strong anyway. Corinth had a couple of grassland hills and fish and Delphi horses and ivory.

I finished the Great Lighthouse in Sparta the same year. Although I would only have six cities and the impact of the trade routes would thus be limited, it had a great value in denial purposes.

After this a thousand years flew by and I kept on researching and building up my first invasion troops. Take a look at this.



And this is what they accomplished a couple of turns later.



Of course I had to raze the city, but if you looked closely at the previous picture you spotted a settler in the stack. Pharsalos is founded on the city ruins the next turn. And what a good spot, with fish and pigs for food and ivory and iron!

My stack kept on harassing Mansa Musa for some time and crippled him down quite good. The positive thing was that I got some elite troops in the making. Later I would upgrade them to grenadiers first and infantry at the end. Think about CR III, combat II and pinch infantry. Pretty scary if you are defending with rifles at best.

In 1210 I build the second wonder, the Colossus in Corinth. Again great stuff, but the denial part was even better.

In 1545 I got Liberalism first and picked Nationalism and built the Taj Mahal in Pharsalos for my golden age. This happened in 1590 AD.

After this I just kept on researching and when I got to assembly line I upgraded my grenadiers and went for Washington, as he was first in score and also had quite a high GPT. I wanted to strike before he got infantry of his own. This is what I sent after him.



After crippling Washington down I just started to looked at what techs I presumably was up against the different AIs and watched their income. I also tried to look out for the oil resources and pillage them, because I did not want to have opponents with neither destroyers nor tanks. The game basically became an always war game as I declared on all the AIs one at a turn. The AIs did not land a single unit on my islands and the best they were able to accomplish was pillaging my nets and sink a couple of my ships.

Although my six cities where not able to produce that many units, my elite infantry and later tanks were a disaster to the AIs who totally were on the defence. I did loose my elite infantry with 99,x odds, and that really hurt. Not my game, but my heart.

My success in the conquering was amazingly good and I was starting to believe I could get a conquest victory before 2050. At the end I came pretty close with Mansa Musa, Isabella and Washington all down to one city. Washington and Isabella would have been gone the next turn, but I would not have been able to take out Mansa Musa for another five or six turns.



Here we have some statistics from thee game. Killed quite a few of those rifles and apparently also some infantry. CR III tanks are quite efficient too. 70 cities razed and only 6 founded.



Nice game, but not as tough as I though it would have been. At least not after reading some adventure 11 reports. If it had been on any other map, I would have been toast, but tiny islands is just something the AIs handle exceptionally bad.

Thanks for the game and let’s see what the next game that gets me playing once again looks like.