Epic Seventeen: Sullla's Shadow (HRE)

[Sullla]

My shadow report is in the usual location:

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/civ4_epic17_1.html

As it turned out, no one else picked the same leader as I did. (I made my selection before the game opened, by the way, so it was not influenced by anyone else.) I guess we'll find out if that was a brilliant decision or a bone-headed move!

[Ruff_Hi]

Nice report and game. I also noticed a lot of war activity between the AIs during my game and it seems that you saw this too.

[SpazzMaticus]

Nicely done. I followed a similar gameplan i.e. building a strong economy and then stomping through the AIs in one go.
However I opted for using Cuirassiers instead of Knights, which turned out to be a little quickier. (I also had ~45 of them built, or rather whipped)
Your Golden Age, while nice, was not really that beneficial. It may have shaved some turns from your victory date, but it seems you had the game won at this point anyway.
I'm surprised you didn't go for Mausolleum of Mausolos having marble on hand.
In my game this wonder provided me with 45 turns long Golden Age, that took me from bleeding -30gpt to researching steadily at 40%.

[Jabah]

Knowing that Monty was in the game, I expected him to grab Buddhism (which he would, in fact, do)

Interesting that in was quite different in several people game.
In my game it was Khan,
In LKendter it was Mansa
(and I haven't finish reading everyone report)

Jabah

[timmy827]

Your struggle with KK shows just how lucky I was. I certainly don't think I'm any better at early aggression than you, and invaded at a similar time and force size (but more diverse). Like you, I took the capital easily, but unlike your game KK had not hooked up the iron and did not whip archers in his other two cities so I mopped up very easily. I did have a little scrape with the RNG, losing two immortals against one archer in a 40% city without putting a scratch on the defender, but nothing like your misery.

[sooooo]

Yep, I think the map and AIs were pretty interesting. Interesting as they can be on a pangaea anyway. I like a good fastest finish romp once in a while, it was a nice game. Though I'm beinging to think that BTS monarch is more suited for gentle games.

But Domination, on the other hand... that requires mastery of the in-game economic system enough to stave off financial collapse

Yeah I like this aspect too.

I ultimately decided to go in an odd direction and pick Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire as my leader

Would you have gone for Charlemagne again if you had the choice? TBH I didn't consider him - he's the leader with no traits after all. But that Rathaus certainly seems powerful - I've never build one so don't have the experience with them. In my game I barely built a courthouse because I couldn't go into slavery to whip any!

A nice report as usual - I especially liked the detail surrounding the roman attack. The AIs seemed to be better up to the task of warring in your game than in mine.

[Compromise]

Another stellar report; thank you Sullla.

I don't mean to gloss over your excellent play (so much to learn about maintaining a solid economy!) but I do have a question about your reports. How long does it take you to compose these reports? Sometimes, I find that even for the low-text reports I write, I'm spending almost as much time writing the reports as playing the game. Yet the result is never as much fun to read as your concise yet informative writeups. I suspect you're in the right RL profession.

[Sullla]

Now that I finally have a chance to reply to some of these messages:

Would you have gone for Charlemagne again if you had the choice? TBH I didn't consider him - he's the leader with no traits after all. But that Rathaus certainly seems powerful - I've never build one so don't have the experience with them. In my game I barely built a courthouse because I couldn't go into slavery to whip any!

No, after reading these reports if I were going for fastest Domination I would have chosen Darius. He has both an early rush unit (which would have helped me immensely in the early war against Kublai) and the two best economic traits in the game. Honestly, it makes me wonder what they were smoking at Firaxis when they created that pairing. It was no accident that Washington originally had the Financial/Organized trait, which came paired with the latest unique unit in the game.

Alex Mantzaris justified all his trait-swapping by saying it was more "historically accurate", but neither Financial nor Organized fit Darius of Persia one bit. Historical accuracy my ass. However, I'm glad that I was able to experiment with a civ that I had never played before, and still turn in a decent result.

How long does it take you to compose these reports? Sometimes, I find that even for the low-text reports I write, I'm spending almost as much time writing the reports as playing the game. Yet the result is never as much fun to read as your concise yet informative writeups. I suspect you're in the right RL profession.

They do take some time, although not nearly as much as playing. I would say that each page takes 60-90 minutes to write on average. I try to limit my reports to about 3-5 pages now, for convenience's sake - I don't really want to go back to the 9 pages of "United We Stand" any time soon! That was my favorite game, so it deserved an extra-long report.

I take relatively few notes while playing. I used to take a lot more, now I usually screenshot whatever seems important and work from that. I typically take twice as many screenshots as I will actually use in a report, sometimes more than that. Cutting and editing screenshots in preparation for the report usually takes about an hour as well. All in all, a report will usually take about five hours worth of work, which I can typically bang out in a weekend. I've written so many by now, it's practically second nature.

Stylistically speaking, I always try to convey what I was thinking and feeling at the time I was playing. I'm far from the best player at Civ (many of you have gotten a lot better than me!); my gift comes in the form of presenting entertaining stories. As a historian, my job relies on the ability to dig through hundreds and even thousands of documents to find what's important amongst huge quantites of dross. If I can't do the same thing with something as simple as Civ4, something would be wrong with me.

Anyway, everyone has their own writing styles, and that's what makes so many of our reports great. I'd encourage everyone to think in those terms and not worry about comparing themselves to others. For example, I still think that my writing style is greatly inferior to Sirian's, but I'm working on it!

[sunrise089]

Stylistically speaking, I always try to convey what I was thinking and feeling at the time I was playing. I'm far from the best player at Civ (many of you have gotten a lot better than me!); my gift comes in the form of presenting entertaining stories. As a historian, my job relies on the ability to dig through hundreds and even thousands of documents to find what's important amongst huge quantites of dross. If I can't do the same thing with something as simple as Civ4, something would be wrong with me.

That trait would suit you very well indeed in law school. Right now we have an assignment where the main thing that will separate the class on the curve is how well you've found cases to support the assigned position for the assigned facts. Having a graduate-level historian's eye for sifting the wheat from the chaff would serve me well...sadly my undergraduate "research the books we have on hand" skills aren't quits as useful.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Anyway, everyone has their own writing styles, and that's what makes so many of our reports great. I'd encourage everyone to think in those terms and not worry about comparing themselves to others.

I'd like to second this. As much as I miss Sirian's reports, what I like most about report day is the different writing styles. Telling a story, detailing micromanaging tricks, light-hearted humor, or describing the decision process are all different styles, and all great in their own right. I'm glad not all players are trying to copy Sirian's or Sulla's style.

I'm a bit ashamed that I was unable to write a report of my own for several games now. I'm feeling a little bit like a parasite, enjoying other's works without contributing something of my own. I really hope that will change soon.

-Kylearan