Since I just finished on Saturday, i've only had time, so far, to score my game.

I got a time victory (which i was aiming for ) in 2050 (of course).

169 points, i think. Around 1400 or so, i found that i didnt' really have much of a direction for my civ and wasn't sure that i could win in any way, so i decided to go for a time victory and aim for the end-game points since i knew i was not going to get "First Victory" points. To be honest, the game dragged alittle bit, except the last 100 turns or so. I declared on teh Chinese (to get gems) adn the Persians (to get uranium) and never did much island hopping before. I like marines

As i said, i just finished Sat, so i'm going to be spending the next day or two writing up the report ~ more to come! However, i will try to get my opening moves up

Edit: Added VoiceOfUnreason, the Grimm, uberfish and GreyFox.
Edit: Added Soooooo, DarkSavant, Herbie, Mihau, Blid, Compromise, Griselda, Harleqin. Fixed Blake's research path. Fixed Zalson's build order.

I recently read a book titled "The Wisdom of Crowds" which in a nutshell was about how collective decision making under the right cirucmstances was always superior to relying on a single expert. Having read most of the reports now, I decided to do a comaprison of everyone's opening move to try and see what this crowd's wisdom is

Apologies in advance if I got someone's sequence wrong, just send me a PM and I'll edit the post. If you are in an "insufficient detail" bucket I can also update if you PM me the details . Finally, I'll try to update this as I read more reports.

Sulla
Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Fishing -> Sailing -> Meditation -> Priesthood
Fast Worker -> Barracks (partial) -> Work Boat -> Galley -> ??? -> The Oracle

Blake
Fishing -> Sailing -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Bronze Working -> The Wheel -> Archery -> Writing -> Iron Working
Warrior (partial) -> Work Boat -> Settler (started at size 3, so maybe some more warrior hammers?) -> Fast Worker -> Lighthouse -> Warrior (completed) -> Work Boat -> Settler -> Great Lighthouse

Darrell
Fishing -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Sailing -> The Wheel -> Masonry -> Bronze Working -> Iron Working
Stonehenge (partial) -> Work Boat -> Fast Worker -> Work Boat -> Galley -> Settler (x2) -> Stonehenge (completed)

Kylearan
Fishing -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> The Wheel -> Sailing
Fast Worker (partial) -> Work Boat -> Fast Worker (completed) -> Work Boat

Qwack
Fishing -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Bronze Working -> Sailing
Warrior -> Work Boat -> Fast Worker -> ??? -> Settler

Grey Fox
Wheel -> Fishing -> Bronze Working -> Sailing -> Iron Working
Warrior (switch at size 2) -> Worker -> Work Boat -> (cont'd) Warrior -> Settler

Zalson
Fishing -> Sailing -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Bronze Working
Fast Worker -> Work Boat -> Work Boat -> Settler

Uberfish
Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Fishing -> Sailing -> The Wheel -> Bronze Working -> Iron Working -> Masonry
Worker -> Warrior -> Workboat -> Workboat -> Galley -> Settler -> etc.

theGrimm
Fishing -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Wheel -> Bronze Working -> Sailing -> Masonry -> Iron Working
Warrior -> Workboat -> Fast Worker -> Workboat -> Warrior -> Workboat

Voice of Unreason
Bronze Working -> Fishing -> Hunting -> Sailing -> Animal Husbandry
Fast Worker -> Stonehenge (11/180) -> Workboat (pre-chopped) ->Workboat x2 (for exploring) -> Galley

Harleqin
Fishing -> Hunting -> AH -> Sailing
Build path unrecorded

Griselda
The Wheel -> Fishing -> Sailing -> Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry
Fast Worker -> Unknown

Compromise
Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry -> The Wheel -> Pottery -> Masonry -> Fishing
Fast Worker -> Stonehenge (partial) -> Settler -> Granary -> Stonehenge

Blid
Fishing -> Bronze Working -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Sailing -> The Wheel
Warrior -> Work Boat -> Fast Worker -> Work Boat -> Barrack (paritial) -> Galley -> Barracks (complete) -> Settler

Mihau
Fishing -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry
Stonehenge (partial) -> Work Boat -> Fast Worker

Herbie
The Wheel -> Fishing -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Sailing -> Masorny
Build order unknown

Dark Savant
Fishing ->The Wheel -> Sailing 4. Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Masonry -> 7. Bronze Working
Fast Worker -> Work Boat -> Galley -> Settler

Sooooooo
Fishing -> Sailing -> ??? -> Bronze Working
Stonehenge (partial) -> Work Boat -> Galley -> Stonehenge (complete) -> Settler -> Fast Worker -> Galley

Detailed report not yet available
Justus II
Mihau
Polkhere

Insufficient detail
Playshogi

I 'll post my report as soon as I can (hopefully not after a week or 2 likewise Godot thing :D ).

