[SPOILERS]-! Churchill and the natives, a true story.

[RefSteel]

Question for any lurkers--- Happen to know what turn barbs start to head for the border on monarch? Thanks!

My understanding is that the turn number only matters with raging barbs - and the turn is like 3 or 4 or something!  For normal barbs (like the ones in this game) it works like this:

- Animals never enter borders no matter what.  If a border pop envelops them in your culture, they will immediately move to a tile outside of your culture if they can.  If they have no tile they can move to that doesn't have somebody's culture on it, they sit in place forever, or until they're killed, or until a city gets razed or something to clear the culture out of their way.

- Barb warriors show up no sooner than T25, and not until the total number of cities in the world is greater than (or at least equal to; I'm not 100% sure on this one) time and a half the number of still-living civs.  If you have a unit (including settler or worker) right on the edge of your culture, they can attack it.  Otherwise, they won't enter your borders until...

- The barbs get less respectful when the total number of (non-barb) cities in the world is greater than twice the number of civs.  Apparently they still won't bother unless there's a tile improvement they can pillage right on the border, or if they're right next to a just-captured city (either because it's still in revolt or because they moved in to pillage a tile improvement) until...

- The barbs stop respecting borders altogether when the total number of cities in the world exceeds three times the number of civs in the game.  (Actually there's apparetnly an edge case where they'll ignore cities to which their only route would be across multiple unimproved tiles inside your culture, but this is unlikely to come up much.)

- The nominal difficulty level has no direct effect:  It appears to happen faster at higher difficulty levels in SP because the AIs expand faster, increasing the total number of cities sooner.

[superdeath]

Question for any lurkers--- Happen to know what turn barbs start to head for the border on monarch? Thanks!

My understanding is that the turn number only matters with raging barbs - and the turn is like 3 or 4 or something!  For normal barbs (like the ones in this game) it works like this:

- Animals never enter borders no matter what.  If a border pop envelops them in your culture, they will immediately move to a tile outside of your culture if they can.  If they have no tile they can move to that doesn't have somebody's culture on it, they sit in place forever, or until they're killed, or until a city gets razed or something to clear the culture out of their way.

- Barb warriors show up no sooner than T25, and not until the total number of cities in the world is greater than (or at least equal to; I'm not 100% sure on this one) time and a half the number of still-living civs.  If you have a unit (including settler or worker) right on the edge of your culture, they can attack it.  Otherwise, they won't enter your borders until...

- The barbs get less respectful when the total number of (non-barb) cities in the world is greater than twice the number of civs.  Apparently they still won't bother unless there's a tile improvement they can pillage right on the border, or if they're right next to a just-captured city (either because it's still in revolt or because they moved in to pillage a tile improvement) until...

- The barbs stop respecting borders altogether when the total number of cities in the world exceeds three times the number of civs in the game.  (Actually there's apparetnly an edge case where they'll ignore cities to which their only route would be across multiple unimproved tiles inside your culture, but this is unlikely to come up much.)

- The nominal difficulty level has no direct effect:  It appears to happen faster at higher difficulty levels in SP because the AIs expand faster, increasing the total number of cities sooner.

Thanks!

[superdeath]

turn 31, what a busy busy turn!

[img][/img] with  my "protective" warriors standing guard, i chopped a forest to allow my settler to settle next turn, instead of in 2 turns from now. i put the chop into another worker, and between the 2 i plan to chop a 3rd worker out, then chop/whip 3-4 DS's to go say hi to dtay, from what i can see... im ahead of dtay in production, crop yield, and gnp. if he gets archery ill still likely be able to take one of his cities, ( providing he has settled a city or 2 by the time i get there.. ) but if he doesnt tech archery by the time they are knocking on his door, i might finally have a mp kill.   

[img][/img] some demographics. 

[img][/img] Rusten is to my south-west. dont know if he is fogbusting, or thats his next planned city site, but either way a nice slowish starting neighbor with a shrine later... i like it.

[img][/img] AND DTAY STILL HASNT " met " BGN.. man, idk if he just hasnt scouted that way yet, or is purposely avoiding contact..

and yes, after these screenshots i did convert to slavery while the settler is moving. ( i think thats still the go-to micro ? )

[superdeath]

Turn-35

[img][/img] rusten and BGN have met. im curious to how many close neighbors i have... this is a bit much lol. Must be a test.. hope i pass.
[img][/img] checking if rusten has a neighbor to keep him from dogpiling me, or if this is all backlines.
[img][/img] my preparations for war with Dtay.  i likely didnt have perfect micro for all of this, but i did manage to squeeze a growth in the cap and keep my 2nd city on track to grow and whip its DS into a barracks for culture for the pig. im "planning" on making 3 DS's and send them while the 4th?  follows after. IF this plan fails, such as if dtay spots it coming, watches graphs close enough ect ect, and gets archery, AND 2 archers in a city.. idk what im going to do, hope dicerolls win the game? go past and hope another city is open? if i can see from graphs that he has gotten archery, or alot more units ill likely find another target, perhaps rusten? idk.. such a crapshoot, but you win some and you lose some, lets just hope i come out on top :D
[img][/img] my....final? neighbor, TBS. alot of desert/jungle looking over there, hopefully he doesnt settle towards me while im dealing with dtay.

