Adventure 37 - Seven Trans-Terrestrial Tribes

[timmy827]

Plan going in was for a space victory, thought that would be an interesting challenge against big AI's and without tech trading. Conquest sounded harder but also a lot more tedious, while cultural wouldn't play much different from normal (could only get a cathedral for each religion in 2 of the 3 cities but that's really not too big a deal if you can manage diplomacy, you'll be slower but still ahead of any AI culture or space most likely).

Well, I moved 1N to get the 3rd clams, and wound up missing the pig that was initially hidden. With the limited city variant, I prioritized exploration more than usual with several warriors. Had good luck with them surviving a long time, which translated into crazy hut luck. Popped AH very early, then Writing, and IW (!) after despairing over the lack of horses/copper anywhere near the start. Also eventually got a Woodsman warrior to 10XP and snuck him to safety in Viking land for later Heroic Epic.

Took a very long time before 2nd city up (1760BC):

The lake tile irritated me enormously; founding on that space would have have been better, trading plains for grasslands. I had never played a tectonics before and was dismayed at the huge swaths of brown everywhere. Despite a generous amount of land available, it was hard to come up with 6 other good sites. I was looking for mostly cities that could grow to full size and work 15+ cottages.

With few happiness resources anywhere close, low commerce, Ragnar and Huayna as neighbors, no tech trading, and Industrious, building Oracle for Monarchy seemed like obvious move. It's funny - HR is sooooo valuable, but since the AI is willing to trade it at monopoly I never research it myself. That was done in 1200BC, still only at 2 cities. Next order was a Settler for the west:

Like other parts of the map, you couldn't get the awesome FP sites you see on other scripts - they all came with significant plains/desert. With a limited amount of territory I figured +1 health from the HG would be valuable, which bumped this site up in priority. And of course I wanted the names to line up for city #4:

500BC for 4th city, seems kind of slow. This of course was meant for early-game production, I thought I was going to need it because I was planning on taking Nidaros for one of my sites:

So much better than any other option in the long term (although I was probably going to raze it and move 1N). I had two spots staked out in the SW jungle, about the only other place you could find mostly grassland city sites.

Stupid quest RNG never gets the variant:


I really hope someone follows my original plan of attacking the Vikings because I didn't. First wrench was thrown in when a barb city popped up where I was planning my jungle outpost, so had to wait for military to move over there. I wasn't sure how close Huayna was and didn't want to risk him taking those sites while I fought Ragnar. Took until 520AD to raze the problem site:

It was on the best square for a city, but as the signs show I moved it 1N to reduce overlap with the other site to the SW. Anyways, during these events Ragnar got to Feudalism and kept founding cities in the land between our capitals; these events convinced me that war for Nidaros was going to cost more than it was worth, especially since my 4 older cities were all dependent on my army for civic order. Just moving the force into position would cause problems like old-school war weariness. Finally, Ragnar adopted Huayna's Buddhism and I had the chance, so I could get both of them to Friendly and not worry about defending myself.

So I decided to take this for a final site:

Moai went here and it was a fine compromise, but I could have founded it way earlier if I didn't have the silly idea about war. That also made for silliness as I prioritized HBR and Construction before Literature, with the result of Elephantine building a big army before the Heroic Epic, and tragedy as the late Lit cost me the Great Libary by a single turn to Huayna (who was cleaning up many other wonders, and was clearly the leading AI. No one had Alphabet for long time so I couldn't see techs, but from throwing EP at Huayna I could see he was easily researching 1.5 to 2 times faster than me).

Meanwhile Ragnar had been warring with Victoria and I didn't meet her for quite a while. As soon as I did I DOW'd for brownie points. The Viking roughed her up real well, they were at war for a millenium and Victoria was easily the weakest AI when that was done. Long period of peaceful building followed, heading up the Liberalism line. Sankore went up, and I self-researched Nationalism to use a GE on the Taj. (Huayna had Mausoleum, so definitely wanted to deny that to him). Despite Huayna's superior GNP, he spent quite a bit on the lower side of the tree, enough for me to plan the Democracy slingshot. Then in 1500AD I see H-man is going Education, and this is gonna be close:

Good thing ties go to the player. I had a GE stored for another golden age but fortunately that wasn't needed.

Diplomatically, I was still missing contacts. I sailed a Trireme past Sitting Bull and Qin to meet Hannibal (who was also advanced) but couldn't get open borders to keep going. Thus I didn't meet Monty until 1620AD by sending a caravel west around the world, but this was a major coup - I could get gems and dyes from him despite being Annoyed, and that was enough happiness to finally retire HR for representation and US as needed (Shared faith and wars kept Ragnar and HC Friendly despite the loss of fav civic.) After finishing the game, I came across a post at CivFanatics explaining that there is a current bug that the AI is effectively always at Cautious for resource trades, so that's why Monty was willing (geez, what is it with those Firaxis programmers? My programming concentration was in AI, so I have some idea about how hard making effective AI's for a game as complex as CIV (not to mention signifcant changes with patches/expansions); as a result I'm willing to forgive a lot of terrible AI city management, tactics, etc, but they seem to have a weird tendency to introduce simple errors in patches.)