I did 300pts. with 8(!) gems, 50 islands and cultural victory in the late 90's
I do NOT expect to get those points for earliest cultural victory but if nobody else does I will watch the reports for other ciltural victories



PS: I am glad to see I did started similary to Sulla and Kylearan by building workboat first rather than hunting->AH and worker (I've made some calculations to see that this was nearoptimal since a worker would have nothing to do beside mining and using mining would have prevented the city from growing) .

Sigh.

Summary: I just didn't "get it", discovered I was floundering, and eventually abandoned the game because I wasn't able to find a way to make progress.

If you take Sullla's report, and reverse pretty much every detail, you get a good description of my game. But to touch on the high points

This was my first attempt at Epic speed - so my instincts here were not of any help at all.

I haven't touched an Archipelago map in I don't know how long. (Prior to Frozen Jungle, I believe, from which I date actually starting to understand this game at all; prior to that time I was collecting tokens rather than attempting any sort of a plan).

And I felt completely boxed in by the rules. I probably should have isolated my doubts and asked about them in the game thread, but the whole "must trade gems if there is a buyer" thing (a) felt like it was cutting into my options, since I didn't feel like I could act against a civ that I was selling to (b) the novelty of checking the resource screen each turn to see if a new buyer was available got old very quickly, not to mention hoping for a chance to renegotiate a slightly better deal for myself © as relations decayed, the deals kept getting more and more lopsided (gems + gold + clam for ivory + 2gpt)?

I ran the game out to 1382 AD, but had no idea where I was going, or how to get there, or what was the right approach to my immediate problems. So, I took a break at that point, hoping to find my way, and never did. So that's where I left it.

So five gems connected and traded by 1382. The sixth (near the mountain, directly east of Delhi) had a settler and garrison parked next to it, ready to go as soon as I wanted it, but since I didn't figure I was in the running for firsts I was waiting until settling that city made sense - Toku was too poor to buy gems anyway. Five points for trashing cities to score gems. Four points for Magellan's voyage. Another 9 points for seafood.

Most of the traps Sullla alluded to, I think I fell for. I was figuring that Mining would be enough to keep an initial worker busy for a bit, so I started with a worker build while researching Bronzeworking, Fishing Hunting Sailing Animal Loving. Gotta figure I was a bit slow to be growing on that start.

I ended up building Stonehenge (before the stone was hooked up), so you know I killed production in Delhi. I also grabbed Pyramids - pyramids and spiritual go together nicely, and it's another way to get hammers on a map that doesn't have many, but I don't believe I had either of those ideas in mind. I simply collected the token, parked myself in Representation, and sat there - a completely non spiritual lump.

I also landed the Colossus (another set of handcuffs, since I never want to get Astronomy), but missed the scoring goodies (Gardens,Lighthouse) - a deadly lack of production, I believe (or a lack of planning my cash flow so I could buy rush it).

Brief war with China to liberate the gems (the same city pair everybody else faced). I decided to keep Guangzhou for the fish, and since I had an artist on hand I promptly culture bombed the whole mess).

The useful city to the south with the wheat was settled by Julius, who was ahead of me by a small margin for most of the game.

What really did me in was that I kept slamming into health limitations (I've been taking that part of granaries for granted for a long time). I never did work out that yes, I was supposed to plant cities just to claim a single resource. And I don't think it ever sunk in that, since I was Organized, this would be ok.

Which is weird - my signature pre-game analysis would normally tip me off to this sort of thing. As far as I can tell, I didn't do one for this game, aside from a bunch of scribbling to work out how long each improvement would take.

Pebkac.

On to the next, hopefully a better player than when I started this one.

See here for the report.

Due to negligence on my own part, i had to submit this as shadow. I apologize for that.

--

Hi,

you can find my report on my site, as usual.

Looking forward to read the other reports...

-Kylearan

My game was uneventful and milking for scenario points made the game boring. One thing I don't like about tiny islands is the way the AI settles cities all over the place so the final map looks like a patchwork quilt. I played without much of a plan, deciding with about 200 turns left to win on
points in 2050. This would give me time to earn as many scenario points as possible.