Reasoning for declaring war/ note to self. Im not going to do as well as any of my neighbors in the micro department, i just dont have the time to sim and work out every detail like i would have almost any other time of the year, but now im playing on a new server on Everquest so alot of my extra freetime is going to that.  So my thoughts are ill try doing what i do in single player, Rush/take over nearest neighbor... and use that land advantage to tech HBR and roll over a couple more then make sure i can hold onto what i have, tech to cavs immediately, then take over what i can with that.. its not exactly what i have planned to do in this game, but ill fall back on some form of that if i survive to that era.

[superdeath]

well turns 35-36 were... different, Dtay got a 3rd city somewhere in there and im fairly sure has bronze-working. Calling off my likely-already-to-fail rush, the already built DS's will try and find someone else to harass as i pump out some more cities.
Turn 37-
[img][/img] found another civ! Naufragar. dont know much about the guy, heres hoping he keeps Rusten in check.


[img][/img] demos for the turn.

[img][/img] BGN and Rusten continue to hold top 5 cities.

[img][/img] i decide not to poke the bear, and skirt around TBS's border.

[img][/img] future planned city sites, along with a barb warrior that i hope isnt able to enter borders quite yet..

[superdeath]

Turn 38-
[img][/img] overview showing where everyone ive met so far, is relative to me.

[img][/img] horses popped up right in my copper/production city... VERY NICE. Also in the screenshot, my current city builds. Planning on whipping that other worker into a barracks and then chopping the barracks out to try and get a border pop for those pigs asap.. settlerx2 in production in the cap. .

[img][/img] Only place moving south that i could move my scout without risking it..

[img][/img] Dtay and BGN have finally met.

[img][/img] not surprisingly, im not doing great in the categories that i want to be in.

plan of action is - settle south towards my backlines till calendar then settle 2 cities to my north pushing against Dtay. i should be able to get a good blocking city to stop TBS from coming my way, same with rusten.

[superdeath]

thought over my moves for the turn, and switched some micro around. Looked over the demographics and civ relations and found this.

[img][/img] hmm... well i dont need to go full kill mode.. but ill send 2-3 north to do some damage, maybe raze a city?

[superdeath]

Turn 40-

[img][/img] General overview.

[img][/img] skirting by TBS to scout for other players. ( question for any lurker, from what i recall, the more civs that you have found, that know a tech, the lower the tech costs for yourself... right? or am i just wasting valuable time moving a random warrior around..

[img][/img] demo's for the turn. Hoping to spam out settlers with my dog soldiers, and eventual archers id hope no one would call me on my " not so farmers, farmers gambit ".. ive got 5-6 city sites i wanna settle asap, to both block off neighbors, and secure resources/borders. Current tech path is Wheel-Pottery-Writing. I will likely tech archery after writing.

[img][/img] looks like to me, that Rusten got a lucky roll and got a GEMS pop in his cap??   why cant i be that lucky lol. ( before pic

 [img][/img]

)

[img][/img] AND the reason for my change of heart ( switching to spamming settlers and not DS's.. ) BGN and dtay's turn of war was likely just to scout, forgot to screenshot, but moved a ds up and saw a BGN warrior right outside of dtay's border, confirming what must have been a hopefully un-defended city declare, followed by peace.

i guess another question i have is, without using any other spoiler info you might have.. how would you rate my play so far? ( be as harsh as needed )

[RefSteel]

question for any lurker, from what i recall, the more civs that you have found, that know a tech, the lower the tech costs for yourself... right?

Yes, starting whenever any player in the game discoveres a Classical tech, according to the mod's changelog:

Known tech bonus no longer scales with total player number. Scales depending on the tech era of the most advanced player in the game:

Ancient: No bonus
Classical: +2% per met player with tech, max +60% (no further bonus after 30 players)
Medieval: +4% per met player with tech, max +60% (no further bonus after 15 players)
Rennaissance: +6% per met player with tech, max +60% (no further bonus after 10 players)
Industrial: +8% per met player with tech, max +80% (no further bonus after 10 players)
Modern: +8% per met player with tech, max +80% (no further bonus after 10 players)
Future: +8% per met player with tech, max +80% (no further bonus after 10 players)

It's nearly impossible to tell you how well I think you're playing without risking spoilers, especially since specific and obvious stuff (your micro etc.) hasn't been described in detail. There's a good amount of in-game information about your opponents though; from demographics and the like, you can probably get a sense for how well you're doing relative to the field!

[superdeath]

It's nearly impossible to tell you how well I think you're playing without risking spoilers, especially since specific and obvious stuff (your micro etc.) hasn't been described in detail.  There's a good amount of in-game information about your opponents though; from demographics and the like, you can probably get a sense for how well you're doing relative to the field!

fair enough. My goal for this game is to survive, i will by no means win, but i "should" be able to survive till the games end.