Anyways, I pressed max cottages everywhere with no real need of heavy hammers (Ragnar was locked into Friendly and no other AI bordered me), in 1700 I engineer-rush Ironworks in one of the jungle cities. It was the best late-game production site I had (several levee tiles) but ironically had absolutely zero hammer tiles early on - I think I whipped the granary and then it stayed at 1 HPT until Universal Suffrage. However I kept the towns for a long long time. Just keep repeating "research is always the slower part of a space race"...also, I couldn't feed a workshop-heavy approach as I was unwilling to research Communism, and a food corp would be pretty trivial with the lowered per-resource yield on Large maps plus few resources from the 7CC rule. 1700 was also a crucial time as, just before I lost visibility on Huayna's research, I saw his Physics time go from 3 turns to 48 without anarchy. A couple of turns later I had confirmed that he had indeed turned off research and was aiming for a culture win. I was worried about this pregame, with tech trading off there was an real chance of an AI getting culture before I could finish the tech tree, but Huayna was not the strongest contender I've seen. His 3rd city started at about 5000 culture and was only at 300/turn, and I was pretty sure that 150 turns would be enough. He had 3 religions but was handicapped by the plains-heavy terrain, especially since he didn't tech Biology. With time I've decided that this is one of the more problematic parts of the tech tree for AI's - they always go for the free GP at Physics and Communism (ok) but often ignore Biology, which is certainly a better overall tech for your civ than Physics and often on par with Communism.

When Steam Power was done I found that I had no coal. Scan the map, oh good Ragnar has some extra, and already has the prereqs for SP. I would have killed for tech trading at this point, if only to gift him the tech so I could get coal. I wound up checking the tech or resource trade screen every couple turns, only it was all for naught due to the same bug I mentioned earlier, Ragnar was still Friendly but "didn't like me enough" to trade strategic resources. No one else had extra sources and all were quite a ways from steam power anyways.

In foreign relations, Monty had been at war with Hannibal before I met the former but it didn't seem like either was gaining an advantage. As previously mentioned Han was one of the more advanced AI's and eventually got a Rifles vs. medieval units tech edge, then proceeded to lose the war Sheer numbers of knights and trebs started taking core Carthiginian cities, and Monty never let up until Hannibal was wiped out. Ragnar eventually DOW'd Bull and Qin joined in on the fun, and the two of them carved up Native American pretty efficiently. I wanted to join in to refresh my relation + with Ragnar, only to find that I couldn't since I had cut deals with Bull earlier at Qin's request and he still refused to talk to me! So instead of a truly phony war declaration, I had to walk a warrior all the way through Scandanavia to enter Bull's borders Then I got this message:

Uh, I think you've put the cart before the horse there. Not that I cared as she was beyond pathetic, and had no chance of even reaching me as Ragnar's lands blocked her. Not surprisingly, Ragnar moved in for the kill on Vicky once he was done, leading to this horrifying image:

Why yes, that's 200 units, putting the Shaka/Cathy stacks I slaughtered in Epic 24 to shame. Good thing I didn't try to fight him earlier; even though razing to Nidaros would have really clipped his wings, I think he would have been strong enough to keep DOWing me and causing major problems. Instead I piggybacked on him, singing DP's when he was not at war and declaring on anyone he fought.

My research path was definitely suboptimal; originally I had planned to go Internet but abandoned thoughts when it became clear that I might only get Rifling out of it. Huayna's culture push knocked him out of the tech lead and Hannibal was getting wrecked as described above. Those were the two AI's who were doing well and who I hoped to leech off of, with their declines I had a huge tech lead. Nice to not have competition for the modern wonders, but I became more worried about a culture loss since I would have to self-research everything. The abortive Internet meant that I delayed Labs much more than usual (bad) however I did get the TGD earlier than usual (good since coal plants were not an option). Overall - since I was repeating "research is the slower part" - not a great outcome.

In the early 1900's more wars flared, starting with Charlemange on HC. Charle had been an afterthought most of the game, but he had finally pulled ahead of Huayna, and an Infantry + Arty stack captured one border city. I had high hopes, all 3 of the culture cities were near Holy Rome, but the stack appeared to get confused, divided up and wandered between two of the legendary-to-be's, and eventually swarmed by Huayna's older units and wiped out. Ragnar joined in but I didn't think this would help (it was a long ways from his border to the culture cities). One thing of interest though:

I had no aluminum, and no option to found the corp (no coal). At the time of this picture Pi-R was about 3000 culture and should get the aluminum at its 5000 border pop (once Ragnar took the Inca city just out of view; I already had some culture in the tile 1N of the Al). However it was too late - all of the Aluminum parts are the early techs, and you can see that those are already underway. If I had a great artist left over it might have been useful, but there wasn't any other way to grab the aluminum quickly without trashing my techrate (had to stay in Emancipation). I had some spare workers helping railroad along Ragnar's attack path.