I didn't go for the Oracle, thinking that building settlers and establishing the Great Lighthouse as soon as possible was more important. Maybe I should have established a city at the northern tip of the home island to make use of the quarry square, but I didn't do that until very late in the game.
Another mistake I made was building the Statue of Liberty. What a joke wonder on archipelago maps! The Civ 1 artifact of wonders effecting only cities on a certain continent ought to be modded out of the game and replaced at least with top 10 cities or something. Building SoL (S*** outa luck?) cost me losing Kremlin to Cathy who used a Great Engineer to steal that one. I also failed to aggressively establish cities missing out on a corn/gold city the AI grabbed in 1694 AD as well as the wheat island, with fresh water to the south of the starting island. Another bonehead play was when I used a great scientist to contribute research points. Then I unloaded a transport and found another great scientist. Thinking I had found a bug and able to use this guy twice, I disbanded this great scientist. Afterwards, I tried to duplicate this "bug", and discovered that I had had 2 great scientists on hand.

The AI made some dumb moves, too. Mongolia built a city in the arctic to control a silver resource, so I razed that city only to discover another Mongolian city further north controlling the same silver!

I waited until 1898 (very late, I'm sure!!) to start the resource grabbing wars. Japan was attacked first, to grab the aforementioned gold/corn city. I was planning to switch to environmentalism for the 6 health points to achieve the 25 health points required for large cities, but realized very
late that that was against scenario rules. Even later I discovered, genetics and future tech would have secured the needed health points. The next battle was with Cyrus, who had a city on a gems island, but the gems were in Russian territory, so the AI could never hook it up. I captured Cyrus'
city (infantry really don't defend well against marines, battleships, and a few artillery), then culture bombed it, hoping to secure the gems that way, but it didn't work. In fact, the culture bomb effect did not work immediately. Some squares remained neutral and only flipped to me a few
turns later after a few citizens starved. So, I had to attack 'friendly' Cathy. She didn't mind losing Yaroslav, and we were soon good buddies, again. Rome, was next for his gem resource and his city fell easily, so my resource wars concluded in 1966. The only civ I never fought with was China. The rest of the game was a kind of milking for scenario points, with many cities founded to claim 1 or 2 islands.

Mongolia declared war on me in the last 10 years of the game, so I was unable to have him for a customer at the very end.

I realized that an island city with 2 fish would yield 50 food and enough for a size 25 city. With 2 clams/crabs I would need 2 great merchants to settle there. Of the 6 cities that I built to size 25 4 need 1 great merchant and 1 needed 2. I had a lot of difficulty keeping my GP generators "pure"
because the game always wanted to make scientist specialists especially when I was at war and an enemy ship passed through. It was annoying to always cycle through the cities to change this back, but I was fortunate to get all the great merchants I needed. I add an option to "work any square
before making specialist" to the city manager in the next patch/expansion.


Scoring: 278 plus possible Firsts (only for connecting gems). Others not applicable.

25 Time victory. 25 pts - Victory (any sort).

30 5 pts x6 EACH source of Gems you control at game's end.
25 5 pts x5 EACH "Customer" for your Gems at game's end.
20 5 pts x4 EACH source of Gems you control in 1500AD.
9 3 pts X3 EACH source of Gold you control at game's end
6 2 pts X3 EACH source of Silver you control at game's end

5 5 pts If you capture or raze cities solely for the purpose of gaining control over Gems, Gold or Silver supplies.

8 8 pts Build Globe Theater in your capital
5 5 pts Build the Taj Mahal
4 4 pts Build Magellan's Expedition (circumnavigate the globe first)
3 3 pts Build the Great Lighthouse
2 2 pts Build the Hanging Gardens

5 5 pts For every Gems resource, build a Laboratory in the closest city

47 1 pts Each island (of ANY size) under your complete cultural control at game's end.

48 8 pts x6 For EACH city of size 25+ at game's end. (Must be a city you founded by 1500AD).

4 4 pts Build the Strategic Missile Defense
4 2 pts X2 For EACH unit of Future Tech you research (maximum of 5).
10 1 pts X10 For EACH ICBM unit you possess at game's end (max. of 10).
18 1 pts X18 For EACH sea-based resources that is controlled and connected by 1500AD

sub total 278. And my dates for applicable firsts.

220 BC 3 pts - First player to have two Gems sources connected.
50 AD 3 pts - First player to have three Gems sources connected.
305 AD 3 pts - First player to have four Gems sources connected.
1940 AD 3 pts - First player to have five Gems sources connected.

1966 AD 5 pts - First player to control all Gems sources in the world AND also have all six rival civs as Customers.

I’m posting a summary for now. I plan (hope) to have the report up Wednesday. I just finished, and I will be on the road tomorrow and Tuesday.

**EDIT: Here's the link to my report:
http://justus_civ_iv.home.insightbb.com/Epic2.htm


Executive Summary:

Spaceship Launch in 2003 AD. This seemed a slow game, and somewhat frustrating building the spaceship with no shield powerhouses, but it was also my first archipelago in Civ IV, and my first game on Epic speed, so I guess I get what I deserved! Space was definitely not the way to go for scoring, and it didn’t turn out to be quick either!



Scoring:

25 – Victory
25 – Gems (x5)
25 – Customers (x5) (all but Mao, had his own)
25 – Gems in 1500AD (x5)
6 – Gold (x2)
2 – Silver (x2)
10 – Peaceful Game
8 – Globe Theater in Delhi
5 – Taj Mahal
4 – Magellan’s
3 – Great Lighthouse
5 – Labs in all Gem cities
24 – Islands at end of game
2 – Future Tech (1)
14 – Sea-Based Resources in 1500AD
0 – No cities size 25+ (19 was my largest), No ICBM/No SDI (No one built Manhattans)

183 Plus any ‘First Player’ points (which I doubt I’ll get, but here are the dates):

Discovered all Gems? (Not sure, sometime around 935 AD when I connected the 4th).
2nd Gems 185AD
3rd Gems 470 AD
4th Gems 935 AD
5th Gems 1502 AD
6th Gems, All Gold, All Silver: No
Launch 2003 AD


Here's my empire the turn before launch:

Attached Files

Thumbnail(s)
   

(I can't seem to log on to the upload server, so no pictures. Terribly sorry.)

I've posted a super summary (scoresheet) first for easy reference, and the second post contains a slightly more comprehensive story.
-------------------------
Super Summary : Score Sheet
(Diplomatic Victory in 1876)

RBCiv Epic Two Scoresheet - theGrimm

Dates to record:

No Dates Recorded (I always seem to get too lost in the game to remember to track dates)



Items to score in 1500AD:

4___________ Gems sources controlled and connected.

12__________ Seafood resources (Fish/Clam/Crab/Whale) controlled and connected.



Items to score at game's end:

Yes_________ Did I remember to follow all the variant rules? (No religions founded, adopt Free Market, etc?)


Yes_________ Did I win?

True Diplomatic__Victory type

1876________ Finish date

No__________ Did I capture or raze a city to acquire Gems, Gold or Silver?

No__________ Did I capture or raze a (non-Barbarian) city for any other purpose?


4___________ Gems controlled.

4___________ Customers.

3___________ Gold controlled.

4 (1 popped) Silver controlled.


0___________ cities I founded by 1500AD that have reached size 25.

21__________ total number of islands that are COMPLETELY within my borders.


No__________ Did I build the Oracle AND use it to discover Math or Currency?

Yes_________ Did I build Taj Mahal?

Yes_________ Did I earn Circumnavigation bonus?

Yes_________ Did I build Great Lighthouse?

Yes_________ Did I build Hanging Gardens?

No__________ Did I build Strategic Missile Defense?

No__________ Did I build Globe Theater in my capital?

Yes_________ Did I build Globe Theater at some other city that has gems?

No__________ Did I build a Laboratory at every Gems-controlling city on the planet?


0___________ Number of Future Techs discovered

0___________ Number of ICBMs that I control (not used) at game's end (max 10).

Score
25 - Victory

4*5 = 20 End Game Gem Sources
4*5 = 20 End Game Customers
4*5 = 20 Gem sources in 1502
3*3 = 9 End Game Gold sources
4*2 = 8 End Game Silver sources

10 = No cities captured or razed at all

4 = Globe Theatre in a gem city other than the capital

5 = Taj Mahal
4 = Magellans
3 = Lighthouse
2 = Hanging Gardens

True Diplo Victory = 1876

21 = Islands under my complete cultural control

12 = Sea based resources in 1502

Subtotal: 163

First off thanks to Sirian for sponsoring this game. Second, thanks to my friend Karthik for giving me a place to throw up my report. I had planned on apologizing for the length (my first Event and all), but after reading that Blake was over triple digits for .jpgs I decided no need

Here is the link:

http://www.erudita.com/darrell/pregame.htm

And here is my scoresheet:

http://www.erudita.com/darrell/darrelljs...esheet.txt

Fast summary, late game space launch and 240 points.

Edit: Make that 224 points. One of my size 8 cities did not have the required food

Darrell