With just Genetics and Ecology to go, Ragnar made peace and went to free religion, dropping to Pleased. There's a slight chance for a DOW, and he went to enough on our hands right away...help! I just had to hope, and consider desperation plans like moving the Palace to Heliopolis (farthest city from him). But no war came, leading to this:

That's syncrhonization! Many of those parts could have been done a while ago, but I kept postponing what could be postponed, to have the cities build Wealth to sustain 100% research. Did a fair amount of last-minute balancing as well (chopping, starvation workshops, switching to Caste for workshop bonus + using culture slider after last tech to balance Emacnipation anger) to get that result. Most of the time I don't enjoy micromanaging a lot, but for some reason going to great lengths to shave 1 or 2 turns off a space win. Maybe it's all preparation for a game where that will actually make the difference between winning and losing. So a fully equipped ship launches in 1942 and lands in 1952.

Huayna finished with 2 legendary cities and Tiwanaku at a little over 40000. It took longer to finish than I thought when I first saw him going cultural, but Tiwanaku never really got over 300 cpt as far as I could tell; there was also a brief time when he went back to teching before resuming culture. Don't know what the AI was thinking by doing that; also he appeared to not bomb with a great artist late in the game, which could have made things interesting; I may have been dreading a 2nd great artist bomb if Tiwanaku was around 45000 culture. On the other hand, the resumed teching got Huayna to Rifling and probably saved him from being quickly run over by the other AIs. Out of curiosity I played ~10 turns after the win to see what Ragnar did with his war preparations, and it was HC yet again. Monty had piled on during the first war and never let up, making much progress, and it actually looked certain that one of them would take his last culture city before it hit legendary despite going the long way across his empire.

Just for fun, here's a power graph:

Wonder if anyone will try Conquest? Could be a wild ride...Also I'm amused by the times where my level is perfectly horizontal. Although I've seen something this in other games where I was safe from attack, usually pop growth + tech discovery does something to power. I wonder if it was truly flat or if I had small changes that are just not visible due to the Viking/Aztec behemoths.

Thanks to Sulla, this was fun and relatively quick game. Looking forward to other reports, as noted there were several weedy decisions on my part so I'm expecting that I'll be beaten easily unless no one else went space.

[sooooo]

Woah, that screenshot of Ragnar's army is amazing! Reminds me of the stacks I saw during epic 10.

Good game and a nice read.

[T-hawk]

Wow, close finish! Yeah, space was certainly the more challenging route. I guess beating out that cultural win avenges RBTS7.

Yes, the happy cap was quite constraining early. You thought HR was the obvious happy solution? With the Stone not far away, I thought Pyramids for Rep was the obvious happy solution. Both worked.

My Ragnar behaved almost identically to yours. He crushed Victoria, where I phony-joined for the brownie points, and later attacked Native America. But despite gigantic unit stacks, he was real easy to get to Friendly with both civics and religion.

enough happiness to finally retire HR for representation and US as needed

I'm curious, what was the "as needed" bit for US? I always feel like I should be using it but that it's never really strong enough. When you first get the civic, the town count never seems sufficient. And when enough towns have finally matured, you're into the era of corporate food and Rep specialists are much superior. And the cash rushing never seems worthwhile to siphon economy away from research.

Just keep repeating "research is always the slower part of a space race"

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. The spaceship costs about 20,000 hammers, which sounds like a lot, until you realize that the spaceship also costs about 300,000 beakers.

[timmy827]

Wow, close finish! Yeah, space was certainly the more challenging route. I guess beating out that cultural win avenges RBTS7.

That is the only time I've lost to an AI culture win (still, the game overall was a total blast). Much easier here as Huayna only got 3 religions and was jumped on by many AI's. The win/loss date in RBTS7 was 1929, which would have beaten me easily (although the other civs were going after Huayna by that date and I bet I could have assembled an expeditionary force to raze a city if I had to. )

Yes, the happy cap was quite constraining early. You thought HR was the obvious happy solution? With the Stone not far away, I thought Pyramids for Rep was the obvious happy solution. Both worked.

My Ragnar behaved almost identically to yours. He crushed Victoria, where I phony-joined for the brownie points, and later attacked Native America. But despite gigantic unit stacks, he was real easy to get to Friendly with both civics and religion.

Part of your answer is right there - I wanted to buddy up with the first two civs I met pronto which meant HR. (Built the Oracle before I seriously considered attacking Ragnar).

I'm curious, what was the "as needed" bit for US? I always feel like I should be using it but that it's never really strong enough. When you first get the civic, the town count never seems sufficient. And when enough towns have finally matured, you're into the era of corporate food and Rep specialists are much superior. And the cash rushing never seems worthwhile to siphon economy away from research.

Definitely agree with the last part, almost never use cash-rush when playing for a peaceful space win. (Great for speeding domination though, especially with the WW tone-down Since I didn't go the corporate route I ran not that many specialists, so Rep wasn't as appealing. US was really needed to give some of my cottage-cheese cities enough hammers to build all the multiplier buildings (especially nice with some late golden ages) as well to pitch in on the cheaper spaceship parts. I stayed in it most of the time, finding that extra hammers into building wealth was about as good research-wise. Of course a sushi-spam with a big empire skyrockets rep's usefulness, while the Mining hammers decreases the utility of the town bonus.